Murder Mountain Read online

  Murder Mountain

  by

  Stacy Dittrich

  To my loving family

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title

  Dedication

  Quotes

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Other Books By

  Copyright

  “When you think of the long and gloomy history of man, you will find more hideous crimes have been committed in the name of obedience than have ever been committed in the name of rebellion.”

  -C.P. Snow (1905-1980)

  “Murder is unique in that it abolishes the party it injures, so that society has to take the place of the victim and on his behalf demand atonement or grant forgiveness; it is the one crime in which society has a direct interest.”

  -W.H. Auden (1907-1973)

  “…he allegedly told her that he and his girlfriend ate some of the meat from the woman’s body, which he referred to as bitchburgers…”

  -The Roane County Reporter news article that inspired “Murder Mountain.”

  Prologue

  “Heinous” is a word used by the media to describe the violent acts committed by one human being against another. Applying the word “heinous” to a murder victim, like the one I stood before now, does a great disservice and injustice to those who lost their lives as crime victims. In the eyes of a criminal investigator like myself, there is no word in the English language, or any language, that can bring forth the true emotions one has when looking down at another human being who’s been brutally murdered. If anything, your own mortality crashes down faster than you can say, “I am going to die someday.”

  The victim was thirty-one years old, only two years younger than I was. She had twin boys, aged seven, and a full life ahead of her. At least, she had—until this morning. After working two jobs to get through nursing school, she tried to better her life even more by leaving her laid-off, verbally abusive, drunken husband—a husband so self-absorbed and egotistical, he wouldn’t hear of it. Instead of going the rational route and talking to his depressed wife or suggesting marriage counseling, he decided to solve their problems by stabbing her twenty-six times and severely beating her face in with a ball bat, making her virtually unrecognizable.

  Then, to underscore the deplorable nature of his crime, he wrapped her in clear plastic and dumped her body in a ditch by our local airport. The Richland County Coroner, shocked even after years of viewing crimes of passion, called the crime “heinous” when he first viewed the bodies.

  Yes, bodies. The husband apparently had a change of heart, or wave of guilt, when he decided to put the barrel of his nine-millimeter handgun into his mouth and pull the trigger, rather than leaving her there to rot alone. His brain matter sprayed the top layer of plastic that entombed his late wife, his body falling directly beside hers.

  I’ve investigated monsters such as this man most of my career, and I had a good idea of his thoughts prior to pulling the trigger: if I die, too, we’ll die together and bond forever. This is a typical criminal’s way of rationalizing his behavior, giving no thought to the children he left behind—the true victims. How does anyone tell two seven-year-old boys that daddy killed mommy, and then killed himself?

  It’s not like this is the first murder-suicide I’ve ever been on. These crimes are commonplace in law enforcement, with my own department handling anywhere from five to ten domestic murder-suicides per year. Why I was reacting to this particular scene with such emotion, I couldn’t understand. At least I didn’t have the misfortune of being assigned as lead detective for this crime. There’s not much to the title, by the way, just mounds of paperwork to close the file and the grueling job of getting the last minute details from survivors, but I’ll pass anyway.

  Watching the coroner and his assistants place the bodies in two dark blue vinyl body bags, I thought of the last homicide I had been lead investigator on over two months ago. A man had walked into the home of his wife’s lesbian lover, shot her in the face, and left her dead on her kitchen floor. What he didn’t know, or didn’t care about, was that the woman’s two-year-old little girl was napping in her bedroom when the murder occurred. Waking up to the sound of the gunshot, the little girl found her mother on the floor and lay down next to her for the next twelve hours, occasionally eating Cheerios out of a box in the lower cupboard until both victims, mother and child, were found by the neighbor.

  I happened to be out of the office that day and heard the call put out on the police radio. When I arrived on the scene, I realized I was the first detective on scene—a circumstance I gravely regretted. The two-year-old, who was then sitting on the porch with a hysterical neighbor, was covered in her mother’s blood and sucking on a bloody pacifier. That vision stayed with me—vividly—for weeks, and most likely will stay forever.

  There are days when I don’t think I can bear to see another dead body—days that are getting more and more frequent. After the bodies were loaded in the coroner’s van, I asked the assigned detective if he needed my assistance, and when he said no, I left the scene, went back to my department and shut myself inside the confines of my office.

  Focusing on counting the minutes until I could go home, I sat at my desk and thought about my career, looking out my office window at the city below. What the hell was I doing here?

  Chapter One

  It had been four years since I’d been promoted to detective in the Major Crimes Division of my department. I sat staring out the window over the city. I would have thought I’d have the human race figured out by this time, but I wasn’t even close. I don’t know why I ever thought I could. I decided that we couldn’t be figured out. There would always be one more surprise around the corner, one more shocking set of circumstances to prove me wrong once again.

  This city in front of me seemed nice enough by all outward appearances, but ordinary citizens didn’t realize what a sewer Mansfield, Ohio really was. The city itself was pop. 50,000, small on the grand scale of cities. The total county population, Richland County, was 150,000. Oh, and by the way, Richland County and the City of Mansfield had the highest crime rate per capita in the entire country. We’d held that exalted position for three years.

  I’d tried to leave. Within four years of graduating high school, I had stints in Florida, where my ex-husband (whom I married at nineteen) tried to make it big in the major league baseball circuit and fell flat on his face. Next was New York City, where an illustrious modeling career turned my ego into the size of a pea. Then, Cleveland, Columbus, and Toledo, where I took turns attending several colleges. Unfortunately, these never filled the void I felt inside, and I kept coming home. After my hellish first marriage, a union that resulted in a non-working husband who had an addiction to strippers (it lasted less than a year,) I stayed and became a cop at the age of twenty-three. A wonderful second marriage and two kids followed shortly after. As to the weather in Cleveland, I despise it, but I’ve learned to deal with it.

  As I continued to look out over this booming metropolis, I began to feel the imaginary eyes of two huge piles of cases boring a hole in my back. Whenever I feel satisfied that I’m caught up on cases, I walk into my office and there are twenty to thirty more sitting on my desk. On days like that, I feel completely ov
erwhelmed. Now, instead of trying to lighten my load by starting to work, I lit a cigarette.

  “Hey! Heads up, CeeCee!” I heard from behind me.

  I turned around and saw Detective Jeff Cooper standing in my doorway. Coop was probably my closest friend in the major crimes division. He was now in his early thirties and had started in the department the same time I had. Usually, when we’re sworn in with other people, we tend to stick together for the remainder of our careers. Not always, of course, but Coop’s kids were the same age as my own and my husband, Eric, and I did a lot of things together with Coop and his wife, Cindy. I guess from an outsider’s point of view, Coop was pretty handsome—the typical dark-haired, blue-eyed babe.

  Considering that I get the pleasure of hearing and watching these guys burp, fart, and scratch their balls, it’s hard for me to summon up any feeling other than sisterly affection.

  “Kincaid’s on her way to see you,” he warned me, “and she looks pissed.”

  I rolled my eyes, groaning, as I put out my cigarette, (there’s no smoking in our building), and turned to my computer to look as if I was doing something productive.

  I paused for a minute, still staring at the screen. “Exactly what does that nosy pain-in-the-ass want now?” I said loudly.

  Too loud, actually. Little did I know that Coop had scurried off to his office like a little rat.

  “I beg your pardon?” I heard this from behind me. The tone of voice wasn’t exactly warm and friendly.

  “Nice,” I muttered under my breath.

  I slowly turned towards the door and saw Captain Naomi Kincaid, head of the major crimes division, looming before me like a terminal disease.

  “What can I do for you, Captain?” I said with a half grin, my day going downhill by the minute.

  “You can show me a little respect, for starters.”

  I took a deep breath, and as much as I wanted to launch into a counterattack about what a worthless captain she was, I merely smiled, bit my tongue gently, and said, “That’s a fair request, what do you need?” as sweetly as I could.

  “First, I need you to quit smoking in the building. I could smell it halfway down the hall. You know the rules,” she began. It was more like a verbal staccato than talking.

  “I quit two weeks ago, Captain. It wasn’t me,” I lied.

  “Whatever. That’s not why I’m here anyway.” She strode in and sat in one of the chairs in front of my desk.

  “Feel free to come in and have a seat,” I said, allowing sarcasm to infiltrate my voice. From the look on her face, I realized I had gone too far.

  “Exactly what is your problem with me, CeeCee?” she barked.

  She had definitely opened a can of worms on that one. My mind was racing back and forth trying to decide whether to answer her or not. However, the sensible side of me took over—for once.

  “No problem, Cap, I’m just having a bad day. I assume you’re here to see me for a reason?”

  She started clicking her tongue, a habit she had when she was thinking—a habit that annoyed me to no end.

  “I know you didn’t agree with the merger, but the fact is, you have to work for me and you better get used to it.”

  I always notice when people ignore my questions. Ah, the dreaded merger. After September 11, city and county budgets plummeted, ours included. Our wonderful county commissioners and city councilmen decided to merge the City of Mansfield Police Department with my own Richland County Sheriff’s Department, and we are now the Richland Metropolitan Police Department, the only county in the eastern half of the United States to create such a merger.

  By doing so, our department gained national attention, and other counties and municipalities are following suit. I really didn’t mind at first. My husband, father, and uncles were all with the city, so I got to see them more.

  However, out of both departments, Captain Naomi Kincaid, formerly with the city, has the reputation of being the most wicked of all witches, and as luck would have it, she is now my boss.

  She finally was tired of waiting for me to say something and got to the point. “Do you have the Samantha Johnston file?”

  I quickly scanned the two piles of cases that I hadn’t bothered to look through. “I’m not sure,” I stalled.

  “Well, look then!” she snapped, “What have you been doing all day?”

  I clamped my jaws together hard and started flipping through the files. Of course, it was on the bottom. I opened up the folder and scanned through the report.

  I looked up from the report. “This is a missing person case…Why do I have it?” I asked her, more curious than irritated. “There’s no evidence of foul play.”

  Captain Kincaid stood up and I truly thought my day was getting better, as it appeared she was leaving. No such luck.

  She stretched her arms out and sat back down. “Her father is a good friend of Commissioner Phillips.”

  Here we go, I thought, ladder-climbing time.

  “Phillips called me this morning. Her father said the word on the street is that she was murdered. He wants this handled as a top priority.”

  I sat there, stunned. “The girl is a twenty-three-year-old crack-head, probably laid up in one of the Detroit crack houses!” I said, incredulously. Mansfield has a strong connection to Detroit. Dealers come here, set up shop for a while, make their money, and leave. The problem is that they tend to leave a slew of unsolved shootings and other homicides in their wake.

  “There isn’t one thing in this file to suggest otherwise,” I continued, and as my curiosity was satisfied, I became seriously angry. I had worked my tail off to get to major crimes, and this incompetent bitch was giving me a missing crack addict case.

  “Actually, her father said that the tips came from Roseland, not the North End,” she replied with maddening calm.

  Roseland, also known as Little Kentucky, is an area that borders the city’s North End district. The two are as different as night and day, but both are equally dangerous. The North End, around Ocie Hill, is predominately black and prime turf for the Detroit and local drug runners. Roseland, on the other hand, is pure white redneck hillbillies.

  Back in the late 1960s, scores of people migrated from Kentucky to this area to look for jobs at the local steel mill. They lived in tents, and for a while, people called it Tent City. After that, the area became Little Kentucky and stayed that way. When actual homes started going up, most had dirt floors and blankets hanging for doors. Roseland has the highest crime rate outside the city limits. Although Ocie Hill and Roseland butt up against each other, there isn’t much border crossing going on. The last unsolved homicide we had, a little over a year ago, was in Roseland.

  The steel mill had hired Curtis Williams, a nice, educated black man, for a management position. He moved here from Columbus and, not familiar with the area (God knows he should have asked), he bought a house in Roseland. The first four days, animal carcasses and garbage were thrown in his yard. The fifth day, he looked out his front window and saw a cross burning on his lawn. On the sixth day, Curtis Williams, age twenty-four, was found beaten and set on fire in his back yard. He had also been run over by a car.

  Of course, not one person saw or heard anything, which is the norm nowadays in places like Roseland. The answers to police questions were either “I didn’t see nothing” or “I didn’t hear nothing.” Either people didn’t want to get involved, or they were too scared.

  To this day, I am amazed how the sheriff kept that out of the media. Had he not, we would have had a small border war going on. People don’t realize things like that still go on in this day and age.

  “Are you listening to me?” Captain Kincaid snapped.

  I glared back. “I heard you. The tips came from Roseland.”

  “That’s right. Make this your priority case until I tell you otherwise.” This was clearly an order.

  I started to look at the other case files, sorting through them out loud, “Let’s see here: aggravated robberies, ra
pes, shootings, and aggravated burglaries, all taking a back seat to a missing crack whore. I certainly hope you’re prepared to explain to all of these victims why their cases are not being worked on.”

  “The cases will be re-assigned to the other detectives and I want you to start on this today. I’m sure the Commissioner will be calling me frequently for updates.”

  At that point, I just couldn’t keep my mouth shut any longer. “Captain, if I may be so bold as to ask, but since you did, exactly what is your problem with me?”

  She actually smiled. I didn’t. “Believe it or not, CeeCee, I don’t have a problem with you at all. The reason I’m giving you this case is that you’re the best, and everyone knows it. We’ve got a Commissioner involved, and I know I can count on you to dot your ‘i’s and cross your ‘t’s. I know you will be thorough, and if anyone can solve this, it’s you.” She smiled again and shrugged. “If she is laid up in a crack house, you’ll find her. If she really is dead, you’ll find that out too. Good luck to you.”

  With that, she turned around and walked out of my office, and although I should’ve felt complimented, I didn’t. I knew it was all a lie. I do a damn good job as a detective, but she didn’t assign this case to me because of that. She had ulterior motives. I was sure of it.

  At that moment, I heard what could only be described as snickering outside of my door; there had been an audience to my encounter with the Captain. I got up from behind my desk, walked out of my office, and into the hallway. Not surprised, I saw Coop, Detective Chris (Boz) Boscerelli, Detective Sean Michaels, and Detective Bill Sinclair, four of my glorious co-workers. I attacked Coop first.

  “Hey Coop, next time you might want to tell me she’s right outside my door. She heard me!” I was angry, but I was outnumbered.

  They all still just stood there and grinned.

  “Exactly what is the joke?” I growled—my patience nonexistent.

  Boz piped right up. “Nothing like seeing two hot women at each others’ throats to end my day on a good note for once.”