Sheila disconnected and started to scan the sheet. “I’m not seeing any numbers that I recognize, but that’s not a shock. They’re a smaller organization and I’ll need to run down each of these numbers to see if any of them could be related to this case.”
She pointed to one particular line on the paper. “This is most likely the call from the informant. The time matches, and there doesn’t seem to be much else on here that would fit.”
I picked up my phone and dialed the number before Sheila could stop me. I was in a mood to get things done. Though I still liked Sheila, my confidence in the police was at a low. I wanted to do things myself and hear things for myself. The phone rang repeatedly, but no answer.
Sheila gave me her sternest look. “Do not leave a message for a possible drug smuggler. That would be stupid even by your standards.”
The voicemail kicked in. “You have reached the voicemail of Mark Brate. Leave a message at the beep.”
Neither one of us did, because we were speechless.
Sheila had to take this one on her own. Since Brate was still in prison, there was no way that I would be included in an interview, even if she felt inclined to include me. I had my doubts that she would have done so. She has fairly strict rules on what she considers appropriate for those who are not police employees.
So I was stuck with waiting again. It was becoming a nightly occurrence with me. I would find a lead that led back to the police and watch as someone else followed up on it. I was becoming very glad that this was not my main business. It would have made me frustrated beyond belief.
I walked the dogs again, who were enjoying my irritation. I fed them and settled on the couch to watch some mindless reality show while I pondered my own reality which was much more confusing than these shows. Sheila had indicated that she would be looking for some information on crimes in the area around the time of Susan’s disappearance.
I had just started to get the hang of the show, which mainly appeared to be annoying everyone else on the program, when the doorbell rang. I went to answer it, hoping that Sheila had come back with answers. However, I stopped dead at the door. My mother, the woman who never left the house, was standing outside my door. I took it that Sergeant Siever had called her and told her about Sheila’s phone call with the retired officer. Whatever they were hiding had to be a major issue, because I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen my mother out of the house. Perhaps it had been when my brother had left town, but it had been years since she’d left of her own accord. Her only forays outside the house were to the doctor when she absolutely had to make an appointment.
I thought about letting her ring the bell and not answering, but the dogs had already gone crazy by the door. I would be faced with their pestering to answer it as well as the jangle of the bell. I unlocked the door and pulled it open.
“What brings you out on a night like tonight?” I asked cheerily as if she visited often. I was not going to be intimidated here.
“Can the crap,” she said. My mother’s tone had taken on a hard edge since I’d read the police report. Now most of her conversations with me were harsh and short. I suspected that this one would be the same. “What were you and that girl doing calling Sergeant Siever? What exactly are you planning to do?”
I gave her a long look. “Are we communicating now? Because I seem to be the last to know that Susan’s alive and living in Seattle. Did you forget to bring that up since you found her?”
“You didn’t need to know about this. You don’t need to know about this. Drop it.”
I looked her in the eye. I wasn’t backing down. “I’m an adult. You’ve led me to believe that my sister was taken in the night by bad people for over a decade and now I find that she left of her own accord and lives in Seattle. It would be one thing if you hadn’t misled me, but you’ve lied to me for years about this. You’ve encouraged me to live a life defined by the fact that people will steal you in the night if you’re not careful. You took me to martial arts classes. You showed me how to keep a low profile. You’ve locked yourself in your house for years. All of this based on a premise that’s a lie – and you knew it.”
She looked surprised by my words. I don’t think that I’d raised my voice to her in all the time since Susan had left. I’d never wanted her to think that I’d leave too. Now I had to wonder, given that both siblings had left the state and moved thousands of miles away.
“I’m telling you to drop it, Griff. As your mother, I’m demanding that you drop it.” Her gaze didn’t flinch or shift away as she spoke to me.
“I will – provided you tell me the entire truth. Everything that happened. No lies and no half-truths. Then I’ll let it go.”
“No,” was her simple response. No explanation, no words to make me understand why she’d done this.
“That’s my answer, too,” I replied. “I think you’d better go now. I don’t have anything else to say to you.”
She marched to the door. She turned as she opened the knob. “You need to back off. You’ll be sorry if you don’t.”
I felt my heart beat in my chest and my face flush. “No sorrier than I am now,” I said as I closed the door after her.
I locked the door and slumped down against the jamb. I wasn’t used to this kind of emotion. All of our emotions in our family had been bottled up after Susan’s disappearance. We walked around on eggshells with each other, afraid to address the issues that faced the family. I think that’s one reason why we all made our own uneasy peace with the disappearance. We all went our own ways in coping with it.
I needed something to occupy my mind. Sheila had said something about crimes that had happened around the time of Susan’s disappearance. I went to the computer and logged on to the Toledo Blades website. They had a fairly extensive archives section to the site, and I began to work backwards through the news stories. I started with the day of the disappearance, even though I knew that the date was too late for Susan’s plans.
It still startled me to see our family’s photo on the front page. I looked at the faces and read the article, noticing that they managed to mess up two facts about the disappearance by the third paragraph. I wasn’t impressed.
I worked my way back through the days, noticing what was playing at the movies, what was going on with the Mud Hens and other local events. I’d gone back nearly two weeks – to about the time of the first phone calls to the bus station when something caught my eye. There was a mention of the Frias murder case.
I’d nearly forgotten about that case, and I certainly had not placed it at the same time as Susan’s disappearance. It had captured Toledo’s imagination for a while. Belinda Frias was a local housekeeper who had been killed while cleaning the home of a local couple. Her blood had been used to write obscenities across the walls and floor. Their home was only a few miles from our house. Had this been the case that had caused Susan to run, assuming that Sheila was correct?
I wondered. It fit the timeframe and it was certainly spectacular enough, but I couldn’t see how Susan could have been at the house or near the house at the time of the killing. We didn’t have any transportation except for our parents, which would have meant that they had witnessed the crime as well. They certainly wouldn’t have kept this a secret for years. I couldn’t imagine my father not reporting a crime. He’d always believed in the power of the law. Unlike my mother, he would have been happy to see me date a police officer.
I printed off a couple of articles on the case and then started looking for updates on the case. I couldn’t remember there being any resolution to the matter, but of course, in a few weeks, I would be dealing with the matter of my sister and my mind would not be on current events.
From what I could tell, the case was never closed. No suspects were identified and no arrests were made. I’d have to ask Sheila about the case, but I knew I needed to wait until this mess with the Port Clinton K9 unit was cleared up.
It was nearly midnight when I got a phone call. My ID
showed that Sheila was calling. I figured it would be a long night. I answered the call. “Hey, how goes it?”
“I’m outside. I didn’t want to scare you so I called first.”
I answered the door, and she entered without waiting for an invitation. I still wasn’t sure of how I felt about this. I wondered if this was supposed to be a step forward in our relationship or not. “So what happened when you talked to Brate today?” I asked as she sat down.
“Long story,” she replied. I expected that to be the end of it, but she continued after a breath. “He told me that he knew that the dog was a fake. He suspected it from the moment he laid eyes on the dog.”
“Then why did he involve me in this matter?” I hoped it wasn’t like a previous case where a person had hired me, expecting me to be a clear fraud. I’d disappointed that man, but at the same time, I’d felt hurt by the thought that I was less than scrupulous about my work.
“He wanted someone else to spot the difference and call attention to it. He called McNabb, so that if the operation they were on did include drugs that the perps would be caught. He seems to have wanted someone else to handle the heavy lifting for him. I don’t see him for the crime, but he’s definitely got some explaining to do about the matter of the dog.”
“Not even with the body in the trunk?” I asked.
“No, he didn’t kidnap the dog. He went out of his way to make sure that potential crime scenes were covered by other dogs, and when he got the dog back, he identified the dog’s bark and investigated. He could have just as easily taken the dog inside so that you wouldn’t notice that the dog was barking at the car. If he’s responsible for the crimes, he’s one of the most incompetent criminals around.” She looked beat, and she slumped back against the cushions.
“So we’re back at square one?” I said, wondering what could be done now. The dogs had been swapped back, and the man most likely to be able to tell us about the switch was dead, shot in front of me.
“Not exactly. We know that something had to be going down. We have a dead man that no one has come forward to identify, and we have a dog that’s been switched and switched back. Why?”
I shrugged. “It’s too much for my tired brain. Maybe the dead guy knew about that something about to go down. Maybe that’s why he had to be killed. He could have told the police what happened. Couldn’t he have cut a deal based on that?”
Sheila scrunched up her face. “That’s possible. I’m tired too though, so it can wait until the morning. Anything new here? Anymore witnesses come and visit you while I was out?”
I raised an eyebrow. “My mother stopped by.”
She laughed out loud. “That’s a good one.” She paused, seeing that I was not laughing with her. “You’re serious?”
“Yeah, I am. She wanted me not to go any further with this. She wants me to drop it and just accept that she’s lied all this time for a good reason.” I felt my face flush as the anger from earlier started to boil up in me again. I didn’t enjoy being told what to do by someone who had lied to me.
“So of course you’re marching full steam ahead on this. I know you, and she pushed all of your buttons tonight, didn’t she?”
It didn’t take a pet communicator to figure out that I was mad. I only lacked steam rising out of my ears to complete the picture. “I thought about what you said earlier about witnessing a crime or something. I googled the Blade and the Frias case happened just a few weeks before she left.”
Sheila said quietly, “I know.”
“What? When did you have time to look up the case?” I asked, surprised to think that she had any time to look into my sister’s case.
“I didn’t have to,” she replied. “Every investigator in TPD knows the dates associated with that case. It’s something of a legend in the station. As soon as you first told me the date of your sister’s disappearance, I cemented it with the Frias case. So yeah, I knew they were close in time.”
“What do you think? Could they be related?”
“Griff, I’m not one to tell you what to do – well, maybe except for the hair and the yard, but the only way you’re going to know is to ask. The only person who hasn’t lied to you is your sister. She’d be the one you need to ask these questions. That’s assuming you want to take this any further. When you took the Port Clinton case, you were up in the air about even calling her. Now you’re on a crusade to learn the truth.”
I agreed with her. If I wanted to know the truth, I’d have to call Susan. I knew what that would involve. It would mean that I had validated the shift in the way I looked at the world. I would have to view my entire life and my entire history differently than I had before. The thought terrified me. What would it mean to what I did for a living, how I felt about Sheila, how I felt about the world? I wondered how much it would change me and if it would make me jaded to have been duped by everyone I loved? Would I be able to trust again?
On the other hand, I would have my sister back and be able to find out the truth of what had happened all those years ago. I would stop battling through everyone else and be able to get to the source to talk things through.
Sheila yawned. I checked the clock and it was nearly 3am. I was shocked at the time. The dogs would want to be let out at 6am, which meant I only would get a bit of sleep before the grind started again. “Want to spend the night?” I asked.
Sheila’s eyes grew wide, and she looked like she might spit out her tongue. “What?”
My face grew red, and I could feel my ears burn. “I just meant, you have to get up soon. You could stay over – clothes on and everything. But there’s no reason to drive all the way home to get some sleep.”
She grinned. “That’s more like you. I was shocked for a second, because I thought we’d agreed to take this slow. You’ve still got the training wheels on.”
I nodded, not sure of how I would deal with a mature sexual relationship while I was still in a fight with my mommy. I needed to resolve some issues before I could tackle a family of my own.
We went upstairs and crashed on top of the bed, each of us too tired to undress. The dogs, shocked to see another body in the bed, climbed in between us and promptly fell asleep.
Chapter 7
When I awoke the next morning, Sheila was gone. There was a note telling me that she’d made coffee and taken the dogs on a short walk. I glanced up to see it was nearly 9am. Though I was not an expert in relationships, I had always thought that the other person leaving without waking you in the morning was a bad sign. However, Sheila had made coffee which for me, was nearly a proclamation of love.
She was back before I got through my second cup. She was carrying an album of photos, and for a moment, I wondered if we were sharing pasts now. She knew all about mine – thanks to the daily newspapers and police files, but I knew next to nothing about hers.
I settled in to look at photos of her past. Yet when she opened the book, it contained photos of men with police records. I looked to her for an explanation.
“Last night, something you said sparked an idea with me. I wanted to know how both departments knew about the drug smuggling on the day when Barkley couldn’t smell. We knew that Brate had called McNabb and told him. But who told Brate? And almost as importantly, could the man who told Brate be the guy in the back of the Corolla?”
“Wouldn’t he have recognized him and mentioned it? Don’t you meet with CIs on a regular basis and know them?”
“For the most part, but this didn’t have to be a regular CI. This could have just been a tip from someone.”
I took a long sip of coffee and tried to collect my thoughts. “So how do we figure this out? Brate isn’t talking and I don’t know who else would know who the man is?”
Sheila patted the photo album. “That’s why I brought these. First there are a groups of photos of some of the known CIs for Port Clinton. Then I gathered up as many photos as I could of people associated with the drug dealers busted by McNabb when there was a fake Barkley. I’m
not going to get an answer out of Brate, and the Ottawa County coroner is backed up. It could be days before he gets to this case. So I thought we’d get a lead on things if you could identify someone from the book. You did get a good look at the corpse.”
I nodded. I remembered it like it had been burned on my retinas. The pale white skin and the bugs that had crawled out of his mouth. They were all reminders to me of what I’d seen. I’ve only ever seen a few bodies in my lifetime, mostly at funerals, though in the past few months, I’d seen more than my share of dead bodies during my business. It was not a positive for my line of work.
Sheila rested the book on the coffee table and flipped it open. The first pages were easy to eliminate. The men were of different races or ages. I was able to quickly skip the young, the old, and anyone who was not white. I’d made it through about 25 pages before I stopped. The man’s eyes stared at me, almost telegraphing to me that he was the one.
I read the bio on him. He was 40 and worked nominally as a bookkeeper for a company that was suspected of being a front for drug operations. That would explain the pasty complexion and the seeming uniqueness of his appearance in this book of photos. He’d never been arrested, but he’d been watched for years. The lack of arrests could explain why his fingerprints hadn’t been of any help to the police in identifying him.
Sheila picked up on my reticence to turn the page. She spent her time taking a few notes on the man while I looked at him. She wrote down his name, which was Harold Berkemeyer, and his address which was in Ottawa Hills. I wondered if Harold had been friends with the Weinburgs who had rented the house to Troxel. It certainly was a small world, after all.
“This him?” she asked.
I nodded. “I’m pretty sure.”
“Let’s go then.” She stood up and brought her coffee mug with her.
“What’s going on?” I was surprised that she had extended an invitation to me. Either she was offering to buy me breakfast or she was about to break protocol here.
Nothing To Sniff At (Animal Instincts Book 5) Page 8