Tony Marcella 05 - Witch House

by Dana Donovan

  “Look.” I put my hand around his shoulder and we started toward the car. “You are right. I should never have diminished your authority like that. It was selfish and disrespectful. I am sorry and I promise it will never happen again. But you have to admit; it gave me an opportunity to ask Chief Running Bear a few more questions that we probably will never get to ask him again, and you the opportunity to question those two goons outside in the hall.”

  “Yeah,” he said, “you’re right about that. I did get to ask them a few questions, and look.” He pulled out his phone and held it up for me. “I got their pictures.”

  “Great!”

  “Oh, and this.” He pulled a book of matches out of his pocket. “I got one of them to give me this.”

  “Matches?”

  “Look closer. They’re from Pete’s Place.”

  I took them. “You’re kidding?”

  “I saw him take them out and light a smoke with them out in the hall.”

  “Yeah?”

  “So, I bummed a smoke off him and asked him for a light. That’s when he gave them to me.”

  “But you don’t smoke.”

  “I know, I told him I couldn’t smoke it there because you would pitch a fit and that I wanted to smoke later after I ditched you.”

  “After you ditched me?”

  “Yeah, well they saw what an ass you were.”

  I took my arm off his shoulder and slapped him on the back of his head. “Nice going, Kemosabe.”

  On the ride back into town, I told Carlos about the sacks of money taken in the heist. “That’s a large cargo,” he said. “I can’t see that much cash getting burned up in a fire without a single trace of it.”

  “Agreed,” I said, “and something just doesn’t sit right with me about Chief Running Bear, either.”

  “How so?”

  “I don’t know. He tells me the money was insured and that the casino actually lost nothing, yet he clearly is hiding something. I mean, we know his men were at Pete’s Place last night.”

  “Did you ask him why they were transporting so much cash in the first place?”

  “I did.”

  “And?”

  “They were renovating the vault, making security upgrades and such.”

  “Ha! That’s a coincidence.”

  “A big one.”

  “So, what do you make of it? Did the chief and his thugs go to Pete’s Place just to rough Landau up for stealing the money?”

  I hesitated long on that one. “Don’t know, Carlos. It doesn’t make sense if they did. It’s been almost eighteen years and the casino never lost a dime. Why would Chief Running Bear risk getting into trouble with the law when he supposedly had nothing to gain?”

  “I don’t know, but he was there.”

  “Yeah, you know I got a sense that the chief is a stickler for Indian traditions. Maybe punishing Landau for robbing the casino is something he had to do.”

  “By punish, you mean kill?”

  “No, I didn’t say that. We know they didn’t kill Landau when they first had the chance. Pete said he came back into the bar a little roughed up, but he wasn’t dead.”

  “Probably would have been dead if that’s why they went there.”

  “That’s right. So, either they wanted to shake him up—”

  “Or shake him down.”

  “Right, or shake him down, or maybe they wanted to fulfill some Indian tradition of punishment.”

  “What about the old guy?”

  “What old guy?”

  “Bart the bum. He said he heard the thugs asking about the money and Landau saying he didn’t have it.”

  “Yeah, that’s right. So I guess…. Wait. Let me get that.”

  “Get what.”

  My phone rang; I thought for the second time, but from the look on Carlos’ face, I am not sure. “Hello, Lilith. What now?”

  “Tony, you are not going to believe this. Ursula and I went back to the house and we—”

  “What house?”

  “The one I called you about this morning. I swear, you never listen to me.”

  “I listen, and I remember. You called me at the diner and told me about a haunted house. Lilith, don’t tell me you bought it. I told you not—”

  “Cool your jets, cowboy. I didn’t buy anything. I’m calling you now to tell you that Ursula and I went back to the house and we conducted a séance.”

  “How nice, Lilith. Listen, Carlos and I are—”

  “I am talking to you!”

  I pulled the phone away from my ear. I know Carlos heard her because of the look he gave me. I realized then what he must have felt like back in Chief Running Bear’s office after I stripped him of his dignity by diminishing his authority. I knew that Lilith had a habit of doing it all the time, but I had not realized that I was so capable of it, too. I put the phone back to my ear. “I am sorry, Lilith, you were saying?”

  “I was saying that Ursula and I conducted a séance at the old house, but that we didn’t have a lot of luck.”

  “Oh?”

  “He’s pissed, Tony.”

  “Who is pissed?”

  “The ghost! Jesus, are you even listening?”

  “I’m listening. I’m listening.”

  “`Kay, then, this is what we have to do.”

  “We?”

  “Yes, we: you, me, Ursula and Fidel.”

  “Carlos.”

  “What?” This from Carlos.

  I covered the phone. “Not you.” To Lilith I said, “I don’t think you understand, Lilith, but Carlos and I are in the middle of a homicide investigation. We can’t—”

  “Excuse me. I wasn’t finished.”

  I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Carlos was laughing now, and I suppose he had earned that right. After counting to ten and finding a glint of serenity in the moment, I came back to Lilith. “All right, I am sorry. Please finish what you were saying.”

  “I was saying that we all have got to go back to the house tonight, after dark, and conduct another séance.”

  “What?”

  “Tony, we have to. Ursula and I cannot do this alone. We need at least three people to do it right, and four is better still. I want to find out who this guy is and why he’s so pissed.”

  “But Lilith, I—”

  “Tonight, Tony, unless you want to sleep on the couch for the rest of your natural days. Is that what you want?”

  “You know it isn’t.”

  “Well then?”

  “All right, fine, but here’s the deal. Carlos and I do this séance, but tonight I get to sleep with you.”

  “Of course I’ll let you sleep with me. You know I have no problem with that.”

  “No, I mean sleep—all night, till the sun comes up in the morning.”

  “Oh, you mean you don’t want to….”

  “Sure I want to; in fact that’s part of the deal, too, but afterwards, I want to stay and sleep, and I don’t want you kicking, or rolling over on top of me or anything else you can think of to get me back on the couch. Is it a deal?”

  She hesitated. I knew I was asking a lot of her. Lilith is not exactly the cuddly-waddly type, but I simply could not stand the thought of another night on that damn couch. So I held my ground and my tongue until she came back with the only answer she could.

  “Fine, we have a deal, but you better be good.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means if you’re going to sleep in my bed all night, you better give yourself a reason to be tired.”

  I smiled devilishly; Carlos did, too. “Then it’s a deal. See you tonight,” and I hung up.

  Carlos asked, “Did I hear her say something about a séance?”

  “Yeah,” I said, “don’t worry. You’re invited, too.”

  TEN

  We arrived back at the Justice Center around four o’clock. After stopping in the lobby so that Carlos could load up on candy bars from the vending machine, we headed upstairs to
see Spinelli, hoping he had found out something interesting that we did not already know. It turns out he did. He led us from the detective’s floor to the conference room where case files, research documents and photos littered the tabletop from one end to the other. He even had an easel set up with a flip chart showing the relationships of all the key players in the case.

  “Look at this,” he said, seemingly more excited than the occasion called for, then again, he was still drinking coffee out of a forty-eight once Styrofoam cup. That and the allergy meds he was taking had him strung out like a kite. I had to cut him down just to understand his words. “This is a picture of Sergeant Ron Powell,” he continued. “You know him?”

  “Sure,” I said, “we know Powell. We saw him this morning. He was one of the officers responding to the 10-54 outside Pete’s Place.”

  “Yeah? He pointed to the chart. “Did you know that eighteen years ago Powell was the first unit dispatched to the 211 on the armored car call that morning. Only, he never made it to the scene, at least not until the driver was dead and the suspects and money were gone.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “Car trouble, so he said.”

  “All right, so he had some bad luck. What of it?”

  “Funny you should use the term bad luck. Did you also know that Powell likes to gamble?”

  “I had not heard that.”

  “It’s true, and apparently he is not that good at it. Here, look at these.” Spinelli slid a batch of black and white photos across the table for Carlos and me to examine. “Those are surveillance photos taken over a twenty-year period showing Powell coming and going from the Wampanoag Indian Casino. You will notice that in some, he is still in uniform.”

  I glanced at the photos, still not impressed. “I know about these. Internal Affairs interviewed me three times over this and other matters concerning Powell. As far as I know, he has always come out of it clean.”

  Carlos said, “Yeah, but not guilty does not always mean innocent.”

  Spinelli weeded through the photos and isolated several showing Ron Powell and Chief Running Bear together, shaking hands and embracing. “I did some checking. I.A.D. believes that Powell fell into heavy debt with the casino on a number of occasions and that the casino forgave those debts.”

  “Are you saying he’s on the take?”

  “Could be, of course they could never substantiate that. It is also interesting to point out that Powell’s unit was first to respond to a shooting on the reservation last year. In his report, he wrote that a security guard at the casino shot two armed suspects after they tried breaking into the vault on Christmas Eve.”

  “But that’s not what happened, is it?”

  “If it is, then they were a couple of incredibly stupid robbers. First off, they supposedly broke into the casino by way of the underground garage behind the locker rooms belonging to the security squad. Then they managed to somehow get their hands and feet bound up in duct tape before taking a bullet to the back of their heads.”

  “It was an execution,” said Carlos.

  Spinelli agreed, adding, “It was more than just an execution, it was a message.”

  “To whom?”

  “To the rivals within the tribe wanting to take over casino operations. The two suspects were Chief Running Bears’ own nephews who had contested his authority as chief. Their father, Jonathan Mochohyett, a.k.a. Little Cloud, is Daniel Mochohyett’s brother. These two brothers have been embroiled in a power struggle since the government first granted permission to the tribe to build the casino.”

  I asked, “What does this all have to do with Powell?”

  “Powell,” Spinelli answered, “cleaned up the crime scene and made it look like an attempted robbery. He is the one who removed the duct tape from the victims’ hands and feet and placed guns on their persons.”

  “How do you know this?” asked Carlos.

  Spinelli hesitated, uneasy about divulging that information. I cleared my throat hoarsely and he spilled his source. “I have friends in the tribe,” he said. “They are members of Little Cloud’s circle, and they are scared to death of Running Bear. If you ask them about it, they will deny knowing anything.”

  “You believe them, though?”

  “I do. I think it is no coincidence that Powell’s unit was closest to the casino when the call came in, because he was already there. You see, a dealer at the casino swore in his initial interview that he went out for a smoke break thirty minutes before security raised the alarm, and he saw Powell’s cruiser parked out by the back door. Later, when asked to sign an official statement, he recanted and said he had made a mistake.”

  “You think someone threatened him into changing his story?”

  “I do.”

  “That’s a strong charge, but you know we can’t use any of that information in this Landau case, even if we thought there was a tie to it.”

  “Oh, there is a tie.” Spinelli opened a folder sitting on the table and tossed out a statement dated eighteen years previous. “Here is the arrest record on Landau. N.C.P.D. picked him up at his lake cabin a few days after the robbery. Care to guess who the arresting officer was?”

  “Ooh, I know,” said Carlos, his hand in the air, waving. “It was Powell.”

  Spinelli pointed at him. “Bingo. Give that man a cigar.”

  “No, take it back,” I said to Spinelli. “You already told him that over the phone this morning.”

  “I did?”

  “You don’t remember?”

  “Huh, I guess not.”

  “Forget it. Listen, how did Powell know about the lake house? Is that something the department had known about?”

  “No. They had not even identified Landau as a suspect yet. That’s what makes it bizarre. Powell is intricately entwined throughout this case, including now, having been one of the first to show up at Pete’s Place where Landau turned up dead.”

  “Maybe it’s coincidence. This is a small town. There are only so many cops on the force.”

  “Coincidence?” Spinelli tipped his coffee back and finished off the cup before tossing it into the trashcan behind him. “If so, then this case is swimming in coincidences.” He pulled a Sharpie from his shirt pocket and pointed at the chart again. “This guy?” He took his marker and circled the name, Paul J. Kemper. “I know you know him.”

  “That’s Landau’s lawyer,” I said. “We talked to him this morning. He had nothing to offer us.”

  “No?” From Kemper’s name, he drew a line down to another and circled it. “He didn’t tell you that he and this man, William DeAngelo, were old college mates, that they studied criminal law together, and even belonged to a secret society there known as Dragon’s Gate, a sort of Skull & Bones club like at Yale?”

  “No, he did not,” I said. “Why, who is William DeAngelo?”

  “DeAngelo is the warden at the Massachusetts Correctional Institution at Cedar Junction.”

  “Walpole?” said Carlos. “That’s were Landau did his seventeen years.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Whoa, that is a coincidence.”

  “Maybe not,” I said.

  Spinelli agreed, drawing our attention to a fourth name on the chart. “It hardly seems a coincidence when you factor in this guy, Judge Thomas H. Cardell, the presiding judge at Landau’s sentencing.” He circled Judge Cardell’s name and connected it to DeAngelo’s with another line. “Because it so happens that Judge Cardell is Warden DeAngelo’s brother-in-law.”

  I shook my head. “Unbelievable. It’s no wonder you made a flow chart. You practically need a program to keep track of who’s who.”

  Carlos put his finger up. “I have a question.” Spinelli and I turned to him. “Why is this all beginning to sound like a conspiracy to me?”

  “That’s because it probably is,” I said. “You know, it has never set right with me that the judge sent Landau to a level six maximum security prison for the robbery. Kemper seems like a smart e
nough lawyer not to let that happen, even if Landau wanted to go there, like Kemper said. Now, with these new revelations, I have to think that Walpole was not Landau’s idea, but the conspired efforts of Kemper, DeAngelo and Cardell.”

  “Yes, but why?”

  “For the money,” said Carlos, and I knew he had hit the nail square on the head. “No one believed that the money burned up at the cabin. This was their way of keeping Landau under their thumbs so that they might learn where he hid it.”

  “Yes, but does that give any of them a motive for murder?” I asked.

  “Hell yes!”

  “And Powell’s involvement?” I pointed to the photo of him and Running Bear outside the casino. “Where does he fit in? Is he a good cop or bad?”

  That question none of us could answer. Spinelli circled another name on the chart. “What about her?”

  “Stephanie Stiles?” I gave Carlos first stab. “Any ideas?”

  He made a face as if something came up stinking. “I don’t trust her. We need to tail her and find out who she is seeing.”

  “You mean our mystery wristwatch owner.”

  “Yes. If it is not Kemper, then maybe we have another name to worry about.”

  “Good point.” I motioned to Spinelli. “Dominic, see if we can spare a couple of guys to rotate shifts outside Stiles’ apartment. Let’s find out who this guy is. While you are at it, see what she does for a living besides chain smoke and binge drink. I want to know how she pays her bills.”

  “You got it.”

  “And do some more digging on Powell. Get me his schedule for the last few days and copies of all the reports he has filed since then, especially today’s. Oh, and see if you can get me photos of Kemper, DeAngelo and Cardell. Together with these of Powell and Chief Mochohyett, I hope that Pete down at the bar can identify just who the hell Landau met with last night.”

  “Kemper and DeAngelo will be easy,” Spinelli replied, “but I doubt you will need one of Cardell.”

  “Why is that?”

  “He’s dead—passed away six years ago.”

  “Oh, then I guess we won’t need his.”

  “Is there anything else?”

  “Yes, if you don’t mind. Would you call the prison and see if you can get Carlos and me in to see Warden DeAngelo in the morning? Tell him if he cannot see us there, then we will gladly have him come downtown for an interview.”