Murder! Too Close To Home Read Free

stiffly, “might early for the prosecutor ain’t it?”
    Allen Vanguard stood looking at the grisly scene for a long minute before saying, “well Lean, just trying to get a feel for probably the most brutal crime this county has seen since the horse and buggy days. The people in that car deserve justice, and it’s never too early to start on that.”
    “Do we know the identity of the murdered couple?” he continued.
    The sheriff grunted, putting his cigarette behind his ear as he reached into his shirt pocket, grabbing his notebook and flipping it open in a huff.
    “Abby and Tyler Lettermen, drivers’ licenses say they are from Cairo, Illinois. They were shot execution style, back of the head for both. We are doing a background check to make sure they have no criminal involvement in anything that might lead to this kind of a retaliation, but it could be just a crime of opportunity; wrong place at the wrong time.”
    “We don’t know if they had a passenger before they stopped…maybe the guy in the back seat just went berserk. Maybe they just stopped to help someone with a broken down vehicle, getting shot for their trouble. Either way, we got a real crazy on our hands. I don’t have to tell you how scary that would be for the folks of our little county.”
    “The K9 unit is on its way,” the sheriff continued with a grumble as he put away his notebook, “may be able to tell us which way the perp went from here, if the rain doesn’t wash away the scent before then.”
    “If the second scenario proves to be the case, this was planned out,” the sheriff continued with a look of concern on his face. “Whoever did this would have gone to a hell of a lot of trouble to stage a trap for someone.”
    Sheriff McHenry again reached into his shirt pocket, pulling out a small evidence bag with a business card inside.
    “Found this on the floor in the back. We assume the doer left it, but we haven’t tested it yet. Forensics is on the way, we should know more soon.”
    Taking the bag, the prosecutor eyed the white and plain looking business card. There appeared to be no identifying marks, save for the one word spelled out in plain block letters: “Ghost”.
     
    Chapter 4
    February 16, 1997
     
    Allen had called Frank and me into his office the next morning. We had by that time of course both heard what had happened and were chomping at the bit to get working on the murders. Allen had apparently been up all night, exhibiting pronounced bags under his eyes even as he exuded the substantial energy typical of his term as prosecutor.
    “I’m sure you guys have heard about the murders last night,” he started. “I’ve had Ellen compile a list of the clues collected by the Sheriff’s department up to this point, which are few.”
    Handing us both a single sheet of paper each, I was taken aback by just how little in the way of information was listed.
    “Last night,” he summarized, “one Abby and Tyler Lettermen, man and wife, were shot in their own car west of town. Background checks on the couple reveal no previous criminal activity or trouble. It looks like it could be some sort of pre-planned, execution style murder. We are going on the assumption for now that the victims were random.”
    “We think the perp used a stolen car as a decoy to lure the couple into helping a broken down motorist. He or she apparently got in the back seat, pulled out a gun, and shot them point blank in the back of the head. With the rain we had last night, we were lucky the K9 unit could find anything at all, but they did find a scent from the car going about thirty feet west.”
    “We also found an abandoned car this morning about five miles away on Langdon Creek Road. The K9 units returned and they again found a scent, tracking him thirty or forty feet where the scent again disappeared. Apparently another vehicle was stashed there, although we have no idea what it was. The gravel road yielded no tire treads.”
    “We’re at a