Bone Maker: Will Finch Mystery Thriller Series Book 1

by D. F. Bailey

  A little after noon Finch decided to send Fiona an email. He wanted to attach the backgrounder he’d prepared and ask her to follow up with anything she could uncover that would broaden the picture of the twins. But what he’d written seemed too clean. Not that he needed more dirt to pile on the legal case the prosecutor had built against the family firm. No, Finch had a deeper concern. All the frat house pranks, the rumors of orgies, drugs and booze were ultimately benign. Nothing in their very public history suggested the boys were capable of planning and executing a cold-blooded killing. They were party boys, not hit men. He needed at least a hint that they traveled somewhere on the dark side. Maybe Fiona could dig deeper into their private world and unearth their secret story.

  Before he could send the message, his phone rang: Jennie Lee.

  “Hi Jennie, what’s up?” He pushed his laptop aside and pressed his back against the bed pillows.

  “It’s a match. The slugs from the bear and the brass you found on the road. Winslow just told me.” Her voice came in light, uneven panting. “He said the ballistics expert figures the probability is above ninety percent.”

  Finch’s shoulders relaxed. His belly softened. “Biff Winslow, the deputy sheriff?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right. But look, neither of us should be surprised. Ninety percent isn’t a lock-down, but it’s close enough for you to request a formal inquest, isn’t it?”

  “It should be.”

  “Jennie, where are you?”

  “On the ridge trail. Same place we were walking on Wednesday. I had to get out for a run to clear my head.”

  Finch glanced through the window. A steady drizzle tapped against the glass. “In this weather?”

  “Look, there’s more to this than either of us thought.”

  Finch waited for her to continue. He knew the pattern: whenever she had new information, she needed to assess what part she could reveal to him. He realized she needed another prod.

  “Jennie, I didn’t have to tell you about the Whitelaw’s sons escorting Toeplitz up to Saddle Mountain. Or about the bullet casings I found. I could simply have published — ”

  “Have you?”

  “Have I what?”

  “Published that story. Because if you did, you’re wrong. At least about the Whitelaws.”

  Finch paused. “All right. So tell me what you know.”

  “This is from Biff Winslow but he won’t put any of it in writing. Not yet, any way. So this is off the record, okay?”

  Finch took a moment to consider this. She knew all the rules and knew that he would play by them. “Okay.”

  “This morning I told you about a boy found drowned off the mouth of the river. That the sheriff found a gun on his body.”

  Finch nodded. “A Glock.”

  “Look, this is so far off the record…. Jesus, I shouldn’t be telling you any of this.”

  “Listen, Jennie,” Finch stared at the motel wall. “Here’s what I think. One of the reasons you’re telling me what you have is because you’re frightened. And you’re frightened because this case is unlike anything you’ve seen before. Believe me, I know what that’s like.” He turned his chin to one side at the memory of the first story that had eaten into his soul. “I promise you this. I will never reveal that you are the source of whatever you tell me for as long as I live.”

  A moment of silence filled the air.

  “All right.” She lowered her voice to a barely audible whisper. “The bullets that killed Raymond Toeplitz were fired from from the Glock found on Donnel Smeardon. But here’s the kicker. Winslow and Gruman know everyone in the county. Unlikely as it sounds, Winslow told me the only person he knows who owns a nine-mille Glock is Ethan Argyle.”

  Finch tapped a finger on his lips. “Ben Argyle’s father?”

  “One and the same.”

  Finch scanned the ceiling as he tried to align the puzzle pieces. “So … where does that leave us?” He was thinking out loud now. He knew it was a sign that his story might be falling to pieces.

  “I don’t know.”

  Finch’s mind began to race through the possibilities. “Well, it leaves us with the Whitelaw twins one step removed from actually pulling the trigger. But, they could still have been there. Just like the bear.”

  “I don’t know.” Jennie sounded doubtful. “What about motive? Why would a kid, either Smeardon or Ben Argyle shoot Toeplitz? It’s unlikely they ever met him.”

  Finch held a hand in the air. “Hold on, you mean no motive that we can see. Not yet, anyway.”

  “What about Ethan Argyle?” Jennie asked. “If he actually owns the gun, we can’t dismiss him, either.”

  Finch shook his head. The father seemed even more unlikely. He had a family, a good job. “Does he have any criminal history?”

  “I doubt it. Gruman will be checking that, but they’re both from Astoria. They’re all second cousins out here.”

  Finch laughed. True enough. This end of the gene pool seemed pretty damn shallow.

  “Look I’ve got to go.” Her heavy breathing had subsided. Finch imagined that she was now preparing to jog across the top of Saddle Mountain.

  “Okay.”

  “So we’re back to square one.”

  “Not really.” Finch pouted and rubbed a finger over his lip. “When this kind of thing happens, you just have to reframe the facts. Once you get that right, the picture clarifies.”

  “Well let me know when your vision’s back to twenty-twenty.” Jennie’s voice carried a note of sarcasm. “I’ve got a lot to do.”

  “Okay. And tell me when you start the inquest.”

  She hung up without a response and Finch tossed his phone to the far end of the bed. What a bloody mess.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “I’m going to face this on my own!” Ben shouted and then dropped his head into his hands.

  “I don’t know that you can.” Ethan narrowed his eyes and considered the tears and remorse flooding through his son. Millie had already fled to the sanctuary of the bedroom when she saw her husband clenching his fists. And when Ben began to choke on his own sobbing, Ethan knew it was time to lower the heat. The two of them had gone at it for ten minutes as soon as the boy returned from basketball practice after school. Not a dog fight, but still, probably the worst argument they’d had.

  “Yes, I can,” Ben insisted when he recovered. He sat in a chair at the kitchen table, and lifted his head to look at his father. “With Donnel dead, it’s one thing I have to do. Go in there and talk to Sheriff Gruman on my own.”

  What could that possibly mean? Ethan paced in front of the table. He realized there had to be more to the missing pistol than mere theft. “All right, but I want to know how Donnel Smeardon died with my pistol in his possession.”

  “I don’t know the answer to that. Three days ago he didn’t even have the gun.”

  “What?” Ethan shook his head in disbelief. “And how do you know that?”

  Ben hated the look on his father’s face. “Okay. Before that … I gave the pistol to Donnel.”

  “You did.”

  “That’s all I can tell you right now.” He stood up and walked to the far end of the kitchen. He couldn’t explain why he gave the Glock to Donnel Smeardon. There was something crazy to it all that he didn’t understand. An impulse. A desire to have Donnel boast what a stand-up dude Ben Argyle was. None of it made sense.

  When Ben realized that his father had accepted this last statement, he cut through the back door, jumped on his mountain bike and pedaled toward the Sheriff’s office on Seventh. Ten minutes later he leaned the bike against the building wall, locked it and pressed his teeth together until they hurt. As he walked into the building he realized it was better he’d already had it out with his mother and father. That way Sheriff Gruman couldn’t hold the threat of parental disgrace against him, too. Despite the relief, he could still feel the adrenaline coursing through his body and he felt the sinews cramping in his arms an
d legs. Do not fuck with me, he whispered to himself.

  The interior of the station appeared to be half-empty, almost abandoned. He stood next to an area marked RECEPTION where Mary-Beth Wheeler talked on a phone at her desk. In front of her a long wood counter blocked off access to the center of the office and two rows of six workstations. One desk was occupied by an officer Ben did not recognize, the others were vacant and coated with a layer of dust. Before Mary-Beth could acknowledge him, Gruman appeared from an office door at the far end of the room and pointed a finger at him and clicked his thumb. Pistol-shot.

  “Over here, Ben.” His voice was flat, but loud enough to carry the length of the building. He disappeared back into the office.

  “Yessir,” Ben said and cursed himself. Mary-Beth pressed a concealed button and a gate in the middle of the counter popped open an inch. He pushed through it, swung it back in place and made his way to the sheriff’s office.

  “Close the door,” Gruman said without looking up from his chair.

  Ben shut the door and glanced around the workplace. The building, a designated heritage site, had always seemed pleasant enough to Ben from the outside, but the interior reeked of age and slow-motion collapse. He sat in a metal chair opposite Gruman’s massive desk which was littered with stacks of files, books, photographs, newspapers — a jumble of chaos that caught Ben by surprise. This mess belongs to the county sheriff?

  “Try to ignore this.” Gruman waved a hand at the clutter. “This is what happens when the economy goes south. We’ve been cut back and understaffed here for three years. Everybody left has taken salary cuts, including me.”

  Ben shrugged.

  “I guess that wouldn’t matter to someone your age.” He applied a smile to his lips and decided to change gears. “I appreciate you coming in, Ben. I’m sure it wasn’t pleasant getting the news from your father and Millie.”

  Ben turned his head aside. Another surprise: he knew his mother as Millie?

  “I know them both pretty well. We all went though AHS together.” He narrowed his eyes to take in the boy. Once again, there were so many ways to play this. “You kids still pronounce it awes?”

  “Some do.” He drew a long breath.

  Gruman nodded. Now that Ben had spoken, the weight of silence would fall on him. The sheriff stood up, took a key from his pocket and opened a locked vault behind his desk. From there he extracted an evidence bag and set it in front of the boy. He pushed some papers from the side of the desk, plumped his left thigh onto the wood surface, stared down at him and waited.

  “So that’s it.”

  “Look familiar?”

  Ben hesitated.

  “Go ahead. It’s not loaded. Not any more.”

  He lifted the opaque bag in his hand, pulled the plastic tight against the pistol grip. “I guess so.”

  “No, Ben.” Gruman adjusted his weight on the desk. “There’s no guessing involved. That’s your father’s pistol. Now what we all need to know — and by we, I mean me, your father and the prosecutor — what we need to know is how this gun came to sit here in front of you at this very moment in time.”

  Ben tried to swallow. He could barely open his mouth. “May I have some water?”

  May I? Gruman shook his head and realized he could back off a few degrees. Always best to make things easy. He walked to the far side of his desk and pressed a button on his phone. “Mary-Beth, bring Ben a glass of water would you?”

  He set the phone down and studied the boy in silence. A moment later Mary-Beth presented a tumbler of water and closed the door as she left.

  Ben took a long drink and tried to imagine what he could say. He decided to start with a question of his own. “What makes you think I know anything about this gun?”

  Gruman tried to smile. “Let me provide you with its most recent history. Last night Donnel Smeardon was pulled from the ocean. Drowned. Did you know that?”

  Ben glanced away. “Yes.”

  “I’m sure you did.” He walked beside the desk. “Your father’s pistol, the one in front of you now, was found on his body, tucked under his belt. Did you know that?”

  “Dad told me.” Ben looked at the sheriff. For the first time he could keep his eyes on him.

  “Yes, but your dad denied that he gave the gun to Smeardon.” He continued to stare at the boy. “I’d like you to tell me who you think gave Smeardon that pistol.”

  Ben opened his mouth to speak and looked away. He wet his lips and said, “I did.”

  “You did.”

  “Yessir.” With this confession out of the way, he suddenly felt that the worst of his culpability was now on record. If he’d committed any crime, that was the extent of it. The only thing that remained was to demonstrate that he’d had nothing to do with Smeardon taking drugs from Jackie Spitzer. And absolutely nothing to do with Smeardon’s drowning.

  “And you gave it to him for … money?”

  “No.”

  “Drugs?”

  “No!”

  Gruman held a hand over his mouth. “You gave it to him because you wanted to be cool?”

  Ben thought for a moment. This was the closest he could get to an actual reason. “Something like that.”

  The sheriff stared at him and let out a long sigh of disbelief. “All right. When did you last see him?”

  “On Monday. On the way to school.”

  “I understood that Donnel hasn’t attended class for two weeks.”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. I was on my way to school. He was on his bike. I flagged him down and asked for the gun. I told him Dad would find out it was missing.”

  Gruman wondered about the look on Ben’s face. Confessional, contrite, remorseful. If he could feel sorry for the boy, now would be the time to tell him. “All right. I believe you. Can you tell me why Smeardon wanted the gun in the first place?”

  “He said he wanted to take it to a drug deal. But he only told me that after I gave it to him.” Ben shook his head. Did this implicate him in another crime? Conspiracy of some kind? He pressed the balls of his hands to his eyes and pushed back the tears.

  “What drug deal?”

  “I don’t know.” He looked into the sheriff’s face. “I honestly don’t know. I don’t know anything more. Fuck.”

  Gruman rolled his upper lip over the lower and realized there was no more juice to squeeze from the boy. The best he could do would be to leave him with a warning. Put the fear into him. “Ben, how close do you think you are right now to being charged with a felony?”

  Ben lifted his hands, let them drop in his lap. “I don’t know.”

  Gruman sat on the edge of the desk again. He stared down into the boy’s face. “This close.” He held his thumb and index finger a quarter inch apart. “Now what do you think is holding me back from charging you right now with two, maybe three criminal charges?

  “I don’t know, sir.” Ben took another sip of water.

  “Me.” Gruman raised his eyebrows.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You don’t understand?!” He leaned forward. “Me. I’m the only person in this world standing between you and the fucking slammer. Now do you get that?”

  “Yessir,” Ben whispered. “I get it.”

  ※

  Three hours later Ben lay on his bed staring at a poster of LeBron James taped to the ceiling above his head. He drifted in and out of the funk that had squeezed him in its grip over the past week. Every time he thought that he might be nearing the end of this misery, a new phantom would emerge. The latest being the threat of arrest for a criminal felony. Worse, the decision to arrest him could be triggered by a mere whim. And apart from a statute of limitations — what, ten years? — Gruman’s threat had no limit. The sheriff could pull him aside five, seven, nine years from now and throw him in jail on the spot. Insane. That’s what his life had become in just two weeks. Deranged.

  He tapped the screen of Donnel Smeardon’s iPhone 6. Even though it had no data or telepho
ne service, the wireless connection worked flawlessly and the phone was loaded with a ton of apps, videos, music, games. He could never tell his parents he’d swapped this for the Glock; in fact, it seemed dangerous just to hold it in his hand. But he could get so lost in its digital labyrinth, wander mindlessly for hours from porn to military games to brain-numbing clips on YouTube. A complete and perfect distraction from the world. Only two of his friends owned one of these and he could see why everyone lusted after them. He wondered who owned the iPhone before it came into Donnel’s possession. But no matter who might be its rightful owner, he realized that he should turn it over to his father. With that surrender would come a final confession, hopefully the last time he’d have to come clean about his brief encounters with Donnel Smeardon.

  As he clicked from screen to screen another twenty minutes passed before he stumbled upon a file named 0427.mp3. He tapped the screen icon. A moment passed in which he could hear a grating sound through the earpiece, as if fabric or clothing was rubbing against a microphone. He boosted the volume and heard the sound of two men talking in low tones. He sat up on the bed and narrowed his eyes. Who were they? Donnel. Yes, he could make out Donnel’s nasal whine, his slang, his mumbling expressions. The other voice was flat, and then it rose with bleak authority. Good god. Sheriff Gruman.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “Wally, I really think I need to wrap this up.” Will Finch stared at the beige paint on the motel wall and wondered how he’d endured five nights in room 203.

  He switched his cell phone from his right ear to his left. The conversation with Wally Gimbel had gone longer than he’d imagined it would. He had intended to check in, let Wally know that he’d ferreted out as much of the story in Astoria as he could. The rest he could handle on the phone from his desk back at the eXpress. His one week on location had been profitable, no doubt. In fact he expected the story of Ray Toeplitz’s murder to blow wide open once Jennie Lee launched a formal investigation. But the question pivoted on when she’d get to it. He explained how the local politics had slowed the investigation to a crawl. Furthermore, he couldn’t release the statement against the Whitelaw boys from Gianna until he obtained corroborating testimony from someone else. Wally agreed. The story was just too explosive. Besides, the twins would argue that their step-sister had an interest in humiliating the family because they’d turned her lover away. Even more troubling was Jennie’s last call and her claim that the chain of evidence pointing to the Whitelaws had broken. Perhaps Donnel Smeardon, an eighteen-year-old drug dealer and school dropout, had shot Toeplitz. The fact that Smeardon himself had drowned within a week of the murder seemed much too convenient, but how could Finch pursue that line of inquiry? No matter what happened now, Finch knew the story angle had switched from “California Kennedys are Killers” to “Dime-bag Dealer Delivers Death.”