Читать книгу Murder In The Heartland - M. William Phelps - Страница 22

Becky Harper started walking to her daughter’s house sometime around 3:18 P.M., after she tried calling Bobbie Jo a few more times, but got no answer. Since Bobbie Jo had not shown up at Harper’s place of work to pick her up, she decided to walk to West Elm Street and see what was going on.

A mother’s instinct.

“I keep thinking,” Harper later told a reporter, “I wish I had gone over there earlier.”

When Harper arrived, Bobbie Jo’s door was wide open. That was strange, since those unseasonably warm temperatures that had moved in during the early-afternoon hours had given way to the low thirties by late afternoon. There was also a slight southerly wind curling up around the fields south of town, kicking the mercury down a notch further.

Why was the door open?

“Bobbie?”

No answer.

“Bobbie,” Harper said, walking in. “Honey, you here?”

The porch swing Bobbie Jo and Zeb had hanging from the ceiling of the overhead porch was rattling a bit in the wind. It was spooky. Bad karma was in the air. Something was obviously wrong.

At 3:26 P.M., Becky Harper entered the room in which the horribly bloodied body of her daughter lay. Bobbie Jo’s arms were folded up over her chest; her face was covered with blood.

Although quite unnerved by what she was looking at, Harper reacted immediately, reaching for her cell phone to call the Nodaway County Sheriff’s Department in Maryville.

Speaking to the 911 dispatcher, Harper was frantic and struggled to find the right words. It couldn’t be real. It had to be some sort prank, some inconsiderate joke that didn’t make any sense.

“My baby is dead!” Harper screamed into the phone at 3:28 P.M., her voice raw with agony. “My baby…she’s lying in a pool of blood.”

“Ma’am, please tell us what happened,” said dispatcher Lindsey Steins with as much composure as she could manage. “Please try to remain calm and give me an address.”

Ben Espey, the county sheriff, was sitting in his office ten feet away when he heard the call come in. He walked toward Steins’s desk, which was flanked by three computer screens, a switchboard, and several two-way radios. It was located in a dark area of the sheriff’s department, in front of a line of jail cells. As Steins and dispatcher Melissa Wallace sat wearing headsets and typed on a keyboard, their work area resembled some sort of Bat Cave setting.

“It’s my…my daughter…It appears as though her stomach is exposed.”

Stomach exposed? thought Espey, looking at Steins.

As Steins and Wallace, who was now listening in, typed, Espey stood over their shoulders and read the computer screen, realizing there was a “major problem” in Skidmore.

“Hey,” yelled Espey to one of his deputies.

“Yes, sir?”

“Radio my lieutenant investigator now and tell him to meet me in Skidmore ASAP. Give him the address.”

Harper was delirious by this time. Bobbie Jo was sprawled on the floor, blood all over the room, a large pool of it underneath her lifeless body.

What is going on?

Even more disturbing to Harper was that Bobbie Jo’s midsection was flat.

“It looks like her stomach exploded!” screamed Harper, in tears.