by Dudley Lynch
* * *
When I pushed on the partially unhinged door of the former Bartlett Machine Shop building, it pushed back. So I pushed harder, generating a tortured screech as the battered door dragged on the scarred concrete floor.
The Count was sitting on the floor underneath a window. Using the light coming through the window to read. Fresca, his mongrel pooch, was there too. Observing. The dog already knew who had come calling. And that all she had to do to get me to scratch her tummy was amble over and flop on her back at my feet.
You could see she was considering it.
“Yo, Count!”
“Sheriff!”
“You’re reading something.”
“Yup.”
As I approached, he tilted the book so I could see the cover. I bent for a closer look of the shopworn green cover. It was a copy of Michelin’s annual camping and caravanning guide — for 2001. “You’re going camping?”
“Gonna be an expert.”
“In camping?”
“Tent cities. France is full of ’em. Good as motels — cheaper too.”
I gave him a thumbs-up. “Good to know.”
“But you’ll need to go to the patty-series every day. For breakfast goodies.”
“Patty-series?”
He showed me the word. Pâtisseries.
“Right. Bakeries. The French have wonderful bakeries.”
“You have to pay to put up a tent, though. Not like the Acres.”
“Well, their customs must be different.”
“And give ’em your passport every night. If you don’t have an international camping car net.”
He showed me the word. Carnet. French for book. “Car-nay, right.”
“That’s what I said.”
“Yass’um.”
He changed the subject. “Bring me something to read?”
“I did.” He already knew that. Why else had I lugged a box into the building?
Then the Count went quiet.
I was wondering if he had decided to exercise his constitutional right to remain silent. But I think he was searching for the right words. “Had big teeth on it, you know.”
“What did?”
“The thingamajig on the trailer. They backed it into the building across the street a couple of days ago.”
I reached down and scratched Fresca’s stretched-out tummy, knowing she was about to be short-changed.
But I needed to get to the office and have Helen file for a search warrant for Flagler’s old Cromwell Company warehouse. I’d been told there’s a thingamajig parked inside it that the local sheriff needed to see.
Chapter 27
Helen reminded me that cranky old Judge Kincannon over in District Court would want to know the owner of the warehouse before he’d give us a search warrant. The county tax office gave her that. I heard her ask the clerk to spell the name again. She said thanks and started typing it into her computer.
Before long, I heard my first “Mmm.”
I could have said, “Mmm, what?” but I knew she’d say what as soon as she knew.
“Lots of stuff about him on the net.” Another pause followed, and I knew to expect another “Mmm.” It arrived not long after. After more keyboard clicking.
At that point, Helen leaned toward her computer screen. Tracked something with her finger. And launched another “Mmm.” “Meersman. That’s Doctor Worley Meersman to the great unwashed public. He moved to Flagler three years ago to teach at the University of the Hills. Says here he’s an assistant professor of physics.”
I signaled my enthusiasm at her discovery. “Bingo.”
“Started the U’s first class in astrophysics, in fact.”
“Bingo.”
“Wrote a dissertation at one of the California universities on the impact of scientific discoveries on people’s belief systems.”
That revelation didn’t get a “bingo” because I didn’t know if it had anything to do with our suspicious deaths. But it was a factoid-of-interest. I flagged it as such. “Bingo-possible.”
“He spends his summers cataloging Professor Huntgardner’s papers in the Hills-U library. He’s writing a book about them.”
“Double bingo with a cherry on top!”
I asked Helen to call the university. If she was in, speak to the head of security. See if Dr. Meersman had done anything this summer to warrant their attention.
I returned from a quick trip to the men’s facilities to find Helen holding a phone to each ear. She’d talk for a moment on one phone while holding the other one away from her mouth. Then she’d change the phones’ positions and talk into the other one. Her conversations produced quick results.
The officer in charge of Hills-U’s security force didn’t seem surprised we were looking for Dr. Meersman. He’d failed to show up at a summer seminar twice in six days. They’d checked his house and found his yard full of newspapers and his mailbox jammed full. They had no clue where he was but were now checking his house twice a day.
His home phone was unlisted, but the university’s alumni office provided a private email address. When Helen tried sending an email, she got a notice back saying that his inbox was full.
More to mark our turn of luck than commemorate our victim, I jotted one down on my desk blotter. R.I.P. Friend of the Professor’s. I didn’t mean to be cruel, but it was a habit I had. When things have been falling apart and then reverse themselves, it’s hard for me to suppress an epitaph befitting the moment.
My feeling was growing that my epitaph was going to work for a bunch of unfortunate folks.
For the first time, I felt okay about giving the media more specifics.
I dictated what I thought a press release should say to Helen. Knew she’d turn my words into passable officialese. The gist of it was how much we’d welcome hearing from anyone who thought they knew a physicist or astrophysicist or physics professor or physics researcher or secondary school teacher of physics or a science writer whose whereabouts might be in doubt and had been for several days.
A CNN reporter was the first to respond. I stood listening to Detective Moody as she fielded the phone call. “Yes, this in connection with our ten unexplained deaths in Abbot County.”
She extended her phone receiver almost straight up and away from her ear, then lowered it somewhat. “Yes, there is a reason we are particularly interested in people with training in physics who might be missing . . . From where? From anywhere.”
My deputy was now whirling her pen on her desk blotter. “Yes, we have a tentative identification for a possible victim.”
She gave an opposite twist to the pen. “No, I’m not able to give you a name or tell you more at this time . . . Yes, I can confirm that this person is a physicist . . . No, I can’t tell you where they lived or were employed.”
She picked up the pen and began doodling on her blotter. “No, at this time, we haven’t developed possible identifications for any others. But we’d like to.”
CNN must have rushed out a news ticker bulletin because our first call came within minutes. It was from a worried wife in Ashtabula, Ohio. After Detective Moody hung up with her, she shared the woman’s details.
Her husband taught physics at one of the area’s Kent State University campuses. He’d gotten a late-night email more than a week ago and left for the airport early the next morning. Said he would call her later about when he’d be coming home. But he hadn’t called. And he hadn’t returned. “Weird.”
I was lingering at the end of Rashada’s desk. “Weird how?”
“Well, he just didn’t tell her anything. He got an email message. Erased it. Immediately booked a plane somewhere. Left the next morning and told his wife he’d be in touch. And disappeared.”
“Didn’t tell her anything?”
“Tried to joke with her. Said he had
to go see a man about a flying teacup.”
“Has she ever heard of Flagler?”
“Said her husband talked about it all the time. Got his undergraduate degree here.”
That ended my conversation with Detective Moody. All four lines on her phone console were flashing.
I reached for her notes from the first call and pointed to Conference Room Corner to show her I was taking them. But she was so involved with the phone she didn’t notice I’d left.
Other deputies had started fielding calls too. I moved to the writable wall in the far corner of our situation room. Dr. Meersman’s name went up first. The missing Ohio professor’s name, age, and location was next. The other deputies noticed what I was doing and began bringing me their notes as they hung up with a caller.
As the minute hand on our department wall clock neared straight up noon, the wall was filling up:
Worley Meersman, 40, assistant professor of physics, Flagler.
Parnell Sethridge, 46, physics professor, Ohio.
Will Lemsberg, 61, high school physics teacher, North Carolina.
Rodd Desjarlais, 55, science teacher, Chicago area.
Kieffer Bahn, 29, biomedical science writer, Baltimore.
Nathan Harmeling, 45, associate physics professor, Bay Area, California.
I took a couple of steps back and counted them to be certain. There were six. When I’d left the Count and Fresca three hours before, we’d had none.
That’s when I remembered one of my favorite Yogi Berra quotes. It had described something as “too coincidental to be a coincidence.” I didn’t know what Yogi was referring to, but it must have been something like what was happening on our suspicious deaths case.
Then I got a phone call that confirmed it.
Chapter 28
I had thought about asking Deputy Chief Tanner or Detective Moody or Detective Salazar to join me for my chat with Judson Mayes’s mother, but I couldn’t see any of them at their desks.
As for Dr. Simpson-Mayes, once again, she was dressed to the nines. “Professionally attired” was a phrase that came to my mind.
In our interrogation room, she didn’t wait for an invitation to sit down. She went straight to the same chair she’d used before. And placed her purse in almost the exact same spot on the other chair and sat a cloth grocery bag she was carrying beside it.
This time, the purse looked like something out of the 1930s — gold mesh, gold tone metal frame, gold chain carrying strap. I doubted that any of it was real gold, although I wouldn’t have bet the farm on it. But the purse radiated a vintage authenticity, so it could have been made in the ’30s.
I saw something in her face I was not expecting — embarrassment, perhaps. Couldn’t imagine about what.
Her first comment cleared it up. “I don’t typically eat lunch at sports bars. But then, I don’t have lunch that often with my ravenous son.”
I wanted to put her at ease, so I gave her my reelection photo smile. “Let me guess. You went to the Eden Junction Bar and Grill.”
This seemed to have the desired effect. “So you know about the Both Barrels Double Meat Cheeseburger.”
“With caramelized onions.”
“I’ve already gone through half a roll of breath mints. But that’s not what I need to talk with you about. They had CNN playing on one of their big-screen TVs. I saw the news bulletin.”
I knew which one, but I wanted to appear as congenial as possible. “About missing physicists?”
She gave no indication at all that she’d heard me. No “yes,” no nod of the head, no nothing. Only a curt bit of instruction. “You will need to understand something.”
I was already understanding why Judson displayed confidence beyond his years. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree! “You have my undivided attention.”
“You were so intent on questioning Judson the other day that you failed to include me.”
I felt my smile edging toward a look of neutrality, and that’s not where I had wanted this to go.
“In fact, you kept trying to intimidate both of us. That juvenile move you made leaning back in your chair and spreading your legs? I teach my women clients that when a man emphasizes his pelvis, he’s trying to establish authority over you. Manspreading. Male apes have been doing that for eons. And it does convey a strong message, because . . . because a woman can’t do that — especially in a business setting.”
Okie-dokie, Sheriff, you’ve got a wildcat on your hands. Keep your legs close together this time, son. “Not sure I’d ever thought about that. Good to know, for sure.”
“I’m a psychotherapist. I spend a lot of time talking with people myself. Therapy is a kind of interrogation. But we have more rules to follow than you law enforcement people do. And that’s why you’re going to have to let me do this my way” — she raised both hands, palms up — “or it’s the highway.”
This was a first for me. I couldn’t remember someone pushing so hard in my interrogation room to make it their own territory. But new experiences can be good. “We’d appreciate any help you can give us.”
Again, not so much as a head nod. I was beginning to feel like an extra in the school play.
“What I’m about to do can be dangerous under our rules of ethics. With rare exceptions, our clients are entitled to think that we’ll say” — she scooted her pressed thumb and forefinger along her lips — “zip, about what they share with us.”
I blinked twice and clasped my hands in my lap.
“But there are exceptions. We can disclose private information without consent if we are trying to protect the patient or the public from serious harm. I think that’s what I’m doing here. And I’m going to leave it to you to decide what, if anything, it means.”
Had she glanced at me, she’d have noticed I was blushing. Not because of anything I’d said. But because I’d spread my legs pretty wide in maneuvering my chair closer to the table. She appeared not to have noticed. And what she said next banished any concern I had about whether my pelvis was too exposed.
“I’ve been doing a lot of distance therapy lately — mostly on Skype. This allows me to accept a client from anywhere in the country. In the world, actually. But the clients on this list are all from the United States.”
She had taken a piece of paper from her purse when she first sat down but had forgotten about it. I had noticed that it was letter-sized, creased once. Now, she reached for it. Pressed it flat against the tabletop. Used her fingertips to pivot it so I could read it. And gave it a gentle shove in my direction. “These names may be useful to you.”
But before I could look at it, she reached over to retrieve the green tote bag sitting beside her purse.
She needed both hands to do it, but she moved the bag from the chair to the table. Spread the mouth of it open so I could have a good look at what was inside. And voiced another opinion. “There may be items in here that will be helpful to you too.”
I pulled the bag closer, surprised at how heavy it was. Opened it wider. Let my eye range over what I could see without emptying everything onto the tabletop.
I recognized what I was seeing, but it took me a moment to understand why the bag contained so many small items you would expect men to carry — wallets, watches, money clips, eyeglasses, car key rings, nail clippers, mobile phones. Then I did understand, at least in part. “These came from our victims, I’m assuming.”
“They gave them to me before they left for the professor’s house. Asked me to keep them.”
I gave her a keen stare. “Because?”
She gave me what I’d come to regard as the Judson look. Took another moment to think about it. “Because . . .” Took another moment. “You know, I don’t really know. They told me it was for safekeeping. But somehow, I felt like it was more complicated than that.”
“Do you have their clothes and their everyday
shoes too?”
“Those I don’t have. Have you checked their motel rooms?”
“Didn’t know where they were staying. Until now, we didn’t know who any of them were.” I closed the green tote bag. Sat it on the floor. And slid the sheet that she’d unfolded to where I could read it. “So, yes, I think this will be helpful.”
The sheet had several names written on it. They weren’t in the same order as the list I’d created on the white wall in our situation room. And there were no details about the people named. No ages, no places of residence. No titles or job descriptions.
But I didn’t need that information for six of the people on the list because I already had it. It was the other three names I knew nothing about:
Niall Taylor-Haskell
Hayden Derek Walcott
Robert Earle Morrow
I counted them to make sure. Nine. Not ten. So we didn’t have possible identifications for all ten of our suspicious deaths. But nine was enough to speed up my heartbeat. “I take it these are all physicists of one job description or another.”
“That’s correct.”
“And they — I’m going to take a guess here — are all graduates of the University of the Hills.”
“They are, yes.”
“And that they are all acquainted with Professor Thaddeus Huntgardner.”
“You may ask that, but I can’t reply. It would impinge on their confidentiality.”
I sensed that the dance she had warned about had begun. “These folks sought you out because you live and work in Flagler?”
“You can assume that, but I can’t say.”
“And they had issues that required a therapist from Flagler?”
“I can’t answer that for reasons of confidentiality.”
“Can I ask if they had issues that were similar in nature?”