Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

I’m Lieutenant Deviled Yeggs.  I work homicide in the big city of Tracy.  Working for me are my old partners: Detective Sgt. Jim Wednesday and Detective Poached Yeggs, my nephew who is slowly becoming a good detective.

Editor’s Note: Before anyone gets nervous, this has nothing to do with anyone stealing Christmas.  This is about a less-known December Holiday.  Okay, to be honest, I had never heard of it.

We had been called to a farm near where the flood had wiped out the Dalton Farm on the southeast side of the big city of Tracy.  This was higher ground, thus not flooded in the last flood, but T.R.U.S.T. was wanting to expand on the PLAYhouse project (the initials spelling P-L-A-Y, but standing for Pink Lady Apple Yeggs, rich alumnus and major donor).  I wondered if this farm was part of the planned expansion.  They wanted to put my wife, Glyce, down here to be near the athletic training fields and intramural fields, but then someone suggested buying more properties to expand the buildings in the facility (the PLAYhouse opposed to the PLAYground) to become a satellite campus, providing technical trade instruction, and classes for freshmen and sophomores, maybe even associate degrees and then transfer to the main campus west of the city center.

I just mention that in that this farm might not be here much longer, and Polly Pulice begged to not be assigned to this case.  Her parents lived walking distance away and she had not talked to them in a while.  She told them they should sell their home to the university, and they got very upset with her.  But, no, she was part of our perimeter security crew and well-trained in such matters.  We needed her.

As I was taking an overall look at what this farm looked like, the overall terrain, that kind of deal, a short, thin man popped out of the barn.

“Oh, I am so glad you are here.  You need to have this all cleared up and the llamas returned.”

Poached, who had arrived before I did, sang, “La-la-la-llamas!”

I looked at him with a stern look.

Poached asked, “What?!  You have never seen Monty Python?”

I pinched the bridge of my nose.  This was starting to sound like a really bad murder investigation.  “Poached, stick to conversation related to the job.  We can discuss the la-llamas la-later.”  Why I put the “la” in front of those words, I have no idea.  Maybe Poached is contagious today.

“NO!” The little man shouted.  “I am Al Packer, from the Tracy School Board.  I had a truck parked here last night.  The llamas are now gone, stolen.  If you are the person this idiot said was next to arrive, then you must be the lieutenant.  You need to drop everything and find the missing llamas.  After all this is National Llama Day.  I have school coming every hour to the Olmstead Park downtown.  We have an enclosure prepared for a petting zoo.  We were going to give the elementary school a lecture on the llamas and then while we lectured the next class, the first class would get to pet and feed the llamas.  As you can see.  No llamas!  No truck!  Someone has stolen National Llama Day from the elementary students of Tracy.  Do you have children, Lieutenant?”

“Mr. Packer,” I replied, “I have a newborn, two in high school, and one in college, but they got by in life without petting a llama, and I doubt if their education was thwarted by that fact.  But Mr. Packer, you will have to wait.  I am Lt. Yeggs, homicide.  I do not deal with robbery or burglary.  And those that investigate such things will not be called to the scene until the murder investigation is complete.  Too many people walking around and valuable evidence can be lost.”

Al Packer yelled, “NO!  You will investigate the stolen llamas.  You will recover the llamas.  I have children waiting!  Get to it, lieutenant!  If you don’t, I will be forced to call the head of the School Board who will call the mayor.  You may be walking a beat tomorrow if you do not do as I say.”

Poached asked, “Lieutenant, can I tase him?  He is within the roped area.  But he refuses to tell me where the body is.  We’ve pretty much roped off the entire farm.”

I shook my head, “He would just add that to his complaints to my nephew and your brother, the mayor.  Then we would ruin evidence trampling the entire farm trying to find a dead body.  But if he does not produce the location of the dead body and what he knows about it, you have my permission to cuff him and put him in the squad car.  Then we can question him further in the office.  Now, Mr. Packer, you are interfering with a homicide investigation which can lead to you being arrested if you do not cooperate.”

Mr. Packer shouted, “The body is that of the farmer’s daughter.  She is behind the barn.  I will show you how much disdain I have for your investigation by trampling my way to show you the body.”

Within the next five seconds, Packer had taken just two steps toward the barn when Poached had him on the ground, face down in the mud, getting his cuffs on him.

I hesitated, but said something anyway, “Poached, nice takedown, but a horse collar tackle wasn’t necessary.  He is not that big of a guy.  Put him in your squad car.  Where is Jim?”

Poached nodded toward the barn.  “Since Mr. Packer refused to talk about the murder, Jim went into the barn to look at the truck tracks and hopefully find the body on his own.”  We heard a “woot” from the barn.  Jim must have found a back door and the body.

As Poached walked, half-dragged, Mr. Packer to the squad car, he passed Polly Pulice, Police Officer, well inside the roped area, talking to someone who was not a policeman.  They were having a heated discussion.  Poached yelled, “If he gives you trouble, tase him and cuff him.  I’m taking this suspect to the squad car.  We can put yours in your car.  We wouldn’t want suspects fighting each other.”

Polly yelled, “He’s my Dad, not a suspect.”

Poached yelled back, “Inside these ropes, we have suspects, witnesses, or a dead body.  Everyone else stays outside the ropes.  You know the rules, Polly.  You get him out of here, or I arrest him on my way back.”

Polly said, “You heard the detective, Dad.  I am very proud of my risqué photograph in the first responder calendar.  More would be showing if I had worn a bikini.  Wearing Plain Jayne’s old uniform shirt that is a bit too small because I am chestier, that was priceless.  We’ll sell a lot of calendars, and it is for a great cause.  As for still being a good little Catholic girl, I have not been to bed with anyone, and only a licensed medical professional has seen me without clothes on.  And, NO, I will not move back home.  It is at the far side of town from the precinct.  I have an apartment walking distance from the precinct.  I love it there.  Great neighbors.  They love it when I park the police cruiser out front.  Crime is way down at the apartment complex.  And after all my failed attempts at getting a boyfriend, I have a doctoral candidate at the university that thinks I am a wonderful young lady.  He treats me like a queen, and we are both in the mayor’s wedding party.  Don’t mess things up, DAD!”

Her Dad said, “You need to go to confession.  You need to go to church.  You need to take the host.”

Polly yelled, “Dad, I go to church.  Randy takes me to the First-Third Metho-Presby Church.  It’s where the head of Randy’s department and the assistant head of the department attend.  I love it there.”

Her Dad said, “I have heard horrible things about that church, but it’s not as bad as that Evangelical church on the east side of town.”

Polly spit, “Dad, quit being prejudiced against something you do not know about.  Poached!!  This man here is inside the ropes.  He refuses to leave.  And he just said that the church where you attend is the worst church in Tracy, only followed by the church where your Dad, Granddad, and uncle attend.  Can you get him out of here?”

Poached yelled back, “With that kind of attitude, gladly, but I’ll need your cuffs.  Mine are being used.”

Her Dad yelled, “I’m leaving.  Do not bother.  And Polly, we will light a few candles for your soul.  You need to quit this silly idea of being a policeman and move back home.  The idea, making up a story about being in the mayor’s wedding party.  You have a lot of sins to confess, young lady.”

Poached groaned, “I am in the wedding party also, sir.  Polly is a welcome addition to the wedding party. And as far as the Catholic church is concerned, she is not the only one in the wedding party of the mayor.  There is Jerry.  He’s a nice guy.  But you may not leave until we interview you.  We need to investigate the scene of the crime first.  You either walk to the squad car and sit in the back seat until we are ready for you, or I cuff you.  This has not been a good start to an investigation.”

Her Dad asked, “Who is Jerry?”

Polly laughed, “Jerry is a sweet man, but you may know him as Father Jerome, the abbot of the monastery, who is the best man, and he has been trying out a comedy routine on us for the wedding reception, where the guests will include the governor, lt. governor, a few judges, and some possible cabinet members from the executive branch in DC.  Jerry is so, so funny!  Oh, and Poached, if I know my Dad, he is not a criminal, but he probably won’t behave either.  Here are my cuffs.”  But Poached led her Dad to the back seat of the squad car without cuffs.  Polly’s Dad only realized that there was no door handle to exit the car until he was safely locked inside the cage.  Polly walked back to the entrance to the roped area, smiled and waved at her Dad, and then ignored his yelling and beating his fists on the glass.  She knew that he had been doing his morning walk and saw her standing there.  He probably had no witness evidence, but Poached and I would get it out of him if he did.

We had little trouble after that.  There were indeed tire tracks inside the barn where the heavy-laden trailer had left the barn.  The trailer must have been loaded, possibly with the llamas, because an empty animal trailer is not that heavy, and the ruts were pretty deep.  Good luck for us in that we could get good impressions.  We had tried to contact the farmers that owned this farm, but they did not answer their phones, and no one was at home.  The ground where the body was found was also soft, and we had good shoe impressions.  Not just for size and the model of shoes, but there were identifying markings in the prints.  If we tracked down those shoes, we might have a great case.

Before everyone with the crime scene crew were finished, Mr. and Mrs. Stegall arrived.  They had gone to the holding pen at Olmsted Park to inspect the enclosure and the set up.  They were shocked in seeing police and crime scene tape blocking their entrance into their driveway.  Polly told them that they should stay with her until I arrived.  She was capable of telling them that their daughter had been killed, but if they went into hysterics, she might need help in keeping them from running behind the barn.  There was not much left to protect.  Casts were made of all shoe prints.  Stella Stegall was already in a body bag.  The M.E. was waiting in hopes that the parents would show up before he had to leave.  He was cutting it close.  I told them that their daughter was killed.  Polly escorted them to the M.E. van to personally identify the body.  I waited at the entrance as a few reporters were starting to gather.

The Stegall’s had absent-mindedly left their phones on the kitchen table.  Stella was supposed to herd the llamas into the trailer and get to the park by 7:30am.  The first school bus was due at 8:15am.  They trusted Stella.  The llamas were all her idea anyway.  She was eighteen, having just graduated from Diet Smith High School.  Did she have any boyfriend?  They knew of none, but a neighbor, Paul Pulice, was hanging around the barn, the llamas, and Stella more than someone old enough to be her father should hang around.  And the unnervingly irritating Al Packer from the School Board spent too much time at the farm also.

As we were packing up, two reporters recognized Polly from the calendar photo and they each asked her to marry them.  She was flattered, but she had a boyfriend.  The conversation being heard by her father who was yelling that Polly had even more prayers to recite and more candles to light.

Luckily, the only suspects that the Stegall’s mentioned were the two we already had in custody, really both in custody for not following the instructions of an officer on duty, but in custody.  We still had all the neighbors to canvas the neighborhood.  Since this was farmland, for the most part, there were not a lot of neighbors.  Guy Weiss finally arrived and started that part of the job.  By mid-afternoon, he and Polly joined us in the squad room, and they reported independent witnesses as having seen at least two different men and a young boy go to the Stegall’s farm on multiple occasions.  Since Polly took pictures of her Dad and Al Packer, she threw in a few others on her phone.  Only one person was certain that she saw Paul Pulice with Stella near the barn, nothing romantic.  One other person thought Al Packer was the one he saw on three occasions, but he would not swear to it.

But Paul Pulice could have just been on his morning walk and Al Packer was setting up the National Llama Day event.  Both had legitimate reasons for being near the barn and being with Stella really meant nothing unless they were in a romantic embrace.

Unlucky for us is that the shoe prints were the same sized shoes for both men.  We could almost eliminate Al Packer.  He had his car parked near the barn and after giving it a thorough search, there was one other pair of shoes, but neither pair, nor the shoes Paul Pulice wore, matched the make, style of the prints near the body.  But their footprints were nearby.  Still not damning in that they could have made those prints the day before.  It had been about 24 hours since the last rain, but there were various reasons why that area did not dry out as quickly, soft enough to make a good impression and the impression would not degrade in that length of time.

The time of death was a narrow window.  It had to be after the parents left and before Al Packer arrived.  That again pointed away from him and even Paul Pulice, but they could have used a confederate to drive the truck away and dispose of the uniquely marked shoes.

Both Packer and Paul Pulice refused to answer any questions.

A farming friend of the Daltons called them, and they relayed a message.  There were llamas all over the pasture the Daltons had purchased near the Stout County line.  They thought they saw a trailer hiding in the bushes.  By the time a patrol car arrived, with Tuesday Wednesday, Jim Wednesday’s wife who is a detective in Stout County, arriving from the other direction in case there was evidence on her side of the county line. We worked well with them, but Tuesday was there to prevent any issues about custody of evidence.

In the end, we found the trailer, but not the truck.  It was the Stegall’s truck, so we got out a statewide be-on-the-lookout (BOLO) for the truck.  And we felt more confident that the truck driver might be the murderer.  The driver had “used a tree” while wearing the same shoes.  So, the driver is probably male.  We had good foot impressions.  Actually, the Daltons were there and found the footprints.  Crime Scene soon arrived to make casts of tire tracks and footprints.

We had no evidence to hold either of our suspects.  We let Paul Pulice and Al Packer go but instructed them to not leave the county.  They both had jobs in the city.

When I gathered the team, including Polly and Guy, I asked Poached to mention the suspects and possible scenarios.  He started with Al Packer.  He spent a lot of time at the farm, maybe having an affair with Stella.  We could say the same thing about Paul Pulice, but the reason for being there was a morning walk before going to work.  Then Poached surprised me.

Poached scratched his head, “I have reason to not like either suspect, but I would like to introduce one or two person’s unknown.  There was only one person who did the deadly dance with Stella.  With their footprints intertwined, the footprints looked like some bad dance moves.  The trailer and truck did not leave on their own.  I’m thinking the truck was driven away by the assailant and the llamas and trailer were slowing him down.  Or the truck driver was stealing the llamas to disrupt the holiday event, grudge with Al Packer, Llama activist, or some other cause.  And that leaves a second murderer who arrived after the llamas were loaded and driven away.  That makes little sense due to Stella was supposed to drive the truck.  I am leaning toward one person unknown, but let’s leave an option for two, one being the murderer and the other being the thief.  That means doing a deep dive with high school friends to see if Stella had a friend her parents were unaware of, but if discrediting Packer was the goal, we need to investigate him.  There is always the longshot of Paul Pulice killing Stella or even Packer, and then in the distraction of the murder, a thief stole the truck.”

Jim groaned, “I hate one ‘person unknown’ on the board.  Now we have two or even three?”

I said, “Congratulations, Poached.  You finally did not get on a single track and then see nothing else.”

Poached shrugged, “This case has made the least amount of sense of any that I have worked on.  All we have are loose threads that seem to go nowhere.  Yet, if a pair of shoes shows up and maybe attached to a farm truck owned by the Stegalls, our case may solve itself.

I realized an error in the investigation the next day.  Polly was known by the neighbors.  The neighbors that she talked to might give her a different answer than if it was a stranger.  Georges Evident had always been great at canvasing neighborhoods.  I put him with Poached, his old partner on patrol.  The neighbors had either seen Polly or Guy the day before.

Georges and Poached got a few added people, some having been at work the day before.  See!  Not much of a holiday when most people are working.  They also talked to the mail carrier for that route.  Nothing new was found on Al Packer, but Paul Pulice was seen from a moderate distance in an embrace with Stella.  It might or might not have been romantic.  It could be she had received some type of blessing and in celebration Paul Pulice gave her a hug.  Then again, hugs with a neighbor’s teenaged daughter in private were sketchy at best.  The search for the truck was still underway.  That meant the driver of the truck was still unidentified, but some witnesses said that Stella had a young teenager, younger than her, that would do the heavy lifting for her.  Everyone confirmed that Stella was the farmer of the three Stegalls.  Her parents never checked on the llamas.  They never dealt with llama food or water.  They only went to the park for the photo op that might get them in the newspaper.  It was all Stella’s idea.  Her parents said that she did the shearing of the llamas herself.  So far, the wool sales did not equal the cost of the llamas upkeep, but the budget was close.  This petting zoo thing was the game changer.  Stella would be making a profit.

We had to do something while we waited for the highway patrols of three or four states to track down an old beaten up truck with a young boy driving it.

We brought Paul Pulice back in for questioning.  This time in an interrogation room.  This time with a surprise interrogator, her first time doing it, but something told me she had a strong reason to get the truth from him.

We will pick up from there in a couple of days.

Credits

Here is a video that contains part of the la-llamas sketch from Monty Python’s Flying Circus.

Al Packer – or Alpaca.  The alpaca is similar to a llama, and they can be crossbred, but it is not the same species.  Alpacas were bred for their wool fiber, rather than being a beast of burden.

I grew up in an area with a lot of farms owned and run by various Stegall families.

For nearly ten years, we lived in a house in a hidden neighborhood.  For about half that time, one of the houses near the entrance to the neighborhood was owned by a police officer that parked his cruiser on the street, not in the garage.  Suddenly speeding was not a problem, and petty theft became non-existent.

Olmsted Park – Central Park in New York City was designed by landscape architect, Frederick Law Olmsted.  He preached the need for city people to have parks with trees and ponds and such.  He tried to keep his name from being attached to the parks, like Central Park in Manhattan, Prospect Park in Brooklyn, and Cadwalader Park in Trenton, New Jersey, but in a small park outside the growing town of Augusta, GA, the city named the lake that is the central part of this little park, Lake Olmsted.  I should know, I was a member of the Lakemont Presbyterian Church, just up the hill from the lake.  And if you want to know where the water comes from that feeds Lake Olmsted, well, you may have never heard of it, but there is a creek that runs through “amen corner” at the Augusta National Golf Course.  It is called Rae’s Creek.  The golf course is upstream of Lake Olmsted.

And when in college, I was on my way home when a woman, going far greater than the speed limit, ran past a stop sign as big as my car.  She hit me on the back passenger wheel, spinning my VW bug like a top. She finally stopped some two hundred yards past the intersection.  She was hauling a Baptist church worship band’s gear to a gig, and the policeman was obviously Baptist.  The evidence was obvious in her guilt, but she claimed to not see the stop sign.  He put me in the back of the cruiser, where suspects sit, while she sat in the front.  We each gave our statements.  He offered her a tissue and then held her hand while he ushered her back to her truck.  I know far too well what it is like to be unable to leave the backseat of a cruiser.  I was stuck until the policeman returned.  He even jokingly acted surprised that I was still there.  How could I leave without any means of getting out?  I guess this proves that I did not have GrandPa’s magical escape skills.