Eleven Days Read Online Free PDF Page A

at that over the years.
    “Lamar, you talk to the press yet?”
    “Yep.”
    “What you tell ’em?”
    He handed me a sheet torn from a legal tablet. It said, “More than one body was discovered at the Herkaman residence this morning. Identities withheld pending notifying next of kin. Cause of death unknown. Incident under investigation.”
    “God, Lamar, that’s a lot for you. Ever think about a journalism career?”
    “Fuck ’em!”
    I went home and sat at the dining room table, eating about two dozen Oreo cookies and drinking milk. And thinking about the day so far. I am the department intelligence officer and for that reason had a file on Satanism. Not that we’d had a case before, but I was just curious about it, and I knew some officers in the metro areas who had dealt with it before.
    There was no doubt that the Satanic overtones were there. Overtones, hell. It was like somebody had used a how-to book for Satanic ritual killings. But this just didn’t make sense, as far as I could tell. Satanists were into ritual sacrifice, on rare occasions, but this was a massacre. Not a ceremony, at least not one that I could match with anything I’d ever heard about. We had everything except a flashing neon sign saying “Satanic Cult Homicide.”
    I knew that Satanism attracted psychopaths, but so did many things mystical or unsocial. Satanism was both, of course. It attracted its share of sociopathic personalities, as well, for that very reason. But not like this. It didn’t fit the pattern at all.
    I went to bed, slept about four hours, and managed to hit my patrol car at 22:56. I was sent directly to a car wreck, with an unruly drunk driver. I was done with him by 01:10. I was then dispatched to a domestic dispute, arriving at 01:22. That took almost three hours to sort out, and by that time I was too tired to think.
    I got home at 06:00 and prepared to enjoy my day off. I went to bed and slept till 17:00.
    My wife, Sue, was home, and was going through her usual response in these instances: concern, frustration, concern, anger, concern, anger, anger, anger. By the time we got to the fourth anger, supper was long done, my digestion had gone to hell, the office had called twice, and she had gone to bed to be by herself.
    As a result, I had plenty of time to think. Not exactly what I wanted, but better than being too tired. When youdo a homicide case, it tends to bother you a lot until you figure it out. In this particular instance, we didn’t even have a suspect.
    One of the calls from the office was Art, telling me that the telephone at the McGuire residence had been out of order for three days prior to the murder and that there was no way the unknown female could have called from there. Oh, swell. He was pissed off at Sally, assuming that she had screwed up somehow. Not logical, as it was at the McGuire farm that we found the body. I told Art I wanted to talk about a possible dope connection, and he said to come up to the office in a couple of hours.
    It was a little after midnight, Monday, April 22, and as our office is in Maitland, and I live in Maitland, I wandered up to see Sally and listen to the tape of the phone conversation.
    She had already transferred the tape to a cassette, because she was outraged at the unfair suggestion that she had made a mistake. I listened to the tape. McGuire was the name, all right. I didn’t recognize the voice.
    “Okay, kiddo, what did you think about her?”
    Sally thought for a second or two. “She was telling the truth, I think. She was really scared.”
    Sally is one of those rare dispatchers who have a natural way with people on the telephone. And who have an instinct for judging what they say. It would be a mistake not to use her in the investigation.
    “So where is she?”
    “If I was her, you’d never find me again … if I was alive.”
    Another problem. So far, the second female at the Herkaman residence hadn’t been identified. There was a chance that she