The Dead of Night

by Jean Rabe

  “Going over to the bank again, in just a little while. I put a hold on that savings-checking account yesterday when we were there, when I filled out that fraud paperwork. You watched me. Should’ve thought to close that money market, too. I wished I would have. I wish I’d never put it all in a bank, should have diversified, stocks and such. But I trusted the bank more. Should’ve done that, closed that money market. If wishes were fishes, eh? I know them bank folks said they’d put some fraud specialist on it, but that’s a fellow in Indianapolis, I’m sure. Maybe New York or Chicago, someplace big where the main office sits. No one from around here.”

  “Probably.” Piper watched a hawk circling. It dropped over the edge of the bluff, maybe seeing something down along the bank to pursue.

  “But the thief. The thief’s from around here.”

  Piper nodded. “Someone who knows you, where you do banking, how you do banking, how much money you have.” Who knows I’m investigating this.

  “Had.” Mark spat at the ground between his feet. “How much money I had.”

  “Someone who is good with computers.”

  “I should’ve never signed up for that online banking shit. Online anything. Should’ve never bought a damn computer. I worked for that money, Sheriff Blackwell. Farmed a lot of years for that money. Sold a lot of land for a lot of money. Sold my dad’s farm. Sold all but two of my old cars. Not right that someone would take it from me. Not right. Now maybe I’ll have to sell my motorcycles. Didn’t want to do that. They were my safety net, them bikes. You believe me.”

  “Absolutely.” She actually did believe him about the stolen money, the spies—or spy—the one driving a silvery-gray foreign car. Maybe it was the precise story about the cost of the tattoo or the conviction in his voice. Maybe he was indeed missing a few fries from his Happy Meal, like her Goth dispatcher claimed, but he seemed to have retained most of them. And though she discounted his conspiracy theory of Democrats, he was no doubt right about being followed. The image of the silvery-gray car flashed behind her eyes again, the scratches on her Ford, the dented hood from when she’d parked it at her apartment, the threatening email. Piper shuddered.

  “How much was taken this time? From your money market?”

  “Three hundred and ninety-one thousand, four hundred and thirty-eight dollars from my money market. Left me four dollars in that account, just enough to cover the breakfast special I usually order at the restaurant. The thief hadn’t messed with that account before, the money market. That’s why I didn’t think to tell the bank to shut that down. I just hadn’t thought about it. Crap.”

  “Dear God. That’s a lot of money.” Piper realized she spoke too softly for Mark to hear her.

  “You promised you’d fix it.”

  “I will.”

  Why, why, why did I say that?

  “I’ll fix it somehow. I promise.” She put her hat on.

  “You know, I don’t have a lot of time left, Sheriff. I’m an old, old coot, past my expiration date you might say. No one is promised tomorrow. Don’t none of us know how many tomorrows, how much time we have, though I suspect my future years are a single digit. Just hope I don’t have to spend them in some damn nursing home. But time’s the one thing we all have in common. And it’s the most valuable possession, don’t you think? I learned a long while back that time’s worth more if it’s well-spent, if you do good with it, make a difference, don’t squander it. Don’t waste it. I hope I’m not wasting yours, this hunt for my money.”

  “You’re not wasting my time, Mark the Shark.”

  “Until this happened, I thought I was well off. Almost rich. Don’t want to be on the county dole. Gonna have to sell my old bikes. Money market emptied, I won’t have enough for one of them nice nursing homes, that’s for sure. Not if I’m in there for any big amount of time. I still got some money buried, and I got those bikes. But, oh, hell. I shouldn’t never have signed up for that online banking shit. Should’ve never bought a computer. My sweet Mae went through money like a faucet gushing when I had to put her in one of them nursing homes. Wished she would have had longer. Wished I would’ve had to keep spending the money on her. Better spent on her than the damn thief that got it. If wishes, eh?”

  “Have you seen a Honda near your house?” Piper needed to change the subject.

  “A gray one?”

  “Looked kinda silver to me.”

  “It’s not a Honda. I know cars. It’s a Toyota, a Celica, at least ten years old, probably closer to fourteen. Someone’s kept the body in pretty good shape, but the mileage has to be way, way, way up there, that old of a car. The paint job is a redo, metallic. I can tell. I know cars, I say. That Celica was in my neighborhood yesterday morning, about the time you were supposed to show up. Had gotten real muddy. When I’d seen it before, it was nice and clean. Is it following you, too?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I couldn’t get a look at the driver. The windows have a tint. That’s not original, the tint.”

  “I didn’t see the driver either.”

  “Some damn Democrat,” Mark said. “Told you someone was following me. Told you I had a spy on my heels.”

  Piper knew the threatening email had been sent to scare her off. But rather than scare her, the email—and the suspicious car—were making her more determined, had thrown fuel on her ire.

  “Did you get a look at the license plate?”

  Mark shook his head. “Had mud on it. Didn’t pay attention to the plate when I saw the car at the library.”

  “The library? The genealogy club?” Piper would call Diego on her way to Jasper, have him do a search on Toyota Celicas registered to drivers in Indiana and Kentucky. Maybe get lucky right away and find one in the county. If Diego got an address, she’d stop there on her way back from the State Police. If the driver was the thief, it would be quick to wrap it up. Getting the money back? Hopefully that would be quick, too.

  “Yeah, at that little library. Saw the Celica a few other places in town, too. Once at the grocery store, that I recall. Can’t be that many Celicas around. That’s why I noticed it. Toyotas now are sleeker. That one, maybe the only Celica in the county,” Mark said, mirroring her thoughts. “Democrats drive foreign cars, you know.”

  “That old of a Celica,” Piper mused. “Yeah, hopefully just one around here.”

  “You fix—”

  “Yeah, I’m gonna fix it. I told you I would. I promised.”

  Somehow I’m gonna fix it.

  “I voted for you.”

  Piper studied the cars around the park again.

  “Maybe meeting in daylight was a good idea,” he said. “I can see the street better, see if someone’s taking undue interest in me. If your department had one of them drones—”

  “They cost seven thousand, the drone I want. A drone’s a handy thing for a department, especially with everything so rural.”

  “Had a drone, you could send it off looking for that Celica.”

  She thought a drone might come in handy looking for meth manufacturers. “It’s not in the budget. A lot of things aren’t in the budget.” She hadn’t needed to add that last part. She had no business venting to Mark. He had his own awful problems. “Don’t have a drone to fly over your property or off looking for an old Toyota. But we’ll be searching for the car with a computer.”

  “Damned computers.” Mark pushed up on his canes. “I parked real close this time, dogs bothering me and all. You watch me leave, see if anyone follows.”

  “Sure.”

  “I’m going back to my attorney, let him know about my siphoned money market. Then I’m going to the bank. Get that last four dollars and buy breakfast with it. Fill out another one of those damn fraud reports. Push ‘em. I’m gonna push ‘em. But their fraud department—them people aren’t here. And the thief—”

  “Is,” she finished. “The thief is right here in Spencer County.”

  “Damn straight. You meet me here tomorrow. Same time. You tell me if
you find that Celica driver. You tell me if that’s the thief twirling his fingers in my bank business and bleeding me. Maybe I’m not his only victim. You tell me if you arrest him and he’s behind bars and is gonna rot until he’s bones like that boy on the bluff you found. Make him give me my money back. Every penny. You fix this. I voted for you. I believe in you, Sheriff Blackwell. I ain’t got anybody else to believe in.”

  She opened her mouth to tell him it wouldn’t be that simple, but stopped. “I’ll meet you at this bench tomorrow, Mr. Thresher.”

  “Mark the Shark.”

  17

  Seventeen

  “You’re not missing if nobody’s looking for you.” That’s what Oren’s dad had said last night when they talked about the bones.

  And if the boy had never been listed as missing, Oren inferred, he would be impossible to identify. It would be a cold case forever frozen.

  But his father had half-remembered something from sixty years or so past. The old man had dementia, but there were gaps in the clouds when long-ago memories surfaced crystal clear. Last night, the clouds had big gaps in them.

  Oren’s ears were warm. He touched the back of his hand to his cheek and felt the heat there, too. The flush wasn’t due to some bug he’d picked up; it was because he was pissed.

  At the nursing home for not being more attentive to his father—who had been sitting in soiled pants when he’d arrived—and clearly had been that way for a while.

  At twenty-three-year-old Piper Blackwell for hiring his granddaughter.

  At his granddaughter for applying for the deputy opening without telling him.

  So that’s why Millie hadn’t wanted to talk about law school, and was her reason behind renting a house in Rockport. His granddaughter was hoping to get hired by Piper. Oren figured that with her degrees she’d been the standout among the applicants. No one could have touched that high-bar. Plus, Piper would’ve been looking for the opportunity to add a woman to the department. A smart, young one with blue in her blood. Millie’d been a magnet, and Piper hadn’t been able to resist the pull.

  “Shit and back again,” he grumbled.

  He would have tried to talk Millie out of applying—and she probably knew that, was probably the reason she hadn’t told him, probably didn’t want to get in an argument with Pops.

  Oren hadn’t helped pay her way through college just so she could end up in the same sheriff’s department in a sparsely populated county, working for the same twenty-three-year-old boss who only had a high school diploma. Millie’d been going to pick up some doctorate degree in law or some such, be a big-time attorney. Really make something of herself.

  But a part of him was proud that Millie wanted a taste of law enforcement—keeping it in the Rosenberg line. He’d bragged to his dad about that during the nursing home visit. From great-grandfather to grandfather to granddaughter. Only skipping one generation because Millie’s parents were—were what? Not together and not close. Her dad was a crab fisherman way the hell up in Alaska, and her mom worked in the accounting department of an Indianapolis hospital and had run afoul of the law because she’d killed a boy.

  Maybe down the road Millie wearing a badge for a little while would make her a better attorney. Maybe he shouldn’t be pissed. Maybe instead he should be pleased.

  Nope. He couldn’t let himself go all the way to being happy about it. He’d been too blindsided by the whole thing to smile.

  “Shit and back again.”

  “You’re not missing if nobody’s looking for you.”

  He sat in an uncomfortable chair in a back room of Rockport’s library.

  “We rarely get anyone wanting to use this machine,” the librarian said. She was young, but not that young. Oren guessed she was in her mid-thirties, and she was wearing way too much perfume and jewelry—three necklaces, one with a seashell fob that hung down to her waist. He’d not seen her at the library before. But then he rarely came here, usually only on an occasional weekend when he was out with his wife and she wanted to stop in and check out a few mysteries and romances. He’d sit in a chair and wait for her. “I hope it still works.”

  The machine was bulky and big, and the plastic that had covered it was cracked and yellowed and made a crunching noise when she took it off.

  “So much is on computers, they’re easier and don’t take up as much space. We’ve had no call to scan in these old newspapers you want to look at. No one asks for them. I’m surprised we’ve kept this machine, actually, and all the microfiche slips. But then we really don’t throw out much. Just worn-out books we toss at the summer sale.” She stepped back and retrieved a gray box that Oren suspected had been white decades ago. “What years did you say you were looking for?”

  “I’ll start with five. 1952 to 1956.”

  She whistled. “This covers 1950 to 1960. Long time ago.”

  Oren frowned. In that overall scheme of things it was a heartbeat. He was no older than the films he’d requested. He figured the librarian considered him an antique. Again retirement thoughts flickered. But he didn’t want to leave yet, especially with his granddaughter joining the department. He’d stick around in case she needed help. Oren grinned. He’d found an excuse to stay on the job that his wife would accept. He wasn’t so pissed off at Piper and his granddaughter after all.

  “Yeah, ancient history,” he said dryly. “Practically stone age time.”

  “Be careful with the films,” the librarian cautioned. A pause. “You know how to use the machine, right?”

  Oren detected a hint of worry in her voice. Maybe she didn’t know how to use it. Maybe she was afraid he’d ask her to demonstrate. He almost did. He was in that sort of a mood this morning.

  “Sure. I know how to use it. I’ll put the box back when I’m done.” He waited until she left. It really didn’t matter if she watched him, he wasn’t doing anything secretive. He just wanted to page through history by his lonesome and not be forced to inhale all that flowery perfume.

  Oren opened the box. Inside were pocket pages labeled Rockport Weekly Democrat, each holding a four-by-six-inch piece of film. He inserted one into the viewer. Newspapers in Spencer County stretched back to 1855, and there used to be more than one. Oren remembered that sometime in the late seventies the Rockport Democrat and the Rockport Journal merged. It was the Journal-Democrat now.

  Oren skimmed the headlines, a mix of international, national, and local—the latter always on the front page, though not always above what would have been the fold. He had to admit that he liked searching news articles on the computer. The screen brighter and it was easier to adjust the type size.

  1956.

  February: Nikita Khrushchev denounced Stalin’s excesses.

  March: Morocco gained independence from France. He skipped ahead a month and noted Morocco also gained its independence from Spain.

  “Bully for Morocco,” he said.

  The summer of that year saw a worker’s uprising against communism in Poland; Egypt took control of the Suez Canal; and the British and French invaded Egypt at Port Said.

  Oren noticed the national news was diverse. The first black student at the University of Alabama was suspended from classes after riots. A hydrogen bomb was tested over Bikini Atoll with the force of ten million tons of TNT. The Yankees beat the Dodgers in the World Series. Marty won Best Picture at the Oscars. Oren had seen Marty a couple of times. Good picture, worthy of an award, he mused. Needles won the Kentucky Derby. Federal spending topped seventy billion dollars. The cost of a first-class stamp was three cents. Peyton Place became a steamy bestseller. Tommy Dorsey died.

  “And some damn fine music died with him.”

  In local news Our First One Hundred Years was published by the Free and Accepted Masons of Grandview, Indiana, Grandview Lodge. Oren’s father was a Mason. He laughed softly, recalling how his dad had tried to get him to join. An Archaeological Survey of Spencer County by James H. Kellar of the Indiana Historical Bureau was published in the same
month.

  Finding nothing else of particular note, Oren carefully put the film back into its envelope and pulled out a year earlier. His dad had suggested this, after he ate the last bite of double-thick grilled cheese sandwich.

  “Sometimes people go missing and it doesn’t show up in any police report. Sometimes you got to read the papers. You go read the old papers, Oren. I remember something about a nine-year-old boy. Maybe two of them. Maybe three. Maybe your dead boy was never missing. You’re not missing if nobody’s looking for you.”

  So that’s what Oren had decided to do, read the old papers.

  The weeklies in 1955 covered multiple films. He looked through two sheets, then got up to stretch. The third sheet was more interesting. The world population sat at two point seven billion; Churchill resigned; the Federal Republic of West Germany became a sovereign state; the Warsaw Pact was signed; Argentina ousted Juan Perón; and the United States spent more than two million to aid Vietnam.

  “Fat lot of good that did,” Oren mused. “Then we went to war in Vietnam for too damn long.”

  Rosa Parks refused to sit in the back of the bus, defying Alabama’s segregated seating law. The AFL and the CIO merged into the AFL-CIO. The cost of a first-class stamp was three cents. The Brooklyn Dodgers won the World Series, and Detroit grabbed the Stanley Cup. On the Waterfront won Best Picture. Oren never liked Marlon Brando, never saw the movie. Lee Meriwether won Miss America. She’d been a real looker, Oren thought, recalling that in the sixties she’d played Catwoman in a Batman movie. Gunsmoke debuted on CBS. Albert Einstein died at age seventy-six. James Dean died at age twenty-six in a car accident.

  “Too young to go,” Oren said of Dean. “But seventeen more years than the boy got.”

  In Indiana news the Crispus Attucks was the first all-black basketball team to win a state championship. Spencer County seemed pretty boring that year, and nothing stood out. After skimming the last film in the folder, Oren went on to 1954.