by Jean Rabe
She skimmed the next sheet and whistled. “Thirty-two years old. Four years Navy. Top of his class in the police academy. Four and a half years as a patrolman. Five years as a detective, one with Major Accident Investigation Section, four with Gang and Narcotics.”
“Hence the drug experience you asked for,” Oren put in.
“Commendations. Decorations. Why the hell would this man want to come here? Gotta be something off. He’s gotta be in trouble, dodging discipline, or—”
“Next page. I emailed him one question—why Spencer County? While I waited for his answer, which he sent over lunch, I called his captain and had some of his records faxed. Clean background. No complaints. He’s headed toward a promotion, in fact. The captain doesn’t want him to go, but knows he’s looking. Anyway, next page. That’s the answer he sent. He’s not dodging discipline. But he’s clearly dodging something.”
Piper read the email reply.
Chief Deputy Oren Rosenberg:
You ask why I’m interested in the Spencer County Sheriff Detective opening. I have three reasons—
•Esme Meredith, my wife.
•Shaya Meredith, my five-year-old daughter.
•Jelani Meredith, my three-year-old son.
I googled Spencer County after I saw the advertisement. Small. Rural. Comfortable driving distance to some bigger cities for weekend getaways. My wife enjoys weekend getaways. You have a town named Santa Claus. My kids would like that. You don’t have as much snow or as many days below 0. I would appreciate that. You have a few murders. But you didn’t have 762 homicides in 2016—more than LA and NYC combined. You didn’t have pregnant mothers and their toddlers killed by stray bullets in gang fights. You didn’t have 4,368 shooting victims. You don’t have a flood of illegal guns…our department confiscated well more than 8,000 illegal guns last year.
My work here is exciting and interesting. There is never a dull day. Chicago has wonderful museums, professional football, hockey, basketball, and baseball teams. But you have a waterpark, and the Evansville Otters minor league team is only an hour away. My wife’s parents live in Nashville. You’re closer to Nashville than Chicago is. Most important, you have playgrounds where Shaya and Jelani will be safe, schools they can walk to without fear of stray bullets.
I would prefer to provide a two-week notice.
I look forward to hearing from you,
Basil Meredith
Piper quickly glanced again at the other two Oren had selected. Her chief deputy—with his decades of experience—knew better the type of qualifications needed for a detective position. He’d weakly protested her promoting JJ—and he’d been right, though she wouldn’t admit it. That decision had caused a lot of hard feelings among the others in-house who’d also applied. And there were already too many hard feelings because the deputies were working for her—someone who’d won the sheriff’s badge without previously spending a single day in the department.
Piper’d also had the notion to look through all the emailed detective applications, just to see if her tastes matched her chief deputy’s. But she pushed that idea away. Oren had three solid candidates, Meredith standing out. She was going to lean on Oren for this posting, and wished she would have for the open deputy slot.
“Basil. Good name for a detective,” Oren mused.
“Huh?”
“Basil. Basil Rathbone. Basil Meredith.”
Piper rubbed her chin. “Who’s Basil Rathbone?”
“Gornisht helfn,” Oren whispered. “Basil Rathbone played Sherlock Holmes.”
“Never heard of him. Jonny Lee Miller, Benedict Cumberbatch. I’ve watched them play Sherlock. Never heard—”
“Before your time,” Oren growled softly. “Late thirties, into the forties. Black and white.”
“Basil Rathbone, huh. Isn’t that before your time, too?”
“Reruns. Forever in reruns. Sorry I mentioned it.”
“I’ll keep the ad up for another few days. Just in case,” she said. “But email Basil Meredith and see how soon he can come down for a face-to-face. Chicago’s a drive, but doable. We wouldn’t have to fly him.” Besides, she thought, if they flew him to Indianapolis or Evansville and had him rent a car to drive here it wouldn’t cut down much on his travel time. “Six-hour drive, thereabout. Tell him we’ll put him up in a hotel for a night.” She unsuccessfully forced down the grin. “He could be good here.”
“He could be bored here,” Oren returned, standing and stepping to the doorway. “But, yeah, he could be very good.”
“Basil and Kevan, we’ll bring in, and we’ll do Jefferson with a video conference.” Piper returned to pawing through the files, pulling a few folders out for more scrutiny, until Sylvia D called with the next interview.
This one took a half hour and made Piper’s heart sink. She wanted another woman in the department, but this one had eight years of deputy experience with four different Indiana counties. This candidate could well be a “gypsy cop,” switching places either because she was an oddball not fitting in or she was close to being fired each time and jumped before that could happen. Piper preferred someone without such itchy feet, someone to keep around for a while. But she’d brought her in because she met all the requirements. The sinker was when Piper had asked her why she moved around so much.
The woman replied, “I’m just looking for a good place to settle, I guess. That might be here. Right now that certainly isn’t Lagrange County. We’re a little bigger than Spencer, and a whole lot dumber. Almost forty percent of the adult population lacks a high school diploma. I need to be around smarter people.”
Piper wished her well in her search.
Amelia Isaakovitch—Piper had saved what she’d hoped to be the best for last, wanting to end the day on an up note. Amelia was graduating from a university this weekend, had certificates of completed firearms training in basic and advanced handgun, point shooting, and rifle/carbine, and she looked physically fit.
“I intend to pursue a doctorate degree in criminal law,” Amelia said. “I’ll do that online in my spare time. Through Concord or Keiser. It’ll take me a while. I don’t know if I’ll ever actually be an attorney, but I want the degree and the option. I know that I need to do this, law enforcement. A deputy position here? Pretty much perfect for me.”
“Because—” Piper prompted.
“Because my grandfather helped me with college, taught me to love the law. He’s why I don’t have any college loans. Pops helped me with everything. I’d like to start paying him back. And I’d like to live in the area. I’ve found an old house to rent here in Rockport.” She laughed. Piper thought her voice sounded like crystal clinking. “Provided they get the electricity and plumbing working.”
“So your grandfather—”
Amelia nodded. “Yes. My grandfather is your chief deputy. And, I didn’t tell him that I applied.” She sucked in her lower lip.
“Complicates things,” Piper said, “relatives in the same department.” But she knew law enforcement—being a cop or sheriff’s deputy—ran in families. Blue in the blood, some called it. She knew Oren’s father had been a deputy here and later was with the Owensboro police. Her own grandfather had been with the state police, and her father had been a fixture in this department. Piper came from very blue blood.
Piper hadn’t thought that she’d offer anyone the job right on the spot, but she wanted this young woman, suspected she’d make a fine deputy.
“I can work the schedule so you wouldn’t be on the same shift.” Piper noticed Amelia scoot forward in the chair. “You graduate Saturday, right?”
“Yes.”
“I’d like you to start a week from Monday. Can you do that?”
“Yes!”
Piper stood and extended a hand. “Welcome to the Spencer County Sheriff’s Department, Amelia. See Teegan at the desk. She’ll give you some papers to fill out, work out sizes and get uniforms ordered. They should be in by the time you start.”
“Than
ks, Sheriff.” Amelia returned the handshake. “I go by Millie.”
Stefan Sampson. If Piper did get that other opening she and Oren had mused about, she’d call him back in and have him fill out paperwork, too. Or maybe he might be the ticket to adding an extra deputy slot. Her department was understaffed given the size of the county, and Piper’d put in a request for added funding for another deputy. Maybe she could play politics with Commissioner Sampson, the nephew a pawn on the board that would let them both get something they wanted.
Oren had left her a note on Teegan’s desk, said he didn’t want to interrupt her interviews. Piper figured he certainly would have interrupted if he’d known Amelia was here. “Basil Meredith is available to come in Monday. Going to Owensboro to visit my dad. If you need me, call the cell. Oren.”
“Monday. Teegan, call this Basil Meredith and tell him Monday is good with us. Morning if he drives down Sunday, say nine or ten, his choice, and I’ll slot an hour.”
“You heading home, Sheriff?” Teegan asked. “You’ve been working some long hours.”
“Soon,” Piper returned. “A few things to go through first.”
“Like finding a replacement for Drew? Do you need to talk about it? Firing him?”
“No. I’m good.” Piper had wondered when Teegan would bring that up. The Goth woman was friends with Drew Farrar. No doubt he’d called her and vented. “I’ve already posted the vacancy. We have Sylvia D until it fills. You interested in moving up to first shift?”
Teegan shook her head. “I’m married to the middle shift, Sheriff. Do not, do not, do not move me.”
Piper nodded. “Just checking.”
“Uh, Sheriff—” Teegan’s face pulled together curiously. “I’m worried about him. Is Drew going to, I dunno, be all right?”
“I hope so.” Piper retreated into her office and picked up the 1985 folder that had been misfiled. Eight separate incident reports were inside, dates ranging from May to October of that year, all on the same stretch of road in Fulda. Three mailboxes torn off their bases in the first report, the investigating deputy believing a baseball bat was involved as the posts remained undamaged, and the boxes had big dents in them. Mail scattered in the ditch. Apparently that had been a pastime of bored youths, the recording deputy had noted—counting coup on mailboxes. Another report indicated a mailbox had been blasted by a shotgun, the package inside ruined. A third report had more mailboxes knocked off their posts. The fourth, another shotgun blast. The other reports were similar. The last sheet in the file listed the names of teenage boys that had been brought in for questioning, as the two deputies who investigated the claims were convinced it was young people joyriding, rolling down a car window and seeing how many mailboxes they could destroy. A barely legible note mentioned mailboxes damaged along the same road the previous year. There was no pattern to the day of the week, time of the month, morning, night, middle of the afternoon. The incidents were seemingly random. No witnesses, no confessions—no arrests were made.
On a hunch, Piper went to the records room and pulled out an old county directory, thumbed through the residential listings for Fulda and found Gretchen Brown’s name. The woman lived in Gentryville now. But in the early to mid-1980s she had a Fulda address.
“Really? The Mailbox Mauler’s been pulling this shit for thirty years?” Just how far back did the woman’s nefarious exploits run? Piper brought the directory back to her office, dropped it on the middle of her desk, and growled. The misfiled folder contained a cold case—eight cases, actually, and in a dozen minutes she’d managed to solve them. At least the “who” behind them. Gretchen apparently had graduated from baseball bats and a shotgun to using her car. An old woman, maybe she didn’t have the strength to heft a baseball bat or shotgun anymore. To get to the “why” of it, Piper would send JJ out in the morning to talk to Gretchen, who’d been released yesterday right after posting bail. Gretchen needed some serious help, and maybe JJ could track down a relative and make that happen. She’d also have JJ search the computer files for additional unsolved mailbox maulings. If her detective was leaving for those greener pastures of North Carolina, let her deal with the rural pastures of Spencer County for the next day or two.
Pull JJ off the bones and leave that case to her and Oren.
Piper did a quick look through law files in her laptop. The statute of limitations was two years for the Criminal Mischief Gretchen had practiced in 1985. Apparently mailboxes were not worth enough to warrant longer attention. And that two-year deadline applied to when a prosecutor filed the charges in a case. But if Gretchen had bashed more boxes in the past two years that she hadn’t been charged with, they might be able to find some things to stick within the boundaries of the statute. And each offense could technically be a separate count, an individual case. The whole notion of a woman with a history of destroying other people’s property had thoroughly pissed Piper off.
She didn’t care that Gretchen was now into her eighties. Age was no excuse for rotten behavior, especially since it had apparently been going on for decades.
Piper glanced at the clock—5:25. “I’m heading out,” she told Teegan, as she grabbed another sixty-year-old file box and started walking to the garage. The mechanic said if the Ford’s repairs weren’t finished, he’d have a loaner ready. She figured walking the dozen or so blocks to the garage would justify dinner and dessert tomorrow with Nang. And it might help her burn off some of the ire Gretchen had stoked.
The sheriff’s department sat near the downtown, but there wasn’t much operating along the main street that stretched away from it and into what amounted to the business district. She passed the courthouse, a few taverns, Harlan Cook’s law office, and an antique shop that opened when the aging owner had the whim. She paused and looked in the window, seeing a vintage China doll at the forefront, seated with legs splayed and petticoat showing at the bottom of a sun-faded red dress. Gray velvet shoes had probably once been black. There were faint spider web cracks on the beautiful angelic face, and the hair was a long side-braid that looked perfect, tied with a faded red ribbon. The childhood treasure should be on a shelf, she thought, back where the sunlight couldn’t reach it and suck out the rest of the color that remained. Rising behind it was an off-white dress from the 1920s, trimmed with fringe and lace, and rich with beads along the neck and the shoulders. It was pretty, and maybe had been a pastel shade that had been leeched because of its prominent spot in the window.
Other items on display, all faded and thereby looking older than they likely were, included a rack of Matchbox cars, a tricycle made mostly of wood that perhaps should be in a museum, a stack of books that by their angle she couldn’t read the titles of, and a massive vase made of carnival glass. The display hadn’t changed since Piper had window shopped when she moved back to town a little more than a year ago. Maybe she’d call the owner, see when the place would be open, and actually take a look inside. Would there be something from the years the unknown boy had lived? Something that might give her clues to a boy’s life that many decades past?
Had he been playing sheriff?
A car reflected in the window and she whirled in time to see a silvery-gray Honda or something similar directly across the street. It had been parked and now pulled away too quickly for her to get a look at the driver, the windows being tinted. The rear panels and trunk were coated with dirt, like the car had been mudding, the license plate so obscured she couldn’t even tell the state.
Coincidence?
She couldn’t do a search on it because she couldn’t read the license plate and wasn’t sure of the make or model.
Was it the same car she’d spotted from her apartment window last night?
Had the driver rammed the brick into her Ford’s hood?
Was someone really watching her?
BACK OFF AND KEEP BREATHING.
Coincidence?
Or was she letting Mark the Shark’s paranoia burrow deeply into her brain?
15
/> Fifteen
Thursday, May 3rd
Piper had found three “open” cases in the file box she’d taken home yesterday. One, the robbery of a liquor store in 1962—a quick search showed the store had closed a decade later, and the woman who’d owned it died in a nursing home in 2012 at the age of one hundred. The second, from 1963, reported that three cows were shot dead at a farm outside of Dale. The third was from the same year. Bertram Thresher—a look at the records revealed that was Mark the Shark’s father—had reported a break-in at his house. He’d stated that nothing appeared to have been stolen, but furniture had been subtly rearranged in every room. The report included a separate written statement from Thresher.
“The changes were small. An armchair turned near the window, and the lamp moved by a few inches. When I cast an eyeball around in the bedroom I saw that my sweet Mae’s toilet water bottles had been repositioned. In the kitchen, a plate was in the wrong cabinet. A no-good greaser or a fream, for certain. I don’t have no smog in my noggin. Someone’s been in my house playing games.”
The deputy who’d filed the case noted that he’d checked with the neighbors, and none of them had evidence of a break-in. It said he would investigate further, but there were no additional notes.
Suspicion ran thick with the Threshers, Piper mused.
She marked the cases “closed-unsolved,” and knew that there wouldn’t be—and didn’t need to be—a resolution to them. The skeleton from the bluff? That absolutely had to be resolved. She’d been having trouble sleeping because of it. And there’d been no overnight messages from Kentucky or Arizona. Nada. Zilch. Piper realized a cold case could take a long while, but this was festering.
Who would kill a nine-year-old boy?
And had it happened in the summer?