Scott Wittenburg: The May Day Murders

His game plan had fallen apart, he admitted to himself grimly. He had always had this crazy dream of being a novelist, and after having gotten his first bestseller published, moving his family to New England to spend the rest of his life writing novels in his den in front of a roaring fire in the fireplace. Now, at forty, he no longer had a family to move anywhere and his “bestseller” was yet to be written, stalled on page sixty-three where it had lain dormant for months.

Sam hung a right onto Court Street and heaved a long sigh. The divorce had been the beginning of his undoing, no doubt about it. He missed Ann and he missed his kid. His motivation to write was shot-his two greatest sources of inspiration now in a car heading north on Route 23 en route to Columbus… To a new city and a new life…

One mistake was all it had taken to end their once happy marriage of seventeen years. He’d fucked-up royally by letting his dick do his thinking for him. One measly night in the sack with that beautiful young thing had blown everything all to hell. Had he seen the consequences beforehand, he would never have let it happen. But it was too late now. Ann had been relentlessly unforgiving and hadn’t budged an inch. She had surprised him. He had never realized that Ann was so strong-willed.

The joke was on him…

Sam shut his eyes for a moment in an effort to exorcise these nagging thoughts. When he opened them again, he focused on the road and thought about the matter at hand: Marsha Bradley’s murder.

Once he arrived at the Observer, Sam resolved, he was going to research each and every minuscule detail the police had logged thus far concerning the case, as well any background info he could find on Marsha and Doctor David Bradley for the article he was writing for Monday’s paper. He needed to call Roger and set up a time that he could visit the Bradley residence and take some shots for the article, just in case he needed them. Roger would question this, and probably laugh in Sam’s face as he proceeded to ask Sam why in the fuck he wanted to take more pictures of the murder scene. Sam would then reply flippantly that it might add interest to the article, and Roger would know better, but say no more about it.

Smithtown Police Detective Roger Hagstrom was Sam’s best friend and had been for practically four decades. He’d been with the Smithtown P.D. for twenty years, and was one hell of a good cop-when he was sober, that is. Roger had a serious drinking problem and many were the times that Sam had had to bail him out of the fixes he’d often gotten himself into. His hangovers were legendary and he frequently missed entire days of work as a result of them. Sometimes he’d even get himself blasted while on duty, which never failed to create some major problems.

But the Smithtown Police Department was very small-only fifteen officers and patrolmen in total-and they needed Roger Hagstrom badly enough to overlook his shortcomings. Besides that, Roger Hagstrom was second in command, so they more or less had to. His only superior, Chief Frank Thompson, admired and respected Roger’s skills as a detective and tolerated his tardiness and occasional inebriation on the job up to a point; his only stipulation being that Roger not make the chief’s special leniency toward him public knowledge.

Sam often tagged along with Roger on his assignments. It wasn’t a particularly unusual situation-cops and journalists frequently worked closely together to a degree, especially in a little town like Smithtown. What made Sam and Roger’s relationship unique was the way in which they complemented each other. They were a good team and often aided one another in achieving their respective goals.

Besides the benefits attained from their working relationship, Sam had another reason for occasionally joining forces with his friend: it was interesting as hell. Murder cases were few and far between in Smithtown, but there were plenty of other crimes going on all the time: dope deals gone bad, burglaries, armed robberies, bar stabbings and shootings. A pretty lively town for its size, crime-wise. The faltering economy seemed to have a lot to do with it.

Sam pulled into the parking lot of the Observer and shut off the ignition. The parking lot was as desolate as he’d suspected it would be; the Observer had no Sunday paper and everyone had already cleared out for the day. He got out and walked over to the side entrance of the massive stone columned building and entered. He turned right and made a beeline through the ornate lobby to the elevator and pressed the button for the third floor.

When he reached his floor, Sam strode past the reception desk to the editorial offices. His office was located at the far end on the left, near the coffee machine. He cued up a pot on the Bun-O-Matic and checked to be sure that there was some milk in the tiny refrigerator beside it before entering his office and switching on the overhead lights.

Sam stepped over to the window behind his desk and opened the blinds, staring out at the view outside. Directly below him he could see downtown Smithtown; five square blocks or so of dead or dying businesses that were slowly but surely being strangled by the slumping economy. Further north, beyond the railroad tracks, was the Hilltop section of town where the majority of Smithtown’s less unfortunate resided. It sprawled either way for a few miles, bounded by the Scioto River to the west and a range of foothills to the east. It was early October and autumn was already making its debut in southern Ohio. The trees were flecked in bright shades of reds and yellows, making the view even more impressive than usual. In another week or two, Sam thought, the hills would look as though they were on fire as fall peaked-out.

Sam turned around, rolled his swivel chair out from under his desk and sat down. The large oak desk was in its usual disarray, littered with files, sections of last week’s papers and no fewer than three used coffee mugs strewn randomly around a black plastic ashtray in bad need of emptying. He tidied up the papers a bit and carried the dirty coffee mugs out to the sink by the coffee machine. When he returned, Sam switched on the computer, located the police file on Marsha Bradley in a drawer and pulled out its contents.

Sam felt a cold chill run down his spine as he stared incredulously at the eight-by-ten glossy photograph on top. It was an image of Marsha Bradley lying nude on her living room floor, face-up, her eyes frozen in a hideous expression of terror. A narrow red welt running across the width of her neck where she had been strangled to death was crisply rendered in the photo, as were her breasts with the words “May Day”-one word per breast-meticulously inscribed in red lipstick by her murderer. And, as if all of this wasn’t appalling enough, Marsha’s assailant had then proceeded to cram the lipstick vial into her vagina; its end barely visible between her splayed legs.

The autopsy performed on Marsha’s body had determined that this final gruesome act had been performed after her assailant had strangled her to death. No weapon had been found at the scene, but the coroner’s hunch was that Marsha had most likely been strangled with a lamp cord or similar object. Prior to her murder, the victim had been raped and sodomized, and her assailant’s semen and hair samples had been sent to a lab, pending analysis.

Sam laid the photograph aside and studied the police report. The victim, Marsha Lynn Bradley, nee Stilson, had been a white female, 5’6”, 118 pounds, brown eyes, thirty-nine years old. Her husband, Doctor David Lee Bradley, had discovered her body on the night of October 8, at 9:47 P.M. The victim’s son, Tommy, age five, had been present in the house when the body was discovered, locked in his bedroom closet. The child had been in a state of severe shock and literally unable to speak when police arrived at the scene. There had been no signs of physical trauma to the child.