by A W Hartoin
“I saw that whiskey,” I said. “I barely made it here when you were sober.”
“I’m sober. It was barely a drop.”
“Still, I think I’ll hit the microfiche, if I may,” I said.
Tank stared at his computer screen and didn’t respond. I walked around his desk and took a peek. It looked like a fire investigation report. “I never put it together. I had two fires a year apart and I never put it together.”
“No reason you should,” I said.
“Wasn’t the fire here kids?” asked Lefty.
“That’s what we thought,” said Tank.
“There you go.”
He shook his head and tapped the paper on the desk. “I just checked the numbers. There were four fires before the fire here and one after. That’s it.”
“So what?” asked Lefty. “The kids wised up or they got bored.”
Tank flicked a glance at me and I bit my lip before asking, “Were they all Molotov cocktails?”
“Yep.”
“What were the other targets?” I asked.
We had the gazebo, an abandoned shed next to a house that was being torn down, a dumpster fire, and some decrepit playground equipment at the park that the Jaycees had been raising money to replace. I vaguely remembered the equipment and the gazebo he was talking about. They were both by the lake where I found Janet Lee Fine.
The only incident after the Sentinel fire was a pile of sport equipment at the public high school that had been left out, tackling dummies and tires for foot work.
Tank sat back and folded his hands over his stomach. He watched me and waited.
“I’m getting that this is important, but so what?” asked Lefty. “It’s good they didn’t torch the Burger King or the high school itself, right?”
“It sounds like the cops thought it was the same person,” I said.
“Definitely,” said Tank. “Same beer bottles, gas, rags. Always happened about two in the morning.”
“And places where there weren’t any cameras.”
“So it was all the same,” said Lefty.
“Except here,” I said. “Here our guy kicked in the door and threw the device in. More than one?”
Tank nodded. “They estimated three.”
“Very different,” I said. “I’d say the other fires were distractions. Your fire was the point. The cops should’ve figured that out.”
“Maybe they did. I didn’t get much out of them, except the whole kids idea and then it stopped. We had the sports equipment and poof, it was over.”
“Until your house went up.”
“But that was wiring,” said Lefty. “Nothing like the other ones.”
Tank looked at me again. “I’ll find my notes from back then. I’ll give you access to my microfiche and anything else you want.”
I sighed. “In exchange for what?”
“I want the exclusive and I want it to be a five-part story with total access.”
“You were going to let me have the microfiche anyway.”
He smiled. “That was when it was just a fifty-something-year-old murder. Now it’s my arsons. You need my microfiche. Your guy can’t get the stories any other way.”
“I don’t know why my life has to be hard,” I said.
“It won’t be hard from my end,” said Tank. “I’ll make it as easy as possible.”
I rolled my eyes. “Really? I’ve heard versions of that before.”
“Look. My wife has been quietly pissed at me for six years. I would very much like to know that it’s not my fault our dogs are dead.”
I stuck out my hand. “You had me at dogs. Deal.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
FOR THE RECORD, I don’t like microfiche or microfilm. It is evil and must be destroyed. Tank put me in the basement in front of a machine that looked like a crappy super-sized version of the computer Grandad had set up in his man cave “just in case”.
Since Grandma J wasn’t there to look after it, Tank’s monstrosity was covered in thick oily dust and the area smelled like cat pan, very old cat pan. Tank used an old sweatshirt to wipe it off, sort of, and showed me how to use it. He had cabinets full of little boxes labeled by month and year. That sounds easy enough, I know, but it wasn’t. The Sentinel had been publishing for over 150 years and organization wasn’t their strong suit. Tank took over after the internet became a thing and didn’t really pay attention to the basement and the piles of clutter down there. It took us an hour to find the little boxes for 1965 because, you guessed it, he pulled all the relevant stuff on the murder and put it somewhere where he wouldn’t lose it.
That place was a shelf in the toilet room. Why? We’ll never know.
Then he showed me how to use the rolls of film and little sheets of film. Whoever was in charge couldn’t make up their minds, so we had both. It’s hard to say which was worse. I started with the film and the sight of the paper whizzing across the screen made me crazy nauseated. Plus, the machine wasn’t exactly kept in good condition, so it kept unfocusing and that isn’t a good thing. By the time I found the articles, I wasn’t sure I cared anymore and wanted to put Tank or Lefty on it, but Lefty had gone to help a neighbor out of a ditch and Tank was off searching for his notes, which he was certain held critical information. I don’t know if they did. He never found them. Tank found that suspicious. I found it likely, considering the whole storing important stuff by the toilet idea.
By the time I found the first article about Maggie I felt gross and barfy. The article didn’t improve things. It was published the day after her body was discovered by a couple named Desmond and Mary Shipley, who were out mushroom hunting. I didn’t know you could find mushrooms in the winter, but Desmond and Mary were described as experienced and they were looking for a variety called Turkey Tail when they happened upon Maggie’s body. They didn’t know her identity at that point and the body was described as female, mid-thirties, and partially nude. It was out in the open, next to some brush that Chief Woody Lucas said was loose and showed signs that it had been over the body at some point and then removed. Chief Lucas also said that the woman had to be from out of town because no one had been reported missing and no one at the scene or morgue recognized her.
The brush next to the body was an interesting point. It sounded to me like the killer used it to conceal her, so he could visit, and when he was done with her, he removed it. That fit with Maggie’s medal being found in the Kansas graveyard. Visiting was a serial killer thing.
The chief didn’t come to that conclusion. He said the wind had most likely blown it off. When questioned about the uptick in crime in the county, he said the words I was waiting to read. “It’s nothing but some small time crime. It’ll pass.”
Then the reporter, one Barney Scheer, asked if murder was a small time crime. I thought I heard some sarcasm in that question, but the chief apparently didn’t. He said, “These things happen. It won’t affect our community as a whole.” I took that as a yes and so did Barney Scheer who reported that the chief wouldn’t answer any more questions about the murder and started talking about the weather.
Perhaps more interesting was the interview Barney did with the mushroom hunters. Mary described finding the body as ghastly and said everyone should lock their doors. Something I noticed the chief didn’t say. She was described as very upset and unable to speak more about it. Her husband was made of sterner stuff. Desmond said that the body had been there a while, but less than ten days because that was the last time he’d been out to the area with Mary. Most important of all, he said he couldn’t tell how she died because the body had been abused.
Abused. Odd choice of words. Not something like animals got to it or decomposition made it hard to tell. Abused. It must’ve been extensive, too. Strangulation was generally pretty easy to identify. Maybe the killer was trying to cover that up, but why bother? He put her where she’d be found.
There were pictures of the site, sheet over the body, and I got a good look at that brus
h. It was a big pile of loose fir branches with the needles still on and a bunch of regular branches. The wind didn’t blow it anywhere. It was too bunched up. The chief made it sound like that brush might be incidental. It just happened to be there. Yeah, right. Desmond didn’t think so either, and he gave the impression of a man who knew more than just mushrooms.
Barney Scheer interviewed everyone and their brother about those woods. It was a popular place for walking in the fall because it had gorgeous fall color, but the leaves were long since gone and only a few people were out in the area. One family said they walked right by the spot while searching for a Christmas tree to cut down and another group of women were birdwatching, looking for the elusive yellow cardinal. Neither group noticed anything amiss or smelled anything either. Barney reported the daily temperatures as not above thirty-six with a low of twenty-four in a heavily treed area, so decomposition wasn’t an issue.
He was thorough that Barney. Nobody saw anything unusual in the area, except a man with a house adjacent the Snider land said he thought he remembered flashlights in the woods during the time in question, but thought it was kids. Davis Snider, named as the head of the Snider family, said none of his family had been out to the woods in some time and said anybody could’ve been out there. No trespassing signs were posted, but no one paid them any mind. His family lived in town so they had seen nothing.
It took two days to identify the body and after that the reporting took a sharp turn. Before, Barney had been investigating. After, he was giving facts as he was told by Chief Lucas. There was a generic statement by the church and a picture of Bishop Fowler entering the police station. Then it was silence until Barney reported that Father Dominic was the police’s suspect and that he had jumped to his death off the Eades Bridge. No evidence connecting Dominic to the crime was mentioned. Barney said an autopsy was being done, but didn’t report the cause of death until after Maggie was identified. Then he called it “simple strangulation.” That wasn’t even a normal term and, from what Desmond said, there wasn’t anything simple about it.
I zipped forward, scanning the months after the murder. A cursory glance said things slowed down like Uncle Morty said. In June, Barney did an interview with Chief Lucas talking about the crime rate going down substantially. No reasons for the change were given and the murder wasn’t mentioned.
Then I went back to before the murder. What did Uncle Morty say? Arson, property crimes, and thefts.
Wait. Arson?
I found the first incident in June 1965. Someone poured kerosene on the front doors of the high school and lit it on fire. The doors were destroyed, but, since the building was brick and neighbors smelled the smoke and reported it early, the damage was minimal. Then there were several dumpster fires, starting with a variety of accelerants from kerosene to heating oil to gas. That went on through the summer. In September, a Molotov cocktail was thrown through the plate glass window of a local bar called Dark Sparks, burning the place to the ground. The owner said there was a fight earlier in the night between regulars and a crowd of high school students who wanted to be served and were refused. Another cocktail was thrown into an open garage with the family at home. That one took out the garage and part of the house. They tried again at the high school, throwing cocktails in through the windows of the science lab and English literature department, but the principal had fire alarms installed, which apparently wasn’t mandatory at the time and that had pissed off the locals who thought it was a waste of money. Not so much as it turned out and the clamor was so loud that neighbors heard it and called the fire in. Those school fires and the house fire all happened in November. The last one was the day before Maggie disappeared. Yet another Molotov cocktail was hurled through the window of the Liquor Mart. It had no alarm and burnt to the ground. The owner reported that he had some trouble with some high schoolers who wanted beer earlier, but said they left without a problem. The teenagers weren’t named in either the bar or Liquor Mart, but it couldn’t be a coincidence. The high school was hit three times. Who gives a crap about high school unless you’re in it?
The odd incident was the house. The family was home. All the other places were empty and hit in the early morning hours. The house happened at nine in the evening. The family was awake at the time and heard the explosion, calling the fire department seconds after it happened.
I went back to the articles on that fire. If my hunch was right, there’d be a teenager in the family and it would be a girl. Arsonists were by and large male, so I was looking for a disgruntled guy and I doubted he’d be that pissed at another dude and make sure he wasn’t hurt. No. It had to be a girl that broke up with him or something of that nature.
I scanned the initial report and only got the name of the family, Coulter. There were a few follow-ups, but I didn’t get actual family members until there was a town meeting the night before Thanksgiving, a week after the Coulter fire.
Chief Lucas called for the meeting, but he didn’t have a clue who was setting the fires or doing the break-ins. There’d been a rash of property being stolen out of unlocked cars and houses. Apparently, nobody locked their cars or houses back then. People had lost car stereos, wallets, purses, cash, guns, and TVs. It could be teenagers. It’s not like the thefts were hard to pull off.
The locals were hot. Barney Scheer reported yelling and raised fists. Mr. Coulter spoke and said his family had never experienced anything like that. He said that they’d been egged and TP’d in August, but his daughter, Kathleen, age seventeen, knew the boys that did it and it was just a prank. Mr. Coulter was a divorce lawyer and it was suggested that his fire was related to his work and nothing to do with the other fires at all.
I leaned back. “And there it is.”
Tank walked in, carrying a stack of folders. “There what is?”
“Kathleen Coulter, age seventeen.”
“You can’t be saying that a girl killed Sister Maggie.”
“Not at all. Did you know that there was a rash of arsons in 1965?”
Tank froze and then his face curved into an intense frown. “No, I didn’t.”
“Have you heard about any other suspicious fires in the area other than your own?” I asked.
“No. Our last fire was over a year ago and it was down to an aroma therapy candle.”
“Molotov cocktails?”
“Are you kidding?” he asked and I showed him the Coulter articles.
“I can’t believe I missed that.”
“You weren’t looking for other crimes,” I said.
“Why were you?”
I told him what Sister Frances said about Chief Lucas and then showed him the chief’s comments on the murder.
“He sounds overwhelmed,” said Tank. “And he might’ve been sick already.”
“Oh, he was sick already without a doubt.”
“That’s right. You’re a nurse.”
“I am and it takes a good while to cause cirrhosis of the liver.”
Tank sat down in a folding chair next to me. “Did you find any fires after the murder?”
“No. My guy said there was a steep climb in crime leading to Maggie with little after. The paper confirms the stats.”
“Nobody was arrested?”
“I can’t find that Chief Lucas had a lead much less an arrest.”
Tank slumped down and gripped the folders in his lap for dear life. “Was he just a terrible cop?”
“Please tell me you’re not his grand-nephew or something. I already pissed off your current chief today.”
“You talked to Will?” he asked.
“Yeah, and it didn’t go well,” I said.
“If you brought up his grandfather, I wouldn’t think so. Will’s uptight about the family.”
“Ah, crap. You are family. I cannot catch a break.”
He forced himself to relax, stretching out his long fingers and dropping the folders in his lap. “I’m married to his sister Mallory, but we go way back. Played football in high sch
ool together.”
“You do not look like a football player,” I said.
“It wasn’t my idea. My dad loves the game. That’s where I got the nickname.”
“Because you were a tank on the field?”
He laughed. “Because I wasn’t. Anybody could run me over like a tank. I decided to embrace it, like you and your name.”
“I didn’t so much embrace Mercy as it was just what I was always called. I screamed a lot as a baby and my dad kept saying ‘Have Mercy!’”
“There you go,” said Tank.
“Yep.”
“So we’ve got arsons back then and arsons when I was looking at the murder.”
“I don’t think it’s just a coincidence.” I told him my theory about the high school students.
He nodded. “Like I said, they thought our fires were kids. But if it’s the same guys, they wouldn’t be kids now.”
“People go back to what works for them.” I tapped the folders. “What’d you find?”
“Photos from the murder. Might help. You never know.”
We spread the photos out on the floor, but I couldn’t get oriented. “Do you have a map?”
“Like a map map? Paper?” asked Tank.
“Yes. I can’t picture where this is.”
He went off to find a map, thinking they probably had one since they weren’t into throwing things away, and I looked at the pictures. We had tire tracks in a muddy area, the body, the brush pile, pictures of a house, and a road. There weren’t any notes and the articles didn’t say anything about tire tracks. The pictures were sharp, still in black and white like the newspaper, but I could make out a lot more details. Maggie was on her back. I could tell from her feet pointed up under the sheet. I would guess that she wasn’t displayed in any particular way, just sort of lying there. Most importantly, there wasn’t any blood anywhere and I was pretty sure I could tell even in black and white.
“I found a map.” Tank walked in as he unfolded an old school map and laid it on the floor next to the pictures. “Are you having a hard time looking at these because I am.”