Terry Odell - Mapleton 03 - Deadly Puzzles

by Terry Odell

  Gordon thought it over. “I doubt it. I dropped him off, came straight back. The rentalpaperwork alone would have given me at least a fifteen minute head start. There aren’t any shortcuts. It’s the highway or nothing. I’d have noticed someone speeding past me.”

  “Okay, then Wardell is out as the firebug, and it went down the way the arson investigator said it did. The guy got drunk, careless, and whoosh. Krispy Critter.”

  Gordon grimaced.

  Solomon raised his hand. “Sorry. Forgot you were in there, too.”

  “Makes more sense,” Solomon continued. “There was nothing to indicate Wardell was trying to start a fire at Daily Bread. Just wanted a way to break in to Angie’s. We don’t have a motive for that yet.”

  “We still need more on the connection between Wardell and Blackhawk. I’ll see if I can get Blackhawk’s next of kin information from the hospital. They might be able to shed some light on Wardell.”

  “I could do it,” Solomon said.

  “This is one place where I’ve already made some contacts. Why don’t you do some of your poking. If Wardell abandoned the car, maybe he’s on a bus or plane to New Mexico. Or maybe he’s going to the Colorado address we got from the first car. Castle Rock, I think it was.” Gordon reached for the paperwork he’d accumulated, leafed through it, found the paper and handed it to Solomon.

  “I’ll see what I can do. You want me to drive out there?” Solomon asked.

  “Not in our budget. Ask the locals to check.”

  Solomon left, and Gordon looked at the folder, filled with printouts of forms, reports, and various scraps of paper. Now that things were connecting, he needed to organize the information they’d accumulated. He started sorting things into piles on his credenza.

  Laurie’s buzz interrupted. “Trooper Harris is on line one.”

  Gordon punched the button on his phone. “Hepler.”

  “Near as we can figure, the driver of the vehicle went down, buried the stuff, then climbed up and got into another vehicle. We called Sophie off. I’ve got a BOLO out, but we don’t have much of a description. If we were looking for a murderer, or someone who’d committed a major crime, we might pursue it further, but for now, he’s in the wind.”

  “Actually … he might be a murderer,” Gordon said. He ran through the homicide in Telluride. “Can’t rule him out as a suspect. According to my timeline, he had opportunity.”

  “Damn, this is getting convoluted. I’ll fill Telluride in.”

  “Convoluted doesn’t begin to describe this. I can get you a shot from the surveillance video at Finnegan’s,” Gordon said. “And some we’ve grabbed off the Internet, but I’ve got a feeling he’s changed his appearance again. Maybe I can work with a sketch artist. I’m pretty sure the man I saw at the Yardumians’ was the unedited version.”

  “Anything will help. And who knows? Maybe the guy will do something stupid. He’s using his own ID, right?”

  “I assume so. The rental car was in his name. They’re picky when it comes to seeing a driver’s license.” Gordon added the connection to the fire victim at the Yardumians’. “We’re following that as a potential lead.”

  “All right, we’ll step up the effort to locate Orrin Wardell. I’ll let the county people know, too.”

  “Sounds good.” Gordon hung up and returned to his piles of paper, then set about piecing together bios for all the major players. He figured he might get a more honest picture of Wardell from Jase Blackhawk’s family, assuming they knew him. Usually, immediate family saw nothing but the good in their offspring. Once he had another point of view, he’d try to track down Wardell’s family and compare notes.

  He found the printout from the CBI and called the investigator, and explained why he wanted a contact number for Blackhawk’s family. It took a little verbal tap dancing, but Gordon got the mother’s number, promising to relay anything he found to the CBI.

  He took a breath and punched in the number. A woman answered, and Gordon introduced himself. “I’m sorry for your loss, Mrs. Blackhawk, but it would help us a great deal if you could answer a couple of questions. Would you happen to know whether your son was acquainted with an Orrin Wardell?”

  “Orrin Wardell?” she said. “Lordy me, I haven’t heard that name in donkey’s years. Did something happen to him, too?”

  Gordon started taking notes. “So you do know him?”

  “Can’t say I know him. Or even knew him. Not like what you’re probably asking, like did I know his family, or what kind of a person was he. Met him a couple of times after the accident. Right shook up, he was. Full of guilt, kept saying it should have been him. Tried to tell him I felt him no ill will. He showed up at the hospital every day at first. Then he stopped coming, and I put it out of my mind. Wasn’t like I knew him, like I said. Had enough to deal with trying to keep my boy’s spirits up.”

  She paused, as if collecting her thoughts. Gordon waited for her to continue.

  “It pains me to say this, being his mother and all, but at some point you draw the line. Now, if he’d come home, been willing to get help, I’d have taken him in, you can bet on that. But he wanted nothing to do with me, his pa, or any of us. I had three other kids to deal with, two jobs to work to pay medical bills. They say alcoholics run in families, and his pa took to the bottle, heavy-like, after the accident. Marriage went to hell after that. So, it weren’t any big surprise my boy turned to the booze, too. In his blood, I reckon.”

  As she spoke, Gordon frantically searched the papers for any further background information on Jase Blackhawk. Where was that newspaper article Solomon had talked about? Had he even given a copy to Gordon? Apparently not. Even without it, Gordon was fairly certain he knew the answer to his next question, but he asked it anyway.

  “Mrs. Blackhawk. What was this accident?”

  A pause. “I thought you knew. Happened when they was fraternity brothers in college. My boy was driving Orrin’s girlfriend home when a drunk driver hit them.”

  Chapter 49

  After ending the call, Gordon sat, semi-stunned, for a moment. Then called Solomon to his office. “Bring everything you have on these cases.”

  A moment later, when Solomon arrived, Gordon almost snatched the file folder out of the man’s hands. He spread everything on his desk, hunting for the copy of the newspaper article.

  “You going to tell me what’s going on?” Solomon asked.

  Gordon found the clipping. Scanned it. An early report. No names released.

  “Did you follow up on this?” Gordon waved the page in front of Solomon.

  “Huh?” Solomon snatched the page from Gordon’s hands. “No, we got sidetracked with other stuff. Stuff you thought—we thought—was important.”

  “It was. It is. But this is one of those pieces that connects a bunch of puzzle parts.”

  “Okay, Chief. Forgive me for not following, but what the hell are you talking about?”

  Gordon regrouped. Slowed down. “Turns out Jase Blackhawk was the frat brother who was driving Roni home.”

  “You’re shittin’ me.”

  Gordon grabbed a marker and drew more circles and arrows on the white board. “According to Blackhawk’s mother, Wardell felt guilty at first. She thought he’d gotten over it, and maybe they had. Apparently, the two men stayed connected, perhaps after finding themselves at the same mental health facility.”

  “Okay, I have to think about this for a minute.” He glanced toward Gordon’s coffee maker. “With real coffee. Be right back.” Solomon left, and Gordon poured himself a cup of his own brew. Would it hurt to have a cup of the real thing? No, he’d sworn he’d follow the rules for the next six months. He inhaled the aroma, took a sip, then called the freelance sketch artist the department used, who promised to get there within an hour or so.

  Solomon returned, coffee in hand, and paced in front of the white board. “I don’t think we’re going to get around HIPAA red tape, but damn, it would be good to know when their stays at t
he loony bin overlapped. Did they reconnect recently, or have they been hanging together for years?”

  “Not sure it matters,” Gordon said. “We know their pasts are connected, and they were together last week.”

  “Are you sure?” Solomon asked. “Is there a possibility they happened to bump into each other? Wardell, in all his craziness, at the B and B, and Blackhawk, who’s the wandering sort, ends up there on his own?”

  “Anything’s possible, but I wouldn’t buy that coincidence. I’d say Blackhawk was here because Wardell arranged it, so for now, we assume they were together.”

  “So, why was Blackhawk in the cabin? Why didn’t they both show up when Wardell did? Easy enough to say they were travelling together.”

  Gordon shook his head. “From what we’ve learned, I don’t think Blackhawk could have pulled it off. Maybe Wardell left him in the cabin, then did his crazed husband thing. Promised to pick him up later. Only he hadn’t counted on Raffi Yardumian’s renovation work. Hell, for all we know, Blackhawk could have been in any of the cabins. Maybe he came in after Yardumian left, because it was warmer. Or there was food. Or the lights were on. We might never know that. All we can do is deal with the facts we do have. Blackhawk was in the cabin, it caught fire, and he died.”

  “How would that have affected Wardell?” Solomon asked. “If Wardell showed him to the cabins, would that have dumped another bucket of guilt on him when his frat brother died?”

  “Would Wardell even know?” Gordon asked. “He would have been on his way from Montrose to Mapleton when it happened.”

  “Wait.” Solomon moved to the timeline. “All you know is Wardell couldn’t have gotten to the B and B in time to start the fire. But you didn’t get to Mapleton until days later. You were in the hospital, then you had your … procedure … in Denver, and a couple days off. Wardell could have been here in town, and we’d have had no reason to be looking at him. Heck, he could have been in a different disguise every day.”

  “Good point.” Gordon scratched his jaw. “But why would he have come here in the first place?”

  Solomon stopped his pacing and stared into his mug. “Maybe he wasn’t coming straight here. Maybe he had another destination. Maybe he did go to the Yardumians’ to pick up Blackhawk and found out about the fire then. Even if he didn’t, if he’d seen any new reports about the fire, he’d have figured out who the victim was. That might have flipped him.”

  “Valid assumption,” Gordon said. “Either way, we’re looking at this as though Wardell came here after he found out about the death of his friend.”

  “You’re thinking what I’m thinking, aren’t you, Chief?” Solomon went to the board, picked up a red marker and wrote Gordon’s name in large, block letters. He rapped it with the end of the marker. “He’s blaming you for his friend’s death.”

  Gordon tried to maintain objectivity. “That’s one hypothesis, yes. But—”

  “Don’t start looking for zebras, Chief. We’ve got a nutcase who thinks his wife is still alive. He steals your stuff from Angie’s apartment. He wants to get back at you.”

  “Let’s not narrow our focus too far. There could be other possibilities.”

  “It fits the facts,” Solomon said. “He finds out his friend died—maybe in a place Wardell had told him would be safe. He finds out you didn’t save him. He knows you’re from Mapleton—doesn’t he?”

  “If he didn’t, he would if he saw any news broadcasts,” Gordon said.

  “Right, so he comes here, does a little recon. Daily Bread’s better than the Mapleton Bee when it comes to knowing who’s up to what, and it makes sense he’d hang around there.” Solomon turned. “You know, he might come back. Maybe we should put his sketch by the register like we did with the ATM scammer. Get more eyes looking for him.”

  “I think that’s premature,” Gordon said. “And you’re leaving out one thing. If he killed his uncle, how does that tie in? The man who trashed Angie’s apartment and helped himself to a few incidentals doesn’t seem to fit the killer model. No destruction, no rage.”

  Solomon stopped, his enthusiasm momentarily dampened as he appeared to be weighing all the facts. “That all happened before the incident at the B and B, though. Could be two entirely different motives. And we haven’t proven that Wardell’s the killer in that case.”

  “We haven’t proven he’s the one who broke into Angie’s, either.” At Solomon’s look of protest, Gordon added, “Although he’s looking very good for it.”

  “You think he could have thought it was your apartment?” Solomon asked. “When he saw it belonged to a woman, not you, he got mad, tossed stuff, and then found whatever he did of yours and took it? He has spent time in a loony bin, after all.”

  “I have no way of knowing what this guy was thinking. If he was even thinking at all. Maybe he’s on meds that keep him on an even keel, and he ran out or stopped taking them.”

  Solomon wrote “Meds?” on the board. “Maybe we can trace that. I’m thinking a call to someone who knows him, who’s not governed by privacy laws, might shed some light. Family?”

  “And the Castle Rock address. Maybe someone there will know him.”

  “Yeah, could be he lives with family when he’s not in the loony bin.”

  “I wish you’d stop calling it that,” Gordon said.

  “Fine. The mental health facility. But loony bin is shorter.”

  “Yeah, but it’s not going to reflect well on us if you start using the term when you’re talking to his family.”

  Solomon grinned, but Gordon knew his officer would be the picture of professionalism once he left the confines of the station. Solomon took off, and Gordon buzzed Laurie.

  “I need a list of all the places people can stay in and around Mapleton. Motels, B and Bs, rooming houses. Within an hour’s drive, for starters.”

  “No problem. I’ve got most of those in a file. Give me a few minutes and I’ll have it for you.”

  “Have I ever—?”

  “Not often enough.”

  Seconds later, she buzzed him. “The sketch artist is here.”

  “Send her back, please,” Gordon said. This would give him something to show the innkeepers when he was hunting down Wardell’s whereabouts. And maybe he should follow Solomon’s “informed citizenry” approach and go beyond places to stay. The man would have to eat somewhere, too.

  After an hour, Gordon had a sketch of Orrin Wardell as himself and as Carhartt Cowboy. “I can run these through my computer program,” the artist said. “Change his hair, add glasses, stuff like that.”

  “I don’t know,” Gordon said. “Too many variations might confuse people, and they’d be seeing him everywhere.”

  “There is that.” She left him the two drawings she’d done. “I’ll work up some more and email them, for your departmental reference. Your officers are less prone to imagine everyone from great-aunt Mazie to cousin Billy is our guy.”

  Gordon saw her out, then made copies of her sketches and took them to the shift officer. “We’re looking for this man in connection with not only the break-in at Daily Bread, but also as a person of interest in a homicide.”

  “Which guy?” the officer asked.

  “They’re one and the same.”

  The officer looked from one to the other. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Nope. And he might have half a dozen other disguises. I don’t want our officers stopping everyone they see, but I do want careful eyes on anyone they don’t recognize. And if they’ve seen this guy anywhere over the last few days, I want it called in forthwith.”

  “You want to address the shift?”

  Gordon shook his head. “You can handle it. I’ll get you a few more variations the sketch artist is going to come up with, too. Tell them to be careful out there.”

  “Always do.”

  His personal cell rang. He smiled at the C is for Cookie ringtone he’d reprogrammed for Angie. “Hey. What’s up?”

  “Can you
come over here and check the security video? I have a feeling there might be something important on it.”

  Chapter 50

  Gordon refrained from rushing out the door. Although Angie had stopped referring to her feelings about events, whether past, present, or future, every once in a while, she reacted—or overreacted—to everyday happenings. However, nothing in her tone said this was an emergency. “What’s the problem, Angie?”

  “Patti thinks she saw that man—the one with the newspaper who might have set off the alarm. She was on her way out when he arrived, and didn’t remember it until she was halfway home. She called to let me know.”

  “Is he still there?” Gordon asked.

  “I never saw him,” Angie said. “Today or the day of the fire alarm. Right now, there aren’t any men here I don’t recognize. That’s why I thought you might want to look at the video.”

  Damn right he did. “As long as he’s not there, let me take care of a couple of things here first. Should be over within fifteen, twenty minutes.”

  Angie’s “okay” hadn’t sounded like she’d expected him to drop everything, so Gordon went down a mental “what if it’s him?” checklist. He alerted Solomon, and told Tessa in Dispatch to make sure there were plenty of eyes out for their suspect.

  “Make sure this gets into the notes for your change of shift when Connie gets in. All officers already have pictures of what this guy looks like.”

  “Got it, Chief,” Tessa said.

  He let Laurie know he was leaving for Daily Bread. “I’ll be back, but no need for you to work late,” he said.

  “I’ll have that list of accommodations on your desk,” she said.

  Gordon wondered if he should call County and have deputies go door-to-door. A lot of manpower, but if Wardell was a murderer, they needed to find him. He’d make that decision later, after he saw what was on Angie’s video.

  Dinner seating was picking up as Gordon entered Daily Bread. Almost all the tables were occupied. He found Angie helping Ozzie in the kitchen.