Farraday Road

by Ace Collins

  “That’s the interesting thing. The Stone County Sheriff’s Department sent the gun and bullet from the suicide to the ABI as a matter of routine. Nothing more. Just the usual ballistics to find out if there are any matches with other crimes. Nothing to do with their case, which was a suicide. We test these but never connect them to anything—until this time.

  “First, the bullet and the gun didn’t match. The .32 found at the suicide scene two years ago was not the same gun that fired the shot. The man couldn’t have killed himself. It was murder.

  “I ran the two-year-old bullet from the suicide case against current cases. Including the bullet from the Explorer. They were both fired by the same gun. The .32”—the techie stopped and opened the file to study his notes—“that killed Moony Rivers in Stone County two years ago was involved in the Evans murder in Fulton County last week. And as you know from what the boss told you, that same gun was used in that other case, the Dean case, two years ago. Three murders with the same gun!”

  Three murders?

  Diana Curtis smiled at the tech, took the file from him, and guided him to the door. “Fine work. Great job. I’ll get all this to the director immediately.”

  The tech stood hesitantly outside the office as Diana, still smiling, closed the door.

  She spread the file out on Barton’s desk and studied the reports. “Incredible.”

  Lije was looking over her shoulder.

  “The gun that fired on you on Farraday Road was used to kill this man in Mountain View, Moony Rivers, just two days after it was used to shoot Micah Dean.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me about the connection to Dean? ” Lije asked, angry at not being told of the link before.

  “Because I didn’t know.”

  “But you told the tech that Hillman had filled you in.”

  Her eyes never left the papers. “I lied.”

  “Then that same gun killed Kaitlyn? But you never found the bullet. So there’s no way to prove it. This knocks a big hole in the case against Heather. And it might be just what’s needed to get Jennings off death row and out of prison. He just might be innocent. What happened?”

  Curtis didn’t answer. She walked over to the window and stared blankly at the scene before her. She could not believe that Barton Hillman, director of the ABI, would withhold evidence. Any evidence. But this was crucial evidence. He must have a valid reason, but what was it? She couldn’t even begin to guess. Yet even in her confused state, one fact did ring true. She now had to take her role as bodyguard very seriously. There was someone out there with a gun who was looking for a chance to finish a job that started two years before. Maybe he was working with Jameson or maybe …

  “Swope’s Ridge,” she whispered.

  “What? ” Lije asked.

  “The answer has to be on Swope’s Ridge. We need to go there. Let’s get packed and head to your place. I’m thinking you and I are suddenly on the same team.”

  “When I tell you what I found out the last couple of days, you’ll know we are.”

  “What did you find out? No, don’t tell me now. I’ll take you up on your offer to ride with you. We can talk on the way. We have a couple cars still up in Fulton County. I’ll use one of them once we get to your place.”

  She now had a sense of purpose and direction, but she also felt a hint of disillusionment. She didn’t bother finishing the cleanup in Hillman’s office.

  THE NEXT DAY CURTIS AND LIJE ARRIVED IN AN agency car at the overgrown lane that led to Swope’s Ridge. Their trip had taken them through deeply wooded hills and valleys along Route 289 before they had turned onto a logging road that evidently hadn’t been graded in years. The recent heavy rains had deposited rocks and a few tree limbs onto the road’s washboard surface. These new obstacles, combined with the mixture of soft sand and hard bedrock, bounced the passengers in the agency’s Crown Victoria like popcorn in a microwave bag. They could travel no more than fifteen miles an hour. They cautiously crossed two low-water creek bridges, wondering each time if they’d make it across.

  “Should have checked a National Guard tank out of the armory for this junket,” Curtis said.

  Lije grinned. “Yep, but it’s sure a good road test of the Ford. I’m impressed.”

  Swope’s Ridge had long been Lije’s Promised Land. For much of his adult life he had dreamed about going through the gate. He and Kaitlyn had spent hours planning what they would do when they finally were able to buy the property. He felt exhilarated and disappointed all at once. Kaitlyn would never be with him. To distract himself, he told Curtis about his conversation with Kent McGee the day before.

  McGee had called with more information on the old German, Schleter. It was true that he was a truck driver during World War II. At least part of the time he was driving tanker trucks, and because Allied planes always went after those, it was a pretty dangerous job. He never advanced past the rank of private, and he evidently never saw combat unless it was during the last few days of the war when everyone was pressed into defending Berlin. He never married, never had children. He had filled out all the proper paperwork to come to the United States in 1946. He never returned to Germany.

  He didn’t come over on a passenger ship, but instead worked his way over as a seaman on a cargo boat. He paid to have a large amount of stuff brought from Germany on that ship. Maybe it was the materials he used to build his house, but records were sketchy, so who knew? He kept his nose clean, became a citizen, paid his taxes, and never got so much as a parking ticket.

  The source of his money remained a mystery. He was the son of a day laborer. His parents never owned a car, much less the small apartment where they lived, so he didn’t inherit a penny. There was no record of his ever earning a fortune.

  When they arrived at the gate to the property, Lije got out and, using the keys he had found in the box in Jameson’s desk, set about unlocking the last obstacle between them and the ridge. He ran through the set twice. None of the keys fit, even though the small brass one had been clearly marked as the gate key. He studied the gate and realized the lock and chain looked brand new.

  Curtis got out and popped the trunk of the car. From the side pocket of her field kit she pulled a set of lock-picking tools. With Lije following behind her, she examined the lock and went to work. Within a minute, the lock’s arm snapped open.

  She headed back to the car. “Lije, swing the gate open. After I drive through, close it again and lock it.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  “But why use a lock we don’t have a key for?”

  Curtis smiled. “Because someone obviously cut the old lock and chain off the gate to get in, then replaced them so they could come back. When we leave, I don’t want it to be obvious that we’ve been here.”

  “Setting a trap?”

  “Don’t know if we need one, but if we do, then no reason to announce our presence. At least not yet.”

  The Crown Victoria worked its way through the nearly overgrown path with very little trouble. Curtis parked in knee-high grass along the back of the house and looked at Lije. “Did you notice the other tracks?”

  “Even an amateur couldn’t miss them. Besides, I grew up in the woods. I can read a trail. Whoever has been up here has used the old road several times. The grass is pushed down pretty good. Looks to me like a four-wheel-drive pickup.”

  Curtis looked impressed. “You’re probably right.” She studied the area around the back door. “They came this way, but they didn’t stop at the house. Note the truck tracks head down into that draw, and there are no recent impressions made from walking in this area. After we survey the house, we can follow the truck trail on foot. I’m going to treat this as we would any other crime scene. I want gloves on, I want us to take our time, and I want you to stay out of my way. Put some gloves on, but follow me. If you see something you want to examine, don’t! Use your voice and call me over. Okay, let’s get started.”

  Lije snapped on a pair
of latex gloves and trailed Curtis around the outside of the house. He quickly grew bored and looked out over the ridge, at Spring River in the valley below. It was his dream to own this view, and now that he did, it was even better than he had imagined. The morning sun was pushing above the ridge and dancing on the ripples in the swift water of the river. The sounds of the river’s joyous melody as it tumbled over rocks and boulders could be clearly heard from where he stood. As far as he could see, there was unspoiled beauty, almost unchanged since the moment a divine breath had brought it to life. He was so drawn in by nature’s composition that he lost all track of time.

  Curtis walked up to him. “Lije, you ready to go inside?”

  “Sure.”

  At the front door, Lije tried the keys on the ring, found the right key, and started to open the door.

  Curtis stopped him. “Don’t go in yet. It’s like I thought when we drove up. I don’t think the house has been visited in some time, probably months. But I can’t be sure, so we have to be careful. At one time someone forced open a window on the other side, but it doesn’t appear that whoever has driven by this place recently and headed down that trail has shown any real interest in the house. First we need to get the flashlights.”

  Lije walked behind Curtis to the car, took the flashlight she handed him, and then accompanied her back to the house. Curtis entered the house, and Lije followed, breathing in a large dose of stale air as he crossed the threshold. The house smelled of mold and old furniture. As his eyes grew accustomed to the dim light filtering through the small windows, and as his own flashlight beam floated through the dusty interior of a large open living area, a realization began to settle in. With its steel-shuttered windows, dark walls, and meager furnishings, the German had confined himself to a voluntary house arrest. Schleter’s life appeared to have more in common with the death-row existence of Jonathon Jennings than with the life of a normal person. Why would anyone choose to live this way? It boggled his mind. Schleter moved thousands of miles, made no friends, and holed up in a man-made cave. His was the ultimate game of solitaire. What was the payoff?

  “Someone’s gone through everything,” Curtis said after peering into a few closets and the kitchen and studying the contents of a large bookshelf in the living room.

  Lije scanned the stacks of papers, books, and pots and pans. “Maybe this was just the way he lived.”

  As she walked into an adjoining bedroom, Curtis explained her reasoning, raising her voice so Lije could hear her. “Dust. Examine the dust that has accumulated in the years since Schleter died—such as on the kitchen table—then compare it to the dust on the books spread out in every direction. Big difference. You can see that a person or persons were here moving things around within the last few months.”

  Lije leaned over and studied one of the books on a ladder-back chair just to his left. The cover was only slightly dusty while the dust on the seat cushion was almost a quarter-inch thick. Obviously this CSI stuff was not as hard as it looked on TV.

  Curtis continued the lesson from the bedroom. “There’s something else about the scene that reveals the way this place was ransacked. What’s in front of us tells us that these were not thieves looking for something to steal. Whoever entered this house was searching for some kind of information, perhaps written on a piece of paper. The books were thoroughly thumbed through, probably picked up by the spine and shaken, with their pages down, in hopes that something would fall out. The visitors went through this home, room by room, and they weren’t in any hurry. It’s apparent one of them sat in that large chair in the corner, where he probably went through a book, then set it to the side of the chair and went through another one. They weren’t worried about being caught.” Curtis appeared in the doorway and added another observation. “The shoe prints indicate two men, about average height and weight, dressed casually.”

  “How could you tell that? ” Lije asked. “I mean the casual part.”

  “Well,” Diana explained, “it’s just an educated guess, but they were wearing Nike cross-trainers—the shoe tread gives that away. So you have to figure they wouldn’t have been in dress clothes with the tennis shoes. And, based on a few markers from their stride and step patterns, both searchers were men.

  “Now notice the walls,” Curtis continued. “Even the pictures have been taken down. It’s readily apparent they pulled the backs off to see if anything was hidden behind the prints. They went through everything in here with a fine-tooth comb. And they covered their tracks pretty well too. I have not seen anything in the way of a fingerprint.”

  “So they wore gloves? ” Lije asked.

  “The places where I’ve found hand impressions, such as on this desktop, it’s obvious their hands were covered. I’m sure there are a few prints around, but with the dust coating them, I’d guess they belong to Schleter.”

  Lije attemped to stand in a manner that created the illusion he was looking for something specific, but he sensed Curtis saw through his ruse and chose not to make fun of him. Finding nothing crime-related to point out, he straightened up and glanced at his watch. “It’s ten-thirty.”

  Curtis moved over to an easy chair, swept away the dust with her gloved hand, and sat down. “We can guess that two men were looking for something rather small, something that could be hidden in a book. Looks like they searched through the entire house. I’m surmising they didn’t find the object of their search. Or, if they did find it, it was in the last place they looked and they would not have to look further. Since someone has been on the property in the last few days and did not come back into the house, they probably decided to expand their search to another part of the property. That leads me to believe they’re still looking for that something, whatever it is.”

  Lije listened intently. It all sounded logical. But there was something she hadn’t addressed. As weird as this place was, there was one thing that really stood out. It was time to take a step of faith and see if what he had noticed was important. “The place is built like a bomb shelter. The outside walls are thick enough to take mortar fire.”

  “Schleter was an eccentric and probably paranoid. He constructed a fortress to ease his fears and make himself feel secure.”

  “That was my first thought when we walked in,” Lije said. “But then I noticed that the inside walls are just as thick.”

  Curtis looked at the wall between the kitchen and living room. It was at least two feet wide. The wall between the bedroom and the living room was made in exactly the same fashion.

  “Would I be stupid to think there might be a hollow place between the walls? ” Lije asked.

  Curtis hurried back to the bedroom and pulled a hammer from a drawer she had gone through. She went to the nearest interior wall and started tapping. Lije listened as she continued the exercise all the way through the house. When she returned, she said, “They’re as solid as the outside walls.”

  “What about the attic?”

  “There’s a crawl space in the bedroom that allows entry to it,” Curtis said. “It’s a large open area, but the only thing stored up there is a trunk. The guys who got here before us opened it and dumped the stuff on the attic floor. All I saw were some German military uniforms, a couple of ancient family photo books, and some personal letters postmarked 1944 and back. Nothing that caused any alarms to go off.”

  Curtis and Lije poked around some more, exploring the house. The building not only was in a time warp but was a home that reflected another country. The books were all in German, the prints in the frames were scenes from Germany, the furniture and the dinnerware all looked as though they were purchased in Europe and shipped here. Nothing, other than some canned goods in the cabinets and a few items in the laundry and bathrooms, appeared to have their origins in this country or even to have been purchased in this decade. Yet even as antiques, nothing appeared to have any real value.

  Curtis led the way out of the house, and Lije locked the door. They walked back to the car. Curtis dropped off
most of the gear in the trunk and picked up two handguns. She handed Lije one of the weapons (in case he was right, she said, and someone was still after him). She picked up a backpack that she said contained peanut butter crackers and bottled water, then led the way as they set off down the hill, following the recent tire tracks in the foot-tall grass.

  THEY MOVED DOWN A SLIGHT INCLINE AND FOUND themselves headed up a fairly steep hill. “Lije, what do you know about this land?”

  “Well, as you can see, it’s pretty much untouched by man. This whole area is like that. If you were to go deep enough in the woods, you might find some signs of stills that were used to produce moonshine, but not much else. Except for a handful of hunters, few modern men or women have ever seen what we are seeing now.”

  Curtis stopped and glanced skyward. Sitting atop a hundredfoot oak tree was an eagle. It stared at them, studying their moves, its head slowly bobbing from one side to the other.

  “That’s a golden eagle,” Lije said. “There are a few bald eagles that have recently come back into the area, but the golden is much more common.”

  As if bored by the humans’ actions, the eagle took off, spreading its wings and riding a breeze that took it above the tree line. Banking to the left, it headed toward the stream, gliding down toward the water.

  As they continued their climb up the ridge, Lije noted several places where the truck that had chosen this same path had lost traction and slid to the right, then the left. It was clear the vehicle had gotten stuck in a soft spot near the top of the hill.

  “Bet they got muddy trying to push their way out of this mess,” Curtis said. “Must have been a day or two after the huge rain.”

  Her words sliced through Lije like a knife. The huge rain had almost left his memory. Was that good or bad? Had he been hiding from the memory? What kind of memory had driven the German to hide inside his fortress of solitude?