Attn: Jim James
County Coroner Office
South Kingston, RI
02818
Jim:
Hoyt from CID in Providence wanted you to be aware of this - the screed that we found in an envelope by the computer - thought it might help you to sort out whatever it is that we’ll find in the next couple of days. My assistant thinks this might be part of a blog, or some kind of internet journal. To that end she‘ll be looking around online for anything that may help, should have some answers by tonight. I know you got a look at this, but wasn’t sure you’d made copies. Last night was, very hectic.
Hope it helps. We have the presser set for later today with just me, and then early tomorrow A.M. where we’ll bring the whole team to try and reassure the cowering masses that the guy responsible for this is going to face a judge. Between you and me I’m beginning to have my doubts.
I’ll check with you later. Although not later today. I’d imagine with thirty-six fresh corpses and more coming in that you guys have your work cut out. The murder police at CID have this as well, but nobody’s been through it with anything approaching a fine-toothed comb. If anything apocalyptic turns up I trust you’ll point it out to the investigation team first, and let us decide as a group how best to deploy. Along those lines. Again, please send ALL materials pertaining to this investigation to CID in Providence FIRST. We had no idea how pervasive and significant Officer Moreland’s influence had become in either South Kingston proper or SK Precinct Two, and the last thing we need now is paperwork jam-ups from secret cohorts.
OK
Donald Ministrone
D.E. Ministrone,
County Commissioner,
Municipal Police Command
Kent County, RI
02675
My name’s Moses John Moreland, but people just call me Mo, or “Big Mo”. Don’t much matter. Don’t much of anything matter to me these days, now that my sisters gone. Kelli, that was her name. We went to the same school, played with those same kids after school. We pretty much did everything together since we were born. I was younger by seven minutes and she never forgot to remind me.
My little brother is a stupid and only four anna’ half
That’s what she’d say. To everybody. She made everybody look at me all the time, once she even brought me to school for a show and tell day. Mom told me that was cause she loved me, but Kelli wanted to tell the kids at school that I was a four anna’ half. And a stupid.
Even though Kelli was mean and hated me, I did look up to her. Mostly because I had what you would call a grudging respect for my sister. She proved a worthy adversary while she was around. She taught me the importance of ruthlessness, cruelty. Kelly was, probably as close to what you may call a role model for me as anybody. You could say she had a hand in creating the man I am today.
***
Officer Lynch: Very good buddy, you’re doing great. Now try and talk about what happened yesterday. Can you remember that for me?
MO: Yeah.
OL: Ok pal. Start when you woke up. What happened?
MO: OK. Well, every Saturday, me and Kelli go blueberry picking and bird watching in My. Abraham’s orchard.
Mrs. Donna Rafter (mother to RMR): Excuse me officer, is it ok to interrupt? Just to clear this up, “blueberries” is just what these guys call it, there really not edible. They knew not to….I‘m sorry (crying).
OL: Not at all Donna. I know this is very difficult, I don’t want to make it anymore so with an interrogation. It’s just that, keeping in mind that time is a factor…
DR: (still crying) I know officer, we can…He can go ahead. I’m sorry. Sorry .
OL: Ok. So now, you and Kelli are heading off to the orchard. Now how long does it take to get there?
DR: It’s about a ten minute walk…
OL: Ok, now Mo, did you see anybody on your way up there? Did you talk to anybody that you didn’t recognize?
MO: Nope. I just talked with Willie.
OL: Willie…
MO: That’s my best friend.
DR: Our neighbors dog.
MO: Yeah. He is our neighbors dog. Mr. Tibbs’s dog. Mr. Tibbs is mean. Daddy says he’s a jerk.
DR: Mo! That’s not polite.
OL: No it’s Ok. Hey Mo, is Mr. Tibbs around a lot? Does he talk to you guys a lot? Is he your friend?
MO: No, the kids in the neighborhood all hate him, Charlie Pine told me that Mr. Tibbs once tried to run his dog over. He’s never outside. He just opens up the door in the morning and every night for Willie. He spies on all the kids through his curtains.
DR: No, no, no…Honey please…
OL: It’s ok, every little bit will help us find Kelli. The sooner the better too, right pal? So it’s fine. Now you started what walking to the blueberries or you rode bikes?
MO: We walked. On the way Kelli was really, really quiet. I asked her what was wrong and she didn’t even say no. Then I asked some more and then she got mad and called me stupid. I am stupid. I just want Kelli to come home.
OL: Not stupid, buddy. You’re doing great. Now what happens when you get to the blueberries?
MO: Well before we got there we stopped and ate some fruit snacks on the dirt road.
OL: Ok. So you sat in the middle of the road?
MO: Yeah. There’s never any cars back there. My dad says the road used to be for students in the eighteenth censhur.
DR: Century dear.
MO: Ok mom.
***
That’s the transcript from the very first time I talked with a police officer. After officer Lynch left that day , told my mom that’s what I want to do. I told her I wanted to be a cop to fight bad guys, advance the cause of justice and so forth. In reality though, I just liked the weaponry. Lynch also had a nice, shiny Crown Vic. He had a Remington automatic .12 gauge in the seat rack and I saw a sawed off in a quiver down by his right leg. He had a Colt Python slung low on his hip. I figured if you’re allowed to be carrying that kind of ordinance, there’s got to be a good chance you get to blow somebody’s face off. After that I never, ever so much as entertained a thought of being anything else in this world than a Policeman. I ended up telling the cops that we’d gone down to pick blueberries, but that was only part of the plan. The important part was what we did before the blueberries.
I thought of the whole thing, impressed myself too. Kelli left our house that morning with intentions of picking blueberries. On the way though, I told my sister I wanted to go see a crazy tree in the woods maybe a quarter mile. She knew the spot, couldn’t understand why I’d wanna’ go there. I told her, because there’s a dead body out there.
I built it up too. On the way out there I told her the body was naked, and that it was a guy. I told her the guy was cut open and you could see inside him. Everything Buzz told me to tell her I told her. And, just as he’d promised, it worked. We were on our way. On the walk she said:
Listen you little maggot, this better be good. I’m ruining my new back-pack and I’m tired. We’re supposed to go right to the orchard. Mr. T!
I tried to ignore her, she stayed with it:
Mom said we can’t go anywhere else without telling her. How far is this place, jerk?
And I’m thinking, maybe I can hit her and then just drag her out there. But then, just as I began searching for rock big enough to knock her out, I saw the stream, and realized we were there. I’d done everything just as I’d been told. One last thing:
OK we’re here. Now I can show you. Come over here.
She came over and she had on this mask of disgust. I just stayed in the scene and waited for whatever was coming. The tree was really old and the lower trunk was diseased. The bark was almost completely black around the widest part, which was over ten feet across. It split into two separate trees about six feet up, and in the lowest part of the split there appeared to be a hole about two feet by three feet. The tree had been well known in our neck of the woods at one point, opening as it did into an underground root complex wide and tall enough to dance a proper argentine tango. Passers-by were often moved to stop, snap a few well-lit photos of the secret wooden cage in the ground. At one point the townspeople in East Greenwich actually petitioned to have it declared a national treasure, the town father’s eyes rolling back into dollar signs at the prospect. By 1986 however, all that had changed. Hurricane Carol bent the thing almost out of the ground completely, exposing the photogenic root-cage and splitting the healthy green-grey bark from stump to canopy. All that remained of the underground chamber was a partly exposed root system - visibly diseased - and the rotting hole, now full of moist sawdust.
So now she gets over there, and I step aside, let her duck her face into the hole. It seemed like forever before it started to happen, but I guess it was only a few seconds. She put her face to the hole and said, ok jerk, what’s the big deal. I swear if…
She didn’t get a chance to finish that. I heard her say
OWW! Hey something just bit…AUGHHHHHHHHHHHEEEEE
She screamed, not like in the movies either. It was like an angry, low sounding scream. Desperate. She kept on as she raised her head from the whole. It was covered with, yellow and white bees. She was still yelling but I guess the bees were inside her open mouth too because she started choking and coughing. She fell to her hands and knees and she vomited up a black, slimy fluid and squirming, buzzing bees. I saw some of them fly away and reposition on her forehead and her hair. She fell face down into the mess she’d made and started clawing at her head and rolling around. The bees, some of them, switched to her hands and arms then, and suddenly she had bee gloves on, bee sleeves.
I couldn’t hear her yelling, but I think she was trying. She was rolling still, but it was getting slower. Her mouth kept opening and shutting and I could see her mouth was carpeted with the bees. I heard them crunching and clicking in the back of her throat.
I took maybe fifteen minutes. When she hadn’t moved for a while I poked at her face with a long stick, but the bees started crawling down the end of it and I figured maybe it was time to get out of there. I took one look back at her and hustled home to begin the rest of my life.
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