Deadly Recall

by T. R. Ragan

  To pay for the costly drugs, I sold my house, begged for money on social media, and worked long hours so I could keep my insurance since I still needed what little help it offered. Eventually the money ran out. The hospital, the doctors—everyone involved—watched my daughter’s decline, and they did nothing.

  Unlike my wife, my daughter didn’t die instantly. She suffered for another year. Have you ever had to watch someone you love slowly deteriorate?

  The lumps that appeared on her body were painful to the touch, but I couldn’t help her to the bathroom without touching her. She couldn’t walk without feeling as if there were dozens of needles sticking into the bottoms of her feet. The pain was excruciating. She couldn’t move without crying. Her suffering did not continue for days or weeks, but for months.

  If you talked to the people who know me best, they would say I am a calm and rational being.

  But that was then, and this is now.

  I’m mad as hell.

  My daughter needlessly suffered and died too young because of greed.

  Since I have been unable to get the insurance company’s attention, I want you to contact DHI and see that I get an apology and reassurance that all experimental drugs will be covered for all patients henceforth. If, and this is a very important if, I do not see a photocopy of such letter on DHI’s company letterhead signed by the president and chief executive officer, Owen Shepard, on the front page of the Sacramento Tribune on or before Wednesday, October 18, an innocent life will be taken.

  Sincerely,

  MAH

  Something niggled, stopping Ben from tossing the letter in the trash. He thought about his accident. Even ten years ago the hospital bills had been astronomical. If not for the health benefits he received through his work, he would have been screwed. His wife was a nurse. She had told him many sad stories about patients who were turned away because they didn’t have insurance. Even with insurance, two out of three people were unable to pay their hospital bills.

  On the off chance someone’s life could be in danger, Ben stood, scooped up the letter, walked across the fading parquet wood floor to his boss’s office, and took a seat in one of two chairs facing Ian Savage’s desk.

  “Not now. I’m busy.” Ian waved him away without bothering to look up from the pile of papers in front of him.

  Ben slid the letter under Ian’s bulbous nose, then waited a few seconds until watery gray eyes looked at him over wire-rimmed glasses. “What now?”

  “Read the first paragraph, and then we’ll talk.”

  Ian gave his attention to the letter. A full minute passed before he looked up again. “Just another crackpot.”

  “I don’t know. I’ve been doing the crime beat for a while now.” Ben pointed at the letter. “He’s threatening to take an innocent life if his demands aren’t met. What if he is serious, and we do nothing?”

  Ian took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “So, what do you propose?”

  “I’d like to give Owen Shepard at DHI a call. See what he has to say.”

  “Fine.”

  “And then I’m going to call the police.”

  “You really think that’s necessary?”

  “I do.”

  “Of course, if the person who wrote the letter had threatened a specific group or person, I might be concerned, but his threat is a little vague—don’t you think?”

  “I’d rather be safe than sorry.”

  “Okay, fine, fine. Get out of here and get it done.”

  Ben made a quick exit. After making copies of the letter and envelope, he returned to his desk and picked up the phone.

  THREE

  The next morning, running on the sidewalk along J Street with her niece’s dog, Higgins, at her side, Jessie weaved a path around two women and a row of colorfully painted condos. She and the dog had taken up running after her sister’s funeral. She’d needed something to keep her mind clear. The first couple of weeks had been grueling. Her muscles were always sore, and her lungs burned. Higgins had given up a couple of times, stopping in midrun and refusing to budge. She’d begun to doubt there was such a thing as a runner’s high.

  But after the four-week point, everything changed. She was less winded, and somewhere along the way her muscles adapted. Higgins was doing better, too, often challenging her to keep up.

  It was October. The morning air was crisp. Temperatures would reach the high seventies by noon. Turning onto Nineteenth Street, she passed the old purple house she rented and headed straight for her office a block and a half away.

  The building where she worked was two stories with narrow hallways and a maze of offices. Businesses included a marriage counselor, a home-cleaning service, Felix Newton Real Estate, a yoga studio, and an organic teashop on the rooftop.

  She pushed through the front door, then held it open for Higgins. The pitter-patter of his paws against the wood floor was the only noise as she made her way down the hallway to the first office space on the right. Since she rarely locked the door when she left for her morning run, she didn’t need a key. Pushing open the door, she was surprised to find someone waiting inside.

  The dark-haired woman sitting in one of two chairs in front of her desk whipped around at the sound of the door opening.

  Jessie recognized her at once. “Zee!”

  Zee Gatley, a twenty-eight-year-old woman with schizophrenia, didn’t bother to say hello or get up to greet her. Zee’s father, Arlo, had hired Jessie when Zee went missing. Jessie had located her before she’d been physically harmed, but by then Zee had been held captive for days by a deranged serial killer.

  Higgins went to Zee, sniffed, then stared up at her.

  “Does he bite?” Zee asked.

  “The only person I’ve seen him bite was the same man who kidnapped you.”

  “Oh, what a good dog,” Zee said.

  Higgins’s stump of a tail wagged as she pet him. When she finished, Higgins walked over to his dog bed in the corner and plopped down.

  Jessie took a seat behind her desk. “It’s good to see you, Zee. How’s your dad?”

  “He’s still dating Mrs. Dixon, the next-door neighbor. I think he’s the happiest I’ve ever seen him.” She frowned. “He thought it might be a good idea if I got a job.”

  “And what do you think?”

  “Well, after mulling it over a bit, I thought it would be cool to become a private investigator.”

  Jessie lifted a brow. Her niece had also recently announced a newfound desire to become a PI.

  “Dad said you told him you needed help, so that’s why I’m here.”

  Jessie had talked to Arlo a few times. She couldn’t recall telling him she needed help, but she had mentioned how busy she was on more than one occasion. “What exactly is it you’d like to do?”

  “I want to work on cold cases, you know, look for missing people like you do.”

  “I thought you weren’t allowed to drive.” Jessie looked outside, thinking she might see Arlo waiting in the car. “How did you get here?”

  Zee’s eyes brightened. “My doctor said I had to be without symptoms before I would be eligible to drive again.” Her chin jutted. “I’ve been taking my medication every day, and he signed off on the paperwork last week. I got my license yesterday.”

  “You’re no longer hearing voices?”

  “Nope,” Zee said. “The voices are gone.”

  “I don’t know, Zee. I wasn’t looking to hire anyone right now and—”

  Zee placed a clenched fist on the top of Jessie’s desk. “I’m a hard worker and I’m dependable. And besides,” she added, her words coming out fast, “Dad’s new girlfriend comes over when he’s at work. She’s driving me crazy. You have to give me a chance.”

  Ah, Jessie thought. So that was the problem. She thought about everything the two of them had been through together. Zee was a good person. She was smart and strong-minded, and she deserved a chance.

  “I’ll do whatever you ask me to do,
” Zee said. “I won’t fuck up—I mean mess up, I promise.”

  Jessie couldn’t bear to turn her away. She reached for an envelope from her in-box and said, “When I first started my business, I handled mostly workers’ compensation cases. Do you know what that is?”

  Zee shook her head.

  “If a person claims they were injured on the job, they can file a claim to collect workers’ compensation, which is monies paid by the company they work for. If the company has reason to believe that the employee filed a fraudulent claim and they want to dispute the claim, the company will sometimes hire outside help to prove the employee is capable of doing their job.”

  “Weird. Do a lot of people lie about that stuff?”

  “Most cases are legitimate, but statistics show that one to two percent are fraudulent.”

  “So you have to prove they’re faking it?”

  Jessie nodded. “We set up surveillance. It’s not an exciting job, Zee. You basically sit in the car for hours at a time, watching and waiting. If you see the claimant lifting heavy items or walking without crutches, depending on the case, you have to take videos and pictures because the insurance company needs proof that they’re not disabled.”

  “What if the person you’re watching sees you?”

  “I’ve had it occur a couple of times. When I was approached, I told them I was interested in buying a house in the area and was checking it out. Something like that.”

  “What if they never come out of their house at all?”

  Jessie shrugged. “It happens. If they realize they’re being watched, they’ll figure out a way to sneak out the back, and you won’t even know they’re gone. Sometimes it’s just a matter of outsmarting them.”

  Silence settled around them. Finally Zee blurted, “I’ll do it.”

  “Maybe you should think about it for a day or two.”

  “No. I want the job. I already looked up the requirements to be an assistant to a PI. There are none.”

  Jessie said nothing.

  “In case you were wondering, I have a high school diploma.”

  “That’s fine.”

  “I’ve also taken some online courses.”

  “Very good.”

  “I can start work tomorrow.”

  Jessie clamped her lips together to stop herself from laughing. She’d already known there was no way she would turn Zee down, but she couldn’t help but be amused by the girl’s determination. “I’ll give you some paperwork to fill out at home. Meet me here at eight o’clock tomorrow morning and we’ll go over a few things.”

  “Okay.”

  “Five hours a day, five days a week. Minimum wage. Deal?”

  “You bet.”

  As soon as Jessie handed her the paperwork, Zee jumped to her feet and headed for the exit. She got as far as the door before she turned back and said, “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.” Jessie watched her leave. When Jessie had been looking for Zee, she’d done some research on the mental disorder she suffered from. People with schizophrenia sometimes had a difficult time connecting with others. Many didn’t like being touched or having others invade their personal space. Sometimes they withdrew from the world. Jessie didn’t want to see that happen to Zee. If she could continue to get the right help and surround herself with supportive people, Zee could lead a satisfying life.

  FOUR

  “It’s very important that he call me back,” Ben told Owen Shepard’s assistant at DHI. “This could be a matter of life and death.”

  The woman rambled on about Mr. Shepard being a busy man, and since he was in Arizona on business and wouldn’t return until the next day, she wasn’t sure whether her boss would be able to help Ben before then.

  “You need to let him know what’s going on. Tell him to call me at any time, no matter how late.” Ben hung up the phone and rubbed a hand over his face. There wasn’t enough time.

  “Hey, Ben. Come see this.”

  Across the room his coworker Larry was leaning back in his chair, waving Ben over to his cubicle. Ben pushed himself to his feet, wincing as a sharp burning sensation shot through his right knee. A car accident ten years ago had left him with stiff joints and disfiguring scars on his left side. Ignoring the pain, he walked over to see what Larry wanted.

  “Ring any bells?” Larry asked as he jabbed a finger at an eight-by-ten glossy of a man dressed in an expensive-looking suit.

  Ben took a closer look. “What’s his name?”

  “Wow,” Larry said. “You really don’t remember.”

  People like Larry just couldn’t wrap their brains around the idea that amnesia was a real and debilitating disorder. Ben had been working for the Sacramento Tribune for twenty years. The same car accident that had left him permanently disfigured had also left him with retrograde amnesia, and he didn’t remember anything prior to the accident. Not friends. Not family. Nada.

  “I’ve got work to do,” Ben said. “No time for games.”

  Before he could walk away, Larry said, “This right here is good ol’ DJ Stumm.”

  Ben’s throat tightened. He didn’t move, didn’t say a word. DJ Stumm. Where had he heard that name before?

  Larry pointed a finger at him and let out a guffaw. “I knew it! There it is. I see a flicker of recognition. I knew you would remember. Twelve years ago, you and I worked a crime scene together. It was one of the worst I had ever witnessed. A mother and her two young kids brutally murdered.”

  As Larry talked, something he did more often than not, Ben sifted through the pictures on Larry’s desk. A naked woman hung from a rafter in a basement. A kid in the bathtub, another on the bed. Both children bludgeoned to death.

  “I was a newbie around here,” Larry was saying, “when all this went down. You happened to be the guy showing me the ropes. You taught me a lot that day—like how to become part of the crime scene without being noticed. Your mantra back then was ‘look and listen.’ You knew how to gather information without getting in any of the crime scene technicians’ way.” Larry reached for a picture. “This Christmas photo was taken weeks before the murder. The perfect family,” he added under his breath.

  Ben took it from him. Two kids, both under ten years of age. Their mother gazed fondly at her children while their father looked blankly at the camera. This time when Ben’s gaze connected with the image of the man, a sharp pain sliced through his skull. “Did he kill them?” Ben asked.

  “Yeah,” Larry said, looking up at him. “All the evidence pointed to him. Bloody prints, empty bank accounts, etcetera. It didn’t take long for investigators to learn from DJ’s coworker that he’d fallen in love with a woman at his work. But get this . . . DJ didn’t believe in divorce.” Larry shook his head. “He slaughtered his kids and tortured his wife because divorce was out of the question. Fucker.”

  Ben agreed. “Still behind bars?”

  The expression on Larry’s face made it clear that it truly pained him to know that Ben couldn’t remember the case.

  “You allowed me to be your shadow for weeks,” Larry said, his tone so sharp it made Ben think he was hoping to jog his memory. “I’ll never forget the intensity and passion in your voice whenever you talked to me about that case. Bottom line: you wanted DJ Stumm caught.”

  Ben set the Christmas card photo back on Larry’s desk.

  “But they never found him,” Larry went on. “Not until a few weeks ago, when they dug up a pile of bones in the city of Lincoln, not too far from the house where Stumm and his family lived before he killed them.” Larry grabbed a manila envelope sitting on his desk, pulled out another eight-by-ten picture, and handed it to Ben.

  It looked like a backyard. He could see a wood fence and a rosebush. Nearly half of the property had been dug up. At the bottom of a deep hole was a pile of human bones.

  “Until this morning,” Larry continued, “those bones were known as John Doe. Tests came back a few hours ago. John Doe is now officially DJ Stumm. He died twelve years ago, which
means that all this time authorities have been looking for a dead man.”

  “How do they know he’s been dead that long?”

  “Get this,” Larry said, straightening. “Stumm was buried under a patio beneath a water pipe that hasn’t been disturbed. Water pipe was put in approximately four days after Stumm killed his family, which means Stumm was killed within that four-day window.”

  “Wouldn’t someone have found the body when they installed the water pipe?”

  Larry shook his head. “Pipe only went two feet under the ground. Another six to twelve inches and they might have seen the body.”

  “Interesting.”

  “Not just interesting. Downright incredible. You don’t get too many cases like this, where time of death can be determined almost to the day. Somebody killed DJ Stumm within days of the brutal slaying. And whoever it was got him good. Was it his wife’s parents? Her brothers? A cousin, uncle, lover? Too early to tell.”

  “Or maybe Stumm wasn’t the one who killed his family,” Ben offered.

  “He was guilty, no doubt about it. All the evidence pointed to him: No signs of breaking and entering. Credit card charges for the rope used to hang his wife. DJ’s fingerprints and his own blood was on everything, including the kids.” He let out a breath. “Sad.”

  Ben examined the photo. There was machinery in the background. Past a stone retaining wall, he spotted a brick building. Between the graffiti and the broken windows, he figured the building had been long abandoned. Feeling dizzy, he pointed at a folder on Larry’s desk. “Mind if I take the file back to my desk?”

  “Sure.” Larry frowned. “You okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine.”

  Larry shoved the photos back into the file and handed it to him. “I’ll need it back before the end of the day. Ian wants me to do a follow-up story on the case.”

  “No problem. Thanks.”

  As Ben headed back to his cubicle, he heard Larry say something, but he wasn’t listening. He felt nauseous. Since the accident that took Ben’s memories, doctors had said it was likely some or all of his memory would eventually return, but that hadn’t happened until months ago, when he recognized a woman named Sophie Cole on Cold Case TV. Sophie turned out to be Sacramento PI Jessie Cole’s younger sister, who had gone missing ten years ago. Hoping to find answers, he’d sought out Jessie, and together they had discovered that Sophie had been in the car with him when it crashed. She had been thrown from the car, and her skeletal remains were found down a steep ravine, buried beneath a thick tangle of brush. Although Ben still had more questions than answers as to why he’d been with Sophie that night, he couldn’t deny that his memories were returning. Sophie had been real. She was not a figment of his imagination. Nor was she a part of a crime scene he had covered, which meant other images he saw in his mind’s eye could also be bits and pieces of his past.