Fog of Dead Souls

by Jill Kelly

  “Rohypnol.”

  Spears nodded. “Yup. Then when Caprese called …”

  “Capriano.”

  “Yeah, that’s the guy. Then we knew what we had, but where to go? Killer’s not local and the connection, this Dr. McKay, she’s not local either. And Caprese said that she’s not a viable suspect.”

  “No, she was the victim in the first case.”

  “And so the killer is looking for her?”

  “That’s what we think.”

  “Can she identify him?”

  “No,” said Hansen. “She was drugged, too. Doesn’t remember any of it.”

  “Then what’s he want with her?”

  Hansen was silent for a long moment. Then he spoke, “I’d say he is toying with her. Hunter and prey. Cat and mouse. I think it’s a game.”

  Spears grimaced. “I hate these cases.”

  “Me too.”

  After that, there wasn’t much more to say. They talked about the white coat. Spears had checked with local hospitals but it was generic. “Could have been stolen,” he said. “DeBakey Med Center loses a few dozen a year. They don’t track them. And it could have been purchased online.”

  Hansen just nodded at this.

  Spears asked if he wanted to visit the crime scene but Hansen knew it wouldn’t tell him anything new. He did ask about Lewis’s computer, whether there’d been email from Ellie to Lewis before or since the murder. But there was nothing.

  He drove on to San Antonio, where finally a desk clerk recognized her. But there was nothing to learn there. He kept following the credit cards north and west until he got to Santa Fe, until he got to where she vanished.

  He slept hard that first night and couldn’t drag himself out of bed until late into the afternoon. The truth was he was exhausted. He’d been driving himself hard and his stamina was still low. He got up, showered, and shaved. But that seemed to take all he had. After a rest, he went downstairs for dinner. He asked the desk clerks and the restaurant staff about Ellie, but no one remembered her. He went back to bed.

  The next day he felt better and he slowly widened his circle out from the hotel, showing her picture to shopkeepers and wait staff in the blocks around the Holiday Inn. Nothing. Then, in the middle of that second afternoon, he came upon the branch of Ellie’s bank and he remembered that activity on her checking account had stopped on the same day as the credit cards. He’d assumed something had happened to her, that she hadn’t been able to use it. Now he wondered if she’d made some decision, some move to try and keep the killer from tracking her.

  The tellers at the bank couldn’t help him, so he waited for twenty minutes for a banker. That man was equally of no help, even when he showed his badge. So he asked for a manager and eventually they discovered another banker, a young woman this time, who remembered talking to Ellie.

  “Yes, she was very pleasant. Said she was traveling and needed traveler’s checks. I convinced her not to close her account, which was what she wanted to do. I was proud of myself for keeping a customer.” She looked at her manager, who smiled at her and nodded.

  “It was a lot of money she wanted to convert, but then, retired people travel a lot, don’t they?” She looked at Hansen this time.

  He agreed. He asked a few more questions but there wasn’t much more. Traveler’s checks didn’t come back to the bank that had sold them. They went to the issuer for accounting. He could contact American Express but he’d probably need a court order, the manager said.

  Hansen felt stymied. Ellie had cash, lots of cash, and her trail could have continued to Canada or Hawaii or anywhere. And there’d be no money trail. But there was a better chance that she was alive.

  Then as he was leaving the bank, the young woman banker called after him. Said Ellie had asked her about a B&B close by where she might get a room for a few days. She had recommended two places. Hansen wrote them down. At least he had someplace to start now.

  60

  When the phone rang, Hansen was deep in a dream: He had Arlen Gerstead by the throat in an interview room. The man weighed nothing and Hansen shook him like a rag doll. Traveler’s checks flew around the room and Gerstead laughed and laughed.

  The ringing stopped and then started up again. He looked at the clock: 1:15. A long streak of afternoon sun lay on the floor. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and picked up his phone.

  “She’s married.” It was Capriano.

  “Who’s married?” Hansen was having trouble shaking off the dream. He hadn’t meant to sleep, had meant to just wait for Capriano’s call, but the fatigue and the ache in his side where the bullets had been had obviously done him in.

  “Ellie McKay. That’s why we’ve lost track of her.”

  “That’s not possible.”

  “My friend, it is possible. I am holding a marriage license from Flagstaff, Arizona. She got married four weeks ago. Changed her name. She’s now Ellie Robison.”

  Hansen fought his confusion. “How are we just finding this out? Marriages are in the system.”

  “Yeah, but somebody has to enter it into the system and it looks like they’re a tad bit behind in Flagstaff.”

  “Is there a Flagstaff address?”

  “No, a PO box in Farmington, New Mexico, not far from where you are.”

  “And the husband?”

  “Al Robison, a rancher. Lived there all his life. Sixty-four. Widower. No record. Upstanding citizen. All-around nice guy.”

  “He’s not our killer then.”

  “No. Local police say he has a busy life on the ranch, no foreman. Seldom leaves town and has been seen every few days for months.”

  “They know about the wedding?”

  “Yup. Seems everybody knows everybody’s business in Farmington. Met her in a bar, married her six days later.”

  Again Hansen tried to hang on to his detective self. “When did the license appear in the records?”

  “Yesterday. Why?”

  “Did you get the message I left you?”

  “No. I’ve been out. Murder-suicide near Pitt. Haven’t checked since noon.”

  “I found a B&B where Ellie stayed here in Santa Fe. The woman who runs it remembered her.”

  “Did she know where Ellie was headed when she left?”

  “North, that’s all Ellie had said.”

  “Farmington’s north of you.” Capriano said. “Her next stop.”

  “Just a minute,” he said. He got up and went into the bathroom and in thirty seconds had the coffee machine set up and beginning to gurgle.

  “What else, Doug?”

  “Day before yesterday, a young couple stayed a night at the same B&B. The fellow said a friend had recommended it. Had stayed there recently. He gave Ellie’s name.”

  “A couple?” said Capriano.

  “Yeah,” said Hansen. “The young woman registered for them. Michelle Rinaldi. I met one of Ellie’s students in Paris. Her name was Michelle. I didn’t get a last name. However, the description fits. White, tall, slim, long dark hair. She and Ellie were close. It could well be her.”

  “And the guy? What’d he look like?”

  “White, late twenties, early thirties. Short hair, light brown. Clean-shaven. ‘A nice-looking couple,’ the woman said.” He poured himself some coffee and then began to pack his things.

  “Sounds like Roger Gerstead.”

  “That’s what I thought, too, but I showed her his picture and she said no. Not even a resemblance. And the girl called him Jazz.” He hesitated. “This could be innocent, you know. Could be that Ellie has been in communication with Michelle. Could be kids on a road trip.”

  “Yeah, and I could be the next mayor of Pittsburgh, but it’s not likely. Not after Houston. We know the killer’s tracking her.” There were a few seconds of silence and then he said, “Hold on, Doug. I need to take this other call.” Then he came back on. “I sent Jackson out to talk to Mrs. Gerstead. We’re missing some big pieces and somebody knows them. Somebody kno
ws this guy, whoever he is. That somebody may even know how he met Richardson.”

  “Well, I suspect Arlen did. And you’re right, maybe Sandy Gerstead does, too.”

  “No, not her. I sent Jackson to Akron to talk to the first Mrs. Gerstead. We never really put her in the picture.”

  “That seems a really long shot. She and Arlen divorced more than twenty years ago.”

  “Yeah,” said Capriano. “But I don’t know what else we’ve got.”

  Both men were silent for a moment, and Hansen went on packing.

  Then Capriano spoke. “How far to Farmington from where you are?”

  “I don’t know. A ways. There are really big spaces out here. I’m going to leave now. And at least we’ve got the advantage. We know where Ellie is.”

  “Don’t kid yourself, Doug. If we’ve got the marriage info, the killer’s got it.”

  “And he’s a day ahead of me.”

  “That, too.”

  61

  Ellie spent two more nights at the Residence Inn although Al wanted her to come back into town, pack up, and move to the ranch the very afternoon after the sweetness of their confessions and their night together. For him, everything seemed settled. For Ellie, it wasn’t that simple.

  She was fond of Al, that was certain. He was a good man, a solid man. He would treat her well and there would be a life together of steadiness and more certainty than she had ever imagined existed. There was a deep pull in part of her toward that.

  It was hard to imagine Farmington as home. She’d always preferred a greener landscape. But Houston and Pittsburgh had both seemed alien at first, and then she had grown comfortable in each. And there would be lots of new things to learn about the ranch and about a farm community, and the curious student in her was intrigued.

  And in a sense, what else was there? She couldn’t imagine that any amount of pleading would make the dean give her back her job. She had tenure, it was true, but the college would rather buy her out than deal with the scandal. And she was the one who had fled, had broken her current contract. What kind of bargaining position did that leave her in?

  And what was in Pennsylvania, anyway? She still cared about Sandy, cared about her a great deal, but Joel and Arlen stood there between them, so many bad memories. It wasn’t Sandy’s fault but somehow that didn’t matter.

  She thought about Hansen with a dull ache in her heart. If Paris had been different, if she had been different, maybe something could have happened there. There had been the promise of chemistry between them, something that wasn’t there with Al. And Hansen understood what had happened to her, understood in a visceral way that comforted her. Al had been shocked at her story and then kind. It was a genuine kindness, she knew, but one that came from who he was, not what he had experienced. And so even if it wasn’t a secret anymore, even if her experience was out in the open, it hadn’t bonded them the way it had with Hansen.

  She knew she had to let Hansen go from her heart. He had made it clear that nothing more would happen between them and she assumed he was back with his wife. We tend to seek out those who have loved us when we are in trouble. She had done that with Danny, and Hansen would do that with the woman in Montreal. Besides, they had kids together, a long history.

  And she was married to Al. It had been an impulsive move on both their parts, but Al seemed so sure of a future together. It was worth a try.

  Her decision once made, Ellie got busy. She wrote a letter to the dean of the college and resigned. She called the community college in Farmington and made an appointment to see the dean there again, to offer her services in any way that she could be helpful. She called the shaman and made an appointment for the soul retrieval for the next week. And then she went shopping for a wedding gift for Al.

  62

  It took Hansen less than ten minutes to check out of the Holiday Inn in Santa Fe and get on the road. It took Capriano less than twenty to call him back.

  “There’s an Ellie Robison registered at the Residence Inn in Farmington,” he said when Hansen picked up the phone.

  “She’s married to this rancher and she’s staying in a Residence Inn?” Hansen didn’t like things like this, things he couldn’t figure out.

  “I don’t know,” said Capriano. “None of this makes a lot of sense to me. She only knew the guy a few days before she married him. But it’s a place to start.” He paused. “Do you have some kind of plan, Doug? Are you going to check in with the locals before you ride your high horse out to the ranch?”

  “You’ve been watching too much TV, Larry.”

  “Quite possibly. But this guy’s been getting grown men to sit still while he kills them. I don’t want that to happen to you.”

  “I’ll be careful.”

  “Why am I not reassured?”

  “Hey, besides advice, can you check on some things for me?”

  “Of course. What do you need?”

  “Find out what you can about Michelle Rinaldi. She was a student at the college where Ellie taught. The school should have an address for her and for her folks. Maybe they can identify the boyfriend. When I saw her last, she was with a guy named Lenny. I think he was from Indiana.”

  “Already on it.”

  “Oh shit!”

  “What is it?”

  “The last time I saw Michelle Rinaldi and this Lenny was at Arlen Gerstead’s funeral.”

  They were both silent a moment.

  “You’ve got no last name for this guy?” said Capriano.

  “No,” said Hansen. “And another thing. I feel so stupid. There’s a name I didn’t run down. Jason Dirrelich.” He spelled it for Capriano. “The car Roger Gerstead was driving while he stayed at Ellie’s was registered to a Jason Dirrelich. I just filed it away, intending to follow up and I didn’t.”

  “You think Lenny and Dirrelich are the same guy?” said Capriano.

  “I don’t know but the B&B owner said that Michelle called her friend Jazz. Jason isn’t too far from that. That’s what made me think of it.”

  “Okay, you got it. Let me know when you get to Farmington.” And Capriano disconnected.

  Hansen turned his attention to the road. He wished Skopowlski were there to do the driving so he could think. But at least the road was clear and dry and there was little traffic.

  He knew in his gut that Michelle’s boyfriend was the killer, it was just too coincidental. A clever cover—the road trip to visit a favorite professor, the girl as a beard. And showing up in Paris and at the funeral. It all so fit together. He’d come across a few psychopaths in his time. The men were often handsome and always charming. Ted Bundy wasn’t the poster boy for these guys for nothing.

  He tried to dismiss Ellie from his thoughts. This was about the killer of three men and one woman and a rapist of who knew how many other women. This was about keeping it from happening again. And he hadn’t put her in danger, he didn’t believe that. But he did believe that everything we do has an effect on everything else. His indecision about his feelings at that moment, crucial or not, had set all the rest of this in play: his trip to Montreal, Ellie’s flight, Houston, even probably her marriage to the cowboy. And she was in danger. She didn’t know the face of the killer, wouldn’t know to escape him when he came for her.

  As he cleared the outskirts of Santa Fe, a mileage sign appeared: Farmington 210. Three hours if he was lucky. He’d called to see about a flight but there was nothing until the next morning, and he had no funds or authorization to hire anything private. The killer was a day ahead although he might well take his time. He might well think he had plenty of time. He might well not know that Hansen was tracking him as he had tracked Ellie.

  Through the years, Hansen had learned how to be with time. Long stake-outs in the car with an uncommunicative partner, long evenings at home with an uncommunicative wife, he’d learned to go to a quiet place in himself, create an emptiness for something else to move in. He wouldn’t have called it a spiritual practice, although that would
n’t have embarrassed him. It was more a survival technique that he had cultivated. He moved himself now into that zone as he drove, not thinking too much, not planning. Just letting the miles go by. He didn’t watch the clock.

  Miles and miles later, the ringing of his phone brought him back. Capriano.

  “What have you got for me, Larry?”

  “Not much. Jason Dirrelich is a dead end.”

  “How so?” He hung onto the peacefulness he had been feeling.

  “He’s Joel Richardson.”

  “What?”

  “The DMV address is the same apartment that Arlen Gerstead was using, the one where he was killed, the one Richardson had rented. And the driver’s license in Dirrelich’s name has Richardson’s photo. And get this, Jason Dirrelich is an anagram for Joel Richardson.”

  “Shit,” said Hansen. “That’s no help. All it tells us is that Richardson knew Roger Gerstead and he loaned the kid a car.”

  “Maybe not even that. Richardson could have given the car to Arlen, who then gave it to his son.”

  “So we’ve got nothing for me to give the locals on this guy.” Hansen hated this.

  “Nope. No name, no connection, no physical evidence, nothing.”

  “What about Lenny?”

  “What about him? You’ve got no photo, no last name. I’m not a miracle worker.”

  “You sure know how to help a guy out, Larry.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. I’m grasping at straws here.”

  There was a pause. Then Hansen said, “Anything on Michelle Rinaldi?”

  “She got an apartment in Pittsburgh when she came back from Paris. Substitute teaches at a couple of high schools while she looks for a full-time job. Parents live in Greensburg, said she flew to Santa Fe to meet Lenny, whose last name they don’t know. How do parents let their daughter go out with someone whose last name they don’t know?”

  “I don’t know, Larry. This sucks. Do you think she’s involved in the murders?”