“You don’t say,” Justin Harold snorted. “Too bad it’s just symbolic.” The meeting devolved into a raucous discussion of the presidential campaign where the issue of hard money was once again a hot topic.
“Business at hand,” I ordered. “Business at hand.”
Harold Sider was laughing openly but Dr. Ferguson refused to join in.
“Sam, about those marks. Were you going to tell us something relating to the investigation?”
“Yes, the marks are how the killer managed to get to Reaching Woman. See those little scraped places. He didn’t use a boom lift or a ladder, he climbed up there. It wouldn’t have been easy, but it tells us something. Whoever did this had to be young and agile enough to get this done and know something about climbing. I’ll ask one of the state boys to check for rope marks and I’ll bet there will be fibers left that might even tell us what kind of rope he used and if there was rappel equipment involved. Kind of think there was.”
“Good job, Sam.”
We went around the table but there wasn’t anything else to report. There were a lot of questions for David. He came to life when he discussed technology.
Then Keith noted that there might be a weather change and some of the men had chores to do and if Dr. Ferguson was going back to Eastern Kansas he had better get started.
“I am,” Ferguson replied. “Well, this certainly has been worth my time. I thought this would be a total waste.”
Talk about attitude adjustment.
He sounded friendly enough. Remarkably so, actually, for someone who had been slapped down hard. It was okay with me if he was just faking it. I’m a great believer in civility in any form. False, sincere, insincere, whatever. Just so we could come together long enough to get some work done.
***
We invited Sam to follow us home and stay for supper.
“Can’t promise you much. Just chili and cheese and crackers. And some popcorn afterwards.”
Having no family of his own, Sam loved the warmth of our household and was one of Keith’s closest friends. His wife had died of cancer and he had lost his only child in Vietnam. Too stern to cry, the old man usually gruffed out a polite refusal of our hospitality. Then we coaxed. It was our ritual and we all understood what it meant. That he didn’t want us acknowledging his loneliness, didn’t want to impose on our good will. That we were not to mention the fact that he would be going home to an empty house. That he was one sad son of a bitch.
Sam turned to Dorothy. “I expect they are inviting you too, Ms. Mercer.”
“Of course,” Keith and I said at once, stumbling over each other’s words. “We’ll have a party to celebrate the successful opening of the uber law enforcement center of the High Plains.”
And we did. Or at least we tried. Keith opened some of his infamous home brews, and Josie and Dorothy and I dug around through our bottles of wine. None of it was stellar, but it would do and I made a mental note to hit the liquor store the next time I shopped.
For the first time since this nightmare of an investigation had started, there was music in our house. Keith was an excellent musician and Josie was outstanding. All of Keith’s daughters were musical except for Bettina who was usually too busy chasing her little boys around to improve.
Dorothy’s eyes sparkled. “I had no idea,” she murmured after Josie began to play “Turkey in the Straw” and Keith joined in with the guitar.
“There’s someone missing.” Sam contentedly waved with his pipe. “Old Man Snyder. But you might never meet him. We can’t tell when he’s going to show up.”
Josie laughed. “He lays me in the shade. Honestly. You would have to hear him to understand.”
But the playing was off. It was very subtle. Josie’s fingering lagged no longer than the flutter of a butterfly’s wing, but it was there. Keith’s notes weren’t as clearly separated as usual. Like his fingers had gotten thicker overnight.
Not all the popcorn kernels had popped. And Tosca didn’t want to sit on anyone’s lap. Instead she laid in her special bed resting her head on her paws like she had gotten hold of a bad bone planted by some evil adult and she planned to punish us all until the culprit confessed.
We were bone tired and discouraged even though the meeting had ended on a positive note.
The phone rang. “I’ll get it,” Josie said, putting down her fiddle.
She came back two minutes later, her face beyond white. We stared at her. Trembling she grasped the door jamb of the music room.
“Merilee Suter is missing.”
Chapter Sixteen
Keith and Sam and I left for the Suters’ immediately. When we pulled into the yard Patricia was waiting as she held open the screen door. Her frail form was thrown into shadows by the looming yard light. Obviously hoping we were bringing Merilee home, she watched the three of us come up the walk. Hope died when she could make out our faces.
“Any word?” Keith asked.
“None. I was hoping you knew something.”
“We’re here to get some information before we start looking. Given the circumstances we don’t have to wait before we put our full resources behind this.”
Patricia crossed her arms over her chest as though she could ward off evil. “My God,” she whispered.
She waved us through the kitchen and into the living room, talking as she went. “Merilee wasn’t here when I got home from work. I thought she was with one of you. Or Ms. Mercer. She thinks the world of her. Do you think the person who pulled that malicious trick with the thing under her pillow is behind this?” Her voice shook and her tongue seemed to have swollen to the point where it garbled her words. Vexed, she swallowed hard and pushed her fist against her mouth.
Ernie sat on the sofa, his hands clamped between his legs. “I just hope to God it is that person and not the one who killed my son.” He did not get up but scanned our faces to see if we were withholding information.
“It may be that she is at a friend’s and lost track of time,” I said lamely.
Ernie scoffed. “She calls. Always now, because she knows we worry ourselves sick over stuff that didn’t bother us before.”
No one had to tell me what he meant by “before.”
“When did you find out she was gone, Ernie?” Keith’s voice was cold and steady. Putting all his feelings in a box so he could focus.
“I was in the field but had my cell phone with me. Patricia called after she got off work. Thought maybe I’d given Merilee permission to go somewhere. But I had no idea where she was. I came right in from the field and we started calling around. Her pickup is here. That’s what gets me. She had been to all her classes and then drove home from school. Patricia and I drove back to town because there’s a girls’ volleyball game tonight. I thought maybe one of her friends picked her up and took her to the game. She likes to watch it sometimes.”
“So you and Patricia have already looked into the first things that came to mind?”
“Yes.” He stared at his shoes. Ashamed at his ineptness. Like a decent father could have prevented having his kid just disappear. A decent father wouldn’t have racked up two tragedies.
Sam gazed at the wreck of a man, then looked away. Ernie Suter was ruined. Sam suppressed his fury and turned to me. “Lottie, I want you and me to look over Merilee’s room. Ernie, do we have your and Patricia’s permission to search the house?”
They both nodded. I followed Sam’s thinking and was sickened. He was worried about foul play.
“Keith, I know you are familiar with any questions that need to be asked. Please proceed with that while Lottie and I go upstairs. Pat, Ernie, stay here and talk to Keith. Every detail will help.”
“I want every square inch searched,” Sam said as we headed to the second floor. “No stone left unturned.”
“Okay.” The Jon Benet Ramsey case jumped into the mind
of every law officer west of the Mississippi. The missing six-year-old beauty lay murdered in the basement of her home, which the police had neglected to search. She was found there by her own father eight hours after she had been declared missing.
“And that includes the barns, the machine shed and the workshop and garages and seed and grain bins.” Sam’s voice was tight with rage. “Everything. Inside and out and under. Check beneath tractors and combines and mowers and rakes and wagons.” His face drooped. “Don’t know if this is local or regional business, Lottie. Just know we don’t have time to sort this out.”
“Agreed. But we don’t have the manpower for this kind of search, Sam.”
“The hell we don’t. Call David and ask him to get ahold of every member of the team and get them here right now. Then call Winthrop and ask him to send extra men.”
“I want Dorothy to go over Merilee’s room too. She sees things other people miss.”
“And Dr. Ferguson? Can that smart-ass add anything special?”
I glanced at my watch. “We can call him but he will be nearly to Topeka by now. By the time he turns around and comes back we’ll be finished here.”
“Have Dave call him anyway. I don’t want him saying that we left him out.”
***
We all went back to the Regional Room later after a twelve-hour search of the Suters’ farm and the entire one hundred-sixty acres of homestead land the house set on. We added what we could to the whiteboard. Five bleak lines of everything known about Merilee’s disappearance. All of that had been contributed by the Suters.
“Dorothy went through Merilee’s room, but she will go back and look again when it’s broad daylight. Josie will take a look too.” I looked around at the men. We were a dismal lot.
“Did you get ahold of Ferguson?” I asked David.
“Yes, but like you said, there was no point in his turning around.”
“He called me,” Josie said.
Surprised, I waited for her to report. We had come to the sheriff’s office in separate cars so she didn’t have time to tell me this until now.
“He told me how sorry he was over the latest development. He wanted to know if I had any ideas because I had more experience than he had in clinical psychology. His specialty was counseling persons with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and helping track down serial killers.”
I wanted to ask her if he had belittled the team again, but we were down enough without bringing up controversies.
“He said he would call you later. He suggested that everyone get as good a night’s sleep as they could manage because he thought it would take a while to get to the bottom of everything.”
I nodded and managed a weak smile. “I appreciate that. Anyone else have anything to add?”
There was dead silence.
“Okay. Time to pack it in. Everyone is dead on their feet, including me. Go home. Get some sleep. David will page all of you when we need to meet again as a group. If you have a good idea, call me.” I glanced at my watch. It was already morning. “I’ll be back here at about one o’clock tomorrow afternoon.”
Justin Harold volunteered to stay at the Suters. I persuaded Dorothy to come home with us. It didn’t take much. Sobered by the effect of participating in a real life crime instead of making stuff up, she seemed to be more comfortable staying on the farm. Whether she was in town or in the country, her walking stick was always within reach.
We dragged ourselves upstairs and I put on warm pajamas and crawled under the covers. Keith reached for me and we clung to each other. His anger seeped into the air and if he had any words, he choked them back. I shivered and reached for another layer of quilts.
The phone rang. I sprang out of bed and answered it with a sense of dread.
It was Sam. “I didn’t want to get into this at the meeting, Lottie, but I’m ready to throw in the cards.”
My heart started beating like a kettle drum, not sure of what I was hearing. “What do you mean?”
“I mean we may have wanted to solve these murders through regional resources, but it’s not working. Ferguson is right. It’s time to admit it. Especially with the disappearance of Merilee Suter. We’re over our heads. It’s time to turn this over to the KBI.”
“Oh, Sam.”
“Nothing against you or any of the rest of us. We’ve given this our all but we keep getting in deeper and deeper. A dead baby, a son that any parent would be proud of murdered in cold blood, now a teenage girl missing.”
My heart sank. What if he was right and we had no business trying to solve a major crime? What if a regional center really wouldn’t work? Arguments marshalled in my head but I was too tired to give them voice.
“We have no business taking on one major crime case, let alone three.”
I swayed with fatigue. No shit. Welcome to the club. At that moment I believed we couldn’t do it either. We were a bumbling collection of amateurs. He’d nailed it.
“Wait a day or so before you call Dimon, please. I want to sleep on it.”
“It’s my call as sheriff, Lottie. This is county business.”
Was it? I hung up the phone and crept under the covers and huddled against Keith.
***
I dragged myself into the kitchen the next morning, then noticed someone had already made coffee. I poured a cup and smiled at the first taste then headed for the bay window to watch the sunrise. Dorothy was already poring over the commonplace book. She started to rise.
“No, don’t get up,” I protested. I saluted her with my coffee cup. “You’re a quick learner. I can’t stand most people’s idea of coffee. I would just as soon drink weak tea.”
She gave me a wry smile. “I noticed.”
There were footsteps on the stairs and Keith and Harold came down together. I sighed and went back to the kitchen to prepare scrambled eggs and pancakes. Josie emerged about an hour later and we were all too subdued to discuss Merilee’s disappearance.
There was a faint cry from Dorothy and we all froze. She came to the doorway. “Lottie, Josie, come in here. I want to read you something.” She looked around at our anxious faces. “Sorry to startle everyone. This has nothing to do with the here and now. It’s sad, that’s all. Poor Franklin Slocum.”
“I’ll take over in the kitchen.” Keith sounded annoyed. “You two go listen to your soap opera.”
Josie’s face said she was dying to bawl him out, but she tightened her lips and we got the hell out of the kitchen.
“Listen to this.” Dorothy started reading immediately:
I’m so ashamed, so ashamed, so ashamed. I can’t even do what I swore I would do. My blood oath. That I would always act like a manly man and stand up for what is right and true.
A girl came here by herself yesterday. She comes here a lot and takes off her shoes and just sits where the bank is low and sticks her feet in the water. She looks lonely. A man came and watched her a while. In this journal I want to record lovely and true thoughts. I know what he did because my paperback books talk about it, but I was so terrified that I thought I would melt into the earth.
When he was done he just left her there and I didn’t know what to do. After a long time she rolled over on one elbow and tried to get up. Finally, she did. I know she lives close around here because she always walks to the creek. What he did was so evil and while he was doing it I didn’t make a sound. I didn’t try to help her. Instead I turned myself into a wood frog and stopped my heart and floated above her and listened to her cry. Then I pulled out my six-shooter and swooped down and told her it would never happen again.
The next morning, I hid in the woods next to the school and didn’t see her go in or come out. I watched for her a whole week and when I had a chance I read any newspaper I could find. There was nothing about it in them so I knew she had not gone to the police. Then a week later I saw her go
to school. But I’m still ashamed that I didn’t try to stop it.
Stunned we all three looked at one another. “He witnessed a rape,” Josie said softly. “And his response was to berate himself for not trying to stop it.”
“Which he could not have done. The most likely result would have been for him to get hurt.”
“Or killed,” Dorothy added. “Or even more maimed than he already was.”
“Wait just a minute here,” Josie said. “On the other hand something else might be going on. He might be making all of this up. He’s a young boy entering puberty. And filled with anger. Reading old Westerns and badly needs to feel like a hero.”
Dorothy and I looked at her.
She shrugged. “To tell you the truth, I can’t tell whether this is a fantasy or one of the saddest true stories I’ve heard. Either way, he isn’t handling it well. The floating above would indicate that he disassociated.”
“And the shape-shifting?” Dorothy asked.
Josie snorted and crushed out her cigarette.
The telephone rang and we all jumped. Harold answered and stuck his head around the corner. “For you, Lottie.”
He handed me the receiver.
Sam again. “What did Keith think about our turning everything over to the KBI?”
“I haven’t had a chance to talk to him.”
He grunted. “When are you coming in?”
“In about an hour. I’ve been doing some thinking myself. We can’t take this back once we call Dimon. We’ll be washing our hands of the whole thing. I want you and me to slug this out before we take the final step. Between us we can come up with every reason why this is a good idea or bad idea. Pros and cons.” We did this often on matters far less important. “Meet you there in an hour.”
I grabbed a piece of toast to eat on the road, and told Keith and rest of the group that Sam wanted to talk. I drove to town, my mind half on what it should have been thinking about and the other half grieving over Franklin Slocum’s sad life.
Fractured Families Page 16