Dead Deceiver

by Victoria Houston

  “Wow,” said Lew, half leaning against a nearby desk. “Wow.”

  “The lawyer was nice enough to take the time to give me the background on Mr. Mason,” said Beth. “Seems he has never made much money but always managed to land jobs at places like Target or Best Buy. He would keep each job until he met a woman who fell for him, they would marry, he would persuade her to put his name on a joint bank account and about a year into the marriage, he would empty the account and take off. A pattern.”

  “Did he say if these women were fellow employees or customers?”

  “Both,” said Beth. “One had been his manager and the other bought a home entertainment center from him, which he helped install and never left. That’s what the lawyer said,” said Beth with a hint of humor. Lew had a hunch that if Beth weren’t in the throes of grief over the death of her close friend that she might have more of a lively, dry wit than first appeared.

  “What are the liens about?” asked Lew.

  “Dani,” said Beth, “you found that data. What’s the story on those?”

  By now Dani’s girlish mannerism had morphed into a sense of authority that Lew found more reassuring. “Lawsuits from the women involved,” said the girl, hitting keys and leaning towards the screen as she spoke. “One wanted a car back; the other was out a chunk of her savings that he was supposed to use as a down payment on a house but never did.” Dani scrolled down, looking for more. “Guess that’s what I’ve got so far, Chief Ferris.

  Lew, arms crossed and thinking back over the details, said “So basically, we have a gentleman who prefers ladies with generous bank accounts. That would include Dr. Schumacher, wouldn’t it.”

  Beth and Dani nodded in agreement.

  “There’s more from the lawyer,” said Beth. “I kept thinking I was keeping him from his dinner but he was really ready to talk. It’s personal stuff—but do you want to hear—”

  “For heaven’s sake, yes,” said Lew. “You know, Beth, it takes skill to get people to open up, especially lawyers. You’re good.” Beth blushed at the compliment.

  “Apparently the ladies he wed found him quite charming and colorful. He told his first wife his hobby was raising bald eagles.”

  “No,” said Lew, “how pretentious. And she believed him? Honestly. Keep going.”

  Beth looked down at her notes. “Wendy—that’s Wife Number Two—was told he wanted to become a master gardener. But in the divorce documents she states that after they married, he never picked up a shovel. Wife Number Three married him thinking he was a frustrated poet …”

  “And Patience Schumacher thinks he’s a painter of fine art,” said Lew. “What crap! Dani,” Lew shook a finger at the young woman, “you learn from this—don’t ever let a guy bullshit you, okay?”

  Dani giggled. “Promise.”

  Beth smiled, then said, “but here is the frustrating part—we have found no indication that Mr. Mason has anything but the most rudimentary experience with computers. Otherwise I would suspect him as our fraudster.”

  “Too bad,” said Lew. “We need to confirm whether or not he is married to that another woman.”

  “The lawyer is having the law office send the divorce documents over by courier tomorrow. I’ve arranged for the package to be delivered to your office, Chief. You can expect them by late morning.”

  “Once they arrive, I’ll get Mr. Mason in for questioning.”

  “That should be interesting,” said Beth, slipping her notepad into her purse. “Okay, I’m heading home now. Dani is going to do a little more work on this search tonight if that’s okay?”

  “Fine,” said Lew. “You go. I’ll stay here with Dani until we call it an evening. So far no sign of the spammer, correct?”

  “Nothing yet,” said Dani as she waved goodnight to Beth.

  Lew took the chair next to Dani. “Poor Dr. Schumacher,” she said with a shake of her head. “I hate having to be the person to tell her the truth about Charles Franklin Mason.”

  The evening passed slowly. Not once did the cursor move that had been set up to signal the presence of spam. Around ten o’clock, Dani decided she needed a quick break for water and the bathroom.

  And, thought Lew, the cute janitor, of course.

  Before leaving the room, Dani said, “what you want to watch for, Chief Ferris, is this.”

  She showed Lew how the cursor would react if spam entered the system. “But it has always arrived by this time so I think it isn’t going to happen tonight.”

  “How do you know that?” asked Lew. “We’ve only been watching for a night.”

  “Oh, Chief Ferris, that’s not true exactly. For two weeks now, Professor Hellenbrand and I have been watching the spam coming in—and there has been a real pattern to it. That’s before we knew it was originating from within the system. No, whoever it is has always sent the emails by now.”

  “Okay, I’ll watch,” said Lew.

  Nothing moved. All that happened was someone entertaining Dani at the vending machines—at least Lew heard her peals of laughter before she returned to the office.

  “Oh, that guy,” said Dani, bouncing into the room. “He’s so cute.”

  “Which guy are we talking about?” said Lew.

  “The janitor—the one who wants to take me snowmobiling.” She sat down, a grin of delight on her face. “He’s got a neat beard, kinda like my dad’s,” she gestured towards her chin, “and these huge dark eyes. Long lashes. Cool looking guy.”

  “Dani,” warned Lew, “I thought you said he’s a lot older.”

  “Yeah,” said Dani, raising both arms to shake her curls back behind her ears. “He is. I keep telling him that.” She gave a small secret smile and Lew could see she felt very flattered. “But you know, the longer you’ve worked here, the more money you make.”

  “I assume he told you that.”

  “Uh huh.”

  Lew resisted the urge to tell her to be careful. She had delivered enough instructions tonight. At ten-thirty, they put the computer to sleep and walked to their cars in the parking lot. Parked on the walkway running alongside the maintenance garage, which was located at the far end of the parking lot, Lew saw a red snowmobile. She bet anything that was the sled Dani was hoping to ride.

  Some things never change: girls like guys with cool cars … or sleds. Lew knew. She made that mistake herself once upon a time.

  CHAPTER 26

  The knock on the door to Lew’s office startled Osborne, who had just poured himself a cup of coffee and was in the midst of pouring one for Lew. He turned to Lew with a questioning look.

  “Who is it?” she called from where she sat behind her desk, busy with reviewing emails that had come in overnight.

  “Bruce,” said a voice from behind the door. Osborne pulled open the door.

  “Bruce!” Lew got to her feet. “It’s seven o’clock in the morning. What are you doing here so early?”

  “I couldn’t sleep. Got incredible results in late last night. Chief, you won’t believe the DNA matches. I was so excited that I finally got up at five, went by the office to be sure I hadn’t imagined things and decided to drive up here with the results.”

  “I appreciate that,” said Lew. “But you could have phoned and emailed—”

  “But then I couldn’t see your face.”

  Lew laughed as she beckoned Bruce over to the table near the windows where the morning sun was flooding in. Icicles dripped on the pavement outside. If you didn’t count the frigid temperatures outdoors, the combination of sunlight and Bruce Peter’s good cheer was making for a very pleasant start to the morning.

  “Okay, okay,” said Lew as if she was trying to calm a Labrador Retriever, “let’s all sit down over here and see what you got. Doc, pour this man a cup of coffee, would you please?”

  “Lots of cream and sugar, if you have it,” said Bruce, slapping a folder on the table as he pulled out a chair.

  Osborne found himself chuckling. Bruce Peters might be a skilled for
ensic technician in his mid-thirties, an expert on grim matters, but at the moment he was as hyper as a ten year old who has just landed his first muskie.

  Bruce leaned over the file he had laid on the table before him, eyes gleaming as they searched Lew’s face. “Got a perfect DNA match with Charles Mason, okay?”

  “Ouch,” said Lew. “Guess I hate to hear that. So much for his wife’s insistence he was out of town when the break-in occurred.”

  “Hold on. Got the same perfect DNA match from the national criminal database—a convicted felon in California who walked away from a minimum-security prison three months ago. Richard Mason is his name. Goes by ‘Dick’ and he’s got a long rap sheet of white-collar crime. Forged checks, counterfeit checks, embezzlement, identity theft and … tah dah! … computer fraud.”

  “I’m confused,” said Lew. “Just last night Beth Hellenbrand did a public records search, which turned up divorce records on Charles who appears to have been living in Minneapolis. But are you saying that Charles is really … Dick?”

  “Hold your horses, Chief, I’m not finished,” said Bruce. “Next I compared the fingerprints on record for Dick Mason with the ones I took yesterday from Charles. No match. I also have a printout in my folder here of assorted mug shots of Dick Mason, which may be very helpful.”

  “The bottom line?” asked Lew. Osborne walked over to the conference table where Bruce was laying out the photos.

  “The two are brothers,” said Bruce, slipping photos from his file. “Identical twins.” He turned one photo over.

  “This fellow is at least fifty pounds heavier than Charles,” said Osborne, “but I see definite similarities in the configuration of the skull.” Years as a dentist had honed his ability to visualize the bone structure hidden beneath jowls and sagging skin.

  “You have a better eye than I do, Doc,” said Lew, poring over the photo. “This guy doesn’t look at all like poor skinny, pale-faced Charles.”

  Bruce sat back quiet in his chair. “People change over time. I checked the records on Dick Mason and my guess is we’ll find them to be the same height, blood type, everything except the fingerprints and the weight.”

  “So why,” asked Lew, speaking slowly, “would Charles Mason’s brother leave a DNA sample that would implicate his brother?”

  “That is the question, isn’t it,” said Bruce. “I will tell you one thing, though—the average person is not aware that identical twins do not share the same fingerprints. Whoever said that criminals are brilliant?” Bruce grinned, “at least not as smart as me. Seriously, DNA is the gold standard today. Most lab techs in law enforcement would have stopped with the DNA match.”

  “Deliberate sabotage, you think?” asked Osborne.

  “What time is it?” asked Lew.

  “Time to call Charles Mason,” said Bruce. “I will bet you a fly fishing trip to Jackson Hole that he and his brother are behind the computer fraud at the college.”

  Charles sounded mildly surprised when he got the call from Chief Ferris an hour later. “Certainly,” he answered when she asked him to come in to the police station. “I’ll drive right in if you wish.”

  “No, Charles, ten o’clock is just fine,” said Lew. Beth had called to say that the divorce papers and legal files would be arriving by nine thirty and Lew decided it would be good to have those documents on hand during the meeting with Charles.

  “Think he’ll try to run?” asked Osborne when she was off the call.

  “That wouldn’t be smart,” said Lew.

  “Smart does not take money from a wife and disappear.”

  “Now wait, Doc. The divorce papers stated that he left those women—not that he disappeared. After all, he did get served with divorce papers. I don’t think he’ll run … yet.

  “I would like you and Bruce to sit in on my questioning of Charles. The lawyer’s documentation will be impeccable should he deny the marriages and the lawsuits. Bruce, do you have the time?” She glanced over at Bruce.

  “Wouldn’t miss it,” he said.

  With two and a half hours to go until ten o’clock, Osborne busied himself making phone calls in hopes of finding someone who knew Walter’s niece while Lew called Ray and arranged for him to take Bruce along when he checked the area around Walter’s shack for footprints.

  “Bruce,” she had said, “see if you can find fingerprints, bullet casings that may have been overlooked because of cracks in the floor—any evidence that might help us identify the party who killed the old man. Todd was working the crime scene when he got called away—one of his kids got injured playing hockey.

  “Here,” said Lew, handing him a file, “I have his notes on what he managed to cover. If you could make some headway that would be helpful. It’s frustrating how shorthanded we are but that will change after the tournament, thank goodness. But tell Ray you need to be back before ten.”

  Bruce returned a good twenty minutes before the meeting. “Good news and bad news, Chief,” he said. “That shack is a challenge. I’ve lifted a number of prints to sort through later though initially they look to be from the same individual. Oh, and I did find one bullet casing that had rolled through a crack in the floor. That’s worthless unless we find the actual murder weapon.

  “I’ll doublecheck the prints to see if I can find any that differ from the victim’s but right now it looks to me like whoever it was who shot the old man just walked in and walked out.”

  “Todd missed the casing? That doesn’t make me happy.”

  “A lot of debris between those floor boards, Chief Ferris. Years of debris, plus it was under some bloody matter—tissue.” On that grim note, he paused.

  “And the good news?” asked Lew.

  “Oh that,” said Bruce with a wide grin. “While we were out there your friend, Ray, got a call on his cell that his ice shanty is one of four finalists in that contest they got going. A crew from the TODAY SHOW is flying in later today to cover the final judging for both the international ice fishing tournament and the shanty contest. He’s pretty excited.”

  “I’ll bet he is,” said Osborne.

  “That’s terrific news,” said Lew. “But did Ray say if he found any tracks in the area?”

  “Not yet, but he’s planning to go back this afternoon. They asked him to stop by the officials’ tent before lunchtime to fill out some paperwork for the final judging.”

  A gentle knock at the office door changed the expressions on everyone’s face.

  Charles entered. “Good morning, Charles,” said Lew in a brisk tone. “Please, take a seat here at the conference table.”

  Charles walked over to sit down across from Osborne. Bruce took a chair next to Osborne at the round table. Lew sat in the center facing all four and with Charles to her immediate left. She pushed her chair back and turned so she could speak to him directly.

  “Charles,” said Lew, setting a hand on the manila envelope that had been delivered, “we know about Linda, Wendy and Kathleen.”

  “Oh.” With a heavy sigh, Charles slumped back in his chair. He looked grayer than ever and his ponytail hung limp over his left shoulder. “I guess it was just a matter of time.”

  “As of late yesterday, we were convinced you were a bigamist,” said Lew. “But just this morning we got records from your most recent wife’s lawyer that indicate your divorce was final last August. Would that have been before you married Patience?”

  “Two days before,” said Charles, shifting in his chair and clearing his throat.

  “You know you have the right to a lawyer if you wish,” said Lew. “You don’t have to answer my questions … Would you like me to read you your rights?”

  “That’s fine. They’ve been read to me before. I know them by heart,” said Charles. “Not necessary.”

  “All right, then,” said Lew, reaching for one of the documents from the law firm. “We know that Kathleen would not agree to the divorce until you repaid one hundred thousand dollars that you took from a joint savings ac
count two years ago. How did you manage to repay that amount? That’s a lot of money. Did you take the money from Patience? Did she give you that money?”

  “I had help from my family.”

  “Dick?”

  Charles went from gray to white. Osborne thought he might pass out.

  Lew gazed at Charles for a moment before saying, “Charles, we know all about Richard. We know he is an escaped felon with warrants out for his arrest. Tell us where he is.”

  The man leaned forward to put his elbows on the table and cover his face with his hands. After a long moment, he raised his head and said, “If I turn my brother in—he’ll kill me. He will kill Patience and, if you get in his way, he may hurt one of you sitting at this table.

  “My brother has no conscience. He has infected my life since we were kids.” He spoke clearly, simply and Osborne believed him.

  CHAPTER 27

  “Our parents were killed in a car accident when we were four years old,” said Charles. “Christmas Eve some woman driving drunk after an office party swerved and hit their car head on. My dad had just got his paycheck that day and my folks had been out Chrismas shopping or we would have been in the car, too.

  “There were four of us kids. Dick and I are the youngest. At first one of my mother’s sisters tried to take care of us but she couldn’t afford it so my two older sisters stayed with her and we were put in foster homes. Dick and I grew up with different families. I was in two different homes over the years but Dick must have been in a dozen. He was always getting kicked out.”

  “Why was that do you think?” asked Lew. Charles shrugged. “He’s a mean sonofabitch. I suppose sometimes he was put with the kind of people who take kids in for the money so they deserved what they got. Most times he was mean to the other kids, to the foster parents, to family pets. But to hear Dick tell—it was never his fault.”

  “Growing up, did you two go to the same schools?” Lew asked.