He dropped the reports on his desk and flicked the skull with his middle finger. The head bobbled and a tinny version of “Jail House Rock” blared out of the skull’s mouth. Peter turned to glare at his office mate.
Brent threw his hands up in a don’t-look-at-me gesture. “It was here when I got in. Someone already owned it, or they paid overnight shipping to get it here. My superior taste precludes the first, and I don’t like you enough for the second.”
Peter raised his voice over the music. “What idiot would own this piece of junk?”
“I’d vote for Junior, him being an Elvis fan. And he works with dead people so the skull would appeal—only he’d think he was casting pearls before swine to pass it along to you.”
The song stopped, thank the Lord. Peter dropped into his chair, stared at the now-silent King. “Maybe I’ll give it to him.”
“Won’t that make Amanda do a happy dance.”
Moving as if handling a live bomb, Peter turned Elvis to face the wall. He booted his computer and opened Heenan’s newly scanned file. The original missing person file was thin, consisting of interviews with neighbors and ending with the discovery of Heenan’s car at the airport and the assumption that whatever happened to Heenan, happened elsewhere. The file also included Heenan’s fingerprints, courtesy of a record check for a children’s organization.
With no next of kin to push the issue, Heenan’s disappearance slid into obscurity. Now brass expected him to pull a rabbit out of his ass.
He shifted his gaze to the stack of tips with the wariness you give the rattlesnake that already bit you. Someone could send you down a rabbit hole for their own reasons. And biases often distorted information from legitimate sources. The quick glance he’d given the stack earlier suggested the usual time wasters, but they were all he had.
He bought a Pepsi from the machine in the hall, then used post-it notes to label sections of his desk as “Psychics,” “Crackpots,” “Nuisance,” “Possible,” or the hopeful “Priority.” He popped the tab on the Pepsi and settled down to triage the information, scanning each call sheet before assigning it to its proper place.
Brent scooted his chair over. “I’d change those to ‘Malicious,’ ‘Misguided,’ ‘Attention-Seeking,’ and ‘Deluded.’”
“That’s helpful.”
“Anything good in there?”
Peter snorted. “Only if you count entertainment value. I’ve got three psychics and a claim against Heenan’s estate, along with accusations we’re desecrating the King and demanding we return his bones to Graceland.”
“You calling the psychics?”
“You never know. Bailey’s come up with some spooky stuff with her Tarot readings.”
“Only in a Monday morning quarterback kind of way. Her ju-ju never helps when you need it.”
“Truth.” He picked up the next report. “Here we go. ‘Joe Thomas killed the magician. He lives at 4317 Glenmore Avenue.’”
“There you go. Case closed.”
Peter set the page on the space marked “possible” then pulled Thomas' driver license up on his computer.
“Thomas was four when Heenan died. No criminal record.”
“Who called it in?”
Peter checked the header information on the form. “Anonymous.”
“I bet Joe let his dog piss on Anonymous' lawn.”
Peter shifted the report from “possible,” to “nuisance.” “Only if Anonymous is a total psycho, which I won’t discount. More likely Anonymous is Joe’s ex-girlfriend, or Joe got a promotion Anonymous wanted.”
History was full of tips that had been ignored to everyone’s regret, so Parker’s mandate to follow every tip—no matter how bogus—made sense. But he was in no mood to chase down cranks.
Peter’s phone rang. He grabbed the handset with one hand while he scanned the map. “Dourson.”
“Detective Dourson? My name is Sylvia Walsh.” The voice was female, hesitant and reedy, likely middle aged or older.
“What can I do for you?”
“I saw you on the news. I’m calling about Andrew Heenan.”
Right age. Doesn’t sound like a crackpot. He grabbed his legal pad and a pen. “Did you know him?”
“No, I never met him. But—I don’t know if you’ve heard of me, but I get messages.”
Peter deflated. “You’re a psychic.”
“If you want to call it that. I have a message for you. I need you to write this down, exactly as I say it. Will you do that?”
Peter surrendered to the inevitable. “I’m ready.”
“You will solve this. I want you to know that.”
Peter caught Brent’s eyes, shook his head. “Thank you, that’s good to know.”
“That’s not the message.”
“What’s the message?”
“I had a vision of roots, a tangle of old roots.”
Peter once read facial expressions transmit over the phone. He didn’t know if it was true, but he kept his eyes from rolling, just in case.
“Um, yeah, that’s how Mr. Heenan was found.”
“These roots stretch into the past.”
Time to ease the nice psychic off the phone. “That certainly makes sense since he disappeared thirty years ago.”
“It’s more than that. I keep seeing a tree, with roots reaching into the past and branches reaching into the future. Andrew Heenan’s death is the base of the trunk, where future meets past.”
Peter dutifully scribbled this down. “Any idea what that means?”
“I’m just a conduit. The message was for you, not me.”
“Anything else? A name, maybe how Mr. Heenan died?”
“Sorry, that’s all they told me.”
“Thank you for your civic-mindedness.” Peter took her contact information for his records and disconnected the call. He made an explosive “puh” sound and slumped in his chair.
“I take it your psychic wasn’t helpful.”
“She said the murder is a tree.”
“That’s a valuable tip there. Who gave her this message?”
“I didn’t ask. Probably a forty-thousand-year-old Inca warrior.”
“There were no Inca forty thousand years ago.”
“Exactly.”
Three hours and thirty-seven phone calls later, Peter shoved away from his computer, tipped his head back and shut his eyes. The bland office walls closed in around him. He opened Google maps on his computer, switched to satellite view, and plugged in the GPS coordinates he’d taken at the site. On his left, Brent hammered at his keyboard.
“I have to get out of here. Want to be a sounding board?”
“Sorry, jammed up with the warrant you were supposed to write—”
Peter picked up his desk phone.
“—and Cynth’s out on an active shooter simulation with SWAT.”
Peter hesitated with the receiver frozen halfway between the phone and his face, then dialed nine for an outside line.
A wall of parked semi-trailers passed by Lia’s window, towering over Peter’s Blazer as he navigated a narrow stretch of recently paved asphalt. Trees lined the other side of the road, looming over a barricade of honeysuckle bushes. The effect was tunnel-like and claustrophobic.
Two weeks earlier, honeysuckle blooms perfumed the air all over the city. Today, withered flowers littered the pavement. The bush was Ohio’s version of kudzu and a target of those determined to eradicate invasive species. Of all the requests clients made, no one ever asked her to paint honeysuckle.
“Where are we, Boot?”
Peter responded to Lia’s involvement in dangerous situations by treating her like a rookie and coaching her in preparedness. This was much better than trying to keep her locked up, so she usually humored him. Today’s game was a standard field training exercise intended to increase awareness and observation skills.
“We’re in the middle of nowhere, headed for more nowhere.”
“Cute. Do better.”
&nb
sp; “Somewhere in the West End. Please don’t make me jump out to find a street sign. I haven’t seen one since we turned off Gest.”
“You won’t find one. We’re not on the map.”
“Dirty trick, Dourson. How does a road that’s not on the map rate fresh asphalt?”
“This is the back way to the academy.”
“Where we did those shoot/don’t shoot scenarios?”
“Yep.”
“Explaining why an alley rates better maintenance than Hamilton Avenue. Someone buried Andrew Heenan behind the police academy? That’s gutsy.”
“Not exactly behind. A tick north. CPD took over the site in 2004. It was the Bengals training camp in the eighties, but I’m not sure if the Bengals or Heenan got here first. The site may have been under construction when Heenan went into the ground.”
Peter checked his GPS app and pulled over to a patch of gravel. “This is as good as we’ll get.”
“Do you think Terry knew the road was so close?”
“Probably not. You can’t tell from the creek what’s at the top along this stretch. I found this spot on Google Earth, but I don’t know if we can get down from here. Hand me the water bottle and grab your hiking stick.”
Once out of the car, Peter stashed the bottle in the cargo pocket of the pants he’d changed into when he picked her up. He pulled a machete and a backpack out of the rear, slinging the pack on his back. He led, shoving branches aside and whacking his way through the thicket.
“What exactly is our purpose today?”
“Parker expects me to deliver some kind of progress when I have nothing to work with. I thought another look at the scene would help.”
The way Peter swung his machete, Lia wondered if he’d really come so he could take out his frustrations on the honeysuckle.
“There’s nothing helpful in the file?”
“The file is useless. The detective who worked the case died of cancer years ago, so there go any private observations or personal notes.”
“Do cops often keep notes out of their files?”
“Case files are for facts and evidence. We keep speculative stuff and impressions off paper, especially if they seem nutty. But I need crazy for this one.
“Everyone associated with the case is gone. I can’t locate the neighbor who reported Heenan missing. The booking agency he worked with went out of business years ago. The neighbors said he was a nice man who kept to himself, except for one who thought he was a pervert because he performed for children—but there was no substance to that.”
Peter gave a vicious thwack at a bush before he continued. “They might have found something—fingerprints, blood evidence, a freaking gum wrapper—if they’d bothered to consider his home a possible crime scene. They decided he left home under his own steam and only did a minimal search. Heenan didn’t have anyone looking for him, and the assumption he ran into trouble elsewhere made it easy to let it go.”
“Poor man. It would be awful to disappear and have no one looking for you.”
“He was never formally declared dead. I kept getting more and more pissed about what hadn’t been done thirty years ago. I had to get out and reboot.”
“What do you hope to find?”
“I want to see what’s involved in getting a body to the creek. That’s the only clue I have to Heenan’s killer. I need you to be a sounding board and devil’s advocate.”
“Won’t Captain Parker care that you’re consulting your girlfriend?”
“If she cares, she needs to assign more people to the case.”
They emerged at a steep slope overlooking the creek. The bank was taller than she remembered, or rather, the water level had returned to normal. The ugly aftermath of the flood remained. Mud had yet to wash from the tree trunks. Detritus hung in the branches. She wondered how long it would stay there.
Peter scanned the slope.
“No easy way down.” He nodded at a thin spot in the vegetation, a deer trail running along the top. “This way.” He continued to mangle bushes until their path was blocked by the crown of the downed cottonwood.
“Where to now?”
“We hack our way back to the road and go around.”
Peter ruled the bank on the far side of the tree navigable, and they worked their way to the creek with the aid of convenient saplings. The water, so muddy ten days before, ran clear, the bottom visible through what she guessed was two feet of water. He dug into his pack, swapping his sneakers for waders.
“I don’t suppose you brought a pair for me,” Lia said.
“You get to ride piggyback.”
Peter left his pack on the bank with his machete and took Lia’s hiking stick. She climbed on his back, his heat penetrating her clothes as she hugged tightly, pressing her cheek against his hair.
Touch was a simple thing people took for granted, a luxury Lia only allowed with people she trusted. It was a secret pleasure, one she relied upon Peter to provide because initiating was still so hard for her. She sank into that sense of comfort that was Peter as his body shifted and lurched inside the circle of her arms and legs.
He eased into the creek and plowed through the water, using her hiking stick to assure his footing on the sand and rocks while her feet dangled inches above the surface.
On the other side, Peter turned his back to the bank and let her slide to the ground. She felt a pang at the loss of him, then turned. The trunk loomed beside her, the fan of roots reaching over her head.
They climbed the bank to the root crater, mud sticking to Lia’s sneakers in clumps and smelling of wet basement. The ends of severed roots glowed pale in the tangled wall of roots and muck, marking a void where Andrew Heenan had been.
Lia sat on a log. “Hard to believe something that awful was right here.”
Peter unhooked the bib of his waders, handed her the water bottle, and sat beside her. She drank and handed it back to him for a long pull. He wiped his face with the back of a forearm, smearing mud across his cheek. She rubbed it away with a thumb.
“Is this helping?” she asked.
“It’s a sight better than talking to wackos on the phone while I’m chained to my desk. And now I know one thing about our murderer.”
“What’s that?”
“He’s strong. Or he was thirty years ago. Heenan weighed 145 pounds when he disappeared. You could handle that with a fireman’s carry, but it’s rough going.”
“What about Commodore’s idea, that the killer came in on this side and buried him at the top?”
Peter shook his head. “I studied the satellite view on Google Maps. You’d have to hump the body across an obstacle course to get it here. There’s a rail yard with two hundred feet of rough ground and tracks to cross between the top of the bank and the nearest place you could park a car. Beyond that you have a warren of warehouses covering more than a quarter mile before you find your way out to a street.
“A night watchman would spot the car and investigate before you could get in and out. If a train came through at the wrong time, Heenan’s killer would be stuck with nowhere to go. Crossing the creek makes no sense, but coming from this side is idiocy.”
“Not if it was the night watchman doing the dumping.”
“That’s possible. He kills Heenan, puts him in the trunk of Heenan’s car and drives it to work. What if it’s not the watchman?”
“I don’t understand why he didn’t dump the body off the side of I-74. There are places where the highway is fifty feet above the ground, spots only accessible to coyotes. He pulls over in the breakdown lane, tosses the body over the rail, and drives off in less than two minutes. No chance it would ever be discovered.”
Peter frowned. “When was I-74 built? Maybe it wasn’t around then.”
“Sometime in the seventies.”
“That tells us something about him. You use what you know, what you see. He didn’t drive I-74 and wasn’t aware of the potential for body disposal.”
“He felt at home runnin
g around an open sewer? A toxic waste dump?”
“Maybe he explored the creek when he was a kid,” Peter said.
“Then finding him will be easy. He’s the guy with three arms, and ears that glow in the dark.”
“Stink and danger would only make it more attractive to most boys.”
“Why didn’t he dump poor Andrew off the Eighth Street Viaduct? Andrew lands in the creek, washes down to the Ohio River, and winds up in the Gulf of Mexico.”
Peter took another slug from the bottle. “Maybe the viaduct was too exposed. Too much traffic that night. Then he got down here and this section of creek was too low to carry the body out to the river. It had to be low that night or he wouldn’t have crossed it.”
“And he found a shovel propped against the tree? He brought the shovel, so he had to carry the body and the shovel. If it was the watchman, he probably had some kind of cart.”
Peter shook his head. “The ground by the tracks is too rough. Maybe if he had a Humvee.”
“Now you’re making fun of me. Humvees didn’t exist until the nineties.”
“Your night watchman had to be a real behemoth to hump Andrew two-thirds of the way across a football field. There are a lot of industrial jobs down here, jobs that build more muscle than being a night watchman. And I bet more than a few sports fans hung around to see the Bengals practice.”
“A football player could haul a shovel and 145 pounds of dead weight with no problem.”
“They built the training facility that year,” Peter said. “A construction worker might be a better choice.”
“Construction workers would be hard to track, wouldn’t they?”
“They come and go. I don’t think my guy came in from the rail yard, but he might have discovered the creek because he was hanging out to watch trains.”
Lia took the bottle from Peter. “You’re thinking someone who grew up here.”
“Screams ‘native’ to me.”
“I can see that.”
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