Terry Odell - Mapleton 02 - Deadly Bones

by Terry Odell

  “A prominent physician and apparent philanthropist is related to your mayor? I think we need more connections first. I’m going to prod my research team.”

  “What did you get on the Pinkerton Foundation? Any political connections?”

  “Like, did it finance the mayor’s campaign?” Colfax clicked at his keyboard. “And so what if it did? The man’s long dead. I don’t think it’s illegal to accept money from a foundation your grandfather started. I was looking at connections to your Doc. Most of the grants are medical, so it wouldn’t be hinky that Doc got one, but it would take weeks to go through everything they’ve funded.”

  “Laurie’s good at digging through records. I’ll put her on it—she might stumble on something we need.” Gordon checked the clock. “She’ll be here in an hour.”

  Colfax stopped clicking and stared at the white board. “Your Angie. She was picked up near the bones, wasn’t she?”

  “From the Kretzers’ house, yes.” Gordon swiveled so he could see the white board. Had Colfax noticed something? Nothing popped.

  “Megan Wyatt was in the house, too, right?” Colfax said.

  “Yes, but she said she was in another room.”

  Colfax tapped a pen against the desk. “Someone watching the house would have seen two women go in. Why not grab both of them? Another minute or two’s all it would take.”

  “We’re assuming Angie was still in the house. According to Megan she had this thing about wanting to check out the bones again. Maybe she was on her way there.”

  “Door was wide open. Would she have left it that way? Not told Megan where she was going?”

  Gordon mulled that over. Angie was impulsive, but he couldn’t see her doing something risky alone—not when Megan was right there. “I doubt it.”

  Colfax’s gaze was directed upward, as if he were playing out the scenario, not talking to Gordon. “So, Angie was grabbed—or lured—from the house, resulting in—?”

  “In yet another distraction from the bone site. If Kennedy hadn’t taken those pictures, we’d never have looked.”

  “Look again. Ignore Kennedy’s looking at the site? Why Angie?”

  Gordon’s mouth went dry, his palms wet. “To get to me.”

  Colfax drew an imaginary tick mark in the air with his forefinger. “But the grab backfired. Instead of you dropping everything to look for her, you find out about tampering with the bone site and you do the professional thing, which is to let your people handle the search and you come back here to attack from the inside.”

  “And the mayor is involved how?” Much as Gordon disliked the man’s politics, he couldn’t see trying to pin an abduction on him without concrete—very concrete—evidence.

  Colfax grinned. “That, my man, is what we have to find out—or disprove.”

  “If we find it, better it comes from you than me,” Gordon said. “But I’m definitely in on the hunt.”

  “I’m sure Alexander was investigated down to his toes when he ran for office. I’m equally sure that if we scrape his toenails, we’ll find something they missed. There’s always something.” Colfax opened his cell phone and called someone Gordon assumed was one of his researchers, asking for a deep background check on Martin Alexander. “From conception onward, and I need it yesterday.”

  “You know,” Gordon said, after Colfax hung up, “if Alexander is involved, I can’t see him getting his hands dirty. He’s got to have people doing it for him.”

  “His entourage?” Colfax asked. “Man in his position is going to have his inner circle, even in a dump like Mapleton.”

  Gordon pretended he hadn’t heard the slur. His pulse quickened. “You think one of them has Angie?”

  “Can’t see him being stupid enough to keep her at the mansion.”

  The mayor’s residence was hardly a mansion, but Gordon ignored that, too. “So, do we look for people who’ve made big donations to his campaign?”

  “Seems that might work the other way around. They’ll figure he owes them. More likely it’ll be someone who’s trying to get into his good graces—someone with his own agenda.”

  Gordon wracked his overtaxed brain. Someone on the town council? Most of them were the mayor’s yes-men. And then there were all the Mapleton citizens who supported him. Did any of them have a reason to cross the line for the mayor? A line that included abducting Angie? His stomach turned at the thought of that kind of skullduggery in Mapleton.

  “Got names?” Colfax asked.

  Gordon rattled off those on the town council who always sided with the mayor. The ones he dreaded seeing at council meetings. But he’d never have thought one of them would be working outside the law.

  Colfax’s cell rang. Gordon glared at his again. Where the hell were his updates? Why hadn’t Megan called? In this world of instant communication, why was he so far out of things?

  “Crap,” Colfax said. “You sure this time? All right. Thanks.”

  Gordon waited.

  Colfax stomped to the board. “Your hick newspaper. Damn reporter got the name wrong.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Robert Browning. Your Mad Dog guy. Turns out he was a wild goose chase. The guy’s name was actually Robert Brownell and he ran a gun club out of Aurora. All the guys in the photo belonged. That’s your damn connection.” Colfax erased Browning’s name and replaced it with Brownell and the gun club. “My guys were looking for Browning, and didn’t follow up on the nickname. Until one of them thought it was strange that the nickname never showed up, so he kept digging and found Brownell.”

  “You’re sure about it?” Gordon asked.

  “I trust these guys. They triple checked. It makes more sense.”

  “I don’t suppose Brownell is still alive,” Gordon said, thinking about what his age might have been when the picture was taken.

  “No, but his son is, and he runs the gun club. I’ll give him a call.”

  While Colfax handled that, Gordon started looking into search engines for the mayor’s henchmen. As far as the law enforcement sites went, the two men Gordon thought most likely to owe the mayor were a bust. His phone vibrated against the desk. He pounced on it, his hands visibly trembling.

  A text. He pulled down the display. From Megan. He calmed himself and opened the message.

  All is well. Dropped Justin at the airport. Find Angie? Can I move back to the house?

  Stomach churning, he typed Not yet. Please stay at the motel and sent it.

  Colfax set his phone on the desk. “Kid remembers the group, although he didn’t know everyone’s full name. He called them all Uncle So-And-So. They were regulars at the shooting range, went on lots of hunts, always nice to him. When his dad died, junior discovered a tidy investment package which included connections to the now-defunct Roger, Suben and Clark.”

  “So, Brownell, senior, was involved in the goings-on of the company?”

  “Yep. He’d owned a sizeable amount of real estate decades ago, much of which was purchased through them. The kid doesn’t know for sure where it all came from, whether he’d invested at the recommendation of the corporation and then re-sold, or whether he’d owned the land early on. He does know it’s paying for his kid’s college education.”

  “I see the financial connection, which doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with the bones. Unless Brownell originally owned the property the Kretzer’s bought—but even then, that doesn’t mean he buried the bones there, or knew who did.”

  Gordon drew lines connecting Brownell to Fred, Roger, Clark, Hal, and Doc. “Another fact to add to the pile. Which is sprawling all over the place.”

  “That’s how it usually works. Until you find that one key piece.”

  “And hope everything comes together instead of falling apart.”

  “You could be a detective,” Colfax said.

  A knock on the back door interrupted them. Gordon’s heart jumped to his throat. Angie? Gordon glanced toward the white board and told Colfax to f
lip it. He inched the door open. Irv?

  Gordon took in Irv’s greenish tinge, the red-rimmed eyes, stubble-covered jaw, rumpled black denims, and a faded long-sleeved tee underneath a nylon jacket. Didn’t look like the man had slept. “You sure you shouldn’t be home in bed, Irv?” Gordon said. “If you’ve got a bug, you shouldn’t be spreading it around here.”

  Irv shuffled his feet. “What I got isn’t catchable, Chief.”

  “Come in.” Gordon introduced Irv to Colfax, who relinquished his chair.

  Irv lowered himself onto the seat, looked from Gordon to Colfax and back. “I can’t do it anymore, no matter what Marty says.” He drew himself erect. “Chief Hepler, I hereby tender my resignation.”

  Chapter 41

  Gordon’s heart rate skyrocketed, more from Irv’s saying Marty than the announcement of his resignation. Ignoring the latter, he repeated the name. “Marty?”

  “Didn’t seem wrong at first,” Irv said. “I mean, he is the mayor. He had a right to know, I reckoned.”

  Gordon had a fleeting moment of feeling miffed. The mayor had told Gordon to call him Martin. Irv rated a Marty. Feeling foolish for the thought, he went back to what Irv had said. “Had a right to know what?”

  “Routine stuff. You know, dispatch calls. If something was going on, he wanted to know about it. Gave me a number to call, and I left messages. Figured he would pick them up in the mornings, seeing as how I worked the night shift.”

  “What made you come in now?” Colfax asked.

  “So much going on—things weren’t ringing true.”

  “Explain,” Gordon said.

  “Well, first I told him you”—he cut his eyes toward Gordon—“you were doing a good job as Chief, and I didn’t see why he needed me checking up on you. He said he agreed, that he was putting together a fancy report to show the town council, and he wanted to prove that you were on top of things—making sure everything was covered, like that. Looking back, it sounds stupid, but at the time, it was convincing. And he’s the mayor.”

  Irv’s voice was low and hoarse. Gordon leaned over and turned down the volume on the radio.

  “What wasn’t ringing true?” Colfax asked.

  “Like those break-ins the other night?” Irv said. “Most of them were on the list.”

  “List? What list?” Gordon asked.

  “You know, the Directed Patrol list. So we boost patrols when folks go out of town, or there’s a vacant house.”

  Why hadn’t he thought of that, Gordon wondered. He glanced at Colfax, who shrugged. “Go on, Irv.”

  Irv sat a little straighter, a hint of pride flashing across his features. “Well, I thought a couple of those addresses rang a bell, so I checked the list.”

  “Why didn’t you say something?”

  Irv slumped. “I meant to. But things got busy, what with the fire and all, and I guess it slipped my mind.” He swiped the back of his hand across his nose. “I know I forget things once in a while. That’s another reason I’m resigning. Job’s too important to have someone who loses it sittin’ in that chair. Gotta be willing to face reality.”

  “We’ll discuss that later,” Gordon said. “Right now, I need you to tell me everything you did, everything you know. Do you know what happened to Angie Mead?”

  “No, Sir, and that’s the God’s-honest truth. I’m truly sorry about that, and if I knew anything, I’d be sure to tell you.”

  “Are you positive it was the mayor you were talking to?” Colfax asked. “Not someone using his name?”

  Irv scraped his fingernails over his stubble. “I never called him at his office or anything. I used the number he gave me, which almost always said to leave a message. One of those mechanical voices, though, not his. But since he’s the one who gave me the number, I had no reason to doubt it was his phone.”

  “You said almost always,” Gordon said. “You mean he did talk to you on occasion?”

  Irv cast a sheepish glance Gordon’s way. “The other night. When you came in. Marty had told me his project was all hush-hush, that I shouldn’t let you know about it. And since he was asking about what was going on with the fire—the stuff the Incident Commander was organizing, where resources were being assigned—it didn’t seem that what I told you was a lie. Except for not knowing who called. I kind of stretched things when I said I didn’t remember. But there were a lot of calls.”

  “How did the mayor make his initial arrangement with you?” Colfax asked. “Did he call you?”

  “Nope. I met him at a fund raiser picnic supper some time back. I started working in his campaign office, answering phones, making calls.”

  Gordon told himself he couldn’t hold Irv’s political affiliations against him—although accepting the man’s resignation looked a lot easier now.

  Irv continued. “He came in from time to time, chewed the fat. He cared, you know. Always stopped, asked how I was, about my kids, grandkids. When my sister was in the hospital, he sent her flowers.”

  Like he’d said he was going to do for Rose. A twinge of guilt suffused Gordon. Irv had been working at the station for several years, and Gordon didn’t even know he had a sister, much less that she’d been in the hospital. Made it a little easier to see how Irv had gone along with the mayor. When Gordon accepted the job as Chief of Police, he’d stepped across the line between one of the guys and the boss—perhaps too far. He could pay more attention to his staff without trying to be best friends.

  “Did he offer you money?” Colfax asked.

  “No, nothing like that. We talked about my job, and he told me what I said before. Gave me a number to call to check in. I didn’t use it much at first—nothing much goes on in Mapleton, but when they found the bones, I thought he might want to know. And then, I started calling a couple of times a shift, because he asked me to.”

  “Did he ever mention whether you were the only one… helping… him? Or if there were others?” Colfax said.

  “Never said so, but I wouldn’t be surprised. I’m only here three nights a week.”

  “Be right back.” Gordon made a quick trip to Dispatch and asked Connie to pull all her dispatchers’ logs.

  “Mine, too, Chief?” Connie said.

  Crap. He’d known Connie since he’d been a green rookie on the force, couldn’t believe she’d ever do anything shady, much less fall for the mayor’s sales pitch. If he was going to be looking at call log transcripts, it had to be across the board. “A formality, but yes, get yours—for the past ten days—to me. At your convenience.”

  He hoped that was professional enough, but at the same time would let Connie know he trusted her completely.

  He retreated to his office, where Irv, his water bottle empty, seemed less green.

  “You know,” Colfax said. “I’ll bet the mayor has minions in more places than the P.D. Reporters feeding him information. Contacts everywhere. Who knows what else he wants to be on top of?”

  Gordon sat behind his desk and moved his legal tablet in front of him. “If he met Irv at campaign headquarters, maybe he’s picked up some others there as well. Irv, can you give us some names of people you know from the mayor’s campaign—anyone the mayor might have spent a little extra time with? Any feelings that someone’s helping him beyond what they do in the office?”

  As soon as Gordon uttered the word feelings, his thoughts flashed to Angie. Were they wasting their time asking Irv about the mayor’s compulsion to get insider information? Wasn’t that all in a day’s work for a politician? It was a big jump from collecting facts to abduction. Gordon wrote the names Irv provided without paying attention. Until one. His pen slipped from his fingers. “Would you repeat that?”

  “Crazy Freddy. Fred Easterbrook. He shows up once a week—Tuesdays, I think—and stuffs envelopes.”

  Another coincidence? Gordon had had enough of them.

  “You noticed the mayor talking to him?” Colfax asked.

  “Sure. But then, when the mayor came in, he talked to everyone. He
might have spent a little extra time with Fred once or twice. Nothing he didn’t do with everyone else. Never thought much of it.”

  “Fred ever talk to you?” Gordon asked.

  “No more than to say hello. Mostly Fred talks to himself. Crazy ramblings about his wife and kid. And ranting about his fuddy-duddy neighbor, Mrs. Blanchard. We tune him out.”

  Gordon recalled what Angie had said. That Fred seemed to have erased his wife from his life. But not his daughter. So why would he be talking about both of them? “Would you remember anything he said?”

  Irv seemed to be searching the ceiling for answers. “Mostly how he was going to be seeing them soon, stuff like that. A grand reunion. How they’d finally be together, where they belonged. I figured he was going to go to wherever they were—but then again, maybe they were coming here. You know, for a visit. Doubt they’d be getting back together, at least from what I’ve heard. Something about a scandal, but I don’t know any details. I’ve only lived in Mapleton a few years.”

  Gordon’s radar pinged. Not a red alert, but at least he’d be doing something. “Thanks, Irv. You’ve been a big help. Why don’t you go home, get some sleep, and we can talk tomorrow.” To Colfax, he said, “If you don’t mind checking into the other names, I’m going to pay Fred Easterbrook a visit.”

  Gordon opened the back door for Irv, then went to his desk for his phone and keys.

  A rap on the door announced Titch’s entry.

  “Sorry to disturb you, Chief, but I wasn’t sure if you were monitoring the radio.”

  Gordon swerved, turning up the volume. “Not for the last few minutes. What do you have?” He braced himself, dreading bad news.

  “Solomon called in. They’ve searched the entire area, but no signs of Miss Mead.”

  Emotions swirled within him, but Gordon didn’t know whether he was relieved or dismayed. “Thank you. Tell Dispatch to release the officers to resume their normal duties.”

  “Will do.”

  Titch looked as if he were about to speak, but Gordon didn’t need any awkward sympathy. “Tell Connie I’m on my way to Fred Easterbrook’s place,” he said, forestalling any platitudes. However, instead of looking sympathetic, Titch seemed confused.