“Thank you for helping me to save someone I cared about—even if you were only doing your job.”
“How come you didn’t come here to look me up?”
“Who says I didn’t?”
“This was a few years ago?”
“I didn’t want to trouble you, but I did look you up. Juan said you didn’t want to be bothered.”
She was sure that wouldn’t have stopped him but she said goodbye and shut the door. So he knew about her even before Clark’s death. That was something to think about.
“Mackenzie, a word if you have a minute,” Mitch called to her early the next morning.
“Sure Mitch,” Otter said, turning back and walking toward him. “How is your wife? Michael said she was sick.”
“It’s just—what you say—a touch of the stomach flu bug. She was very ill for a day, but she seems to be better today.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
“Me too,” he smiled, “She can be very difficult when she doesn’t feel well.”
“I have to say that I’m no piece of cake when I’m sick either.”
“I just wanted to tell you that I talked to Michael about Ron Defray. This is my entire fault. He asked me if he could have a week off and I told him it was fine if he did so. I forgot to tell anyone, we were all so excited about the ball.”
“Oh, I’m so relieved,” Otter said. “We were worried when he didn’t come to work. You know he’s never missed a day, much less not come in without telling someone.”
Michael had absolutely forbidden Greg, Annie and herself to mention a word about the theft to anyone. He had repeated the word “anyone” several times for emphasis. She also knew that if Ron Defray had planned to take some time off, he would have sent everyone an e-mail, explaining in detail what he planned to do on his time while he was gone.
“I thought you should know,” Mitch said. I didn’t realize how worried everyone would be. I thought nobody liked him.”
“Well, he has his moments,” Otter said. “Actually I’m glad you stopped me, I needed to talk to you about this lathe that’s coming in tomorrow…”
She and Mitch absorbed themselves in technical talk, but in the back of her mind, Otter knew what she had seen at the ball. Ron Defray’s vape pen had been in Mitch’s breast pocket. That was one of Defray’s prized possessions. The only way Mitch would have gotten it would have been by force or if Defray had been unconscious.
After a few phone calls, Otter found herself in a secure office that was the headquarters for The Apollo Institute of Phoenix. It was a reception area, a couple of offices and a nice sized conference room. They asked her to bring Michael and Greg, if they were willing.
When they arrived, she found Susan and Tempest already there. They were sitting at the conference table with Troy, Graham and Detective Addison munching on small sandwiches from a platter in the middle of the table. Joel was on the phone in one of the side office.
Otter put the laptop in the middle of the table and put the stuffed dragon on a chair. She made introductions all around and helped herself to a soda from a cooler next to the conference table. Joel came in shortly after and took his place next to the whiteboard at the front of the room.
“OK everyone, I thought it was time we pool our resources and see what we have. Everyone here has been working on this from different angles and I think it’s time we put it all together.
“Now what we know is that Charlotte disappeared with her sister back in 1983, right after Charlotte graduated from high school. She appeared briefly when it was suspected that she murdered a young man in Detroit and disappeared again.”
“Was she dating him?” Otter asked.
Joel looked at her for a minute. “No, but they were friends.”
“He found her out.” Otter said with a nod.
“We discovered that Charlotte was actually born with organs of both sexes and was labeled as a hermaphrodite. Otter thinks she killed the people who knew that. The high school boyfriend probably found out accidentally—you can imagine how. I believe that her parents had lost their usefulness once she turned eighteen.”
Otter frowned. “Didn’t you say they mortgaged their house a couple of weeks before they were murdered? And Charlotte didn’t take the money?”
“Yes they did and no she didn’t.”
“What if they had taken out the money for both children to get their gender identities fixed? Maybe they didn’t like the gender assignments that their parents picked out for them?”
“That’s possible,” Joel said, “A little crazy, but not outside the realm of possibility.”
“Not all transgendered children kill their parents, even if the parents don’t like their lifestyle.” Troy said.
“True, but this one kills on an agenda.” Otter said, “It’s a screwed up agenda, but it makes sense to her.”
“I think Otter is right, and I’ll tell you why in a minute.” Joel said, “I was called to the murder in Detroit and verified that it was done by Charlotte, but she had disappeared again. My crew and I,” he waved to Troy and Graham, “were officially brought on to the case when it was determined that Clark was murdered.”
“When was that determined officially?” Michael asked.
“Shortly after Otter started making noises to Susan,” Addison said. “Susan and I looked at the evidence and the coroner’s report and I saw something that Joel Buchanan needed to see. When he got here he verified right away that we had another of Charlotte’s murders.”
“When Otter told Susan about Marvin Jones, Addison and I flew up to Detroit to look things over and verified he was another one. So we had to figure out how they all were related and maybe we could catch her.” Joel continued.
“So I knew I had to meet Otter. I convinced Susan to introduce us.”
“I knew what you were up to,” Susan said, “I think I knew even better than you did what you were looking for.”
“Be that as it may,” Joel cleared his throat as Graham snickered, “She turned out to be invaluable. She had the list and figured out the code. She got this laptop, “he gestured to the machine on the table, “and even got into that. I’ll bet that right now she knows who the killer is.”
“Well who is it, Mackenzie?” Michael asked.
“It’s Mitch,” Otter told Michael and then she looked up at Joel, “but you knew that already.”
“And when did you figure that out?” Joel asked her.
“When I was talking to him and he told me that Ron Defray had asked for some time off, which is why he was missing. Defray wouldn’t do something like that quietly. He’d send an e-mail to everyone bragging how he was going to be gone fishing or hunting or whatever. When he took his time off, he wanted people to know.” She paused a moment. “And I remembered after I realized he was the kidnapper, that he had had Defray’s vape pen in his pocket at the ball. That’s what I had seen while I was dancing with Graham but couldn’t place.”
“I figured out something was wrong when he spoke at the ball,” Troy said, “His accent is definitely not Rumanian.”
“He didn’t know what Cal de Lemn meant,” Michael asked. “I showed it to him as part of a project and he didn’t know what it was. If he was from central Europe, he would have known.”
“You knew?” Otter asked her boss.
“I suspected for quite a while, but wasn’t sure.”
“What made you suspect him? I could have been the imposter.”
Michael snorted out a laugh. “You both were supposed to have degrees in metallurgy. Only one of you knew the difference in the age cycle of 2024 versus 7075 aluminum and the free machining capabilities of 303 instead of 321 stainless.”
“Ah, ok,” Otter said.
“She works metals and engineering into everything,” Tempest said. “I think it’s in her blood.”
“Mitch came to your shop and applied as a general manager.” Joel said to Michael, “and you were impressed by his resume.”
“Yes, I was.”
“You didn’t know that is was a stolen identity. His papers were good.”
“They were.”
“So what we think happened was this, she made friends with Clark. She has always liked guns; it makes sense she would belong to one of the most exclusive gun clubs in the valley. She invited him to her club with her and Clark was impressed.”
“Until he saw ‘Jameson Pennell’ on the identity card that Mitch presented at the club.” Otter said.
“And Clark was a busybody; he loved to pry into people’s lives.” Michael said.
“Clark was also dying,” Troy said. “His cancer had come back. He hadn’t told anyone yet, but he didn’t think he would live much longer.” He looked around the room. “I got his medical records and talked to his doctor.”
“I think he had his periodic table made out already,” Otter said, “I think it was his personal way of keeping score on everyone, a way to have a private laugh once in a while. He worked his mystery code out and jumbled everything up with the table and clues he already had worked out so that if Mitch got into his computer, he wouldn’t know what it was.”
“He had an adopted nephew that was brilliant at software, so he used the software to snoop on Mitch and other people in the shop. He found Marvin Jones and met up with him. Clark found out from Marvin Jones that Mitch was female in high school and not from Rumania at all.”
“He must have been ecstatic,” Otter said, “all that dirt on one person in one trip.”
“Should have done his research,” Graham said, “He would have also found out that she was a dangerous killer.”
“Maybe he didn’t care,” Susan said. “He was going to die anyway.”
“Possibly, but he met with Mitch when he got back from meeting Marvin and they went out shooting one last time as planned. Either Clark slipped and told Mitch something, or straight out decided to blackmail him.” Otter said, “Either way, Clark wasn’t afraid of him, he let Charlotte walk up to him and shoot him in the head.
‘Clark started to tell me something just before he left on that trip.” Otter continued, “Raymundo started pounding on my door about a shipping crisis and Clark changed his mind about telling me.”
“Marvin posted on his Facebook page that a co-worker of his old friend came by and was going to get them to meet sometime soon,” Troy said. “It was only on there for a short time before his family took it down.”
“So Marvin unwittingly sealed the death warrant for both of them,” Graham said.
“So it seems,” Joel said. “We believe he has taken and possibly murdered Ron Defray, but we don’t know why. He has also tried to frame Mr. Defray for a theft at AzTech, possibly to throw suspicion off of him.”
“So why do you think he was so anxious to work with me?” Otter asked Michael.
“Part of the reason was that he liked working with you,” Michael said, “He always said he learned something from you every day.”
The whole room paused to consider that statement.
“And he could keep an eye on her,” Joel said. “See if she was getting suspicious. She said she didn’t think Clark killed himself, he may have wanted to know how far she was going to push that.”
“He insisted several times that Clark was a suicide and we never knew what people were thinking.” Otter said.
“He was certainly right about that,” Graham said.
“Then Charlotte scoped out Otter’s house,” Joel continued, “and apparently encountered her security system.”
Tempest and Otter grinned at each other.
“One day you will have to show me that whole system,” Addison said. “We have reports of some kid apparently trying to go over a wall in your neighborhood. He ran for a police car screaming ‘La araña grande!!’ [10] as loud as he could. His eyes were as big as saucers and he was a white as a sheet. It took the uniforms an hour to calm him down and they couldn’t get him to go back and show him what he had seen.”
“Maybe he was on some kind of drugs,” Tempest said demurely, “I hear that spice or bath salts will make people see things.” Otter wouldn’t meet her eyes and tried very hard not to make any noises.
“Can any of this be proven?” Michael asked, “Can he be arrested?”
“We have a couple more things to show you and then we need to construct a plan of action.” Joel said.
“What about Mitch’s wife?” Otter asked.
“We think that it’s probably his sister pretending to be his wife, she’s kind of in the background,” Joel said. “We don’t know if she’s a part of this of her free will or not.” Troy said.
“We’ll find out once we have them in custody,” Addison said.
“Tempest and Susan have been working with Troy and Graham and together they found out about Mitch Balan, the real Mitch Balan.”
“He was an engineer and manager at one of the places where Charlotte worked. He disappeared about the same time she did. Here is a picture of what he looked like.”
Joel looked at Troy and Troy clicked a few things on his keyboard. A picture of a tall blond man with cold blue eyes stared out of the photograph on the white board.
“Mitch Balan wasn’t liked very well by his co-workers. By all accounts he was extremely intelligent and knowledgeable, but had absolutely no people skills. When he left a work place, everyone breathed a sigh of relief.”
“Is that a trend with your industry?” Tempest asked. “Is everyone an asshole?”
Michael laughed out loud. “Not everyone,” he said, “but a lot of them, that’s true.”
“So the real Mitch Balan was a cold personality,” Otter said.
“That’s definitely not the Mitch I know,” Michael said.
“We think Charlotte killed Mitch and took his identity. It made it easier for her to become him and get steady employment.” Troy said.
“How do you know she killed him?” Otter asked.
“Because the four of us figured out some probabilities,” Graham nodded to Susan and Tempest, “and decided on a couple of locations where Charlotte would have most likely left the body. Troy and I went up to Detroit and a cadaver dog found it on the third try.”
“And it was most definitely Charlotte’s handiwork.” Joel said.
“What kind of mark are you talking about? You’ve mentioned it before.” Otter asked.
“Have you seen any of the symbols for the intersex movement?” Joel asked her.
“I’ve never really looked.”
“There is one that is the combination of male and female.” He said. “It’s a circle with a crossed line on the bottom like a female and an arrow shooting off toward the right at an angle like a male.”
“Oh yeah, that’s been around for quite a while.”
“Charlotte carves that symbol in body part of every one of her victims. Most of the time it’s so deep it goes into the bone.”
“Eww, I hope they were dead at the time,” Tempest shuddered.
“So far that seems to be the case,” Joel said, “but it’s been on every one I’ve seen.”
“So do you think she’s making a statement for all transgender people?” Otter asked.
“No, I think she’s a deranged killer who is using that for an excuse.” Joel said.
“So now what?’ Otter asked.
“Now we get a warrant for Mitch’s arrest,” Addison said, “and to search through his home.”
“What do we do in the mean time?” Michael asked.
“I’ll signal you once we have her in custody,” Joel said. “Then it will be safe for you to go back to the shop.”
“It still doesn’t feel right,” Otter said to Tempest once they were home.
“How is it supposed to feel?” Tempest said, getting ham and cheese out of the refrigerator to chop up for salad.
“More satisfying,” Otter said. “Mitch just doesn’t act like a cold blooded killer.”
“I’m no expert,” Tempest said, “But I don’t think cold blooded kil
lers have any kind of sign or special jewelry that tells you that they’re crazy and dangerous.”
“That would be cool though, like those medical alert bracelets that people with medical conditions wear. It would have a flashing red light so everyone near them would know.”
“Then everyone would want one,”
“Probably, but I worked with Mitch, often in a high pressure situation, he didn’t act like someone who was deranged,” Otter said, pulling out fixings for her own salad. “If he cracked under pressure, AzTech would definitely bring it out in him.”
“But you pointed him out as the killer yourself,” Tempest said, “You must have thought so at some point.”
“I know. It makes sense, but it doesn’t on some level. He left a trail that points to him, but it doesn’t feel right.”
“Let me know when it does,” Tempest said. “Because right now, I won’t feel safe until he is in jail. He was looking at our house.”
“But he didn’t actually see it,” Otter said absently, “You know how the security system works.”
Chapter 15
Otter woke the next morning to a text from her Aunt Carole, reminding her to get a flu shot. Aunt Carole was a fanatic about flu shots since a friend of hers had gotten heart damage due to a nasty flu virus. The friend had to get a pacemaker and Aunt Carole had a new cause. Otter rolled out of bed and groaned. She would have to send a copy of proof to her aunt sometime in the next week to get off the nag list.
She had gotten a call from Joel, Mitch was secure in a cell, but they hadn’t found the sister or Ron Defray. Joel said that Mitch kept telling them they were crazy to put him in jail--and they didn’t understand what was really going on.
Otter fed her cats and wondered where Ron Defray was. She sincerely hoped he wasn’t dead. Whatever he was like, he didn’t deserve to die. She had a quick breakfast and then dressed in her jeans, polo shirt and work boots.
It was dark at 5am since it had turned to autumn, and Otter called Annie as she got into her car.
“What is this I hear? You had Mitch arrested?”
“I didn’t, the police did.”
“I hope you plan to give me the details on our way in.”
Otter Under Fire Page 25