by A W Hartoin
“Are you alright?” Stratton asked.
“Yes. There’s a mystery about why the plane went down and why they were flying in the first place,” I said.
“Your father hasn’t solved it?”
He hasn’t tried.
“No. I guess some things are unknowable.”
“Not Maggie’s murderer’s name,” said Fats. “Get to work. When 44 opens up, the FBI is going to kick us to the curb. We don’t have a lot of time.”
“I thought you wanted to give it to the FBI,” I said.
“That was then.” Fats pointed at her stitches. “This is now.”
Stratton checked her watch. “An hour until teams arrive at the Turkey Shoot. Let’s get cracking.”
Cracking was right, but it was mostly my back.
My mother always says that nothing good comes easy. In this case, nothing bad does either. It took us twenty-five minutes of backbreaking file rummaging to find the file on Kenneth Young alone and another fifteen minutes to find Maggie’s.
Patton found Maggie’s evidence box straight away, but we didn’t open it until we got the file. Nobody was in a hurry to see inside her death, which was how that box felt. Maybe all evidence boxes feel that way. I don’t know, but after that day I had no interest in finding out.
“Who wants to do the honors?” Stratton asked when we were down in an interview room, also known as the city council’s meeting room.
Suck it up, buttercup.
“I’ll do it.” I lifted the lid off the plain cardboard box, not knowing what to expect from evidence in 1965. First off, nothing was in plastic evidence bags. I took out a plain black wool coat that had leaves, twigs, and dirt stuck to the fuzzy fabric but no label. Underneath were Maggie’s clothes and they looked almost exactly like what Aunt Miriam wore. Very little had changed in the way of nun fashion. I didn’t find her veil, but everything else was there, her blouse, underwear, bra, skirt, pantyhose, sweater, and a pair of chunky black pumps and a matching handbag. Maggie’s rosary and a pair of plain gold stud earrings were tucked in a corner with some torn paper bags. The bags had some faded handwriting with the time and date. First, “unknown thirty-year-old female nun” was written on them and then crossed out and replaced with Maggie’s name.
“Is that blood?” Patton asked.
It was blood. A lot of blood. I laid out Maggie’s clothes the way Miss Elizabeth had done without the creepy breathing, of course. Dried blood covered the front of Maggie’s blouse and it had soaked through to her bra. There were smatters of blood on the dove grey sweater but not a lot. The coat appeared to be blood-free, but it probably wasn’t.
I picked up a pump and turned it over. Fairly new with just a modest amount of wear on the bottom, but the toes of both shoes were gouged and scraped. The knees of her pantyhose were shredded and there were long runs going up to the waist and down to the toes. I was so afraid to look at her panties, but they appeared to be intact and had no visible fluids.
“Anything in the purse?” Patton asked.
I opened the handbag that was so like one of Aunt Miriam’s it was freaking me out. Inside was a date book, compact, a nude lipstick, a mini hymnal, address book, and Maggie’s wallet that had a church identification card, a plastic picture holder with pictures of The Girls, her family, and other nuns, including Aunt Miriam, and a coin purse. The coin purse was empty, but I did find a nickel at the bottom of her bag that the killer must’ve missed.
I skimmed the address book. It was well-used with names, addresses, and numbers filling nearly every page, but no name stood out, and Stott certainly wasn’t in there.
“Check out the datebook,” said Stratton.
Fats and I bent over that little book, searching through the months before Maggie’s death. The only thing we found was the day before she died Maggie had an afternoon appointment with June Pierce. That was a new name. On the day of her death Millicent was scratched out and replaced with Dr. Desarno and Bishop Fowler at ten. That was the only appointment, but she had written sideways across the page, “Call SSS&L.”
“That’s a lot of initials,” said Patton.
“It’s probably a business,” said Fats. “A law firm or an accountant would make sense with the money situation.”
“You can call your research guru. I bet he’ll find it.”
I pulled out Fats’ phone. “We can google it. I don’t want to call when it might be easy.”
Stratton put her hand on my arm. “It is easy.”
“It is?”
She swallowed. “I thought you were wrong and Will was right.”
“What about?” I asked. “He knew about SSS&L?”
“No. He said there was nothing here. I thought I’d let you in and we’d find nothing.”
“Spill it, woman,” said Fats. “I’m losing my patience with you people.”
“It’s the St. Sebastian Savings and Loan,” said Stratton.
Son of a bitch!
I grabbed Maggie’s address book and went through it, carefully this time. I only got to “C”. Bianca Crider SSS&L and a number.
“Do you know any Criders?” I asked.
“There are some in town.” Patton shrugged. “Bianca’s a weird name. No Biancas. Are you going to call your guy?”
“No. I want him on Stott. Where’s the bank?”
“The riverfront branch is four blocks away. The other one is by the Walmart,” said Stratton. “I can’t believe the nun was going to call here on the day she died.”
“I can,” I said. “It was always coming back to St. Seb. I just couldn’t get why.”
“We still don’t have why.” Fats cracked her knuckles. “Is the bank open?”
“It’s always open,” said Stratton. “They don’t close for weather.”
“Give me fifteen minutes.” Fats turned on her heels and went for the door with Stratton running after in a panic.
“You can’t go over there punching people,” she said.
“Who said anything about punching?” Fats asked. “It generally doesn’t get that far.”
Patton wrinkled her nose. “Who are you?”
“Pink the Impaler,” I said.
“Huh?”
“Pro wrestler.”
Patton was simultaneously impressed and horrified. What she didn’t do was ask more questions about Fats Licata the knuckle cracker.
“Hold on. I’ll go with you. Let’s take a look at the police report,” I said.
“Fifty bucks says you find Bianca Crider’s name on the interview list,” said Fats.
Stratton and Fats shook on it while Patton eyed them. The young cop didn’t say anything, but I had the distinct impression she thought Fats was right. It just wouldn’t be good to show up her boss.
I, myself, didn’t have much hope for Maggie’s file once I saw how thin it was. Dad occasionally brought home his murder books, as they were known, and I’d seen the ones Chuck worked on. They were the binders from hell. Timelines, interviews, forensics, every nitnoid scrap of anything that pertained to that particular murder. Dad didn’t pin pictures of corpses up on the wall and there certainly weren’t any 3D skeletons being projected out of nowhere. It was all in the murder book. I caught Dad weighing one once. Fifteen pounds.
Maggie didn’t have a book and her file was less than an inch. But it had been bigger. I could tell by the way the bend was folded. Much bigger. Somebody had sanitized the file. I found the initial report, interviews from people who didn’t see anything, part of the interviews with Desmond and Mary Shipley. Bianca Crider wasn’t in there, but nobody considered that a win. We didn’t have anything on the body being abused or what Des thought. There was a kind of index noting what was supposed to be in there. Whoever removed the evidence didn’t think to change that. We were supposed to have thirty-two crime scene photos and the negatives. He left us seven and they weren’t of the body. We had trees and the tire marks though. Maybe tires weren’t thought to be important. I had a hand drawn map of the
area that showed the position of the body in relation to the tire marks, road, and rocks. Tank was right on the money with his guesses. And on the pictures it had little notes. “Brush sawed down.” “Truck unloaded.”
Chief Lucas had started out doing his job, but something had changed it.
I went through the pictures and skimmed a few pointless interviews. When I turned the last page, I gasped. There it was. The autopsy report. I never in a million years expected to find it.
“Why in the hell?” Fats asked.
“Well, you said the chief was a drunk,” said Stratton. “Maybe he missed it.”
I flipped back to the index. “No, he didn’t miss it. The report came in after Father Dominic jumped off the bridge and was put in by this guy. Initials J.T.”
“Sound familiar?” Fats asked the cops.
It didn’t, of course, but who put the autopsy in didn’t really matter. That it was there and forgotten was important. Dr. Jean Albert August did the autopsy and he was thorough. The cause of death was strangulation as Sister Frances had told me, but that wasn’t the end of it. The doctor thought Maggie had been struck from behind by a narrow blunt object, possibly a crowbar, and then strangled. She had a significant skull fracture and bleeding in the brain and was unlikely to have been conscious when she was strangled. The material used in the strangulation was wide and smooth. No fibers were found on her neck and the doctor concluded a tie might’ve been used.
It was awful and it was going to get worse. The doctor found traces of two different kinds of oil, hay, and fertilizer on her coat and in her hair. Livor mortis showed she’d been lying face down in one position for approximately three hours and then she was flipped over. That’s when it got rough. Usually there was one rough outline of a body and the doctor would note injuries to the victim on it. This doctor, being who he was, did six different pages of the normal sketch.
The first one had the head injury and strangulation. The second had a set of stab wounds. The third her throat cut and wounds to the chest and stomach. The fourth I can’t even talk about. The fifth a broken arm and leg. The sixth the back was sliced open after the kidneys were stabbed.
Patton clapped her hand over her mouth and walked out. I didn’t blame her. I was a nurse and it was hard to look at. Fats didn’t blink, but her face grew harder. When I got to the fifth page, she held out her hand and I gave her her phone. She pressed a button and said, “I need Calpurnia now.” Then she left and I was glad of it. Whatever she and the mob boss were going to discuss was no business of mine.
Only Stratton stayed. She didn’t look away. She read with me. It was good to have company. I needed to hear someone breathing and feeling it the way I was.
“So that’s the abuse,” said Stratton after we’d read the coroner’s conclusions.
“He practiced on her,” I said. “Over several days and Desmond Shipley knew it.”
Patton crept into the doorway. “I’m sorry. I just couldn’t. She was a nun and…”
Stratton went over and put a motherly arm around her deputy. “I know. I know. We’re going to do right by her now.”
Patton wiped her eyes and said, “I’m not totally useless. I called the bank to save us a trip and I found out who Bianca Crider was.”
Fats walked in behind them, her face smooth and untroubled. That troubled me. What in the world had Calpurnia said?
“Who is she?” I asked Patton. “Can we interview her?”
“She’s dead now. Lung cancer like twenty years ago. But back then, she was in trust management.”
Fats and I smiled. A trust, of course.
“What was she? A vice-president?” I asked.
“A secretary actually, but I think you’ll like this. Sadie over there told me that Bianca Crider was really wealthy.”
“A secretary?” Stratton asked.
“That’s what I said,” said Patton. “My sister’s a secretary and she’s not exactly rolling in it.”
“How do you know she was wealthy?” Fats asked.
“Well, there’s these big pavilions over on the fairgrounds,” said Patton.
“The Crider Pavilions!” Stratton said.
“Sadie said Bianca Crider donated the money for them and she left a bunch of money to the Parks department and the ASPCA.”
Fats mouth twisted. “I wonder how she got that.”
“Nobody knows,” said Patton.
I closed the autopsy report and picked up Maggie’s date book.
Bianca Crider, what did you do?
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
I FINISHED PHOTOCOPYING Maggie’s sad little file and handed Stratton back the original.
“I hope I did the right thing,” she said. “This is against every regulation we have.”
“As far as I’m concerned,” I said, “you took a second look and broke the case.”
Stratton slapped the file on top of Maggie’s evidence box and looked out at the snow crusted up on the window of the St. Seb police interview room. “Nobody’s going to buy that.”
“People believe what they’re told.” Fats walked in and tossed me her phone. “I think you want to hear this.”
It was Spidermonkey and he’d done a deep dive into the companies Stott worked for. Loretta sweet-talked the secretaries and got all the tea from the last two companies. Fats nailed it. Stott had used and abused the company credit cards and trucks he used on both jobs. He charged a ridiculous amount of gas and put on hundreds of miles that he couldn’t account for. The last company fired him two months before he moved back to St. Seb and they were pissed. Like the other companies they decided taking a broke ex-con to court wasn’t worth it and they didn’t want him arrested because they looked like idiots for hiring him in the first place. They chalked it up to a lesson learned, but they called every electrician in the state and had Stott blackballed. He couldn’t get a job wiring a light switch and Loretta thought it went beyond just Tennessee. A couple of Kentucky companies called J and R Electrics to see what was up after he applied to them. They didn’t hire him either and that’s when Stott up and moved to St. Seb where he never applied for a job but did start rolling in that trust dough.
“So that solves why he moved back,” I said. “He had something on someone and needed to use it.”
Spidermonkey was quiet, not even typing.
“Hello?” I asked.
“I’m here, but I’m going to give you to Loretta.”
Loretta took the phone and said, “He’s upset.”
“I got that. Is it the autopsy? Maybe I shouldn’t have sent it.”
“No. It’s that the credit cards from the companies showed some interesting activity,” she said.
“Like what? Something other than the gas?”
“It’s where he bought it.”
“Have we got a trail to the Kansas site?” I asked.
“We do and to Florida, Mississippi, and New England.”
Stott was a busy boy.
“Did he find cases connected to the areas he visited?”
“He didn’t look. We’ll leave that to the FBI,” said Loretta.
I looked at Fats and she touched her stomach, tenderly. She did it without thinking and it was the first time I’d seen her do it. The pregnant thing. The mommy thing.
“Was it a kid?” I asked.
Loretta got a little choked up. “He got gas in St. Seb, Mercy. Every time he went to Kansas, he made a detour and went there. You were right. He didn’t come back for Maggie.”
I knew it before she said it. I probably always knew.
“The first time was in August, 1999,” she said.
“And he drove in from Kentucky,” I said.
“Yes.”
“Bertram Stott killed Janet Lee Fine.”
“We think so,” said Loretta. “A white panel van was seen in the area before she disappeared. That’s what he was driving. He filled up one town over three hours before. That night he was in St. Seb.”
“During the fai
r.”
“Yes.”
I couldn’t say anything. For a second, I was back there, digging in the dirt with images and sounds of the fair all around me.
“Are you okay? Finding that little girl must’ve been terrible,” said Loretta.
“It’s all terrible,” I said. “But maybe it will help the parents.”
“I hope so. You’ll hand this all over to those obnoxious rookies now?”
“I have one more thing,” I said.
“What’s that?”
“Can you find out who June Pierce is?”
“Oh, I’m sorry. He already did. June Pierce was the asylum secretary at one point,” said Loretta.
Spidermonkey got back on the phone and although his voice was strained he told me that June Pierce retired from her job in 1955. In 1965, when Maggie presumably met with her, she was living in a retirement home having had a series of strokes.
“She must’ve known something about the money,” I said.
“I think she gave Maggie St. Sebastian Savings and Loan,” said Spidermonkey. “Then Maggie called Bianca Crider.”
“And she called Maggie’s murderer,” I said.
“I’ll be through the bank’s firewall in a couple of hours. We’ll have the accounts,” said Spidermonkey. “Just sit tight. 44 is almost clear. I don’t want you risking yourself.”
“I have my Mauser.”
“I’m not sure that’s enough.”
“Me, either.”
Spidermonkey cleared his throat. “Mercy?”
“Uh-huh?”
“This could all have been prevented. That poor little girl. The people in Kansas. All of it back then in 1965.”
“I know.”
We hung up and I asked Stratton, “I don’t suppose you can go arrest Stott?”
“On info from a hacker? No.”
Patton slammed down her coffee mug, sloshing cold coffee all over the table. “This is fucked. We’ve got a serial killer hanging out in Shady Glen and we can’t do anything? My mother told me to get out of this weird ghost-infested town, but did I go? No, I didn’t. She should’ve made me go. Kicked my butt out like the Shipleys did Carrie.”