When Cicadas Cry, page 15
“Go—I’ve got this,” Addie answered, already sitting down and pulling the first pile of documents toward her. She hardly heard the door close.
“Seriously?” Kate Williams’s tone was incredulous. “This is what you want to work on?”
“It’s a double homicide—what could be more worthy of another look?” Addie asked.
“It’s a double homicide that took place thirty-four years ago—were you even born then?”
“No—not that it should matter.”
“I vaguely remember this,” Kate said, flipping through the first few pages of the file in front of her. “I was only eleven or twelve—probably six or seven years younger than the two girls who were killed that night—but I had siblings close to that age, and I remember all the parents freaking out. Every kid in town got stuck with early curfews and had someone watching their every move because the whole community was convinced there was a predator out there trolling for unsuspecting teenagers. It was such a strange story. It was all the news media talked about for weeks.”
“And then?”
“Over time, it faded away. There were very few leads and none of them went anywhere. The consensus seemed to be that it likely was a drifter who had passed through and was gone. Eventually, life went back to normal without there ever having been any answers. Like it does all too often,” she sighed.
“I doubt it went back to normal for those two families,” Addie said.
“No, I’m sure you’re right about that. So, what makes you think you can pick up a scent on a trail that’s been cold for more than three decades?” Kate was giving her that same appraising look again, and Addie was determined to measure up.
“The last people to see them alive were teenagers at the time, probably scared to talk because they lied to their folks about where they were going that night or some other teenage bullshit. But they’re not kids anymore. They’re all in their early fifties now, and probably a fair percentage of them are still in the area,” Addie said. “Whatever they might have remembered over the years they now see through the eyes of adults.
“Plus,” she said, “if this was the act of a drifter, the same thing may have happened again somewhere else. We have access to all sorts of databases now that didn’t exist back then, and new forensic tools can help connect remains that might otherwise seem unrelated.”
“And you’re sure this is what you want?”
“Absolutely.”
“Well, at least one bit of timing went your way. The only guy still on the force who worked on the case when it was new handed in his notice to retire in three weeks. If you hadn’t shown up now, you would have missed him.”
“Must be my lucky day.”
“I’ll be interested in seeing if you still feel that way after working on this for a while,” Kate said, picking up her phone. “Heather, could you please find Sergeant Bowen and send him in here ASAP? Yeah, thanks.”
“Sergeant? After more than thirty years?” Addie asked.
“Yes, but not because Command Staff didn’t try to promote him. He flat out refused to apply. Lee Bowen shares your disdain for the political aspects of the job, and all he wanted was to be left alone to be a cop. And he’s been a good one, too. One of those guys born with a knack for it.” She was interrupted by a rap on the frame of the open door.
“Yo, Cappy, you looking for me?” Then he spotted Addie. “Oh, excuse me, I didn’t realize you had company. I thought Heather said you were looking for me.”
“I am. What are you doing right now?”
“Well, I was planning to go to lunch. I mean, you didn’t expect me to do any real work these last few weeks, did you?”
“Relax, Lee. You’re still going to lunch—only now you have company. Lee Bowen—Addie Stone,” Kate said, introducing them. Lee’s confusion was obvious. “Addie’s about to become your new best friend, Lee. She’s reopening the old Edisto Beach double homicide.”
The initial shock that flashed across his face was quickly replaced by a grin. “For that, I’m even buying.”
CHAPTER 20
“WHAT’LL IT BE, FOLKS?” THE WAITRESS ASKED AS SHE PUT DOWN the two sweet teas and placed paper-wrapped straws beside them on the checkered plastic tablecloth.
“I’ll have the blue plate special,” Lee said. “Addie?”
“What’s good here?” she asked, looking up at the menu written in colored chalk on a blackboard.
“It’s all good,” Lee said, “but if you order anything other than the blue plate special, you’ll probably regret it when you see mine,” he warned her.
“That so?”
“Oh, yeah. Miss Tess can cook up a storm and nothing she fixes is bad, but when you let her choose whatever she happens to be inspired by at the moment, that’s not mere food, it’s an experience.”
Addie looked at the waitress, who nodded enthusiastically.
“Make that two, then,” she said. Addie had ridden with Lee in his cruiser and had already decided that she liked him before they ever sat down at the table. Kate had been right, of course; he came across as a cop’s cop who just wanted to do his job.
“Not that it’s any of my business …,” Addie said after the waitress left with their order.
“But?” His grin suggested he knew that wouldn’t stop her.
“But you seem a little young to be retiring. For that matter, you seem a little young to have been working a case this big thirty-four years ago.”
He laughed. “Thanks, I think. After high school, I got a two-year degree in criminal justice from Carolina, then I came straight here to the sheriff’s office at age twenty-one. They sent me to CJA—the police academy—and then out on patrol. That first summer they assigned me to the beach—probably because I was only a few years older than most of the kids they expected me to keep out of trouble.”
“So, why’d they give you such a big case?”
“Didn’t—they put a senior sergeant on it, but I was assigned to work with him since I was working the beach and knew some of the kids who hung out here. He was all hyped up about it at first—liked the attention that came with a big case. But when the case dragged on for weeks and then months with no leads, he started pushing more of it my way until I finally ended up handling it mostly on my own and reporting to him.”
“That explains why you got to work on a big case so early, but why retire now?”
“Under the state retirement system for police—PORS—officers who’ve been in the system as long as I have only need twenty-five years of service or to be fifty-five for full retirement. I hit the twenty-five-year mark years ago but wasn’t ready to give it up. Last month I had my fifty-fifth birthday, and I decided this was a good time to hang up my spurs. Maybe see what else I might like to do for a while.”
“Aren’t you worried you’ll miss it?” she asked.
“No. I’ve loved it, but I’m getting too burned out to do this anymore. I’m grateful for every kid we were able to bring home safe, and I’m glad we could at least bring closure to some families when we couldn’t, but I’m tired of chasing bad guys. Besides, it’s become so demoralizing lately. We can’t seem to please anybody on any side of things, and I decided I’ve had enough.”
Addie nodded, remembering Kate expressing some of the same frustration. And they were right—this was a hard time to be a cop.
“This case, though … they say every career cop has one he can’t let go of. One that follows him around and haunts his dreams. This was that case for me. I worked on it day and night from the beginning. They finally made me move on when it became clear we were getting nowhere. Still, I’d drag it back out whenever I had some time to spare or saw something I thought might possibly be related. After all these years, I still think about it more than I care to admit.” There was a resigned sadness in his eyes.
Addie was quickly finding herself drawn in by the case and it wasn’t hard to understand why. Edisto Beach was a laid-back, no-shirt-no-shoes-no-problem kind of place, and Edisto Island itself was remote, primitive, and steeped in history—replete with stories of hauntings and mystery. The unresolved murders of two young women only added to the intrigue and made the story hard to shake.
“I read some of the initial reports, but those are dry facts,” she said. “Can you walk me through it and add your perspective?”
“You might be sorry you asked. Once I start, I’m hard to shut up,” Lee warned.
“I’ll take my chances,” she said, and Lee shrugged and leaned forward, putting his elbows on the table.
“It started with a party in May 1983. Most of the kids were seniors wanting a final blast before they headed separate ways. Internet and cell phones didn’t exist. Their grapevine used landlines and meet-ups to spread the word, and they usually partied someplace private—not in clubs like kids in bigger cities. Maybe someone’s parents were out of town, or someone lived on a farm. Maybe they were out in the woods—there were plenty of those around.”
“I’m starting to feel I was born too late,” Addie said as her cell phone vibrated for the third time since they’d sat down.
“Eighteen was the legal drinking age, which means they were drinking by sixteen or seventeen because older siblings or dates bought the beer. Cigarettes sold in vending machines to any kid with two quarters. Seat belts weren’t required, no open-container laws, and nobody gave a rat’s ass about speed limits on back roads. Kids weren’t as linked-in to what was trending on the other side of the planet, but they had a lot more latitude here at home.”
“I take back my comment about being born too late,” Addie said. “I’m not so sure I would have survived with that much freedom that young.”
“Sadly, that’s how this ended, but then you know that already.” Lee’s expression grew heavier.
“That night, they were having their blowout on some private property that bordered the beach on Edisto.”
“Somebody’s beach house?”
“No, just land. It was owned by the Gadsden family.”
“Buford Gadsden?” Addie’s eyes widened at the mention of the name.
“No—this was thirty-four years ago. It would have belonged to his father. Anyway, God only knows where those kids told their parents they were going, but they all showed up with whatever alcohol they had, built a bonfire, set up some music, and were living the dream.
“The party was in full swing by nine that evening, with people coming and going. Somewhere around one in the morning, they started packing up. That’s when they realized that Tara Godfrey and Cindy Crosby were missing. They rode to the party with two other girls—Julie Mathis and Sonya Beach. When they couldn’t find them, they started to panic.”
“So what did they do?” Addie asked.
“Are you familiar with Whaley’s—the seafood restaurant on Edisto Beach?”
“Sure. The self-described seafood dive—great place.”
“Back then, it was a filling station and convenience store—sort of a hub on the beach because there wasn’t a major grocery store—and it was used as a base for an ambulance on the island. One of the girls—Julie—knew the paramedic. She went to him, and he pulled together a search party. What they didn’t know was they were already on a recovery mission instead of a rescue.”
“Why was the paramedic gathering the search party instead of calling for you?” Addie cocked her head.
“He did call us, but it was going to take me a few minutes to get back, and in cases with missing persons, we don’t want to waste even a few minutes, so I asked him to get started.”
“Edisto Beach is not a big place—where were you?”
“On Jungle Road. It doesn’t look like much of a jungle today, but back then there weren’t many houses in that area, and a jungle is what it looked like. We’d had complaints that someone was using those woods as a place to party—leaving trash and burning campfires that posed a risk. I was patrolling that night and spotted flashlights, so I parked my cruiser and went to check things out. I got the call on my radio and had to run back through all that brush to get to the cruiser. I was pretty scratched up and dirty, but I made it back to Whaley’s where they were gathering in the parking lot and joined them about fifteen minutes later.
“We found the first body—Tara Godfrey’s—around 4:00 a.m. The tide had turned, and her body had drifted with the current to farther down the beach. There was trauma to her head, but on scene it wasn’t clear whether the head injury came first, or she drowned and hit the rock groins as she washed up along the beach. And there was no way to know at that time if the head injury was accidental.
“Those questions were answered when we found Cindy Crosby’s body. No question that wasn’t an accident. She was found in the wooded area near the beach, facedown under a palmetto tree. There were finger marks and bruises around her neck—she’d been strangled.”
“Two blue plate specials,” the waitress interrupted as she placed the piled-high plates in front of them.
“Wow—what is all this?” Addie asked her.
“Fried chicken breast with a wild blackberry sauce on the side, mac and cheese with shrimp mixed in, and here you have collard greens,” the waitress said, pointing to each in turn.
“What’s this stuff on the collards?”
“If I told you, I’d have to kill you,” she said, “but I guarantee you’ll love it.” She winked and turned to go. “I’ll be right back with more sweet tea,” she promised.
They were quiet for a moment as they both dug into lunch.
“You weren’t kidding, this blackberry sauce is out of this world,” Addie said.
“Told you,” Lee said. “Sorry about the timing—not ideal conversation for lunch.”
“Goes with the territory.” Addie shrugged. “Speaking of timing, what did the coroner say about time of death?”
“They placed it between 10:00 p.m. and midnight for Cindy. They couldn’t be sure with Tara since the body had been in the water. That would have affected the body temperature and complicated things in other ways too, but the body condition was not inconsistent with that timing, and their estimate was that they were both likely killed in that same time frame. The theory that made the most sense was that they were both attacked relatively close to where Cindy’s body was found.”
“And the cause of death for Tara?”
“The head trauma. They said it would likely have caused immediate death.”
“Were they able to identify what she was hit with?”
“No. There were particles of the rock from the groins found in the wound, but that could have been deposited while the body was in the water. Same was true for trying to identify any foreign fibers that might have come from an attacker.”
“Footprints? Signs of struggle?”
“No, any prints—or blood—on the beach had been washed away. With the other girl, Cindy, the forest debris around her body made it impossible to get any good prints, but there were broken branches and trampled plants that suggested she had been running in a northwest direction—and was being chased. There was tearing at everything within an arm’s reach of where they found her. No question about it, that girl went down fighting.”
“Was either girl sexually assaulted?”
“Both were fully dressed, and there was no evidence of sexual assault on either body. We found DNA under Cindy’s fingernails, but no match in any of the databases we had.
“Cindy had a little cash in the pockets of her jeans. Both girls were wearing those gold herringbone chains that were so popular in the eighties, plus a few rings, earrings, and bracelets between the two of them—all there when the bodies were recovered.”
“What about forensic toxicology reports?” Addie asked, placing her fork on her empty plate and pushing it away.
“They had been drinking that evening, but their blood alcohol levels were minimal. The specifics are in the file, but I don’t recall them off the top of my head since there wasn’t enough to suggest that contributed significantly. They didn’t find evidence of any drugs for Tara, though the results might be less reliable because of the time the body was in the water—bacteria and all. Cindy’s test results showed low levels of marijuana. All that was consistent with witness statements about what was observed at the party.”
“Will there be anything else?” the waitress asked as she put the check on the table.
“No thanks, Sue. That’s it for today,” Lee answered as he handed her a few bills. “I don’t need any change.”
“Thank you, kindly. See y’all next time,” she called back as she headed for another table.
“You mentioned witness statements—were you able to talk to them that night?”
“Only the two girls who went for help. The others had all gone home with no clue about the tragic turn things had taken. We got a list of names from Sonya and Julie of the people they remembered being there, and as we tracked those down, we asked for additional names from them. I think we had a complete list by the time it was over. Come on, let’s head back.”
As they left, Lee held the door for a group coming in, several of whom had heard about his retirement and made all the usual corny jokes accompanied by handshakes and slaps on the back. Watching the scene, Addie could tell their well-wishing was heartfelt and she suspected Lee was going to miss this more than he let on. She felt a little pang of jealousy over the camaraderie and realized she missed that part of it.
The car was hot from sitting in the sun, and Lee put down the windows as he backed out of the parking space.
“So, what did you get from the witnesses?” Addie asked as he pulled the car out of the lot and into the street.
“Lots of kids noticed that Tara and Cindy had left the party, but nobody seemed to think that was any cause for alarm. The biggest bombshell was that another kid—Logan Bennett—left the party around ten and came back around eleven.”
“That coincides with the time of death,” Addie said quickly.
“It does, and that got our attention. Nobody had seen him with the two girls, but it seems he and Cindy had been an item until a recent breakup that got ugly.”
