The Cold Case of the Furry Fox

In December of 1986, a deer hunter on his own land found what looked to be a campsite with a tent with the flap zipped shut and a fire circle. He hadn't given anybody permission to camp there so he was going to tell whoever was in that tent to leave.

When hunter unzipped the tent flap and looked inside, he saw what he thought was a person in a sleeping bag. He tried to wake the person, but couldn't, so he figured the person was dead. He walked back to his house and called 911. The Knoxville PD dispatched two patrol cars, the EMT's, the coroner, and a team from the Crime Lab.

What they found inside the tent was a dead woman about twenty-five dressed in a costume made of plush fabric. After taking pictures of the inside of the tent and the rest of the site, they helped the coroner load the dead woman, still in her costume, into a body bag and then into his van.

When the coroner took the costume off the dead woman, he discovered some interesting things.

The costume was designed to look like a fox, because it was sewn from sections of plush material in the colors that would match the coat of a fox, and it had a bushy tail. Under the tail was an opening that allowed access to the woman's body in that area. When he took the costume off the woman, she was completely naked.

The coroner's autopsy stated the cause of her death was strangulation, the time of death was up to a week before she was found, and that there was evidence that she'd had sexual intercourse at least once prior to her death.

Since there was no identification in the tent or on the woman's body, Harry did try to identify her via fingerprints, but found no match in the TBI or FBI fingerprint files. While the Crime Scene Techs had looked for fingerprints inside and on the tent, they'd found none anywhere.

As a last resort, Harry put the woman's picture in the Knoxville newspaper and asked anyone who recognized the woman to anonymously report her name and any other information they might have about the woman. He got no responses after the article ran for a week.

After a month with no more information, Harry resigned the case to the cold case files.

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When Rochelle looked at the pictures in the case file, she chuckled.

"I've read about them, but I've never seen one in real life."

"What does that mean?"

Rochelle smiled at me.

"She was a furry, though from what I've read they weren't usually out in public back in 1986. Most people, at least in the South, considered them to have some mental problems."

I chuckled.

"Well, in 1986, a lot of people in the South thought there were people here with a lot of different mental problems. What made these furries different than all the other crazies?"

Rochelle smiled again.

"From what I've read, furries like to pretend that they're animals. They like dressing up in a costume that looks like a particular animal and meeting with other people who also dress up in animal costumes. Today, there are furry conventions, about like ComicCon and other fan conventions. I don't know what they did back in 1986. I was only six then.

"Maybe she had her own little furry convention in that tent. I can't think of any other reason why she'd have been dressed in a fox costume and in that tent unless there were some other furries with her. Or, maybe it was just one furry she took there for sex. In either case, our killer is probably another furry."

I nodded.

"That's possible, but we can't really work on much until we know who she was. Harry didn't find her fingerprints with the TBI or FBI, and that won't have changed. The only thing we have is a picture and an autopsy report. Surely she'd have been reported missing by somebody. Maybe you can check that out tomorrow."

Rochelle frowned.

"I can do that, and there can't be many red-heads unless she dyed her hair. Red-heads are a pretty small part of the population. I do have another question though.

"I didn't see anything in Harry's report about DNA. I take it he didn't have the fox costume checked for DNA. I don't see that the coroner made any comments about sex other than to say she'd had intercourse before she died. Did he take a vaginal smear? Is the fox costume still in the evidence box? If it is, maybe some DNA or other evidence survived after all these years."

"Harry probably wouldn't have had the costume checked because even if there was DNA found there wasn't any way to compare it to any other DNA. Yes, the fox costume is still in the evidence box in a sealed evidence bag. I'll take it to the Forensic Lab and ask them to see what they can find."

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The next morning, I left Rochelle searching NamUS for any women missing in November of 1987. I went to the evidence locker and signed out the box from the furry murder case.

I took the evidence bag down to the lab and asked Betty Connors, the lab supervisor if she could have a tech check the costume for DNA and anything else that might help me identify my victim. She said as soon as she had a tech available, she'd assign it to them, but it might take a couple days. I told her there was no hurry since it was a cold case.

That left me with the rest of the day to work on the case. The only real information I had was Harry's report and the coroner's report, but there wasn't much in either that would do me any good without the victim's name. I had hopes that Rochelle would find our victim in NamUS.

The only other actual information I had was the name of the hunter who had found the body. I checked the DMV records and he'd renewed his license in 2018 but not in 2025. He'd have been eighty-four in 2025, but a lot of people that old still hang on to their driver's license since it's the only way they can stay independent. A driver's license lets them go to the grocery store once a week and makes it easier for them to get to the doctor's appointments they usually have as they age. It's only when a child convinces them to give up driving that they'll stop.

Virgil Shaw's address was 2316 McCammon Road. All I found there was a mailbox. The address on the mailbox was right, but the name was Brian Shaw. I turned into the drive and after winding through some trees, I came to a well-kept two-story house with a detached four-car garage. There was a late model SUV parked in front of the garage, so I walked up the walk and knocked on the door.

A couple minutes later, a woman at least in her late sixties answered the door. I showed her my badge and introduced myself.

"Ma'am, I'm Richard Owens, a detective for the Knoxville Police Department. I'd like to speak to Virgil Shaw if he's available."

She looked me up and down and then smiled.

"Virgil passed away in January of 2019. What is it you wanted to ask him? Maybe my husband can help."

I said I was looking for any information about a body that was found on the property in November of 1986.

She smiled again.

"Larry probably knows as much as his dad would know. He's working on his truck out in the garage. I'll call him and tell him you're coming. Just go to the door on the side of the big doors."

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I didn't have to knock on that side door. Larry was standing on the concrete pad beside it.

He smiled.

"Jenny said you want to talk about that body my dad found back in '86. I'm ready for a cup of coffee anyway. Come on in and have a cup of coffee and we'll talk."

It didn't take me long to figure out that the four-car garage was really Larry's hobby office. He had a small kitchen with a refrigerator, counter with a sink, a table with four chairs, and a couch. He grinned when he saw me looking around.

"Pretty neat, huh? This is where I go when I need to get away from Jenny for a while. Through that door is my machine shop, and beyond that are two garage bays. Let's take a walk and I'll show you."

I'd been in more than a few home shops before, but Larry's looked more like a tool shop than a hobby shop. I'm no machinist by any stretch of the imagination, but it looked to me like Larry could have set up a small custom machine shop. He even had a crane mounted on one side.

He grinned when he saw me staring.

"I started accumulating this stuff when I started working as an engineer. A lot of shops at the time were selling off their old lathes and mills and stuff and buying CNC. I got most of what I have for scrap prices. It all needed some work, but over the years I've gotten it back to what it was when it was new. I haven't been able to do much with it until I retired this year. I have a project that's going to use it all. Let me show you my baby."

Larry led the way through another door and into the two actual garage bays. What I saw in the first bay was what at one time had been a large truck. The second bay was a collection of sheet metal fenders, door, and wood boards.

"She was my dad's first truck when he started Shaw Trucking. She's a '60 Chevy two-ton with a stake bed with steel sides and tailgate. He built the wood rack side you see over there. Dad would haul anything you could get on the bed. Made most of his money hauling gravel and sand to all the construction sites in the suburbs because he could haul smaller loads than a dump truck and didn't charge as much as a business using only dump trucks. Dad also ran a few cattle on the eighty acres around this place. He used the wood rack sides to haul them to Lay's in Knoxville.

"When Dad retired, he sold off all the cattle but he kept this truck. I'm in the process of stripping her down to the frame and then rebuilding her from the ground up. I figure it'll take me a couple years, but when I'm done, she'll look like she did the day she left the factory.

"Now, how about that cup of coffee while we talk?"

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Larry didn't know much more than I already knew from Harry's report, but two things he said gave me something else to work on.

It had seemed odd to me that somehow, my victim and my killer had both gotten to a hidden campsite without leaving a car behind. I figured there were two possibilities. Either my victim had driven the killer to her tent and he killed her and then took her car, or my killer drove my victim to the campsite, killed her, and then left in the same car he'd used to take her there. The first option seemed more likely, since the campsite was hidden. My victim or killer would have been the only one to know where it was.

That made me realize that there was also a third option, that being that the campsite was the killer's and he'd somehow managed to get my victim there.

Either of those three options required a road close to the campsite where a car could remain hidden for a while, but I couldn't find any road on Google Earth because the only picture showed the whole area covered in trees.

I asked Larry if there was a road that ran close to where the tent was found and he shook his head.

"No, no road, but there is a sort of lane that runs back there. Dad needed money when he built the house in '84, so he sold some oak and hickory trees to a guy who cut and sold firewood. The guy cut trees to make a drive on his way in until he had as much as he'd paid Dad for and then left. What he left was the lane and a little clearing so he could turn around. Where that tent was, was maybe fifty feet from the clearing.

"It's still there, or at least it was the last time I went out there. It would have been rough going because of all the stumps, but I think something like a Jeep could have made it from the road back to the clearing. It's not open now. We had a bunch of thunderstorms in May of '87 and on the first of June, we had some really high winds. They said it wasn't a tornado like everybody thought. It was what they said was a gust front. When that wind hit, it uprooted a whole bunch of trees that fell across the lane. I went up there to look after the storm, but short of walking, there was no way to get back to the clearing.

"Dad didn't bother to have it cleaned up because he never went back there anyway. I did when my wife and I moved in in 2019. I thought I might build a pond back then. I never did, so the lane's pretty overgrown now. I'd advise you to not try to get your car down it though. It's in pretty rough shape, and I don't think a car could get down it without losing a muffler or the transmission."

Larry took a sip of his coffee and then chuckled.

"I was working in Nashville back then, and when the story about the murder hit the Nashville newspaper, one of the other engineers saw Dad's name and asked if I was related. Dad had called me the day he found the body so I already knew the details. I told the guy I was Dad's son, and he asked me if I knew why the woman was dressed up like a fox.

"Now, as far as I knew from reading the paper until the story finally died, the fact the body was dressed up like a fox was never made public. I asked him why he thought the woman might have been wearing a costume. He said his sister knew another woman who had been to a party the weekend before Dad found the body. The party was supposedly in a little motel on US 441, and she'd seen two women and one man wearing fox costumes on Friday and Saturday, but only the man was there on Sunday. She said she figured the dead woman might be one of the women dressed as a fox and was killed by someone at the part."

I asked Larry if he thought there was any truth to the story and he grinned.

"I know there were parties like that in Nashville because I dated a girl who went to them. Only dated her for a couple weeks though. Carla was... well, she was just weird. Kept going on and on about how she was born a human but was a rabbit in her mind. Only ate vegetarian food so finding a place to take her for dinner where I could also get something to eat was a problem. She didn't drink either, so most places for after dinner were off limits."

He chuckled then.

"She did fit the old saying about rabbits though. Almost made up for the whole vegetarian thing.

"As far as the woman who was murdered by someone at the party, I doubt it. I met a few of Carla's friends. The were all weird too, but seemed pretty harmless to me. I don't know about the motel either. It was called "The Sleep Inn" and was one of those mom-and-pop run things, just six little rooms and an office with a little restaurant on the side. It was still running in '86, but the big hotels in Knoxville had pretty much put them out of business. I heard from a buddy from high school that they were renting rooms by the hour then. When the owner's both died, it was torn down. There's a used car dealership there now."

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When I left the Shaw house, I drove on up McCammon Road to the intersection with Louis Wise Road and saw the lane on the right side of the road. The highway department had mowed enough of the lane that I could park my car. I walked down the lane about a quarter of a mile to the clearing Larry had said was there and then looked up. I could see the sky, but only where there was a separation of the overhanging tree branches.

The lane wasn't straight either. It looked to me like the logger had just gone around the bigger trees. When I looked back toward McCammon Road, I couldn't see it. That meant a car parked in the clearing would be hidden from view from the road. The clearing was more than big enough to turn a car around, so anyone who drove down that lane wouldn't have had any problems getting back out to the road.

Finding out that there was access to the place where the tent was found besides walking from the house didn't prove anything, but it did give me a possible method by which the killer and victim could have gotten to the tent.

On my way home, I was thinking about the lane and wondering how anybody would know it was there except for Virgil and Larry. I mean, I suppose it's possible someone, either the victim or the killer was looking for a place to hide and drove around the area looking for such a place, but that didn't seem all that likely. What was more likely was someone who lived in the area at the time knew when the lane was cut through the trees. That would make Virgil and Larry both suspects, but I doubted that was the case. According to Harry's notes, Virgil was pretty shaken up by finding a dead body on his property, and Larry hadn't given me any indications he was trying to hide something from me. I hadn't talked to Larry's wife all that much, but I'd told her why I was there and she didn't show me anything out of the ordinary either.

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Rochelle had been a little more successful than I was. She'd found thirteen women with red hair who disappeared in November or early December. Most of them she'd discounted because they lived too far away from Knoxville or they were too old or too young. Rochelle said she had four possibles.

"One was a woman named Naomi Harrison. Naomi lived in Bristol and was twenty-six when she was reported missing. Naomi was a waitress at a truck stop restaurant and had been reported missing by the truck stop manager when she didn't show up for her shift on the Friday after Thanksgiving.

"The second was a woman named Marian Fitz. She lived in Atlanta and was twenty-two when she was reported missing. Marian worked as a saleswoman for a company that made automotive parts for the big three automakers. She was reported missing by the sales manager of her company when she failed to meet a client in Detroit on December 2nd.

"The third was a woman named Helen Draper and she was twenty-four when she was reported missing. Helen lived in Chattanooga and was a singer on the Southern Belle riverboat. The tour manager reported her missing when she missed the Sunday river cruise on December 5th.

"The fourth was a woman named Alice Copeland who lived in Lawrenceburg and was a tour guide for the Jack Daniel's Distillery Visitor's Center. She was twenty-one when she was reported missing by her husband on November 21st."

Rochelle frowned then.

"I've tried to put together a reason for each one to have disappeared, but I always find a reason why they probably wouldn't be found dressed in a fox costume and dead in a tent, and another reason they could have disappeared.

"The waitress at the truck stop probably wouldn't have missed work just to go camping in a fox costume. She'd have been making minimum wage and most of her income would have been from tips. Missing a day of work would have cost her a lot. My bet is she hooked up with some trucker and left with him.

"I think the same thing probably explains why the riverboat singer disappeared. She was probably one of those young singers hoping to be discovered by the music industry. When that wasn't happening, she decided to try something better. That something better was some guy she met on a river cruise. She's probably happily married and living in Chicago.

"The saleswoman was obviously a professional and dressing up in a fox costume and camping like that in the woods isn't something she'd do. She'd risk her reputation with both her company and her customers if they ever found out. Something like that always has a way of coming to the surface no matter how hard you try to hide it. I think she probably just changed jobs without telling her company first. Once they found out where she was, they didn't update the missing person report. From the missing person reports I've researched in the past, that's pretty common. Once the person surfaces, the last thing anybody thinks about is reporting that the person has been found.

"The married woman, well, I don't know how a married woman would ever keep her hobby of dressing up like a fox from her husband. I'd be more inclined to believe that the husband found out she was doing more than dressing up like a fox at those events and killed her and dumped her body somewhere. She just hasn't been found yet.

"I figured that out this morning, so what I've been doing is trying to find out if there was some sort of furry convention in Knoxville in November of 1986. Well, guess what? There was, but it wasn't exactly a convention.

"I was looking for any kind of announcement about a convention during the week before Thanksgiving. I didn't find any articles about any type of convention, so I started looking at the events section of the classified ads. What I found is a small ad that ran from November 16th through November 21st of 1986 for what it called a "Toon Party". It was also in kind of code. All it said was that Shelbyville was coming to Knoxville and to bring your toon to the Sleepy Night motel on US 441 starting at noon on November 21st for three days of toons, meets, art and fun.

"There was a Charlotte, North Carolina phone number to call for more information, so I called it. I figured that after all these years, the number would have been reassigned, but it wasn't. The man who answered the phone is Walt Nichols and we had a nice conversation.

I told him I was a free-lance journalist and was researching the founding of conventions like ComicCon and that I'd found his phone number in an ad in the Knoxville, Tennessee newspaper for an event at a motel in November of 1986. I asked him if he'd sponsored the event.

"He told me that he'd put together the event. He also told me a lot about himself and why he'd done it.

"Walt's basically retired now, but in 1986 he was a gay artist working for a small publisher in Charlotte that published a monthly newsletter for the gay community called "Qnotes". On the side, he also liked drawing cartoons of animals with human-like characteristics like in all the old cartoons. He knew that a lot of gay men and lesbian women like the same thing, so he started going to sci-fi conventions and selling his art.

"He found out that there was a market for his art, but the sci-fi conventions weren't really where most of those people went. He decided to start his own conventions. That was a problem because renting a large venue cost more than he could afford. After several tries at renting things like church basements and such, he tried one of the small motels that were along what used to be major highways before the interstate system was finished. Most were going broke because of the big hotel chains, and were more than willing to rent the whole place for a weekend.

"His first one was at a motel in Shelbyville, Kentucky. That's why the reference to Shelbyville in the ad. That one went well. He made some money on tickets and sold some of his art, so he decided to have one closer to home. That was the little convention at the Sleepy Night motel in Knoxville. He figured Knoxville was big enough he'd draw more people. He rented a player and a projector to show VHS tapes of cartoons in one room, a BYOB bar in another room, a room for his artwork, a room for changing into costumes and a room for socializing

"What ended up happening was he had fifty people show up for the weekend, and he made enough money to pay for renting the entire motel and between ticket sales and sales of his artwork, he made more than he made in a week working at the publisher.

"I asked him if he remembered a woman who wore a fox costume and he just chuckled."

"Ma'am, I'm seventy-five and I can't remember what I had for dinner last night let alone something that happened in 1986. I might be able to help you though. I had a digital camera back then and I took pictures of everybody at all of my early events. They're all in several files on my hard drive, but if you'll give me your email address, I'll email them to you."

"I asked Walt if he had a list of the people at the party and he just laughed."

"Ma'am, you're too young to have experienced this, but here in the South if you were gay or lesbian, most people thought you were mentally ill and should be locked up in an asylum. If anybody knew you liked dressing up like a cartoon animal, they'd have put you in a rubber room so you didn't hurt anybody.

"I never kept a list of names other than the names people gave me for their nametags. I also didn't take credit cards or checks back then so I have no idea about anybody's real name. They paid cash at the door and got a nametag that let them into all the rooms and that's all."

Rochelle tapped a few keys on her laptop and then turned it so I could see better.

"I got his email an hour ago and he was right. It is huge. There are pictures there from every event he held from 1986 until 1990. I've been going through them and I've found three foxes in his Shelbyville, Kentucky event, and three that look the same at the Knoxville event. In the pictures from the Shelbyville event, he got close enough I could read the nametags, and they're just what Walt said they were, the names they used at the event.

"Two are obviously women because they're pretty small. The third is either a man or a really tall woman, but I'm pretty sure it's a man. One of the women went by "Vixey". She's the older fox in Disney's "The Fox and the Hound" movie. The other two are "Maid Marian" and "Robin Hood", the two main characters of Disney's animated story of Robin Hood. It seems like all three had a fascination for Disney characters.

"I'm thinking what this tells us is that our victim was at the events in Shelbyville and Knoxville so they probably knew each other. I was looking at the event in Asheville when you came home. Let's see if they're in that one too."

Rochelle flicked her finger on the touch pad of her laptop and then stopped and pointed at the screen.

"There are only two in the pictures. Let me zoom in and see if I can read their nametags."

A few seconds later, Rochelle frowned.

"They're Vixey and Robin Hood. I wonder what happened to Maid Marian. Maybe she's our victim."

I smiled.

"Or maybe, Maid Marian was just busy and couldn't come. There could be a lot of other reasons she skipped that event too. We'll need to know the victim's name and Maid Marian's real name to know for sure.

"What you have done is back up the story I got from the son of the man who found the body. He told me his sister knew a woman who was into the furry thing, and that woman had seen three people wearing fox costumes at an event at a Knoxville motel called "The Sleep Inn" on US441. It sounds to me like the location of your event and the motel must be the same.

"I also found out from Larry, that's the son's name, that there was a lane from McCammon Road back to within about fifty feet from where the body was found. He said a car probably wouldn't have made it down that lane in 1986, but it would have been walkable. I drove out there to see for myself.

"Larry had had the downed trees cleared, but it's still a pretty rough lane. One thing was pretty obvious though. If you had a vehicle with a high ground clearance, you could drive down that lane far enough that the vehicle would be hidden from the road. That's what I think happened. The killer drove our victim out there to the tent, killed her, and then just drove back down the lane.

"One thing about that bothers me though. The killer had to know the lane was there before he took our victim out there and killed her. I also think it was the killer who set up the tent and that means he planned to kill the woman. That means he probably knew her and she knew him. I don't know of any woman who would get into a car with a perfect stranger and let him drive her out into the woods.

"I think our killer has to be from that area of Knoxville, or at least was in 1986. I don't think it was the owner of the land or his son. The owner really had no reason to report finding the woman if he'd killed her. His son told me more than I expected and he was pretty open about it."

Rochelle grinned.

"I don't have any idea about why he killed her, but I think I know why there was a tent out there and why he took her there. Walt told me he had the motel owner take the beds out of all the rooms and replace them with folding chairs. He did that because when he had the event in Shelbyville, he found more than one couple in a room and having sex. He just laughed then and said that it seemed to him like the same people who like dressing up as cartoon animals like having sex with other cartoon animals. I'd bet the killer knew that and set up the tent so he'd have a private place to screw Maid Marian."

I nodded.

"That's entirely possible. Larry told me he'd dated a woman who thought she was a rabbit and she fit the old joke about bunnies. That's another reason for the killer and victim to know each other and how he got her to the tent. I think she went willingly to have sex with him. Something went wrong and he ended up killing her.

"Our problem is still that without a name for Maid Marian, we really have nowhere to look for a motive that would lead us to the killer. I sent the fox suit to the lab and asked them see if they could find anything. Maybe that'll get us a name."

Rochelle closed her lap top and then grinned.

"I'm not a furry, but I do have a little fur. How about we have dinner and then you show me what you think of my fur a couple times?"

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Well, morning came pretty early considering that I didn't get to sleep until almost midnight. I had to show Rochelle how much I liked the taste of her fur and then how much I liked to feel her fur brushing my cock. I say I had to do it, but there's no way I'd have told Rochell no. I'm perfectly happy doing what she wants in our bed. I am sort of glad it doesn't happen that way every night though. If it did, I'd be a zombie.

See, Rochelle is a great lover anyway, but when something gets her excited, she's almost more than I can handle. I usually have to hold her down when I'm licking her clit or she'll buck me off the bed when her orgasm hits. When it's just normal sex she can be slow and amorous or fast and helping all she can. Either way, it's always great for me. I just have to figure out what mood she's in and time myself accordingly.

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The next morning, I was sitting at my desk and reading Harry's report again when Becky called me from the Forensic Lab.

"Rich, the costume has two sort of flaps that would have covered the woman's crotch, but they weren't buttoned or zipped so they'd open up pretty easily. Virginia found some residue that might be semen on both the inside and the outside of the flaps, and we sent it to the TBI lab for typing. She also found something else that you need to see."

I walked down to the lab and Becky showed me to the table where Virginia was working on the fox costume. Virginia looked up and smiled.

"I don't quite what to make of this. I found what looked like semen on the flaps that covered the woman's crotch and I cut some out and sent the samples to the TBI for analysis. It's what else I found that's confusing.

"On the flaps over the crotch I found some hairs. Most looked like pubic hairs because they were pretty coarse and a little crumpled. I'd expected to find the woman's pubic hair there, and I did on the inside, but I found some others that definitely aren't hers. She was a red-head and I found three red pubic hairs that are probably hers because they're fine like a woman's pubic hair, but there were three that are thin and light brown and eight more that were coarser. I think they're from different people because four are black and four are dark brown. Based on the thickness, they're probably male.

"Most blondes don't have blonde pubic hair. They have pubic hair about the same color as their eyebrows, and that's almost always light brown. I think the light brown pubic hair is from a blonde woman. I also found something that reinforces that. On the front of the suit, I found four, long blonde hairs. They were stuck in the fur so it was hard to see them. Two were on the chest, right where the suit zipped up and where the woman's breasts would have been, and two were on the Velcro strip around the neck where the hood with her mask attached to the rest of the suit.

"The blonde hairs still had roots, so the lab will probably be able to get DNA from them. The pubic hairs are toss-up. Sometimes the lab can get a full DNA sequence from them and sometimes it can't. I sent them all to the lab too, so we'll see."

It took me a few seconds to digest all that.

"So you're telling me that my victim had sex with another woman and two different men before she died?"

Virginia grinned.

"That's what it looks like to me. I should be so lucky. Well, not the part about being killed, and I'd never do something to Tom like sleep with three other people, but it would be fun to try it once.

"Oh, the lab said they're not real busy right now, and they always put murder cases first, so they should have the results from the semen samples in about a week. The hair will take longer."

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Well, I was pretty much stuck as far as finding a name for our victim, much less a name for our killer, and it was Friday. I went home to see if Rochelle was having better luck.

She was working on a timeline when I walked into our dining room. She looked up with a frown on her face.

"This case is looking to be a lot more than we first thought. I decided to keep looking at the pictures Walt sent me to see if our three foxes were in any of his other events. I've found three more events so far and I think there's a pattern emerging. Look at my time line. The yellow dots are the events and the red dots are our foxes.

"In the pictures from Shelbyville, Kentucky, all three are in at least one picture. It's the same with the pictures from the event in Knoxville. Walt's next event was in Asheville, North Carolina, and I could find pictures of only two, those being Vixey and Robin Hood.

"After that came an event in Johnson City, Tennessee. The only fox in any of the pictures from that event were pictures of Vixey. She wasn't in the pictures from his next event in Huntsville, Alabama.

"It looks to me like at every event, one of the three foxes went missing for some reason. I went to the newspaper archives from each city newspaper in the timeframe of the event looking for anything that looked suspicious. What I found is that within a day or two of each event, a body was found somewhere in the same city.

"We know that in Knoxville, it was Maid Marion. We just don't know her name. After the event in Asheville, North Carolina, the maid cleaning a hotel room found a man dead in one of the rooms. He'd been strangled. He hasn't been identified either. I haven't looked at NamUS yet but I will.

"After the event in Johnson City, a man was found dead in another hotel room. He was identified as Robert Ingrahm and he died of a drug overdose. The pattern seems to stop there. There were no deaths after the Huntsville event except for one from a car wreck and two who were older people.

"What the timeline looks like is that somebody was killing people who went to furry events. I think we might have a serial killer on our hands and we just haven't found Vixey yet."

I shook my head.

"Well, if all three were strangled it might be the same killer, but what about the third? He might have just taken more of some drug and essentially killed himself. "Besides, we don't know that he was at the furry event.

"As for Vixey, maybe she just skipped Huntsville.

"I'll see if I can get the police files on the murder in Asheville and the OD in Johnson City. The files might tell us if they're related or not.

"By the way, the Forensic Lab did find what they thought might be semen on the costume our victim was wearing and they've sent samples to the TBI for DNA testing. I should have the results in a week or so. The lab also found some hairs tangled up in the costume and I'm not sure what to make of them. There were red and light brown pubic hairs in the crotch area of the costume that Virginia says are probably female. She also found some dark brown and black pubic hairs in the crotch that she thinks are male. She found some long blonde hairs on the costume, two where it zipped up the front and two in the velcro that held the hood with the mask to the costume. She sent them for DNA testing as well. I should have the results a little after the DNA results of the semen samples."

}|{

I spent Saturday taking care of some little things around the house and took both our cars for an oil change. Rochelle spent the day looking at more pictures from the furry events and also looking at NamUS for any men reported missing in the Asheville, North Carolina and East Tennessee area.

By Saturday night, Rochelle hadn't found any missing men, but she had found a supposed man in the event pictures from all the events up to the event in Huntsville.

"I kept seeing this guy, well, I think he's a guy because he's tall and looks pretty muscular. His costume is a wolf and his name tag at each event reads, "Sher Wolf". He's in several of the pictures from each event, but there's one thing that sets him apart from all the others in the pictures. He's usually either beside or behind Vixey. That makes me believe they knew each other.

"There's another tie between them as well. Two Disney movies that had a wolf character and were released before 1986 are "The Jungle Book", and "Robin Hood". In "The Jungle Book", the wolf is sort of a minor character, but one of the main characters in "Robin Hood" is the wolf who is the Sheriff of Nottingham and had the job of ridding Sherwood Forest of outlaws like Robin Hood. See the play on words, Sherwood and "Sher Wolf"?"

I nodded.

"I see it, but it's a pretty big stretch based on an assumption. If it's true, why would he be around Vixey? She was a character in "The Fox and the Hound", wasn't she?"

Rochelle frowned.

"Well, they're both Disney movies with foxes and there's no fox in "The Jungle Book". Maybe he just liked who she was in real life. Women generally prefer strong men and a wolf would be a lot stronger than a fox. Maybe she wanted him close to her. The only way to know is to find her and ask her."

That was just Rochelle's writer mind making up a plot that fit what we thought we knew. I don't mind at all. Sometimes she hits pretty close to home with one of her scenarios.

}|{

We didn't do much on the case on Sunday, mostly because there was nothing to do except speculate. It was easy to see why Harry had given up. We had a tiny bit more information but none of it could be tied to the murder of the woman in any manner except circumstantial.

The premise of the TV show, "48 Hours" is exactly right. If a detective investigating a murder doesn't have some pretty conclusive evidence within forty-eight hours of the murder, his chances of ever solving the case drop to nearly zero. That's why only about fifty percent of all murders are ever solved.

}|{

On Monday morning, I placed a call to the Chief of Police in Asheville, North Carolina. I explained my case and why I thought his murder case might be relevant to mine and possibly mine to his, and then asked him if he'd send me a copy of his files on the case. He said he'd have to verify my identity, so I gave him the Captain's cell phone number. He said he'd call me back if he got verification.

Half an hour later, my desk phone rang. It was the chief from Asheville.

"Detective Owens, you might like to know that your captain had only good things to say about you. He also said you work with a civilian partner. What's his name?"

I hadn't expected that, but I knew he was just making sure I was who I said I was.

"He's a she, and she's a writer of crime novels based on true crimes. Her name is Rochelle Roberts."

I heard paper shuffling in the background, and then he spoke again.

"Detective Owens, I have the file and I'll send you a copy, but there are some things you need to know. There are certain details about the case that were never released to the press and I've noted them in a cover letter to you. I still hope to solve this case someday, so I'd like those details to remain secret. I'd also like to see a copy of your report if and when you solve your case. As you said, it might help me solve mine.

"I'll send a copy of everything via FedEx. You should have it tomorrow morning."

He ended the call then, so I called the Chief of Police in Johnson City. I'd worked with the Johnson City police before, so the Chief knew me. I didn't have to go through the whole verification thing with him. He said he'd have the file sent via FedEx and I should have it the next morning.

It was almost eleven by then so I was going to go home for lunch and see if Rochelle had located any missing men in NamUS. I'd just locked my desk when my desk phone rang. It was Betty from the Forensic Lab.

"Rich, the TBI lab outdid themselves. We asked them to rush the analysis and they did. I have four DNA sequences with two matches. One is the DNA from your victim that was sequenced from a blood sample taken during her autopsy. The other is from a man named Robert Ingrahm. His initial DNA sample was taken during his autopsy in Johnson City.

The third sample is male, but there were no matches in CODIS. The fourth is female, also with no matches in CODIS.

"I don't have the results of DNA from the hairs yet, but according to the autopsy, Robert Ingrahm was bald, but he had black eyebrows. He probably had black pubic hair too because it usually matches the eyebrows.'

"I'll let you know as soon as we know anything about the hair samples."

Well, you always hear on the TV shows about some tidbit of information turning the case on its head. That's seldom true, but in this case it kind of was. We finally had a name of a person who we could link to our victim. That link might give us the victim's name.

}|{

Rochelle smiled when I gave her the DNA results.

"So I was right. Robert Ingrahm was the wolf at the events."

"Well, be careful here. We know he had sex with Maid Marian sometime before she died, but that's all we know. Still, I don't know how he'd have known her well enough that she'd agree to sex unless he was a regular at those events. The pictures you have say that this "Sher Wolf" was, so maybe it was Robert Ingrahm or maybe the guy just checked himself into a hotel with a some drugs and took more than he realized. It happens every day in some parts of Knoxville and any other big city.

"I'll have the police files on both the guy killed in Asheville and the investigation into Robert Ingrahm's death tomorrow morning. The chief in Asheville said there were some details about the case that he wanted kept secret, so maybe there's something there. The Chief in Johnson City has already closed the case, but maybe there's something in the file that can link Robert Ingrahm to the furry events. We'll just have to wait and see.

"Did you find a NamUS report on a missing man around the time frame of the Asheville event?"

Rochelle smiled.

"I found four, but I think only one may be our Robin Hood. He's the right age to fit in with Maid Marian and his name is Forrest Sherwood. I can't believe that his real name and calling himself Robin Hood is just a coincidence.

"One of the other three is black and married with three kids, so I can't see him dressing up like a fox and going to furry events. The other two lived too far away to make the trip to where the events were held. One lived in Texas and the other in North Dakota. I suppose they could have flown to the events, but that would get pretty pricey really fast.

"I may have found a way to figure out who's who. I tried a trick I learned a long time ago in a math class that might help us. The autopsy report on Maid Marian said she was five feet three. I used a ruler to measure the picture and she measured three and an eighth inches. That gave me a scale for the picture of about five hundredths of an inch on the picture to an inch in real life. Then I measured Robin Hood with the same ruler and he measured three and a half inches. Using the same scale, he would have been about five ten. That's the height NamUS had for Forrest Sherwood. The others were either shorter or taller.

"I did the same thing for Sher Wolf, and in the pictures he measured about three and three-quarter inches. That would make him about six three in real life. If your file for Robert Ingrahm says he was between six two and six four, he's probably our Sher Wolf.

"It's funny that I didn't find any missing person report for any man who matched the man in the death report in the Johnson City paper. My only guess is he either lived quite a way outside of Johnson City or he had nobody to report him missing. Maybe your file will tell us that too.

"Just in case we needed it, I did the same thing with Vixey. She would be about five nine. I think that's close because in the pictures she's taller than Maid Marian but shorter than Robin Hood."

}|{

I had to admit that Rochelle's timeline made sense if her assumptions were correct. For some motive as yet unknown, somebody didn't like the three people in fox costumes and started killing one at each event. The fact that the murder happened around the same time as an event made sense too. The killer would know where the three would be on a given date, and with everything going on at an event, people probably wouldn't miss one if they weren't at the event when it closed. They'd just figure the person was off doing something with another event attendee or that they'd gone home early. That would give the killer ample time to get away before the body was found.

None of that explained Robert Ingrahm's death, but then, he wasn't murdered. He'd just OD'd in his hotel room. There was nothing that positively tied him to any event except that he'd had sex with Maid Marian once, and there could be a lot of explanations for that. She was relatively young and maybe she decided to hit a bar after she left the event, met Ingrahm in the bar, and invited him to have sex with her.

The only things that didn't jive with that was that she was still wearing a fox costume when she'd had sex and when she died, and the fact that she died in a tent at the end of a private lane few people could have known even existed. I didn't think any guy meeting a girl in a fox costume in a bar would even think of having sex with her unless he was also in the furry thing.

}|{

The case files for the murder in Asheville and Robert Ingrahm's death in Johnson City were in my inbox the next morning. I scanned through the file from Asheville first, mostly to see what the Asheville police hadn't released to the press.

It's pretty common for a police detective to withhold from the press some unique information that only the killer would know. That gives the detective an advantage when questioning a suspect. If the suspect has knowledge of one of more of the withheld details, he's probably the killer. If questioned long enough, he'll probably give up and admit to the murder.

In the case of the man found murdered in a room at a Motel 6 in Asheville, the detective withheld two items of evidence.

The first was that during the autopsy, the coroner found some fibers that looked like fur on the man's chest hair, and that fur was red-orange in color. The fibers were subsequently identified as an acrylic polymer commonly used in the production of faux fur for the textile industry.

The second thing that the detective didn't release to the press was also in the Coroner's report. The man had been strangled, but prior to that, some object large enough to cause anal tears had been thrust up his anus.

The rest of the coroner's report was about what I expected. The man's fingerprints had been taken and sent to the FBI for identification, but the FBI had no matching prints on file. A subsequent submission of the prints to IAFIS once it had been up and running for a couple years also returned as no match found.

Cause of death was strangulation. No other physical injuries were present.

The coroner did take some tissue samples and a blood sample. When DNA testing became affordable, the detective sent a blood sample to the FBI lab for sequencing. He got a sequence back, but with nothing to compare it to, it served no purpose.

Not listed as evidence but included in the detective's report was that a 1983 Datsun 200 SX was found abandoned at the Asheville Regional Airport and the license number traced back to a man of twenty-three named Forrest Sherwood of Nashville, Tennessee. Since no unaccounted-for car was found in the parking lot of the Motel 6, The detective thought the abandoned Datsun might be related to the murder. He had the car towed to the Asheville Crime Lab and the techs had gone over the vehicle looking for any evidence. They found no fingerprints, but did find two tiny pieces of thin, latex rubber stuck in a crack in the panel of the driver's side door where the door handle was attached.

A check of the airline passenger manifests for the week prior to the vehicle being found didn't find a passenger by the name of Forrest Sherwood. The detective concluded that the Datsun had been stolen from Mr. Sherwood and left at the airport after being wiped clean of prints. The detective did check to see if the car had been reported stolen, but found no such report for the VIN number, license number, or make, model, and color or any stolen car in Tennessee or North Carolina. That would probably be because Mr. Sherwood was already dead.

The file on Robert Ingrahm had only one detail withheld, and that was only because a Jeep Cherokee registered to him was found a week after his body was found. The Cherokee was in the parking lot of the Johnson City Holiday Inn. The Cherokee had generated some questions that had no answer. The Crime Scene Techs in Johnson City went over the vehicle and found some fingerprints, but they all matched Mr. Ingrahm's fingerprints. The detective on the case couldn't connect the vehicle to anything involving the case, so he made an assumption that for some reason, probably related to drugs, Mr. Ingrahm had driven to the hotel and injected himself.

The coroner had ruled the cause of death was an overdose of xylazine administered intravenously. The only problem I had with the investigation by the detective in Johnson City was that there was no container of xylazine or a syringe found in the hotel room where he died.

I'd have felt better about the cause of death if there had been some evidence that the guy injected himself, but I'd worked drug cases when I worked for the drug task force in Nashville and I'd seen the same scenario. The addict buys his heroin or other drug on the street but doesn't want any evidence left in his possession in case he's found still passed out. He shoots up in some quiet, hidden place like a park or an alley and once the initial effect ends, leaves the baggy and syringe in a dumpster or drops them down a street drain and makes his way back home.

In Nashville, that usually was an aspiring musician whose income depended upon being hired as a backup artist by a recording studio. Country music producers aren't very understanding of drug addicts. They can live with alcoholics, but not drug addicts. In Johnson City, it would probably be a professional like maybe an upcoming VP of a corporation who needed to keep his personal life a secret.

It had been a while since I'd worked on any cases involving street drugs, so I didn't know much about xylazine. I walked down to talk to Ron Black, our coroner. I knew he'd know all about xylazine.

}|{

Ron was bent over a very large, very naked woman on one of his autopsy tables when I walked into the lab. He looked up, wave the scalpel in his hand at me, and said "Hi, Rich. Give me five minutes, OK?" I went to his office and sat down to wait.

When Ron came in, he put an evidence bag on his desk and then frowned.

"Took me forever to dissect her tit enough to get to this. She was found keeled over in an alley behind a little strip bar. It was pretty easy to figure out what killed her. She was about a hundred- and fifty-pounds overweight for her height and her heart just gave out. They know she was a prostitute because it was her john who called the EMT's. What they don't know is who she was.

"Her tits are huge, but it was pretty easy to tell they weren't all just burgers and cupcakes. They didn't feel right and they didn't sit right on her chest. Well, actually, they'd have been sitting on her belly when she was standing up. The serial number on this implant will tell me who put in her implants and whoever did that work will have her name.

"I'll bet she made her living on blow jobs and hand jobs. Her belly and thighs are so fat you'd have to have a cock a foot long just to get it in her far enough to feel it."

Ron signed the evidence bag with a pen from his desk, then looked at me.

"OK, Rich, what pearls of wisdom are you looking for today?"

I just ignore Ron when he starts talking like that. I've worked with several coroners over the years, and they've all been a little weird. I can't say as I blame them. They get paid for looking at people who are dead and often the cause of death is pretty gruesome. I think the only way they stay sane is to develop a warped sense of humor.

I handed Ron the folder on Robert Ingrahm.

"This guy is related to a case I'm working on, and I'm wondering about his cause of death. The coroner in Johnson City said it was an overdose of xylazine. I haven't had much exposure to xylazine. Could he have injected himself with enough to kill him?"

Ron read through the autopsy report and then frowned.

"The asshole is lucky he OD'd."

"Oh, why is that?"

"Xylazine is an animal tranquilizer used mostly for surgery on horses. It puts the horse out and relaxes the muscles for about an hour or two. It's been around for a while and was usually used by vets until some dumbass decided to see what it would do to him. It's been used as a recreational drug for probably fifty years, but not to any great extent until lately. Your guy is lucky he didn't get himself hooked on it. Over time, it causes the user to develop open sores on his arms, legs, and feet. There have been cases where the affected limb has to be amputated because the sores developed into gangrene. If they don't get to a doctor in time, they just die."

I found that to be interesting.

"So, he probably wasn't a long-time user?"

Ron shook his head.

"If he had been, he'd have known how much he could handle at a time. The concentration the coroner measured in his urine was high enough to kill a couple horses. To give the coroner his due, in 1986 there wasn't all that much research about the effect of xylazine on humans, so he probably didn't realize how high the dose was.

"I'd have called it a possible homicide if it happened today. I'd also look for some fentanyl or heroin. Xylazine is used today to cut those two drugs because it's cheap and easy to get. Back then, it was relatively easy to get the pure form because it isn't regulated under the Controlled Substances Act. Theoretically, it was only sold to veterinarians, but most companies didn't check for a vet license. You could also buy it from some Asian countries and it was cheap. Still can. The street name is "tranq", because that's what it does. It's a powerful tranquilizer. In simple terms, xylazine inhibits signals from the brain to the muscles so the heartbeat slows and the respiration rate goes down. With enough in the person's system, he'll stop breathing and his heart will stop."

I was starting to agree with Rochelle. Somebody had been killing off people who went to the furry events.

"Well, if he injected himself, would he have been able to do that and then get to his hotel room, undress, and in bed? The police didn't find a container for the drug or a syringe in the room with him."

Ron chuckled.

"He'd have had to be really fast on his feet. He'd have started going out in about a minute or so. After that, he'd have been basically a pile of Jello."

"So he was probably killed by someone who took the container and syringe when they left?"

Ron nodded.

"That's the way I see it, but then I wasn't there so it's just my opinion."

}|{

When I walked into our dining room that evening, Rochelle looked up and grinned.

"I did a lot better today. I think I've found the link we've been looking for, or at least, a person who can give us that link.

"I reasoned that since Sher Wolf had been to the events in Knoxville, Asheville, and Johnson City, he probably lived in the area. I checked the newspaper archives for Johnson City and didn't find anything.

"When I searched for his name in the Knoxville paper, I found him.

"He was born and raised in Knoxville. I found his birth announcement. His dad was a construction worker and his mother worked at a grocery store. I also found his graduation announcement from high school and then an article by the electrician's union in Knoxville. He graduated from there with a certificate as a journeyman electrician.

"The next time I found his name was when he married Gail Madison in 1981. She was a nurse at The UT Medical Center.

"Apparently he was hard to live with. I found another wedding announcement for Gail Madison Sherwood in 1985 to a Dr. James Cunningham. Her face in the picture was the same Gail as the picture when she married Robert and she was still a nurse at Mercy, so she must have divorced Robert or he divorced her.

"I couldn't find any more about her, but you can, and if she's still alive she'll probably have a lot to say about Robert Ingrahm."

I nodded.

"Rochelle, I think you've just found a key to solving this case.

"I have another name for you to check out tomorrow. The man found in the Motel 6 in Asheville was named... you're gonna love this. His name was Forrest Sherwood, the same name you picked out of NamUS. They traced him from the license plate on a car abandoned at the Asheville airport but didn't find any evidence to tell them who left it there. They never released his name to the press, and from the detective's report, they never found any family to notify. They also never released the autopsy results that indicated he had severe tearing on his anus. When they ran down his driver's license, it was issued in Tennessee and he lived in Nashville.

"I think he's Robin Hood, both because of his real name and because there were some strange fibers found in his chest hair. The fibers were later identified as an acrylic polymer used to make fake fur, and the fibers were reddish brown in color.

"Tomorrow, I'll run down Gail Cunningham, and if I find her and she's close enough, I'll go talk to her. Maybe you can find out more about Forrest Sherwood."

}|{

Gail Cunningham was easy to find and she was probably still alive. He'd renewed her Tennessee driver's license in 2020, and the address was on Lyon's View Pike. Evidently Dr. Cunningham was pretty successful. The houses on Lyon's View Pike sit between The Cherokee Country Club and the Tennessee River, and depending upon the size and what else is on the lot, go for between a million and two million. When I drove into the half-circle of paving stones that served as the drive, I figured the house as at least a million-five.

When I rang the bell, a woman who was maybe twenty-five answered the door. I assumed she was probably a housekeeper so I introduced myself and asked if Mrs. Cunningham was home. The woman smiled.

"Yes, she is. She's outside in her garden. I'll go see if she has time to talk with you."

The housekeeper didn't slam the door in my face, but I heard the lock click after she closed it. She was a good housekeeper.

About five minutes later, the door opened again and the housekeeper smiled at me again.

"Mrs. Cunningham will see you now. I was about to take her a cup of coffee. Would you like one as well?"

I declined and then followed the housekeeper through the house to the back door. As we walked, I did what any detective does. I surveyed each room we walked through. How people live can tell you a lot about them. I wasn't seeing the extravagance in décor I'd expected. The furniture and wall decorations were nice, but not what I'd consider to be an expression of wealth. Everything just looked comfortable.

The back yard was about the same. I'd expected a pool, but there was only a well-kept lawn with some trees for shade and several flower beds. A woman in jeans and a T-shirt was bent over one of those flower beds. Gail Cunningham would be sixty-seven now, but the ass I was looking at didn't show it.

When we walked up to that flower bed, the housekeeper said, "Mrs. Cunningham, Detective Owens is here to see you."

Gail stood up, turned to face me and smiled. She held out her hand.

"Detective, I must apologize. I just look a fright, but this is how I dress now that I'm retired. Apparently I've forgotten to send our annual donation. I apologize for that too, but I'll fix that today."

Even if she had been dressed in rags, she'd have still been a beautiful woman. I could imagine that when she was young, she'd have had men begging her for a date.

I smiled back.

"Mrs. Cunningham, I'm not here to collect a donation. I'm here because I'm investigating a murder that happened in 1986 and some research by an associate of mine indicates you may have some information that can help me."

She frowned.

"I don't see how unless... I was an emergency room nurse at the UT Medical Center in 1986. Does this have anything to do with the hospital?"

I shook my head.

"Mrs. Cunningham, what I want to know is anything you can tell me about your first husband, Mr. Robert Ingrahm."

She chuckled.

"I've tried for forty years to forget about Bobby, but ask away. Let's sit down though. I don't like standing up a lot. My husband says I need a knee replacement, but he's a cardiologist, so how would he know? I do fine if I don't do a lot of walking."

She led to two lawn chairs under an oak tree.

"OK, Detective, what do you want to know? Has Bobby gotten into some sort of trouble?"

"No, he's... there's no easy way to tell you this except to just tell you. Robert Ingrahm died of a drug overdose in a Holiday Inn 1986."

I was watching Gail as I told her, but she didn't even flinch. She just leaned toward me.

"Detective, if you're waiting on me to break down, you're going to have a long wait. I'm not happy that Bobby's dead, but I'm not going to shed any tears either.

"I don't think I believe he OD'd though. Bobby drank like a fish but never did any drugs and I'd have known if he did. I saw hundreds of people who came to the emergency room high as a kite on drugs. He couldn't have hidden that from me like he hid his girlfriend."

"He had a girlfriend?"

Gail frowned.

"That's why I divorced him. It took three months before I did. I was washing clothes on a Saturday night, and found two condoms in the hip pocket of his work jeans. He had no reason to have them unless they were for another woman. I was trying to get pregnant at the time. The problem I thought we were having was his job.

Bobby was an electrician who worked on things like factories and office buildings, but he didn't work for any particular contractor. He got his jobs through the union job posting board. He said he made more money that way, and we were going pretty well with his pay and my salary from the hospital. The only problem we had was being together.

"Most of his jobs were away far enough away from Knoxville he couldn't drive home every night. Instead, he stayed in cheap hotels and drove home on Saturday morning. Sunday afternoon, he'd have to drive back to his job. I was working a lot of Saturdays and Sundays because I didn't have much seniority at the hospital. We barely saw each other, let alone have enough time to have sex.

"Well, I asked him why he had the condoms. He said he used them to insulate wires sometimes and had just forgotten to put them back in his tool box.

"Now, I'm no electrician, but I'd already seen enough people with electrical burns to know that a condom wasn't going to insulate anything. I didn't question him though. Instead, when he left for work, I found a private detective and hired him to find out what Bobby was doing.

"The short story is that Bobby had hooked up with some blonde woman on his job in Lexington, and he was staying with her every night. Once I had the report, I went to a lawyer. It only took two weeks to divorce Bobby because he didn't try to fight it. He didn't even hire a lawyer."

Well that was interesting given that the Crime Lab had found four long, blonde hairs on Maid Marion's costume. That didn't mean it was the same blonde, but I don't believe in coincidences, and ignoring anything that seems odd is a sure way to get started down the wrong trail.

"Mrs. Cunningham, you don't happen to remember the woman's name, do you?"

She waved her hand.

"Land sakes no, and I burned the report as soon as the divorce was final. The private detective will have it though. I know he's still in business because I get a Christmas card from him every year. You might even know him. His name was Mack Hodges and he told me he was a police officer before he started his private investigator business. Just tell him I said it was OK if he gave you a copy of the file.

"Is there anything else I can help you with?"

"Well, this is going to sound really crazy, but did Mr. Ingrahm like a particular type of cartoon or cartoon animal?"

I figured she'd laugh at me, but she didn't. She frowned.

"Bobby asked me to never tell this to anybody, but I guess since he's dead, it doesn't matter anymore. Bobby's parents were members of some little church that didn't believe in movies or television or comic books. Once Bobby moved out, he bought a TV and two VCRs, and rented every cartoon and movie he could find. He copied them all onto blank tapes, and when he started his electrician's jobs, he took one of the VCRs with him so he could watch them on the TV in his hotel room.

"The first year we were married, the local electrician's union had a Christmas party. Bobby went out and bought a wolf costume. He went as a wolf and I went as a sexy Red Riding Hood.

As I remember, we had some really great sex that night."

}|{

I did know Mack Hodges, though I hadn't worked with him because he was a patrolman and I was investigating cold cases instead of any current case he'd have been involved with.

Mack retired at the age of fifty-seven after he'd served as a patrolman for thirty-one years. He told everybody at his retirement party that it was time for younger blood to take up the fight, but he was going to keep his hand in the game by starting his own private investigation company.

That's what Mack told everybody who'd listen, but from what I'd heard, Mack had retired so he wouldn't lose his pension. He had a reputation for sometimes bending the rules in order to catch a perp. While that was probably overlooked when he started out, as time went on and after a few lawsuits filed against Knox County, the Knoxville Police Department, and the Chief of Police, a directive came down through the ranks that there would be no leniency if an officer or detective was deemed to have done an unwarranted search of a person or property.

Mack's undoing had been when he pulled over a woman of college age because she was driving erratically. He did everything by the book until he arrested her and put her in the back of his patrol car.

At the hearing, Mack maintained that he'd smelled marijuana in the car and was therefore allowed to search the vehicle. What he found under the driver's seat was half a pound of marijuana and three baggies of coke. He went back to his car and informed the woman she was also under arrest for possession of illegal drugs.

As it turned out, the woman was the daughter of an aide to the state representative for Knox county. They way I heard the story, the girl's father called an aide to the Mayor of Knoxville. Nobody really knows what happened next, but the suspicion is that the Chief had two options. He could convince Mack to tear up his arrest report and then retire or he could retire himself.

Anyway, everything else I'd heard about Mack was that he was a good patrolman who would always help out anybody who needed help, but had no sympathy whatsoever for anybody violating a law, no matter how stupid that law was.

I used my phone to find his address. It was what had been a shop of some kind in a strip mall in the suburbs. The sign on the door said, "OPEN", so I went inside.

I asked the girl at the desk if Mack was in She said he was and asked who she should say is calling on him. I showed her my badge. She picked up the phone on the desk and pushed one of the buttons,, then said, "Mack, there's a Detective Owens here. He wants to talk to you... OK, I'll tell him."

I recognized Mack as soon as he walked through the door behind the desk. He evidently recognized me as well, because he smiled, walked around the desk and stuck out his hand.

"Rich Owens. Good to see you, though I didn't figure any detective from Knoxville's finest would ever want to admit knowing I'm still around. What can I do for you?"

"Well, I work on mostly cold cases anymore and the one I'm working on right now has been really tough. All the people who might be potential suspects are dead. I got your name from the wife of one of them, a Mrs. Gail Cunningham, though at the time she was married to a man named Robert Ingrahm. She told me she hired you to investigate what her husband was doing when he wasn't home. She said she'd burned the file you gave her once her divorce from Robert was final, but you might have a copy. If you do, I'd like to see it. She told me to tell you she had no objections to showing me your file."

"When did I do her investigation?"

"She divorced Robert in 1984, so it would have been 1983 or 1984, probably 1984."

Mack looked back at the desk.

"Sandy, see if you can find a file from 1984 under the name of Ingrahm."

He turned back to me then.

"I've kept all the files from every case I've worked on since I started this business. My lawyer recommended that. If I did an investigation, I'll have file. It'll just take Sandy a while to find it. Let's go to my office and you can catch me up on what's happening downtown while we wait."

}|{

Mack was mostly interested in who held what job now. I told him about that, and he'd often nod.

"Good man. He deserved to be promoted out of a squad car. Was more interested in not breaking any rules than catching the bad guys, but he did a good job. Glad to see that he got rewarded.

"From what you've heard about me down at the station, that probably doesn't seem like something I'd say, does it?"

I shrugged.

"Mack, I don't know what your situation was back then and I don't really want to know. I learned a long time ago not to believe everything I hear. "

Mack smiled.

"Well, what I hear about you is that you're the guy the Captain turns to when he has an impossible case, and so far, you're batting a thousand."

I shrugged again and grinned.

"Like I said, you shouldn't believe everything you hear."

About that time, Sandy walked in to Mack's office with a file folder in her hand.

"Mr. Hodges, this is the only folder I could find. I hope it's the right one."

Mack opened the folder, looked through the contents and then looked up at me.

"I remember this case now. Gail came to me and wanted to know what her husband was doing the five or six days a week when he wasn't home.

"On Sunday afternoon at I followed him from their house to a Red Roof in Lexington, Kentucky. I was ready to give up and get a room of my own, when this blonde in a white pickup pulled into the parking lot. She got out and walked straight to his room and knocked on the door.

"At first I thought she was probably a hooker because her jeans fit like they were painted on and she had tits out to here.

"A few seconds later, he opened the door. She kissed him and then they both went inside. I got a VHS video of that and it showed Ingrahm's face and his hands on the blonde's ass cheeks. A few minutes later I saw a light come on in the window of the room but the curtain on the window was closed, so I couldn't see what they were doing.

"I went back to the office of the Red Roof and rented a room for the week, but I was waiting in my car in front of his room at five the next morning. About six, they both came out of the building, got in the blonde's pickup, and headed back to some sort of vet clinic. She dropped him off at the gate to the construction site and then drove on to the parking lot.

"I waited all day for something to happen, but it didn't until five that night. Ingrahm walked out to the gate in the fence around the construction site. About fifteen minutes later, the blonde pulls up to the gate in her pickup. He gets in and they drive to a burger place, pick up something to eat, then to a liquor store, and then back to the Red Roof. This time, Ingrahm unlocked the door, and then squeezed the blonde's big tits before he let her in.

"So, what was going on was Ingrahm had found him a really nice piece of ass to tap. I had no doubts that he was tapping her every night during the week. I could go back to Knoxville and tell that to Gail, but most women want more than a couple pictures of her husband letting a stacked blonde into his hotel room while he was grabbing her ass and tits. It's a shame I didn't have my little wi-fi cameras back then, but it looked like all I was going to get was short videos of them at the hotel room door.

"I got a better video on Thursday morning. They both walked out of the hotel room at six like always, but Ingrahm walked the blonde to her truck but didn't get in. I had my camera rolling and watched him kiss the blonde while his hand was under her top and squeezing her left tit. A second or two later, she pulled his hand away and pushed it down to the waistband of her jeans. She wiggled a little until he got his hand down to her crotch. He was fingering her snatch right there in the parking lot and I got it all on video. I figured that would be enough for Gail to get her divorce and then some.

"After that, Ingrahm walked to his truck and they both left. I figured he was going to the construction site. The blonde had somewhere else to be, so I followed her out of curiosity. She drove to the airport, but not to the main terminal. She drove into the parking lot of the area for private aviation, and went inside. I waited for an hour and she still hadn't come out, so I went inside.

"I walked up to the desk and asked the girl if she'd seen a blonde woman come in. I said I thought I recognized her as one of my daughter's friends and wanted to say hello.

"The girl smiled and said the blonde woman was Dr. Karen Renard, but she'd flown out about half an hour before. I asked the girl how that was possible since I hadn't seen her come back out. She just smiled again, and said Dr. Renard was a very well know veterinarian in the horse world and that she often got calls to do surgery on horses in some place too far away to bring the horse to Lexington. She said Dr. Renard had her own plane and she keeps it in a hanger there so it's ready to go any time she gets a call.

"Well, that's about it. I didn't really try to find out more. Gail paid me to find out what her husband was doing and I gave her a copy of the video tapes to prove it. I also gave her the woman's name in case she needed it. If you want the file, I'll have Sandy make you a copy. I tossed the VHS tape when my player died, but I had a lab convert them to stills so the important parts are in the file as still shots.

"It's a shame the way that asshole Ingrahm treated Gail. She's a really nice woman. I send her a Christmas card every year just because I liked her then and I still do."

}|{

Some things were starting to come together for me, but I wanted to run my ideas past Rochelle. While Rochelle can come up with some seemingly impossible solutions to a case, she's just as good at pointing out where I've missed something or come to the wrong conclusion.

I started out by asking Rochelle if she'd been able to come up with anything that indicated Vixey was dead like a missing person's report or an obituary. She said she hadn't, but that didn't necessarily mean that Vixey was still alive.

"There are people added to NamUS every day and some of them have been missing for years before they're reported. It depends on how close they were to a friend or to family. As far as an obituary, I won't be able to find one unless I have a name."

"Well, maybe I have a name. When I talked to Gail Cunningham, she told me she divorced Robert Ingrahm because she thought he was seeing another woman. He was a commercial electrician and got jobs all over the states because he was free-lancing to contractors who didn't have full-time electricians on the payroll. As a result, he was gone from home five days a week and sometimes six.

"Gail hired a private detective to find out if there was anything going on and he did. The PI used to be a patrolman so I know him. He told me what he found out and he made me a copy of his case file."

I took one of the pictures from the file and handed it to Rochelle.

"Any guesses about who this woman might be? Her name is Karen Renard and she lived in Lexington, Kentucky."

Rochelle studied the picture for almost a minute, and then looked up.

"She's about the right height and she has long, blonde hair. Is she Vixey?"

I shrugged. I don't know, but there are some other things that make me believe she might be. Gail told me that once right after they were first married, the local union had a Christmas party. She went dressed as Red Riding Hood. Guess what he chose for his costume."

Rochelle grinned.

"Wouldn't be a wolf, would it?"

"That's not all either. Remember that you said you found two missing men that lived too far away to have gone to the furry events? Well that could be said for any of the people at those events, but what if one of them was a private pilot and had his own plane? The blonde woman does. She's apparently a well-known veterinarian who specializes in surgery on horses, and she has the plane to fly to work on a horse that's too far away or is not well enough to be hauled to Lexington.

"There's another thing as well. I talked to Ron about how Mr. Ingrahm died. He didn't believe it was just a simple OD. He said if Mr. Ingrahm was a user, he'd have known how much to inject himself with to get the high he wanted. Instead, he had enough in his system to kill a horse. There's also the drug that killed him. The coroner at the time got it right. It was xylazine, and xylazine is used by veterinarians to anesthetize animals, particularly horses, before surgery. Who would have easy access to a drug used to put a horse out before surgery and know what a lethal dose was?"

Rochelle grinned.

"You go get us a couple dinners from Smokey's barbecue while I see how much I can find out about her."

}|{

When I got back home, Rochelle was staring at her laptop screen. She looked up and frowned.

"I found her, but she must be the most egotistical woman on earth. She was easy to find because she has her own website and it's full of her bragging about what she's done and what she can do.

"Let's eat and then I'll tell you about her, or at least, what she thinks about herself."

When we finished eating, Rochelle took a sip of her iced tea and then started.

"Karen Renard is a vet, like you said, but she's not just a vet. She has certifications in Surgery and Internal Medicine as well. She's pretty proud of those additional certifications. She goes out of her way to list the racing stables and walking horse breeders who evidently have her on speed-dial. She has lots of pictures of her standing in front of stables that look more like luxury homes than stables, and several more of her with horses she's treated.

She's basically retired now, but she is a visiting professor at most of the vet schools in Kentucky and Tennessee. She teaches a few seminars in large animal surgery.

"She also owns her own plane, a 2020 Piper Seneca that seats six. She has a separate web page for the Seneca with pictures of the inside and outside, and of course, about herself. She has private pilot's license and is both multi-engine and instrument rated.

"She's really proud of her plane. Take a look at the nose of the plane. See anything familiar?"

Rochelle didn't have to point it out to me. It was there plain a day. In red-brown script letters was one word and that word was "Vixey".

I smiled.

"OK, you've proved to me that Karen Renard is Vixey, but the only thing that ties her to any of the others is Mack's report tying her to Robert Ingrahm. There's nothing there that helps us solve Maid Marian's murder. Even if the blonde hairs from Maid Marian's costume yield DNA, we don't have anything to compare it to."

Rochelle grinned.

"I've been thinking about that. Like I said, she has an ego as big as Montana. She has a separate web page for her schedule, and she's supposed to be at the UT Veterinary Center here in Knoxville for a one-day seminar on equine surgery a week from Tuesday. Maybe there's a way to get her to give us a sample."

}|{

Getting into that seminar was relatively easy though it didn't start out that way. After Rochelle looked at how to register for the seminar, we got stopped in our tracks. We'd both have had to be licensed veterinarians, but that didn't really matter. There were a hundred seats available and they were already reserved. My first thought was to meet with the Dean of the veterinary college, explain what I wanted to do and why, and then ask him to get permission for both Rochelle and I to be there.

I discarded that idea after Rochelle pointed out that if I went to the Dean and told him I was trying to get DNA from a famous veterinarian because she was a person of interest in a murder case, the dean probably wouldn't be very cooperative.

Rochelle figured out how we might be able to be there.

"The schedule says the seminar starts at eight and runs until five, but there are two breaks and a catered lunch. That lunch has to be served by somebody. Why can't we be there as part of the catering service? Somebody has to clear the tables, and her DNA should be all over the silverware, china, and glassware she uses. All we'd need to do is collect it all and take it to the lab. Nobody pays any attention to people clearing tables, so we could do whatever we want."

It was easy to find out who the catering service was. Rochelle just called the coordinator listed on the application form and asked if they needed a catering service for the seminar. The woman told Rochelle they already had a caterer. Rochelle asked who that was and the woman told Rochelle she'd already contracted Sequoya Catering for the event.

On the Monday afternoon before the seminar, Rochelle and I drove to Sequoya Catering and asked to speak to the owner.

}|{

Jane Seymore looked like she'd been running her head off, but she said we could talk in her office. She closed the door behind her, then went to a small refrigerator behind the desk, took out a bottle of water, and then asked if I wanted one. I said we were fine, and then waited until she sat down and asked me what I wanted to ask her. I introduced myself and showed her my badge.

"Mrs. Seymore, I'm Detective Richard Owens, and I work for the Knoxville Police Department on old, unsolved cases. It's one of those cases I'm working on right now. I can't tell you about the case because of some of the people involved.

"One of those people will be at the seminar at the UT Veterinary College that you're catering tomorrow. What I need is a way to get myself and Rochelle here into that seminar without looking out of place. Rochelle thought that if we looked like we were part of the catering staff, we could pretty much do what we need to do without anybody noticing. Is there a way for us to join your catering staff at that seminar?"

She frowned.

"What is it you need to do? I can't have one of my employees causing trouble at an event. I'd never get another event if that happened."

I shook my head.

"We won't be doing anything your other employees aren't doing. We just need to do it to one specific person. Once we have what we need, we'll leave."

She was still frowning.

"I don't mind helping the police, but my other people will know you don't work for me because they're all kids working their way through UT. What am I supposed to tell them?"

Rochelle smiled.

"Tell them we just started college later in life."

Mrs. Seymore chuckled.

"They'll never believe me, but OK. I need to know what you intend on doing so you'll do it per our standard procedures."

}|{

Rochelle and I got to the seminar at seven the next morning and spent half an hour walking around the tables until we found the table with the place card for Dr. Karen Renard. It was at the front, just opposite the speaker's platform, but we didn't intend to do anything while she was speaking.

Karen didn't look a whole lot different than the pictures of her that Mack took. She'd obviously had some work done because her face didn't have the usual lines of a woman of sixty-nine and instead of blonde, her hair was white. She was still in really good physical shape, though Rochelle thought her butt was too tight for a woman that old.

We waited through the first four hours and listened to her go on and on about different surgical techniques. We waited until the regular catering employees took the meal to each table, and then waited until it looked like the people at Karen's table were about finished. Rochelle and I both took little rolling stainless steel carts and waited at the sides of the dining area until Karen put down her fork, and pushed her chair back from the table. Rochelle set her phone to record video, stuck it in her breast pocked with the lens out, and pushed her cart up to the side of the table opposite Karen. I pushed my cart up behind Karen's chair so she couldn't stand up, leaned over, and said, "Ma'am, may I clear your table for you?"

As soon as Karen said, "Yes, but please leave my water glass", and handed me her plate, I started taking plates and silverware from her place setting and putting them into the garbage back on the lower shelf of my cart. Rochelle did the same thing on her side of the table, but she was taking care to keep facing Karen and me. I cleared my side of the table but put everything but Karen's on top shelf of my cart.

Once we'd cleared that table we pushed our carts back to the kitchen area. I put an evidence tag on the garbage bag, filled it out and signed it, and then Rochelle and I walked out the door of the kitchen area. In five minutes, we were on our way to the station and the Crime Scene Lab.

}|{

The two weeks we waited on the DNA analysis of the dinnerware was almost painful. The only thing that made it bearable was the Crime Lab got the results of the DNA testing on the hair samples from Maid Marian.

DNA from the red pubic hairs matched the DNA from Maid Marian, and CODIS still didn't have a name to go with the sequence.

One of the blonde hairs yielded enough DNA for the lab to get a sequence. It matched the sequence of unidentified female DNA taken from Maid Marian's fox costume.

DNA from the brown pubic hair matched the DNA taken from the crotch flap of Maid Marian's costume. There was still no matching DNA in CODIS.

The DNA from the black pubic hairs was a match for the DNA previously identified as belonging to Robert Ingrahm.

}|{

Two weeks to the day after the dinnerware went to the lab, Betty got the results.

"Rich, that pile of dishes and silverware you gave me, well, the TBI got several DNA samples from it. Some of it is yours and some of it is from some as yet unknown guy, but most of it was female, and it matches the unknown female DNA from your victim's fox costume and the blonde hair we took off the front of the costume."

That was all I needed. I didn't have enough to charge Karen with murder, but with the DNA, I had enough to charge her as an accessory. I went to the DA and showed him what Rochelle and I had found. He looked it all over and frowned.

"Rich, you've proved this Karen woman was with your victim, but any defense attorney is going to say the DNA was collected illegally. If you'd followed her outside and picked up her cigarette butt or soda can, she'd obviously abandoned it, and it would be a legal search."

I smiled and opened my laptop.

"When I collected the dinnerware, Rochelle recorded this."

As the video played out, it showed me pushing my cart up behind Karen's chair and then asking her if I could clear the table. Her voice when she said, "Yes, but please leave my water glass" was clear as a bell, as was the way she picked up her plate and handed it to me.

The DA smiled.

"I'll get your arrest warrant and an extradition warrant to bring her back from Lexington."

}|{

Two days later, I walked into an interrogation room with Karen Renard and three lawyers. I suppose she thought the three lawyers would intimidate me, but they didn't. My plan was to intimidate her with the evidence I had as well as the threat of more trials in Asheville, North Carolina and Johnson City, Tennessee.

When I introduced myself, Karen looked at me for almost a minute and then yelled, "You're that son of a bitch that cleared my table at the UT seminar."

I smiled.

"Yes, that was me. You were very helpful though. You handed me your plate. I have that and you asking me to clear your table on video."

The lawyer on Karen's right touched her on the arm.

"Miss Renard, please don't say anything unless we tell you it's all right. Detective Owens is just trying to get you to talk."

He looked at me then.

"I assume you're going to advise our client of her rights and state whatever charges you intend to bring against her."

I smiled again.

"Well, I know the detective in Lexington already did, but I'll advise you again."

I handed her the standard form we use. It has each right listed in bold print, and at the bottom, a place for the person being questioned to sign and acknowledge their rights. Once she'd signed it, I would too. It was just a good way to prove in court that the defendant had truly been given the chance to understand and exercise their constitutional rights.

The lawyer on her right grabbed the form before Karen took it, studied it for several minutes, and then handed it to Karen.

"You can sign this, but only after the detective reads you your rights."

I read each right and asked Karen if she understood. When I finished, I asked her to sign in the box colored pink. She looked at the lawyer and when he nodded, she signed the form and handed it back to me. I signed it, tore the perforated top part and gave her and her lawyer each a copy. I put the original in my folder.

Then I looked at Karen's lawyer.

"I'm charging your client as an accessory to murder for the murder of an as yet unknown woman sometime between November 23rd and December 1st of 1986."

The lawyer smirked.

"You don't know the victim's name or the date of her death but you're charging my client? Unless you have some more conclusive evidence, we're done here."

I was still smiling because I could tell it was aggravating the hell out of Karen. As the old saying says, if looks could kill, I'd have been dead about six times.

"Well, what I have is a positive DNA match to your client's DNA from two places on the fox costume my victim was wearing at the time she was killed."

The lawyer chuckled.

"You don't know when your victim was killed, but you know she was wearing some sort of costume when she died?"

"Well, I seriously doubt that she died and then put on the costume. Most dead people aren't able to do much of anything after they're dead except just lay there.

"Regardless, I have your client at my murder scene. Unless she can give me an explanation for how three of her hairs got caught in the front of my victim's costume, and a deposit of something in the crotch of my victim's costume got there, I have enough to convict her of accessory to murder. The penalty for that is the same as if she'd committed the murder, so she's looking at a minimum of fifty-one years in prison and possibly the death penalty.

"Now, my victim was strangled. If I had enough evidence, I'd be charging your client with first degree murder. Personally, I'd like to see her get the death penalty, but I am in a position to do a little bargaining. If your client will tell me exactly what happened, I'll talk to the DA about reducing the charge to second degree. Given the date of the murder and depending upon her involvement in the murder, she'll be looking at a prison term of between fifteen and sixty years."

I looked at Karen then and smiled.

"If I were you, I'd take my chances with second degree murder. What do you think?"

Before he could stop her, Karen started screaming at me.

"You bastard, do you know who I am? I'm the best equine surgeon in the US and probably the world, and I know the Governor of Kentucky. He'll have your ass out on the street if you continue this fucking mess."

I just smiled because I figured if I could make her mad enough, she'd slip up and give me an advantage. If not, I had a couple more surprises for her.

"Well, Ma'am, you're in Tennessee now because the murder happened in Tennessee, so the Governor of Kentucky can't help you. Are you ready to tell me what happened and who my victim is?"

The lawyer stopped Karen before she could say anything else.

"Detective Owens, we'd like some time alone with our client."

I smiled.

"You can have until tomorrow morning if you want because she'll be my guest in Holding tonight. When you get done, just knock on the door. I'll have a patrolwoman outside waiting to escort her to Holding."

}|{

I figured Karen would hold out as long as she could to keep from being questioned any more. I was wrong. The policewoman I'd left at the door called me half an hour later and said they wanted to talk.

When I went back to the interrogation room, I noticed that only one of the lawyers was left and he was the lawyer who had done all the talking.

I smiled.

"So, Karen, you must have figured out that three lawyers weren't going to keep you out of prison. I see the other two are gone. Did they figure out that you're guilty and decline to represent you?"

I could tell that I'd gotten to Karen because before she could say anything, the lawyer touched her on the arm. When she settled back down in her chair, her lawyer turned to me.

"Detective Owens, Miss Benard will admit to being with your victim prior to the woman's death. She didn't kill the woman, but she knows who did. She's also prepared to give you the woman's name as long as you agree to drop any and all charges against her."

I chuckled.

"Do you really think I have nothing better to do than charge your client with accessory to murder without enough evidence to convict her. The DA is convinced I do and that he can persuade a jury to convict. The only deal I'm ready make is maybe second degree if she tells me what happened that night and I can verify her story with what I already know."

He turned and whispered some to Karen. She whispered something back. The lawyer nodded and Karen put both her hands on the table.

"Yes, I knew the woman. Her name was Marian Fitz. We met at a sort of odd event that my boyfriend at the time talked me into attending. Bobby had this thing about cartoon characters that was just weird. He was actually turned on by them. He convinced me to buy a fox costume and go with him to an event in Shelbyville, Kentucky and he wanted me to register as Vixey from the Disney movie "The Fox and the Hound."

"While we were at the event, I met Marian. I asked her why in the world she liked dressing up like a fox and going to events like that one. She said it was because she was in a high-pressure job and needed something to keep her sane. Playing Maid Marian let her forget about her job and just enjoy being somebody else. Then she told me that she was convinced that she was really a fox born in a human body.

"Can you believe that? I thought she was nutty as a fruitcake. I was sure of that when she told me she didn't stay in hotels because she felt more free in the woods so she camped out at the events. I mean, she didn't have a toilet or a shower or anything. She didn't even build a fire. She said she was afraid of fires.

"Well, we got to know each other pretty well and that night, she told me another thing that I'd never have suspected. Marian was bi-sexual. She invited me to go back to her tent with her, but I said I couldn't because I was there with my boyfriend.

"I saw her again when Bobby insisted we go to another event in Knoxville. He got hung up at his job and didn't make it until Saturday. Marian was the only person I knew so I stayed with her all night. She was wearing the same fox costume, and we ended up sharing a bottle of wine. I got half-drunk or I'd never have agreed to go to her tent with her, but I did. I ended up spending the night with her in that same tent, and well, I guess I found out that I like women too.

"That shook me up quite a bit once I sobered up, so I told Marian I couldn't do that again until I had some time to think about it. She said she understood and that she'd met a guy that she liked and she was going to spend the night with him. I don't know his name, but he was wearing a fox suit and went by the name of Robin Hood. Bobby got there about six, so we had dinner and I spent the night with him in his hotel room.

"We'd agreed to meet for breakfast on Sunday morning. Bobby and I were there, but Marian and Robin Hood weren't. We figured they'd just stayed in the tent having sex. We went back to the event, but left about two. I had to get back to my veterinary practice and Bobby had to get back to his job.

"What I think this means is that Robin Hood, whoever he really is, was who killed Marian. He was the last person to be seen with her, and I never saw him at any more events."

I smiled.

"That's your story?"

Karen nodded.

"As best I can remember, but that was a long time ago."

I opened my folder and took out the pictures Rochelle had gotten from Walt.

"Well if that's true, how do you explain these pictures from the Knoxville event. The event sponsor took these on the Friday night of the event, and he wrote the names of the people over their heads. The names are Maid Marian, Vixey, and Robin Hood. Behind Vixey is a man dressed in a wolf costume and his name is Sher Wolf. Since he has his arm around your shoulders, it sure looks like he knew you.

"If he didn't get to the event until Saturday, how is it that he's behind you in this picture and in a couple other pictures from that Friday night?"

Karen shrugged.

"I don't know who the man is, but he's not Bobby. Bobby is taller than the man in the wolf suit."

"How tall is Bobby?"

She shrugged.

"I never measured him, but he said he was six feet three. He seemed taller than that though."

I smiled again.

How tall are you?"

Karen looked at her lawyer. He nodded.

"I'm five nine."

"Well, Karen, we have a problem here. One of my associates used the height of Maid Marian taken at her autopsy to determine the heights of the other three people in the picture. Her height for Sher Wolf, the man you say is Robert Ingrahm, was six feet three. It just seems odd to me that you'd tell me Mr. Ingrahm was taller than the man in the wolf costume when my associate's calculations matched what you just told me was Mr. Ingrahm's height."

Karen frowned and then shifted position on her chair.

"Well, maybe she made a mistake when she did the calculations."

I smiled again, partly because I'd caught Karen in a lie, and partly because she had started shifting in her chair again. Slowly, I was tearing down her story, she knew it, and it was making her nervous.

"Well, I'm pretty sure my associate didn't make a mistake. She checked all her calculations twice. She also calculated your height as five feet nine inches, the height you just gave me. Odd that she'd nail your height on the nose but miss Mr. Ingrahm's height, don't you think?

"What I'm thinking is that for some reason you didn't tell me the truth when you said Mr. Ingrahm didn't get to the event until Saturday. Why should I believe the rest of your story?"

I looked at her lawyer.

"No deal because your client lied. Maybe she needs more time to remember. I'll have the policewoman outside escort Karen to Holding. She'll have all night to think about what really happened. Well, maybe. I was talking to Holding to make sure they had a cell for Karen, but they're full. This morning the Knoxville PD arrested a dozen prostitutes from one of the bad areas of town and they've filled up Holding while they wait to see a judge in the morning. Karen will have to share a cell with three other women. I know the three. They're prostitutes because they hate men, but they love other women. Karen might make a couple new friends tonight, if she still likes women that is."

I stood up to leave. Karen blurted out, "Can I talk to my lawyer again?"

"Yes, you can have all the time you want. Just let the police woman outside when you're ready."

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I was almost laughing when I walked back to my desk. Most people think that criminals are dumb so it's easy to get them to admit to a crime. That's what all the cop shows on TV lead you to believe. That makes for a neat ending for a TV show, but it's far from the reality.

While some young kid may eventually confess to a murder, it's usually because what he's done finally sinks in and he feels remorse. Given the right treatment by the investigating detective, that remorse will eat away at the kid until admitting to the murder makes him feel better inside. The people who do that are usually not in any risk of being nominated for a Nobel prize.

Their lawyers are usually public defenders. They're smart people, smart enough to know when they have no hope of winning a case. A public defender has two options once he decides a jury will probably convict his client. He can either ask the judge to assign another public defender to the case or he can try to negotiate a settlement that serves the public by locking up his client and serves his client by reducing the penalty for the crime to as low as he possibly can.

It's not usual for a judge to allow a public defender to leave a case unless the public defender discovers either a conflict of interest, has received threats to him or his family as sometimes happens in drug cases, or if his client had done something that would force the private investigator to violate his professional oath and ethics as an attorney.

It's the genuinely intelligent people who are the hardest to crack. They seem to enjoy playing mental chess with the investigating detective, and will keep reinventing their story to explain anything the detective points out as not fitting what he already knows. They eventually screw up so bad they have no other way out than to admit what they did and hope their lawyer can get them a reasonably good deal. That can take a long time depending upon how smart they really are.

Their lawyers are also usually pretty good at trying to keep as much evidence out of a potential trial as possible, so the detective is really facing two people during an interrogation, the lawyer trying to keep his client out of jail and the client trying to lie their way out of what they did.

I figured this case was going to be the latter. Karen hadn't shown me any type of feelings that she was sorry for the death of Marian Fitz. Instead, her whole story was that she knew Marian, had spent one night with her, and after that night hadn't seen her again so it wasn't her fault.

I called Rochelle, told her Maid Marian's real name was Marian Fitz, the same Marian Fitz she'd found a missing person report for, and told her not to wait up.

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Over the next three hours, I'd had a little fun leading Karen down one path only to stop her with a fact that she couldn't lie her way around. It was fun because I was watching a woman who thought she was untouchable slowly come to the realization that she was going to spend the rest of her life in prison.

I asked Karen how Marian knew about the place where she'd set up her tent. Karen said she didn't know. I asked her how they'd gotten to the tent since they were both drunk at the time. She said Marian drove so she must not have been as drunk as she thought. I asked where Marian's car was because no car had been found after the murder. She just shrugged and said she didn't know.

The first crack in her story happened when I asked Karen how Marian got to the event. She said Marian told her she'd flow to Knoxville from Atlanta. She assumed that Marian had rented a car in Knoxville to get to the event. I started sorting through the paper in my folder and then lied out my ass. I said if Marian had rented a car in Knoxville and hadn't returned it, the company would report the car as stolen. Then I told her I'd checked NCIC for any cars reported stolen by any car rental company in that time frame and there were none.

Then I asked Karen how she got to the event. She said she'd flown from Lexington to Knoxville. I asked if she still had the ticket. She said she owned her own plane because she sometimes had to travel to treat a horse and driving would take too long. I said if that was the case, her flight log would have the flight logged and she smiled. She said she logged every flight per FAA rules. She stopped smiling when I said I was going to get a warrant for her flight log, but she didn't say anything.

Karen said she was starving then, so I had the policewoman take her back to holding for dinner. The lawyer went out for a burger but said he'd be back. I got a candy bar from the machine in the break room and then asked the DA for a warrant for Karen's flight log. It would be on her plane, so if she didn't break, I'd drive to the airport the next day and pick it up. It would tell me where she'd been since she got her first license.

When we sat back down in the interrogation room, I showed the warrant for Karen's flight log to the lawyer. He looked at it and then whispered something to Karen. She whispered something back.

The lawyer turned to me then.

"If Miss Renard tells you everything, is your offer still on the table?'

I nodded.

"Yes, but I'm tired of her changing her story every time I contradict something she's said. I can keep playing this game as long as she wants, but it's going to end the same way. She's guilty of at least being an accessory to murder, and that's the same as if she'd strangled the woman herself.

"There's something else you should know. I've gotten some of my information from the police departments in Asheville, North Carolina and Johnson City, Tennessee. Both have unsolved murders that happened during one of the same events as the event in Knoxville. I have pictures of the people at those events, and Miss Renard is at all of them, but the other three people seem to have dropped out along the way. The last was a man named Robert Ingrahm, the same Robert Ingrahm your client told me called himself Sher Wolf.

"Both departments have asked for the results of my investigation into Marian's death in Knoxville because the victims in those cases knew Karen Renard. When I show them what I've found out, it's likely they'll re-open their cold cases on the two deaths. If my evidence about the murders in Asheville and Johnson City proves to be true, your client is facing the same charges or worse in two other cities.

"Now, those other jurisdictions may choose to close those two cases to save the cost of a trial if they're assured that Miss Renard will spend the rest of her life in prison. At her age, even the minimum sentence for accessory to murder is twenty-five years so she'll be in prison until she's ninety-four and it'll be in maximum security.

If she pleads guilty to second degree, and depending upon her involvement, she could get away with serving just fifteen years. Given her age, the DA could have her sent to a minimum-security prison. She'll be there until she's eighty-four, but she won't be putting up with the type of women who end up in maximum security. She might not have to go through this questioning and two more trials either."

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Rochelle was sitting on the couch watching a movie when I finally got home. It was almost eleven so I didn't expect she'd have kept my dinner warm, but she had.

While I ate, I filled her in on what happened and the results.

"Well, none of the three victims are totally innocent like we thought. I'm not sure I believe everything Karen told me, but the important details all match the evidence we have. Unless we find something else, the DA is willing to take her at her word.

"This all started when Mr. Ingrahm got hired for a construction project at the Kentucky Horse Park in Lexington, Kentucky. Karen was there caring for a horse she'd done some surgery on. She went to a bar one night to relax with a couple drinks, and met Robert Ingrahm.

"They met at the same bar every night for a week, and by the end of the week, they were sleeping together in his hotel room. Ingrahm had also told her about his fetish for animals with human characteristics. He told her about a sci-fi event in Shelbyville, Kentucky and asked her if she'd come along with him. He told her she'd make a good fox. Karen went to a costume shop in Lexington and bought a fox costume.

"They went to the event in Shelbyville. They both rode in her veterinary truck, and she paid for the room at the Fairfield. That night, they had sex for the first time in their costumes. Karen said it was an experience she'd never forget. I take it that Mr. Ingrahm was, well to put it into Karen's words, Mr. Ingrahm was hung like a young mule.

"Marian was in Louisville calling on the Ford Truck plant there, but had scheduled another sales call with the new Toyota plant in Georgetown the following Monday. There was no point in her flying back to Atlanta on Friday and then flying back to Louisville on Sunday. She kept her room at the Holiday Inn and stayed the weekend.

"Marian was looking for something to do when she stumbled across an ad in the Louisville newspaper. According to Karen, Marian was into sci-fi movies, so she decided to go to the event in Shelbyville on Saturday. While she was there, she found Walt's booth and started asking him questions about furries. He was explaining to her when Karen and Mr. Ingrahm walked up. They ended up in a four-way conversation about furries and the upcoming events Walt had planned. Mr. Ingrahm suggested to Marian that if she came to the event in Knoxville, she'd make a great fox and since her name was Marian, she should go by Maid Marian from the Disney movie, "Robin Hood".

"They agreed to have dinner together that night, and over the course of dinner and a bottle of wine, Karen steered the conversation to how furries behave in private. She told Marian that a lot of furries get a real thrill out of having sex with each in costume other because it really isn't two people having sex. It's like two animals having sex. When Marian asked Karen if she did it that way, Karen smiled and said she had, but only with Mr. Ingrahm. Then she said she'd like to see if it was the same with another woman, but she didn't know any other furry women who felt the same way.

"We'll never know what Marian was thinking, but Karen said Marian looked at her, smiled, and said she might if there was no way anybody could find out. Mr. Ingrahm said he could take care of that if Marian was serious. He told them about the lane he'd cleared on the Shaw property and said he had a tent he could set up at the end of the lane. It would be in the trees so nobody driving past would know there was anybody back there. She could have sex with Marian and nobody would ever know. Once they finished, they'd just go back to their hotel for the rest of the night. The last thing in the way was that Marian said she couldn't afford to fly to Knoxville. Karen said she could fix that.

"The Friday morning of the Knoxville event, Mr. Ingrahm drove home to Knoxville, and told his wife he had to work over the weekend and he'd just come home for some clean clothes. He dropped off his laundry, picked up a week's worth of clothes, and loaded them into his truck. Then he picked up the tent from his garage and drove to the lane on the Shaw property. He set up the tent along with his two sleeping bags, and then drove to the airport to wait.

Karen flew to Atlanta, picked up Karen, and then flew to Knoxville. She put her plane in a hangar owned by the fixed base operator, and then she and Marian got into Mr. Ingrahm's truck and drove to the Holiday Inn where they rented a room with two double beds.

"They went to the event where they met Mr. Sherwood. He'd come from Nashville but got there late. Karen said he fit right into their little group and they had a few drinks when they left. She said that Marian seemed to really like him.

"Karen took Mr. Ingrahm back to the hotel and then she and Marian drove out to the tent. They stayed there until about five, and then Karen drove them back to the Holiday Inn. After lunch, the drove back to the Sleepy Inn, changed into their costumes, and spent the afternoon at the event. About six, Karen asked Marian if she'd like to go back to the tent again. Marian said she would, but Mr. Sherwood had asked her to have dinner with him, and she thought she'd probably stay with him that night.

"That's where the problems started. I got the impression that Karen is a very intelligent but very controlling woman. She had her mind made up that she was going to spend another night with Marian, but Marian had turned her down. That was thirty years ago, but when Karen was telling me that, she was gritting her teeth and pounding on the table.

"Karen and Mr. Ingrahm spent the night together in their hotel room, but Karen decided Maria had to pay. When Marian came back, Karen said they needed to be in the air in an hour or she'd be late getting Marian back to Atlanta. Then she said she needed to pick up the tent and asked Marian if she'd help. Marian agreed, so Karen drove them out to the tent. What Marian didn't know was that Mr. Ingrahm was under a tarp in the back of the truck.

"They got to the tent Karen told Marian they needed to check inside to make sure they hadn't left anything. Once they were inside, Karen told Marian they still had a little time if she wanted to make love in their costumes again, just so they'd both remember. Marian agreed.

"They were in the process when Mr. Ingrahm got out of the back of his truck, walked back up to the tent, and opened the flap. He went inside, Karen held Marian down, and Mr. Ingrahm raped her. Then, he strangled Marian. When she stopped moving, he and Karen wrapped her in the sleeping bag, and then left the lane. He drove Karen to the airport where she flew back to Lexington. He drove to back to Lexington and when he stopped at a truck stop for gas, he threw Marian's clothes in a dumpster. When he went to work on Monday, he took Marian's purse and all her identification and buried it at the construction site. If it's still there, it's under a building."

Rochelle had been sitting there with her mouth open.

"So, Mr. Ingrahm killed Marian? Why?"

"Well, Karen wanted Marian to pay for rejecting her. She figured if Mr. Ingrahm raped her that might be enough to teach her a lesson. Apparently Marian never stopped fighting, so at the end, Mr. Ingrahm choked her to stop her. Karen said he didn't intend to kill her, but I don't believe that. I think he and Karen had planned to kill Marian. Karen just wanted Mr. Ingrahm to rape her first as a way of getting revenge.

"It doesn't really matter. They took Marian there with the intention of raping her. Rape is a felony and the fact that she was killed during the rape makes it an intentional murder. In Tennessee, that makes it the same as a premeditated murder with the same penalties. I had to remind her lawyer of that when he suggested that Karen was at most guilty of simple assault.

"I told him I was satisfied that Karen had mostly told me the truth and that if she'd write down what happened in the tent when Marian was killed, I'd talk to the DA about letting her plead guilty to second degree murder with a penalty of twenty-five years in prison. He said he wanted to talk to Karen for a few minutes so I left them alone. When I went back, he said Karen would plead guilty to second degree murder with a penalty of fifteen years in a minimum-security prison. I'd already talked to the DA and he agreed because of Karen's age. It's not likely she'll serve even fifteen years.

"I told the lawyer that the DA would agree if Karen would tell us what happened in Asheville where Mr. Sherwood was murdered and in Johnson City where Mr. Ingrahm was killed. I said I'd listen and make my decision after that.

"All Karen would say about Asheville was that she'd slept with Mr. Sherwood one night because Mr. Ingrahm said he had something else to do. When she found out that Mr. Ingrahm spent the night with another woman, she broke off the relationship and flew back home. She didn't know what happened to Mr. Sherwood, because he's spent Saturday and Sunday with different women. She said she thought it was possible that Mr. Ingrahm had killed Mr. Sherwood out of jealousy.

"As far as Johnson City, she said she'd been there, but had spent the days with several gay men and lesbian women and she hadn't seen Mr. Ingrahm. At the end of the event, she flew back home.

"What I think is that Karen probably wanted Mr. Sherwood dead because he'd essentially rejected her after the first night. I don't know if she killed him or if Mr. Ingrahm did since he was strangled, but I have to believe she was behind it. I think once he was dead, she drove his car to the airport and left it while she flew home.

"I think she probably killed Mr. Ingrahm too, both because he'd also rejected her and because of the way he was killed. She left his truck in the hotel parking lot so it would look like he just checked in and then OD'd.

"After we took care of the paperwork, I had Karen taken to holding. Just before the policewoman closed the door, Karen gave me the finger. I have to say that that was the first time in my life a woman old enough to be my mother told me to go fuck myself."

Rochelle grinned.

"How about if a woman your age asked you to do her instead?"

"Rochelle, it's almost midnight."

She grinned again as she pulled her T-shirt over her head.

"I know. I'm not talking about tonight. I'm just going to sleep naked so we can save some time in the morning."

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I didn't go in the next day until after lunch. The first reason was I was tired. The second reason was Rochelle made me more tired. Now, don't get me wrong here. Of all the ways of getting tired, I can't think of any that even come close to being as much fun as getting tired with Rochelle.

When I got to my desk, I made two copies of the video tape of Karen's interrogation, two copies of her confession, and two copies of the rest of my files on the case, including my case summary. About two, I got Karen's pilot log and made two copies of it as well. I sent one copy to the chief in Asheville and Johnson City. I figured that Karen had a lot more to answer for, and with what I'd already found out, some detective in both police departments would pull out the cold case file and start rechecking everything.

Karen went before a judge a week later, made her guilty plea and was sentenced to fifteen years in the minimum-security section of Bledsoe. I'd imagine she'll have frequent visitors from Asheville and Johnson City as soon as they have more to talk to her about. Maybe she'll make a friend or two in Bledsoe. For her sake, I hope so. I'd sort of lied to her about women in minimum security prisons. Most are there because their crime didn't include some type of assault or other violent act, but it doesn't take long before they figure out the only way to survive is to fight back.

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I'm not sure about our next case. Rochelle and I need a break so we're going to take some time off. We thought about Florida, but it's been so damned hot in the South that we decided on a trip to Yellowstone instead. There are a lot of things to see and do there, and from what the weather girl on TV says, it'll be cooler.

I'll look for another case when we get back. It's not like I'm going to run out.