The Boys from Santa Cruz

8

When Lorraine Neely had failed to pick up her four-year-old daughter at her mother’s house by 4:30 Saturday afternoon, as arranged, her mother had tried calling the library but reached the answering machine. By six o’clock she’d been worried enough to call her husband and ask him to stop by the library on his way home from work. Irv Neely, who owned the hardware store on John Marshall Avenue, thought it was a waste of time, but he’d rapped on the locked library door anyway.

When no one responded, he’d turned to leave, and spied a bloody shoe print on the cement walk to his left, just outside the exit door, pointing away from the building. Stooping, he’d seen a second, lighter print a little farther on, and the faint trace of a third. He’d immediately called 911 from the pay phone on the cantilevered fieldstone wall to the right of the library entrance.

Officer William Baer, responding for the Marshall City Police Department, had agreed with Irv that the waffle-soled shoe prints might have resulted from someone stepping in blood, but he’d also thought they could have been left by wood stain, paint, or sealant. So rather than break in, he’d asked the dispatcher to notify the head librarian, who’d arrived with a key fifteen minutes later. Officer Baer had asked the other two to wait outside and entered the hushed, dimly lighted building alone.

The trail of waffle-soled prints, right shoe only, had led backward into the room, growing more distinct as it skirted past the crumpled body of the first victim and continued on around behind the checkout desk. The young officer, recognizing that the first victim did not appear to have lost enough blood to supply all those prints, had circled the enclosure apprehensively, his right hand resting on the butt of his holstered weapon for reassurance, and had discovered the second victim lying facedown behind the desk.

Although the body’d had that rag doll look that came with multiple broken bones, most of the blood, which had fanned out in a pool around her head, was later determined to have come from a broken nose, one of her lesser injuries. Following procedure, Officer Baer had secured the premises by herding Irv Neely and the head librarian away from the entrance before he called in the double homicide.

The hamsterlike county medical examiner, Dr. Flemm, had arrived half an hour later, his mustache quivering busily. “Everybody got their photos?” he’d asked briskly, donning his dust-free, latex-free rubber gloves and stooping beside the first victim. After checking for morbidity and lividity, and taking a rectal temperature to establish the time of death, he’d rolled the victim onto her back. “Oh, I know her,” he’d said, as if he were pleasantly surprised. Then, over his shoulder to the homicide detective, as more flashbulbs glared: “Heart shot-looks like about a thirty-eight.”

“And how long would you say she’s been dead?”

“Around three hours.”

“Yeah, that fits.” The library closed at four on Saturdays, and the other victim’s analog wristwatch, having been stomped to death along with its owner, still read 4:17.

After changing gloves, Dr. Flemm had taken his time examining the second woman, kneeling beside her behind the checkout desk and running his plump hands up and down her body, feeling for broken bones. Her rib cage he’d seemed to find particularly fascinating. In twenty years, he’d never encountered a torso so thoroughly crushed, he’d told the detective, with the possible exception of an artichoke grower in Castroville who’d been run over by his own thresher.

“The only possible way anyone could have done that much damage,” Dr. Flemm had added, “was to climb on top of this desk here, jump down and land on her with both feet, then climb back up and do it again-maybe ten, fifteen times.”

“Oh, Christ.” The homicide detective had sounded almost awed.