by A W Hartoin
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
FATS WAS TRAGICALLY low on gas, meaning a fourth of a tank, and we made a quick detour to the very gas station that was there in 1974, Harvey’s Fill ‘Er Up. Now you pumped your own gas and Fats got out, garnering double-takes for more than just her size. Some of her stitches were on her face and she had considerable swelling. I knew she had to be in pain, but Fats Licata did not show pain. I, on the other hand, wanted Chuck there to rub my feet and feed me ice cream while I groaned dramatically.
Fats and I looked bad, but the good news was that Tank was awake and talking. He recognized Mallory with no problem and he told her the news that her family had been involved in something shady to do with at least one murder, possibly more. Mallory didn’t take it well. She found Fats in the ER and brought her to me. Tank said I needed protection and Fats was it. There was a lot to like about Tank’s little firecracker of a wife. Her brother was lucky there were witnesses or I didn’t like his chances.
“What do you hope to find in those old files?” Stratton asked.
“The coroner’s report, interviews, an ID on the type of tire on the truck that they used to dump Maggie would be nice. Time of death is important and Desmond Shipley saw something he didn’t like. I want to know what that was.”
“The abused thing you mentioned,” she said. “Do you think she was raped?”
“You know what? I doubt it,” I said. “But hopefully, we’re about to find out.”
Stratton looked around from the front seat. I noticed she had her revolver on her lap. “Do you think he’s watching us?” she asked.
“Maybe, but he’s sneaky. He’s not going to lob a grenade at us at the Fill ‘Er Up.”
She nodded. “It’s still broad daylight. When are those agents going to get back to you? They know we’re down here with a nut job on the loose, right?”
“It’s hard to know what the FBI knows. It’s even harder to know what their intentions are. Mostly, my guys are working on getting Maggie’s case reopened and more importantly getting themselves assigned to it.”
“Bastards.”
“Remind me to tell you the rest of the story later,” I said.
A phone buzzed and Stratton handed it to me. It was Fats’ phone. Mine was somewhere in the depths of the Sentinel basement.
“How are you feeling?” Spidermonkey asked.
“I’m fine. Tell me you have something to connect Stott to Kenneth Young so Stratton can go arrest that old codger,” I said.
“I wish I could, but I do have some news.”
Spidermonkey was decidedly more helpful than the rookies, who were no longer answering my calls. He’d identified several donors to the asylum through the initials Maggie used and other Catholic charities that had accurate books and taxes. He estimated that at least thirty to fifty thousand had been stolen from the asylum before Maggie joined the staff. That was a lot of money in the sixties.
More interestingly, Bishop Fowler’s sister had paid a boarding school a sizable tuition every year for a boy that wasn’t her son or any relation at all that Spidermonkey could see. She also gave a woman named Nora Connery a salary for housecleaning when Nora lived in Oregon. Nora the fake housekeeper once worked in St. Louis at the Cardinal Regali Center. That accounted for half the money stolen. The rest remained a mystery. If we could find that money, we could find Maggie’s murderer.
“Maybe it’s in Stott’s trust fund,” I said.
“Possibly, but my instinct says Stott had nothing to do with that money. He was a kid at the time and no financial genius or any kind of genius. As far as I can tell he was in Tennessee at the time of Young’s disappearance, working as a delivery boy. That’s how he targeted the victim he went to prison for.”
“But you can’t rule him out?” I asked.
“No. We just need something to rule him in,” said Spidermonkey. “There’s nothing that says he ever came back to St. Sebastian between 1965 and ten years ago.”
“But he did come back. Why would he do that?”
“Fond memories of being a young psychopath?”
Fats knocked on Stratton’s window and she put it down.
“The credit card pad isn’t working. I have to go in,” said Fats and she jogged off through snowflakes that were starting to get fatter.
“Mercy?” Spidermonkey asked. “You still there?”
“Yeah…I was just thinking about something. We’re at the gas station that Young was at before he left town,” I said.
Stratton turned in her seat. “We don’t change much. Just got pay at the pump and it hardly ever works.”
Pay at the pump.
I frowned at her and my nose burned under its splint and heavy bandages.
“What?” she asked.
“I don’t…” I looked out at the other people attempting to pay or gassing up or running inside with their credit cards in hand.
Credit cards.
“So Stott was only here like six or seven months. There has to be a better reason than that for him to come back,” I said. “The trust fund would send the money anywhere he wanted. Why St. Sebastian?”
“Serial killers like to visit the places where they killed their victims,” Spidermonkey said.
“Sure, but if he didn’t kill Maggie there’s no reason to visit,” I said. “Her body isn’t here either.”
“But he was in on it. That’s why he had her medal.”
He had that medal. He was in Kansas.
“She was important to him. He was the accomplice. He kept her medal,” I said softly. “He dropped it or purposely put it in a grave in Kansas.”
“I know what you’re thinking, Mercy,” said Spidermonkey. “I checked. Stott didn’t leave any paper trail to Kansas or St. Seb.”
“He had to drive them to Kansas,” I said. “You can’t check a body.”
Fats got in and pulled out of the gas station. “This town needs a tech update.”
“Tell me about it,” said Stratton.
“Everybody uses credit cards,” I said.
Fats turned around and both women raised their brows at me.
“Gas is expensive.”
“Yes, on a good day. Outrageous on a bad,” said Stratton. “I hate filling up.”
Fats started to say something, but I held up my hand and asked Spidermonkey, “Stott didn’t have any money until that trust fund kicked in.”
“That’s right. What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking how did he afford it, if he didn’t use a credit card? Gas from Tennessee and back or, hell, wherever he was killing people,” I said. “Hotels. Food. It all costs. Did he have a credit card?”
“He did,” said Spidermonkey. “The interest was criminal, which he deserved.”
“Did he use it?”
“Not much.”
“You’re a numbers guy. You tell me how he afforded driving halfway across the country to bury victims in Kansas,” I said.
Spidermonkey went quiet and all I heard was typing. We fishtailed on a turn but drove into the police station parking lot unscathed before Spidermonkey answered, “He couldn’t, not from the numbers I’m seeing. Of course, he could’ve been working under the table. That’s a possibility.”
“What kind of car did he have?” I asked.
“The last one was a 2002 Mercury Cougar. The trunk’s pretty big. You could definitely get a body in there.”
“Where is it?” I asked as we got out and slid across the parking lot to the door of the station. A deputy opened it for us and I handed her Moe, much to her surprise.
We took off our coats and the deputy at the desk eyed my marshmallow Peep outfit. I like to think she was envious of how I was self-confident enough to rock it, but she was just horrified. I explained how I ended up wearing those sweats. It didn’t help. My street cred, if I ever had any, was zero.
Stratton got us mugs of truly terrible coffee and led the way up to the station’s attic while Spidermonkey continued to type in my ea
r.
She paused outside a door and glanced at the deputy. She was about to prove that she lied and it wasn’t easy for her to stomach.
“Patton, we’re going to need you to help us go through the files and look for everything we’ve got on Sister Margaret Mullanphy.”
Patton blinked her wide blue eyes. “I thought those were destroyed in the flood.”
“We made a mistake. Those old files were moved up here.”
“Oh, great. That will really help with your investigation, Miss Watts,” said Patton. “Do you think it’s tied to the bombing and the fires Mr. Tancredi had? I always thought something was off about those. Why would kids try to set fire to the Sentinel? They pretty much cover the fair and local sports.”
Two spots of pink formed on Stratton’s cheeks, but she remained dignified. “New evidence has been uncovered and that’s what we’re trying to determine.”
“How exciting. Maybe we’ll end up on 20/20,” said Patton.
I’d rather have a colonoscopy.
“You never know,” I said. “Let’s get at it.”
Stratton unlocked the door and revealed what could only be described as a craptastic mess. Aftermaths of hurricanes looked more orderly.
“What the hell is this?” Fats asked. “I’m ashamed to be on your side this time.”
“This time?” Stratton asked.
“You heard me.” She stomped into the attic and sneered. “It’s a wonder you’ve caught so much as a purse snatcher.”
“We’ve caught criminals,” said Patton indignantly.
“Do they march in and confess? No wonder you told Mercy the files were gone. They might as well be.”
“We meant to organize it, but…” trailed off Stratton.
She didn’t have to say they had a drunk leader and no motivation. At least she had the decency to look ashamed about it.
“What’s wrong?” Spidermonkey asked.
“We have access to the police files,” I said. “Now we have to find them.”
“Should I let you go?” He had a funny twinge in his voice.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“Yes. I just…I made a mistake.”
“Lay it on me.”
Spidermonkey’s mistake was another person’s oversight. Heck it wasn’t even that. My hacker didn’t think to take a hard look at Stott’s car. I didn’t think of it either, so it was hardly his fault.
Stott bought his Cougar in 2005 and drove it until he moved to St. Seb ten years ago when he traded it in on a brand-new loaded Cadillac that the trust fund paid for. It had 29,000 miles on it when he bought it and 92,000 when he traded it in. I was no math whiz, but that wasn’t a ton of mileage for a serial killer. From the number of bodies the FBI found in Kansas, our guy wasn’t a once every five years kind of killer.
“That doesn’t add up,” I said.
Fats and the cops stopped hopping over stacks of files on the floor and waited expectantly.
“No, it doesn’t. I should’ve thought of this. It’s what you pay me for,” said Spidermonkey.
“I’ve loaded you up and this is a small detail.”
“There are no small details.”
Like no small time crimes.
“He has another vehicle,” I said. “We just have to find it.”
“Easier said than done. I already went through his registrations, taxes, and tickets. No other cars. Period.”
Patton waved at me. “A girlfriend’s car?”
I nodded. “Did he have a girlfriend? A wife?”
“He was an ex-con living in a single-wide trailer in the middle of nowhere Tennessee,” said Spidermonkey.
“Women marry multiple murderers on death row,” I said. “It’s not beyond the realm.”
Patton smiled at me, glad to be of help, and I smiled back.
“I’ll double-check his email and cellphone, but I saw no sign of anyone in his life, other than work colleagues.”
Ding. Ding. Ding.
“Work!” I said. “Did he have a company truck?”
“Company credit card,” said Fats. “Look at that.”
Stratton shook her head. “No way. Who in their right mind would give a convicted murderer a company credit card?”
Fats smiled. “Who said anything about ‘give’?”
“Yes,” I said. “That’s excellent. Spidermonkey, can you get in the businesses he worked for?”
“Yes, yes, I’m on it. He worked for six different outfits since he got out of prison. I’ll look at them all working backwards.”
“Six companies? That’s a lot.”
Fats squatted in front of a stack of files casually dumped on the floor. “He was fired. Find out why.”
“Fats says he was fired. We need to know why,” I said.
“Agreed. There were no arrests or lawsuits. If he was caught stealing, they let him walk away,” said Spidermonkey.
“Have Loretta call them and ask. She has a great phone voice and she’s Southern. I bet somebody will spill the tea.”
“Spill the what?” he asked.
“The tea,” I said. “It’s slang for gossip. Get with it, Grandpa.”
“That hurts, Mercy. You know I’m barely in my seventies.”
“Whatever, dude.”
He laughed and said he’d give Loretta the companies to call. She’d be happy because the daughters-in-law were now discussing chemtrails and Loretta was looking more and more like she was ready to take a long walk off a short pier.
I pocketed Fats’ phone and looked around. The company truck and credit card idea was exciting. That attic was not. For a second, I questioned if I really needed that police report. Was it really imperative? Could I possibly take a micro-nap and pick the caked blood out of my nose instead? The latter was getting to be an issue.
“Are we doing this or not?” Fats asked.
I sighed. “How many years are in here?”
“I’ve got a robbery in 1953.” She fanned out the stack and checked the bottom file. “And an indecent exposure in 1944. On D-Day. What a dirtbag.”
“1962 over here,” said Patton. “It’s a murder. We had another murder. Weird.”
“Only outside of town,” said Stratton. “Never inside the city limits or close to them.”
“What are all those evidence boxes?” I asked, picking my way through the mess. “I thought you hadn’t investigated any murders.”
“I haven’t, but Will had one in the nineties in another town. We handle things for the places that don’t have a department of their own. Most of those are probably from accidents. Will takes drunk driving seriously. He treats them like they’re regular homicides.”
We went quiet and she said, “Yes, I get the irony. Move on.”
Accidents.
“Accidents, like plane crashes?” I asked.
“Huh?” Stratton muttered from behind a cluttered shelving unit.
“Plane crashes. Would that be in here?”
She stuck her head out from behind the shelving. “We don’t investigate plane crashes. That’s the NTSB.”
“But if you had evidence it would be here?” I asked.
“How random is that?” Patton asked. “We never had a plane crash.”
“You did. In the eighties.”
Stratton stepped out. “Is this the accident you were asking about before?”
“Yes. My great grandparents died in the accident,” I said with an unexpected lump in my throat.
“I’m sorry to hear that, but the NTSB would’ve handled it. We’d have the initial report, maybe some findings, but that’s it.”
“Found it!” Patton turned around with a stack of two evidence boxes.
There it was. The accident date and my grandparents’ names written in faded black marker on the evidence labels. My knees got weak. I’d asked, but I didn’t think anything would be there. Jeff City should’ve taken it. The NTSB. Somebody.
“Don’t look at that.” Fats took the boxes from Patton and
tucked them in a corner with the labels hidden. “It’s Maggie right now. That can wait.”
The cops gave me curious looks but went back to searching. I couldn’t drag my mind away from those boxes. There could be something important in there among Agatha and Daniel’s belongings. Possible clues as to what was bringing them to the Bleds in a rush. Did they have what The Klinefeld Group wanted? Why weren’t their effects released to Nana and Pop Pop after the investigation was closed? Maybe they didn’t know it was there or that they could get it. Maybe they didn’t want to have it.
“Mercy,” said Fats. “Focus.”
“I…I didn’t think there was any evidence,” I said.
She set aside her files. “Do you want me to take a quick look?”
“Is there something you’re looking for, in particular? A family heirloom?” Stratton asked.
“Something like that,” I said. “Please look. I don’t think I should right now.”
Fats opened the boxes and went through them quickly.
“Well?” I said.
“Nothing useful. We’ve got clothing, wallet, purse, hat, a Rubik’s Cube, and some makeup and glasses.”
Don’t cry. It didn’t just happen. Don’t be a wuss.
“Two boxes for that?” I squeaked out.
“The coats take up space,” said Fats.
“No boxes? Artwork?”
Stratton frowned. “Artwork?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Something special. Unique. Paperwork? Files?”
Fats shook her head. “No. This is just what they had on them. Personal effects.”
She didn’t say it, but I knew was Fats meant. I’d thought for a long time that what Agatha and Daniel were bringing was information, something they knew and that died with them, which was, of course, why The Klinefeld Group bothered to kill them. That knowledge was lost forever. The Bleds didn’t know what Stella Bled Lawrence sent back to the States or where it was, if it even existed anymore.