The Pact: A Detective Locklear Mystery

by Carol Coffey

  “Why are there red dots on some of the pieces?”

  “I put a dot on every state I lived in as a kid.”

  Carter whistled. “Boy! There’s an awful lot of dots, sarge!”

  “I lived in an awful lot of places.”

  “Thanks, sarge.”

  “Carter?”

  “Sarge?”

  “Go see Sara. Go before it’s too late.”

  Carter nodded and left the room.

  Locklear watched from the window as the trooper’s car drove slowly off the station’s lot and headed south in the direction of the Kindred Hospital.

  Locklear returned to his seat and put his reading glasses on. He began to pore over Shank’s confession which contained information on the burial places of the Yoders and Bill Jefferson and four names of other people he did not know – crimes obviously committed by Shank during the decades he persecuted his community. He picked up the phone and began the process of arranging the exhumation of their bodies. He thought of Norma Jefferson sitting alone in her Fifth Avenue apartment and the closure she would get from bringing her beloved husband’s body home.

  There was no mention of Anabel Schumer. Locklear sighed alone in the empty incident room. He’d been hoping to give the woman’s family some closure. He heard a light tap on the door.

  “Two visitors for you, sarge.”

  “Send them in.”

  Locklear looked up to find Ling Ling and Letitia Grant standing in the doorway.

  He stood and offered the women seats at the table in the centre of the room.

  “We were here earlier but you weren’t around so we delayed our flight back to New York until later. Letitia has something for you that she didn’t want to hand over to anyone else.”

  Letitia moved forward and reluctantly placed a package on the desk at the centre of the room. She sat down and looked to Ling for direction.

  “I lied to you about the box,” she began.

  “I know,” Locklear replied.

  “I didn’t want to hand it over because it is the only thing I have that belonged to my

  grandma.”

  Locklear unravelled the thick brown paper from the front and sides, revealing a discoloured silver box about ten inches long and six inches wide. It was plain except for a silver crucifix on the lid. He lifted it and found it was unexpectedly heavy. He tried to unlock the fragile clasp at the front of the box and found it would not open.

  “Did you ever look in it?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “And?”

  “There ain’t nothing in it.”

  Locklear looked up in surprise.

  “Nothing?”

  “Except …”

  “Except what?”

  “See for yourself.”

  Locklear tried again to open the clasp but his large hands were too awkward.

  Letitia took it from him. She placed it on the table and pushed two tiny levers upward.

  The hinged lid sprang open.

  “There’s a knack to it.”

  Locklear stared into the box, speechless.

  He placed his hands inside and pushed his fingers around the inside of the empty container.

  Letitia reached forward again and pressed hard inside the gable ends of the box. Locklear heard a click as the young woman lifted the base to reveal a false bottom.

  Locklear ran his hands into the dry, grey material.

  “It’s ... it’s soil,” he finally said.

  “I told you there was nothing in it. It’s just dirt.”

  She took a letter from her pocket and handed it to Locklear.

  “Only I found this on top of the dirt.”

  Locklear opened the letter as carefully as he could. He thumbed ancient paper and felt its velvety, shiny surface.

  “It’s in German,” he said.

  Letitia sighed and lifted the box again. “Sure is heavy.”

  Ling touched her shoulder. “We better be getting to the airport.”

  Locklear followed the women to the station door.

  “Thank you,” he said to Letitia. He held her hand. “I hope you make it, Letitia. I hope someday I see your paintings in some fancy New York art gallery.”

  Grant blushed and pulled her hand away but the smile remained on her lips as the pair walked down the station steps to a waiting taxi.

  Locklear looked at his watch. He returned to the incident room and locked the box in the station safe at the far end of the room. He took the letter and checked the home address for Anabel Schumer’s parents and drove the eight blocks to her house. When he rang the bell, Albert Schumer opened the door swiftly.

  “I saw you coming,” he said.

  Schumer had the look of a man hoping for good news but his eyes told a different story. He waited for Locklear to speak.

  “There’s no news on Anabel,” Locklear said.

  Locklear had to decide if he would tell the girl’s father that they had news on other murder victims or not. He decided on the latter and followed Schumer down the hallway to a back lounge room where Anabel’s mother sat in her wheelchair watching TV.

  “This is my wife, Heidi,” Albert said.

  “Mrs Schumer,” Locklear said with a nod.

  Heidi Schumer turned off the TV and gazed at Locklear. She obviously, like her husband, thought the sergeant was there to either return joy to their home or tell them the devastating news that their hearts already knew but their minds refused to accept.

  “He has no news, Heidi,” her husband said.

  He sat beside his wife and gestured to Locklear to take a seat.

  Locklear sat and fixed his eyes on an old man sitting under a radio at the other end of the room, humming to himself.

  “This is my father, Hans,” Schumer offered. “He came to this country when he was only nineteen and spoke perfect English but he has dementia and he mostly only speaks German now. He doesn’t seem to remember English now apart from constantly asking where my daughter is. It’s a strange thing.”

  Locklear took the letter from his pocket.

  “I’m really sorry that we have no news on Anabel’s whereabouts but we are doing everything we can,” he said, glancing awkwardly at the girl’s mother. “But I received this letter today as evidence in the case.” He handed the letter to Schumer. “I heard you were German and I thought you might translate it for me. I am sorry to have to ask you. I can see this is a terrible time for you both but ... it might help. It might help us figure out Anabel’s whereabouts.”

  “How?” Schumer asked.

  Locklear had no answer. “Will you help me?”

  “Sergeant, I was born here in Virginia and my wife was too. I speak German but I can’t read it.”

  Locklear fixed his eyes on the old man again. “What about your father?”

  Schumer sat beside the old man and spoke to him in low, hushed tones. He handed him the letter.

  The old man gazed at the letter then looked up at Locklear and seemed suddenly alert and aware of his surroundings.

  “Read it aloud, Papa,” Schumer said.

  The old man laughed and spoke in German to his son.

  “What?” Locklear asked.

  “He said it’s like a fairy tale – you know, written in language used in fairy tales.”

  “Does he mean, old language?”

  Schumer spoke again to his father.

  “Yes. He said exactly like that. Papa said these words aren’t used anymore.”

  Schumer began to laugh at something his father said.

  “You know, he means like ‘thus forth’ in English – ‘ye olde’ – that sort of language.

  Locklear walked over and pointed at the words on the top righthand corner of the letter.

  “What is this?” he asked.

  Hans provided an answer. Schumer translated.

  “It’s a date – May 9th, 1861.”

  “A month after the Civil War began,” Locklear replied. “What else does it say?”
/>   Locklear waited while the two men conversed.

  “Papa can’t understand some of the words. He never saw them before. It might be a rural dialect. But he says that it’s a letter from a mother to her son named Eli and she is asking for a promise to return and is trusting him to ...”

  Schumer stopped and asked his father to repeat the last part of the sentence.

  “To return the treasure ... to bring it safely back.”

  “Does it say what the treasure is?”

  “No.”

  The elder Schumer suddenly became animated and started flailing his arms around.

  “OK, Papa, relax!” said Schumer. “Papa says I’m wrong. I translated the word treasure wrongly. The word in German has many meanings but in this case Papa thinks it means something treasured instead of something valuable.”

  “Like an heirloom?”

  Papa Schumer nodded. “Heirloom,” he repeated, smiling. Then he turned to his son. “Where is Anabel?”

  “She’ll be back soon, Papa.”

  Schumer stood and, beckoning to Locklear, left the room.

  Locklear collected the letter from the old man, thanked him, said goodbye to Mrs Schumer and followed Albert out and down the hall.

  “Those few minutes are the longest we’ve got him off the subject of Anabel,” Schumer said. “He dotes on her.”

  He opened the door and Locklear stepped out onto the doorstep.

  “We don’t know that she’s dead, Mr Schumer. There is hope yet,” he said although he didn’t really believe it.

  “Anabel would never leave us wondering if she is alive or dead. She wouldn’t do that to us. I know my daughter is gone. I just want to bring her home here and say goodbye.”

  Locklear did not respond. Every inch of him knew Schumer was right but he didn’t want to confirm it. Not yet and not without a body.

  He drove south to his motel and, exhausted by the events of the day, lay on his bed fully clothed. When he had woken in that same bed that morning Jacob Shank and Peter Wyss were alive, Samuel Shank was still an eighty-three-year-old man well enough to sit at his company’s head. In those few short hours so much had changed, including the fact that he had allowed his emotions to bring him to the brink of losing his battle for sobriety.

  There was nothing else he could do but lie down and ruminate over his disappointment that the box which had been missing for more than one hundred and fifty years held nothing but dried-out soil and a mother’s letter to her son.

  Chapter 27

  The 6am call from Jerome Stein raised Locklear from a dreamless night. He woke refreshed and pressed the button to answer the call from the IRS man who seemed determined to talk to him. Stein was still in town and arranged to meet Locklear at the station at 7am. Locklear rose, changed from the clothes he had slept in and stuck a note under Mendoza’s door telling her he’d meet her at the station later. He bought a coffee en route and was sitting in the station by 6.45am.

  When Stein entered the incident room, Locklear noticed the shiny new briefcase tucked under the taxman’s arm.

  “You didn’t like the one with ventilation in it?” Locklear quipped.

  Stein sat without invitation. “I was worried that a briefcase with two bullet-holes would give other defaulters ideas,” he said with a grin.

  “Wise.”

  Stein placed his briefcase on the ground and clasped his hands together. “Sergeant Locklear, I wanted to talk to you that day at the creamery but I couldn’t risk it.”

  “Do I take it that Samuel Shank wasn’t paying his taxes?”

  “There were … irregularities,” Stein replied curtly.

  “Mr Stein, you wanted to talk to me. Are you going to tell me what those irregularities were, or do I have to guess?”

  “I wanted to talk to you, but it was to find out what you knew. I knew you were a cop as soon as I laid eyes on you. We’ve been trying to get Shank for years but he kept pulling the noose off his neck at the last minute.”

  Locklear thought about the tax inspector’s unfortunate choice of metaphor.

  “Our investigation has nothing to do with money,” Locklear replied.

  “In my experience everything that happens in this world begins and ends with money, Sergeant Locklear.”

  “Our investigation is sensitive. It’s highly confidential. What I will say is that it involves murder … several of them.”

  Stein did not look shocked. He pushed his thick-rimmed glasses back. “OK. In confidence?” he asked.

  Locklear nodded.

  “Shank has been claiming tax breaks on expensive medical benefits he’d supposedly been paying for his staff for years. When we looked into his wage system, he’d been overtaxing his staff and in each case it was around ten percent over and above what he was paying for them in insurance.”

  “So … he claimed to be paying for their medical plan but in reality…they were paying it without knowing and he was adding more on?” Locklear asked.

  “Exactly. We checked with the insurer and Shank wasn’t buying the plans he was claiming for. He purchased lower plans so when his workers got sick …”

  “Shank paid the shortfall and they were indebted to him … to the point of silence,” Locklear said, finishing Stein’s sentence.

  “What did you do?”

  “We served him with tax bills which he ignored. He took him to court for that and several other breaches of tax law. Each time – he walked.”

  “If those cases are closed, why were you at Shank Creamery the other day?”

  “He hasn’t paid his taxes for the past year. Shank Creamery filed for bankruptcy two months ago.”

  “They’re broke?” Locklear asked, astounded.

  “B.R.O.K.E. It seems Jacob Shank and Beth Stoll have a passion for the finer things in life. They’ve bled the company dry. There’s nothing left. I’m telling you this in the hope that you can help me. I hadn’t lost an investigation in my whole career until I came up against Shank and he beat me over and over again.”

  “Well,” Locklear said, leaning back on his chair and stretching his arms upwards, “I don’t think you’ll have to worry about Shank much longer. Shot twice yesterday, once in the shoulder and then a bullet to his chest. There’s no way he’ll survive that at his age.”

  “It’s who will come after him that I worry about. That granddaughter – believe me – she’s more ruthless, more evil than Shank and his son were put together.”

  “She’s missing,” Locklear replied.

  “For now. A few seconds after that man opened fire in the lobby, I saw her escape out a door behind the reception area. Looked like she’d been in a fight – there were scratch marks across her face.”

  Locklear’s attention heightened. He hoped the gentle Helena Wyss had been smart enough to inflict those wounds on Stoll and, with it, provide evidence that Stoll was a murderer.

  Stein stood and moved to the door.

  “Did you see what type of car she was driving?” Locklear asked.

  “Yes. A blacked-out SUV.”

  “Registration?”

  “Do you have something for me or not?” Stein asked.

  Locklear mulled over the situation.

  “I do have something for you. A book recording Shank’s financial transactions.”

  “And you’ll give it to me?”

  Locklear nodded.

  “Virginia plates – 186121. It’s registered to the company. I had planned on confiscating it.”

  Locklear visualised the numbers in his head. If the digits were designed to commemorate the start of the Civil War and the age at which the Fehrs were driven to suicide by the Shanks, it was in poor taste. Stein was right. Beth Stoll was evil and she was also crazy. A dangerous combination.

  “I can’t give it to you yet but I will. Soon as I figure out what was driving Shank to do the things he did.”

  Stein placed his hat on his head. “I wouldn’t work too hard at it, Locklear. I meant what I said. Every
thing is about money, in the end.”

  Locklear saw Stein out and charged Lennox with finding Stoll’s SUV. He returned to the safe and took out the box.

  When he arrived at Harrisonburg Hospital, he went directly to the intensive care section. Maguire had been posted outside Shank’s private room all night in the hope that Beth Stoll would go there.

  “Sarge, Doc says no one’s allowed to interview him yet,” he said.

  “OK. Do you want to go for a coffee?”

  “I’m desperate.”

  “OK. I’ll stay for a while. Go wake yourself up.”

  As soon as Maguire disappeared, Locklear stepped into Shank’s room.

  He stood at the door for a few minutes before he approached the bed. The bullet to the man’s shoulder had only caused a flesh wound but the shot to his chest had damaged an artery. Even with the removal of both bullets, the surgeon did not think the old man would make it. The blood loss had been too great.

  Locklear surveyed the white-painted room which was almost as void of interest as the room Sara Fehr lay in except the young woman’s room was sparser, more dismal and did not have the air conditioning that whirred in this ice-cold room.