General Oates

(Story mentions death, murder scene)

The call came in at six-forty-two, before Smitty had finished his first cup of coffee. The dispatcher said a body had been found on the footpath below the dam bridge. Cora Vance had spotted it on her way over the bridge. She lived above the North Haven Courier at 1018A E. Main and walked that stretch most mornings. Smitty was out the door in three minutes.

Daryl Whitecloud was already there when he arrived. He stood on the gravel path with his hands in his jacket pockets, looking down at the body. The light was early and gray. The air was cold and still.

"Where's Vance?" Smitty said.

"Patrol car. Monroe's with her." Whitecloud nodded toward the bridge. "She's shaken but talking. She said she heard nothing. Just came around the bend and saw him there."

Smitty walked to the patrol car. Cora was in the back seat with the door open.. She was in her mid-twenties, with light brown hair cut in a bob. She was wearing a heavy winter coat. She looked up when Smitty and Daryl approached.

"You doing all right?" Smitty asked.

"I've been better." She stuffed both hands deeper into her pockets. "I walk this path every morning. Six-fifteen, give or take. I come over the bridge and down the north side." She stopped. "He was just there. On his back. I thought at first it was a manikin."

"Did you see anyone else? On the path, on the bridge, anywhere on the road?"

"No. It was quiet the whole way out." She looked at Smitty and then Daryl. "I didn't touch him. I could see he was gone."

"You did the right thing calling it in," Smitty said. "We'll need a full statement later today. Can you come to the station this afternoon?"

She nodded. "I'll be there."

Smitty stood. He and Daryl walked back to the body. It was a man in his late sixties, slightly heavyset, wearing pressed khaki pants and a canvas jacket with brass buttons. He was on his back with one arm outstretched and the other folded across his chest. No sign of a struggle in the gravel around him. No visible wounds from where Smitty stood.

"Gerald Oates," Whitecloud said. "Retired four-star. Moved to the island about two years ago. People called him the General."

"You knew him?"

"By sight. He came into Bardo's Books now and then." Whitecloud paused. "Jack mentioned he'd been asking questions about the Campbell case."

Smitty looked up from the body. "What kind of questions?"

"The kind that should have stopped when Lysander and Brenda went away for Sawyer's murder," Whitecloud said. "Who had access to the Campbell house. Whether anyone saw Lysander's truck on Dorothy Street that night. Jack said he came in twice, and he wasn't browsing either time."

Smitty crouched down. There was slight bruising at the base of the General's neck, faint and purplish against the gray skin. The man's wristwatch was still running, the second hand moving around the dial. Smitty stood back up. "We'll wait for the coroner."

Whitecloud was looking past him, up the path toward the road. Smitty turned.

A woman was coming down from the direction of the highway. She was tall, maybe fifty, wearing a dark coat against the morning chill. Her hair was waist-length, gray-black, and loose. She walked without hurrying.

Smitty had never seen her before. He looked at Whitecloud.

"That's Mairenn," he said.

Smitty had heard the name several times over the years. He knew she lived out past the dead end of Hwy 143, beyond Garrett Bardo's farm. People knew she was there, but most kept their distance. Some called her a witch. What Smitty had heard, from people he considered level-headed, was that she had a gift for knowing things she had no ordinary way of knowing. She had lived alone out there her whole life, and that was the way she kept it.

"What's she doing down here?" Smitty asked.

"That's a good question."

Smitty went to meet her before she reached the tape. "Ma'am. This is an active crime scene."

She stopped. She looked at the body from where she stood, twenty feet back. Then she looked at Smitty. "I know what it is," she said. "He came to see me. I thought you should know."

"He came to see you?"

"Three weeks ago." She had no bag, no visible phone, nothing in her hands. Her hands were red from the cold and the walk. "He wanted to know if Sawyer Campbell was at peace."

"And what did you tell him?"

"I told him what I heard." Her jaw tightened. "He wasn't."

Smitty held her eyes for a moment. He wasn't going to ask her what that meant. Not here.

"Is that the kind of thing people come to you for?" he said.

"Sometimes. Not often." She said it without apology. "Most people on this island would rather not know I exist. The ones who come usually have no one else to ask."

"And Oates came."

"He drove out past the Bardo place and walked the rest of the way in. He didn't want to be seen." She paused. "He wasn't the kind of man who believed in what I do. But he was out of other options."

Whitecloud came over and stood beside Smitty. She looked at him and nodded once.

"Did Oates say what he was looking for?" Whitecloud asked.

"He said he'd spent thirty years in military intelligence. He said he knew when an investigation had been closed before it was finished." She pulled her coat closed at the collar. "He had a file with him. A thick manila folder. He didn't show me what was in it, but he said it had to be protected."

"Did he say who he was worried about? Who did he think might come after the file?"

"He didn't say. But he was careful going back to his truck." She paused. "I watched him from the door. He checked the road both ways before he got in."

Smitty looked at her. She had walked the length of Hwy 143 to get here. He wanted to know how she had heard about this before he had, but he set that aside.

"We'll need a full statement from you. Everything he said, the order he said it."

"I can do that."

"Can you come to the station?"

"I'd rather not be seen in town other than when necessary."

"Then I'll come to you." He held out his card. She took it with cold fingers. "This afternoon."

She nodded once and walked back up the path toward the highway without looking at the body again.

Smitty turned back to the scene. Whitecloud was watching her go.

"What do you know about her?" Smitty said.

"What most people know. She's been out there her whole life. Comes into town once a month for supplies and goes back." He paused for a moment. "She didn't come into town outside her routine for nothing."

The coroner arrived. Blunt force to the base of the skull, a single strike. He had gone down without a struggle. It had been fast. No weapon anywhere along the path, no phone, and no folder.

Smitty stood and looked at the water running cold and fast below. Lysander was downstate, one year into twenty. Brenda Campbell was in prison for her part in Sawyer's murder. The case was closed.

Whitecloud came up beside him and leaned on the railing.

"If there was a file," Smitty said, "and someone knew he had it—"

"They needed it gone before it went anywhere, official."

"Who knew he was asking questions?"

"Jack Bardo. Whoever else the General talked to." Whitecloud looked at the water. "And whoever he was asking about."

Smitty thought about Todd Campbell, still here on the island, Sawyer's twin. He had taken over his brother's construction business and kept to himself since the trial.

"Pull what you can on Oates," Smitty said. "Military record. Anything he may have filed in the last two years. If that folder existed, someone else knew about it."

"And Mairenn?"

"She walked the length of the island to get here this morning," he said. "She didn't do that to be nosy.” He pushed off the railing. "Oates had a rental on River Street. I want to get there before anyone else does." They went up the path toward the road together.

Smitty didn't know yet what Oates had found or who had needed him gone for it. But a retired four-star didn't walk into a woman's door past the end of a county road because he had loose ends. He had come because something wasn't finished. That meant there was still something to finish, and now it fell to Smitty to find out what.