“I can’t answer that. We can provide you protection. I can put an officer in front of your house twenty-four/seven.”
He pauses for a moment before answering. Then, “I can’t be holed up in my house all day. Dammit, I’m not the one who is supposed to be a prisoner.”
“I’m sorry, it is what it is. Our goal is to get this behind us soon.”
“I need to think this out,” he says. “What about if I leave town?”
“What about it?”
“Do you think I’ll be safe? Damn, I don’t deserve this.”
I feel badly for him; he did the right thing, and now he’s scared to death. Which I guess is better than the other kind of death. “We can protect you,” I say. “We can have you watched.”
“You want me to be a target so you can trap Phelan,” he says, not inaccurately. “That ain’t happening, I can tell you that.”
Nate walks in while I’m nearing the end of the phone call with McKinney and hears my end of it. “I assume he’s not happy?” Nate asks after I hang up.
“You are a keen observer of the human condition. He’s scared shitless.”
He nods. “Can’t say I blame him. Not only did he betray a mass murderer, but he also turned in the guy’s daughter.”
Time to change the subject. “Here’s one of the many things that are worrying me: All along we’ve wondered how Phelan could be in hiding yet be mobile enough to be driving around and killing all these people.”
“Now we know,” Nate says. “He had Gero to help do his dirty work. And now Gero is gone.”
“Right. But what if it’s not just Gero? If Phelan could have one accomplice, why not two?”
“No reason why not,” Nate says. “But we can’t even figure out what Gero had to gain from this. Isolated killing doesn’t pay that well.”
I nod. “The only way we are going to come close to finding out any of this is by learning how Phelan was connected to Gero in the first place.”
Nate looks toward the door, so I do as well, and Jessie is standing there. “I think I’ve got your answer,” she says.
“Gero and Phelan were in the army together,” Jessie says.
“How do you know?” I ask, and I instantly regret the question when she gives me “the stare.”
“Don’t question genius,” Nate says, then to Jessie, “Forgive him; he’s young and stupid. Tell us more.”
“I don’t know much more. All I can tell you is that they were in the same place in Iraq at the same time. I can’t put them together or give you any more details; that would be part of their army records.”
I don’t say anything; I just pick up the phone and call General Thielen. He’s not available at the moment; I guess generals don’t sit by the phone waiting for state cops to call. But I tell his assistant, Lieutenant Paul Anderson, that it is urgent that he call me back.
I don’t say it’s a matter of life and death because that seems a little overdramatic, and besides, he knows I’m working on a murder investigation. “Life and death” sort of comes with the territory.
“Perhaps I can help you,” Anderson says. “What is it you need?”
“Information.”
“It would help if you could be more specific.” When I hesitate, Anderson adds, “I can assure you that if General Thielen needs information to turn over to you, he will direct me to find it. So if you tell me now, I can get a head start on it, pending his willingness to provide it.”
That makes a lot of sense to me, so I tell him what we need. I want confirmation that Gero and Phelan were actually in the same unit, and if so, firsthand information about their service and their relationship.
Lieutenant Anderson doesn’t sound as if this is too daunting an assignment, and I assume that generals have their pick of who they want to work for them. So I’ve got some confidence that Anderson is a savvy guy, and he’ll deliver. I hope it’s fast.
While we’re waiting, I ask Jessie if she has anything else to update us on. She will give us written reports, but if she has anything important, like the Gero news she’s just delivered, she’ll verbally tell us about it first.
“Not much,” she says. “You’ll be getting the reports. Most of it is background information on Helen Mizell.”
“Did she rob banks while the kids were in homeroom?”
She smiles. “Nothing that exciting; in fact, nothing at all. Her husband died eleven years ago; he was an accountant. They had two sons, both semi-estranged from their mother. They live in St. Louis; I talked to one of them. He didn’t have much to say.
“She left life insurance policies to three people; not huge, two of them were about two hundred thousand each. Those were for the sons, who even though they pretty much hated their mother, took the money. That’s why I say semi-estranged.”
“An obvious gesture of goodwill,” I say.
She nods. “Touching. The third person, who she left less to, about fifty thousand, was a woman named Marcia Carnow. Not sure of the relationship; probably a cousin, but I’ll know when we reach her, if we do. She also took the money.”
“Any reason to think Mizell slighted Phelan in any way? Or even Gero?”
“None that I can find. And no way Gero was in her class; he went to high school in Greenville, North Carolina. That’s where he grew up.”
Nate suggests we go down to the cafeteria to get a cup of coffee. He’s wanted to go down there a lot since they’ve been bringing in glazed donuts. We go along; we can talk as easily down there as here.
We no sooner get seated than the desk sergeant sends a guy down to tell me that there is a Lieutenant Anderson on the phone, waiting to talk to me. We go back upstairs, Jessie and I carrying our coffees, and Nate toting coffee and a bag of donuts.
“General Thielen has authorized my giving you the following information,” Anderson says, seeming to choose his words carefully. “Gero and Phelan were in a specialized infantry unit together in Iraq in 2005.”
“Good,” I say. “What else have you got?”
“Nothing. The record doesn’t speak to their relationship at all. But I can put you in touch with someone who should be more helpful. Major Lewis Taggart; he commanded the unit.”
“Where is he?”
“Germany.”
“That’s not terribly convenient. Can you tell me how to get in touch with him?”
“I can patch you through. He’s waiting for your call.”
“Now?”
“Awaiting your assent.”
“Lieutenant Anderson, you do nice work. Very impressive.”
“Lieutenant Brock, when I speak for a general, it has a tendency to amplify my voice. Hold on for Major Taggart.”
“Thanks for talking with me, Major Taggart.”
“General Thielen,” he says.
At first I think that he is saying that he is General Thielen, but I think he means that General Thielen’s request is the reason he’s talking. I suspect that this guy might speak a bit cryptically.
“Right. The general has been very helpful.”
“It’s eleven p.m. and I’m dining at the American embassy. Can we get on with this?”
“Of course. I’m looking for information about Daniel Phelan and William Gero. I understand you commanded their unit in Iraq.”
“Information is an expansive word.”
“Yes, it is.” I realize that since he is in Germany, Taggart might not realize what has gone on here. It’s all consuming for me, but not necessarily international news. I continue, “Phelan is a suspect in a number of murders, and Gero was an accomplice. Gero is now deceased; Phelan is at large.”
“I’m aware,” Taggart says, blowing my realization out of the water. “What kind of information do you require?”
“Do you remember them?”
“Yes.”
“Were they both in the unit at the same time?
“Yes.”
This is like pulling teeth; Taggart is acting like I’m charging him by the word
. I decide to go more open ended with the questions; he’s answering as if I’m cross-examining him.
“Major, we need to know about their service and specifically their relationship. You know what we’re up against, so literally anything you can tell us about them in those days would be helpful.”
“Fair enough,” he says. “They were quite a group; all excellent, well-trained soldiers who unfortunately did not belong in the army. They were not prepared to accept discipline to the degree required in a combat zone, or in any zone in the military.”
“What did they do that reflected their lack of discipline?”
“I suspected drug usage, which in and of itself would not have been wildly outside the norm. What got them in trouble, and ultimately led to Phelan being processed out of the military, was the after-hours difficulty that seemed to find them. Constant assaults, bar fights, that kind of thing.”
“Can you describe the circumstances leading to Phelan being discharged?”
“Not really. He had left the unit by then.”
That surprises me. “Why did he leave the unit?”
“What often happens is that soldiers within a unit like ours have specialties: medical, artillery, munitions, and so on. Phelan’s specialty was munitions, as I recall. So if one unit is in need of a specialist, if they have a shortage in that discipline, they can engineer a trade with another unit that has a different need to be filled, provided that unit would not be rendered deficient in the specialty they are giving up.”
“Do you throw in draft choices?”
“I assume that is an unsuccessful attempt at humor? It’s late and I am needed elsewhere, Lieutenant.”
“Sorry. So Phelan left in a trade?”
“Yes, and he subsequently left the army.”
“And once he was traded out, he would no longer have been in close proximity to Gero?”
“That is almost certainly true, though my memory does not include that. I really had no interest in following Phelan’s career.”
I’m about to get off the call when something he said earlier takes center stage in my mind. “Major, when we started talking about this, you said that ‘they were quite a group.’”
“And?”
“And by group, did you mean the unit itself, or Phelan and Gero? Groups usually have more than two people.”
“Yes, they do. I could have said ‘trio’; they were a tight-knit, undisciplined group of three.”
“Phelan, Gero, and who else?”
“I believe his name was Scanlon. Yes, Scanlon … Rodney Scanlon. Are we done here, Lieutenant?”
“We are done.” I thank the major and send him back to his dinner; I hope his tablemates appreciate his witty repartee. Then I call back to General Thielen’s office to speak with Lieutenant Anderson, who I now consider my military information genie.
I tell him about Scanlon and request any information he can provide, especially any contact information the army may ever have had. He promises to get back to me, and I know he will. Genies are very reliable that way.
I finally get off the phone and turn to Jessie and Nate. They’ve heard my end of the conversations, so it isn’t necessary to say it, but I do anyway.
“There’s a chance we’ve found our number three.”
Roderick, not Rodney, Scanlon was born and raised in Fort Smith, Arkansas.
He managed to graduate high school, though his army proficiency reports make it clear that he wasn’t exactly a Mensa candidate. He worked in and around Fort Smith for a few years, not doing anything noteworthy, before enlisting.
He seemed to have found himself in the army and, as Major Taggart indicated, he was a talented soldier. He re-upped for three separate tours to Iraq, and it was during the third one that he started to get into trouble with his pair of stablemates, Phelan and Gero. His record includes a number of disciplinary actions for after-hours wrongdoing, mostly bar fights and minor assault charges.
Scanlon left the service almost a year after Phelan transferred out of that unit. He came to the New York/New Jersey area, and we have a residence on file for him on Long Island. The reason that is part of his record is that he went to the local VA hospital for a knee injury suffered in Iraq. That may well be why he went to Long Island in the first place; there’s no way for us to know.
All of this information is provided by Lieutenant Anderson. We put Jessie and her team on the case, and they quickly learn that Scanlon no longer lives at the address on Long Island. In fact, that address doesn’t exist anymore; it was knocked down to make room for a mall.
Jessie is not worried; she has all of Scanlon’s relevant information, including his Social Security number. “If he’s on the planet, we’ll find him,” she says. An hour later she comes back and adds, “He’s not just on the planet; he’s in New Jersey.”
Scanlon’s last known address is a garden apartment in Lodi. It’s a complex of at least forty furnished apartments, and the address we have for his is near the back. That’s good, because we’re starting off by talking to the manager, and his office is in the front.
Nate waits outside while I go in by myself. There is a small sign outside the manager’s unit, which seems to be just another garden apartment, that identifies him as Jonathan Wynn. So when I knock on the already open door to the office, I say, “Mr. Wynn?”
“Yeah? You looking to rent?”
Apparently, this complex is not quite full. “Actually, I’m just looking for a friend.”
“So join Facebook.”
“His name is Rod Scanlon.”
He almost does a double take on hearing this. “You think you want to find him? Take a number, pal. Your friend is an asshole.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because he stuck me with a month’s rent and took off. So unless you’re going to make good on it, you can take off too.”
Mr. Wynn seems like someone who it’s easy to quickly grow tired of. “I don’t think this is going to work that way,” I say. I go back to the open door and signal for Nate to come in, and then turn back to Wynn. I take out my badge, show it to him, and say, “Let’s talk some more about my friend, while my other friend comes in.”
“Well, what the hell do you know? He’s wanted by the cops? That’s a real shocker. What did the prick do?”
“The way this will work, Mr. Wynn, is that we will ask the questions. You can handle the answering part of the conversation. That way everyone has a lane to stay in.”
“And what if I don’t want to?”
“Then we’ll assume it’s the environment that is causing the problem, and we’ll reconvene down at the station. In fact, we can all drive down there together. We’ll be in the front of the car, and you’ll be in the back wearing handcuffs.”
“You going to arrest me if I refuse?”
I turn to Nate, and he shrugs and says, “Works for me; I’ll get the cuffs out of the car.”
Wynn is indignant. “On what charge?”
“Suspicion of being a pain in the ass. Even though you’re clearly guilty, you’ll probably beat it, but my guess is it will take thirty-six hours, during which time you will be behind bars. That can feel much longer than it actually is, but you can spend the time telling your cellmates how tough you are.”
“You guys are unbelievable,” he says. “This used to be goddamn America. What do you want to know?”
“Everything you know about Rod Scanlon.”
It turns out that he doesn’t know that much, or at least that’s what he claims. I tend to believe him, since he probably has forty or fifty tenants, and there is no reason to think he has gotten close to them. Wynn does not seem like that friendly a guy.
According to Wynn, Scanlon came and rented the place about two and a half months ago. “I remember when I showed it to him, it was like he didn’t care what it looked like. He was like, ‘whatever, I’ll take it.’”
“Did you see much of him after that?” Nate asks. “Ever see him with any friends?”
“What am I running a social club?” he asks, but when Nate gives him his “I’m going to crush you like a bug” stare, he adds, “I don’t notice stuff like that; I give people their privacy. But Scanlon’s apartment was near the back, so he wouldn’t have come through this entrance. No reason I would see him.” He thinks a moment and adds, “He wanted the apartment back there; we’ve got plenty of them all over. But he wanted that one.”
“So he left without paying his rent?”
Wynn nods. “Five weeks.”
“You know what kind of car he drove?”
We catch a break in that tenants have to provide Wynn with the make and model of their car, plus the license-plate number. That’s how they get a parking space on the premises and don’t get towed. He gives us the information; it’s a 2014 Kia Optima, metallic green.
Wynn says that Scanlon’s apartment has remained empty since he left; there are other vacancies in the complex as well, and they have been empty longer than this one. For that reason he hasn’t shown it to anyone yet, and, in fact, hasn’t even had it cleaned or done any painting or repairs that might be necessary.
Wynn agrees to show us the apartment; he’s more cooperative now. I think he’s more afraid of Nate than spending a weekend in jail. I can’t say I blame him.
The apartment is bland and depressing, furnished with the kind of stuff you’d find in the cheapest of chain hotels. It’s also empty except for those furnishings; there is nothing left of Scanlon’s things that I can see.
“We’re going to be sending a few cops here to guard this room until our forensic people have a chance to go over it,” I say. “I assume that won’t be a problem?”
“You going to pay me rent?” Wynn asks.
“No. We’re going to rely on you being a civic-minded citizen.”
Rod Scanlon expected the next four days to be the longest of his life.
He had spent the last two weeks holed up in a dump of a hotel room, completely cut off and only getting his news from television. The garden apartment he had left was the Ritz-Carlton compared to this place.
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