IN THE WATER

The father and son had spent all day fishing on the lake. It was getting late and they needed to get home with their catch because it was to be their supper tonight. But when they went to pull up the anchor it was stuck. It wouldn’t budge. If they hadn't gotten it free with that last tug the father was tempted to unhook it from the boat and leave it there in the water. He could always buy another one. But then again he tended to be on the frugal, well rather on the cheap and tight side of things, and that’s why they gave it that one last tug. So when finally, after many attempts, they got it free and brought it to the surface they saw something on it that wasn’t supposed to be there. Something that looked gooey and all bloody like.

The son reached for it.

“Don’t touch it son. Whatever it is, there's blood on it. Let me put my gloves on and I’ll cut it off.”

The father put on his rubber gloves, leaned over the side of the boat, and with his fishing knife cut off the piece of flesh, or skin, or meat or whatever it was, from the anchor, and held it up for his son to see.

His son gave it the once over and said, “Looks like a piece of meat to me.”

“Ya me too,” responded his father. “There’s probably a big animal of some kind or other down there and the anchor got hooked onto it somehow. That’s why we had such trouble getting it loose.”

“You think it might be that big buck I took a couple of shots at last week. We never did find it, you know.”

“Maybe.” The father nonchalantly tossed whatever it was back in the water paying no attention to it as it drifted toward shore.

“Let me wash the blood off the anchor first before we pull it in son. I don't want any blood in the boat. It's too hard to get out.”

The father washed the anchor off with his gloves on and the two of them then lifted the anchor into the boat. Then the father went over to the motor, yanked it to life, and they took off for home.

When they got home the son immediately ran to his mother with their string of fish. “Look, we had us a pretty good day Mother.''

“Well you sure did. Hurry up and clean them so I can get supper started.”

The father and son cleaned the fish and in no time at all they sat down to a supper of fried fish, fried potatoes, and yummy brussel sprouts with orange sherbert for dessert.

It was the following Sunday morning before the father and son had left to go fishing again when the cops showed up.

The father opened the door and politely asked the standard question, “Can I help you officers?” He didn’t know either man but he could tell from their uniforms that they were from the county sheriff’s office and who was the sheriff and who was the deputy.

“Mr. Potter, we have a warrant here to search your place,” said the tall one, the sheriff, and flashed it in front of Mr. Potter’s face. Mr. Potter reached for it but the Sheriff quickly withdrew it.

“I’d like to read it please.”

“Trust us. It’s all legal,” said the short one, the deputy, of the Mutt and Jeff pair.

“What’s this all about, Sheriff?” asked Mr. Potter.

“Oh you’re telling me that you don’t know what this is all about Mr. Potter. Is that right? That you don’t know that your neighbor Mr. Maupassant has been missing for over a week now. Is that what you want me to believe? Is it now?”

“Yes it is. I don’t know anything about those people. I don’t even talk to them.”

“Yah and we know why you don’t talk to them. You and Mr. Maupassant got into it didn’t ya. Got into a big fight where you threatened him didn’t ya?”

“That was months ago and no I didn’t threaten him.”

“HIs wife said you said you’d get him. That’s a threat.”

“Look we got into it over his dog coming over and using our front yard as his personal toilet. That’s all. I told him I’d get even with him somehow if he didn’t get his dog under control. That’s not a threat on his life. Besides, he got his dog under control. It never came over again.”

“Well he took it as a threat according to his wife. She said he was scared of you.”

“Said he was scared of me. That’s a joke. The man is at least six foot four and probably weighs over three hundred pounds. He was big enough to have played left side for the Green Bay Packers.”

“Was big enough? You’re talking about your neighbor in the past tense Mr. Potter. Is there a reason for that?”

“I meant he is big enough.”

“Step aside please and let us do our job.”

Mr. Potter stood aside. He had no choice. He didn’t want to appear that he wasn’t cooperating or the sheriff would suspect him even more. The two officers went about executing their search warrant by going directly to the obviously well displayed gun case in the living room. There their decision was made for them.

“We’re taking all these in.”

“All twelve of them.”

“All twelve of them. That your boat in the driveway?””

“Yah it’s my boat.”

“Deputy go search his boat.”

Exit the deputy.

Fifteen minutes later the deputy came back grinning from ear to ear. “Look what I found, Sheriff: Bloody gloves, bloody knife, and there’s blood on the pull cord handle of the Evinrude.”

“Bag ‘em deputy and we’ll take in the Evinrude too.”

Then turning to Mr. Potter he said, “Be a couple of weeks before we get the test results back so don’t be leaving town Mr. Potter. And one other thing as soon as we get everything loaded, you mind coming down to the police station with us. We have a few questions we liked to ask you. It won’t take long.”

“Yes Sheriff, I would mind,” answered Mr. Potter defiantly. He had rethought his position on this matter. He knew the sheriff already thought of him as suspect number one. He had seen way too many crime shows on TV to know that police interrogations were never short. That they customarily grilled their suspect for hours and hours until they thought they had tripped him up with their clever questions. Then they’d charge him with murder. No one ever left the interrogation room except in handcuffs.

“So I take it you’re not willing to take a lie detector test either.”

“I invoke my right to remain silent.”

“Bingo,” said the sheriff to himself.

A couple of weeks later some kids found the body of Mr. Maupassant. It eventually came to the surface and drifted to shore. The father and son had loosened the rope anchoring it to the cement blocks when they kept tugging on the anchor.

The blood on the knife, gloves, and pull handle was determined by DNA experts to be Mr. Maupassant’s but there were no knife wounds on his body. And as to the piece of flesh missing from his right side, the forensic experts determined that it had not been cut off by Mr. Potter’s knife because Mr. Potter’s knife was a saw tooth knife. They said that more than likely it had been ripped off somehow. But how they couldn’t say. And finally as to the bullet hole in Mr. Maupassant’s back they couldn't say for sure that it was from any of Mr. Potter’s rifles because the hole had been enlarged by fish nibbling at it.

The sheriff was stymied.

“We got us a motive. We got us a knife with the victim’s blood on it. I don’t care if the cut doesn’t match the wound. It’s still his blood. We got us Mr. Potter’s gloves with the victim’s blood on them. Therefore he handled the body. We got the victim’s blood on the pull cord of Mr. Potter’s Evinrude. Therefore Mr. Potter used his boat to haul the body out to the lake and dump it in the water. Probably anchored him down with a couple of cement blocks I bet. But the dummy didn’t do it good enough now did he?”

“Ya lucky break for us huh Sheriff that those kids found the body.”

The Sheriff ignored that remark but the deputy was not about to be denied.

“Ya know Sheriff, maybe we should search his house again. Maybe we missed a rifle. Maybe we’ll find one that the experts will say matches the bullet hole in the victim’s back.

“That’s what I was gonna say if ya hadn’t so rudely interrupted me.” The Sheriff wasn’t about to say that but he couldn’t let his deputy know that. “The murder weapon is still there.”

“So we’re going back for it.”

“Yah deputy we’re going back for it.”

Mr. Potter answered the door again. This time he forgot to invoke his right to remain silent.

‘What do ya want,” he growled.

“The murder weapon.”

“Well why don’t you go ask Joyce for it. Don’t you cops know you're always supposed to question the spouse first when a spouse is killed. Find out if there’s any life insurance on the deceased.”

“Joyce, Mr. Potter. You’re on a first name basis with the deceased’s wife huh. Something going on between you two?”

“No. No way. I always called her Joyce even after all the trouble between us.”

“Ya right. Besides, we already cleared her. She had no life insurance on her husband.”

The Sheriff lied. He hadn’t checked that out but he wasn’t going to admit it. He’d write himself a note to do that later.

They let themselves in. The Aha moment came from the son’s bedroom when the deputy shouted out with glee, “I found it. I found it.”

“You can’t take that,” shouted Mr. Potter. “That’s my son’s rifle. I never fired it. He’s the only one that fires it, not me.”

“When did he fire it last Mr. Potter?”

“A couple of weeks before all this started.”

“Oh,” said the Sheriff. “Then I’m taking it with me.” He left with his son's rifle.

The experts examined it and said yes it’s possible that this could be the murder weapon. But no they couldn’t say for sure it was. And there was another problem. The fingerprint people only came up with one set of prints on it, the deputy’s. Seems that in all his excitement in finding the murder weapon, he had fondled any fingerprints on it off into oblivion.

The state’s attorney told the sheriff he wouldn’t prosecute. The case was too flimsy, he said, because Mr. Potter would never take the stand. He wouldn’t be able to trip him up and nail him on cross examination.

But the Sheriff was not about to give up. He liked to win and he told Joyce, he was on a first name basis with her now, in a not so subtle way, to bring a wrongful death action against Mr. Potter for being careless in supervising his son in the use of firearms. That his son probably had killed her husband by shooting at a deer, missing it, and hitting her husband. That Mr. Potter then covered it up by dumping her husband in the water and anchoring him down. Told her that she’d get some money that way since she had no life insurance on her husband.

Yes he did ask her if she had made any claim on any life insurance policy. The question having been asked that way Mrs. Maupassant could honestly answer that no she hadn’t made any claim. Technically she told the truth but the truth of the matter was that she was going to wait until she moved out of state to make her claim.

The sheriff’s reasoning behind the wrongful death suit was that the sheriff knew that a wrongful death action was a civil, not criminal matter, and that Mr. Potter could be compelled to testify in a civil matter. He couldn’t invoke his right to remain silent. Therefore something might come out during a deposition or during the trial that he could then use against him to charge him with murder.

Joyce brought a wrongful death suit against Mr. Potter. But it never went to trial. In fact no depositions were ever taken. Mr. Potter’s insurance company offered the umbrella policy limits and Joyce jumped on it like a flea looking for a free meal from a dog’s bloodstream.

She moved out of state, way out of state, shortly thereafter. Said it was too much living there with all those dear fond memories of her beloved husband still hanging around, haunting her. Rumor had it she remarried in Vegas and the newlyweds settled down in paradise, aka Hawaii.

But the Sheriff still had one last card to play. He got the Department of Children involved by telling them that the Potter boy was growing up in an unsafe gun loving environment. He did so hoping that he could use something from their investigation to nail Mr. Potter. What the dummy didn’t remember though was that proceedings involving minors are sealed. The judge wouldn’t grant him an order letting him examine their findings.

Children and Family Services did eventually get around to going out to the Potter residence. Both parents answered the door. The social worker introduced herself, told them why she and the police officer were there. Told them that they had a court order granting them temporary custody of their son because their son was found to be living in an unsafe dangerous environment with all those guns there. That there’d be a full hearing on the matter at a later date and they’d get notice.

As their boy was being led away by the police officer Mrs. Potter broke down and burst into tears. Mr. Potter lowered his head, stared at the ground, and mumbled over and over to himself under his breath again and again, “I knew it. I knew it. I should have unhooked the anchor and left it there in the water.”

B. Craig Grafton is a retired attorney. His legal fiction western novels and short stories are published by Two Gun Publishing and his modern day fairy tales by the Scarlet Leaf Review. He has had a number of stories published in online magazines and anthologies.