Small Time Crime (Mercy Watts Mysteries Book 10)

by A W Hartoin

  His father didn’t go with him. He leaned on a wall looking down at the pool of water forming beneath his feet.

  “She needs a vet,” said Fats with Moe nestled in her arm.

  Patton, whose father was a vet, took over with Moe, checking her and deciding she needed emergency care. Stratton decided not to arrest Fats for shooting Robbie and let her go to the vet with Patton. Mosbach went up to announce that the bomber was caught and the tournament could go on as planned. As if there was any doubt that it would. St. Sebastian was nothing if not single minded.

  “Are you going to arrest me?” Robert Junior asked.

  “What for?” Sister Emily asked. “You tried to stop him.”

  He looked at me and I wasn’t sure what to say. It was wrong, years and years of wrong, but was it criminal? That I wasn’t sure about.

  Mosbach came back down with an evidence bag and a box of tissues and said, “The FBI are almost here and one named Gansa said to tell you that your boyfriend is with them and he is pissed.”

  “Swell.”

  Mosbach opened the evidence bag and I dropped the yearbook in. “Your son knew about Bertram Stott and your father? Did you tell him?”

  Robert Junior raised his head. “God, no. Sorry, Sister Em.”

  “That’s alright,” she said, looking almost demure in her bewilderment. “I don’t understand about this yearbook situation. 1965? Why that year? How did Robbie know it was important?”

  I took the tissues and started mopping up my face. “He said Zoe told him. I think he must mean Carrie’s granddaughter Zoe. She said a bunch of high school students were at her house for the snow day and they were all excited about me being here, Stott, and the murder.”

  Robert Junior nodded. “He and Zoe have been friends forever.” He hung his head and his voice got tight and throaty. “I didn’t know he knew. I tried so hard to keep it from him, from everyone, but I should’ve known the minute Stott came back, it was over.”

  “This is about Sister Margaret?” asked Sister Em. “But that was so long ago.”

  A flame started inside me and I clenched my one working fist. “You think it went away just because you and the church decided to forget her?”

  The nun’s face flushed. “I didn’t forget her. I pray for her soul every day.”

  “Well, it’s not enough,” I spat at her and turned to look at Robert Junior. “You knew what happened to Sister Maggie and you knew what happened after, didn’t you?” Blood was spraying from my mouth and nose, but I didn’t care. “People died because you didn’t say anything. Tank’s in the hospital because you had to keep your family secret.”

  Robert Junior’s mouth trembled, but he didn’t speak. The secrets started before he was born. He inherited the horror, but he didn’t have to go along. He didn’t have to keep it going.

  “I don’t understand,” said Sister Em. “Obviously, Robert Junior wasn’t here when she was murdered.”

  “His father was,” I said. “Isn’t that what we’ll find in the file room? Bertram Stott was in school on the day Maggie was murdered. Your father wasn’t.”

  Sister Em scoffed. “Don’t be ridiculous. Robert Snider was a Snider. His family is a fine upstanding family. He wouldn’t have killed anyone. He was practically a child.”

  “A high school senior is hardly a child,” I said, “but he was just as scared as Robbie, wasn’t he?”

  “Scared of what?” She looked at Robert Junior and he raised his eyes to meet hers, guilt written all over him. Then he slid down the wall, all the strength gone out of his legs. “I can’t believe it’s finally over.”

  Stratton clicked her walkie and asked the voice on the other end for an ETA on the FBI. They were almost there and she surprised me by telling her deputies and the fire department to hold them back for a few. “I want to hear this and not second hand or on the news.”

  Robert Junior swallowed and he did as promised, he told me everything. Me, not Stratton or the nuns or Mosbach. It seemed important that he talk to me. Maybe because I was covered in blood from his son’s attack or because I was an outsider, I don’t know, but Robert Junior confessed to his family’s crimes and I swear he lost twenty pounds in the process.

  Irene was right. The Snider family crimes went all the way back to Decatur. Daniel Snider did rob that bank and used the money to buy up properties during the Great Depression. It’s easy when you have stolen money and zero compassion. Daniel used his so-called windfall to good advantage, but he had a family of spenders and layabouts. The properties had to be sold one by one since they always exceeded their income. By the late fifties, the Snider’s were down to a farm and the land Maggie’s body was found on. They couldn’t find a buyer, so Davis Snider, Robert Junior’s grandfather, had to find an alternative income, other than, you know, working for it.

  His wife, Helen, was very active in church affairs and she was invited to join the asylum’s council in 1950, but she always used her maiden name in business matters, Helen Smith, which was why we didn’t connect her.

  Robert Junior didn’t know how it happened or why, but his grandfather Davis started serving on the council instead and he was the one who decided to syphon money into the trust fund at St. Sebastian Savings and Loan.

  “How did you find out?” I asked. “Did your dad actually tell you his father stole money from the asylum?”

  Robert Junior took a deep breath and shook his head. “No. I don’t think they ever would’ve told me anything, but my father got killed and I got curious.”

  “Curious?” Stratton asked.

  The Snider family was a close one and hunting together was something they always did, but in the fall of 1999, something changed. Robert Junior came home from law school for the annual turkey hunt, but everyone was surprised that he showed up, since he hadn’t been specifically invited, and they weren’t happy about it. His father was strung out on painkillers. His mother was hysterical and his grandparents silent and dark. Most importantly, nobody else his age was there. Siblings, cousins, no one else showed. The next morning when they would normally have gone out for the hunt, Robert Junior was told in no uncertain terms that he was to go back to school. His grandfather put him in his car and watched him drive away from his rocker on the porch.

  Since everyone was acting so odd, Robert Junior didn’t go. He drove down the block and waited to see what would happen.

  He watched his mother drive away crying and a few minutes later the rest of the family, his grandmother and uncles, drove by with his father in their trucks. Everyone but his grandfather, who never hunted because he’d lost a leg in the war. The rough terrain was impossible for him.

  Robert Junior didn’t know what was going on, but he did suspect his parents were finally getting a divorce. His father had been a mess for years and his mother was miserable.

  He didn’t want to leave, but, since no one wanted him there, he did go back to school. Not long after he got to his apartment, his grandfather called to say his father had been shot accidentally and he was dead. Robert Junior drove back to St. Seb and was ordered to hunt down his mother who had gone to a bar, where she’d drunk herself into a stupor. Her son had to scrape her off the floor, literally.

  It was Joan Snider, his mother, who let it slip while she was drunk out of her mind. The family had killed Robert because he had to be punished. Robert Junior searched his father’s belongings when no one was watching and he found a nun’s veil and letters quietly threatening to expose the Snider family’s crimes. He confronted his grandparents and Helen admitted to shooting her own son and dared her grandson to turn her in. She told him that Robert had murdered a nun because she found out that his father had been stealing from the church. She didn’t say orphans or the mentally ill, but Robert Junior figured that out on his own.

  “But why kill him then?” Stratton asked. “It’d been a long time.”

  “Because he helped Stott bury Janet Lee Fine’s body,” I said.

  Robert Junior nodded.
“But I didn’t know that then. All they would say was that my father was a murderer and they found out. It was a kindness to kill him and not put him in jail.”

  “When did you find out about Janet Lee Fine?” I asked.

  “Stott showed up at my office out of the blue. I didn’t know who he was. Nobody said there was someone else involved in the murder. My mother never spoke to me about it again and she died a few years later. Overdose. My grandparents were gone and when I asked my uncles about it once, they threatened to take me hunting.”

  An involuntary shiver went down my back. What a family.

  “Why did you believe him?” Stratton asked.

  “I didn’t at first, but he had evidence.” Robert Junior swallowed hard. “Pictures of the body. Of my father moving the body.”

  “Janet Lee Fine’s body?” Stratton asked.

  “No, I mean, yes. He showed me pictures of the nun first. He said he wanted money, enough to live on the rest of his life. I didn’t have that and even if I did, my wife handles our finances. She was going to notice thousands going missing. But then he threatened her and my kids. He told me about the little girl. He said, ‘If she can go missing, so can your boy.’ That’s when he showed me the other pictures. It seemed like they were real, but he didn’t give me a name. I didn’t know who she was.”

  “Your father was in the pictures?” Sister Em asked in a choked voice.

  Robert Junior wiped his eyes. “He was.”

  “What was in the pictures?” I asked.

  He described a white panel van with the back doors open, his father reaching in toward a small figure, partially nude. There was a pink bicycle next to the body. His father looked drunk, which he often was, and he had a bruised face.

  “So you sold the land and gave him the money?” Sister Em said.

  “I did. I had to. He was serious. He would hurt my wife and my kids. I sold the land and told my wife that I put it in trust for the kids.”

  “You never thought about going to the cops?” I asked. “You could’ve had Stott arrested. You had evidence.”

  He wiped his eyes again. “No, I didn’t. I’d burned the veil and letters. I didn’t want anyone to know what my dad did. Sure he was an asshole and a loser, but a nun killer, how could I ever have a life with that hanging over my head?”

  “What about her family?” Sister Em asked.

  “They thought that priest did it. It was solved.” He paused and then said, “Sometimes I thought I dreamt it all up. That it was all a nightmare. Grandma didn’t kill Dad. Dad didn’t kill a nun. That little girl. None of it happened.”

  Sister Em took his hand. “It was easier that way.”

  “Nothing was easy. I’m just as much an asshole as my old man. I drink. I’m a nasty bastard to my only son and he’s trying to blow people up to protect me. I don’t deserve protection. Someone should take me hunting.”

  “How did he find out?” Stratton asked.

  Robert Junior rubbed his eyes. “I don’t know. I didn’t tell him. My wife doesn’t even know. There’s nothing in our house to find.”

  “Where’d he get the grenades?”

  “That’s easy. My grandpa brought them back from WWII. My uncle had them out at his cabin. It was always the family joke that someday we’d throw them at our enemies.”

  “Hilarious,” said Stratton.

  “I didn’t think it would happen,” he said, “and they’re so old. I thought they must go bad at some point.”

  “I guess that’s it.” Stratton clicked her walkie. “They here?”

  The voice answered that the FBI and a very pissed off St. Louis police detective were in the principal’s office.

  “Tell ‘em we’re on our way.” Stratton took Robert Junior’s arm. “I think I should arrest you, but I’m not sure what for.”

  “Hold on,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Where did your grandfather serve in WWII? The Pacific with Chief Woody Lucas and Barney Scheer?”

  Robert Junior’s eyes widened. “How did you know?”

  “They covered up for your father or, at least, looked the other way.”

  “I always wondered how no one ever found out, but that makes sense,” he said.

  “Does it?” I asked.

  “Those two were in my grandfather’s brother’s platoon during the war. He didn’t come back.”

  “So they were close? Woody, Barney, and your grandfather, I mean?”

  He shrugged. “I have no idea.”

  “Any pictures of them together? Woody and Desmond Shipley were tight until Maggie’s murder. There are all kinds of pictures of them together.”

  “I don’t remember any, but I wasn’t looking. My grandfather never talked about it, except to yell about the Japanese every once in a while. He thought buying a Japanese car was the act of a traitor.”

  I pulled out Fats’ phone, but it was waterlogged. Spidermonkey would have to wait. “Robert, how did you get down here?” I asked.

  “Through that door there’s an emergency exit,” he said, pointing down the hall. “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to see a man about a murder.”

  “What about the pissed off boyfriend?” Stratton asked.

  “Let me worry about him,” I said. “One last thing, does the name Kenneth Young mean anything to you?”

  “Who?” he asked.

  “That’s what I thought.” I turned to Clarence. “How did you get here?”

  “I took an Uber,” she said. “Irene taught me how. My kids will be so impressed.”

  Robert Junior frowned. “Have you been cloistered?”

  “In a way.” Clarence smiled and gave him a hug. “I will pray for you and your son.”

  That brought fresh tears to his eyes. “Thank you, Sister. I need all the help I can get.”

  “Where to next?” Clarence asked. “Sister Frances is very impressed with your progress.”

  “I’m going to give a serial killer what he wants,” I said.

  Stratton got stiff. “You’re going to see Stott? That’s not a good idea.”

  I smiled. “Not good ideas are my favorite kind.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  WE DIDN’T TAKE an Uber. Deputy Mosbach snuck us out the back exit and drove us in his squad car after a quick stop at Fats’ truck for supplies. Getting out was easier than it should’ve been. I was a soaking wet and bloody marshmallow Peep, tromping through knee-high snow with a nun and a cop, but nobody looked twice.

  To be fair, Robbie was being loaded into an ambulance, wailing for his father, and Robert Junior walked out before us. He apologized to everyone in sight. I don’t know if it was simply the spirit of St. Sebastian or the fact that nobody but Robbie got hurt, but forgiveness was in the air. Whether the promises for prayer and help would materialize after they found out the rest was an open question, but I was betting they would. Robert Junior hadn’t done the right thing. He hid what should never have been hidden, but it wasn’t hard for me to put myself in his place. I was the age he was when he found out what his family had done. A murderer father in turn murdered by his grandmother and a couple of uncles who would cheerfully do the same to him. What would I have done? I wish I could say I knew for certain that I’d do the right thing, but I’d be lying. And once you start keeping secrets, more secrets come your way and they never die. I wished Robert Junior had done the right thing in the fall of 1999 and taken so much pain away from Maggie’s family, Millicent and Myrtle, not to mention Aunt Miriam, but he didn’t and it was up to them to forgive if they could.

  “Do you see your boyfriend?” Mosbach asked as he put me in the back of his squad car.

  I squinted at the crowd and the steps up to the front doors of the high school. Gordon and Gansa were there, trying and failing not to look like they just won the lottery. A bunch of other agents were working on the impact area outside the principal’s office and still more were arguing with what I assumed were basketball coaches. T
hey tried to put up crime scene tape and the coaches kept tearing it down and yelling the way only irate coaches can. The show aka the tournament would go on.

  “He’s probably in the basement looking for me,” I said. “Better get while the getting is good.”

  “Do you really want to see Stott?” Clarence asked as she tucked an emergency warming blanket around me. “I think you should go to the hospital.”

  “I should, but I won’t.”

  Mosbach drove slowly out of the parking lot weaving between busses, cars, and FBI vans with no lights on. I thought that looked pretty suspicious, but we got away clean and were driving back into town through increasing snow.

  We drove down Fifth Street and slid to a halt at an intersection with a cop directing traffic.

  “Mercy?” Clarence whispered.

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you see that?”

  “Definitely.”

  Mosbach smiled at me in the rearview. “It happens.”

  “Should we be scared?” Clarence said, wringing her hands.

  The deputy patted her on the shoulder. “No, Sister. He’s just helping out.”

  The shadowy figure dressed in a cop’s uniform that looked to be from the 1930s waved us through the intersection. I took a breath and then leaned over to peer out at him. It was the weirdest thing. He was there, well-defined and semi-solid, but I could also see through him as we drove past. The officer glanced down at me and touched the tip of his phantom hat and then went back to waving the traffic through.

  “Who is he?” squeaked Clarence.

  “Thomas B. Thompson,” said Mosbach. “He was killed in a collision during a thunderstorm in 1936 and he’s been directing traffic when there’s bad weather or an accident ever since.”

  It took me a second to find my voice. Being seen and acknowledged by a ghost is unsettling to the extreme. If I’d had something in my stomach, I would’ve thrown it up. “How is he not all over TV?”