by Mark Treble
“Daryl, the Westside Middle School Massacre in 1998 was done by an eleven year old and a thirteen year old. Four dead. That same year Andrew Wurst was only fourteen when he opened fire at his eighth grade graduation dance with one dead and several wounded. Back in the 1920s there was that six year old kid convicted of murdering his friend in Kentucky. Why is the guy’s age a problem?”
Grzgorczyk still had the problem of the poisoning. Blackford asked him if Vanderveer had survived the event. Suddenly two plausible barriers to suspicion were overturned.
Grzgorczyk thanked Blackford and hung up. “Silverstein, Goldberg, Flint, Brown, if you can hear me get your asses in here.”
Things began moving quickly. Silverstein and Wilson got to work on a sketchy time line for Vanderveer. The murders had begun when he was just fifteen, and tracking a minute by minute schedule for a high school student was beyond difficult. It got easier once Joel was in college, easier yet in law school while he was working at Fitch and Clemons as an intern.
There seemed to be a conflict for the three stabbings that included Millie Boatwright. Joel Vanderveer had a class scheduled at that time, some sort of Advanced Intellectual Property clinic. The professor had no idea if Vanderveer had attended that day, nobody called roll and attendance fluctuated based on phases of the moon it seemed.
For the murders over the past three months the Boatwright killings were the only ones where Vanderveer might be ruled out. Sorting out the earlier murders, not to mention suspicious accidents, was going to take some time.
The photos in Clemons’s bathroom plus the shoes linked to William Henderson’s murder could have been placed by Vanderveer. He had full access to Clemons’s office. And, he had helped prepare and serve the cabbage soup at the Ash Wednesday supper. He himself had been poisoned, but if he’d been using aconitum for the early “heart attacks” then he had a lot of experience with the substance. Calculating a relatively safe dose for himself wouldn’t be particularly difficult.
Had Grzgorczyk allowed the murderer to be invited into the investigation? God, he hoped not. That shit was only for the movies. Right?
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck!” Daryl Grzgorczyk was explosively angry. “When?”
“Some time overnight. They found him this morning already dead and beyond help. I’m requesting an autopsy.” Portia Livingston was no less upset than Lieutenant Grzgorczyk. They had a murderer, embezzler, money launderer and all around bad guy dead to rights, except now he was right dead. Fuck, indeed.
Grzgorczyk dispatched Flint and Brown to the jail to find out what happened. There had been three visitors the previous day: Clemons’s lawyer, plus Myra Hartag and Joel Vanderveer to discuss firm business. Given Clemons’s proprietorship of the law firm, the meeting with Hartag and Vanderveer was considered privileged and had not been monitored. The meeting with his lawyer had also not been monitored.
The prison nurse said it was probably a heart attack. Danny Flint wasn’t buying it. Too convenient. If this was another “assisted” heart attack, suspicion could only fall on corrections officers and Clemons’s three visitors.
Flint and Brown grilled every corrections officer who had any contact with Clemons the prior day. None had seen anything, none had reported anything, and each one of them was credible. The best criminals, of course, are very credible, so that wasn’t conclusive.
Goldberg and Silverstein pulled financials for all of the corrections officers who might be implicated. One had deposited a thousand dollars in cash into his checking account the previous day; that turned out to be most of a winning $1,200 scratch-off lottery card. Otherwise, nothing out of the ordinary was found. The corrections officer who had found Clemons showed them an unfinished letter found in his cell. “I’m sorry for everything” was as far as Clemons had gotten. Was this a suicide note? Brown wasn’t buying it.
Brown went to see Hartag, who cried throughout most of the interview. Steve Clemons had believed in her when nobody else would give her a job. Now he was gone and the firm was likely to close. Why would she kill him? Brown had no good answer to that question.
Flint talked with Clemons’s lawyer. The guy was distraught. He already had more than $90,000 in legal fees racked up and hadn’t been paid. Another $200,000 minimum was likely in the case. Recovering the ninety thousand would have necessitated petitioning the judge to allow disbursement from Clemons’s private funds, which were frozen. Now, with Clemons no longer able to benefit from legal counsel, and it being Clemons’s estate that owed the money, the lawyer considered himself screwed. Danny agreed.
That left Vanderveer. Danny wanted to wait for the autopsy to talk to him, and Daryl Grzgorczyk agreed. The following day both Flint and Goldberg attended the autopsy. It confirmed that Clemons’s heart had stopped, but that’s the case in every death. Why was not yet clear. For his lifestyle and eating habits Clemons’s heart and coronary arteries were in remarkably good shape. Toxicology would take a while, so it would be almost another week before the results came back.
Louisiana State Police agreed to provide most of the people needed to put Vanderveer under twenty-four hour surveillance. Marcia Blackford took a “job” as a cleaning woman at Tulane Law School. Grzgorczyk figured that a black woman mopping floors wouldn’t arouse Vanderveer’s suspicions. He was right.
While they waited on the toxicology lab, some other things could be done.
Danny and Cheryl traveled north from New Orleans to Livingston Parish. Something other than the Martyrs murders was bothering him, and Danny wanted to look at the old Vanderveer homestead.
After the home invasion the house had been closed up. A realtor bought it from the estate, cleaned up all traces of the murders, and rented it out to newcomers in the area. Locals were spooked by the ghosts that might still be there. Newcomers could care less. The current renters, a family of four from Montana, was enjoying the plantation lifestyle.
It was not a plantation, but folks from Montana didn’t know the difference. The place covered maybe five acres, including an attractive flower garden surrounded by a fence. That seemed odd to Danny, who asked both the real estate agent and the current residents about it. The fence had been built by the Vanderveers, but nobody knew why.
The residents let Danny and Cheryl tromp all over the place to their hearts’ content. This was the South, after all, and it was important to be hospitable. Even to visitors who had no idea why they were there or what they were looking for. Anyway, the couple were in their fifties, not likely to be drug runners or serial killers, so what’s the harm?
There were three acres of lawn. Cheryl and Danny were both glad someone else was doing the mowing. There was a pond that covered a bit over an acre. Cheryl sat on a stone bench watching goldfish surface. She thought they must associate human visitors with food, but she hadn’t brought any.
Last stop was the flower garden. Most of the flowers were purple, a few were pink, and some were yellow. They all looked pretty much alike except for their color. Cheryl snapped some pictures, just as she had of the gold fish pond and the home. Like a lot of amateurs, Cheryl took a million pictures and sometimes actually looked at two or three of them. Eventually.
Nothing jumped out at either of them. They returned to New Orleans and spent the night at Danny’s small place. By morning Danny’s orgasm deficit was down to nine.
Cheryl was on the seven-to-seven shift at St. Swithin’s that day, so Danny took her home to change before heading into the office himself. Detective Flint rarely made an appearance before nine a.m., so the rest of the gang was surprised to see him.
Danny asked Goldberg to get the full investigative files from the Vanderveer home invasion some ten years earlier. It arrived via messenger at the end of the day; Goldberg and Wilson stayed late to go over it. Joel’s alibi was that he was camping out with a friend, Ricky Stanley, who supported Joel’s story. It seemed appropriate to re-interview Stanley and confirm his story. Or not.
Cha
pter Twenty-Nine
Veronica was having dinner with Cheryl and Danny at Cheryl’s place. Over the meal Danny noted that he (the only “he” Danny discussed these days was Steve Clemons) should have stayed home. Maybe he would have struck oil and not need to kill people for money.
The student nurse knew that there was oil in Louisiana, but most of it was off-shore. She wondered aloud where in Louisiana Steve Clemons had lived that he might have struck oil.
“He’s not from Louisiana. Born and raised in North Dakota, some small city called Jamestown. His mother went back there after the divorce, and before giving birth to the little monster.” Danny changed the subject to the latest past accidental death that had now been ruled homicide. The Green River Killer’s crown could be in danger.
“Wait a minute.” Veronica was a very polite young woman and rarely used her phone to surf the net during a social occasion. But this was just not right. “It says here that the black population of Jamestown, North Dakota, is something like a hundred people out of fifteen thousand. This can’t be.”
“What can’t be?” Cheryl had developed respect for the young student nurse’s brains and, more importantly, her intuition.
“Joel told me that Steve Clemons had been beaten up by a gang of black thugs in school after forced integration. His parents wouldn’t pull him out and put him in a private all-white school. This makes no sense. There was never any school integration in Jamestown because there were never any non-whites with which to integrate.”
Danny called the police contract psychologist and told him about the lie. The shrink was already familiar with the case, and asked for a couple of minutes to review notes on Vanderveer.
He called Danny back half an hour later. “Danny, it’s not a lie. He’s describing something in the background of the killer. The real killer, who is not Clemons. Vanderveer knows who the killer is, and just might look at him every morning in the mirror.”
Chapter Thirty
“Can I see a picture?” Karen Hunnicut was a visual person, which may have contributed to her interest in ophthalmology. The botanist had found limited use for her undergraduate degree outside medical labs and public parks, and advancement was going to be slow. So, she went back to school and got an M.D.
Karen was the on-call ophthalmology resident for St. Swithin’s. It was a slow night and she had stopped by the Emergency Department to visit with Cheryl Longfellow, the chief trauma nurse. Nurse Longfellow was one of the unofficial power centers of the hospital, and Dr. Hunnicut knew it was to her benefit to stay on her good side. Plus, she liked the older woman.
Cheryl pulled out her phone and showed Dr. Hunnicut pictures of Danny. “Looks like a very pleasant man,” Karen said. Cheryl understood the subtext: Not much in the looks department, but you can’t have everything.
They continued browsing when Karen stopped her. “How did that picture get in the middle of those ones of Louisiana?” She referred to a picture of the fenced garden at the old Venderveer place. “Those don’t usually do well in wet areas with a lot of sun.”
“It’s just a garden at a house Danny and I went up to see, maybe an hour or two north of here. Why do you ask?” Cheryl was puzzled. It was just a flower garden.
“Do you have any more pictures of the garden?” The younger woman was being kind of a pain. She had asked to see pictures of Danny and now all she wanted to look at were stupid flower pictures.
Cheryl showed her every shot she had taken of the garden. When Dr. Hunnicut saw the fence she nodded her head. “Hope they kept it locked up well. Animals and even kids might die.”
Karen Hunnicut explained that these were all species of Aconitum, sometimes called “Wolf’s bane,” and Foxglove. There were multiple deaths every year in the U.S., usually small children, from eating the flowers. The medication digitalis is made from a species of Foxglove plant. Some dietary supplements contain minute amounts of the plants. The root of the Aconitum is a source of potent poisons.
That evening Cheryl met Danny for drinks at DaLounge and related Dr. Hunnicut’s revelation about the fenced garden. His brain made a connection and it wasn’t pleasant.
“What are the symptoms of Aconitum poisoning?” Danny expected Cheryl to know everything about medicine. She had dealt with the poisoned soup patients at the hospital, but that was most of her knowledge on the subject. However, she did know where to go to get answers, which was almost as good. She dialed her friend, Dr. Marsten, Chief M.E. for New Orleans.
“Aconitum poisoning symptoms? … Yeah, Danny wants to know … OK.” She handed the phone to the detective.
“Detective Flint, to a layman it will look like a heart attack. In fact, to most doctors it can look like a heart attack unless they have reason to suspect poisoning. If this isn’t urgent I can get a toxicologist to call you tomorrow with detailed information.
”Tell me, do you suspect poisoning in Clemons’s death?” Danny most certainly did. He thanked her and hung up. He sat silently, tapping his fingers on the table, then softly speaking to himself to be followed by some more finger tapping.
“I know who the accomplice is. And, he’s not the accomplice because there is no such animal. He’s the murderer.”
Chapter Thirty-One
The State Police surveillance lost Joel on a Monday when he left school for the day at five thirty. He hadn’t driven that day and got on the bus that would take him home. The surveillance team leader directed people to his house and didn’t put anybody on the bus. Eddie Franklin might still be alive if she had.
Franklin’s home was just a block from the bus’s route. Franklin lived alone and had done so since his wife’s death from cancer five years earlier. His niece came over every evening at seven thirty to check on him. She found the body near his front door, lying in a pool of blood, a picture of Stewart Swain on his chest covered with a red X. When Danny and Damion arrived at the site they met Carly Thibedeaux, the scene commander. There was little to learn.
“Hey, Damion.” Carly was glad to see her friend. “Detective, there’s no evidence of forced entry, but please re-check that. Neither I nor the crime scene guys can find any evidence of a struggle other than the dead body itself. Again, please recheck what you wish.
“No fingerprints other than those of the deceased, his niece and a cleaning woman. No shrubbery was disturbed, no footprints could be found in the yard, and nothing has been stolen or broken.” Corporal Thibedeaux was professional as always.
Danny called the surveillance team chief. She said that Joel Vanderveer was observed leaving school on a route 39 bus at 5:41 and arrived home at about 6:52. He went immediately to the guest house and hasn’t left.
He called the Regional Transit Authority. They wouldn’t have the drivers’ reports in the system for another twenty four to forty eight hours. The scheduled time in transit from Tulane to the stop nearest the Talbot residence was thirty-one minutes, but there was a detour on the route and that might have slowed things.
The scheduled driver for the bus that left Tulane at 5:41 was Freddy. Freddy Driver was his name, which gave no end of laughs to his fellow motormen. A call to the Driver residence went unanswered. Damion Wilson went to the man’s house and no one was home. He questioned neighbors, who reported that Freddy Driver liked to take long walks in the late evening. No one had a clue when he would be home.
The scheduled driver for the bus that was supposed to arrive at the stop nearest the Talbot home around 6:52 was Minerva Washington. A call to her home got an answer, just not a helpful one. Ms. Washington had taken the day off due to a bad cold. She had swapped the route with Mandy Forte and couldn’t give any other information. Mandy Forte wasn’t at home and nobody knew where she had gone.
Lieutenant Grzgorczyk asked the surveillance team leader to pick up Vanderveer on suspicion of murder. He was taken directly to the HPC offices and Grzgorczyk himself handled the interrogation. And he dispatched Melvin Brown to find Mandy Forte or die trying.
Joel insist
ed he had stayed on the same bus the entire way home from school. He denied any involvement in Franklin’s murder, or anyone’s murder for that matter. He knew the police had Clemons dead to rights on almost all of the murders, and an accomplice was suspected in all the rest. Was it possible that Franklin was murdered by the accomplice, or might his death been a coincidence?
Grzgorczyk went over the inconsistencies in Joel’s statements during the investigation of the break-in at his Aunt Carol’s. Again, Joel had an answer. The accomplice had shown up and tried to break in to kill his aunt. The accomplice left the picture, but had run off when he heard Joel coming. His aunt was just confused and didn’t remember him calling out to her.
Myra Hartag showed up and directed Joel to stop answering questions. After Joel told her of the accusations and his answers, she demanded that her client be arrested or let go. Grzgorczyk reluctantly released the prisoner, but told him he would be watched.