Jump The Line (Toein' The Line Book 1)

by McFarland, Mary

  “Sure. I’ve got time for a cup,”I say.

  A tall man, once athletic, he lumbers on arthritic legs to a custom made bar with a lamp made of deer antlers.

  “I thought I was gonna die before anyone dredged up all the shit that happened that summer,”he begins, without preamble. Pouring us two steaming hot cups of coffee, he settles in his worn old lounge chair.

  “Sit,”he says, waving me to a pink leather couch directly across from him. Like him, it’s worn, yet it’s too feminine a piece of furniture, one he’d obviously never choose.

  I scan pictures on the stone fireplace’s mantle. Sheriff Knowles in college, a football player, and then later as a linebacker for the Chicago Bears. “That you?”I ask.

  “Yuh. In my younger days.”

  There’s also the requisite pictures of children and grandchildren, of Sheriff Knowles on family picnics. A dark statuesque beauty stands beside him, gazing adoringly up into his eyes.

  “Wife,”he says. “I miss the old gal. She passed couple of years back. Can’t say I’m sorry. She was in a lot of pain.”

  His gaze darts into a private space, evading my sympathy—or maybe his pain.

  I enjoy the coffee’s hot black edge, its deep flavor. He might live alone, but he makes a mean cup of java. “Sorry for your loss,”I say, not sure what to say. “Let me tell you why I’m here,”I begin, guiding his attention back to that summer.

  He’s a talker, the kind of man who makes everyone his friend, but Sheriff Knowles’ reputation precedes him. He’s got the highest solve rate of any sheriff in Clermont County’s history. He’s no one a perp would want to cross, from what I hear.

  After our first pot of coffee, we’re Aidan and Billy Lee, not Detective Hawks and Sheriff Knowles. Billy’s finally got the audience he’s been waiting for and, if he gets his way and can prod me in the right direction, his only open-unsolved case will once again become hot and, if solved, yield Sheriff Knowles a perfect solve record.

  I feel like I’ve hit jackpot. Billy Lee’s a walking encyclopedia. He’s forgotten nothing.

  But there’s a price I have to pay for information. He doesn’t take a direct route to answering my questions about Stoke Farrel. He plies me for an hour with background.

  “Something most folks don’t know is that the murdered woman danced naked on the table top at Croc’s,”he says, talking about Stoke Farrel’s mother, an exotic dancer at an infamous dive called“Crocodile’s,”or“Croc’s.”

  I interrupt to clarify. “His mother was from Goshen, and she was murdered?” I want to make sure Billy Lee and I are talking about the same Stoke Farrel and his mother, a murder victim, yet another of many this case is starting to disgorge.

  “I’m interested in a juvenile called Stoke Farrel, who lived in Goshen several years back. I need to know if anything unusual happened that summer—”

  “Well, now, wait a sec. I’m getting to that,”he says, picking up a spittoon, an old Dunkin’ Donuts Styrofoam cup. “But you need to understand who that kid’s mother was first. It explains a helluva lot.”

  Now we’re getting down to the facts, down to what makes Billy Lee—and me—tick. I know he’s anxious to solve a cold case he worked in his glory days, but who exactly are we talking about? Who’s the vic? Is it Megalo Don’s victims, or is it Stoke Farrel’s mother, the former exotic dancer who was murdered?

  The more we talk the more I get the urgent need to call Wes to see if he’s made it over to Stoke Farrel’s apartment and learn whether or not Alaina’s there. Problem is, I can’t call Wes because I can’t get Billy Lee to stop talking. The genie’s out of the bottle, and there’s no putting it back.

  “Alright,”I say, taking my opening after he’s filled me in on Stoke Farrel’s mother’s murder. “Take me back to that summer.”

  Chapter 49

  “She was a whore,”Billy Lee says, shooting tobacco juice like bullets into the Dunkin’ Donuts cup. “So you can’t blame her son much for the way he turned out, can you?”

  “Uh, no,”I say, growing desperate. I’ve kept Billy Lee on track with his story telling so far, but only by promising I’ll come back and listen to him reminisce about the hight point of his life, the time he played two games for the Chicago Bears.

  “I blew out my knee second game, but that wasn’t what sidelined me. It was Molly. Old gal shot me down just when my career was taking off,”he says. “She brought my ass home and told me I had to choose her—or Ara Parseghian. I told her—”

  “Was Stoke Farrel’s mother abusive to the boy?” I interrupt, putting my degree to work and asking the questions I hope will provide insight into a killer’s mind.

  Not getting a whole lot, I again glance at my watch. “I have to be getting back to Cincinnati,”I say. Where’s Wes? What’s he doing? Has he checked on Alaina? Has he found her?

  “She made her living as a stripper. She sold favors to truckers out behind the bar in a camper,”Billy Lee says, heedless of my efforts to interview and run. “Isn’t that abuse enough? Can you imagine what that boy saw? What kind of life he lived?”

  “Where else did Francine dance, aside from Croc’s?”

  “You know, that was an awful nice place once,”Billy Lee says, a dreamy far-away look capturing his rheumy gaze. “I went there with the boys for lunch—”

  “Billy Lee, did she dance at the Ass?”

  “Hell, now, thatwas some bar in its day—”

  “Did she dance there?”

  “Well,”he says,“that’s where they found her body, poor girl, out in the alley. She was laying by the dumpster and stuffed in a garbage bag.”

  Dumpster? Garbage bag? This is starting to sound like a familiar story. “Which spot? Which alley?”I ask, frantic to drill down on what happened to Stoke Farrel’s mother, and then—if the earth holds together long enough for Billy Lee to run out of hot air—to make the past connection I’m looking for between Alaina and Stoke Farrel.

  “Well,”he says, scratching his head,“that’s the damndest thing. There was a stripper bar back then, where she worked. Not the Ass, mind you. The one I’m talking about was owned by a local Mafioso type called John Casanova.” Another ear scratch. More tobacco juice bullets shooting into the Dunkin’ cup. “I helped the FBI investigate Casanova for a murder at a drive-in theatre, but we couldn’t pin it on him.”

  Oh, Jesus. I’ve no idea where Billy Lee’s ramblings are taking him, but when he mentions John Casanova, red flags shoot up. I keep pressing him, a challenge in itself to keep him from going off on tangents.

  “John Casanova? Do you mean they found . . . what’s her name, Mrs. Farrel, Stoke Farrel’s mother . . . they found her body in the alley behind the bar owned by John Casanova?”

  “Eeeyyyep,”Billy Lee says. “A dive. Titty bar. Me‘n the boys went there to break up fights—”

  “He’s not John Casanova today,”I interrupt. “He calls himself Nick LaFiglia.”

  “Eeeyyep, I hear you,”Billy Lee says. His rheumy eyes twinkling, he doesn’t miss a beat, and I’ve no doubt he’s never for a second given up on solving this, his only uncolved case. “But back then, he went by Casanova, not LaFiglia. He bought up a city block in Newport, where Omar’s is today.”

  Ping! Ping! Ping!

  “Omar’s? That’s where they found Mrs. Farrel’s body? Out back in the alley? In a garbage bag?”

  “Two things you need to know, young man,”Sheriff Knowles says, skipping his usual“Eeeeyyep”and gazing at me over the rim of his spittoon, the Dunkin’ D Styrofoam cup. He’s a rube, but I’m not selling him short. There’s a couple of diplomas to the side of the stone fireplace’s mantle, both from Northwestern. This man’s no one’s fool, and he’s telling the truth and laying down facts as he knows them.

  “One,”he says,“you called Stokley Farrel’s mother‘Mrs. Farrel.’ Back then, she went by a few different names. One of them was Farrel, which was her maiden name. Later on, she became Mrs. Verbote. Mrs. Francine Verbote.” />
  “Verbote? Go on,”I say, ironically now wanting Billy Lee to continue talking. “Please.”

  “She was a beaut. Francine caught the eye of well, this . . . hmmm . . . I wouldn’t call him a‘nice’ young man, but he was the scion of a wealthy family. When the Verbotes adopted him, his name was Delbert DeLong. They changed Delbert’s last name to Verbote after they adopted him, but Delbert was a rebellious hellion. Gave the Verbotes fits from the git-go.

  “Later, when he and Francine Farrel married, it was the damndest thing. Shocked hell out of us, once we figured out what he’d done. He took Francine’s maiden name, and called himself Mr. Farrel.”

  Billy Lee looks square at me, checking to see where his latest remark ranks on my stun register. “Pretty weird, huh? Man taking a woman’s maiden name?”

  “Well, no,”I say. Not if you’ve criminal intent or something you desperately want to hide from the world. “But,”I add,“it’s a custom taking hold in today’s society. Beats hell out of me, though, Billy Lee,”I say, shaking my head. Maybe Delbert Verbote, aka Delbert Delong, was ahead of his time.

  “And that man calls himself what today?”I ask, knowing where Billy Lee is taking me with all this, but in the back of my brain, hoping hard that Delbert Verbote is not the Doctor Brick Verbote I know.

  “Well, it gets even weirder,”Billy Lee says. “When Francine married Delbert, he took her maiden name. So he became Mr. Delbert Farrel. But Francine—bless her criminal-minded soul—became Mrs. Verbote, but only when she needed to run a scam or two. Otherwise, she used her maiden name of Farrel.

  Now,”Billy Lee adds,“along comes this child, their son, a boy called Stokely Farrel, who starts calling his daddy,“Brick”because for some reason he can’t—or won’t—say daddy. Anyway, Delbert’s known today as Brick Verbote,”he adds, finally. “Our little Delbert grew up to become a dentist. Calls himself a”—he scratches his head—“an . . . Odon. . . .”

  “Odontologist,”I say, filling in the blank in Billy Lee’s vocabulary.

  “Well, ain’t that the damndest thing you ever heard of? Kid like that growing up to become a . . .”

  Billy Lee shakes his head. “If you want a textbook case of dysfunction, the Verbotes, or the Farrels, were it. The fighting commenced after Francine’s and Brick’s son’s birth and ended only when Brick stuffed Francine into a garbage bag and dumped her in that alley behind Omar’s. Can’t prove it, though,”he says. “Never could, but now he’s a world famous whatchamacalit—?”

  “—odontologist,”I repeat, barely able to continue listening.

  “Right,”Billy Lee says,“so it’d be impossible to nail him for Francine’s murder.” He stops chewing and looks straight at me. “Unless someone in law enforcement—”

  I don’t do cold or“unsolved”cases, but I don’t anything to discourage the hopeful look in Billy Lee’s eyes.

  “I’ve always hated it that this case ruined my perfect record. Ain’t that a damn shame? Me with a near perfect record, and along comes this psycho family and ruins it.”

  “So Stoke Farrel took his mother’s maiden name, too?”I ask, heading off another discussion of Billy Lee’s cold case. “I mean, he’d legally be Stoke Verbote, but he’s calling himself Stoke Farrel?”

  “Eeeyyyep. Like father, like son, those murdering bastards,”Billy Lee says, leading me right back to his unsolved case and Brick Verbote. “I know the sonofabitch did it. I just couldn’t pull enough evidence together to nail him.”

  “Did Clermont County try to prosecute Delbert—Brick Verbote—for Francine’s murder?”

  “His family had a helluva time getting a lawyer who would even defend Delbert,”Billy Lee says. “The case was controversial, but Francine’s body was chewed up so bad. Looked like one of those crocs at the bar she danced at had gnawed on her. They’ve got money, though, those Verbotes. They found themselves a high powered lawyer. Got him off. Lack of evidence.”

  “Do you recall Stoke Farrel having any connection with a girl called Alaina Colby?”

  “You’re talking about Berta Colby’s girl, I take it?” He spits, and tobacco juice sluices down his chin, darkened by salt-and-pepper stubble. “Berta Colby and Francine were thick as thieves. That is, until Francine found out Brick had a thing for Berta. He loved feet, you see, and Berta wasn’t just a looker: she was an exotic dancer, same as Francine.”

  “What about Berta’s daughter, Alaina? Did she and Stoke Farrel cross paths that you know of?”

  “They played together—two of the cutest kids you’d ever want to see—but that boy turned weird and got slammed in juvie.”

  “What for?”

  “Turns out he had a fetish just like his daddy’s. Liked women’s feet. Got a girl named Julianna Short down at school and chewed off and ate a couple of her toes before they could stop him.”

  “Jesus!”

  I bolt to my feet. “Sheriff Knowles, excuse me. I’ve gotta make a call.”

  Maybe they lacked evidence in Francine Farrel’s murder, but Stoke Farrel could be emotionally disturbed enough to stalk and kill Alaina. He might even be Megalo Don. But if so, why did he switch shoulders between Meera and Angie Miller, and then our latest victim, Jane Doe?

  Unless—I think the puzzle through. What if there’s two killers, a father-son team?

  “Dad, I need a warrant,”I say, the second Judge Hawks comes on the line. “Two, if I can get them. Sheriff Knowles just handed me the probable cause I need to search for evidence in the Megalo Don murders.”

  “Whose premises and what specific areas do you want to search?”

  “Two,”I say. “Doctor Brick Verbote’s and Stoke Farrel’s. All of it,”I add. “I’ve got to search their entire premises.

  “And Billy Lee,”I say, disconnecting from my call with Judge Hawks,“we’re reopening your unsolved case. Looks like your killers have moved to my jurisdiction.”

  Billy Lee’s smile grows so big it could swallow that cud of tobacco he’s chewing. “By God,”he says, thumping me on the back,“I’m gonna be the only sheriff in Clermont County’s history with a hundred percent solve rate. The boys down at Ollie’s are gonna love this. . . .”

  “I’ve got to run, sir. Thanks for the coffee.”

  “What’s your hurry?”he asks. “Sit a spell and let me tell you about the time I played linebacker for the Bears—”

  “Thanks, Billy Lee,”I say,“but I gotta run.”

  He doesn’t even notice me leaving. Sheriff Knowles is off on another story about the old timers’ football game, the reunion of the boys who played for the great Ara Parseghian.

  Chapter 50

  I spend the drive back to Goshen fuming. If BCI had gotten my report on Brick Verbote back to me sooner, I’d not have wasted so much time. I’d certainly have made the connection between him and Stoke Farrel quicker. I’d also have known who, among Alaina’s friends, had access to the material to make those dental grills used to disguise Megalo Don’s bite marks.

  I call Wes and leave a message. “Call me. I need you to meet me at Verbote Dental. Pronto.”

  Then I call NPD dispatch and ask for an AutoTrak on Doctor Verbote. “Get me his home address,”I order,“and then call Judge Hawks and give it to him, along with Stoke Farrel’s. He’s got a couple of warrants I need completed.”

  I pull in at Berta’s trailer and get out. Floyd’s lunging at his chain, worse than before for some reason. “Down, Floyd. I’m friends with the dog catcher.”

  The remark further pisses him off. When I try edging by, he goes stark raving mad barking and slobbering like he’s gonna break that tractor chain. At first I think it’s me, but then I realize why Floyd’s acting so mad. She’s not home. Berta’s skipped. Floyd’s doing guard duty.

  “Hellfuckingfire. I can’t find Wes. I can’t find Alaina. DeeDee’s MIA. What’s wrong with these damn people?”

  I do the only thing I can. I call Captain Meyers. “Captain, I need backup.”

  I give him Verbo
te’s business address, and then I ask him to serve my warrants for searches at both Verbote’s and Stoke Farrel’s addresses for evidence—and for Alaina. The captain’s team will beat me to both locations, since I’ve got the drive back to Cincinnati ahead of me.

  Despite his dislike over my affair with Darlene Laws, he gives me what I need.

  “Got you covered, Detective,”he says. “You got time for a quickie?”

  To save time, we do phone briefings called“quickies.” Helps make them less burdensome. “Sure,”I say.

  “I got a call from Berta Colby an hour ago,”the captain says. “She says Alaina’s got evidence Stoke Farrel’s your murderer, Megalo Don. Mrs. Colby’s going over there now, although I warned her not to. I’ve sent two boots over in an unmarked to intercept her.”

  “Captain, have you heard from your boots?”

  “Nada,”the captain says. “Not yet.”

  “Hellfire,”I say. Have we added a pair of boots to our rapidly growing list of missing LEOs? “I’m heading to Cincinnati now, Captain. I’ll meet them at Farrel’s apartment. Anything else?”

  “They found Theodore McCloskey’s body. He was tortured to death. Your friend, SAC Smith’s been talking to Omar Jain to see what he knows, if anything.”

  I inhale, feeling the tension knotting in my shoulders. “What did SAC Smith learn?”

  “Turns out, Omar Jain’s from Punjab. He’s been here in the U.S. looking for his daughter’s murderer. He brought some home-grown Punjabi muscle with him, it looks like, some serious thugs led by a man who goes by the name of Rakesh Gupta.”

  “A fake name,”I muse, recalling how Rakes seemed a little off, even for a lawyer.

  “No doubt,”the captain agrees.“Looks like Jain is the father of our vic, Meera—”

  “Holy shit!” I make the connection before Meyers can finish. “Omar Jain’s bar is a front he’s been using while he looks for his daughter.”

  “Not his daughter, Detective Hawks,”the captain says,“his daughter’s murderer.”