Crow Wing Dead

by Midge Bubany

  “Not much. He just got out.”

  Because she didn’t have any more information, I thanked her and got up to leave. When my hand was on the doorknob, she stopped me cold.

  “Your little boy was in my son’s class.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah, Colby and Devon played together at recess. I was gonna take him to the funeral, but it was so packed we couldn’t find a seat, so we left and got ice cream.”

  They got ice cream. That was going straight to the top of the list of top ten clueless remarks I’d heard. It’d take the place of: It was God’s will Colby died. I could tolerate when someone said it was a mystery we couldn’t understand, but His will?

  I nodded. “The church was full,” I said.

  “Yeah, I had to park and walk three blocks in my heels for nothing.”

  And now, that’s number one.

  As I pulled out, I noticed two little boys playing in the dirt behind a unit. One of them could be Shelly’s son. How much of a chance did a kid of hers have? And how about Jesse Emerson with Clifford for a father? On my way to Max Becker’s, I made my daily drive past Emerson’s on Maple and Eighth Street. The garage was closed, no lights on. An old-fashioned Big Wheel sat near the street. A few years back Clifford’s wife left him and the two boys, and took off for Oregon with one of her post office co-workers. Celia returned nine months later with a seven-month bun in the oven. Clifford took her back. According to his pals at Buzzo’s, that’s when he pushed the drinking lever to heavy. He’s been punishing somebody.

  Clifford registered a 0.06 BAL at eight thirty in the morning when he slammed the Estelle’s semi into the side of Shannon’s Honda Pilot killing Colby. When I saw the car, I was surprised Shannon and Luke made it out alive. Both spent only a few days in the hospital.

  Chapter 10

  While driving to Becker’s, Spanky called to tell me he’d returned from Minneapolis. I asked him to meet me in Becker’s alley. I arrived first and parked behind Max Becker’s Ford Focus, then quickly checked the registration of the gold Dodge Dart parked next to it. Bingo! It belonged to Glenn Hayes.

  After Spanky pulled up behind me, we briefly discussed our plan, which was for me to go around to the front door, while Spanky covered the back. My heart skipped a beat when Hayes answered the door. I had to be smart about this. He was big and a wild card. I might not be able to handle him alone. New strategy.

  “Hey, there. I’m Detective Sheehan and looking for Max? Is he home?”

  He shrugged and opened the door to let me into the living room which reeked of pot, sour socks, and stale beer. Empty beer cans were lined up on the coffee table like the soldiers guarding the small bags of weed and a glass pipe.

  “Hey, buddy, mind if I pat you down for my own safety?” I asked him.

  “Go ’head. Do I look like I’m carrying?” He was wearing shorts with no shirt.

  “Just making sure you don’t have any weapons on any kind.”

  “Okay.”

  I pulled out an empty baggie that probably once held marijuana.

  The guy was a bit shorter than I was, but had spent some serious time in gyms—and tattoo parlors. He was heavily inked on his arms, legs, chest, and back with images of medieval weapons and mythical creatures. Does all that ink go to the brain?

  Max Becker shuffled into the room in bare feet, Spanky behind him. Max eyed the bags of pot and the color drained from his face. He scratched his stomach through his dingy white T-shirt, then hiked up his jeans before he dropped himself on the couch. He coughed, and when he thought we weren’t looking, grabbed the bags and stuffed them between the couch cushions.

  I laughed out loud at what he must have thought was a smooth move. I gestured for the big guy to sit as well.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Glenn Hayes.”

  “Where’s your ID?”

  “Upstairs.”

  “Max, go get your pal a shirt and his ID and a pair of shoes for yourself. Deputy Spanney will accompany you. Okay?”

  “Why? What’s going on?”

  “We’re going for a ride to the sheriff’s department.”

  Max turned white but turned heel and ran up the steps to the second floor. Spanky kept pace. Above, the floorboards creak with each step they took. Max would be an unlikely threat to us, but we’d never ever assume that.

  “Mr. Hayes, you are being arrested for your part in the credit card theft of Michael Hawkinson.”

  He stared at me, his cheeks blossoming to pink, as I read him his Miranda Rights. I was pleased he waved his rights.

  We kept the two men apart by transporting them in separate vehicles and placing them in different interview rooms.

  While we set up to film interviews, I asked Spanky if he got anything interesting out of Cat’s friends.

  “You want me to brief you now?”

  “No, after we finish with these two All-American boys.”

  I studied the men through the observation window. Max, in Room Three, had his head down on the table. He was probably worried about what his old man, the dentist, would say about his being involved with the likes of Hayes. Max was the kid Victoria coerced to fire an arrow through my kitchen window. At the time he was arrested, he was going to school and working at the Birch County Register on the loading docks, where Victoria also worked as a reporter. She snagged him in like a siren and manipulated him to do her dirty work. After he pled guilty, he was sentenced to six months of community service cleaning ditches along county highways and back roads.

  “Did we get the registered owner of the van in the videos at Frank’s and Wells Fargo?” I asked Spanky.

  “Yeah, Raybern Jerome Ginty.”

  “Perfect. You question Max. See if he’s involved in any way with the burglary and/or Hawk’s disappearance.”

  Spanky was new to investigations and eager to interview, but he hadn’t done many. I observed him as he took a seat across from Max Becker. They were polar opposites: Spanky a clean-cut, big guy who didn’t smoke, drink, or swear—while Max was a disheveled pot-head kid who gravitated toward the trouble makers and ended up knee-high in shit because of it. I wondered what he was up to these days after the debacle named Victoria. I stayed to find out.

  Spanky asked, “What do you do for a living?”

  “I’m going to school at Birch County Community, mowing fairways at the golf course.”

  “And you didn’t have to mow today?”

  “I work four to one.”

  “How long have you known Glenn Hayes?”

  “He hung out with my older brother during high school. He asked if he could stay with me ’til the end of the month when everybody has to move out. My dad’s putting the house up for sale.”

  “Do you know Raybern Ginty?”

  “That the guy they call Ray-Ray?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I just met him a couple weeks ago when he and Snake dropped in to seeTodd and Chad.”

  “How long were Snake and Ginty in town?”

  “Far as I know, just a day.”

  “Did they crash at your place?”

  “No, I don’t know where they stayed.”

  “Did Glenn seem to know Ray-Ray and Snake?”

  “He called ’em by name, so yeah.”

  Spanky was doing fine, so now it was Glenn Hayes’s turn. He startled when I opened the door.

  I took the chair across from him. I pulled Hawk’s photo from my pocket and laid it on the table.

  “What happened to this man?”

  Hayes put on a puzzled face. “I wouldn’t know.”

  “We have you on film talking to him at Frank’s Plaza.”

  “Here in town? He works there?”

  “Not quite. On May 12, cameras
above the gas pumps captured you exiting a light-colored van and talking to Mr. Hawkinson for quite a while. What did you talk about for so long?”

  His cheeks blushed a telltale red. “I sure don’t remember that.”

  “Think harder.”

  He pressed a hand to his temple, and after a few seconds of frowning and showing me how hard he was thinking, he said, “Just shooting the shit, I guess.”

  “An hour later, Wells Fargo bank cameras caught the same van drive up to the ATM machine, whereupon someone withdrew three hundred dollars using Mr. Hawkinson’s debit card. To use the card, he’d have to have the pin number. How do you explain that?”

  “Okay, here’s the truth. I was with Ginty at the gas station, but then I went home so I wasn’t there if he did use that card.”

  “That’s convenient. So who was in the front passenger seat when you were at Frank’s Plaza?”

  “Snake.”

  “Snake meaning Nevada Wynn?”

  “Yeah, you heard of him?”

  “Yes, and now I’ve heard of you.”

  His lips twitched.

  “Look, you’re on film following Michael Hawkinson out of the station.”

  His breathing quickened and his eyes shifted back and forth as he was scrambling for an explanation.

  He clasped his hands together and said, “Okay, this is what I know: Ray-Ray followed the Mercedes out. When we came to a stop sign, he tapped the rear bumper. And I’m like sayin’, ‘What’d you do that for?’ and he tells me to shut up. So, the guy in the Mercedes gets out, mad as hell. I didn’t like what was going down, so I told Ray-Ray and Snake I was leaving, so I got out and walked home.”

  “What was going down that you didn’t like?”

  “They were gonna take him somewhere to scare him.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. They’re just mean like that.”

  “Where did they take him?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Was Max Becker with?”

  “Nah, he was working.”

  “Okay, let’s say you did walk home, what happened when you met up with Ray-Ray and Snake again?”

  “I didn’t. Far as I know they went back to Minneapolis.”

  “So you’re sticking to your story that you don’t know what happened to Mr. Hawkinson after Ginty tapped his bumper.”

  He gave me an eyebrow lift and said, “Nope… I mean yes.”

  “I don’t believe you, but, hey, if you want to go down for something Snake and Ginty did, that’s fine by me.”

  His eyes squeezed shut for an instant. “I do not know what happened after I left.”

  “Why were Snake and Ginty even at your place?”

  “They just stopped in to say hey.”

  “You doing some business with these guys?”

  “No, absolutely not.”

  “What are you doing for work these days?”

  “I’m in between.”

  “Where are you getting your money?”

  He looked down and shook his head. He couldn’t come up with a good lie.

  “You come clean, tell me the whole truth, and the county attorney will go easier on you. You think on that.”

  I left him sit alone for fifteen minutes, went back in with a Coke and went round and round with this character for another hour, but he held to his story.

  We released Max because we believed he knew nothing about Hawk’s disappearance. He did tell Spanky that he didn’t see Glenn Hayes that evening or the next day. After I took Hayes over to the jail for processing, Spanky and I went back to the Becker house to look for evidence and found nothing incriminating other than weed.

  We then went back to the department, grabbed a cup of coffee, and made our way to the conference room to add to our notes on the whiteboard. I finally was able to ask Spanky to share what he’d learned from Cat’s friends.

  “I interviewed the other two women who vacationed with her: Hadley and Karen. They said Cat and Michael were real tight. They said she was text­ing someone they assumed was Michael.”

  “Oh, really? We’ll have to run her phone records.”

  “I’ve already got it in the works.”

  “Spanky, you’re right on top of things. Anything more?”

  “Hadley said Cat told them the night before the trip, she and Michael had a tiff about when to have kids—he wanted then now, she wasn’t sure she wanted them at all, but by the end of the trip she changed her mind and was going to tell him she was ready to get pregnant.”

  “Do women tell each other everything?”

  “I think so. When I asked if they thought Michael and Cat had been faithful to each other, they said Cat suspected Michael had cheated on her while he was on the road, but she had no proof.”

  “And she told me the opposite. I know people can change, but he was always faithful to his women when I knew him.”

  “When was the last time you’ve seen him or talked to him?”

  “Just briefly the night before he went missing, but before that, it had been a year ago… at the funeral.”

  “A lot can happen in a year.”

  “True. Did you ask if Cat had cheated on him?”

  “They said no, but they may have discussed what to say, because they both used the word ‘distraught’ when describing how she acted when she found out he was missing. I got the sense they were being very careful. See for yourself.”

  “I’ll check it out later. And we are going to have to bring in Nevada Wynn for questioning because Hayes said he was in the front seat of Ginty’s van.”

  “When?”

  “I’d go tomorrow but it’s my week to have the Twinks. I don’t want to give Shannon any ammunition for a custody battle.”

  “It’s that bad, you’re talking custody?”

  “She has a boyfriend—Mac Wallace. You know him?”

  “Oh, shoot. He’s my realtor. Want me to get somebody else?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Because I will.”

  “Not necessary. I’d like you to go to Minneapolis to pick up Wynn. Take someone experienced like Greg Woods or John Odell with you. I’ll give you Wynn’s parole officer’s number to get his address. Wynn used to work at North Cross Shipping.”

  “Okay. If we leave about 5:00 a.m., we’d be there at seven.”

  “Best time to apprehend. Maybe ask Minneapolis for back up. In any event, give them a courtesy call.”

  “Will do.”

  I gave a call to the lab and asked Betty if the DNA test results had come back from Bemidji yet.

  “As a matter of fact, they just came in.”

  “Terrific. I’ll be right down.”

  I took the stairs two at a time to the second floor. I was panting when I walked into the lab. Les ignored me.

  “Hi, Les. Where’s Betty?”

  “Here,” Betty said as she poked her head out from the small fingerprint room. “Come on back, Cal.”

  We stood at a counter and she said, “Okay, I have prints in the cabin matching one I lifted from the Mercedes. Whoever left a print in the Mercedes was also in Brooks’s cabin.

  “Okay.”

  “However, when I ran the prints through the data base I didn’t get a hit.”

  “Ginty, Hayes, and Wynn are all in the system—so they weren’t there?”

  She lifted her index finger and smiled. “The DNA results say they were. Now, here’s where it gets interesting. Michael Hawkinson’s DNA was on the toilet lid, but so was Ginty’s. Wynn’s was on a spoon left in a stew can.”

  “What about Glenn Hayes?”

  “We had Glenn Hayes’s prints and DNA all over the cabin—the refrigerator, door knobs, an
d a kitchen cabinet door.”

  “Excellent. I’ve got them for the burglary in any case, and at that point Hawk was still alive.”

  “The only DNA we got on the Mercedes was from Mr. Hawkinson.”

  “All right then.”

  “So what do you think happened to your friend?”

  “I wish I knew. I just hope one of the dirtbags will come clean.”

  She said, “You also put in a request form for prints and DNA for Bobby Lopez?”

  “Yes.”

  “I got a hit on his print. Came back as a Cisco Sanchez.”

  “What? An alias?”

  “Yep.”

  “I guess I’m not entirely surprised. Well, thank you, Betty.”

  “You bet. Good luck.”

  When I got back to my desk, I plugged Sanchez’s name in the NCIC system. A message popped up saying his records were classified. Classified? Why would he change his name? I needed to have a little talk with Mr. Sanchez. Let him know I knew who he really was.

  Tamika shuffled in carrying a paper bag and soft drink from the Sub Shoppe.

  “Come on, we’re going out to see Bobby Lopez.”

  “If I can eat my lunch on the way,” she said.

  As she whittled her sandwich down to nothing, I filled her in on what I’d learned. When I was through, instead of remarking on what I’d said, she asked what I’d done to upset Shannon.

  “I paid Mac Wallace a visit. She didn’t like that, I guess.”

  “Shut the door. Did you hit him? ’Cause if it was me, I’d bitchslap the woman who messed with my man.”

  “No, I didn’t hit him. But I am through with this bullshit. She obviously doesn’t want to be married to me any longer.”

  “Well, they have a history.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Uh-oh. You didn’t know?”

  “No.”

  “It was way before you two got together. She felt guilty, so she called it off.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he was married at the time.”

  “And now he’s not. Okay, this makes a little more sense to me now.”

  “I thought you knew.”