A Crane Christmas

Chapter 2 – The Ropes

Chapter 2 – The Ropes

Monday, December 8th, 2014

Muskingum County Sheriff’s Department

“This is Sergeant Holly Burke, my assistant and my right hand.”

Mason extended her hand to Holly, “We met briefly before but it’s a pleasure.”

“Welcome aboard.”

“I’m taking her downstairs to sit with Harding,” I said to Holly.

“Don’t forget, you and I have that 9:00 meeting with the Mayor,” she reminded me.

It was all I could do not to roll my eyes in front of the new help.

Shane shook Janet’s hand heartily. “I’m happy for the help,” he told her. Glancing at me, he continued, “The Sheriff here keeps getting pulled into stuff she shouldn’t have to handle because we’ve been a little short staffed. Now she can get back to doing...Sheriff stuff.”

This time, I did roll my eyes, “Sheriff stuff, huh? How about you go meet with the Mayor about his holiday lights campaign that he thinks the whole county should be involved in and I brief up Mason here on all the open cases?”

“I’ll pass Sheriff...with all due respect.”

“I thought so.”

Turning back to Janet, I pointed out the desk across from Shane’s, “That’s yours. Your computer login info is in that packet there. You’re stocked up too. Everything aside from that, Shane will go over with you. This first week or so...we’ll see how it goes...I’m going to have you two work the same hours so you can work together.”

“These are most of the open case files that I’m actively working right now.” Shane handed Janet a 6 inch high stack of files.

She leafed through them glancing at the titles and the latest filings.

“We’ll talk about some of them but, as you can see, it’s a lot of drug stuff, moonshining, etc. Typical stuff you see everywhere, huh?” he asked her.

“Yeah...well, except for the moonshining. We didn’t have much of that in central Indiana.”

She continued to look through the files. Holding up a file titled, ‘Yuletide Ewe’, she asked, “What’s this all about?”

Shane leaned across his desk, “Just between you and me, that’s some pretty funny stuff, harmless pranks mostly. Some kids, I suspect, have gone around to a couple of the big sheep farms around here and put red and green dye on a couple of the sheep they could corner long enough to do it. It’s got the dander up of the livestock farmers but, unless we catch them in the act, there isn’t much we can do.”

“That little problem will probably go away after Christmas anyway,” she responded.

“True.” Shane picked up another file. “On a more serious note, we have an open murder case that we’ve been attempting to work since it happened back in August.” He slid a thin file across the desks to her.

Janet picked it up and looked through it for a couple of minutes. “This is it? There isn’t much here.”

“Frankly, it’s probably unsolvable but we keep pulling at strings trying to find something, anything.”

“What’s the story?”

“A twenty-eight year old female reported dead in her condo via the phone in her condo. When we got to the scene we found the front door ajar and no one in the place but her. She was fully dressed except for her shoes, laid out on her bed. The coroner determined she’d been choked by an article we didn’t find at the scene. On top of that, a maid we’ve never been able to trace had finished cleaning the place, apparently just before the vic arrived at home. The place was spotless.”

“So the killer took the murder weapon?”

“We think so. Nothing in the place appeared disturbed.”

“Why can’t you find the maid?”

“She was probably an illegal. A neighbor copped to seeing a woman come in, in the morning before she left for work but she didn’t know anything else.”

“Any other witnesses?”

“Yes and no.”

Janet tipped her head and looked at Shane, a question in her eyes.

“There’s a lot to this...It’s a convoluted mess.” Shane drew in a breath and let it out slow. “Anyway, we dusted the place for prints wherever we thought we could see something. Since it was cleaned, not much there...We found two that weren’t Olivia’s. They were on the phone we were called from and they belonged to an 18-year-old kid, Nevil Harper Jr. The Sheriff, who is familiar with the boy, also recognized his voice on the 911 tapes.”

“Where does he fit?”

“Supposedly he was dating her and the father of a child she was carrying...only she wasn’t pregnant.”

Mason shook her head, “Come again?”

“Stiers accused two different men of fathering a child. One, J. D. Roberts, died before her in unrelated circumstances and Harper is the other one. She wasn’t pregnant at all.” Shane took a sip from a coffee cup and grimaced, “That’s cold!”

“Anyway,” he continued, “after Harper called it in, he disappeared. We figured he was good for it and we tried to find him. When we did, he told us he arrived the day Olivia died with her car – he’s a mechanic – and he saw his father Nevil Sr.’s truck in front of her place. His story is that he waited a few minutes until he saw his father leave and he went in using the front door that his father had left ajar. He found Stiers in the bedroom, he says and, when he couldn’t revive her, he called 911 then bolted out the same door.”

“So he’s fingering his father?”

Shane nodded.

“Rape? Any DNA?”

“No rape. She had trace DNA under her nails. She didn’t put up much of a fight. We just got those results back from the Columbus Crime Lab late last week...finally, but, they’re inconclusive. There are markers that would seem to point to a Harper male but they can’t be nailed to Nevil Jr. and even less to Nevil Sr.”

“Someone else in the family then?”

Shane shrugged. “Possibly, but we have no justification to go digging around their family tree and zero other evidence or any witnesses.”

“So, if she didn’t put up much of a fight, she probably knew her attacker? That leaves us back with the boyfriend...or with the maid.”

“There’s one more thing; before she lay down, she took Melatonin.”

Mason flipped through the file. “Says here she was reported about 1:30 in the afternoon. Why would she even think to take a sleep aid at that time of day?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. Her father, Oscar Stiers though says she took it often. She had trouble sleeping going back years according to him.”

“He live with her?”

“No; across town. He paid all of her bills.”

“The Stiers name rings a bell. I feel like I should know it.”

“Hmm, you probably should. He owns Stiers Asphalt Paving; one of the biggest road construction companies in the region.”

“Ah, that Stiers.”

Shane nodded.

“If she took Melatonin, that explains the lack of fight in her. Could it have been forced on her though?”

“Doubtful. No marks on her other than residual from the strangulation and she took the under the tongue ones to boot. It would have hit her fast. Oscar says she had an addictive personality disorder. We didn’t look into that any further when toxicology came back with nothing but the Melatonin and her usual prescribed anti-depressants.”

He paused and then continued, “Mason...”

“Call me Janet, please.”

“Okay, Janet, the crux of this seems to turn on her pregnancy or lack thereof. We’ve questioned both Harper men extensively. The boy is cooperating and we know where he lives and works. It’s in the file. He even took a polygraph and passed...even though it’s not admissible.”

“And the father?”

“He’s a tougher nut to crack. We brought him in and grilled him for hours. He refused a lawyer but it didn’t matter. He didn’t budge. Denied even being at the scene. We couldn’t hold him.”

“So no video in the complex?”

Shane shook his head no. “Not that was working that day, no.”

“No other witnesses besides junior to place senior at the scene,” Janet ticked of a finger. “It’s one man’s word against another’s and that one isn’t budging?” She ticked off a second finger.

“You got it,” Shane nodded. “Short of a full confession from Nevil Harper Sr., we have literally nothing to go on.”

“Have you thought about shaking the tree again now that the DNA is back?”

“On what grounds? We have nothing.”

Janet leaned into the desk, hand to her chin and seemed to be thinking hard.

Shane interrupted, “Oscar Steirs though about pursuing a civil case for wrongful death against Nevil Sr. in an attempt to force both men to the stand to testify. His lawyer advised him that without any evidence other than a witness with a grudge, Nevil Jr., he probably couldn’t even get the case in front of a civil jury. He says he wasn’t in it for money anyway. He wanted the murderer behind bars, not making him payments.”

“If he has the money to pursue that anyway, it’s probably the only way we’re going to get this solved,” Janet said as she slid the file back across their desks to Shane. “You don’t know until you try. He might feel compelled to defend himself. He’d at least have to appear or face charges for failure to do that.”

.