November's Past (Larry Macklin Mysteries Book 1)

by A. E. Howe

  “Seriously, you need to get married,” Pete said, breathing heavily as he lugged gear to the shooting benches.

  “Why?” I asked, lending a hand.

  “Because I’m sick and tired of being the one who’s begging his partner to help him escape.”

  “You love Sarah.”

  “True, that is very true. Loving someone does not mean that they can’t drive you crazy and vice versa. When she’s in one of these manic cleaning modes, I just want to go camp in the woods until it’s over. Why the hell didn’t my father take me hunting? That’s what most of the guys do during the holidays.”

  “Did you bring enough guns?” I asked rhetorically, seeing the half dozen different weapons he was carting over to the bench.

  “I plan on being out here until it’s too dark to see the targets. Of course I’ve got a flashlight, so maybe a little later.”

  “It can’t be that bad.”

  “The trouble is, her mother’s coming for Thanksgiving. Sarah has this huge inferiority complex where her mother is concerned. And her mother doesn’t help. The minute she walks in the house, she’ll be looking for something to criticize about Sarah’s housework. It drives Sarah crazy, but she can’t just ignore it. I understand, but that doesn’t make it any easier to live with. Come on, let’s shoot.”

  We worked with our Glock 17s, the department’s service pistol, then with the Ithaca shotguns, which were issued to us and lived in the trunks of our unmarked cars. Finally Pete did some work with his Remington 700 that was rigged out as a sniper rifle. He was the closet thing to a sniper the department had. This fifty-yard bay didn’t offer too much of a challenge for him. He was putting every round on paper so that a quarter would have touched all of them. After watching for a while, I told him that I needed a restroom break. He nodded and went back to laying shot on top of shot. His mother-in-law might be a little more circumspect if she saw his bullet groupings, I thought.

  Walking past the large open bay, I saw Matt practicing his running and shooting-from-cover drills. I couldn’t see his hits from where I was, but I’d seen him shoot before and had no doubt that every round was on target. Like everything else to do with law enforcement, he seemed to take shooting practice twice as seriously as everyone else.

  After taking care of business I came back and stood watching Matt until he took a break. He saw me and lifted his hand in greeting as he walked back to the shooter’s bench. After he removed his earmuffs, I filled him in on the meeting with Tim and Margret. He nodded.

  He started loading his magazines and looked at me. “I went back over the timeline. There are a few questions there. Checking with the hotel in Tallahassee where Mark was staying, they said he checked in almost five days before he was murdered. Finding out what he did during that time would be helpful.” Damn! I thought. Why didn’t I think of that?

  “I should have a credit card statement from his bank tomorrow. That’ll be a good place to start,” I told him.

  “I’ve put most of the information I have on the timeline. I’ll email it to you. Fill in what you can. Any information that you can put on it might help us see a pattern. Other than that, I’m stuck waiting for lab reports.”

  “I’m stuck waiting for suspects. The only people who are still around that are intimately tied to that period, and therefore to each other and the murders, are Dad, Margret and Jim Devries. Margret was in Jacksonville at the time of both her sister’s and Mark’s murder and Jim was in a coma for both of them. And I don’t see an obvious motive for my father.”

  Matt seemed to be considering my dad. There was no love lost there. He thought Dad was too lackadaisical about training and preparations for major threats. “We can probably rule out the sheriff,” he allowed. “Maybe someone related to those suspects, or maybe we should look into the possibility that they hired someone to do the murders.”

  “Still need a motive. Several questions come to mind. Why now? What happened to set all of this in motion? That is the biggest and, I think, most important question.”

  “How does the arson fit into it?”

  “I think I might have the answer there. Two possibilities. One, there were pictures and documents stored in the house. Second, as part of a revenge motive.”

  He nodded and shook his head, picking up his now-loaded magazines. “We’ll figure this out, but it’s going to take time.” He paused and tilted his head toward the bay where we could hear Pete shooting. “Why don’t you dump him and get a real partner? You’re actually better at this than you appear.” He just had to add a bitter taste to what had been a pretty congenial conversation up to this point.

  “Pete’s a good man.” I raised my hand before he could object. “I know how you feel about him, but I’m okay with him.”

  “Playing cop,” he said with a sneer. “Fine. Do what you want.” He put his ear protection on and turned back down range.

  I walked back to where Pete was looking tired and done in. “About finished?”

  “I don’t think I have a choice,” he said, breathing hard. “I’m out of breath and bullets.”

  I checked my phone when I got in the car and saw that I’d missed a call from Cara. No message. Damn. I called her number.

  “Hey.”

  “I saw you called.”

  “I had an idea for a date.”

  “Nice.” I saw Pete smirking at me.

  “When and where?” I asked.

  “Tomorrow? I have Monday afternoon off. Two o’clock.”

  “Okay. Sure.” I’d figure it out somehow. It wasn’t like I hadn’t worked most of the weekend.

  “I’ll tell you where when I pick you up. Dress causal.”

  “I always do. See you then.”

  “A date?” More leering from Pete. “You’re going to be one of us married guys before you know it.”

  Before I had a chance to give him a smartass answer, I got a text from Dad with a couple other names. Two men and a woman that he could remember being over at the Daniels house. I’d try and track them down when I got home.

  Half an hour of Internet investigating and I had numbers for all three names Dad gave me and I actually managed to talk to all three. Sunday evening isn’t the worst time to try and get a hold of middle-aged Americans. All of their stories pretty much matched the narrative I already had. Gail Sutherland filled in a few details I hadn’t gotten before. She’d been friends with both Dell and Margret though, like everyone else, she’d found it very difficult to be Margret’s friend. However, Margret thought enough of Gail that she’d asked her to be her bridesmaid.

  “All of us were pretty surprised at how quickly the wedding came about. I remember scrambling to get my dress. Jim just up and proposed to her one day and, within a month, they were married. It didn’t surprise any of us when Tim was a month premature. If you know what I mean?”

  “You’re pretty sure she was pregnant when they got married?”

  “Not that big of a deal really. Jim and Margret had been dating off and on for a year. And things could get pretty wild over at the Daniels house when her parents weren’t there. Honestly, that’s why Jason and I would go over there. Bedrooms are better than backseats. Though plenty of stuff went on in the backseats too. The seventies. Your dad was pretty wild too.” She chuckled. You could tell that it was a decade she wouldn’t mind reliving. Of course my mind had been damaged by thoughts of my dad doing… whatever.

  “You remember Mark Kemper?”

  “Sure, he was there for a while. But at some point he just stopped coming by. I think he finally realized that the older kids didn’t really want to have him hanging around. He was pretty goofy. Margret played him bad.”

  “You think he had hurt feelings?”

  “Could have. But he was pretty good-natured too. I just remember not seeing him at the house at some point.”

  “Was he at the wedding?”

  “No, it was a small affair. Like I said, put together fast. And I think he’d stopped coming by then.�
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  She didn’t have anything else to add. The other two people had even less information.

  With Ivy stepping on the keyboard, I did my best to check my email. There was one from Matt. I opened it and looked over the timeline he’d created. He’d started with Mark’s arrival at his hotel in Tallahassee four days before he was murdered. Margret was in Jacksonville and seen at various locations on the night that he was killed. It’s a good three hours from Jacksonville to Adams County, so she couldn’t have done it herself. Did she have someone else do it?

  Jim had his stroke two days before the murder, so he was in the hospital at the time. This brought it back to Dad. Location, location, location. He had the opportunity. Certainly had the means. Motive? No one seemed to have a motive.

  Both Mark Kemper and Dell McDonnell were, by all accounts, two of the nicest people in the world. Did we have a serial killer targeting nice people? If that was the case, then we didn’t have to worry because he’d run out of victims soon enough.

  Two things kept pointing to the past. There was no known connection between Mark and Dell except for thirty-five years ago, and a good explanation for why the house was burned down would be the old photos and documents in the area where the fire was started.

  I looked back at the timeline. Mark is killed, body is mutilated, the Daniels house is torched, the body is dumped. Dell arrives because of the arson and I question her. She freaks when she finds out about Mark’s murder. Back at her hotel she lets someone into her room, and he or she bludgeons Dell to death.

  Why was Mark mutilated? My guess was that the killer was an amateur who thought they could disguise the identity of the victim. Maybe they hoped it would be longer before the body was discovered. Or perhaps they just wanted to muddy the waters and hope that a connection wouldn’t be made between the murder and the arson.

  All of this was making my head spin. It was bedtime. I had to get some work done in the morning so I could come up with a good excuse for playing hooky in the afternoon. Thinking about Cara’s phone call made me smile.

  Chapter Eighteen

  I was out of the house before seven, leaving Ivy fed and already taking her morning nap. A front had moved through during the night with a lot of bluster, but little rain. The wind was strong and cold out of the north. I was in a great mood. Of course it had nothing to do with going to work and everything to do with my plans for being a truant that afternoon. I was anxious to see Cara again.

  At the office everything was moving at the usual lethargic Monday morning pace. The desk sergeant hardly managed to look up and grunt good morning to me. Everyone I saw was bleary-eyed and grumpy-faced. I’m sure my smiling, perky attitude was appropriately annoying.

  After last night’s sit-down with the timeline, I’d just about decided to wait for more of the lab results before trying to move forward. There didn’t seem to be much choice. Other options included recanvassing all the scenes for witnesses or doing a PSA asking for the public’s help. Though we weren’t likely to get much out of that.

  I was whistling as I checked my emails and then my phone rang. A glance before answering told me it was Cara.

  “Hey.”

  “I’m really sorry about this, but one of the other techs didn’t show up today so I’m going to have to work this afternoon.” She genuinely sounded sorry.

  “That’s okay. I understand.” The sound I heard in my head was my spirit being crushed.

  “I should be able to get off tomorrow afternoon, if that will work?” That made me feel better. At least she was anxious for us to get together again.

  “I’ll make it work.”

  “Cool. Got to go.” And she was gone.

  Pete came in carrying a bag of fresh pastries. He set the bag on my desk with a cheery “Good morning!”

  “Screw you,” I replied, grabbing the bag and digging out the biggest, stickiest, fat-filled donut I could find and biting into it.

  “Rough night?” he asked, maintaining his good humor.

  “Life was grand until five minutes ago.”

  “When I came in?” He almost sounded hurt.

  I waved it away. “Not you.”

  “The date!”

  I scowled and went back to reading my emails and eating my bakery-fresh heart attack.

  I tackled the half dozen reports that had been put on my desk. The usual. At first I didn’t think a lot about a new arson case. No one had been hurt. The fire hadn’t even done too much damage. A storage unit had caught fire and the units on either side suffered damage, but the manager had caught it and called the fire department before it had the chance to get out of hand. But something bugged me about it. I put the auto thefts, a burglary and an assault case aside.

  The arson report said that the storage unit belonged to a Dr. Matthew Brook. The name was familiar. I picked up my phone and called his number. A woman answered.

  “This is Deputy Macklin. I’m calling about the fire at the doctor’s storage unit. Could I speak with him, please?”

  “I’m sorry, but the doctor is taking his nap. I’m his caretaker. I might be able to answer your questions.”

  Nap was not the answer I thought I’d get. “Who am I speaking with?”

  “Pat Clarkson. I’ve been with the doctor for a number of years.”

  “How old is the doctor?”

  “He’ll be eighty-eight in another month,” she said. Everything was clearer now.

  “Can you tell me what was in the storage unit?”

  “Not exactly. Most of the records and materials came from his medical practice. He retired fifteen years ago. I’ve been to the storage unit once. A couple of years ago he was looking for some documents from when he was in the Army. I can tell you, I’m not surprised there was a fire. The place was a hazard. I saw old X-rays, film, boxes of news clippings, photo albums and a ton of old files.”

  “Ummm… Is the doctor clear-minded?” I felt bad for asking, but so many older people suffer from Alzheimer’s or dementia that you just can’t take it for granted that they have a memory left.

  “Oh, he’s pretty sharp. Has a tendency to get in ruts and repeat the same stories over and over. But other than that, he’s fine.”

  “Terrific. I’m going to check out a couple things and I might want to speak with him.”

  “Just call ahead and I’m sure we can arrange a time.”

  We said our goodbyes. I got up and took my coat from the back of my chair. Feeling bad for the way I’d treated Pete, I invited him to ride along with me to U-Keep-It storage.

  The place was not very big, just four buildings with units on both sides surrounded by a chain-link fence. The gate was open, but it looked like they locked it at night. Signs wired to the fence gave the hours for access. If you wanted after-hours access there was a number you could call. A nice doublewide had a sign reading “office” on it, but it clearly functioned as someone’s residence too. I parked next to it and Pete and I went in.

  A nice-looking middle-aged woman sat at a desk. “Can I help you, gentlemen?” she asked with the air of professionalism that you might expect at a New York law firm.

  “We’re with the sheriff’s office. We’re investigating the fire you had last night.”

  “I’m glad you’re here. My father owns the place. He’s sleeping right now, having been up all night.” Does everyone but me get to take naps? I wondered.

  “I can show you the unit. It’s a real mess between the fire and the water hoses.” She came around the desk carrying a set of keys. “The water did a lot more damage. We had to cut the owner’s lock off, of course, and put on one of our own. Have you talked to Dr. Brook?” She never stopped talking from the time we entered the office until we stood in front of the wet, blackened mess that used to be the doctor’s memories and records.

  “We saw CCTV cameras in the front. Are there any back here?” I asked, looking around.

  “No, only on the front gate and the office, which is also my dad’s home.”

/>   Pete looked around the fence while I tried to find something readable inside the storage unit. “Here!” he yelled.

  I went over to the chain-link fence where he was holding part of it off the ground. Someone had carefully cut the wire so they could crawl in. Pete pointed to a few pieces of thread on the jagged end of the cuts.

  “Looks like he left some evidence this time.”

  I used my phone to call for the crime scene techs. Shantel called me back and I told her the situation and what I wanted them to collect. They were out the door before we hung up.

  Everything in the unit was toast. What wasn’t burned had turned into a soggy mush. Was it connected to the other arson and the murders? Seemed like a longshot, though it was hard to imagine why someone would torch an old doctor’s storage unit. Unless they got the wrong unit. In the dark, under stress, that would be easy enough to do. And it was very believable that an ex-husband or lover might torch their significant other’s stuff. That would fall under business as usual.

  I’d talk to the doctor first chance I got to try and rule out, or in, a connection with the murders, but right now I had other cases that needed attention while the murder investigations simmered. I spent the afternoon dealing with my inbox.

  Dad called at four to let me know that Jim Devries had passed away and that the funeral was scheduled for Thursday. I told him I’d go to the funeral with him.

  I was on call Monday night and had to work a couple incidents—one a domestic where the wife was put in the hospital and another call about a car-jacking that turned into a drug thing by the time I got there. I took my time coming in Tuesday morning with the idea that I’d check email and finish the reports from the night before, then make an excuse for heading out for my date with Cara.

  I decided to call Dr. Brook to see if he had time for me to visit and maybe I could clear up the questions about the fire at his storage unit. Talking to the doctor would let me skip out with a clear conscience.