The Litter Of The Law

“Aren’t you off work tonight?” Harry, still upset, asked as Cooper crossed the parking lot in her civilian clothing.

“I am, but Dabny called me from headquarters and said that you, once again, have found a strange corpse. So here I am. Anyway, I’d like to see this before the body goes to the state medical examiner. You two stay here. I mean it.”

“All right,” Susan firmly agreed. “I’ll take charge of Harry.”

Cooper turned her back to walk away, then faced them again. “Are you two doing okay?”

Harry shrugged, and fibbed a tad. “Yeah. It’s gross but …” She shrugged again as Susan nodded in assent.

The police investigative team circled the display. The photographer snapped, stepping out of the way of the officers.

Dorothy Maddox, chief of forensics, had only been with the team a year. She was kneeling down, surgical gloves on, carefully touching the corpse’s arm. In the temporary lights now shining on the scene, she studied a swollen hand, and a forearm with purple splotches.

Cooper stood behind Dorothy. “Thirty-six hours at most, my guess.”

“Your guess isn’t far wrong. The nights have been cold, the days in the seventies. She’s on the other side of maximum rigor mortis, obviously, but intact, and that’s a huge help.” Dorothy stood up. “Is Rick on the way?”

No sooner was his name spoken than the sheriff pulled off the road and into the church driveway. He, too, was in his civilian clothes and driving his personal vehicle. He glanced toward Harry, then walked over to the scene.

“We’ll need to dust everything. The pumpkins, the baskets, every single thing.” He took a deep breath, then coughed slightly. “I hated to leave my ball game, but this is, well, original.” He paused. “There’s nothing like the odor of death, is there? It isn’t even that bad yet. I’m surprised the body wasn’t damaged.”

“Boss, can I remove the victim’s mask?” Dorothy asked. “I waited for you.”

“Yes, of course.” Rick motioned for all the lights to shine on the witch’s face.

Carefully, Dorothy removed the rubber mask with the hooked nose.

“My God,” Susan exclaimed, as she could see the face with the flashlight focused on it. “It’s Hester Martin!”

Harry recognized her all the way from where she stood in the parking lot. She covered her mouth with her hand, then let it fall. “Hester Martin. She never did a thing to anybody.”

Tears filled Susan’s eyes for the middle-aged lady. Her mind flashed to Hester proudly showing off produce, filling her specially decorated wooden wheelbarrows, some worn and painted green, some barn red, some faded marine blue. Large wheels were yellow with a pinstripe matching the color of the painted display cart. Hester had a good eye for proportion and color. The produce gleamed, as she had misted it, too. Susan’s tears rolled faster now. She met Harry’s eyes. “Remember when Hester declared that black gum trees were conspiring against humans? Well, everyone gets a free pass for a few crackbrained ideas. Hester’s seemed more imaginative than most.”

“I can’t believe this!” exclaimed Harry. She, too, cried a bit.

Rick was as surprised as they at the victim’s identity. “Dorothy, get the body out of here as soon as you can. We’re lucky it’s night.”

“Sure. I’ve done what I can do without disturbing the rest of this Halloween scene.”

“Here’s Ted. Excuse me.”

Rev. Ted Foster had driven over as soon as the sheriff’s office called him. He lived about twenty minutes up Route 810. Along the way, he’d had the presence of mind to pick up Bunky Fouche, the church groundskeeper.

Seeing Hester laid out in the witchy garb, Bunky had to be steadied.

Rick escorted both men directly to the corpse.

Bunky shook uncontrollably. “Oh, Sheriff, I can’t look at dead bodies.”

“Bunky, tell me who this is.”

“It’s Hester Martin, God rest her sweet soul. She was good to me.”

“Reverend Foster.” Rick turned to the minister, who also appeared shaken by the grisly sight and rank odor. “When did you put up this Halloween crèche, for lack of a better word?”

“Three days ago,” answered Reverend Foster, his voice low. “The witch was a manikin and she had straw hair.”

“And did you look at the display each day?”

“No, sir, I didn’t. From a distance, it all looked fine to me.”

“It was fine.” Bunky’s voice quavered.

“So, neither of you has any idea when Hester Martin’s body was placed here?” Frustration edged into the sheriff’s tone.

“No,” both answered.

Rick put his hand under Bunky’s elbow to steady him, walking him away from the eerie but all-too-real vision.

Cooper watched the men’s departure, then said to Dorothy, “It’s a lot of work to carry a body, dress it up, place it on the broom.”

Harry had inched closer from the parking lot, and piped up. “Maybe Hester’s body was already dressed up when it was brought here. The killer first observed the manikin’s witch outfit and dressed her just the same. I mean, it makes sense the killer would make it easy on himself.”

Cooper stared at Harry, thought a moment, then replied, “A possibility.”

Susan said, “If Hester’s body had been here for any real length of time, dogs would have already gotten at it, crows, flies. We’re all country people. We know the stages of death.”

The three women stood silent.

“We’ve got a real sicko,” Cooper replied simply, saying what they were all thinking: The killer had kept Hester’s body somewhere else and placed it here once rigor mortis decreased and the muscles relaxed.

“Coop, let me get poor Hester out of here.” Dorothy motioned for the stretcher and the body bag. “I need to get her in the cooler at the morgue before there’s more damage. And maybe when I get the costume off, I’ll know how she was murdered.”

“If the modus operandi is the same as our scarecrow accountant, we’ve got a major problem,” said Coop.

Dorothy whispered, “No matter what, we’ve got a major problem.”