“Will that be necessary?” I asked. If they found the house, I wasn’t sure how I’d play into this at all.
“If the house turns out to be the crime scene, they’re going to find out you were there, and then, yeah, there will be questions about it. You’ll be called in to explain how you knew about this place. Given that you talked to the breeder, it’s only a matter of time before they’ll put it all together.”
I nodded. Secrets weren’t ever really private if more than one person knew about it. The number who knew about Barkley’s disappearance now stood at five plus whoever had taken him in the first place. Those odds were too great to feel that this could be kept secret.
We hung up, agreeing to talk again soon. I wasn’t sure that his fears were warranted, but I did want to understand what he wanted me to do in this situation, especially if the circumstances were as dour as Sheila led me to believe.
I’d no sooner hung up than the phone rang again. This time I checked the caller id. It was the bus station. I thought about just letting the call go to the answering machine, but I took a deep breath and answered.
“Is this Mr. Fitzpatrick?” a female voice asked.
“Yes, speaking.” My voice didn’t sound like me. The words were tremulous, and I was about an octave higher than normal. What if they had information on Susan?
“We have the information that you requested about the bus tickets for Susan Fitzpatrick.” She listed the dates and times of Susan’s purchase and the trip she’d arranged. The tickets had been purchased three days before her disappearance and the bus left the evening of her disappearance. She’d had no intention of going to the movies. The woman even confirmed that Susan had been on the bus when it left for Seattle.
I remembered to thank her. I hung up the phone, not knowing what to do. Susan had been alive. She had left Toledo and gone about as far as she could from Ohio, ending up in Seattle of all places. I wasn’t sure how to take the news. If I had so little trouble finding this information, then why hadn’t the police found it? They had manpower and resources that were exponentially larger than me, and yet I had found my sister’s destination in a matter of a few hours of applied time. How could this be? Sergeant Siever looked like an incompetent if he’d been on this case for more than a decade. I’d solved this in a matter of hours.
In my surprise and anger, I had no idea if she’d traveled alone or with someone. She’d been supposedly dating a boy from her school at the time of her disappearance, but now I had to wonder if that was true. So many other things had been lies. I knew that I wouldn’t get any more information out of the bus company, even if I had an idea of where the other person would have sat in relationship to her. I’d have to see a full seating chart for the bus to see if I recognized any names.
I thought of my dad who had drunk himself into a stupor after her disappearance. What would have happened if he’d known Susan was just living in another state? Would he still have drank that much or would he have merely gone to see her on holidays?
The fog around my brain lifted in the heat of anger that I suddenly felt. Damn her. Damn her and what she’d done to my family. In her own desire to escape, she’d left four other people trapped in the bonds of their own making. She’d left every member of the family with a burden that had taken a special toll on each of us. My mother might have continued her life without feeling trapped in her own house. I wondered again if my mother knew more about this than she let on. Had she talked to Sergeant Siever because they both knew more than they pretended?
I had to wonder what I would have been if I had not been trying to duck away from any sign or notion that I was not supposed to be visible to the public. I wondered how my future might have been. Would I have been married, had kids, been something more than a guy who pretended to talk to animals. I wasn’t sure, but I suspected that the answer to all of those questions was yes.
I wanted to look her up in the phonebook and call her immediately, but I suppressed the emotion to do so. Hers had been a well-thought out disappearance, and my response needed just as much thinking to it. I wouldn’t get anywhere if I merely called and made accusations, if I could even find a number for her.
To answer the last problem, I googled her. While there were hundreds of stories on Susan, along with more recent pieces that speculated on her fate that seemed to come around at the same time every year, I found nothing that indicated where she was. Even when I narrowed the search down to Seattle, I found nothing. Of course, she could have arranged for another bus trip once she got there, and I’d have no idea where to find her.
I wasn’t sure if she’d had a social security number, but I knew one place that I could find out. Sheila had given me a copy of the police report on the disappearance some months ago, a decision that my mother had strongly protested. All of her personal information would be in that file.
I had put the manila folder away so that I wouldn’t be reminded of her disappearance on a regular basis. Out of sight, out of mind, or so I wanted to believe. I still thought of her most every day, so it was mostly a vain hope. It hadn’t been entirely effective, but now I grabbed at it and ran my finger across the pages. She had indeed received a social security number.
I went back to the computer, typed it in, and was quickly rewarded with a series of websites that appeared to offer information on this particular social security number. I wondered how legit these sites were; I thought that this was probably one step shy of identity theft. I didn’t care. I was so close to the truth that I could taste it.
I picked the one that was the least shady looking, at least to my untrained eye and gave them my credit card information. In less than thirty seconds, I had a name and address for the person with this social security number. I knew that these numbers were reused by the Social Security Administration after a certain amount of time went by, but since Susan didn’t have an estate, so to speak, my mother had never gone through the process of declaring her dead. She had said that she believed that Susan was still alive somewhere, and she didn’t want society to think of her as dead.
However, I didn’t think that this would be the case here. The search brought up a late 20-something woman named Susan.
After seeing that information in print, I took the dogs for another long walk. I had printed the pages in triplicate. One for me, one for the police, and one for my mother. At some point, I would deliver the information to the police, if nothing else to close the files on the case. Susan was now an adult, who had apparently left of her own volition. There was no crime that I could see except perhaps whatever statute had been violated by running away. There was no longer any reason to keep this police case open.
What baffled me was that once I’d decided to look into the matter, I’d come up with a solution in a matter of hours. I had a hard time believing that Sergeant Siever could not have done the same. Certainly, the police had the same websites available to them. Even now, he could have easily spent the $20 to find out what had happened to that social security number. I doubted that I was that much superior to him in my investigative skills.
My mother had thrown a huge fit when she’d learned that I had a copy of the police report. Now I understood why. The report had shown me that Susan had left her possessions here and gave me the information I needed to track her down. My mother had to know what was in the report, given her reaction. I was baffled on what she’d hoped to accomplish by hiding this from the family. Secrets had a way of coming to the surface at some point.
All of these thoughts of identities made me wonder about the man in the trunk of the car. None of the new sources had identified him. I knew that most media waited until the family had been notified so that the people closest to the victim wouldn’t hear it on the news, but enough time had gone by now that his family should be aware of what had happened. Apparently no one had come forward to identify him. The next phase would be to wait for DNA results and see if he matched anyone’s DNA. It was getting to be a long shot.
I hadn’t checked the pockets of the dead man, but I was going on the assumption that he hadn’t had any identification on him. So not only had the killer wanted time to hide the crime, he or she had also wanted time before the victim’s identity could be discovered.
Living this close to Lake Erie, the police always had to take into account that the victim might be from Canada, which was just on the other side of Erie. I wondered if he could have been Canadian, but without a close examination of the clothes and the body, I wouldn’t be able to tell much at all. Given that I’d nearly been sick the first time, I doubted that I would willingly go for another view.
I opted to call Sheila instead. She usually had the word from other precincts and areas. I let the dogs off their leashes as I opened the front door. I picked up my phone and dialed her number.
“You must be feeling relieved,” she said by way of a greeting.
“How so? You mean because I couldn’t have been involved?” My mind was still whirling from the discoveries regarding Susan. I wasn’t really up for talking about that yet and had hoped to keep the conversation short.
“They arrested Brate this morning for the murder,” she said. “It’s been on the news all morning. I thought you would have heard. They’ve accused him of switching dogs so that he could get a cut of the drug money and then killing this guy when he threatened to expose Brate. Turn on your TV.”
“That’s partly while I was calling. I wanted to know who the dead man was. Have you heard?”
She sighed. “Please don’t go getting involved in this. You don’t need any more trouble in your life. Let it go. The Port Clinton police are satisfied. You should be too. You’re clear.”
This was another one of those situations where I wouldn’t be listening to her. I doubted that Brate had told them the whole story. He’d been worried about the station finding out that he’d lost Barkley. I knew that they could pick up on the tells that he wasn’t being honest. From there it was a short path to uncovering more information about him that would make him appear guilty.
“You’re not going to listen to me on this, are you?” she asked quietly.
“I have a story to tell the Port Clinton police. After that, I think I’ll be done with that case. Since I’m in the clear that should be okay, right?”
She sighed. “Please be careful. You have no idea of the politics you’re dealing with here. You don’t want to take the rap for something you didn’t do, and despite your many flaws, you’re not a killer.”
“Was that a compliment?” I asked, hoping to deflect the conversation from any discussion of my sister. Sheila usually asked what I’d done about that, and most days the answer was nothing. I was hoping that she’d let it drop for the moment.
“Don’t get a big head, please.” She laughed, and we said a quick goodbye.
I turned on the news to see what was happening. The early papers had not mentioned anything about Brate’s arrest, so it had to be a recent development. I sat down in front of the TV to see what had happened.
Sure enough, it was the lead story of the noon news. Brate had been arrested that morning for the death of the unknown man. The body still had not been identified, but it didn’t seem to make a difference to the police. They had assigned him a role in the case, if not a name. However, from the gist of the story, Brate’s fingerprints had been found inside the trunk of the Corolla, which made him the prime suspect.
The story had a video of Brate trying to cover his face while leaving the courthouse. Nothing was said about motives for the crime or the disappearance of their K-9 unit, but perhaps the news hadn’t thought those details worthy of publication. I knew that motive wasn’t a required element for a crime, but district attorneys were always happy to have one to bolster the case.
So I had two things to work on, the identity of the person in the trunk and the motive. Honestly, as I sat there, I wasn’t sure how far I could get with either of those aspects. I’d seen the face of the dead man, but between the stench and the decomposition, I wasn’t sure that I could describe him in enough detail to get a match. I highly suspected that the motive would stem from the identity of the dead man. They were interrelated and I had no idea of how to identify a dead body without a degree in forensics.
Instead, I opted to go with the one area that I knew best – the dog. Someone had bought a dog for the express purpose of swapping dogs with Barkley. I could continue to follow those clues, which technically were not associated with an active police case.
Feeling more confident, I headed back to the breeder’s house to ask some questions.
The old man was at the door this time when I got out of my car. “Well?” Johnson asked, expecting a full story from that one word.
I explained that I’d found Barkley at the second house on the list, and he’d been returned to the police. I also told him that the house had been cleared out and that there were no signs of either the buyer or the dog now. I wanted to learn why he’d switched dogs so that I could make sure that Barkley stayed safe.
He made a noise and motioned for me to follow him. I walked down the hall of the main level of the house. I still had yet to see or hear a Beagle, despite his status as a breeder. We entered the same room we entered during my last visit. He pulled up the keyboard and started typing.
In a few seconds, he’d pulled up a record. I was looking at a lot of data and a copy of an Ohio’s driver’s license. I had been so sure that the buyer would have used a fake name that I’d geared myself up for a massive hunt for his real name and location. Yet here it was.
“I always keep records on my buyers, especially those I haven’t done business with before. Most of the time they’re hunters, but the requirement of making them give me a valid driver’s license keeps them from using the dogs for fighting. Beagles aren’t good fighters, but anything can fight if they’re hungry and mistreated. Ain’t happening to one of mine.”
He hit the print button and pages whirred out of the machine. I picked them up and began to read. Jackson Troxel had purchased the dog six months ago. He’d paid in cash, but this was his first purchase so Mr. Johnson had required a driver’s license.
“Why did you have a dog of that age here? I thought you sold most of them as puppies,” I asked, realizing that this dog had to have been about three years old when he was sold.
“He was sold as a pup, but he got sent back. The poor little guy was gun-shy. That’s not a lot of help to men who buy a Beagle for hunting. The pup ran and hid every time a gun went off. So I gave him a refund, and he bought another one of my Beagles instead.”
“You’d never met Troxel before?”
“Nope, never heard from him before or since. I asked where he heard of me, but he just mentioned he’d heard my name from some hunter friends. All the more reason for me to get an ID.” He stood up and waited for me to take the hint. I had enough information to start with, and I thanked him on the way out.
Since Troxel had left the house so abruptly, I figured that he’d been renting and was not the owner of the home. That meant it was time for me to visit the neighbors of the house in Onyx. I had found over the course of several cases that nothing was more helpful to an investigation than asking the neighbors.
I drove back to Onyx and parked on the street. Two doors down from the Troxel house a curtain moved aside and then fell back into place. I had my starting point. I looked around the Troxel house and then checked the mailbox which was empty. If things looked too bleak for Officer Brate, I could always suggest a forwarding address check for Troxel.
After looking around, I made a pretense of walking up and down the street. I stopped at the house two doors down and knocked on the door. An older woman answered the door almost immediately. She was dressed properly in a dress and hat, like she was going somewhere fancy. I wondered what places in Toledo still wanted a woman to wear a hat. I doubted that many of them did. Hats were mostly for Easter and summer days at the beach.
“Hi, I’m looking for some �
��“ I started.
I didn’t get to finish. “You’re looking for the Troxels. They moved two days ago. In a hurry.”
I could see that this woman was going to be a wealth of information. “How did you know?” I asked, hoping to stroke her ego.
“I saw you down at their place yesterday and today. I knew you had to be looking for them. They probably owe you money. It would certainly be in line with them.” She smiled as she said the last sentence, a little bit of malice showing in the glint on her teeth. She was enjoying this way too much.
“You’re amazing. They do owe me money.” I decided to play along with her. Her story was much better than the one I’d concocted.
“Just like them. I gave that man a dollar one day to buy an ice cream from the truck, and he never did pay me back. I couldn’t believe it.” The notion that a dollar was worth remembering fit the same era as the hat.
“You don’t know where they’ve gone, do you?” I tried to look desperate for cash, which wasn’t a stretch. I had no intention of telling her the real reasons I wanted to talk to this family. I wouldn’t trust her to keep a secret, which was currently working in my favor.
“No, they packed up two trucks two nights ago and left. Didn’t tell a soul they were going.”
I frowned, pretending to be upset about the money. “Do you know who the landlord is? I wonder if they left a forwarding address.”
She had a pad of paper by the door, and she scribbled something down. She tore it off and handed the paper to me. “This is the address and phone number of the landlord. Tell them that Delores gave you the number.”
I nodded and thanked her. The November wind was blowing, and I shivered as I got in the car. Now that I had a buzz-cut, I could feel the cold weather against my scalp, which I wasn’t used to.
I looked at the paper, which had the name Steven Weinberg who lived in Ottawa Hills. I sighed and started the trip there. I had expected a rash of cold calls like this to find Barkley, but now it was apparent that I’d be doing the heavy lifting for finding the fake dog instead. It just went to show that I didn’t know everything about investigation. Not by a long shot.
Nothing To Sniff At (Animal Instincts Book 5) Page 5