The Mather Triad: Series Boxed Set (Chloe Mather Thrillers)

by Lawrence Kelter

  “Anything on my father?” I asked. I walked next to her as she goose-stepped down the corridor to an empty interrogation room.

  “Not a blessed thing. He’s not using his credit cards or withdrawing money from the bank, and as you know, his phone …”

  I shook my head sadly. “Yeah, I know. I don’t know what to say about that.” I sat down on the wrong side of an interrogation table, a position I was unfamiliar with. It made me feel wholly uncomfortable. I pulled out Benzino’s folder.

  “Whatcha got?” she asked impatiently.

  I looked for the photo of Benzino on the morgue table and placed it atop the pile.

  “Seen that. What else you got?”

  I hit her with the Google Maps printout.

  “What’s this?” she asked.

  I tapped the little box insert, which contained the location latitude and longitude.

  She put her left pointer finger on Benzino’s tattoo and the right on the map coordinates and matched them digit by digit. “Son of a bitch.”

  “Yeah. Exactly. We thought we were looking at two eight-number sequences separated by a dash, but it’s not a dash, it’s a negative sign indicating western longitude.”

  Looking at the map, she said, “So this is a spot on a golf course?”

  I nodded. “Appears to be. Benzino must’ve buried something there, something so important he couldn’t risk forgetting the coordinates.”

  Lauda actually seemed to be excited. “My homicide brain is thinking buried bodies. Yours?”

  “You bet your homicide-sleuthing ass I am. Are you familiar with the course?”

  “Yeah, the Wind Mark, it’s a privately owned public course. My husband plays there from time to time when he’s feeling gutsy.”

  Really? So you let Herr Lauda out for a little sport, do you? How decadent. “Gutsy? Why’s that?”

  “Supposed to be a tough course—narrow fairways and lots of water hazards … you get it. But what are the chances Benzino was able to bury something on an active golf course. Someone would’ve noticed for sure.”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The place went through a big changeover in 1997 when the Beacon Hill Resort closed. The hotel, the golf course, and the surrounding property were all redesigned. Anything could’ve happened.” I pointed to the map. “They built this two-hundred-unit homeowners’ association here in the middle of the complex with the golf course running around it. Holes were moved, the land regraded, and trenches run for utility pipes and drainage for the community.” I looked her in the eye, gleaming with exhilaration. “Endless possibilities, Detective. Endless.”

  “I understand, but you know that’s not enough for us to get a court order to dig the place up.”

  “No, but we can run metal detectors and methane probes over the surface. I know that anything he might’ve buried has been there a hell of a long time, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth a try.”

  “Dogs maybe?”

  “Dogs won’t help. They need a scent to follow, and since we don’t have anything for them to go on …”

  “Yeah. That’s right,” she concurred. “Like you said, it’s worth a try. I’ll run this info by the lieutenant and see if I can get permission to contact the golf course.”

  I handed her a copy of Benzino’s rap sheet. “I doubt the FBI version is substantially different from yours, but I took the liberty of highlighting the sections I thought would help you make a case to your brass.”

  “Gee. I think this is the first time I’ve ever gotten friendly cooperation from the FBI. It’s kind of nice,” she said with a genuine smile.

  Aw. I guess she wasn’t really a bitch after all. I guess that she had just acted like one because cops feel that bureau agents are entitled assholes, and actually … I mean, what could I say? Bakal’s mug popped into my head. She wasn’t completely wrong.

  Chapter 51

  “What do we have?” Dr. Shelton asked as a team of EMTs raced into the hospital emergency room pushing a gurney. He was calm and composed as he examined the patient, who was breathing oxygen and appeared to be unconscious.

  “He’s going in and out of consciousness, Doctor. His brother said that he’s been very fatigued all day. He was having difficulty breathing after eating his lunch and passed out shortly after.”

  Shelton studied the patient’s face and noticed his pale skin color and shaved head.

  “The patient has a history of lymphoblastic leukemia and just began new rounds of chemotherapy,” the EMT continued. “BP and heart rate are just slightly elevated, but I’m hearing palpitations.”

  Shelton pressed his stethoscope to the patient’s chest and checked his heart. “I’m getting skipped beats,” he said, then slid the patient’s socks down and checked his ankles. “Swollen,” he commented. “Could be cardiac toxicity—a reaction to the new chemo. Do you know what treatment he’s on?”

  One of the EMTs checked his notes. “DaunoXome, five hundred milligrams.”

  Shelton grimaced. “DaunoXome? That’s a liposomal form of daunorubicin. It should be safe.” He shook his head with surprise. “You just never know how these meds will affect someone.” He turned to the ER nurse. “See how soon we can get a MUGA scan, and while we’re waiting I want an electrocardiogram, an echocardiogram, and a chest X-ray. Start him on eight micrograms of Lanoxin and ten milligrams of Monopril, IV.”

  The sliding doors spread apart, allowing Matt Corey and his parents to rush into the ER. “There he is,” Matt said excitedly as he pointed to his brother lying unconscious on the gurney.

  “How is he?” his mother asked, panicked and out of breath. “How’s Blake?” She rushed to her son’s side, tears streaming as she looked at his face. “He’s going to be okay, isn’t he?”

  “This is your son?” Dr. Shelton asked.

  “Yes.” She continued to examine her son’s face. Her throat tightened so much she could barely speak. “What’s wrong with him? He’s been on chemo before and nothing like this ever happened.”

  “I understand he just started new chemotherapy treatments?”

  She nodded nervously. “Yesterday.”

  He signaled to the EMTs to roll Blake into the treatment area.

  “Where are you taking him?” she asked.

  “He may be having a toxic reaction to his chemotherapy medication.” He began to back away, following the EMT team into the treatment area. “We’ll stabilize his heart and breathing. Hopefully that will bring him around.” He jogged away, leaving Blake’s parents frightened and vulnerable. His father put his arms around Matt and his wife, pulling them tight as they all prayed for his recovery.

  Chapter 52

  “Lieutenant Brooks said maybe,” Detective Lauda advised as she once again reverted to her diverted-eyes you-can’t-get-in-my-face-if-I’m-not-looking-at-you tactic.

  What does he mean by maybe? Wait! Put yourself in his shoes. You’ve got a tattoo on a murdered man’s arm, which is probably a navigation coordinate, but you can’t prove it—not exactly a compelling reason to start tearing apart a public golf course and expending hard-earned taxpayer dollars. “Is he in? I’d like to—”

  “Yes, he’s in, but I don’t think he’ll see you, Mather. He wants something more substantial. He wants something persuasive, a reason strong enough to justify us digging up the golf course. We’re looking for a murderer at the moment, not a body.”

  Are we?

  “You can see how this looks like a fishing expedition, can’t you?” she asked

  “As I explained, Detective, Benzino’s wasn’t the only homicide. Two other men tied to him were recently murdered. There’s got to be a very strong reason that three men, related by their work history, were murdered. Maybe I can convince your CO to give it a shot.” My gut told me that I couldn’t give up. It told me there was something going on at the Wind Mark Golf Club that had to be looked into.

  Lauda put her hands on her hips and huffed.
“Wait right here. I’ll see if—”

  We both turned our heads at the sound of a commotion. Two men dressed in plainclothes were coming our way; one of them was animated and barking instructions at the other.

  “That’s him,” Lauda said. “I wonder what the hell is going on.”

  Brooks looked up, saw Lauda, and waved her over. She hurried over to him just a couple of yards away. “What’s up?” she asked.

  He glanced at me before he began to speak. They were close enough for me to hear their conversation. “Is that her?” he asked. “The fed?”

  Lauda nodded.

  “Get a hold of a judge,” he said. “We’re going full speed ahead on this one. I need a warrant to excavate at the golf course in this area.” He handed her a printout and pointed to it. “I want to be able to dig within a fifty-yard radius of this spot.”

  “Really?” Lauda asked with surprise. “What the hell happened?”

  “Human remains were just found at the Wind Mark Golf Club.”

  Lauda gasped.

  My mouth flapped wide open. I hurried over to them. I hadn’t been invited, but I didn’t care and certainly wasn’t going to stand on ceremony. It was time to get to the bottom of this, and I sensed that my hunch about the navigation coordinates had been right on the money.

  “You feel confident about this?” the lieutenant asked. “You’re certain the numbers on Benzino’s arm are navigational coordinates?”

  “The man did a hitch in the navy, Lieutenant. I figure a sailor has to know how to navigate.”

  He thought for a moment and then shook his head. “I don’t know why I’m saying this, but that’s good enough for me.” Turning back to Lauda, he said, “As I said, get a hold of a judge. Put together our argument and make it stick. There have been urban legends about the old Beacon Hill place since I was a kid. I think maybe we’re going to find out that those old stories were true.”

  Chapter 53

  By the time we got to the golf course, crime scene investigators were already busy photographing the area. In the excavated pit, a human radius and ulna bones were partially uncovered along with the bones of the hand: the carpals, metacarpals, and phalanges. The hand bones had been disturbed by the landscaper’s men, who weren’t exactly as delicate in their work as trained paleontologists. Their only objective had been to quickly excavate a compromised catch basin and in so doing had disturbed the evidence. They were still on site and were jabbering away with a Spanish-speaking police officer in their native tongue, providing testimony, and still very much shaken by their recent discovery. There was too much commotion and noise at the scene for me to hear their comments accurately but certain emphasized words pierced the crowd’s din and made their way to my ears. “Heusos. Esqueleto. Muerto!” Bones. Skeleton. Dead!

  The community contained over two hundred homes, and as close as I could tell there were at least that many onlookers gathered around, police and News 12 reporters notwithstanding. I could hear gossip flying around. Onlookers were alluding to the tainted history of the golf course and the urban legends that surrounded it. A gent the neighbors called “Morty” seemed to be the recipient of most of the questions from the residents. He looked quite pale. I was not surprised to see that he had been shaken by the discovery. Apparently three large sinkholes had developed as a result of heavy rain, and a consulting engineer had determined that the holes were located where community catch basins were buried. All three sinkholes needed to be excavated and inspected before being backfilled to make sure the engineer had been correct in his diagnosis of the problem. The community landscaper’s crew of workmen had hit the jackpot at the very first site.

  “Morty, they’re not going to dig up my whole yard, are they?” a man with a cigar asked in an irritating voice.

  Morty rolled his eyes and turned away without answering.

  “Morty?” the man persisted.

  “You’re kidding, aren’t you, Jack?” he shot back with irritation. “How should I know what’s going to happen next? Ask the police. Who do I look like, the guy from CSI?”

  I had downloaded iTouch Maps onto my phone, dropped a pin at the location of the pit, and pulled up the corresponding latitude and longitude. My mouth dropped as I handed my phone to Lauda, with the map showing markers for the points designated by Benzino’s tattoo and those for the deep hole in front of us. I’m hardly a navigation expert, but from the training I’d received as a marine it seemed like the two points were less than two hundred feet apart. “Here,” I said as I handed her the phone. “Show this to Brooks.”

  She looked at the two pins on the map and her mouth dropped as well. “Sure you don’t want to join Suffolk County PD?” she asked with a smile. “I could use a partner as savvy as you.”

  I grinned but said nothing, and she hurried off to impress her CO.

  ~~~

  Jack Glowmus glanced over his shoulder and shuddered at the appearance of the man standing behind him. “Who are you?” he asked.

  “Suffolk County Department of Public Works,” the stranger replied in a heavy Slavic accent. He was wearing jeans and a long-sleeve shirt. He had a baseball cap pulled down low, and the collar of his shirt stood up too high on his neck.

  “The town lets you dress like that? Where’s your uniform?”

  The stranger winked at him. “My tux is at the cleaners … you take a good look at what laborers wear out in the field,” he offered. “This is my uniform.”

  Glowmus couldn’t help but stare at the man’s skin, which was badly mottled with blisters scattered about. “What’s going on with your face, you’ve got the shingles or something?”

  “Just bad skin.” Wrga had been monitoring the police band to stay one step ahead of them. He’d heard the flurry of conversations pertaining to the discovery of human remains at the golf course, a subject that interested him greatly. “My supervisor called me after hours and told me to come down in case there was any problem identifying where water and waste lines were located. The police found a body, huh?”

  “The police didn’t find shit,” Glowmus informed him, looking for credit where none was due. “This is my property. A sinkhole developed and I told the homeowners’ association they had to dig it up and investigate what the hell was going on. This is my discovery.”

  “Still, it’s not every day you find a stiff in your backyard. You must’ve been shocked.”

  “Shocked?” Glowmus shrugged and puffed on his cigar. “Everyone knows that bodies are buried under the golf course.”

  “Get out of here. You’re kidding?”

  “No. It’s common knowledge,” he boasted most matter-of-factly. Glowmus saw others drawing closer and seemed happy to be the center of attention. “This place used to be a resort for high rollers. It was built with union money, but everyone knows the guy who ran it was in bed with the wrong element.” He pushed his nose to the side with his pointer finger. “Know what I mean?”

  “Really?” Wrga asked, his interest and eyebrows both peaked. “And who may I ask was that?”

  Book II:

  When Irish Eyes Are Lying

  Chapter 54

  Newcastle West, County Limerick, Ireland, 1955

  Bairre Donovan was not a simple country boy nor was his uncle Terence Donovan a small-town solicitor, though they routinely presented themselves as such.

  Terence meant one who aids or assists, and he had been named such for a particular reason, a reason he did not understand until he had become a man.

  Bairre meant fair-haired, as indeed, he was the Donovans’ fair-haired boy. He was blond and his eyes were the color of topaz. He was solidly built and had a smile so radiant it could melt a block of ice. Today, for the first time he would learn that he too had been named as he had been for a particular reason. Like his uncle, he had been given a name that would mask the blatant wantonness of his heritage and befuddle everyone he met.

  It was winter and the air behind the old foundry was thick with the smell of burning coal
and soot. Bairre and his friends played soccer in the empty field behind the foundry every day after school. He was a hearty lad and not put off by the cold. He played soccer in his shirtsleeves while the other boys kept warm in their jumpers. His face was red as he raced down the field to catch Derry McGreevy, who had stolen the ball for the third time and had broken well ahead of the other boys.

  McGreevy was the fastest boy on the field, but he stopped briefly just ahead of the goal to steady himself, get better control of the ball, and direct his kick. McGreevy’s right leg was back for the kick when Bairre flopped on his leg with all of his weight in order to prevent him from scoring the goal. It was a shitty thing to do, intentionally fouling his friend to prevent him from scoring a goal, but Bairre had a huge grin on his face all the same. The penalty would award the other team a penalty kick, but he had heard a snap and a grunt when he fouled McGreevy and knew that he’d be very slow getting up. You can bet he won’t be stealing the ball again today, Bairre mused. He stood immediately and hurried over to the boy he had injured. “Shite. I’m sorry, Derry, I’m such a clumsy oaf, I am. I didn’t—”

  Terence had him by the ear. “Stand up, you bastard,” he said in a ferocious tone and pulled Bairre to his feet.

  “Ah! Uncail Terry. What the hell?”

  “Shut up, you hoodlum. Stand up before I smack your face in front of all of your lads.”

  Bairre grabbed his ear after Terence let go. “Shite. What the hell are you doing here anyway, Uncail?”

  Terence jabbed Bairre’s chest with a stiff finger. “Shut up! Just shut up.” He walked over to McGreevy and helped him to his feet. “Are you all right, lad?”

  McGreevy winced when he tried to put pressure on his leg. “Ahhhh. I don’t think so. I think it’s broke.”

  “Shite!” Terrence rubbed his forehead and then signaled to some of the boys standing around. “Help him over to my car, will ya, boys? Derry, I’ll run you over to the doc so he can take a look at it.”