Duck almost imperceptibly shook his head.
“Joe Fowler,” Leah said. “My pa. That’s right, Duck. How strange is the world now? My pa shot Harry Stork. My pa. Until that article ran, Noah Stork had no idea I even existed, never mind that I became a cop in my pa’s footsteps. It was enough to bring the Stickman back out of hidin’. And that’s why, this time ’round, the letters were comin’ to me. Not Joe Fowler, but Leah Fowler. And Noah Stork knew damn well I went by Teal, but he just used ‘Fowler’ to get to me. And to raise the stakes of the game.”
“This story”—Duck laughed, shaking his head—“nobody’s ever goin’ to believe—”
“You might be right, Duck. If it wasn’t for the final proof we needed to wrap everythin’ up.” Here it went. This was where she had to sell it as best she could. Just a couple of little lies. A couple of little leaps of logic she’d made and was pretty confident were on the money.
“Remember I told you, nobody’s stepped foot in Harry’s house since the day it was searched?” she asked him. “The place was like a museum, Duck. Everything exactly as they left it in 1974. Only, back then they didn’t have the technology we have now. They didn’t have such a thing as ‘latent fingerprints.’ Know what latent prints are, Duck? Latent prints are fingerprints that are not visible to the naked eye, but do exist.”
She let this sink in while Duck tried to look everywhere but at her.
“You see, the person leaving the print would never see it. In fact, in 1974, nobody would ever see it. But these days, we have the ability to bring them out. Using all sorts of things I don’t even pretend to understand, we can find latent prints as easily if they were patent prints. Oh, in case you aren’t well-versed in the forensics lingo, patent prints are normal, everyday fingerprints you can see without the use of magnesium powders, chemicals, or ultraviolet radiation. Anyway, when our forensics guys searched the house for latent prints, Duck, guess what they found?”
He slowly lifted his eyes from the tabletop to hers.
“Go on, guess,” Leah said. “Please? Just take one wild guess?”
Duck looked back down.
“They found some! Isn’t that great, Duck? Fifteen years after the fact, we are able to find prints we couldn’t back then. How wonderful is that? And guess who those prints belong to? Come on. I’ll give you three guesses. Oh, and I’ll also tell you one of them came off of the .38 that was planted in Harry’s house. Aren’t you goin’ to guess?”
Duck didn’t move. His sweat continued to run. She wasn’t sure, but she thought she’d sold it. Everything now depended on what happened next.
She remembered back to the article she’d read in Scientific American while she and Dan had waited for Gary Carmichael’s receptionist to get off the phone that day.
“There’s something else, too, Duck. I don’t know how well-versed you might be in cutting-edge forensic technology these days, but have you ever heard of an ‘electron microscope’?” Leah put all her thought into making sure she came off deadly serious.
Duck didn’t answer her question.
“Yeah, I hadn’t, either, until my forensics guy mentioned it to me. Apparently, using this microscope they can now bounce electrons off of teensy-tiny grains of metal and look at what’s called a ‘backscatter pattern.’ Now, I don’t even pretend to understand the science, but from what my guy said, this ‘backscatter pattern’ is like a fingerprint. It contains all sorts of information about the metal and its history.”
She tried to read Duck’s face. She couldn’t tell whether he was buying it.
“So,” she continued, “let’s say someone punched that metal with some sort of code—or number. Perhaps a serial number? And then, somehow, that number got taken off, maybe it was ground off, or sanded off. Doesn’t matter how. Doesn’t matter. What’s important is that the backscatter pattern from this microscope bouncing electrons off the atoms in the gun’s metal allows forensic scientists to make out what those numbers were, even though they’d all been filed away.”
She gave this a moment to sink in. Sweat continued coming down the sides of Duck’s face and neck.
“Duck,” she said, lowering her voice almost to a whisper. “I know where Harry got that Berretta from. I know who that gun was, and still is, registered to.”
His eyes slowly closed. When they opened again, they stared straight at her. Duck looked like a heavyweight boxer coming out for round ten and realizing he’s got nothing left, that the next jab would be all it would take to knock him down, like he just wanted to get it over with.
Leah kept her voice quiet. “I can help you, Duck. If you confess, I can make sure you get off fairly easy. Remember how I did it last time, with Carmichael? I can do it again. But if you make me push this through the system . . . well, I’m afraid there won’t be anything I can do.”
She waited. Duck didn’t move. Just trembled. She wished she could read his thoughts. Doubt circled in her mind like vultures over a dead corpse. Had she oversold it? It didn’t really matter, anyway. By his reaction, she knew she was right. Really, that was justice enough after all this time. It would just have been nice, though, if only for the memory of her pa—
“What do you want me to do?” Duck said quietly, his eyes reaching up to hers.
“All I want is for you to tell me the truth,” Leah said calmly and smiled.
CHAPTER 75
“So, Duck confessed to setting up Harry Stork?” Dan asked Leah. They were sitting in Leah’s living room at opposite ends of Leah’s sofa. Two wineglasses and a bottle of cabernet sat on the table. Dan’s glass was almost empty. Leah’s was pretty near full. They’d been sitting there for less than ten minutes.
“He did.”
“And you didn’t take me along?” He shook his head. “I would’ve loved to see him squirm.”
“I don’t know if I could’ve done it with you there. I’m not a good liar.”
Dan’s eyes widened. “You lied? You? Say it ain’t so.”
Leah laughed. “I had to. I had to make him think we had him dead to rights. Well, we kinda do, but I wanted to make sure of it. Besides, I thought we were allowed to lie.”
Dan finished his glass and poured himself a new one. He went to top off Leah’s but noticed none of hers was missing. “Are you even drinking?” he asked.
“I drink a little slow.”
“Apparently. In the same way Boy George is a little gay.”
Leah lifted her glass and made a show of taking a sip.
“I knew I could count on you.” Dan smiled. “So, where were we?”
“About lying bein’ okay.”
“Ah, you actually do have to watch yourself there. The rules are a bit sticky.”
“How so?”
“I think the wording is something like, ‘A police officer can use deception in an investigation so long as the deception doesn’t result in coercion sufficient to make someone confess to a crime they did not commit.’ ”
“So I was fine, then.” The sun had just gone down, and with the windows open, the room flooded with a purple-orange from the night sky.
“You were fine as long as Duck is guilty.”
“You think there’s a chance he isn’t?”
Dan waved that question away. “I think everyone’s guilty. Just makes things easier. Covers all my tracks. So, there’s still some things I’m a bit hazy on, probably because I never went through that towering stack of files you and your son read.” He smiled at his little dig at the end. The man really thought he was funny.
“You mean my son, who solved the case you’ve been working on for ten years?”
Dan swallowed a gulp of wine. “That’d be the one, yes.”
“Well, what do you want to know?”
“Why did Noah go back to being the Stickman after fifteen years? Especially when he had such a good gig as the Strangler?”
“Took me a bit to figure that one out, too. Turns out the answer had been literally staring at the side of my
head all day while I worked.”
Dan looked at her questioningly.
“The interview I did in the Examiner. I talked about my pa being Joe Fowler and how his most important case was hunting down the Stickman. Noah Stork read the article and became aware Joe had a daughter working his old job in Alvin. I guess the temptation was just too great to resist.”
“I see. Wow, fame really does come fraught with danger. I thought those bleeding-heart actors not wanting the paparazzi to bother them were just being whiny.”
Leah smiled. “That’s actually how Noah Stork knew Ethan was goin’ to be in the office early the morning of the Fourth.”
Dan shook his head. “Sorry, you just lost me. Could be all the wine.”
She knew he was kidding. She was just happy she’d managed to keep it at only wine for Dan’s last night before heading back to Birmingham. “The interview I gave in the paper. I say right in it that I work most holidays like the Fourth, and that it makes for a long day on account of I usually check in to the office early in the morning before hitting the streets.”
“Wow, so the letter actually was meant to be found by you.”
“Pretty sure, yep.”
Leah pulled two file folders from the coffee table. She’d picked them up at work yesterday on her way back from her visit with Duck. Included in the folders was a background check, a medical report, and all the other items Chris thought were pertinent for Noah Stork.
“What’s that?” Dan asked.
“Stuff Chris pulled for me about Noah Stork. I picked it up at the station yesterday on my way back from Talladega.”
“Anything surprisin’?”
“A little, yeah. The man retired from the army after twenty-two years of service.”
“I thought he was crazy?”
“Oh, he is. But I think it’s the kind of crazy that might work in your favor in some environments. He even participated in D-day with the Five Hundred and Seventh, as part of the Eighty-Second Airborne Division.”
“So, he jumped out of planes?”
Leah nodded. “Hence the jump boots. Also, the original Stickman gun, the Smith and Wesson Model Ten—it’s possible that came back from the war with him. Back then, the gun was known as a Smith and Wesson Victory.”
“Nice,” Dan said. “No serial numbers on that gun, right?”
“No, you’re thinking of the Beretta Ninety-Two Harry had when he died. The Model Ten wasn’t registered.”
“I see. So, what was with his arm? Something else he brought home from the military?”
“Appears so.” She read from the report, trying to paraphrase. “He received a Purple Heart for his action in Operation Varsity, where his team dropped behind enemy lines. They were under fire, and someone from his own platoon fired a shot that severed part of his left deltoid muscle. It’s all very medical mumbo jumbo. Something called compartment syndrome.”
“Compartment syndrome? Never heard of it. And he was shot by one of his own guys?”
“Yeah, apparently they had to investigate the incident before he was given the Purple Heart. But whatever this compartment syndrome is, it’s not something easily treated. Stork’s condition grew worse through the years. Which is why—”
“Which is why he had it out for the medical community. This also explains why his victims seemed to be getting better at running from the Strangler in his later years.”
“And the fact that the Stickman had problems carrying victim number ten down that short path,” Leah added, “not to mention the drag marks I found left by Samantha Hughes. I’m pretty sure that, whatever his condition was, probably something like arthritis set into it not long ago. My pa had arthritis in his gun hand the last few years he worked on the force. It wasn’t a pretty sight to watch him pretendin’ to be just as good as ever.”
Dan nodded gravely.
“But with Stork,” Leah went on, “I should have seen it. I interviewed him twice, and, now that I think back, he never used his left hand or arm for nothin’. Funny I didn’t pick up on it at the time. He obviously had mobility in his left hand, though, since he did use it to type, but even his typing was affected. And I saw that and still nothin’ clicked.”
“Typing?” Dan finished the last of his glass and refilled. He topped off Leah’s.
“Stork was writing a book on mental illnesses.”
“How apropos.”
“Yeah, well, if he hadn’t died, he’d probably have a nice quiet place to write. That is if they didn’t give him the death penalty.”
“That’s a big if.”
“And one we’ll never know. Can’t say I’m too broken up about that.” Leah took a sip of wine. “I think this syndrome thing is why he took a break between being the Stickman and becoming the Strangler.”
“Actually, that’s a good point,” Dan said. “Why did Tommy Stork’s move north correspond so well with the start of the Strangler murders?”
“On that point, I can only guess. But consider it an educated guess.”
“Okay. Shoot.”
“First, the reason Tommy Stork hung out around Birmingham so much was because that was where his ma was buried. That was why he moved there, to be closer to her. I reckon finding her that day when she took all the pills was really hard on him.”
“Wow. He just went from potential serial killer to momma’s boy in my head. Quite the transition.”
“Anyway,” Leah said, making googly eyes at him, “if you’d let me finish, it’s no secret that there wasn’t any love lost between Tommy and his pa. In fact, looking back at my interviews with Noah Stork, I think he might’ve originally planned to let Tommy take the fall for both the Stickman and the Strangler. I have found a pattern, though, going through the Strangler incidents you listed on my timeline.”
“Our timeline,” Dan interjected. “But let’s not split hairs.”
“Okay, our timeline. Noah Stork had a compulsion to record things. When we searched his house the night he killed Jonathon, we found an abundance of journals and stuff. His own mind seemed to fascinate him.”
“Wow, I think I can actually relate to that. So, you’re saying he journaled about being a serial killer?”
Leah set down her wine and leaned back on the sofa. “No, nothing that obvious, but he did talk about all the times when he tried to visit Tommy and make some sort of peace.”
“Let me guess,” Dan said. “That never went well?”
Leah shook her head. “Never. In fact, he’d usually leave all riled up. And those dates correspond almost exactly to the victim dates you put on our timeline.” She fell quiet then and looked away.
“What just happened?” Dan asked. “What’s wrong?”
“Just . . . it’s . . . all this time and you know?” She looked up at him. “My pa really did shoot the wrong guy.”
Dan spread his palms open and touched his fingertips together. “He was a good man. He did good work. I doubt he made any more mistakes than anyone else. Probably a lot less.”
Quietly, she nodded, her eyes looking at the TV that wasn’t turned on. “It’s just . . . somehow it makes everything seem so . . . random and useless.”
“I thought you didn’t believe in ‘random’?”
She let out a big breath and took another sip of wine. “You know, when I was fifteen, he was my world. That man meant everything to me. He could do no wrong.”
“You know Leah, he did a lot of right.”
She nodded, her eyes back on the TV. She remembered what Strident had said. Something about Ethan telling him they were a lot alike, she and her pa, and how that must make her a good cop.
Did it? She used to love being compared to him. But now . . . ?
Was that the real issue that was bothering her? That if he could be capable of making such a mistake, was she capable of it, too?
Ethan had told her that her pa spent the later parts of his life still going over that case. The Stickman. Harry Stork. Her pa had known. He must’ve. He’d known he
made a mistake. And somehow, he lived with it.
Life went on.
And that’s where Leah’s problem was. She didn’t know if she could live with it. She wasn’t sure life would still go on at all.
As she’d said to Strident, she had some mighty big shoes to fill.
“Wow. Hey, what time do you have?” Dan asked, breaking the silence.
Leah checked her watch. “Just past midnight.”
“How ’bout we make out for a bit? Abe’s at Dewey’s for the night.”
“Yeah, but Caroline’s in her room.”
“I can be quiet. Besides, she never comes out.”
“I don’t know.”
“I’m leaving tomorrow.”
Leah just half-smiled at him.
“Okay, then,” Dan said. “How ’bout just some heavy petting?”
Leah downed the rest of her wine and scooted over beside him on the sofa. “Okay,” she said. “Heavy petting I can do.”
CHAPTER 76
Leah knocked on Caroline’s bedroom door. “Is it okay if I come in, honey?” She took the lack of an answer as it being all right. Slowly, she opened the door and saw Caroline lying on her bed, her tearstained face turned toward the window where, outside, the sky had just begun to grow purple as twilight began setting in.
Sitting on the edge of her daughter’s bed, Leah ran her hands through Caroline’s hair.
“Would it help if I told you I know how you feel?” Leah asked.
“Why, Mom?” Caroline asked. “Why did he have to die?”
“I don’t know, honey. It’s a question nobody can really answer. What’s important is that you don’t ever forget him.”
“How could I ever forget him? I loved him, Mom.”
Leah wrapped her arms around her daughter. “I know you did. He was a great guy.”
She started crying hard. “What is it?” Leah asked.
“He gave me a promise ring.”
Leah smiled. “I know.”
Caroline looked up briefly. “He broke his promise.”
“No, no. That’s not how you look at this. He died trying to save your life.”
“I know,” she said, getting a small handle on her tears. “But ... I even wrote him a poem. I was going to give it to him when I got back from the five-and-dime that night. I waited because I was worried he might not like it. Now I wish I’d have just given him the stupid thing when he got here.” She began crying. “He never got to read it.”
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