“Yeah, I guess. What did it say?”
“First, as near as I can tell, Burns wasn’t the lead in that investigation. Second, your dad was caught pretty much red-handed at the 7-11 with stolen goods and drugs in his possession. The drugs were for your mother, the goods he stole to support her habit. Your mom wasn’t much help. I’m sorry, Essie, but it was a clean bust.”
Essie sat for a full minute staring at her shoes. “What do I tell Billy junior?”
“He’ll benefit more if you tell him the truth, than from lies. Look what your mother’s did to you.”
Elroy Heath knocked and entered the open office door. Essie rose and left.
“Essie, on your way out, get me Frank on the phone, will you?”
“Yeah, okay.”
***
Frank had studied the little book found in Smith’s truck. The entries didn’t tell him much but he guessed the newspaper clippings in the back might have something to do with Duffy’s murder or maybe his disappearance. Nothing leapt off the pages, however. He drummed his fingers on his desk and, frustrated at what he perceived as a dead-end, left to get some air. Maybe drive around.
Whether it was instinct or plain dumb luck, he found himself driving back to the park where the truck had been found. It had been towed away the day before so there was no reason to stop there, but he did. The leaves were in full color, one major benefit granted to people who chose the Shenandoah Valley as their place of residence. Whatever else might be said about the midsection of Virginia, fall was spectacular in the Blue Ridge. He stepped out of his cruiser and circled the area where the truck had been parked. There wasn’t much to see. The area had been trampled by the forensic team’s footprints. There was no way to tell if the other tire prints were recent or old.
So where was Smith? He walked absentmindedly to the verge and looked at the ground. Something caught his eye and he stepped away from the parking area and into the woods. It looked as if the leaves might have been disturbed. He didn’t know why he thought that. The damned things were constantly falling and all over the place, but he could have sworn someone had created a path through them as if they had walked in and out of the woods at this particular point. Leaves that had been scuffed by feet looked different somehow than if they hadn’t been disturbed. Had Smith left the truck and walked in here? If so, where did he go?
He followed the path, if you could call it that, deeper into the trees. Here and there the wind had swirled leaves into clumps and piles of various sizes. He kicked at a few of them. The last one did not give to his boot. Perhaps the pile had formed around a stump or a log. He reached down with a gloved hand and scattered the leaves. That’s when he saw the boot and the leg attached. He knocked a few leaves to one side and realized why no one had been able find Smith. He was under the leaves, very dead, and had been for a while.
He called Ike. He got Essie.
“I was just calling you. Ike wants to talk to you, too.”
***
“She been crying, Ike?” Elroy asked as he watched Essie make her way back to her desk.
“Maybe a little. What have you got for me, Elroy?”
“Well, it took some doing. I had to borrow a cop from the Roanoke force to get to it, but I finally dug out a description of the man who leant the phone to her.” He inspected his notebook and read the name. “Miss Tammy Bonwell. I had to find her friend, Tina, first. Tina didn’t want to talk to me. Her parents raised a fuss about me being from out of town and such. That’s when I had to call in the Roanoke officer. Then she dummied up. Finally, I had to tell her it was an investigation into an attempted murder and withholding information could be considered obstruction of justice. That’s when her old man got all nervous and said she’d tell what she knew or she’d be grounded for life.”
Ike gestured for Elroy to take Essie’s seat.
“It turns out that these girls, maybe five or six of them, meet at the mall and they tease older men, I guess you’d say. They flirt with them, get them to treat them to pizza and so on and then duck into the restrooms and ditch the guys. It’s a little like playing chicken, I guess. They think it’s funny. I mentioned the few cases we have had involving teenaged rape and disappearances to her, but I don’t think she heard. The Roanoke cop was taking notes, anyway.”
“Okay, so what did you learn, besides something about the abnormal psychology of hormone-driven teenagers?”
“She finally gave up her friend, Tammy, who is very much into this stuff. I found her at the mall chatting up a banker from Toledo who blew into town for a meeting. He beat a quick retreat when I flashed the badge. Tammy, after a little persuasion, gave me a description of the so-called ‘Old Perv.’ She claimed she didn’t know his name. I got the impression she didn’t dump him right away like the others and that maybe she had a sideline going. I am not real sure about that but, well, I told the Roanoke guy what I suspected and he said they’ll keep an eye on her. The description she gave me matches your man. I showed her the picture. I’m sure she recognized it, but she played dumb.”
“Not dumb, Elroy. Stupid.”
Chapter Thirty-nine
Ike stood and gathered his duty belt and jacket. “I think we need to find Scott Fiske and haul him in, don’t you, Elroy?”
“Sounds like a plan.”
“Have you reached Frank, Essie?”
“He just this minute called in, Ike. He says he needs you out at the park where they found that truck.” Essie held the phone in her hand.
“Can’t it wait?”
“He says it’s real urgent. He found Bob Smith, he says.”
“Okay. Tell him I’m on my way and to stay put. Elroy, see if you can locate our acting president. If you do find him, sit on him until I can join you.”
Ike drove to the park. The forensics van pulled in ahead of him. Frank had called them back to the scene again. He parked and followed the path Frank had marked with yellow crime scene tape back into the woods.
“You found Smith, Essie says.”
“I did. I think he’s been dead a while. Question is who did him in?”
“Indeed. What got him?”
“Looks like a single shot to the back of the head, well not quite the back—more like on top. It’s a funny angle, like he was bending over to pick up something and never made it back up. The ME can tell us more, I reckon. But it’s pretty clear he had no idea it was coming. Whoever did this must have covered him up with leaves afterward. Lord knows we might never have found him `til spring if I hadn’t been curious about what I took to be a path back to here.”
Ike bent over the body which, fortunately, the cool October air and blanket of leaves had kept partially refrigerated. “Anything interesting in his pockets?”
“All turned out. Whoever killed him was thorough. There’s not even any pocket lint. We do have his notebook, though, from under the seat of his pickup. I am still working out what significance it could have, but since I think he hid it there, it must have some.”
“We’ll look at it when the evidence techs are done here. A single shot, you say?”
“As far as I can see, yeah.”
“In all this,” Ike indicated the leaves covering the forest floor. “I don’t suppose you found a shell casing?”
“Sorry, no. It would be near impossible to do it, for sure.”
“We’ll have the ET team rake the leaves back. Maybe they’ll be lucky. If they miss the shell they might at least find something else. A footprint would be nice. I had it in mind to drop in on Scott Fiske when you called. The kid in the mall ID’d him. At least her description is a match. The picture Elroy had with him didn’t click, but she had some reasons to be cute. I’m guessing Scott Fiske may well be hearing from her soon, if he hasn’t already. Kids! They watch too much television and take too many risks. The way she’s
headed, that child won’t live to see twenty.”
“Not following you, Ike.”
“Sorry. Elroy got the impression the kid was playing at being a tramp for pizza and presents. Not sure how far she went, but the fact she’s being coy about the picture suggests she might be thinking about upping her game.”
***
Elroy tried Fiske’s office and then his house on the Faculty Row. The last time he’d visited this end of the Callend campus things had been considerably more hectic, he remembered. Cops, Feds, bad guys, strobe lights, bull horns, and confusion. Working with Ike was a lot of things, but boring wasn’t one of them.
Fiske had a place near the end of the street. He knocked but no one answered. He walked around to the rear and peeked in the kitchen window. There didn’t seem to be any sign of life. No car in the driveway, either. He circled the house but found nothing of interest. He called Ike with the news.
***
“If we can’t find Fiske, how about we look for the secretary, what’s her name?” Frank said.
“Sheila somebody—Overton.”
“Agnes Ewalt said she hasn’t been to work for a couple of days.”
Ike held the phone to his ear again. “Elroy, run out to Overton’s place and see if you can pry her loose. Call Essie for the address. Tell her it’s in the University Directory.” Ike hung up.
“In the meantime, Frank, how about you and I see a judge about some warrants and then we’ll have a look at Fiske’s office and house. Oh, and I had an idea for you. Actually, it was Essie’s.”
“Essie’s? Now what?”
“Tell you on the way to town.”
They drove out of the park and headed back east.
“Right. Now here’s something else I want you to think about. Burns is financing his campaign somehow. He doesn’t have an income. His house is still on the market and he’s separated from his meal ticket, that is to say his wife who is a manager at the supermarket. Does any of this give you ideas?”
“If he wasn’t being financed by some outside source, he had to have an income from somewhere. Who or from whom do you think? Where in the system is that notebook?”
They drove back to Picketsville. The county judge was just leaving his office. Somewhat grumpily, he returned to his office, heard them out, and reluctantly signed off on the two search warrants.
“Ike, why weren’t you at the meeting this afternoon? Your father had to fill in for you. He didn’t look too happy, if you don’t mind my saying so.”
Ike stopped in his tracks and slapped his forehead. “I completely forgot, Your Honor. He’ll be fit to be tied. Well, can’t be helped.”
They left the courthouse.
“I wish you’d take this election more seriously, Ike. You know the mayor will keep a lid on the connection between his boy, Burns, and the dead hay thief, I mean thieves, and that means you could still be in trouble.”
“Frank, the only way I know how to show people why they should re-elect me is to do the job they elected me to do in the first place. We have murders piling up. One killing is bad enough but now we have a second one and nobody but a fool thinks they’re not related.”
“And you have Fiske to collar. Not a murder, but…”
“Close enough. Personally, I can’t distinguish between an attempted homicide and a successful one. For me it’s a distinction without a difference. In each case the intent is identical, as are the measures taken. The fact the perpetrator failed should be unimportant. The punishment should be contingent on the killer’s intent, not his success. We don’t reward failure in business, school, or life in general. There ought not to be a reward for incompetence in criminal behavior either.”
“Now that is a bit of philosophy I would dearly love to see debated on Sunday morning television.”
“Don’t hold your breath.”
Ike’s phone buzzed. Elroy again.
“Ike, the lady is missing too.”
“I think we need to execute our search ASAP, Frank.”
Chapter Forty
Agnes Ewalt looked up, startled when Ike and Frank strode into Old Main’s administration wing.
“Sheriff Schwartz, how nice to see you. How is Doctor Harris?” Even though everyone in town and on the Callend campus knew that Ike and Ruth were engaged, in her public moments, Agnes maintained the fiction that the relationship did not exist. Ike didn’t know why, but that was Agnes and there’d be no changing her anytime soon.
“Ruth is coming along nicely, Agnes, thank you. We’re very encouraged.”
We were? He fought the stab of fear that hit him in his solar plexus every time the thought of Ruth lying unconscious in the hospital forced its way to the surface.
“Frank and I are here to speak to Doctor Fiske. Is he in?” Ike felt sure he wasn’t but he had to ask.
“No, he rushed out of here after Deputy Sutherlin spoke with him a while back and I haven’t seen or heard from him since. Sheila either, for what it’s worth. I already told that to one of your men.”
“Yes, thank you. We’ll just have a look around his office then.”
“Oh, I’m not sure that is…would be appropriate. He likes to keep it locked and after you all left, I pulled the door to. And then, well, there’s a matter of—”
“Not to worry, Agnes, we have a search warrant, and we won’t take much time. You say the door is locked?”
“I believe so. That is what I meant to do.” She went to the door and tried the knob. “Sorry, yes it’s locked.”
“Is there a spare key? Surely he left one here for emergencies.”
“Maybe in Sheila’s desk.” Agnes sat down at a large desk to the right of Fiske’s door and tried the drawers. “This is locked, too.”
“Let me try,” said Frank. He produced a large pocketknife, freed the main blade, and slipped it into the space between the drawer’s top edge and the desk. He gently wiggled the blade while lifting on the desk’s edge just above the drawer’s lock. There was a soft click and the drawer slid open. “If this desk is anything like mine down at the office, the rest of the drawers lock when this one does. They should all be free now.” They were. They found the spare key, conveniently tagged, in the left-hand top drawer.
Fiske’s office had the sterile look of a place used only as a base to do business, nothing more. There were no personal touches anywhere. He had no family which explained the absence of framed pictures on the desk, but there were no mementos, no souvenir paper weight, no magazines, or any indication that Scott Fiske had ever inhabited this space. It could have been a demo unit in a furniture store.
“Look in the desk,” Frank suggested. “That’s where he keeps his personal stuff.”
“You’ve already looked?”
“A little, yeah. He smokes fancy cigarettes and has one or two girly magazines tucked under that address book.”
Ike put on latex gloves, removed the articles from each drawer, and placed them in order on the desktop and the matching credenza behind him. There wasn’t much to see. Besides the wooden box containing the Turkish cigarettes and the magazines, his desk was as antiseptic as the rest of the room.
“Do you suppose he cleaned this place out?”
“No idea. Possibly. I don’t see anything here that would tell us where he went. His address book is filled with names of people with out of town addresses. Then there’s his little notebook with initials and phone numbers only. That could be interesting.”
“Put it in an evidence bag and record it. Maybe one of those numbers will turn up something. We’ll run a criss-cross on them and see.” He turned to the door where Agnes had been watching the search. “I guess we’re done here. Agnes. If Fiske returns, tell him we were here, that he should come in to the police station at once, and then you call me, and tell me he’
s here anyway.”
“Should we post someone to wait for him?”
Ike thought a minute, “We could, but there are too many ways in and out of this building. A watch would have to sit outside the door to be sure. If he’s on the run, and does come here for some reason, he’ll see our guy before he’s seen and he’ll be off. Still, we probably should. As soon as Elroy’s done talking to the neighbors over at Overton’s tell him to come here and stake out this office.”
“Right. Now we go to his house?”
“We do.”
Frank drove the car and told Ike about what he’d come to believe happened to Smith. His best guess, he said, was that Smith and Duffy had a disagreement over profits. The notebook he’d found seemed to be a record of sales and so on, and they must have argued.
“So you’re not buying the notion Duffy overheard something or saw something and perhaps got in over his head and Smith found out. Or, instead, he was a witness to the Duffy hit?”
“I can’t rule it out, Ike, but I like simple answers. In my experience, people like those two bozos tend to be greedy, and stupid, and often sell each other out.”
“Then, who killed Smith?”
“Maybe a friend of Duffy who we haven’t turned up yet, or Jesus, how about Burns?”
“Wouldn’t go there, Frank. In a world where anything is possible, we still deal with probabilities. Burns is an improbable killer—at the moment, he has no compelling motive.”
“But if he was mixed up in the robberies and—”
“That’s a big if. Without the connection—not compelling.”
“Smith took the trouble to hide that book, there had to be a third party involved somehow. Hell, it could have been his uncle trying to get him out of the way and that went south.”
“Could have been works, but without a connection there’s nothing there. You’re sounding like Essie. As I said, won’t work, not yet. Frank, he’s a loser as a cop. He’s the mayor’s ‘flunky of the week.’ And he is shady, but he knows what happens to them when cops go to prison. No, I don’t see him as a killer.”
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