Cruelest Month

by Aaron Stander

  A long silence followed. “Tucker’s got a girlfriend downstate in Royal Oak. Hooked up with her again at their 60th high school reunion. She’s just crazy about the Amish. So when we go to visit, we sorta dress up. Makes her happy.”

  “The potatoes, Sam?”

  “I’m getting to it, Ray. The farm hasn’t been doing too good; the land’s played out. And the price of gasoline for that old truck, maybe 12, 14 miles a gallon. So we were selling potatoes at the farmers market down there, you know gourmet, organic. City people have no sense of money. Five dollars a pound. Couldn’t bring enough. They’d be gone in an hour or two. Even chefs from fancy restaurants buying ’em. So after a few months we ran through all of the ones we’d stored up, so we’ve been borrowing a few. I mean, I’m surprised anyone missed them. And we plan to return them next growing season.”

  “Why didn’t you just buy them?”

  “Well, like I said, things are tough. The casino and gasoline….”

  “So you’re stealing from your friends, and you’re also cheating your customers.”

  “That’s not true. We just borrowed them. As for those people in the city, a potato is a potato. No one was cheated.”

  “Should I get a search warrant for your house and look for the book?”

  Tucker laughed, “I’d like to see you find it. It’s been missing for weeks.”

  “What happens now?” asked Sam.

  “We give you a ride to town in our fancy police car. Sergeant Lawrence here will tape a statement from each of you, separately. We will compare the two interviews to see if either one of you can tell the truth about anything. Then we’ll turn the case over to the prosecutor’s office and let them sort it out.”

  “Are we going to jail?” asked Tucker. “We were planning to vote for you. Guess we can’t do it if we’re behind bars.”

  “There’s no justice in this country anymore,” said Sam. “If you’re not part of the one percent, you just get screwed.”

  37

  It was almost dark when Mackenzie lay down behind a berm at the edge of a wooded area overlooking Jim Moarse’s house. In the fading light, she glassed the area, adjusting the focus on her small, powerful binoculars. There were no signs of a dog or any other animals on the property. The door on the garage, a separate building at the side of the lot some distance from the back door, was closed.

  After a few minutes, she moved along the ridgeline, looking for an angle that would allow her to see into the interior of the house. A long set of windows ran along the south-facing wall of the structure. She found a spot near a clump of cedars, halfway down the hill, and slid between the branches. Moarse appeared to be working at the stove, then he moved to a table, carrying a plate. He pushed stacks of newspaper aside before sitting down, his back to the window.

  Mackenzie checked her watch. It was after 10 o’clock. When she next looked at the luminous dial again, only five minutes had passed. She was wondering if she could make an hour.

  Moarse went back to the sink, plate in hand. He opened the refrigerator, took something out, then walked toward another part of the room. A large flat screen filled a wall with motion and color.

  Mackenzie rotated her body, searching for branches that she could lean into. She was becoming stiff and uncomfortable in the cool night air. Her elbows resting on a branch, she kept her focus on the windows. Other than the flicker from the TV, nothing seemed to be happening.

  Three vehicles passed during the first hour. First, a pick-up with one taillight going north. Then the same truck in the other direction 18 minutes later. Next, a small, dark sedan with a noisy muffler wheezed up the hill and off into the dark countryside. Then nothing. Mackenzie was lost in thought, going over the same things she had been struggling with for days. She was bored and frustrated and ready to throw in the towel.

  A few minutes after 11, a large SUV came up the road, slowed, and turned into Moarse’s drive. Her quick scan of the license number before the lights were switched off confirmed her suspicions. As the door opened and the dome light came on, she got a quick look at Richard Sabotny. He reached back into the Land Rover and pulled out a large brown paper bag. He walked up to the front door and entered, not pausing to knock.

  Mackenzie could see the men moving around the room, but her vantage point felt suddenly limited. Slipping out of the cedars, she crouched, and then scrambled down the hill into the ditch. She waited, listening and looking, before darting across the road into the brush. Slowly she crept forward until she had a clear view of the interior.

  Sabotny and Moarse, both holding glasses, were engaged in an intense conversation. She saw Sabotny reach out and take Moarse’s glass, move toward the sink, and hand it back a few minutes later as he continued talking. When the two disappeared from view, Mackenzie assumed that they had settled in front of the TV. She was startled a few minutes later when an exterior light switched on and Sabotny came out into the yard, followed by Moarse. They headed toward a small block building at the rear of the property. As she watched, the two men stacked kindling in the external firebox, squirted on some kind of liquid, and put a match to the pile. Then, they stood around talking, each with a drink in hand, adding wood until the fire began to roar. They shut the door on the firebox and returned to the house, turning off the yard light.

  The initial activity had given Mackenzie a burst of adrenalin, yet now she was struggling again with the tedium and discomfort of waiting. It turned out to be a long wait. For the next hour, Sabotny would periodically return to what she’d decided was a sauna to add more wood to the fire. She also observed him inside, making drinks and carrying them out of her view.

  Finally the door opened again, and Sabotny appeared with Moarse. With difficulty, Sabotny guided the staggering figure toward the sauna. A small door opened and Sabotny hauled Moarse up the couple of steps. The door closed for just a moment, then Sabotny was back out. He switched on a flashlight and appeared to be looking through a heap of building materials at the side of the garage, eventually moving behind the building and out of view. She could hear things being tossed about. When he returned, he was dragging a large, heavy piece of metal, which he jammed it into the ground, wedging it against the outside of the door. He loaded the firebox again, then went back to the house.

  Mackenzie watched him repeat this process of walking to the house, presumably to watch TV, and emerging to reload the stove with dread. After an hour, he lifted away the metal jam from the sauna. He lugged it back behind the garage where she heard it clang against other metal. When he opened the sauna door, he stood for a long moment, moving his flashlight beam around the interior. Then he kicked the door shut and went back in the house.

  For another agonizing 10 minutes, she waited while he paced back and forth between the kitchen and the living area. Finally, the door opened and he backed out, dragging a large garbage bag. Leaving it on the stoop, he opened the hatch on the Range Rover, and then went back for the bag. He lifted it in both arms, threw it into the SUV, got in the driver’s seat, backed out onto the road, and drove slowly away.

  Mackenzie held her position until the sound of his V8 stopped echoing across the countryside. She crept forward, moving along the perimeter of the yard, trying to stay hidden in the brush. She crawled near the rear of the sauna, then moved along the side, stopping and listening, every few steps. Finally, she reached the door and she pulled it open. A wave of searing heat exploded out, but she entered and pulled the door closed behind her. She switched on her light. Moarse was sprawled, naked, on the floor.

  Pulling off a glove, she felt for a pulse in his neck, his skin hot and dry. Then she killed the light and fled the building, retreating across the yard, the road, back up the hill and into the woods, where she stood, heart pounding, inhaling the cold night air. Her first impulse was to keep going, run, but she straightened up, working to control her breathing and quiet her emotions.

  She walked back, slowly but openly, and headed to the garage. A quick flash of her l
ight revealed an old Jeep CJ parked in the center of several piles of debris. She slipped back outside, pulled the door shut, and reaching into an inner pocket, removed a phantom cell phone. She tore open its plastic bag as she returned to the sauna. With gloved hands she switched it on and activated the 911 calling program. Then she dropped the phone behind a stack of split logs at the side of the building. Thirty minutes later, she rolled past the scene, driving at a moderate speed, observing the emergency vehicles clustered in the drive.

  38

  Ray was revisiting a nightmare, a recurring dream he’d had since college. He was in a large lecture hall, the air close and heavy. A stack of blue books occupied the upper right-hand corner of his desk. A Xerox copy of the exam questions was directly in front of him. He slowly scanned the items, searching for one that he could answer. How did he get into this situation? He couldn’t remember signing up for the course. It was his roommate who’d dragged him off to the exam, and now he was struggling to find a topic that he could write on that would save him from certain failure.

  He integrated the sound of his cell phone into the dream, wondering why anyone would bring a phone with them to an exam. Eventually, the metallic chirp pulled him toward consciousness. He fumbled with the device, finally pulling the screen into focus, the smiling face of Sue Lawrence looking at him. He moved his finger along the bar at the bottom of the screen to take the call.

  “Ray, sorry to wake you, but you’ll want to know about this.”

  “What’s happening?” he asked, struggling to come to consciousness.

  “Jim Moarse, the man we saw this afternoon, the one having a dispute with the former girlfriend.”

  “What about him?”

  “He’s dead.”

  “Dead…what happened? Did the redhead come back and blow him away?”

  “Are you awake?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Your response, it seems a bit unusual.”

  “So what happened?”

  “A phantom 911 cell call, a GPS enabled phone. It came in after 1 a.m. Brett responded. No one answered the door. He checked the house and then went out into the yard. He noticed smoke coming from the sauna, looked into that building, found a body, and determined that the man was dead. Central called me. I’m now at the scene, and the deceased is Jim Moarse. The medical examiner is on his way, and I thought you’d want to be here as well. That said, there is no reason why you need to come. It could all wait till morning.”

  “I’m on my way. Do you need anything? How about coffee?

  “Coffee would be great. See you when you get here.”

  Dr. Dyskin’s sagging Lincoln Town Car, one of the last survivors of Detroit’s nouveau-Jurassic period, blocked the end of the driveway. Ray pulled onto the shoulder and walked past Dyskin’s car and the three vehicles in front of it, an EMT unit and two patrol cars. He joined the group standing near the open door of the sauna, the area lit by the headlights of the police cars and several flashlights. He handed Sue an insulated coffee mug and looked in. Dr. Dyskin was on the floor examining the body. The figure sprawled on the floor, face down and naked. Brett and Sue were illuminating the scene for Dyskin with their flashlights.

  “He looked better with clothes on,” said Sue.

  “Don’t we all,” said Dyskin, glancing up. Then he pulled himself to his feet and crawled out of the sauna, wiping sweat from his brow with the sleeve of his fleece jacket. “Wow! Still hot enough to take a sauna in there, even with the door open. And the place smells like a brewery. What was he thinking?”

  “Cause of death?” asked Ray.

  “A fatal case of roasting,” said Dyskin. “The guy had way too much to drink, then he goes into a blazing sauna. Hyperthermia for sure with alcohol as a contributing factor, maybe drugs. He’s fat, out of shape. There are probably other health issues, too. We’ll know after the autopsy. Let’s say an accidental death with extenuating circumstances.”

  “How long has he been dead?” asked Ray.

  “A couple of hours at the most.”

  “Any sign of….?”

  “No fractures, lacerations, contusions, etc. Give me your light,” Dyskin said, pulling it from Sue’s hand. He moved the beam back and forth in the interior, along the two benches and the floor below. He reentered the building briefly, partially closing the door, then quickly exited.

  “What are you looking for?” asked Sue as he handed the light back to her.

  “Just curious. I wanted to see if he had a robe somewhere, perhaps behind the door. Nothing. No clothes or towel or shoes. And no water bottle, just an empty beer can.” He paused briefly. “Of course, living out here, I guess you could walk to the sauna naked without anyone seeing or caring. And he might have been so intoxicated in the first place that he didn’t think to bother with those kind of things.”

  “We had a 911 call from here. Someone wanted us to find the body,” said Ray.

  Dyskin held Ray in his gaze for a moment. “But the caller wasn’t here when….”

  “No. And it was a phantom cell phone; we can’t identify the caller.”

  “Curious, curious indeed, said Dyskin, clucking. “I think we should ship the body to Grand Rapids for a forensic autopsy.”

  “Yes,” agreed Ray. “Sue, how do you plan to proceed?”

  “I want to shoot the interior while the body is in place, and then we’ll get him bagged and out of here. Then I think we should secure the area and go get some breakfast. We can go back to the office and see what we can find out about Jim Moarse. Get the paperwork done for search warrants. We should probably put out an APB on Sally Rood. She’s a person of interest. Once the sun is up, I’ll come back and work the scene.”

  “The phantom cell call?” asked Ray.

  “That’s a puzzler, isn’t it? Let’s think about that one.”

  Mackenzie washed off the last traces of the black greasepaint, then shampooed her hair and applied her favorite conditioner. She lingered in the warm shower, washing a second time with a sponge and a large block of olive oil and lavender soap. The grime of the evening’s escapade was washed off, but she felt less than clean. Should I have done more? Why didn’t I see what was happening? She was startled by the sound of her voice echoing off the tile. These were the questions she asked hours later when she described the events to Ken Lee.

  “I don’t think you could’ve done anything differently,” Ken Lee responded. “By the time you figured out what was going down, the dude was already dead. Putting the phantom cell out there was as much you could do. It brought the cops running.”

  “I know, but….”

  “Don’t dwell on this, baby. You did as much as you could. The thing we need to start thinking about is why Sabotny wanted Moarse dead. Are the chickens coming home to roost? Maybe Sabotny decided that his own safety depends on getting rid of anyone who knows about your brother Terry’s death. So there were four guys, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “And one of them might be dead already, the one in Galveston?”

  “But we don’t….”

  “No, but if he was one of the four, he’s gone. He might’ve died on his own, but what if Sabotny knew where he was. Pretty easy to knock off a junkie with a big syringe, and without drawing any suspicion. And now Moarse is gone. So that just leaves?”

  “Chris Brewler.”

  “And he may or may not be in the area. You haven’t ID’d him yet. And there’s one more person.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “You. You are a threat, and you are out there. He just doesn’t know where.” Ken Lee let his statement hang. Then he said, “I’ll get back to you later. There’s stuff I want to look at.”

  39

  Ray propped the sauna door open with a board he pulled from a pile of old lumber haphazardly stacked at the side of the building. They peered into the gloomy interior at the chalk outline Sue had made around the body before the EMTs had bagged it and carried it away.

  “So he
was sprawled toward the door?” said Ray.

  Sue switched on a large LED lantern and placed it inside the doorframe. “Yes,” she responded. “Maybe he realized that he was in trouble and had to get out of here?”

  “I don’t think so. Drunk, hyperthermic. But who knows?” said Ray.

  “So what if his lady love came back last night with the intent to do him in. She brings a gift of booze, gets him totally smashed, maybe puts something extra in his drinks, lures him to the sauna with, well, you know, an array of enticements, and bakes him for a couple of hours. It’s not quite the Hansel and Gretel scenario, but it would work.”

  “What’s her motive? She had her stuff back. And she would have to know she’d be the first person we’d want to talk to.”

  “How many times have you told me that most of our bad guys and gals don’t hang out at Mensa brunches?” quipped Sue. “Give me a few minutes to shoot the interior.”

  Ray stood outside, watching Sue. Then the door caught his attention. He inspected the lower half first, searching the soft, rough sawn cedar for marks left by the nails of a desperate man. “Is it okay if I close this for a minute?” he asked.

  “Go ahead,” came the response.

  He pulled away the prop and swung the door shut. It was casually constructed of six wide vertical boards held together by two horizontals, one at the top and one at the bottom. Ray ran his hand below the uppermost board where he found an indentation on the surface of the door. Propping the door open again, he looked at the path of widely placed pieces of cracked stone that ran from the house to the sauna. About three feet from the door there was a deep indentation in the earth to the side of a large stone. He began to search the exterior of the sauna. Along the back wall was a jumble of scrap materials—metal and wood. Ray took particular interest in a rusty steel rod—three inches in diameter and six feet in length—on top of the pile.