Before he became a “human book,” Samuel Upton had been the Madison Heights Chief of Police for ten years. He was a long, lean, handsome man with a high forehead, premature white hair, and yellow speckled green eyes.

At the time his sister, Maddie, asked him to participate in her library’s project, Samuel was forty years old. Four years earlier, when investigating what became known as the GPS Murder Case, he met and fell in love with a television reporter named Gillian Pond. He and Gillian were planning to get married in the spring.

The crime that brought them together had been committed three-and-a-half-miles outside Madison Heights, in an idyllic spot known as Melting Moon Lake. At one time, Cecil Van Cleave, poet, inventor, and heir to a large fortune, had owned the land, the house, and the lake.

Cecil, born in 1895, fell in love at first sight with Mary Platt, the school teacher, on their first date. On their second date, he took her for a long walk behind his house. They went up one hill, down another, and continued until they reached a small body of water ten minutes away. The sun had just set and the moon had just risen. Cecil was looking at the reflection of the moon in Mary’s eyes; Mary was looking at the moon’s reflection in the water. She tilted her head thoughtfully to one side, smiled and commented that the moon seemed to be melting into the lake.

From that day forward, it was called Melting Moon Lake.

Cecil and Mary married and produced three children. They swam in Melting Moon Lake, held sleepovers in the cabin that Cecil built beside its shore, and were buried in a small graveyard behind the house. Cecil, last of the Van Cleaves, died on his 101st birthday. An unknown heir to the property held onto it for nineteen years and then sold it to Mr. and Mrs. Martin “Marty” Kulik, who ran a chain of successful restaurants.

At 4:33 p.m. the day after the murder, Police Chief Samuel Upton arrested the new owner of the old Van Cleave estate.

The Chief considered the case to be both sordid and tragic. Sordid because Marty Kulik had committed adultery with a credulous, underage teenager named Olivia Olmstead. Tragic, because Genesee Fallows, the twelve-year-old girl who’d often babysat for Marty’s daughter, was later found dead.

The forensic pathologist who performed the autopsy on Genesee did not find any evidence of rape, and Kulik was never charged with sexual assault. But Chief Upton believed Kulik had abused the child before killing her and that silencing the 12-year-old had been his motive.

The combination of love, lust, and homicide riveted the town. Each new rumor about Kulik (murderer), Vivian (murderer’s wife), Olivia Olmstead (underage mistress), and Genesee Fallows (babysitter), guaranteed astronomical newspaper sales.

On Sunday, July 5, at 8:15 in the morning, the parents of Genesee Fallows frantically called the Madison Heights Police Station to report their daughter missing. They told the dispatcher that she’d been expected home by 8:00 a.m., but never had returned from a sleepover babysitting job.

Later that day, Genesee’s body was found submersed in the water on the north side of Melting Moon Lake. Initially Marty Kulik claimed that the babysitter had fallen asleep watching television on the sofa in his den on Saturday night, and that he drove her home at 7:00 o’clock Sunday morning.

But nobody believed him.

He was arrested, and indicted. Before the prosecution could bring the case to trial, however, it first had to answer four questions for the jury.

ONE: What caused Genesee Fallows’ death?

TWO: Where was Marty Kulik when the babysitter died?

THREE: How close to Melting Moon Lake had Kulik’s pickup truck been?

FOUR: Exactly from and to where … and at what times … had Marty’s truck been driven that night?

Three of those questions were answered using standard investigative procedures.

1. CAUSE OF DEATH: The forensic pathologist determined that even though Genesee Fallows’ body was found in Melting Moon Lake, she had not drowned, but had died as a result of impact with a moving object roughly the size and shape of a vehicle’s front or rear bumper. The force of the blow broke four ribs and vertebrae C-1 through C-4. The rib that caused her death pierced her heart and tore a hole in her pulmonary artery. No trace evidence was found on Marty Kulik’s bumpers to prove that his truck had struck the babysitter, but no evidence exculpating the vehicle was found either.

2. KULIK’S WHEREABOUTS WHEN GENESEE DIED: The restauranteur’s seventeen-year-old mistress did her best to wrap forty-three-year-old Marty in an alibi as tight as a tourniquet. But Chief Upton obtained statements from Olivia Olmstead’s parents to the effect that their daughter had arrived home at 9:00 o’clock on Saturday night and did not leave the house again until noon on Sunday, which contradicted the teenager’s claim that she had spent the entire night with her lover.

3. COULD KULIK’S TRUCK BE PLACED AT THE SCENE OF THE CRIME? Plaster casts of tire treads indicated that at some time before, during, or after the murder, the truck’s front wheels had been mere inches from Melting Moon Lake’s waterline, where the body was found.

It was the answer to the fourth question, though, that clinched the case.

WHERE AND WHEN (EXACT LOCATIONS AND TIMES) WAS MARTY KULIK’S TRUCK WHEN GENESEE FALLOWS DIED?

Continued Next Week

Copyright © Shelly Reuben, 2024. Shelly Reuben’s books have been nominated for Edgar, Prometheus, and Falcon awards. For more about her writing, visit www.shellyreuben.com