by Rick Mofina
He knew that buried-body cases and outdoor crime scenes posed problems. Weather conditions can harm any trace evidence, blow it or wash it away. Animals can damage a body, or carry evidence far from a scene. The perimeter can be impossible to establish.
Still, the investigators would have been thorough. They would have gridded the area; would have done a lot of things, like look for tire impressions back at the parking lot, or foot impressions here.
As he walked, he raked his light over the ground in front of him, looking at the flattened trail that was likely used by investigators as the entry-exit path to the scene.
He found nothing else in the empty forest. The state police had not released details on the cause or location of Bernice Hogan’s death. Early rumors held that she was killed elsewhere and dumped near the creek. But later, Adell had told him that they believed she was murdered here, given the amount of blood that had soaked into the ground.
While Gannon continued, meticulously sweeping his light everywhere, he tried to imagine Bernice Hogan’s last moments. As he ascended a small rise, he inched his light forward until—Jesus, there it is.
The hole in the ground was about six-by-two feet and about three feet in depth, a rounded, cup-shaped withdrawal of soil clawed from the earth.
This was the work of the scene experts.
To the right of the hole lay a neat mound of fine, dark soil. To the left, a neat pile of branches and twigs. A few fragments of white string were present, likely used to section the site and screen soil excavated from and around the grave. All in keeping with the transfer theory, which arises from the fact that a killer will always leave, or take, some sort of trace evidence from a victim or a scene.
The area had been methodically cleaned by the unit.
Gusts hissed through the treetops, tumbled down to the site, hurling grit into the dark forest and into Gannon’s eyes.
He sat down on the rise nearby overlooking the grave.
Remnants of torn-off police tape waved from trees, like the aftermath of an explosion of the monstrous act committed here.
A human being was murdered right here.
In the distance, he saw the lights of the suburbs, rows of safe middle-class homes twinkling in a different world that was light-years away from Bernice Hogan’s.
He looked down at her grave.
What a lonely place to die.
Did she glimpse heaven in her last moments?
He set his flashlight on the ground, pulled his notebook from his rear pocket, snapped through it until he found clear pages.
Soon, more people would come to the site. A parks crew would likely arrive first to restore it. That was the usual way things went in cases like this. They’d fill the hole, disperse the twigs.
Then morbid attraction would play out.
Neighborhood kids, the little ones, would dare each other to venture here. Teenagers would buy beer to party here and scare each other. Walkers, joggers and the like, would point respectfully and say, “They found her out there.”
Gannon sat on the rise asking himself if there was more he could do as songs from warblers and field sparrows coaxed the sun to come up.
Stiff, he rubbed his eyes and stood. All he could do was search the edges of the area. It was not likely that the scene people had missed anything, but you never knew.
He walked in a spiral pattern, expanding it as he circled the grave site. He kept his eyes to the ground, scanning it for anything that might have been overlooked.
As he walked, faraway noises of dogs barking, a car horn, the sounds of the city waking echoed while he searched the ground.
Maybe Brent and Esko had some key fact evidence they were holding back.
It was a safe bet that Karl Styebeck would be familiar with this area. But so would plenty of other people. It was the suburbs, a metro area just minutes from the Canadian border.
Then there was the mysterious blue rig with unique writing on the door. And what about the angle that another woman had argued with Bernice Hogan the night she vanished, according to Lotta, the waitress at Kupinski’s?
As Gannon continued circling the scene in an ever-widening pattern taking him to the park’s outer limits, he found discarded items: beer cans, whiskey bottles, take-out containers, cigarette wrappers, a rusted license plate, a bicycle wheel and an old tire.
They were such a long way from the scene he wouldn’t expect that the unit missed them, or that they’d be a factor. Still, he noted their location on a crude map, with a brief description.
His body was heavy with exhaustion.
Time to pack it in, head home, have a hot shower, get a few hours of sleep and start fresh. As Gannon turned to leave, he saw another scrap of trash, a piece of paper caught in some shrubs.
Looked like some sort of receipt.
He yawned.
Might as well check it out.
Removing it from the branches, Gannon saw that it was a ticket for a one-way bus trip.
Buffalo to Orlando, Florida.
Hold on.
Somewhere, in the far recesses of his memory, a tiny alarm began sounding a short, high ring, telling him this was important.
Why?
The ticket was unused. There was no name on it. It was bought a week ago, almost the same time Bernice Hogan had vanished.
The pinging in Gannon’s brain was getting louder.
Why was this important?
He should know. He should know.
He did.
Yes. He did know.
Peller.
His heart beat faster as he flipped back through his notes, back to Mary Peller who’d come to the newsroom to plead for help finding her daughter, Jolene.
Jolene, whom she’d lost to drugs and the street.
Jolene, who’d done things she was not proud of for money, like prostitution, maybe?
Jolene, who was twenty-six and missing.
All right, this was stupid. Her name was not on this ticket. No one’s name was on it. He’d found it, what? Sixty, seventy, eighty yards from the scene?
He was beyond tired.
He took out his cell phone and photographed the ticket, then the location.
All right, he needed to find out exactly who had purchased this one-way ticket to Orlando, Florida.
He needed help and he needed it now.
He dialed a phone number.
18
Adell Clark had risen early with a knot in her stomach.
She pulled a robe over her T-shirt and sweats. She went to the bedroom across the hall. Crystal, her seven-year-old daughter, had Ralph, her stuffed bear, in a choke hold and was sleeping deeply.
Good.
Adell went to her home office in the corner of her living room. It consisted of a polished sheet of cherry wood atop two second-hand steel file cabinets she’d gotten from a veterinarian who’d retired to Tempe, Arizona.
Time for the moment of truth.
She switched on her laptop and called up the Buffalo Sentinel’s Web site. The retraction dominated the page. She read it then read the news story on the “mystery truck.” Next, she went to the online edition of the Buffalo News and read their coverage, including the column attacking Gannon’s credibility.
Gannon had shielded her.
He’d sustained the suspension, the humiliation and the professional ridicule to protect her. He’d put it all on the line.
What she couldn’t fathom was why Michael Brent, or whoever was behind it, had gone out of their way to kill Gannon’s story and practically clear Styebeck. There had to be a deeper thread to the investigation that Brent was holding back, she thought as her phone rang.
“Clark.” A habit from her days at the bureau.
“It’s Gannon.”
“Speak of the devil.”
“Did I wake you?”
“No. I just read today’s papers. Thank you seems inadequate.”
“Forget it. I need your help again. I’m at the Hogan crime scene. I’ve
been here all night and I think I found something.”
“Were the forensics people sloppy?”
“No. Listen, can you get to your e-mail?”
“Got it right here.”
“I’ve sent you some pictures of a ticket. Have a look. I need to confirm who bought it.”
Adell opened the e-mails. As she studied the photos of the scene and the ticket, Gannon told her about Mary Peller’s visit to the newsroom, her worries about her daughter Jolene’s disappearance, street talk about Bernice Hogan having argued with another woman before she’d vanished and what Bernice’s foster mom had said about people trying to help Bernice get off the street.
“So, can you help me?”
Adell enlarged the images. The ticket had a number that could be traced to the point, time and date of purchase. Records would show the method of payment. If it was a credit card or bank card, the identity of the cardholder would be easy to trace. If it was a cash purchase, records would still confirm the date and time of purchase, which might, in a perfect world, be linked to captured security-camera images.
“Can you help me, Adell?”
“It’s going to take a few calls. Where are you going to be in the next couple of hours?”
“Getting some sleep. Get back to me if you find anything.”
On his way home, Gannon stopped off at a drive-thru for some breakfast. As his car crawled along the waiting line he tried focusing on what he should do next, but exhaustion dulled his thinking.
At his apartment he showered, got into bed and read through his notes until he fell asleep. Sometime later, he was looking around the bedroom trying to determine what had awakened him when his phone rang again.
“It’s Adell.”
“What do you have?”
“I had to call in a lot of favors.”
“I appreciate that.”
“The ticket was purchased for Jolene Peller.”
“For Jolene?”
“Yes, it was charged to a credit card belonging to the Street Angels Outreach Society.”
“It sounds remotely familiar.”
“Check it out, Jack, I have to go.”
He made a pot of strong coffee and began researching the Street Angels. He put in a few calls to city hall administration then started digging online. It didn’t take long before he’d confirmed that they were a tax-exempt nonprofit association. A few archived news stories characterized their mandate as reaching out to help addicts and homeless people improve their lives.
He dug into the group’s charter and administration pages and his jaw dropped.
Karl Styebeck was a board member.
And the group’s biannual open fund-raiser banquet was tonight.
The banner on the events page said: Tickets still available at the door.
19
“This is Jolene at six.”
A big-eyed girl in a flower-print dress and pigtails smiled at Gannon. Then the plastic cover sheet crackled and Mary Peller flipped through the album to more images of her missing daughter’s life.
“When she was six, Jo fell from a swing in the park and fractured her skull. I was so afraid I was going to lose her then. But I didn’t.”
Mary covered her mouth with her shaking hand.
“But now. Oh God, this is so bad.”
Mary looked at the bus ticket Gannon had set on her kitchen table. Her daughter’s ticket.
She stared at it as if it were a death warrant.
As a reporter, Gannon had seen fear exact different reactions. Some people punched walls, or other people. Some insisted the facts were wrong, or a lie. Some collapsed to the floor.
Some prayed.
Others performed acts of faith in the face of looming tragedy, as Mary Peller did now. She’d reached for a cherished album, for comfort and confirmation that she’d confronted and triumphed over fear before.
See, like the time Jo fell off the swing.
Gannon understood.
But they weren’t talking about a six-year-old girl. And they weren’t talking about falling from a swing in the park.
Jack, if you saw the crime-scene pictures of what Bernice Hogan’s killer did to her…
So Gannon let Mary Peller take her time to absorb the significance of the ticket as he walked around her modest apartment. It was on the third floor of a four-story low-rent building in a struggling working-class area near Schiller Park.
It was clean, tidy, and filled with Jolene’s presence. Certificates for completion of her night-school courses and recognition for her “outstanding” work at her restaurant job hung on the wall. On the floor, a plastic ring-toss game and several picture books belonging to Jolene’s son, Cody.
Gannon peered down the hall to a door partially opened to a bedroom where the three-year-old was napping. He saw his small face, cherubic calm amid tornados of curls.
Prior to arriving nearly half an hour ago, Gannon had grappled with how much he would tell Mary about his discovery of the ticket and its possible link to Bernice Hogan’s murder.
Investigators needed to know about it.
Mary Peller deserved to know about it.
It was at the instant when Mary opened her apartment door to him and he looked into her worried eyes that he’d decided to tell her everything and ask for her help.
Now, after he’d explained all that he knew, after he’d given Mary time to process the twist in her daughter’s case, Gannon had to push things.
“I know this looks bad, Mary.”
“Jolene’s not dead.”
“That’s right. Until we know the facts, anything is possible.”
Mary glanced around her kitchen, helpless.
“Mary, I need you to think hard about my questions. I know they’re painful but I need to know the truth so I can help you, okay?”
Mary agreed.
“When you first came to the newsroom to see me about Jolene, you told me that she wasn’t proud of some of the things she’d done to get drugs. I’m sorry, but I have to ask—did she ever work downtown as a prostitute?”
Anguish creased her face.
She looked away to the window, then her focus returned to the photo album and the picture of Jolene at six in pigtails. Then she looked at the gold-framed photo on a bookshelf near the living room. It was Jolene smiling with Cody laughing in her arms.
“Mary?”
“Yes.”
“Did Jolene ever work as a prostitute?”
“Yes, to pay for drugs.”
“Did she know Bernice Hogan?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did she know Karl Styebeck?”
“I don’t know because she never talked about that part of her life. It was like she wanted to rip it out of her past and move on. She’d worked so hard to crawl out of the hell she was trapped in.”
“She must’ve known people with the Street Angels Outreach Society,” he said, “given that they bought the bus ticket for her.”
“I didn’t know this. I thought she’d bought the ticket with money she’d saved. All I know is that she had some help from some groups.” Mary touched a tissue to her eyes. “Some things she wouldn’t talk about.”
Mary’s knuckles whitened. She clasped her hands together as if to keep herself from coming apart.
“I’m so scared. You found this ticket at the murder scene. I have to find my daughter! I have to find Jolene!”
Mary stifled a sob with both hands.
“I don’t know what to do. Help me, please!”
“Take it easy, Mary. Try to think hard about my questions and listen to me again. I’m going to tell you what you should do, but I also need your help, okay?”
She nodded as she regained her composure.
“I’m going to leave the ticket with you in the envelope. Try not to touch it. I’m the only one who’s handled it. I’ve got a copy. I left details on how it was discovered and my card in the envelope. Call the FBI field office and also call Investigators Michael Brent
and Roxanne Esko with the state police in Clarence. Then call the county sheriff’s office. Tell them about the ticket being found near the Hogan scene. It will get their attention.”
Mary nodded as Gannon stood to leave.
“They’re going to be angry at me for not coming to them first. Let me worry about that, okay?”
“All right.”
At the door, Gannon gave Mary another business card to ensure she had his cell and home numbers.
“Now, I need you to promise me that whatever you learn from anyone on Jolene’s case, you’ll share with me and no other reporters. And I promise to share anything I find with you.”
“You’re the only reporter I trust.”
Gannon nodded his thanks as his cell phone rang.
“Excuse me, I’ll take this outside. I have to go.”
Mary took his hand and shook it. “Thank you for helping me.”
Gannon answered his call as he headed down the stairs.
“Gannon.”
“Hey, this is Lotta, from the diner.”
“What’s up?”
“Got a working girl who wants to talk to you.”
“Really?”
“She’s got information about Karl Styebeck that you should have.”
“I’ll talk to her, tell me where and when.”
“I’ll get back to you with the details. But Jack, you have to know something about her.”
“What’s that?”
“She’s scared to death.”
20
The hooker’s name was Tuesday. And she wanted to meet Gannon at the Compassionate Virgin’s Redemption Church.
He considered the irony.
The location venerated purity and forgiveness. It was also a sanctuary, a smart choice for someone afraid of the secret they possessed. And given what was emerging, a church in the middle-class suburb of Tonawanda seemed like a safe place to reveal the truth.
Especially if it was tied to Bernice Hogan’s murder.