The Scene of the Crime

THE SCENE OF THE CRIME

“It was murder. I’m sure of it.”

“Why do you say that, Ms. Copperfield?” asked the tall woman.

“Look at the scene. There’s guts all over.” She looked around, and pointed. “Over there is the top of the skull. It’s definitely murder.”

Detective Terry Waits looked at her partner, Carlos Ito, who shrugged his shoulders slightly.

“Ms. Copperfield,” said Waits, “all I see is pumpkin remnants. It’s not murder if the victim is a gourd.”

“The victim was a living thing. It had a family, and friends. This was up and up murder.”

Waits kept her features even.

“Ms. Copperfield, vegetables aren’t sentient beings. They don’t feel pain. They don’t socialize. They don’t have families. They grow during their season, and are either harvested for food, or in this case, decoration. Or they die, and eventually rot and return to the soil to enrich next year’s crop.”

Alana Copperfield stood taller and jabbed her finger towards Waits’ chest, not quite touching.

“You don’t know that! You can’t know that! They could very well be screaming the entire time that we are making them into food. Because we can’t hear them doesn’t mean they can’t communicate!”

“Excuse us for a moment, Ms. Copperfield,” said Waits as she gave Ito a head nod.  

They walked out of hearing range.

“What do you think?” asked Waits.

“She’s way more agitated than she should be about a pumpkin being carved. I think it’s an act.”

“Yeah,” said Waits. “I was thinking the same thing. But I think we should call COAST just in case.”

COAST — Crisis Outreach and Support Team — was the police department’s mental health squad that worked in conjunction with the psychiatric hospital. They were deployed in cases where the person’s mental health seemed to be under strain. Waits made the call.  

They returned to where Alana Copperfield was waiting. Waits took a moment to assess the woman. She was standing with her arms tightly folded across her chest, almost as if she was holding on to herself. Her body was rigid. The only thing moving was her head, which darted around the yard looking for something.

Something’s off with this woman, thought Waits. What is it? What’s she hiding?

As they approached her, she abruptly turned towards them.

“I’m not crazy, you know. Someone slaughtered that pumpkin. Then they didn’t even use it.”

She pointed at the crushed jack-o-lantern in the middle of the yard. Smaller broken pieces scattered around it, as if someone had smashed it into the ground with considerable force.

“Ms. Copperfield, we received a 9-1-1 call saying that there was a murder taking place. Was that you who called?” asked Waits.

For a moment, Alana Copperfield looked confused.

“No,” she said, eyes darting around the parking lot.

“Then why are you here, Ms. Copperfield?”

"Here" was at a rural market that sold pumpkins, gave hay rides, and had a corn maze. Still part of the city but far enough away from the city proper to give the illusion of being in the country. But right now the market was closed, and Alana Copperfield was here, all alone, with Waits and Ito, in the dying light of the day.

She looked at Waits, then broke eye contact, looking instead at the smashed pumpkin.

“I wanted to make sure that no pumpkins had needlessly lost their lives.”

“And what did you see when you got here?” asked Waits.

She swung her arm around the yard to encompass the scene.

“This! The murder of a perfectly good pumpkin. But instead of having been sacrificed for the good of the season, someone wantonly and hatefully smashed it to bits. Now it’s only use is to fill up the compost bin.” Alana Copperfield looked as if she were going to cry. “The person who did this needed to pay!” 

She looked away, recrossing her arms. The conversation was over.

At that point the COAST team arrived. It consisted of a civilian mental health nurse and a crisis intervention trained officer. Waits and Ito walked towards the vehicle.  

Ito knew both members of the team, introducing Reggie Finds, the nurse, and Selma Bandaras, the officer, to Waits.

Waits explained the situation to Finds and Bandaras.  

“But there’s something not right about this,” she said. “Ito and I need to take a look around. I’d appreciate it if you’d keep her here until we’re finished.”

They agreed. As long as Alana Copperfield didn’t pose a threat to either herself or the team, they would conduct their initial interview in the parking lot of the market.

The four professionals walked over to Alana Copperfield, and Ito introduced the COAST team members to her.  

“I told you I’m not crazy,” she said, looking at the new arrivals. “I don’t need a psych team picking at my brain. What I do need is for something to be done about the wanton murder of innocent pumpkins.”

Waits and Ito walked away, leaving Alana Copperfield to speak with the COAST team.

“What are we looking for?” said Ito.

Waits looked around the yard. “I don’t know. We’ll know it when we find it.”

They walked around the yard, keeping their eyes on the ground and using their flashlights to illuminate their path in the gathering dusk.

They continued this way for a few minutes, until Waits stopped, looked up, and called Ito over.

When he arrived, he looked down at what Waits was looking at.

“Huh,” he said. “I guess you were right. We’d know it when we see it.”

“Yeah,” said Waits. “This is definitely it.”

The knife was one of the medium-sized knives that came with the more expensive pumkin carving sets. It was about eight inches long, all told, with a five inch steel blade, that was serrated on both edges. The handle was wood, mounted in the middle of the top of the blade, with a rounded bolster where the handle and the blade met. There were stringy pieces of pumpkin caught in the teeth, as well as a fresh blood on the pumpkin shreds, the blade, and the handle.

Waits dropped an evidence marker, and took a few photos from different angles of the knife in situ. While she was doing that Ito called it in, requesting backup, forensics, and a K9 unit.  

“I’ll stay with the knife,” said Ito. “You be careful.”

“Ten-four.”

Waits examined the ground closely, looking for a blood trail, continuing to move in circles away from the knife. She was about four feet out when she found her first drop of fresh blood. Then the second. They lead towards the corn maze. Waits did not like the idea of entering the corn maze alone. It was the perfect place for an ambush. She could wait until the K9 unit arrived, but who knew how long that would be. Plus, someone could be injured in there. She stepped into the maze, warily, moving slowly.

She didn’t have to go too far. There, slumped against the wall of the first turn was a man, blood forming a pool around him.  

Waits approached him cautiously.

“Help me!” he rasped.

Waits dropped to her knees and looked closely at the man. There was a gapping wound in his left side that was bleeding profusely. He had been holding on to it, trying to staunch the blood flow. But that wasn’t his only wound. Both sides of his mouth had been sliced, extending his “smile” to his cheekbones.

“Hang on,” she said. “Help is coming.”

Waits whipped out her phone, calling for paramedics and a Medivac helicopter. She took off her jacket and used it to staunch the flow of blood out of the side wound. All she could do now was wait for help to arrive, and hope that her victim didn’t bleed out.

*****

“Ms. Copperfield, what happened to Jack Thrum?” asked Waits.

Waits and Ito were in Interview #1 with Alana Copperfield.  

“Who?” asked Alana Copperfield.

“Jack Thrum, Ms. Copperfield. The man you stabbed and mutilated.”

“Oh, him,” she said. “Nothing that he didn’t deserve.”

*****

The victim, Jack Thrum and Alana Copperfield both worked at the market, full-time. They had been dating for about seven months. Today, after work, when Copperfield was finished closing up, and heading to her car, Thrum had called her over to the picnic bench he was working at. Thrum was just finishing up carving a pumpkin to replace one that had been damaged in the market’s display. He had informed Copperfield that they were finished. Add to that, he had admitted that he was seeing someone else — Lynn Cobber, the other full-time cashier at the market. Waits believed it might have been less violent if Thrum hadn’t mocked her, saying that the “magic” was gone in their relationship, riffing on Copperfield’s last name.  

“You think you’re funny, Jack?” Copperfield had screamed at Thrum. “I’ll show you funny!”

She had grabbed for the knife, and stabbed him in the side.

“Now that’s funny, Jack,” she’d said, looking at him.

*****

“Tell us about Lynn Cobber,” urged Waits.

Alana Copperfield just looked at Waits and Ito, saying nothing.

“We found her,” said Waits. “She’s going to be fine.”

“Not if I had had the time to cut her heart out before you arrived,” said Alana Copperfield, slapping the table with her palms. “You just can’t screw up someone’s life, and not expect to have to pay. She needs to pay.”

*****

Thrum had staggered away, trying to escape.

At that point, Lynn Cobber had come rushing out of the market screaming.

“What did you do to Jack?” she’d screamed at Copperfield. “Where is he!”

She ran towards Copperfield, looking around the parking lot for her lover. When Cobber had gotten close enough, Copperfield had hoisted the pumpkin Thrum had been carving and smashed it over Cobber’s head, rendering her unconscious. Copperfield had then dragged her over to Copperfield’s own car, and shoved her into the trunk, intending to take care of her, later.

That’s when Copperfield realized that she had inadvertently locked her keys in the trunk with Cobber. Ito had found the unconscious woman by following the drag marks in the dirt of the unpaved parking lot. Once he had pried the trunk open he feared the worse. She was lying motionless, her head covered in pumpkin guts, in the trunk. EMTs had taken her to the hospital to be examined.

*****

They were standing in the observation room, watching Alana Copperfield in Interview #1. They had just finished interviewing her. She had declined counsel, and had freely told them her story. 

“So,” said Ito, “When we first got to the scene, why did you think that something was off with Copperfield?”

Waits looked from Copperfield to Ito.  

“There was a hot, pumpkin latte on the roof of her car. Who drinks a pumpkin latte then freaks out about a pumpkin murder?” She paused. “Someone trying to deflect, that’s who. Plus she said the person who mutilated the pumpkin needed to pay, past tense, meaning the deed had already be done. You were right. It was an act.”

“True,” said Ito. “Thrum had dumped Copperfield and she was pissed.”

“So pissed” said Waits, “that she carved a pumpkin smile on his face.” 

*****

After she had bashed Cobber and stuffed her in the trunk, Alana Copperfield had searched for Thrum, finding him in the corn maze, collapsed against the wall, with the knife still in the wound.

He wasn’t dead.  

Too bad, she thought as she looked at him, and nudged him with her boot.  

“Why?” he had asked her.

Alana Copperfield had just tsk-tsk-ed at the man she loved — the man she thought had loved her back. She crouched down and pulled the knife out of his side.

He had moaned in pain.

“You don’t look so good Jack,” she said, smiling at him. “You should be happy. You dumped me, and you have your new slut now. A whole new life. You should be happier.”

She put the blade of the knife against the side of his mouth, and sliced up and away.

*****

“So,” said Ito. “What do you think would have happened if we hadn’t arrived when we did?”

“I think she would have killed Lynn Cobber,” said Waits. “She didn’t know we were on the way, and we caught her unawares. She had to make up a story. I think she knew she was caught, and decided to act crazy to throw us off the trail.”

“Did you hear when she said that she had to make Thrum her ‘Jack-o-lantern?’ That was seriously messed up,” said Ito, slowly shaking his head, thinking of the deep cuts on Thrum’s face, and the fact that he would be scarred for life. 

“Yeah. The last thing she said to Thrum after she carved up his face: ‘Now you’ll smile every time you look in the mirror and think of me.’ That, sir, is messed up.”