by Jean Rabe
She still thought about the lack of shoes.
“Hey, Sylvia D,” Piper hollered. “What’s a fream?”
Sylvia laughed. “It’s an old word, Sheriff, and you’re too young. It means someone who doesn’t fit in.”
Maybe I’m a fream.
Piper wondered if she’d ever fit in here. Despite being gone from the military for more than a year and a half, she missed that life. It was active, rigorous, filled with an important purpose. Sometimes it had been dangerous, but that satisfied her adrenalin addiction. There’d been something she enjoyed about “life on the edge,” as her first drill sergeant called it. Would she run for sheriff again? Her father had asked her that shortly before she took the Plainfield Sheriff’s Academy test. It had taken her a while to realize it was because he was feeling good, was cancer free, and was looking for something to do. Piper was pretty certain that Paul Blackwell wanted to be the sheriff of Spencer County again.
He’d win if he ran, she knew. He was beloved in the county. And it was because of his last name and reputation that she had clinched the election in the fall. He’d even hinted at applying for her detective vacancy. She wouldn’t hire him, obviously, even though she’d just hired Oren’s granddaughter. It was a different situation. Somehow it was different.
Dear God, let me find someone fast—before Dad applies and before I’d have to disappoint him.
Would she return to the Army after her term as sheriff was up? Maybe. It was an option she wanted to keep open. She missed the life.
Would she run for sheriff again? Absolutely not. Let her dad have the office. Or Oren, even though he’d be sixty-nine. Piper would vote for either one of them.
“Oren should have won this time,” she said. Not that she would ever admit that to another soul. “He’s way the hell better at this than—”
“Sheriff, Mr. Thresher is on line two,” Sylvia D chirped.
Piper stared at the lit button, grimaced, and punched it.
His voice sounded weak coming through the speaker.
“Morning Sheriff Blackwell. I need to talk to you. In person. Same spot. Have to risk being seen, daylight and all. I don’t need you coming out to my place and getting slowed by another drunk on a tractor. It’s urgent. I’ll meet you there in an hour.” The line disconnected.
“Really?” Piper said. She glanced at the clock. 8 a.m. “Really?”
After a moment. I’ll send someone else. Another moment. “Shit.”
The threatening email, the damage to her car—that was connected to Thresher’s case, wasn’t it?
She had an hour before Mark’s meeting, and she assumed he meant the bench in the park. But it couldn’t be all that urgent if he was waiting an hour. Had he been threatened, too? Had someone damaged his vintage Chevy?
A skim through email she’d received from the department’s website and she’d be on her way to meet Mark, then from there to Jasper, the closest State Police district office. She had a consult set up with their lead criminologist to talk about missing children. Piper would rather spend that time working on Mark’s case, especially since the threats. But she’d asked for the appointment and wouldn’t cancel. Jasper and back—and then back to the bank issue.
She quickly deleted notices about refinancing her mortgage, which she didn’t have; enlarging an organ, which she didn’t have; and various advertisements for ebooks and magazines. How did this stuff get sent to her sheriff’s department personal email address? The address was public—listed on the department webpage, but still…
Piper decided to poke through the email options later, beef-up the spam filter. Next came a polite note from Stefan Sampson, thanking her for the interview.
Piper dashed off an email to him, letting him know the job had been filled, but that he’d be considered for other openings. Then she sent a similar email to the other two she’d passed on. She was about to send an email to Oren, telling him she’d hired his granddaughter.
“That’s a chicken shit move,” she whispered.
Maybe he already knows. Maybe Millie called him yesterday. But maybe not.
Piper punched in Oren’s cell phone number and delivered the news. “I would’ve told you face-to-face,” she admitted, though she thought that might have been uncomfortable. “But you’d already left yesterday. And you’re not in the office now.” She knew he was pursuing a lead on the bones. “Your granddaughter was the best applicant. We’ll make sure the shifts don’t match. I’m heading out in a while to Jasper. Missing children specialist there, a criminologist. I’ll let you know if something shakes on our boy. You do the same.”
The bones case belonged to Oren and her, and she suspected they were in a race to see who could solve it first—despite the chief deputy telling her cold cases could take a long while. Why else was she going to Jasper in a little while? To hurry the cold case.
One last email in the queue. It had come in early yesterday evening.
Like the detailing I did on your car, Sheriff Blackwell?
I will do that 2 your face
If you want 2 keep breathing, leave the cheddar alone
Walk away
The email was unsigned, and the sender was not a string of numbers this time. The sender was listed as herself, the personal email account that she’d had since high school. Piper grabbed up her cell phone and checked that personal account’s “sent” folder. There was no evidence that such an email had been composed.
“What the hell?”
Someone had hacked or spoofed her account and sent her a threatening note. Probably the same sender from the previous threats. And to what case did it refer? Mark the Shark? Had to be, right?
Or could it be the bones? Gretchen the Mailbox Mauler? Maybe even Sandy Schmidt, who was still enjoying the hospitality of the Spencer County Jail. There were a plethora of DUI cases, all on the surface routine. Maybe one of the DUIs was a computer nerd and made the threat to get the charges dropped. And what did cheese have to do with it?
No. It had to be about Mark Thresher.
“What the flaming hell?”
“Something wrong, Sheriff?”
Piper had raised her voice so loud that hard-of-hearing Sylvia D had heard her.
“Yeah, something’s wrong.” Piper came out of her office and in a half-dozen long steps was even with the dispatcher’s desk. “Someone hacked my email.”
“I’ve had my Facebook hacked before.” Sylvia D had a matter-of-fact expression. “Twice. Both times some idiot was trying to sell sunglasses to all my Facebook friends. I have a lot of Facebook friends. I had to reset my password and everything.” She paused and took a quick call about the upcoming Sheriff’s Sale of unclaimed property. “Pain in the butt it was. They didn’t even look like quality sunglasses.”
Piper didn’t mention the threatening email messages. “I’ve got some things to do today, gotta go out, Jasper in a little while. I’ll be back around lunch. JJ’s here for a while, then she’s going to deal with Gretchen Brown and her penchant for destroying mailboxes. Diego’s in a car, his last week on first shift for a while. He’s coming back within the hour to write up a few reports. So there’ll be someone in the office.”
“Yeah, I heard. Diego took the car fire in Dale. Thinks its arson for insurance. Did you know that Florence Henderson of the Brady Bunch was born in Dale? In 1934. Sang in the choir in the Catholic Church in Rockport before she moved out and became a big deal. Somebody in the genealogy club told us that, some shirttail relation of Henderson’s.”
“Didn’t know that,” Piper admitted. Didn’t need to know that. “When the first shift is making radio checks, ask if anyone is a computer whiz. Ask Teegan to do the same for the second shift when she comes in. I want someone to look into the hacking.”
“You want to find out who hacked you? That it?”
“That’s it,” Piper said. She was relatively computer savvy, but didn’t know the first thing about tracking a hacker. The email threats, coupled with seeing the silvery-gray car a fe
w times, had put Piper on alert. “I want to trace the hacker.”
“Okay, boss. I’ll put the word out. But, really, you should talk to the Geek.”
Piper turned to go back to her office, but stopped. “The Geek?”
“Zeke the Geek. He helps with the genealogy club. You met him Tuesday at the library. I suspect no one in the whole county knows more about computers than the Geek. He’s a bloomin’ genius with computers.”
Ezekiel Whitman, Piper remembered. She had his resume on her desk. It wouldn’t be prudent to let an outsider deal with the department’s email addresses. But her home email address? That was the one perhaps compromised. She was going to call him in anyway, talk about the dispatcher opening.
“That’s a good idea, Sylvia D.” Piper scratched the back of her hand. “He’s in school now. But—”
“I have his email address,” Sylvia D cut in. “Everybody in our club shares addresses. I can send him a note, say you want to talk to him.”
She really did want to talk to him, make the meeting both a job interview and a chat about her hacked email. Piper had advertised the dispatcher job yesterday. She was required to do that, and to have at least three interviews for any position. But she wanted to talk to Ezekiel, see if he was interested. He was too young to be a deputy. But a dispatcher, that was a distinct possibility.
“Yeah, see if he can come in after he gets done with class. Let’s say four. If today’s bad, ask about tomorrow.”
“Okay, boss.” Sylvia D grinned, clearly pleased that she’d been useful.
Piper noticed that the blue-tint of the temporary dispatcher’s hair perfectly matched the shade of her blouse.
16
Sixteen
“I picked the Navy because I didn’t want to walk a lot. I knew the Army would make you walk a lot. You can only walk so far on a ship.” Mark the Shark was on the same bench, same jacket with the hood pulled up over his head despite the clear sky. The twin canes were between his knees, and he leaned forward, resting his chin on the curved handles. It looked awkward and uncomfortable to Piper. “The Navy made us walk some, too, but it wasn’t that bad. I’ve always had a little trouble with my dogs, you know. Most of my farming I did sitting on a tractor. They’re hurting me pretty bad right now, my dogs. Old men lie if they tell you their feet do not ache.”
She sat next to him and put her hat in her lap. Her curls hung down over her forehead, again reminding her that she needed a haircut. Several yards away, near the edge of the bluff, two park employees worked to fill in the hole from the birch trees that had been pulled.
“I was a wog until we crossed the equator, then I was a shellback—after I passed the initiation. It wasn’t brutal, not like the hazing that goes on in colleges today and you read about in the paper. Nobody died from it. We had to crawl on our bellies across the deck, slide down a tube of chicken fat and get hosed off, kiss Poseidon’s belly. I got a tattoo one time when we were in Pearl. I’d had a beer or two. Maybe three. Maybe even four. I don’t drink anymore, can’t mix alcohol with my pills. Did you get a tattoo?”
Piper nodded. “Yeah, on my left shoulder. Screaming Eagle. I’d had a beer first, too.”
“My name above an anchor, on that tattoo,” he continued. “The anchor meant I’d sailed across the Atlantic. There was a gold and red dragon coiled around it, green eyes, and it meant I’d served along the coast in Asia. The gold because I’d crossed the International Date Line. All of the red is gone, just blue left, the anchor, and it’s real faint, hard to tell what it is. Looks like an odd-shaped bruise.”
Piper wished he’d get to the point of this meeting, something to do with his missing money, certainly. She’d rather talk about that than listen to his Navy tales. It was making her miss the Army life.
He rose up and squared his shoulders. Pride crept into his voice. “I was gunner’s mate first, loaded two big guns. USS Bremerton. Out of Seattle. Bunks three high. I had a top one. I’d spend four hours in a turret—with the Bremerton and then with another one I was on later, the Duluth. I was on more than a few ships in all the years I served. The Bremerton was a Baltimore Class Heavy Cruiser, built in Camden, New Jersey. I liked riding the waves, the feel of that ship. I didn’t like some of the midshipmen who’d went to officer school, thought they were pretty smart, but they didn’t know shit. Served for a time under Captain Mallard, and he was okay. More than a thousand men on the ship that took us to the Philippines, the Bremerton. Displaced thirteen thousand, six hundred tons, six hundred and seventy-three feet long—and five inches. Could take her up to thirty-three knots when we needed to. One thousand and forty-two officers and enlisted on board. I was one of the enlisted. My dad had signed the papers ‘cause I’d been seventeen.”
I know, you told me that the other night, about your dad signing permission.
Piper waited and felt the breeze, inhaled the scent of the river and the dirt from the hole, and the warring fragrances of Mark’s liniments. He’d said this was urgent, when he’d called an hour ago. All that money missing? That really was urgent, but she knew it could take the bank some time to look into the matter.
Urgent must mean something different to old men.
“I remember Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. That was 1945 for me. Went in there to repair typhoon damage to our bow. I recall Tokyo Bay from that year, too. We joined the seventh fleet for the Korean War. I worked the eight-inch guns and the five-inch guns. When I wasn’t in a turret, I was a line server in the mess hall.” He paused to take a few deep breaths.
Piper wanted to ask him what was so burning that he had to see her now, if something had changed overnight with the lost money, if it had somehow mysteriously reappeared in his account. If he’d been threatened, watched. But she held back, figuring he would get to it eventually. She might as well enjoy the sunshine.
Patience, she told herself. Patience. Patience. Patience.
“I had the best time during liberty. We’d go ashore, go to bars. Some of the guys, they’d take their peters out in those bars, and the girls would play with them, get the guys to go into the back rooms, get them to spend money. The girls didn’t know English. I wanted no part of that. I’d seen pictures of wieners with sores on them. I wanted no part. Some of us took a rickshaw once to a cathouse. There were a dozen girls on a bench. A guy clapped his hands and the girls jumped up. He said, ‘Take your pick.’ But I didn’t. I just wanted the rickshaw ride. I’d seen them pictures of bad wieners, you know.”
She scanned the cars parked near the sidewalk, her loaner from the garage—a blue Hyundai Tucson because her Ford wasn’t close to being repaired. Piper was looking for silvery-gray foreign cars. Nothing.
“The best liberty was in Australia. There was a red-haired girl there in a pretty green dress. I spent the afternoon with her in Kings Cross. She gave me a tour, and I bought her coffee and a cupcake, and that was all we did, walk and talk and eat. In Melbourne three girls came on the ship during a visitor day. They weren’t allowed to go below deck, but somebody let ‘em go below. No one would admit who’d done it. The girls were found out and we dropped them off in Sydney. One liberty on the Island of Truk some hotdogs and beer fell off a food truck, so we grabbed as much as we could and ran. Ate a lot that day for free, and I haven’t had a hotdog since. I saw a woman on that island, nursing a baby. She had the longest tits I’d ever seen. I saw a lot of things during the liberties.”
“Mark—” Piper’s patience dissolved with his mention of sailors getting the clap, deciding she’d had enough of his rambling. “What did you need to—”
“In 1964 I was on the Maddox, and we sailed out of Long Beach to Vietnam. We skirmished with some North Vietnamese torpedo boats. In history class it’s called the Maddox Incident, and it upped the United States’ involvement in the war. And it was a war, Sheriff Blackwell. It was no police action.” He turned his head and looked at her. “I’d been drinking before I got the stones to go get that tattoo way back on Pearl. But I wasn’t so drunk I
didn’t remember how much it cost me. Four dollars and eighteen cents, same price as I paid for a Stetson on an earlier liberty. I suspect I’d gotten taken, the beers in me, you know. But it was a good tattoo. Real good work. Four dollars and eighteen cents. Numbers? Money? I could always remember stuff like that. I remember that the Bremerton displaced thirteen thousand, six hundred tons. Numbers, I’m good. The years haven’t numbed my brain, Sheriff, not to numbers. I know someone’s siphoned money out of my bank account, now my money market, too. I signed into my money market this morning while the coffee was brewing. I’m bled dry. None of it because I’m misremembering numbers. None of it because I made a mistake. Someone’s robbed me. Someone’s just about took everything. Some damn Democrat most like. You have to believe me.”
Patience. Patience. Patience.
When he stopped talking, Piper listened to the shushing sound the shovels made as the workers finished filling the hole. One of them started tamping dirt down. Cars drove by on the street, a silvery one, but not the same style as the one she’d seen a few times.
“I believe you, Mr. Thresher.”
“Mark.”
“I believe you, Mark the Shark.” She touched his shoulder. “Have you gotten any threatening phone calls or email?”
He nodded. “Email. Damnedest thing, email. You can’t tell who’s sending you notes, just a damn string of numbers that are always different. Those damn nasty emails started the first time I called the bank and emailed my complaint to their manager. ‘Put it in writing,’ one of them tellers had told me. ‘Send it in an email.’ Damnedest thing, electronic communication. Got more of them after I called you. Told you I was being spied on.”
“I believe you. I’ve gotten some threatening email, too,” she admitted. Maybe someone had connected to Mark’s computer and was privy to his note to the bank. “Did they mention cheddar?”
“Yeah, said I didn’t need cheese.”
“I’m going to fix this. I’m going to find out who is doing this, threatening you, taking your money.”