Final Undertaking: A Buryin' Barry Mystery (Buryin' Barry Series)

by Mark de Castrique

  Since Lieutenant Spring had sent Lincoln’s vehicle registration from his office, there was a good chance he was still there. I called to thank him for his help.

  Spring gave me an update. “We’ve sent a patrol car by Lincoln’s condo down here. No sign he’s been home.”

  “Lincoln’s had plenty of time to get there. Maybe he’s gone to earth someplace up here.” I thought for a second. “What’s the chance of getting a warrant to search his place?”

  “I made the request to my captain an hour ago.”

  “Good. Maybe you’ll find something that tells us where Lincoln’s staying.”

  Spring dropped his voice to a whisper. “Captain Rathbone ordered me to hold off.”

  I wadded the phone cord in my fist. “Hold off. But we’ve got a positive ID from the Kowalskis’ neighbor.”

  “Barry. Something’s going down. As soon as I mentioned OxyContin, the captain backpedaled.”

  I’d been a police officer long enough to recognize the warning signs. My inquiries had crossed over into another investigation. I was the guy from out of state and the captain wasn’t going to jeopardize his local case for me. “Is Lincoln an informant?”

  “I don’t think so. I figure he might be a small fish, but if he gets hooked, the big fish get nervous. And we’ve got some big fishermen casting in our pond who sure as hell don’t want someone hooking a minnow right now.”

  Spring didn’t have to spell it out for me. The feds were involved. I didn’t like the new hand I’d been dealt. “Can we help them?”

  “Yeah. Stay clear. I’ve a feeling the net’s gonna close real quick.” Spring laughed. “Maybe the feds will snare Lincoln and toss him your way.”

  Fat chance. I realized Spring had done all he could for me. “Thanks for sending the car registration.”

  “No problem. Glad it came through before my little chat with the captain. I’ll be in touch.” Spring hung up before I could say anything else.

  I checked his email again. No mistake. The address header showed he’d sent the vehicle information after he’d gotten his captain’s orders to back off. I owed Spring another drink.

  The description of Lincoln’s car could help Fletcher in Asheville. He hadn’t called since he’d left the hospital over five hours ago, and I weighed whether to wait for him to contact me or to ring his cell phone. I decided Fletcher could refuse to answer if he was in the middle of some role play.

  “Talk to me.” Fletcher barked the words as an order.

  “Lincoln drove a light blue Lincoln, Florida plates.”

  “Tell Barry I’ll talk to him when I’m good and ready. I don’t know when I’ll be back north.” His brusque tone was so out of character Fletcher had to be in character.

  “I’m coming to Asheville at four to screen security videos. If you’re good and ready then, call me.”

  “When I get my money.” Fletcher shouted the words and hung up.

  My summer intern had been performing for someone. I hoped he wasn’t casting himself in a play with a bad ending.

  I worked the phone and computer for another thirty minutes, checking bed-and-breakfast and mom-and-pop motel registries for Artie Lincoln. Nothing turned up.

  Tommy Lee slept soundly. I wanted to ask him for any ideas on how to make the most of what little information we had, but I knew his priority was to get the deep healing sleep his body needed.

  “Be careful what you wish for.” Dad’s words rang in my head again. My name was on this case file. I had the duty to find Lincoln and bring him to justice. As far as I was concerned, he was responsible for not only the death of the unidentified girl but also Lucy and Mitch Kowalski as well.

  As a police officer, I’d arrested many druggies devastated by addiction. As a funeral director, I had buried them. Drug dealers like Lincoln made a living off the suffering of others, whether they were teen runaways on the street or elderly ladies at the shuffleboard courts. There was no telling how many lives he’d ruined and how many more he would destroy if he wasn’t stopped.

  At ten till three, I logged off the computer and went down to shipping and receiving. Most people didn’t realize the hospital’s loading dock not only brought in medical supplies and equipment but was also the location where hearses picked up the deceased. I was well known in the department. Cooper Ludden had been in charge as long as I could remember, and I found him outside one of the roll-up doors. He had a cigar cocked in one corner of his mouth and held a clipboard and pen in his hands. Several workers were unloading boxes from a truck marked Remington Medical Supplies, and Cooper checked each one against an order form.

  “Barry. Didn’t know you had a passenger.” The cigar bobbed with each word. Cooper scanned the concrete lot. “Where’s your ride?”

  “Freddy Mott’s meeting me here. I was up visiting the sheriff.”

  He snatched out the cigar and jabbed the smoking end at me. “Hell of a thing. The man survives Vietnam and then gets shot in his home town. What’s the world coming to?”

  “I don’t know. But it looks like Tommy Lee’s gonna be okay.”

  Cooper jammed the cigar back in his mouth. “Damn good news. I was afraid you were loading him up.”

  I shuddered to think how close Tommy Lee had come to being my passenger.

  “Hold it.” Cooper stopped one of his men from setting a box on the forklift. “This carton’s got a split in the side. Move it out of the way and we’ll count the contents later. The driver can just cool his heels.” Cooper turned to me. “You can’t imagine the theft that goes on in a place like this. My job’s to at least get the stuff in the door. Then it’s Hospital Security’s problem.” He made a notation beside one of the items on his clipboard. “So, who are we saying goodbye to?”

  “Mildred Cosgrove.”

  Cooper shook his head. “Mrs. Cosgrove. Had her in first grade. Fifty years ago. She gave me my first paddling at school. Second day. I couldn’t sit down the rest of the morning. Woman put the fear of God in me. After that I did whatever she told me.”

  “Me too.” Up until she wanted a dead cat in her casket, but I kept that thought to myself.

  “Here’s Freddy.” Cooper jutted his chin toward the main gate in the high chain-link fence. Our hearse pulled in and swung wide to back up next to the truck.

  “I’ll call the morgue. Should have had the paperwork by now.” Cooper took the cigar from his mouth and handed it to me. “Hold this. Can’t smoke in the building and they’re never as good if you have to crush them out and re-light them.”

  Cooper disappeared into the large storage room. “Feel free to keep her going,” he shouted from the shadows.

  I looked at the soggy stogie and felt my stomach churn.

  “Your momma know you smoke?” Freddy grinned up at me from beside the rear bumper of the hearse. He wore carpenter’s overalls and a John Deere cap. Not exactly the dignified look one expected in funeral transportation. But Freddy had been working part time for us since he was a teenager, since before I was born. He’d obviously come from one of his handyman jobs.

  “I’m keeping it for Cooper.”

  “Oh, I won’t tell on you.” He dropped the tailgate. “Where’s Mrs. Cosgrove?”

  “Not down from the morgue. And Cooper didn’t have any paperwork.”

  Freddy spit on the pavement. “Figures. Takes forever to check out when you’re alive. Being dead only makes it worse.”

  I couldn’t argue with him. We waited a good twenty minutes and I worried I’d be late for my appointment in Asheville. The burning cigar began to warm my fingers before Cooper returned.

  “Here you go.” Cooper swapped a manila envelope for the remains of his stogie. “When you’ve been here as long as I have, you can shortcut the system. I had her include five copies of the death certificate.”

  “Thanks.” I handed the envelope to Freddy. “Give this to Wayne in case the family needs it before I come in.”

  “Sure.” Freddy looked at the name handwr
itten on the front. “Old Mrs. Cosgrove. She paddled me the first day of school.”

  Cooper puffed out a cloud of blue smoke. “Damn. I thought I had the record.”

  “Sorry I’m late.” I shook hands with Elaine Vincent, a smartly dressed executive who met me in the lobby of Wachovia’s largest office in Asheville.

  “No problem, Deputy. We used the extra time to isolate the incidents on the tapes. Follow me, please.” She turned and led me to a bank of elevators.

  “Incidents?”

  Elaine pushed the down button. “The branch manager in Gainesboro said you got your date of the ATM transaction from the Kowalskis’ statement. We had an additional transaction clear this morning. Five hundred dollars withdrawn last Friday morning.”

  The day of the shooting. The money on the girl’s body.

  The elevator doors opened and Elaine motioned for me to enter. I caught a whiff of her light perfume as I stepped past her. Certainly a vast improvement over Cooper Ludden’s cigar.

  Elaine punched B and the doors closed. As I expected, the security offices were in the basement.

  “I hope I’m not keeping you from your work,” I said.

  “Not at all. This is my work.”

  “Are you in public relations?”

  “No. Bullshit’s not my specialty.”

  Her frankness surprised me. I studied her more closely. Her short blonde hair created a youthful appearance, but the hint of wrinkles around her eyes and throat told me she was a good ten years older than I first thought. Probably at least mid-forties.

  Elaine seemed to read my mind. “I’m retired Navy. Twenty years. Enlisted when I was seven.”

  “That’s how old I thought you were.”

  She laughed. “You should be in PR.”

  The elevator stopped with a jolt.

  “Rock bottom.” She stepped back as the doors opened. “I worked in military security. Joined the bank six months ago and I’m supervising the upgrades for western North Carolina.”

  “We appreciate your cooperation with our case.” I motioned for her to go first.

  “Cooperation? Unauthorized use of a customer’s card is my case. The bank might want to prosecute as well.” She detached her name tag from her blue blazer and swiped it through a keypad to the left of the elevator. The adjacent door opened.

  “Both Kowalskis are dead.” I followed her into a narrow hallway.

  “All the more reason to nail the bastard.” Elaine knocked on a door at the end of the hall, and then entered without waiting for a response.

  The room was about thirty by thirty. We stepped up on a raised platform made of yard-square tiles. I knew enough about computers to guess wiring ran beneath the floor. Racks of what I took to be servers lined the walls on either side. Directly ahead of me stood a console and a bank of computer monitors. I recognized shots from the exterior of this building on Haywood Street and several angles from the first-floor lobby. Other pictures seemed to be from other banks.

  “This is Danny Crane.” Elaine introduced a young man seated at the console keyboard.

  Danny swiveled around and shook my hand. “Pleasure to meet you, officer.” He looked away as he spoke, obviously more comfortable staring at a computer screen than another human being.

  “Show Deputy Clayton what you’ve got,” Elaine said.

  Danny clicked the mouse and the picture on the central monitor vanished. “The quality’s going to be pretty crappy. Gainesboro’s on our old VHS system.”

  I leaned closer to the monitor. “Like a tape from Blockbuster?”

  “Same physical cassette, but the recording speed’s reduced. Twenty-four hours per tape. The branch has a machine that holds seven cassettes and the manager changes them once a week. We pulled video from the last transaction on the Kowalskis’ statement and the one that occurred last Friday. I digitized them in chronological order.” Danny slid the mouse across his pad and double-clicked. “It’s running half speed.”

  The monitor showed a fish-eye view of a parking lot. The video refreshed every second instead of every 30th of a second, giving the sense of watching a series of stills rather than smooth motion. Although the picture was in color, most of the frame was filled with gray asphalt. A readout in the bottom corner of the screen showed date and time—Monday, May 29th, 2:45:15 p.m.

  “That was Memorial Day,” Elaine said. “The ATMs get heavy use on a holiday weekend.”

  As the seconds ticked by, an edge of a blue car appeared on the right side of the screen. I recognized the hood ornament of a Lincoln. “That’s the car.”

  A few seconds later, a woman stepped up to the ATM. She kept her head down, and her face was partially obscured by the hood of a light green windbreaker. Enough of her chin and nose were visible for me to recognize the dead girl.

  “She your victim?” Elaine asked.

  “Yes.”

  She stared at the girl’s clothing. “Seems like we had a record-breaking temperature on Memorial Day. Nearly eighty in Asheville.”

  I’d spent the day with Susan in Pisgah Forest and remembered how hot it had been. “Yes. The sun’s bright and the pavement’s dry. She wasn’t wearing that windbreaker for some isolated thunderstorm.”

  Danny froze a frame that revealed most of the girl’s features. “I’ll print this one for you.” He clicked the mouse and somewhere in the room a printer stirred to life. “Now for last Friday.”

  The date changed to June 9th, the day of the shootings, and the time to 7:16:00 a.m. A garish yellow hue bounced off the pavement.

  “The sun hadn’t come up enough to trip the photo-sensor for the security light,” Elaine said.

  The clock started running and the girl again entered the frame from the same angle. If she came by car, it had been parked out of camera range. Her outfit was different from what she’d worn that evening. A red tank top and black shorts made her look like she’d been out for an early morning run. But she didn’t appear to be breathing hard. In fact she spent most of the time smiling at the security camera. We watched her reach for the cash and then lift her top enough to reveal the pouch Susan had cut off her bleeding body.

  Elaine looked at me. “Tell you anything?”

  “A lot. I just wish I knew what it meant. The first clip she goes to extremes to hide her identity and the second has her auditioning for American Idol. Why the change?”

  Danny froze a shot of the girl staring straight into the lens. The printer started again. Then he put that frame side-by-side with the first one. He pointed to the hood ornament. “That’s interesting.”

  “You recognize the Lincoln?” I asked.

  “No. It’s interesting the girl came by car but walked up to the ATM. It’s a drive-through.”

  Elaine nodded. “And after the transaction, the car backed up. No chance to see the driver or the license plate.”

  I began to understand. “The driver didn’t want the girl or him to be recognized, which means the second withdrawal must have been made by the girl alone. She wanted the whole world to know she was there.”

  Danny zoomed into her face. “Maybe she was being held hostage.”

  “No,” Elaine said. “If so, why not take the money and escape?”

  I leaned closer to the monitor, trying to read meaning in the dead girl’s eyes. “She wanted to be caught. She handed us the evidence, and then didn’t live long enough to use it.”

  “Why?” Elaine and Danny asked the question together.

  “I don’t know, but I’m sure she would have told us.” I thought about Fletcher’s report of the girl’s dying words—“R.D.” and “Billy.” We knew “R.D.” was Artie. Maybe Billy was the answer to why.

  Chapter Ten

  The afternoon sun had dipped below the western ridges by the time I stepped out of the Wachovia offices and onto the shadowed sidewalk of Haywood Street. In addition to my case notes, my leather portfolio held several printouts of a freeze frame of the unidentified girl smiling at the security camera. Alt
hough Fletcher’s composite had been surprisingly accurate, the video from last Friday morning provided an unmistakable likeness recognizable to anyone who knew our mystery girl.

  My cell phone vibrated on my belt, signaling I had a voicemail waiting. The below-ground security facility in the bank must have shielded incoming calls. Fletcher had phoned ten minutes ago.

  “I’ll stay in Asheville till I hear from you.” The swagger was gone from his voice and I knew he was alone.

  I found an empty bench on the sidewalk along the small park across from the bank. Down the block, two young wannabe fiddlers scratched out Ol’ Joe Clark in a mishmash of notes. Their open violin cases would have encouraged more contributions if a sign had read “Will Stop Playing For Cash.” I pressed my cell phone to one ear and stuck my finger in the other.

  “Where are you?” Fletcher got right to the point.

  “Outside the bank on Haywood Street.”

  “I’m over at Pack Square near a monument.”

  “Governor Vance. I can walk there in a few minutes.”

  Fletcher hesitated. “No. Better not. Too many people have seen me. I’ll come to you.”

  “There’s a bookstore nearby. Malaprop’s.” I gave him directions and told him I’d meet him in the mystery section.

  Malaprop’s Bookstore and Café is an Asheville landmark. Not for unique architecture or a singular location, but for the convergence of cultures that share an enjoyment of the coffee, conversation, and the store’s collection of bestsellers and new literary discoveries.

  Three distinct lifestyles intersect within the store. There are the locals who’ve been born and bred in the mountains, the retirees with their silver hair and pension funds, and the new-agers whose hair could be purple, red, or even green, depending upon the day’s vibration of the vortex. Walking between the rows of shelves, I’d overhear patrons discussing everything from the Middle East to Middle Earth.