Murder on the Lunatic Fringe (Jubilant Falls Series Book 4)

by Debra Gaskill

  “OK,” I said. “I’ll stay.”

  “Oh, and I’ve had two messages from some guy who says his name is Agent Peppin,” she said.

  I swallowed hard. “What did he want?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t called him back yet, but when I do, I’m going to tell him that I stand behind the story and you, despite the kind of crap I’ve had to deal with here today.”

  She left, slamming the door behind her. I caught a glimpse of Marcus, Elizabeth and Dennis, all wide-eyed at what they’d overheard.

  I laid my head on the stack of papers on my desk and tried to get my bearings. No matter what she said, the barking dog thing was going to wait until tomorrow. I needed sleep and food, but more important, I still needed to know what happened at the Lunatic Fringe Farm.

  I needed to get back out there and soon.

  Knowing Terrell—or Jerome, as I wanted to keep calling him—had a fondness for getting involved with the wrong woman couldn’t have been easy for Dr. Reed or Dr. Simms. I didn’t believe it was the sole reason he was killed.

  Katya Bolodenka’s refusal to follow WITSEC’s rules got him killed.

  By entering her tapestry in the state fair, and by consenting to a story for the Journal-Gazette, she’d broken the rules to keeping her safe—and those around her alive.

  We had just done what we would normally do, what any other small town paper would have done: celebrated the accomplishments of our residents. Did putting the story up on our website—as part of that newsgathering process—lead to her husband and his thugs locating her? Probably. But what was I supposed to do? Am I supposed to start asking story subjects whether or not they’ve got some deep dark secret that puts their lives at risk before I run every story? Pardon me, you don’t happen to be in any kind of protective federal custody, do you? I need to know before I do this story. That’s just plain nuts. She had the chance to say no to the story when Elizabeth first called her.

  I sat up and reached over to the window behind my desk, pushing it open. Between the focus group, Earlene’s rant and my conversation with Terrell’s/Jerome’s parents, I needed a cigarette.

  Finding a pack in my center desk drawer, I lit one and drew the smoke into my lungs, exhaling out the open window. My thoughts continued to churn.

  Katya hadn’t committed a crime—she’d only witnessed one, the murder of the homeless man in the basement of her Brighton Beach home. How fair was it that she be forced, for her own safety, into a situation where she couldn’t contact those most dear to her? How would I react in that situation?

  It might be easier for the gangsters themselves to step away from the life they’ve lived and assume another identity. I’d read books on Italian Mafioso who turned states’ evidence and disappeared into witness protection. They had to know their new identities and lives were the true reason they were still alive and one word, one hint at who they’d been could get them killed.

  But what about their family members, the wives and families, who, like Katya, never committed a crime? Whose only sin was to fall in love with a crook? It had to be harder for them to have their lives upended, their identities wiped away and any connection to home severed.

  Clearly, Katya was trying to maintain ties with those she loved as often as she possibly could, with disastrous results. She repeatedly contacted her sister Svetlana against her handlers’ orders—and then Svetlana, her husband and her baby daughter, all ended up dead at the hands of Kolya Dyakanov’s thugs.

  Then she’d relocated again, this time from Virginia and with animals acquired from another protected witness, here to Jubilant Falls.

  How long had she been here, anyway? I didn’t know. Duncan and I rarely drove down that road—we would have seen the animals if we had.

  Regardless of how long Katya Bolodenka had been there, she’d had to find something to fill her time. Figuring she was safe, figuring no one would look for her in rural southwestern Ohio, she wants to get comfortable, settle in. She couldn’t do any of those things that most folks would do—take a cooking class, learn to sew, join a book club—without having to repeat her intricate new life story, a life story she’d been given to keep her safe from harm, the result of a crime she did not commit.

  So, she turned to her art. Where she learned weaving and dyeing was anyone’s guess. But, she’d literally worked with what she’s got—the fleece from the animals in her barn, and the life story she’d been forced to tell.

  So she’d woven a tapestry, one she wanted to be recognized for. And, like anyone else, she wanted to reach out into the new community she found herself living in. So what could hurt if the state fair likes what she does? Who was going to come looking for her in Jubilant Falls?

  She didn’t count on me.

  I wondered if she’d even told Jerome she’d entered the tapestry. Did she have to drive up to Columbus to enter it or could she have mailed it in? She knew how to drive—she’d come down to the newsroom to see me about the slain animals while I was in a meeting with Earlene. Graham and Elizabeth spoke to her and Graham took her over to the police department to see Gary. Somehow, though, I couldn’t see her driving the hour to Columbus without protection—and Jerome would have likely put the kibosh on her entering anything. If she mailed it in, that marshal at her side would never have known about it. So, when the tapestry won, it was no surprise that the photo didn’t have her in it. Our story had seriously blown her cover.

  Over the years, I’d seen the damage that secrets could do—every one of the big stories I’d covered had hinged on someone unearthing a truth that someone else never wanted uncovered. I’d even seen the damage secrets that do within my own family. But those secrets were different, based in shame or whatever the current definition of sin was.

  Katya’s secrets weren’t based on her shame or her sin. Her secrets were truth, the life she’d lived and the connections she’d treasured. So when she did the right thing by reporting a murder, she’d been thrown into a world not of her own making, a fiction she was forced to uphold for her own life expectancy—at least until she testified against her husband.

  She was given a new name, a new history, taken from all she had known and all she had loved, and then stuck in what anyone else in her Brooklyn neighborhood would undoubtedly have thought was deep in the sticks.

  Lonely and alone, she’d turned to the man who was sworn to protect her. How did that happen? I’m not sure I really wanted to know, but the things people did for love, or sometimes, just sex, boggled the mind. Did she even know Jerome’s true identity? I doubted it. His identity needed to be protected as much as hers.

  I drew the precious nicotine into my lungs again and exhaled out the back window, tossing the cigarette into the alley below.

  I still couldn’t figure out the argument Dr. Simms and Dr. Reed overheard. Who was Katya arguing with? Was it one of Kolya’s thugs? Someone else? I needed to get over to the farm to find out.

  ***

  The Lunatic Fringe farm was bathed in summer’s late afternoon sun as I steered my Taurus up the gravel drive. It was hard to believe that fifteen hours ago, this driveway had been clogged with law enforcement officers and the road with television remote trucks.

  The sound of the wind rippling through the corn was all I heard as I pulled up to the old farmhouse and parked my Taurus.

  It was one of those perfect summer afternoons that made me glad I lived in Plummer County. Down the road, cows grazed in the fields and birds, balancing on the electrical wires, sang out boldly. A bee flew past my head, buzzing loudly as I swatted at it.

  I stepped up onto the porch and knocked, then turned around to survey the land around it. I was close enough to smell the fresh paint on the porch and front wall near the door, where the man I knew as Jerome Johnson had laid in a pool of his own blood, just a few hours ago.

  No answer. Maybe she’s in the barn, I thought to myself.

  Back down the front steps, I stepped backward into the driveway to get a look at t
he upstairs windows. The front windows were open, the curtains fluttering in the summer breeze.

  “Hey! Katya! It’s me, Addison!” I cupped my hands around my mouth and yelled. “You here?”

  Silence.

  I followed the gravel drive as it curled behind the house, walking toward the little cottage and the barn.

  Thwack! I spun around as the old screen door slapped against the back door frame.

  “Katya?” I called.

  Still no one. The wind caught the old wooden screen door again and again, and it flapped like a broken wooden wing.

  Why would that door be open? I wondered. Could something have happened? Had Luka or any of Kolya Dyakanov’s other creeps returned? What if they’d killed her? I pulled the door open and stepped into the house.

  In the kitchen, breakfast dishes sat in the sink—a coffee mug, half full, and the remnants of a bowl of cereal, a spoon.

  “Katya? Katya? Are you here?” I called.

  From the kitchen, I walked through the dining room and into the living room where we’d first met.

  Katya’s tapestry hung in two slashed pieces on the wall and the pictures of the murdered Svetlana and her daughter in front of St. Basil’s Cathedral lay on the floor next to the cheap, particleboard coffee table. The chairs were overturned and someone had ripped the cushions open on the cheap, brown couch, as if searching for something.

  I knelt and picked up one of the photos. The glass was broken and a shard had pierced Svetlana’s face. If Katya was gone, if she’d disappeared back into witness protection, she wouldn’t have left these behind.

  I ran upstairs. I remembered the master bedroom was at the front of the house, when the Larsens lived there. I threw open the door to see two enormous looms and the spinning wheel Katya had used for the story we’d done. One loom had a thick and heavy project on it, maybe a rug. The other was serving as a catch all for finished tapestries, weaving tools and partially wound skeins of yarn. Fleeces sat in black plastic trash bags, yarn overflowed from baskets and books littered the room, but it looked more like creativity flowing than a raid.

  “Katya?” I called again. “Katya, are you here?”

  In the next bedroom, the mattress had been pulled from the frame and bedclothes covered the floor. The dresser drawers were open and clothing hung over the sides. The closet door was open and more clothing lay strewn across the floor.

  The other bedroom and the upstairs bathroom looked the same—someone had come through and tossed it, in search of whatever they thought Katya was hiding. Another quick look didn’t reveal any blood or evidence of any possible clean up. If Luka and his hoods harmed her, they hadn’t done it here.

  But what if she were safe? Where had she gone? Had she disappeared back into the witness protection program? If she had, why wouldn’t she take those most precious items—the photos of her dead sister and her niece?

  There had clearly been a struggle here. Something awful happened. Who had Jerome’s/Terrell’s parents heard arguing with her?

  I pulled my phone from its belt holder and dialed Duncan’s cell.

  “It’s me, Penny. I’m over here at the Lunatic Fringe and Katya’s gone.”

  Chapter 29 Graham

  It was dusk when I pulled into the lot at the Travel Inn. The door to Benny’s room was slightly ajar and yellow light shone around the edges of the dirty window curtains.

  There were several pick-up trucks parked around the barely-open door, and, with my Toyota’s window down, I could hear men’s voices coming from inside. What was going on? Was it a meeting? Were they making plans for the rally the Aryan Knights wanted to have on the courthouse steps?

  I didn’t want Benny to see me yet. I parked the Toyota in front of the last motel room, furthest from his and walked around the back of the building. I knew from being here on previous stories that the baths for each room were at the back of the building, each with a small crank-out window of frosted glass. Every room had a window air conditioner in the front, but not all of them worked and the owner was never real concerned about getting them fixed. I could only hope Benny’s was one of those rooms and, along with the open front door, that back window would be open to let a breeze come through—and bring conversation out.

  A narrow sidewalk, cracked and uneven, ran along the back of the building, next to a gravel driveway where an industrial Dumpster sat. From the corner where I parked, I could see cheap pink cotton curtains fluttering out the back of a bathroom three rooms down—Benny’s room.

  I tiptoed down the sidewalk and, once I was beneath the open window, leaned my back against the wall to listen. I considered bringing a reporter’s notebook with me, but changed my mind at the last minute. Recording everything on my smart phone was a better choice. That way, I could keep an eye out for anyone trying to sneak up on me rather than having my head buried in the effort it would take to take notes. I hit the ‘on’ button, set the phone on the edge of the windowsill and began to listen.

  “Ben, you’ve got to do something with that little asshole,” a male voice said. “He’s way out of control.”

  I recognized Benny’s slow sardonic laugh. “No he won’t. He’s a pup, just trying to show he can run with the big dogs. I can handle him.”

  “You better! He’s going to bring the cops down on us with all his shenanigans and we’re going to be the ones holding the bag.”

  “No, you won’t,” Benny said, calmly. “I keep telling you, I’ve got him under control.”

  “Is he going to be there tonight?” someone else asked.

  So what was tonight? I wondered. A meeting? Where would it be? And whom are they talking about? Doyle McMaster?

  Benny grunted. “I figure he is,” he said.

  Another truck, this one a diesel, pulled up and cut its engine.

  “It’s him,” Benny said.

  The truck’s door squeaked open and slammed shut. The men inside Benny’s room were silent as the sound of footsteps entered the room.

  “Hey, ya’ll,” said a young man’s voice, a voice just a little younger than mine. I wanted to stand and peek through the window. Was it Doyle? As often as I’d covered McMaster’s lengthy, though petty, criminal career, I hadn’t heard him speak very often—unless it was during an arraignment, when he told the judge “Not guilty, your honor.”

  Whoever this kid was, he wasn’t welcome. Only Benny answered, “Hey.”

  “I got those letters delivered for you.”

  Letters? Like the one Sheriff Roarke got requesting the rally on the courthouse steps?

  “You weren’t fucking stupid enough to do it yourself, were you?” Someone else asked.

  “Naww—I had my sister’s kid do it. I gave him five bucks for each one he delivered—he’s like ten years old. He thought he just got a big ole pile of cash. If I did it myself, my probation officer would have nailed me to the wall. So where’s the meeting?”

  “Same as usual,” Benny answered. His words and his tone turned expansive and sarcastic. “However, gentlemen, before we get the opportunity to preach the virtues of a pure white race to those who would let the Jews and the niggers and the queers destroy God’s great country, we need to discuss a little fund raising. This organization doesn’t run on good will alone.”

  Someone closed the front door of Benny’s hotel room. There was a thump, like something dumped on a wooden surface, like a table. Someone else whistled low and long.

  “That’s heroin, isn’t it?” the young man’s voice asked. “Jesus, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a whole brick—”

  “Would you shut up?” a man’s voice said. “Can you for once just not run your goddamned mouth?”

  “Kid,” Benny said. “Just to be sure, go back there and shut the bathroom window.”

  I snatched the smart phone from the sill and flattened myself against the wall as someone entered the bathroom. There were the sounds of the door closing, a zipper coming down and a stream of urine into the toilet, then t
he flush of water. I held my breath as a hand reached out and pulled the window closed.

  So, even though Benny Kinnon had kicked his own heroin habit long ago, he was serious when he told me he didn’t think twice about selling it.

  I sprinted around to the front of the building, to the door of Benny’s room. I knocked and the conversation inside stopped sharply.

  “Who is it?” Benny called out.

  “It’s me, Graham. I wanted to talk to you again. About this morning.”

  Benny’s hands were around my throat before he was completely out the door. I winced in pain as he pushed me against the truck, the pickup’s chrome grill slamming into the middle of my back. His face was close to mine; I could smell his sour breath and see his scraggly beard.

  “Did I not tell you not to come looking for me again?” he hissed.

  “I just wanted to ask one more thing.” I raised my hands in self-defense.

  I saw stars as he slammed my head against the truck’s hood. “No more questions! You hear me?” he screamed, spittle forming at the corners of his toothless mouth. Veins stood out in the swastika tattooed on his neck. “No more questions!”

  “OK! OK!” I said.

  He loosened his grip and I fell to dirt. Behind him, the barrel of a gun poked through the window curtains. Benny’s dirty hands reached out and pulled me up by my shirt.

  “You shouldn’t have come back here,” he said. “I told you that for your own good.”

  “Who’s in there with you?” I pointed at the gun barrel. Benny turned around and waved. The gun disappeared from the window.

  “Listen kid. I’m going to give you one last bit of advice.” His words were hard. “Those guys in there, they’re not the Sunday school set your idiot mother obviously raised you with. They’ll kill you just as soon as look at you. I’m telling you for your own goddamn good—these guys don’t screw around. Get the hell out of here or you’ll end up dead.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a decrepit four-door Impala with primer grey fenders pull up beside the truck.

  “You OK, Benny?” I turned my head to see who spoke. It was Doyle McMaster. His John Deere baseball hat was smeared with grease and his jeans were torn. He held a knife blade in his hand. So who was the young man’s voice I heard in the motel room? The one who delivered the rally letters? Some other stupid kid who was getting sucked into Benny’s world?