Chapter 261

As I returned the rental car back to MAAR I realized that I had never taken the time to do a site inspection. They were going to luck out today because I did not have the time or was in the mood to do one.

As the pilot taxied the King Air to the runway I reclined in the fancy seat. I opened the inter office pouch to read the police reports. The first few pages confirmed that Courtney had called the state police about Caroline's disappearance. There was a transcript of the call Courtney made to the 911 center and their response. Courtney was transferred from the 911 center to the nonemergency duty officer at the State Police barracks. The duty officer simply said, "That because of her age Courtney had to wait 24 hours and then file a missing persons report before hanging up."

The fact that Courtney had continued the investigation with out hesitation confirmed that I had made the right choice on choosing her for the Director's position at Frost Borough.

The next entry was about the sheriff and his deputies stumbling on the scene at Murphy's house and was in the sheriff's point of view. He had spun the events as if he were running the show, and that he and his deputies were instrumental in finding Caroline's clothes and the camera.What caught my eye in this section of the report was, there was also no mention of him being in the room while I questioned Murphy, only that Murphy needed medical attention after questioning. I also saw no reference to Murphy being read his Miranda rights at any time. I thought for sure there would have been some mention of that for the record.

The statement went to say that Murphy confessed when confronted with the pictures on the camera and gave up the Johnson brothers and their location.

The next section went to the Johnson brother's farm. From there it was word for word of the events that happened there. There was no mention of Ching Lee or Vicky's involvement. Not remembering things was another matter.

The next section detailed the individual interviews with Courtney, Ronnie, Justin, Shelly and me and we told the complete story, with nothing omitted. I had told them to tell the truth exactly as they saw it. The truth always came out in the end - there was no need for anyone to commit perjury by covering anything up. We did omit Ching Lee and Vicky's involvement in the report.

Among all of us, all the little pieces were there. Major Welch had it all well documented. I put the report back in the inter-office pouch it came in.

I opened the forensics pouch; there were several reports in it. The one on Caroline I returned to the pouch. I did not want or need to read any of the little details of what they had done to her.

There were two pouches connected to the Johnson farm. I opened the one labeled Randolph Johnson first. I flipped by all the autopsy photos, and there were plenty. They had removed 24 bullets from Randolph's body. I remembered that he was the bastard with the axe raised above Caroline's head.

The next section peaked my interest. It was the ballistics report. There was a weapons list and whom they belong to. Basically it reveled what had transpired with each gun used. Courtney and I each shot five rounds from our Glock's that hit their targets. Three slugs each came from Shelly, Justin and Ronnie. The sheriff and his deputy managed to put two bullets from their 9mm Beretta's in Randolph as well.

I then opened Billy Johnson's report and flipped past the pictures again. The slug count was identical to Randolph's. I thought it interesting that with the exception of Courtney and me, my ex-military people still shot three round groups - a hangover from the military days.

The shell casings and bullets left in the Glocks that the lieutenant collected from my group matched the number of rounds fired in the barn. I was so glad that I demanded that all my people had to be shooting at 98% or better.

With the sheriff and the deputy it was a different story. They both had emptied their clips from the 9mm Beretta's they were carrying, but only four rounds hit their targets. Sixteen rounds simply went wild; thank God they did not hit Caroline. "So much for local small town law enforcement," I thought.