by Anne Hagan
“Sticks – Levi, he recruited me. He said he worked for this guy that made a little ‘shine that needed it run and that if I did good at that, I could get a cut of some other stuff too.”
“What sort of other stuff?” I asked.
“He has a grow operation and he makes some harder core stuff. Sticks is his distributor for all of it and he has some dealers under him.”
“Have you seen those growing or manufacturing operations?
“The growing stuff...well, sort of.”
“Define ‘sort of’.”
“It’s underground. We get around everywhere on quads. The only time I was ever inside, we drove around in the woods in what seemed like circles for a while and then we stopped and they put a sack over my head and walked me into the grow site. We walked at least 10 minutes. They did the same thing walking me out.”
“Who’s ‘they’?”
“Sticks and the dealer.”
“You don’t have any idea where the grow site is?”
“Not a clue.”
“Is the still underground too?”
“Naw, that’s too dangerous.”
“But you do know where it is?”
“For now, yeah, if they ain’t moved it since ya’ll have had me in here. It ain’t big. Sticks says they move it if the heat gets too close to findin’ it. He says they usually move it a couple of times a season. They keep camo nets up over it. It’s pretty hard to see when it ain’t running.”
“Where was it the last time you picked up product?”
“On a little stream, pretty close to Blue Rock or maybe even just inside of Blue Rock.”
“Let’s talk about the dealer. Who is he?”
“Sticks...er...Levi, calls him Killer.”
“Killer? Who did he kill?” Could it really be this easy?
Funk chuckled briefly, “Sticks says it’s short for killer bees. The guy keeps bees. Sticks is allergic so he says that to him that they’re killer bees.”
“You don’t know his real name?”
“No, I really don’t. I swear!”
“Have you heard him called anything besides ‘Killer’?”
“Boss. That’s it.”
“How about a name like, say, Ryan?”
Funk shook his head. The name didn’t seem to register with him at all.
“Okay, can you describe him?”
“Older than me – 40s maybe. White. Long brown hair...keeps it in a braid most of the time. Wears glasses. Always wears camouflage clothes. Ain’t never seen him in anything other than pants and long sleeves...weird...he’s just really different.” He shrugged.
“Different how?”
“I really can’t explain it. The dude is just odd.”
“If we show you a photo lineup, are you willing to indicate to us if he is in it?”
Funk looked at his attorney who nodded at him. “Yes.” Shane left the interrogation room to get the photos.
“Has Sticks worked for this guy, the dealer, long?”
“A few years at least. They have some sort of family connection.”
“Are they brothers, cousins...?”
“I don’t rightly know.”
“Anything else you want to tell us?”
Funk looked at his attorney. The suit turned left and leaned toward his client, “You’ve said this much. If you know anything else, you might as well tell them everything.”
The ‘shine runner swallowed hard, “You can’t ride quads though Blue Rock. We have to get to the still site and the grow site too I guess by going through private property. Killer has people watching for the guy that owns the property and for his hands and other people. He doesn’t want anyone getting too close to his businesses as he calls them. He says the people ‘what own the land we’re using took it from a guy that actually stole it from his father. He thinks the land should be his and that he’ll do whatever it takes to protect what’s rightfully his.”
I sat back. “Ethan, have you heard the name Dallas Granger before?”
Funk shrugged again. “Doesn’t ring a bell.” He looked at his attorney.
The suit said, “If you know the name, tell them.”
“That’s just it, I really don’t. Should I?” He looked from me to Shane who was studying him hard and then back to me.
“He’s an oil field worker that was murdered. We believe the boss, ‘Killer’ killed him or is responsible for ordering his death because maybe the people that were watching the property for Killer decided he was a little too close to something for comfort or maybe he actually found something while he was out doing his job.”
Funk looked genuinely shocked, “You think he actually killed someone?”
“Or had him killed, yes.”
“I didn’t do it and I don’t know nothin’ bout that, really I don’t!”
“Relax Ethan; we know you didn’t kill him.” I looked at the Deputy DA and then nodded toward Funks’ attorney. “We picked Ethan up for OVI early Friday morning. Granger wasn’t killed until Friday afternoon.” I addressed Funk again, “We’re curious though to know if you heard anything about anyone sticking their nose in where Killer thought it didn’t belong before you got picked up?”
Funk just shook his head no. His attorney stepped in, “I think my client has told you everything that he knows. If that’s all, we’d like to discuss the terms of a plea agreement...”
Shane came back into the room.
“Hold on just a minute,” I said. “He agreed to look at a photo lineup.”
Funk nodded his assent. Shane laid eight photos of similar looking men out on the table in front of him. The Deputy DA and I looked on as he picked the photo of Ryan McClarnan out of the lineup without hesitation.
###
“Dana, it’s Mel. Listen, I’m really sorry to call you at work but I need a little help that you may be able to give me. Is this a bad time?”
“No, not at all. You’re fine. What do you think I’ll be able to help you with?”
“Billy Bob McClarnan is a prisoner at the Big Sandy United States Penitentiary in Kentucky. I’m scheduled to see him Saturday morning...the day after tomorrow...”
“Umm, okay...”
“I can’t seem to lay my hands on his federal case file. I really need to know what I’m dealing with before I go waltzing in there on Saturday and end up making a fool out of myself. Can you help me?”
“Mel honestly, I can try, but this is really short notice and I’m going to have to call in a favor or two, to be blunt.”
“Dana, you know I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important. I’ve chased every other lead I had down the same rabbit hole but I just can’t get a GPS fix on the hole.” I knew she would know what I meant without me giving anything away if our conversation was being recorded by the powers that be at the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Service.
“I know. I’ll see what I can do. What info can you give me?”
“He’s a prisoner under the name Billy Bob McClarnan. The sparse records of his trial and conviction that I can find show that he was sentenced in 1975 for killing an ATF agent some time in 1974. He would have been about 25 when he was locked up.” That’s it. That’s all I have.”
“That isn’t much. I’ll see what I can find and, Crane?”
“Yes?”
“You’re going to owe me for this!”
“Roger! Thanks Rossi!”
###
Duty Day’s End
Thursday, June 5th, 2014
“Sheriff, some big money mouthpiece from Columbus has been calling here every 20 minutes or so asking if Kelly Rice has been charged yet. He’s becoming a royal pain.”
“We have 48 hours to charge her. Any word on that video sound enhancement?”
Holly sighed. “IT is working on it but they need a little more time.”
“IT?” I winced.
“The other option is to send it to the crime lab in Columbus. That will take even longer.”
“Well
then her high dollar lawyer that she shouldn’t even have been allowed to call yet is just going to have to wait. We just made some strides with Funk in exchange for a plea deal but nothing he said implicated her beyond his word that she told him not to talk in interrogation and he would be rewarded. We’ll get a sworn statement out of that but I want to know what her full connection to the whole shooting match is.”
“Gotcha Sheriff.”
“Who’s her attorney anyway?”
“A guy in private practice, Boswell Bates, Esquire,” Holly read from a note on her desk.
“That weenie? He is a pain in the ass!” I thought for a minute, “He’s also on the high end of steep. How does she plan to pay him on a former cops’ salary?”
“Mel, you didn’t already fire her did you? That could come back to bite you in the butt!”
“I didn’t have to. She quit and I accepted her resignation.”
Chapter 31 – Soft Evidence
Thursday Evening, June 5th, 2014
Dana was late getting home. She’d called and said she was on the way and that she had something for me that was going to cost me pizza and beer and whatever else she could get out of me. If she had what I hoped she did, I didn’t mind any cost that she decided to extract from me.
I called Kasey over at the pizza shop and ordered a large with everything since it would be just Dana and I. The kids didn’t like anything but meat on their pizza but they were spending the night at the farm and Kris wouldn’t be home until almost ten. I went over and picked it and a six pack of Bud Light up.
When she pulled in, I was waiting for her at the front door, frosty mug in hand. She laughed and waggled the crutch on her good side at me in a mock attempt at bludgeoning.
“I’m glad to see that whatever you had to go through to bring me whatever it is you have wasn’t too bad.”
“Melissa....Melissa Crane, you have no idea!”
“Raye.”
“Huh?”
“Raye...that’s my middle name. Obviously you wanted to use it to call me out.”
“Well then, Melissa Raye Crane, you owe me! The pizza I smell and that beer in your hand are just the start.”
“Let’s eat first and just enjoy the food in peace. You can show me what you have and extract further payment later.”
“In peace?”
“We’re alone. The kids are at the farm and Kris won’t be here until her usual time on a work night.”
“I see. Lead on then; take me to pizza.” Dana had a huge smile on her face. I couldn’t hide one myself.
We ate on the deck enjoying the evening, the beer and each other’s company. Once we were finished and we’d taken the remnants of our meal inside, Dana said, “There’s a file box on my passenger seat that I can’t carry. Why don’t you go and get that and bring it in here.” She took a seat at the kitchen table while I played fetch.
When I got back, I placed the case file box in front of her and started to take a seat. She looked at me pointedly, “We don’t have this here. It never left the federal court house, got it?”
I nodded.
“Do you have gloves on your belt or in your go bag?”
“Of course.” I went and got them and put a pair on.
“I officially requisitioned this so my fingerprints are expected to be on it. I’m just playing it safe with yours.”
She opened the lid and reached inside. “Billy Bob was tried at the Federal Court House in Columbus. BCI out of Columbus actually headed up the investigation into the ATF agent’s murder since murder isn’t ATFs specialty. This is a copy of the original case file from the lead investigator that worked the case.” She handed me a slim case file folder.
I leafed through the file. “You’re kidding me, right?” She shook her head. “This is it? This is his whole file?”
“So it would appear.”
“What else is in the box?”
“A copy of the court transcript and some things that were entered into evidence. The trial only took a couple of days. The transcript isn’t lengthy.”
She handed me the transcript. It was under 300 pages. I’d seen short trials for misdemeanor offenses that had longer transcripts.
“Well that’s pretty underwhelming for a federal murder trial. What was submitted for evidence?”
“The transcript says he was strangled and stabbed. There’s a piece of twisted steel wire here that was used as the garrote and then left with the body.” Dana held up a double bagged coil of wire with obvious blood evidence staining both the wire and the bag. I took it from her and looked at it closely.
The dried blood was flaking off the twisted wire but there were obvious brown spots still along it that were blood and not rust. One of the wire ends was clearly visible. It was jagged like it had been cut in haste. I peered through the doubled up plastic evidence bags at it. I thought I could see brown blood spots on the cut end.
“Dana, look at this end and tell me what you see” I held the bag up under the overhead light and pointed at the end.
“It looks like all of the rest of the dried blood.”
“But, is it like all of the rest? Could it be the killer’s from trying to hold it there and not the victims?”
“Oh, I see your point.”
“Mom said most people thought Billy Bob was framed. These files would certainly indicate a thorough investigation wasn’t conducted. Think about it...there was no such thing as DNA evidence in 1975. That didn’t come along until well into the ‘80s.”
“You’re saying the blood on the end might not belong to the victim or to Billy Bob and that could prove he wasn’t the murderer?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
“How on earth do we prove that?”
“At this point we don’t, but I use the possibility that DNA evidence exists that could exonerate him to get him to talk when I go to see him on Saturday.”
“So that’s a done deal, huh? There’s no other way to get to his son?”
“Oh believe me, we’re trying. Chips keep falling but nothing has fallen so far that can help me find him and now, I have new information about his operations that make me really want to nail him where he lives and take the whole thing down.”
Dana was putting the stuff back into the box when I thought of something, “Hey, hold up. Does that transcript give Billy Bob’s address or last known address?”
“You don’t think I’d have already looked? You don’t know my investigative mind that well do you? It’s the first thing I checked. It’s listed as unknown.”
“Drat! Oh, and sorry. I didn’t mean to imply you aren’t a top notch investigator. The thought just popped into my head and...”
“Flattery will get you nowhere. Now then, why don’t you get this box back to the car and then join me in the den? You have an aching back and leg to rub and, if you’re good at that, I might let you rub some other things too.”
Chapter 32 – Big Sandy
Early Saturday Morning, June 7th, 2014
I left the house and a sleeping Dana at 3:30 AM. The kids were staying out at the farm at least through the weekend and Kris had gone over to spend the night with her boyfriend after she got off work.
We’d had the house to ourselves all night but rather than do anything crazy or forbidden to us when anyone else was there, we just tried to relax. I was keyed up about my visit with Billy Bob at Big Sandy and Dana was wiped out from her week.
I’d given Shane Friday off since there wasn’t much we could accomplish short of tromping an Army through the forest on a suicide mission. He was going to keep an eye on the Peddler’s Market today and see if McClarnan turned up to sell his honey. He and a patrol deputy would attempt another tail if he showed. I didn’t hold much hope there.
I don’t know what Ryan McClarnan knows about our investigation into the Dallas Granger murder but, after hearing the enhanced audio tape confirm what Ethan Funk had sworn Kelly Rice said to him, I figured she was somehow playing for
the bad guys and McClarnan was probably onto us.
The U.S. Penitentiary was a four hour drive away. I didn’t relish making an eight hour round trip drive in a day all alone on a beautiful Summer Saturday but I was running out of options. I just hoped for payoff for my trouble. I’d thought about bringing Dana along for company but she really needed the rest and she wouldn’t be authorized to do the prison visit with me anyway.
I’d given myself plenty of time to get to Big Sandy but my mind was churning so fast that I was passing the long line of visitors sleeping in their cars, waiting to get into the prison to visit their loved ones before I even knew it. I was early for my own purposes but glad that I didn’t have to wait behind all of them since I was here on official business.
Once it was after 8:00 AM, I checked in with the prison administration as I’d been instructed to do. A matronly guard led me to an interview room not far from the main visitors’ area. She marveled that I’d come to see McClarnan. According to her no one, professional or otherwise, had been there to see him since the prison had opened in ’03 and he was transferred in.
I took a seat and waited for them to bring him in. Soon it would be 8:30 and the masses who were now lining up for security checks would start being let into the visitors area. I wondered how McClarnan would react to being pulled over to this building after years without any sort of visitor at all.
It wasn’t long before the questions playing through my mind were answered. McClarnan was escorted in without shackles or cuffs and wearing the jumpsuit of a trustee about ten minutes later.
Billy Bob looked every minute of his 65 years and more. An adult life spent primarily in prison hadn’t been kind to him.
He looked me up and down.
“Mr. McClarnan, I’m Sheriff Crane from Muskingum County, Ohio.”
McClarnan turned to his escort. “Take me back to my cell. You people know I don’t want any visitors and I sure ain’t talking to no cops.”
“Billy you just simmer down. She’s here on official business. You probably ought to at least here what she has to say.”
“McClarnan stared through me. “Is this about my son?”