The Pale Man Rises

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

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When Chief Enos Howell of the Billings Police saw the wounds on the neck of the GM truck driver Wilbur Gage he realized that he definitely had to summon the Sheriff of Byrd County. He knew Clarke Arrington would be quite happy to see that his demand was being met. He had to admit that Arrington was right this case was way beyond anything his department could handle. 

 Once the body was recovered he had it removed to the vault of a local funeral home before it would be transported to the State Medical Examiner's Office in Chapel Hill.

After the body was secured there at the funeral home Howell returned to his own office and rang up the Byrd County Sheriff's Office in the town of Pemberton, which was the county seat. He was told that Sheriff Trumbo was not now available, that he was presently at a crime scene at the Road Side Motel off of I-88 very near where the chief was located. Howell saw this as being very fortuitous and then called the office of the Road Side Motel.

He alerted the management there of his pending arrival and that they should let Trumbo and those with him know that he was on his way. He didn't want to go into such a complicated matter over the telephone, so he did not specifically tell them what he wished to discuss with the Sheriff. He told them to simply tell the Sheriff that he had something of vital importance to discuss with him.

He felt he had to relate the information of this latest homicide to the Sheriff face to face and to emphasize the sheer magnitude of what he had discovered at Billing's Chevrolet. And he also intended to take him and his colleagues to view the corpse that was presently at the funeral home.

As he drove toward the interstate highway he had no idea that the case he was taking to Trumbo was in any way related to the murders the Sheriff was investigating in concert with the North Carolina SBI and the FBI. 

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 However when he arrived there and began telling them of his own recent experience he soon learned the situation was far different than he knew or could have ever imagined. They told him about the two girls at the motel and how it seemed to relate to the murders that occurred at the Reese farm.