Fatally Bound

by Roger Stelljes

  Whitlock shook his head, “Sorry, I can’t, at least off the top of my head. I can pull reports and the like, but none of those names, obviously outside of their recent roles as victim, rings a bell with me.”

  “How about an incident, perhaps unexplained that they could have been involved in?”

  Whitlock shook his head, “Nothing that I can recall.”

  “What kind of trouble would you have had around here back then?”

  “Probably the same as we have now. We’re in something of vacation country here in the summer months, so there are parties of course, issues at the taverns, the occasional vehicular incident, but I’m scratching my head for that time period and nothing pops.” Whitlock reached for his radio on his hip. “Let me call in to the department and see if they can pull reports from that time period, probably June through what, mid-August for seven years ago, right?”

  “Correct,” Wire answered, and then added, taking a bite of her Cobb salad, “This is delicious.”

  “And this pastrami is too die for,” Mac added, taking another bite. “I need to get the recipe for this for Shamus,” a comment which led to a lengthy discussion about McRyan’s Pub back in St. Paul, the second McRyan family business, the first being policing.

  “My old man was a bartender back in Buffalo,” Whitlock stated with a wistful smile. “He’s been gone a few years now, but I grew up in that place. It was a place for the brothers to hang out back in the day, both for the ones carrying a badge and for those defying the ones carrying the badges, if you know what I mean.”

  “Neutral territory?” Mac asked.

  “That’s right.”

  “I can relate,” which led to ten minutes of Mac explaining McRyan’s Pub’s sordid history during the era of prohibition.

  “John Dillinger drank in the basement of your family’s bar?”

  “There is a picture of Dillinger, my great-great-grandfather and the St. Paul mayor.”

  “That’s terrific.”

  “Agent McRyan,” Fissure asked, veering to different territory.

  “Call me Mac, Chief.”

  “Mac, you said this was seven years ago?”

  “Yes. Does that ring a bell with you, Milo?”

  “Not right around here, son, but a number of years ago, which includes my time as police chief in this fine burg, we had issues with parties over by Auburn, which is a half hour to the east.”

  “What kind of issues?”

  “With field parties at abandoned farms or businesses out in the sticks and a big part of the problem were the people coming down from Syracuse. I believe the kids called the parties raves. Kids from all the towns around here were going to those parties and we had issues with drugs, some overdosing and what not. Maybe something happened at one of those.”

  Mac looked over to Wire, “What do you think?”

  “Long shot,” Dara answered and then shrugged, “What do we have to lose?”

  Mac turned back to Whitlock, “Would you be able to pull reports of any incidents, things of the like over that way, see if there is anything?”

  A half hour later, lunch complete, they followed Whitlock back to his office. Sitting on his chair was a report which he quickly thumbed through and then handed it to Mac, “That’s the report I asked for when we were at lunch. Nothing jumps at me, but you two should look. But this is just here in Geneva. Now let me see about broadening it out,” he said as he walked out of the office.

  Mac and Wire flipped through the report. There were party incidents, minor intoxications, vehicle stops, domestic complaints, a few robberies and three burglaries which were ultimately solved and one homicide for the summer that resulted from a domestic incident. “Nothing that seems to fit,” Wire remarked.

  Ten minutes later Whitlock strolled back in with a report. “Here’s the same kind of report basically covering the ten counties around here. Again, I didn’t really see much in the report of interest, but take a look.”

  Mac and Wire flipped through it and it was essentially the same report with more incidents covering a broader area. There were eight homicides, six of which were closed, two that remained unsolved. One unsolved involved the murder of a woman in her fifties in an alley behind a bar in Auburn and another involved a vehicular homicide on August 17, a Saturday night. The victim was named Rena Johnson. Wire was perusing the record as well.

  “Chief, can you look up any more on this Rena Johnson case?” Mac gave him the case number.

  Whitlock made a few mouse clicks. “Rena Johnson was killed on Saturday, August 17th.” The Geneva chief pushed his reading glasses up to his eyes and began perusing the file and snorted.

  “What?”

  “Milo is like Andy Taylor from Mayberry. Small town cop with big city brains.”

  “Are you Barney Fife then?” Wire asked, smiling.

  “No, dear,” Whitlock answered with a wry smile. “It’s just that Milo’s instincts are pretty good. Rena Johnson was apparently at one of those rave type parties at an abandoned farm that Milo talked about. She wandered away from the party and was walking down Country Road 5 when she was hit by a large silver vehicle and killed.”

  “How do we know it was silver?” Wire asked.

  “Forensics found silver metallic paint on her body. The paint was common to Chrysler and Dodge vehicles, but that in and of itself did not lead to anything. Nobody ever came forward or even called it in. She was found in the ditch around six the next morning by a passerby out for a morning run,” Chief Whitlock noted, reading from the crime scene report on his computer. “She was found lying in the ditch in the fetal position …”

  “Did you say fetal position!” Mac and Wire exclaimed in unison.

  “I did,” Whitlock replied, nodding, suddenly upright in his chair, the casualness suddenly gone. He understood the meaning of that notation. “Let me pull up the crime scene photos.” The chief made a few more mouse clicks and then bolted back in his chair and shook his head. He reached for the phone.

  “Chief, who are you calling?” Wire asked.

  “My opposite’s number in Auburn, Chief Pat Dye. You all might want to roll over to Auburn and check this out.” Whitlock turned his computer monitor so they could see. “Look familiar?”

  On the screen was a crime scene photo from seven years ago, August 17. The victim, Rena Johnson, bloody and battered from the impact of the hit-and-run, was lying in the ditch in the fetal position holding rosary beads to her chest.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  “It’s a Hail Mary, Mac.”

  Mac made the trek east to Auburn in just under thirty minutes. Auburn Police Chief Pat Dye greeted them in front of the police station. Dye, a stocky man with a military buzz cut to his gray hair, led them right to his office, and awaiting their arrival was another man dressed in plain clothes. Dye introduced them to Detective Flynn, balding and rotund, dressed in a blue suit that probably fit him a few years ago. Perhaps there was a Cozy Cousin expanding everyone’s waistlines in Auburn as well.

  “Agents, I asked Detective Flynn in here because he investigated the crime scene seven years ago.”

  Detective Flynn flipped open a folder and slowly shook his head and exhaled, “This is a sad one. We found the poor girl lying in the ditch, grasping her rosary beads, as if she was praying to the Almighty.”

  “She knew she was going to die in that ditch,” Dye added, looking at his own set of crime scene photos. “You two think this girl’s death somehow has something to do with this Reaper killer?”

  “Maybe,” Mac answered. “Certain components of it make us wonder.”

  “How she’s lying in that ditch, I assume?” Dye asked.

  “Yes,” Wire answered. “From what we were able to glean, it doesn’t look like you were ever able to find a suspect.”

  Detective Flynn shook his head, “That’s correct, Agent Wire. Never came close.”

  “What do you think happened?” Mac asked.

  “Rena Johnson was at a rave party
at an abandoned farm. We tracked down a few people who were at the party and they remembered seeing her there. Apparently she somehow wandered away from the party and ended up walking along the county road.” Flynn took out a map. “This road here is County Road 5, a winding road and in the area of the accident it weaves its way through deep woods. The gravel shoulder on the road is very narrow, so she was practically walking on the white line. You see this sharp bend in the road here. Well, whoever hit her came around this corner, hit her, knocked her flying back and down into the ditch. We have footsteps in the small dirt shoulder along the road that we think were Rena’s coming from the south, so we think the vehicle came from the north, around the corner and struck her.”

  Mac was reading from the file, “Coroner didn’t think her death was instantaneous.”

  “No. She would have been alive for some time, although very badly injured.”

  “Just with it enough to reach or hold her rosary,” Mac suggested.

  “That’s right, Agent McRyan,” Detective Flynn answered. “I doubt she landed in the fetal position holding her rosary.”

  “No,” Mac answered. “There was no 911 call, nobody saw or found her until morning?”

  Flynn shook his head, “Jogger saw her down in the ditch. He checked for a pulse, nothing. He had to run to the nearest house to call 911. Just for reference, the nearest house was over a mile away.”

  “So a silver SUV or truck or van hits her, doesn’t stop, just keeps right on going. That makes it a …”

  “A homicide,” Flynn finished. “She died of massive internal injuries.”

  “Is it your theory that the vehicle was at the rave party?”

  “I think it’s possible if not very likely, but the few witnesses we had that even remembered or recalled Rena at the party, didn’t remember any silver vehicles or at least ones that stood out in any way.”

  “So let me ask,” Mac inquired, continuing to look at the picture of Johnson lying in the ditch. “What’s a girl who has rosary beads with her doing at a rave party?”

  “We don’t know,” Flynn answered. “Her mom and dad were out of town. Her brother, a cop, was working down in Ithaca and had no idea what she was up to. Nobody knows what she was doing or how she got out there. Like we said, we did find some local people who were at the party who were surprised to see her there, as those types of parties were not her typical scene.”

  “But none of those locals saw who she came with?”

  “No, and we leaned on them hard. We put them through the ringer and they all came out clean. They saw her there, saw her drinking there and saw her engaging in some of the other intoxicating options at the party.”

  “Such as?” Wire asked.

  “She had Ecstasy, some weed and booze in her system according to the toxicology report. Her blood alcohol content was .23, which for someone who didn’t have a history of doing much drinking, was a lot. She was an extremely impaired young lady.”

  “I assume she was going to college?”

  “She was, at Canisius College in Buffalo.”

  “Anyone else in town go to Canisius?” Wire asked.

  “A few kids in town did at that time but none of them were at the party.”

  “No luck on the vehicle?” Mac asked.

  “Other than silver paint for a Chrysler vehicle, that’s it. We called every repair shop in the state and nobody recalled doing body work on a Chrysler car, truck, SUV or van in the days following the accident and we ended up with nothing.” Flynn looked to Mac and Wire, “What does this have to do with your case?”

  “The Reaper’s victims are posed in the fetal position with the Holy Cross carved in their abdomen. He’s sending a message with that. There are certain … similarities to how Rena was found and how our victims have been staged. I’m starting to wonder if our three victims who were at the AAHS Academy at Lake Seneca played some role in her death.”

  “And someone, namely the Reaper, somehow figured that out and is now imposing his own sentence,” Dara added. “At least that’s the theory, extremely tenuous as it may be. So that begs the question, Detective Flynn and Chief Dye, who would have the desire to seek revenge on Rena’s behalf?”

  “Well, not her family,” Chief Dye answered.

  “Why not?”

  “Because they can’t. Tragically, her mom and dad died within six weeks of one another five years ago. Mom of breast cancer and then Dad had a heart attack.”

  “What about her brother Drake?” Mac asked. “File says he was a cop down in Ithaca. Did he look into her case?”

  “Yes he did,” Flynn answered, nodding his head. “We discussed the case a number of times in the years following his sister’s death. They were not close in age, but I got the sense that she was pretty important to him. So for a long time he called every couple of months to see if we had anything. He did that right up until he died two years ago.”

  “How did he die?” Wire asked.

  “Sadly, like his sister. Drake Johnson died in a car accident in the middle of a late winter snowstorm. His car slid off an icy road, down a steep embankment and hit a tree, exploded and burned. The body was charred so badly it was unidentifiable. They had to identify him with dental records.”

  “So the brother is a dead end,” Mac stated.

  “Nice, Mac,” Wire needled, rolling her eyes at the tasteless pun.

  “What?” Mac replied. “He’s been dead over two years.” Then he turned back to Dye and Flynn, “Is there anyone else who was digging into this? A boyfriend perhaps? Some other relative, is there anyone like that?”

  “No. The only one was the brother,” Flynn answered. “He peppered us for a while, but ultimately I think he understood the harsh reality of it.”

  “Which was what?” Dara asked.

  “That she was a college kid who got in over her head at a party,” Mac answered.

  “That’s right, Agent McRyan,” Dye stated, gesturing with the file, “And she wandered off away from her friends and support, or they left her behind, but in either case, she paid the ultimate price.”

  “And nobody else ever came around looking into this, other than her family which are now all deceased.”

  Detective Flynn shook his head, “I think there was a half-brother up in Rochester, much older than the girl, but he never came around. At least not that I see in the file or recall, Agent McRyan,” The Auburn detective took his glasses off and disgustedly stuffed them into the breast pocket of his shirt. “I gotta tell ya, retired detectives tell me about that unsolved case that they take to their grave. That one case they couldn’t close that just bugs the snot out of them for the rest of their lives. This has been that case for me. If the Reaper is seeking revenge on behalf of Rena Johnson, I don’t know who I’d point you to for motive or revenge. I mean, do you really think that’s what this Reaper character is doing?”

  Mac looked over to Wire, who gave him a shrug, a way of saying: maybe. Certain parts fit, certain part didn’t.

  A half hour later, Mac and Wire were making their way back over to the Lake Seneca Lodge, having agreed to update Dye and Flynn if they developed further evidence that Rena Johnson’s death seven years ago played into the Reaper killings.

  They discussed the case on the drive back. “Do you really think this Johnson case has anything to do with ours?” Wire asked. “What does that gut of yours say?”

  “My gut says yes,” Mac answered. “There’s a thread here. We should keep pulling it.”

  “Why?”

  “There’s just enough there that I think it’s connected somehow. I think Donahue, Goynes, Faye and Janelle Wyland were involved in Johnson’s death. They were either at that party or in the vehicle, maybe both, but they had something to do with it.”

  “How can you know that?”

  “I don’t know it, Dara. I can’t prove it—yet,” Mac answered, right arm extended, his hand casually draped over the steering wheel of the Suburban. “But with a little imagination, this al
l fits together. We have to talk to all of the people who were counselors with Donahue, Goynes and Faye at that camp. I bet somebody knows something.”

  “Maybe even if they don’t know it?” Wire suggested.

  “Exactly,” Mac answered. “They don’t have to be culpable, but they might point us further down the road to finding out if anyone else is.”

  “It’s a Hail Mary, Mac.”

  “Hail Marys work sometimes. Besides, what else do we have?”

  “At this point, nothing,” Wire answered as she slumped in her seat and stared out the window, watching the countryside pass on a warm, gentle summer day. The kind of day you’d just as soon be out on a boat on the cool waters of Lake Seneca, or any lake for that matter. “You know, Mac, there are four women dead. That could easily be all there was in the vehicle or involved at that party. If your theory is correct, this could all be over.”

  Mac sighed and nodded, “That’s a possibility,” he said as he turned down the tree-lined drive to the lodge.

  Director Walton had continued to work through the AAHS records. “Agent McRyan, I found the other two women who served in the dorm with Hannah Donahue and Melissa Ross, well, she is now Melissa Goynes. I also found the three girls who were counselors with Helen Williams, or excuse me, Sandy Faye. I was thinking they might be able to help you.”

  “Director Walton, does the name Rena Johnson mean anything to you?” Mac asked, showing a picture to Walton.

  Walton gazed at the photo and thought for a second and then shook her head. “No. Should it? Was she a student or counselor here?”

  Mac shook his head, “No, just a victim of another crime.”

  Twenty minutes later, Mac and Wire were driving back to the Penn Yan airport. Gesch called and Mac put him on speaker. “Mac, there is no record of any of the girls either owning a silver Chrysler vehicle or, for that matter, any of their families owning or renting such a vehicle. We went back at least twenty years and nothing.”

  “That perhaps means then,” Mac mused, “that there are others involved still out there he’s yet to get. If this were an SUV or van, there would be room for more than four passengers.”