Blood Knot: a small town murder mystery (Frank Bennett Adirondack Mysteries Book 3)

by S. W. Hubbard

  He had been too busy all day to really think about Heather herself, but in the solitude of the car, her image loomed: her frightened face when she’d told him someone else was going to die; her forlorn slump when she admitted she’d been exaggerating. What the hell was the truth? Should he have known she was in danger? Should he have acted to get her out of there? But who was he to intervene in a treatment plan that Heather’s parents had set up willingly with MacArthur Payne?

  Or was that angle entirely wrong? Had Heather “worked a deal,” as Justin implied?

  Which brought him to Lorrie. From what he’d seen of her so far, she seemed more a victim than a perpetrator. But getting kicked around by the strong brought out the worst in the weak—he’d seen it time and again.

  The lights of Malone’s came into view as he approached the green, but they didn’t convey their usual cheery welcome. Frank drove on by and went to pick up Reid at his home. He spent a few minutes bringing the lawyer up to speed on the investigation, then they headed out to meet Dawn Klotz.

  The reporter sat in the back booth of Malone’s, furiously tapping away on her laptop. Her eyes never left the screen as Frank and Reid dropped into the seat across from her. Her fingers continued to fly across the keyboard until, with a grunt, she punched one final key and looked up.

  “Sorry. I’m on deadline.” She extended her hand to Reid. “Dawn Klotz, New York Beat.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” Reid said graciously.

  Frank felt like telling him not to bother. The woman would only regard civility as a sign of weakness. He stared at Dawn impassively, waiting for her to make the first move.

  She obliged. “So, have you determined if Heather LeBron is a suicide or a murder victim?”

  Reid adjusted his tie. “My dear woman! There’s no conclusive evidence that anyone has died. The girl is simply unaccounted for—”

  “But there are signs of foul play at the school, are there not?”

  “It appears someone may have been injured,” Frank said.

  “And Lorrie Betz, who would have been the last person to see Heather alive, is also missing, right?” Dawn started pounding her keyboard again.

  “No ... uh ...” Reid stammered.

  Dawn’s keen eyes peered at Reid over the computer screen. “So, someone else did see Heather LeBron after Lorrie Betz put her in the isolation room? Who?”

  Frank laid a restraining hand on Reid’s arm. He didn’t want the chairman of the town council to get screwed by Klotz; he just wanted him to understand how impossible this woman was to deal with. “We have spent the day interviewing the students and staff of the North Country Academy to establish the chain of events last night. We are receiving their full cooperation.”

  Dawn shifted her gaze to Frank. “Has the school informed you of Heather LeBron’s history of suicide attempts?”

  Reid's and Frank’s stony-faced silence was as good as an answer to Dawn. “The girl twice tried to overdose on pills at the last school she attended. Did the North Country Academy have any procedures in place to safe-guard her?”

  “I’m not in a position to answer that,” Frank said. “You’d have to discuss it with MacArthur Payne.”

  “I would, but he refuses to take my calls. Is it true that Payne tried to conceal the girl’s disappearance and that it was only revealed when an anonymous caller alerted you, Chief Bennett?”

  Frank refused to register surprise again. “I was called as soon as the school was aware they had a problem.” How the hell did she know the call had come anonymously?

  “Did Dr. Payne place the call?” she persisted.

  “The call woke me from a sound sleep. I’m really not sure who placed it,” Frank answered. He, too, suspected Payne of a cover-up, but he was damned if he’d let this woman put those words in his mouth.

  “So, what's the big break in the case your assistant told me about?”

  “We found Justin Levine.”

  “Who?”

  “The third person who was missing.” Frank could see that for once, he’d caught her off guard. “He’s a student at the academy and apparently chose last night to run away. He was found today in Keene Valley, waiting for the bus. At the moment, it appears that his actions were unrelated to Heather’s and Lorrie’s disappearances."

  Dawn studied Frank's face intently for a moment, then abruptly turned her attentions to Reid. “If this tragedy forces the North Country Academy to close, what will that mean to the town of Trout Run, Mr. Burlingame?”

  “It’s quite premature to be predicting tragedy, Ms. Klotz. I’m confident that Heather and Lorrie will turn up unharmed.”

  “Really? Considering that the person responsible for Jake Reiger’s death still hasn't been apprehended, I find your optimism rather surprising.”

  “An animal was responsible for Jake's death. And who says there’s any connection between the two events?” Reid demanded.

  Dawn merely raised her eyebrows.

  Reid rose from the booth and stood glaring down at the reporter. “No wonder the Beat has been involved in so many lawsuits—the paper clearly sanctions the reporting of unsubstantiated gossip. I’d verify my sources very carefully if I were you, Ms. Klotz.”

  “Will do.” She flipped her blond hair away from her face and went back to typing.

  “That woman is maddening!” Reid said as they walked down the steps of the diner.

  The "told you so” didn't need to be spoken.

  Frank focused on the state police cars parked in front of his office. It was time to review all they had and plan the next move.

  Chapter 19

  “Did you know that Heather LeBron had suicidal tendencies?”

  After brainstorming with the state police the evening before, Frank had decided his approach should be to come down hard on MacArthur Payne and try to scare him into being more forthcoming. Consequently, he had gone on the offensive the moment he walked into Payne’s office this morning.

  “Suicidal tendencies? Where did you hear that?"

  “I understand that she tried to take her own life twice at her last boarding school. Were you doing anything to safeguard her?”

  “At St. Bridget’s, she swallowed five over-the-counter sleeping pills. I don’t call that suicide, I call it a very long nap. Heather was constantly looking for ways to draw attention to herself. I suspect this is just another one of her stunts.” The bright morning sunshine seemed to have restored Payne’s confidence. Instead of the jittery and panicked man of yesterday, Payne now strode around the office with his customary arrogance.

  “Shedding your own blood hardly seems like a stunt, Dr. Payne.”

  “What if she didn’t actually shed it, Chief Bennett? What if the blood in that room was menstrual blood—have you considered that?”

  Frank recoiled in his chair. Menstrual blood? How had Payne come up with that? And yet, he might actually be right. It would explain the fact that the blood in the room was smeared, not spattered, and that there was no trail of blood down the hall. But if the forensics team hadn’t come up with that theory, how the hell had Payne?

  “Forgive me, Bennett; I’m getting ahead of myself. You see, I’ve been up half the night thinking about this and I finally had an epiphany. I’m quite sure I know what happened here on Thursday night.”

  “Well, I’m glad someone knows.” Frank stretched out his legs and crossed them at the ankle. “Don’t keep me in the dark.”

  Payne perched on the edge of his desk, swinging his foot so that the tassel on his highly polished loafer danced. He leaned toward Frank. “The first thing you have to understand, Bennett: I have enemies.”

  “Oh?”

  “I used to own a school in Utah called the Langley Wilderness School.”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  “So then you know it closed amidst a scandal.”

  Payne had these moments of disarming honesty that threw Frank. Maybe that’s why he had accepted Payne’s explanations for what went on
at the school—because when you most anticipated a lie from the man, he blurted out the truth.

  “I had a partner in that school. His name is Glen Costello. We parted on bad terms. I blamed him for the catastrophe of that boy’s death. Now he’s started a new school in Mexico, where he can get away with substandard conditions. He’s trying to compete with me; he can afford to charge less because his overhead is lower. But the one thing he can’t deliver is results. His students aren’t transformed; he doesn’t save lives. So he’s trying to drive me out of business the only way he knows how: by creating another scandal that will shut me down.”

  “Very interesting, Mr. Payne. Has your former partner been seen around Trout Run?”

  Payne held up a long finger demanding silence. "I believe he has planted a spy—an operative—inside the academy.” He said this with all the drama of James Bond revealing some diabolical plot, and Frank took it about that seriously.

  “And that spy is Heather LeBron?”

  “Of course not. Heather is just a tool. What does that girl want more than anything else in the world?

  “To get out of here?”

  “Exactly. So she is persuaded to stage this stunt in return for her freedom. She waits until she has her period, she dumps her milk on another student’s dinner, knowing she’ll be put in isolation, she defiles the room with her menstrual blood, and she is liberated.”

  “Wait a minute,” Frank said. “How did you come up with this? Why would Costello ask a young woman to smear her menstrual blood around a room? I mean, that’s ... gross.”

  Payne smiled slightly. “I suppose it does seem like a bizarre concept to you, but Glen and I think alike from spending so many years working with troubled teens. Using body, er, excretions is a very common way for these kids to act out. I can’t tell you how many messages I’ve found written in feces. Believe me, the menstrual blood wouldn’t be a stretch for him.”

  Payne paced in front of Frank, elaborating on his theory.

  “Costello has probably given her enough money that she can hang out with drug addicts in some big city until she poisons herself with the stuff. And it looks like something terrible has happened to an academy student and I’m trying to cover it up. I can only imagine what filth he’s feeding to that Beat reporter—today's paper will be full of it.”

  Frank was never one to subscribe to elaborate conspiracy theories, but if ever there was a time that he wanted to believe Payne, it was now. If the headmaster was right, Heather LeBron was unharmed and would stay that way as long as they tracked her down before she ingested too many drugs.

  “What about the attack on Jake Reiger? Is that part of this plot, too?”

  “I’ve been thinking about that, Bennett.” Payne tilted his head and pursed his lips. “I’m not sure, but it’s possible, isn’t it? You see, when the boy in Utah died on the backpacking trip that Costello was supervising, I blamed him for not making sure everyone had enough water, and for not having first aid equipment to treat heatstroke. His defense was that nature is unpredictable—he couldn’t have known that the temperature would shoot up to ninety degrees in April. Staging this bear attack might have been his way of proving to me the unpredictability of nature.”

  “Killing Jake Reiger is a pretty harsh way to prove that lesson.”

  “Costello couldn’t have meant to kill him. Jake worked for us in Utah and got along with us both. No, it must be that Costello thought up the plan, but it was carried out wrong.”

  “By Heather, since she was on the camping trip, too?”

  “Exactly.”

  "And you think Lorrie is Costello’s spy, the one who put Heather up to this? She certainly needs money.”

  “Lorrie? No, she’s not smart enough. The spy is Paul Petrucci.”

  “So, what do you make of that theory?” Frank asked Meyerson.

  “It does explain a few things, but not everything. It’s worth running a test on that blood—I’ll get the lab right on it. How does Payne account for Lorrie’s disappearance?”

  “Says she freaked when she saw the room bloody and empty, and ran so she wouldn’t be blamed.”

  “You want to talk to Petrucci now?”

  Frank shook his head. “We have nothing on him—he wasn’t even on duty the night Heather disappeared. Might as well wait for the blood test results to come back. In the meantime, let’s do a little background check on Costello. And I want to talk to everyone who was on that camping trip with Jake Reiger.”

  In addition to Heather, there had been five other students on the camping trip, as well as the Pathfinder, Steve Vreeland. Frank called them into the interview room one by one. The answers given by the first three were all the same: they had no access to the kitchen or the camping equipment; aside from their toothbrushes, journals, and clothes, Mr. Reiger and Pathfinder Steve had packed everything and distributed items for each of them to carry. Mr. Reiger had chosen the spot where they would pitch their tents, but the kids had set them up. No one could remember who had pitched Reiger’s tent; some said Steve, another speculated it might have been Justin. Everyone agreed Heather had been hopelessly inept with tent poles. They had gone to sleep after dinner and heard nothing until they were awakened by the sound of the bear attacking. They hadn’t noticed anything unusual about Heather’s behavior. She had complained the entire time, but that was par for the course for Heather. All of them had been forthcoming but ultimately unhelpful.

  Melissa Trenk, Heather’s roommate, was the fourth student to be interviewed.

  "Melissa, are you happy here?” Frank led off.

  The girl pulled back in her chair, as if the question were a large, ugly insect that had flown into her face. “I wasn’t sent here to have fun. I came to confront all the bad things I’ve done in my life and learn to accept accountability for the pain I’ve caused others.” Her eyes didn’t meet Frank’s as she spoke; she seemed to be looking right through him.

  What bad things had she done, what pain had she caused, Frank wondered? “How old are you, honey?”

  “Sixteen.”

  “Why did your folks send you here?”

  “I was drinking, spending time with older kids who were a bad influence, not paying attention in school,” Melissa recited.

  “Some of the same reasons Heather was here, right? But you didn’t seem to get along.”

  “Heather didn’t embrace the program. She was resistant to change. Worst of all, she tried to ruin it for the rest of us. I’m trying to attain a Level Three, and Heather didn’t respect that.”

  “Heather was very troubled, Melissa. Did you ever try to reach out to her, help her?”

  "We all tried to help Heather in Group Encounter, by pointing out all the issues she needed to confront. But she refused to participate in a constructive way.”

  “Tell me more about Group Encounter. How does it work?”

  “I’m not in a position to explain the program. I haven’t completed it yet, so I don’t fully understand it.”

  “So, describe a group encounter session. What happens?”

  Steadfastly, Melissa shook her head. “That would be taking one element of the program out of context. You should ask Dr. Payne these questions.”

  “All right, I will. Thank you, Melissa, you may go.” Frank waited until she got to the door. “One more thing, did anyone here like Heather?”

  Melissa’s eyes narrowed. “I hated her. She wanted to keep me from attaining my goals. Most of the others felt that way, too. Except maybe ...”

  “Who?”

  “Justin.”

  Justin Levine was the fifth student to be interviewed. He slouched into the room and splayed himself across a chair, looking up at Frank with an expression finely crafted to conceal any glimmer of interest.

  “So, Justin, let’s talk about the night Jake Reiger was attacked by the bear.”

  For a split second the boy seemed curious, then he pulled his ennui back into place and drawled, “Talk away.” Frank led him through
the same questions he’d asked the other students and got the same answers.

  “Did you set up Jake Reiger’s tent?”

  Justin shrugged. “I might have helped. I got mine up right away, then I helped the others. I like setting up the tents—reminds me of building with Legos when I was a kid.”

  Frank observed Justin closely. His helpfulness provided a great opportunity to spread the bacon grease, but he didn’t seem the least bit nervous about admitting he might have handled Reiger’s tent.

  “Did you notice anything unusual about Reiger’s tent?” Frank asked. “Was it stained in any way?”

  Now Justin seemed more alert, although his nonchalant pose hadn’t changed. “I said I wasn’t sure if I put up Reiger’s tent. I know I put up one yellow one, and his was yellow, but so were two others.”

  Frank nodded and moved on. “And how did Heather behave on the trip?”

  “God, she never stopped bitching and moaning. It was so irritating, especially since she wasn’t even supposed to be on that trip.”

  “She wasn’t?”

  “She wasn’t scheduled to go until two weeks later. But the campout earns you five points, and she needed points to be able to audition for that play. So Mr. Petrucci finagled it so she could be on the earlier trip.”

  “Heather told you this?”

  “Nah—I overheard Petrucci and Reiger making the deal. Petrucci had a thing for Heather.”

  “What kind of thing?”

  Justin waved his hand. “Not a sex thing. He just fell for her ‘I’ve had a pathetically deprived childhood’ routine, that’s all.”