For NaNoWriMo: The Field of Blood, part 2

This was written Nov. 2-3 ... thinking on a graphic!

Get caught up! Here's part 1

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Lieutenant O'Reilly was 25 – red-haired, green-eyed, and still single, so there was no one for him to call home to, although he would have liked to call Adella Hamilton, the captain's eldest daughter. But, that was hopeless … he was so in awe of Captain Hamilton that he didn't know how to start the conversation about dating the captain's daughter when she came home for the winter break from college. So, that was that – he busied himself booting up the office computer and the program they used: Morton Data Master, adapted by Captain Hamilton for law enforcement use. By the time the captain got off the phone, he was uploading the photos to a folder named for place and date until the case got an official name, and tagging the photos with the appropriate data points.

Captain Hamilton attended to the samples – blood, feces, and swabs had to go into the refrigerator for such things (NOT the refrigerator with the food in it, which had been the situation when Captain Hamilton had arrived – he shuddered to think of what would have happened one fine morning if someone wanted ketchup on their steak and eggs one too-early morning and uncapped a sample bottle) and they too had to be logged, and the lab forms filled out. Then, the dry samples – it turned out that it had been a yellow oak leaf in the victim's hair, lodged quite neatly in it. Then there was the hair itself – straight, with just a bit of flash attached that seemed to be half-healed to the end of it. An otherwise healthy if odd-looking head of hair, with a half-burned scalp … this looked familiar to Captain Hamilton, but he could not quite put his finger on why. It was no longer common, but it was, somehow, familiar.

The flesh piece, no matter how small, meant that the hair, too, had to go into the refrigerator – all those samples would have to be run up to the lab in Big Loft the next day for various tests. There was a file cabinet for dry samples, and Captain Hamilton set aside a filing area for the new case.

Then, there was getting clear on what evidence was in hand, and what wasn't? How had the victim arrived? Had he walked? Had he driven? Had he flown in (unlikely, but possible)? If he had driven, was the car still in the area, and where? The lighting was simply not good enough at that edge of Tinyville to be worth searching, because any dry or heavy evidence near the car might be destroyed by the time one could search the car out in the oak stands by tramping around with lights.

Obviously – who was he? Chances were, DNA evidence, dental records, medical records, fingerprints, identification would turn up his name and age – but that was only the start to the answer. Who had he been, and to whom? What were the steps by which he took himself – or was taken – to such a ghastly end?

“Any photos that show evidence of car tracks at the scene?” the captain said.

“No, sir, none except just outside the scene with the sheriff's and the deputies.”

Layout of work for the next day – out to the scene at the dawn's early light to complete the search for evidence there. They needed to look again at the tree in good light, and then release it for full clean-up before the insects got too out of hand. Then, they needed to search the scene and its surroundings for the car – and really, since Sheriff Nottingham was so interested in the case, it might have been worth doing that first. Thus Captain Hamilton decided.

After that, Lieutenant O'Reilly would be sent to take the samples to Big Loft, leaving Captain Hamilton to field the inevitable press interest and any tips that came in. That night, Captain Hamilton set up the tip line … somebody knew something. They always did. Yet there was so much fear embedded in being an ordinary person in a world in which some people could get away with practically anything … anonymity, so far as that could exist in a small town, helped.

Places traded at the computer – Captain Hamilton checked his lieutenant's work and then finished the rest of the input while Lieutenant O'Reilly prepared their equipment for the next day and also checked and copied the lab forms for the case file before putting the originals back into the folder for such things to be carried out with the cooler that would hold the samples.

“We'll need to get started really early,” he said to Captain Hamilton. “The traffic tomorrow will be ridiculous both ways, what with the Harvest Festival and the forecast being so nice this weekend.”

“I know,” Captain Hamilton said. “I'll meet you here at 5:30.”

“Yes, sir.”

Finally, both men sat down and reviewed the photos and the spreadsheets they had created – it was quite a lot, given the little time they had before sunset to pull it all together.

“What do you think, sir – suicide or murder?”

Captain Hamilton smiled, but waggled a finger gently.

“I think we had better wait until we at least have all the data we can.”

Lieutenant O'Reilly smiled.

“Right, sir, yes, sir,” he said, and the captain's smile grew wider.

“I don't want to bias you – certainly I have ideas already, but in case my bias will cause me to overlook something that explodes it, I need your mind clear. Likewise, I do not want to know what you think yet, because my mind must be clear of your bias if I am to see and understand something you can't.”

“Yes, sir, I understand.”

Captain Hamilton's smile faded.

“This is going to be a tough one, Lieutenant. By morning, everyone in town who does not know exactly what happened will have formed an opinion, and that's 99.99 percent of everyone we will encounter, while those who know exactly what happened are likely to be harder to get information from, for various reasons.

“And then there is the whole question of why Sheriff Nottingham didn't want us to have jurisdiction – what was that about? That place has only been part of Tinyville for 15 years. Why was it added? What was it before that? What happened there, and why? That's a whole different data set that we must fill out.”

“Something tells me we won't be able to pull what we need to know off Google on that one,” Lieutenant O'Reilly said.

“I reckon we won't,” Captain Hamilton said, “but by Monday, the Hamilton-O'Reilly search engine likely will have all the necessary search terms we need to at least start finding what we are looking for.”

8:35 and home to “Hamiltown” – Captain Hamilton and his wife Agnes had 11 children, and thus home, wherever that had been for them in their 24-year marriage, had truly been a world unto itself, a world that had expanded quickly because of the four sets of twins they had.

It had started slowly between deployments … Ironwood Jr. and Adella came three years apart, and then, the first set of twins, Agnes and Iris, and then, Addison. Mrs. Hamilton's big family was delighted to help, and Mrs. Hamilton was not overwhelmed and wanted to have at least one more … but they never came singly again, although as she aged, they spread out … Orton and Edward … Ilene and Addison, and then, when Captain and Mrs. Hamilton were 42, out came Ira and Agnew. So: two kids in college, two kids in diapers – that was Hamiltown for you.

Captain Hamilton still didn't believe it but didn't complain about it – his family kept him focused, kept him connected with civilian life in a way that helped him overcome his PTSD in powerful ways. In addition to his brilliant army career, he was a successful business owner behind empowering his wife's dream of a jewelry business, and all his children had come along learning what it was to create value and beauty for themselves and those around them from their labor.

Captain Hamilton and his wife had raised their children in their strong Christian faith as well, and just to be home with the Hamiltown Church members and do life with God with all of them was one of the greatest privileges – it was enough to bring tears to the captain's ears to remember the occasions of praying with his wife and children big and small, and to know that now that he was home, there could be and would be future occasions for them to seek God's face together, and to walk together and talk together in the narrow way. It humbled him to think the Lord had chosen him for the awesome responsibility to be husband to such a wife, father to such a family – and indeed, this was what kept him focused on being the Christian he was supposed to be, walking by the Spirit abroad as well as at home, at work, at school, at play, at rest. Everything he loved was at stake. So, he stayed focused and stayed around men who were similarly focused when not at home.

But when at home … 23 years into marriage, and Mrs. Hamilton still remembered to do what he loved the most … depending on what was happening with the littler children, she might not make it to the door, but once he arrived, she made sure to come and embrace him.

“Welcome home, Woody.”

She would never know how many times he had pushed through and was still alive and intact because of the extra energy and thus effort he could summon up because of looking forward to her glorious voice and warm amber eyes and sweet kiss and that welcome, and of putting his arms around her and having her arms around him … of the warm affection and passion both of memory and future between their minds and their bodies … the whole thought was what got him home, day after day, year after year, and actually had been what had made at least 50 percent of their babies …

“Daddy!”

And on came those babies, from the teenagers to the actual babies, and Captain Hamilton was in his favorite place in the world: surrounded by his family.

Part 3 is up