by Mark Treble
Grzgorczyk huddled with his team. They were sure Joel Vanderveer was either the accomplice or the murderer. Damion Wilson asked if there simply was no accomplice, and Joel Vanderveer had been the murderer all along. Silverstein brought up Joel’s young age at the beginning of the murders, and Grzgorczyk shut him down. Goldberg brought up Joel’s poisoning, and Grzgorczyk shut her down.
“He’s our guy.” That was in unison by Brown and Flint. Danny took over.
“In most of the murders there will be reasonable doubt, because Clemons was the suspect, and he’s dead. He can’t offer alibis or contest a suggestion that he was responsible. We have nothing but circumstantial evidence on everything else, including several disappearances and a whole lot of accidents and natural causes-deaths. There is one, though, that I think we can nail him for.”
Goldberg held up the file from Joel’s parents murders. “The home invasion that wasn’t. The son of a bitch killed his own parents. Yeah, he was fourteen or fifteen at the time, but the Martyrs murders started shortly after that. When Joel moved in with his aunt he learned about the tontine. As her adopted son, he would inherit everything if the tontine passed to her. All that was needed was a few more murders. Once the money was in her hands she could have an accident or a heart attack.”
Grzgorczyk looked at his team. “Nail him.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Ricky Stanley lived in a ramshackle house on the edge of a bayou. There was a small outbuilding with a locked door and no windows. A used Dodge pickup, body half metal and half rust, sat in front. Otherwise, there was no indication that anybody lived there. Ricky spent his days hunting, fishing and drinking. He had never completed high school. Nobody knew what he did for actual cash. But Ricky knew.
The money orders had started coming almost ten years ago, just like Joel promised. All Ricky had to do was keep his mouth shut, which is easy enough when there’s no one to talk to for twenty miles around. Ricky made monthly trips to the small town of White Castle where he would cash his checks and stock up on bourbon and cigarettes. For Ricky, life was simple and life was good.
The fat old detective from New Orleans had tracked him down and started asking about that night more than ten years ago. Joel had scored some weed, so he and Ricky went camping about a mile from Joel’s house where they could smoke in peace and privacy. Joel had forgotten some things at his house, so he took off around midnight to get them. He didn’t get back until after three in the morning.
Joel had brought back a whole hundred dollars and split it with Ricky. Joel had a change of clothes, a loaf of bread and some peanut butter and jelly. He burned the clothes he had been wearing, then got dressed and shared the peanut butter, jelly and bread. They went through all of the food in half an hour. Munchies, you know. Joel also threw a small bag as far as he could into the swamp. Said it was some porn he didn’t want his folks finding. It’s a shame he never shared it.
The damned detective asked him if Joel had been at the campsite the whole time. Of course Ricky confirmed the story. It’s what Joel had been paying him for. He didn’t know what Joel had done, but it had been worth his while to say that Joel was with him the whole night. Just a fib, and it meant he had money every month, just like clockwork. Ricky’s ethics were solid: Do what’s best for Ricky.
“That’s not a bad bourbon, Ricky.” Danny was pointing toward the half-empty bottle on the dining room table. Well, the table that would be the dining room table if the house had a dining room. The house had a bedroom, a bathroom, and an everything-else room. “I can’t usually find it in New Orleans. Where do you get it?”
“Liquor store in White Castle. I stock up there once a month to save on gas. I’m surprised it’s hard to find in New Orleans.” Ricky lit another cigarette. He might have offered one to the detective, but the guy was too nosy. Let him get going.
“I got to check my traps. If you don’t have no more questions, have a good day.” Ricky stood and pointedly turned his back on the detective. Danny watched as the younger man pulled what appeared to be some sort of red meat organ from the refrigerator. He thought it might be beef lung. That triggered a memory.
When Danny was younger a distant relative invited him along alligator hunting on some land the relative owned. Danny remembered little of the experience except the beef lungs. They were placed on a hook at the end of a sturdy rope. The rope was suspended about a foot and a half above the water, and secured to a heavy overhead branch. Alligators hunted at night, so in the morning they would visit the baited hooks. About every other morning there would be an alligator thrashing in the water with the hook embedded in its stomach. The relative would shoot the animal to put it out of his misery.
Danny remembered his cousin or uncle or whatever explaining that it was legal to hunt alligators in Louisiana but there were some requirements. Danny couldn’t remember the requirements, but knew where to find out.
The nearest office of the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Enforcement Division was in Opelousas, a pretty good distance away. Danny used the drive time to catch up on phone calls. The young enforcement agent – Jim Bob White according to his readily-proffered business card - was thrilled to help out a big time New Orleans detective investigating a murder.
It seems it’s legal to hunt alligators in Louisiana with a permit and alligator tags. Their meat could not be sold for human consumption, though. That could only come from farmed alligators. It was legal to sell the hides, or leather as it was often called.
There was a longstanding problem with alligator poaching in Louisiana. The swamp residents (Danny thought of Ricky) didn’t get permits or tags. They hunted alligators for their meat, which they either ate or sold to others. Female alligators were sometimes killed for their eggs, which were served as a kind of caviar.
The most valuable part of the alligator is its skin. Small alligators, say four feet or less, were not cost-effective to poach. They sold for between a dollar and two dollars a foot. It became economically feasible to catch, skin and sell gators at about six or seven feet. Those fetched between $12 and $18 a foot. At eight feet the price started sloping upwards dramatically.
A thirteen foot alligator could bring in between $400 and $450 skinned. There was almost no upper limit on eighteen foot monsters. Poaching alligators was lucrative business.
Jim Bob identified two or three suspected shops that turned alligator hides into pricey boots, bags and occasional jackets. Every time the enforcement agents turned up the shops had the required tags for every one of the hides. The problem is that there is no way to determine if the tag had been used legally for a catch, or if the free tags were simply kept in stock so that the shops could pretend they were connected to the dead alligators.
Jim Bob showed Danny a list of local licensed alligator hunters. “Is there a Ricky Stanley on the list?” He waited while Jim Bob went through the local list, then looked at the statewide database, then looked at expired licensees. No Ricky Stanley. And, Ricky’s name wasn’t in any investigative records.
Danny thanked the agent for his time and swore him to secrecy. It wasn’t really necessary. There was little chance that Jim Bob would reveal anything to the illegal alligator hide shops, or say anything that could get back to Ricky. It did, however, give Jim Bob a thrill to be part of some secret high profile murder investigation.
Danny gave Agent White the fax number for the High Profile Crimes office and asked him to send along the records he and Danny had reviewed. As Danny walked out the door he could hear the distinctive whine of a fax handshake. Flint allowed himself a brief smile.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Joel Vanderveer did absolutely nothing suspicious the entire week. The surveillance team didn’t let him out of their sight. He had company on the bus and even in public restrooms. They were not going to make the same mistake twice.
A tap on his home phone revealed nothing incriminating, or even suspicious. A tap on his cellphone was fruitless, he neither made n
or received calls. But, the surveillance team had seen him talking on a cellphone. It had to be a pre-paid “burner.”
Vanderveer was a third-year law student doing third-year law student things. He went out occasionally in the evenings but never had more than one drink. A DUI arrest wasn’t going to happen. Littering or jaywalking might have worked, but he did neither.
Danny Flint visited Carol Tolbert at her home and told her they were certain her adopted son was a murderer. In fact, he was a serial killer. It was likely that her husband’s death had been a poisoning using aconitum from the garden in Livingston Parish. Carol Tolbert stopped listening and ordered the detective from her home. She knew her brother’s son was a kind and loving person and could never had done those things.
On Thursday evening Joel took Veronica out to dinner. She declined to return to his home with him for the night; she was somewhat afraid of him by now. He had lied about Steve Clemons’s boyhood beating, and she learned he had lied about calling out to his aunt. Carol Talbot was only 52 and far from forgetful.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Danny Flint took Sarah Goldberg with him to bayou country on Tuesday. Someone once observed that she could talk a virgin out of her chastity belt. That might be an exaggeration, but Danny had no doubt that she could at least find out where the key was hidden.
First stop was the liquor store in White Castle. They had already subpoenaed the ATM’s photo records and had Ricky Stanley dead to rights in the store. “Nope, never seen the guy,” the owner replied when shown Stanley’s driver’s license photo. Charley Poole had been around the block a few times, he could handle these big city yahoos.
“Try again.” This was Flint. Right now it was good cop/bad cop. If necessary, Sarah Goldberg could make it bad cop/nightmare cop. He showed the owner an ATM photo of Ricky Stanley at the store’s counter.
“Oh, him. He looks different in the driver’s license photo.” The owner had been caught in a lie. Time to press him.
“How often does he come in here?” Flint was still playing mildly bad cop, not smiling, just expecting answers. Poole allowed that he came in maybe every five or six months.
“Wrong.” This was Sarah Goldberg, who had handcuffs at the ready. “He comes in here every month. This is a murder investigation, and right now I’m ready to arrest you as an accessory. The inmates at Angola need another white ass for recreation.
“Now, how often does he come in here?”
Poole was shaken by the reference to murder and Angola and another white ass. “He comes in once a month, cashes a money order and buys stuff. Usually bourbon and cigarettes.” Anything but Angola.
“Show me one of the money orders.” Goldberg was issuing orders. She already knew Poole didn’t have any of the money orders, they went straight to the bank the day after he cashed them.
“They’re at the bank. I don’t know nothin’ ‘bout what they does with them.” Poole’s language was slipping, a good sign.
“What bank?” Goldberg was relentless. Danny just leaned against the counter and enjoyed watching her work.
Three minutes later Flint, Goldberg and Poole walked into the local bank branch and asked for the manager. Poole was wearing handcuffs. Some people stared, some left quickly. Most tried to pretend they weren’t watching.
The manager was all smiles until he saw the handcuffs. The badges got his attention.
“Sir, we’re investigating a homicide. Mr. Poole probably didn’t have anything to do with it, but to clear his name we need to see photocopies of the money orders he deposits here every month.” The manager was no fool. In rural Louisiana, black men who were fools did not become bank managers.
It took seven minutes for photocopies of two years’ worth of the money orders to be in the detectives’ hands.
“Mr. Branson, you’ve been most helpful. Thank you.” Floyd Branson knew when he was being patronized – he was a black man in Louisiana and knowing when the white man was talking down to him was a survival skill even black fools developed early. And he was no fool. “I suggest you ensure that copies of the money orders and any other money orders deposited by Mr. Poole be kept safe. We are likely to be back for them.”
Branson understood fully. He made a note to have archived copies duplicated and ready for when somebody came back. Somebody was going to come back. He was absolutely no fool.
Detective Goldberg made a show of examining the money orders, then unlocked Charley Poole. “Sir, I apologize, you are completely cleared. You are free to go. Mr. Branson, there is now no suspicion at all concerning Mr. Poole’s participation in a homicide. Please let your customers know that he is a fine upstanding citizen.”
More patronizing. Poole was a scum bucket and Branson knew it. He wondered why it had taken so long for him to show up in handcuffs. He played the game and assured the detectives and the liquor store owner that he would praise Poole’s devotion to civic duty. And, he hoped the three of them would just get the fuck out of his bank.
They got the fuck out of his bank. Poole, after being warned to say nothing about their inquiries, walked back to the liquor store and the detectives took off to meet with Agent White. Flint drove while Goldberg took photos of the money order copies and e-mailed them to Silverstein. Other HPC detectives would know in an hour where they had been purchased and when. From there, it was only a short step to who.
They met Agent White at the designated crossroads, which involved one paved and one unpaved street. He followed them to the first of the craft shops, the one closest to Ricky’s hovel. White parked a quarter mile away in the bushes. There are always bushes in which to hide in rural Louisiana. It’s a wonder anything is ever found at all in the state.
“I want to buy my honey an anniversary present.” That was Flint; Goldberg was his honey. “You got any alligator jackets in her size? Or maybe some boots or a purse?”
The shop owner smelled a big sale here. “We’ve got jackets that will fit and a wide selection of purses. Boots are another issue, they have to be made to order.”
“Let’s start with purses, OK, sweetheart? That was Goldberg. She clung to Danny like a wisteria to a dead tree trunk. She smiled up at him and gave him a loving kiss on the cheek.
Lanny pulled out their most expensive purse, a $400 shoulder bag. “This one’s usually a thousand, but I can let you have it for nine hundred.”
“Ooh, I like it!” Goldberg again. “If I take it, do you have a matching wallet?” Lanny and his live-in girlfriend and her brood were going to eat well for a week. He showed her a wallet that didn’t really match, but he figured city slickers wouldn’t know the difference.
“Pooky, it’s divine!” Flint winced; Pooky was overkill. But, he trusted her instincts.
“And I have to have a jacket. Can you get me a jacket, too? You know I love you, Pookykins.” Goldberg was a certified ham actor. Lanny had no clue, of course.
Lanny Parsons was doing the math. Nine hundred for the purse, another three hundred for the fifty dollar wallet, maybe he could get a couple thousand for the jacket. He hurried into the back before emerging with an armful of jackets. Maybe he could sell this guy two.
“Is this new?” Goldberg had done enough homework to know that the hide from which the jacket was made had been harvested at least three years ago. Of course it was new. If she wanted all new, he could look into making her some boots from newly-harvested alligator skin.
“Can I see the tags for the alligators, please?” Danny Flint was still smiling and speaking in a conversational tone, but Lanny noticed a sudden chill in the air.
“Tags? What are you talking about?” Lanny was wondering if maybe they’d just take the purse and wallet and leave.
“Have you ever seen this man?” Danny pulled out a picture of Ricky Stanley. The look of recognition on Lanny’s face was unmistakable. He started fidgeting. Sarah Goldberg pressed Send on her phone. She smiled sweetly at the store owner, while Danny just grinned. And not particularly sweetly.
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nbsp; Agent White came in the door in full uniform. He showed Lanny his badge and repeated the question. “Have you seen the guy in that photo?”
Dreams of dinner and maybe even some hotel sex in Baton Rouge were crashing down.
“Should I get a lawyer?” Lanny had seen plenty of crime shows on television, he knew they couldn’t ask him any more questions if he demanded a lawyer.
“Go ahead.” That was Jim Bob White. “Meanwhile, I’ll take these jackets, purses and wallets as evidence in a poaching investigation. Your lawyer can help you get them back. Eventually.” Jim Bob White had some real possibilities.
“What do you want to know about him?” Lanny hoped to make a deal in time to get his merchandise back. If they confiscated his entire stock he was fucked. He lived hand to mouth, supported his girlfriend and her two kids plus himself, and this was turning into a very bad day. Sure his lawyer would get them back. Eventually.