by Jeff Vrolyks
Chapter Forty Two
It was the following evening when Doug Hostetler called me, our first contact since our meeting. Norrah and I were eating tacos when the call landed. I put him on speaker phone.
“Got a minute?” Doug said.
“Yeah, what’s up?”
“You’re right about his name being fake.”
“I knew it,” I said to Norrah.
“Yeah, yeah, you now everything,” Norrah patronized. “That’s why you had to hire Mr. Hostetler.”
“Ouch,” I said.
Doug laughed. “Our man was issued his first driver’s license in 2008, under the name Paul Klein. He bought a 2010 Dodge Ram in May, 2012. He wrote a check for it, fifteen grand after his four-thousand-dollar trade-in. No financing. He opened a bank account the day before purchasing the truck. I think he opened it just for the purpose of writing that check and the one to State Farm. What I just told you was pretty easy to obtain and I’d feel like I was robbing you for taking a check for that. But luckily for my conscience I did earn some of my paycheck today. The car he traded in for the Ram was a 2001 Volkswagen Jetta. The Jetta was in Paul Klein’s name. Two days before he bought the Ram, the Jetta wasn’t in Paul’s name. The pink slip was signed over to Paul Klein from a Darren Woodley. The sale price was listed at the DMV-minimum of fifty bucks—usually a price between family or whatever, a gift price; people do it so they don’t have to pay much taxes on the purchase. Any guesses as to why someone would sell a four-thousand dollar car to Paul for fifty bucks two days before he traded it in for a truck?”
“I have no idea,” I said.
“I think it would come to you if you thought about it for a bit,” Doug said.
“Because Darren Woodley is Paul Klein?” Norrah guessed.
“All right, Norrah!” Doug cheered. “Paul Klein would have a hard time trading in his car if it was in a name other than his own. Simple enough, huh?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“We don’t know if Darren Woodley is his birth name or not. That could be another fake name. I’ll work on that tomorrow. I found some info on the Jetta. It was bought in 2007 by Mr. Woodley, paid for in cash, and purchased from a man Otis Cullins in Northridge for five-grand. How do I know it was paid for in cash? Because Otis Cullins told me so. Yes, I spoke with him. He described the appearance of Darren Woodley. He couldn’t remember much, but said it was a young man who didn’t look old enough to drive. He said he had dark hair, maybe dark eyes though he couldn’t be sure. So that puts our man in the area of Northridge in 2007, probably lived in the vicinity.”
“I don’t understand,” Norrah said. “If his name is Darren Woodley, why did he go by Paul Klein in Fresno back when he was only fourteen?”
“I haven’t gotten that far yet in my investigation. Paul Klein is a name he made up, so he might have used that fake name casually long before he transitioned to changing his identity. If I was a betting man, and I am, my money would be on his real name being Darren Woodley. It’s too lackluster a name to be contrived. And it was his first car purchase, probably his first adult thing ever bought, so he’d use his real name. I wonder how a lousy kid his age had five grand in cash to buy the car.”
“And where he came up with fifteen grand to buy the Ram,” I added.
“That too. I’ll see if I can find a missing boy (a run-away) by the name of Darren Woodley. Hopefully I find something coming out of Sedona. If there is no record of a missing boy under that name, I’ll have to rethink his real name being Darren.”
“I appreciate you keeping us up to date,” I said.
“Yes, thank you, Doug,” Norrah said.
“Don’t thank me. This is costing you a great deal. And I enjoy my work.”
We ended the call and finished our tacos.
The next morning I was at work when I got a call from my diligent P.I. He said he was on his way to the airport, flying into Phoenix before connecting to a hopper into Sedona. He didn’t want to say too much, didn’t want to get my hopes up, but said he thought he was on the verge of uncovering every mystery relating to Paul Klein. He also said the flight from Phoenix to Sedona wasn’t a cheap one, and that he’d need a rental car and only drove full-sized premium sedans. There would likely be a grand in expenses today alone. I authorized it.
It was mid-afternoon when he next contacted me. He was in a community northeast of Sedona, not far from Steamboat Rock, a place I had never heard of. He apologized in advance for his lousy cell reception, said he got between zero and one bar where he was, which was the desert. If the call dropped he’d contact me later in the comfort of his air conditioned hotel room in Sedona.
“I was right about Darren being his real name,” Doug said. “But he’s been calling himself Paul since he was ten or eleven.”
“What kind of ten-year-old changes his name?”
“At that age it isn’t changing your name but more like giving yourself a nickname, or an alter ego, or something. I’m on my way to his mother’s house now. His adopted mother, that is. His real mother lives in New Mexico. Man, Jay, this thing is like an onion, the more layers you peel the stinkier it gets. His sister Clara from his adopted family lives in the University of Auburn dorm rooms in Alabama. I just got off the phone with her. She hung up on me when I mentioned Darren Woodley. I called back, left a voicemail. I said I’m a detective working on a case that would put Darren in prison, and would appreciate her help in making that happen. I figured if she despised her brother that this lie might persuade her to call me. And it did. She called me right back, wanted to help in any way possible.”
“No brotherly-sisterly love between the two, huh?” I said.
“That’s an understatement. She said if I wanted to build a character-case against Darren, that I’d benefit greater by contacting her father—she didn’t say their father, but hers. She doesn’t include Darren as a part of their family. She gave me her father’s number; I left a voicemail.”
“Why does Clara not like him? Did she say?”
“Clara thought he was disturbed, maybe even mentally ill. He killed their pet parakeet when he was six. He may have killed other pets, too, but there was no proof: they went missing. The dead parakeet is when she first considered something was wrong with him. But there were signs even before that. Darren had drawn some things that Clara’s mother had destroyed before she could get a look at. Her mother was distraught by them. So there were signs at a very young age. She said he used to stare at her when she was in a bathing suit; it made her feel ill. He got in trouble at school, as well. Some fights, but there were other things. She says a lot of what he did he got away with, always had a great excuse or an alibi.”
“Yeah, I bet. He sure had a great one on Valentine’s Day. Continue.”
“There was something that Clara had difficulty remembering. Not that it was difficult to retrieve the memory, but painful. Darren was thirteen at the time—coincidentally this was shortly before he ran away from home, never to return. A seventeen-year-old girl in their neighborhood went missing. The girl was Clara’s close friend. The circumstance in which she disappeared hinted at abduction. To this day she’s never been found. The evening she went missing Darren wasn’t home. He returned late that night, smirked at Clara as he came in, went upstairs to shower and went straight to bed. She says she wouldn’t be surprised at all if Darren had something to do with it.”
“Interesting.”
“Let’s see, what else do I have…” I heard some papers being shuffled. “Oh. When he ran away at thirteen, his adopted parents didn’t file a runaway report to the cops. That’s peculiar—though I guess it’s not surprising if Darren was killing pets and drawing pictures of unmentionable things, huh?”
“And making neighborhood girls disappear.”
“Clara said they used to go to church, the whole family.”
This got my attention.
“She said Darren would sometimes disrupt the sermon with questions. Good questions, she s
aid, ones that always seemed to stump the pastor. And he got a kick out of it. Smug little son of a bitch, is what Clara said.”
“It’s definitely Paul we’re talking about here,” I said.
“She said that Darren believed in God, so she couldn’t understand why he’d be such a menace in church.”
“Believing in God and loving God are two different things.”
“I guess you’re right. Clara did use the word evil to describe him. You think he hates God?”
“I do,” I said. “I think the devil got a hold of that kid at a young age, that’s what I think.”
“You mean that figuratively,” Doug said, “don’t you?”
“Maybe, maybe not.”
“Jay, between you and me, do you think this Darren Woodley had something to do with the missing twenty-three?”
“Not only that, but I’d bet he had something to do with the Boise girls’ deaths and Edward Berg’s death.”
“My God,” Doug muttered. After a silent moment he said, “I’m surprised my phone hasn’t cut out yet. I’ll get back at you tonight with more information. I hit pay dirt with that call to Clara; I’m hopeful that this meeting with Barbara Woodley will be even better. Talk to you soon,” he said and ended the call.
I was excited that evening, stared at my cellphone incessantly. Norrah and I sipped wine on her deck, relishing the gorgeous weather. It was seventy degrees at sunset, rare for Arrowhead. When the phone rang I got really excited, then deflated when I saw it was Aaron calling. He just wanted to know if we’d heard anything back from the P.I. yet. He’d be the first to know, I said, and ended the call.
We were on our second bottle of wine when the mood struck to have a little steamy interlude upstairs in her bedroom. When we finished making love it was full dark outside. I had hoped to find a missed call but there were none. We watched Princess Bride on DVD till a quarter of eleven. I decided to call him. It went straight to voicemail. I left a message, just curious what else he learned over in Arizona.
I was getting antsy by the following afternoon, not having heard back from Doug. I left another voicemail, no rings.
I finally got my phone call at four P.M. It wasn’t the news I had hoped for.
“There you are,” I said. “I’m dying to know, man, what did you find out?”
“I…” I knew something was wrong already. “I’m sorry, Jay, but I can no longer be on this case. I’m voiding Norrah’s check; expect it in the mail soon.”
“No,” I whined. “Don’t, Doug. Why?”
“Sometimes bad things happen in my profession. Threats of bodily injury or even death threats. I don’t take many of them to heart, but sometimes I do. I picture Edward Berg being stabbed to death, and picture myself in his shoes. Or worse. I have a wife and two young sons who mean the world to me. I couldn’t imagine losing one of them, and won’t risk that happening. Can I give you some advice? Don’t hire another P.I.”
“Did Paul threaten to kill you and your family?”
“Again, I’m sorry.”
He ended the call.
Part 6: