by Chris Rogers
Two o’clock Monday. Keeping the appointment would mean another chance to look in the psychotherapist’s files. The hour had passed so fast today that Dixie was out the door before realizing she’d never come close to snooping in the files for Lucy’s name.
The appointment card’s raised lettering announced: VERNICE URICH, PH.D., M.S.W., A.C.P. PSYCHOTHERAPY—HYPNOTHERAPY. No mention of astrology, numerology, witchcraft, the topics of the books on Vernice’s shelves. She probably hadn’t listed those on her license application, either. For fun, Dixie read her daily horoscope, and the vague generalities could apply to anyone. But Vernice’s observations hadn’t been so general.
Did she really believe the psychotherapist could answer her relationship problems? Did the woman really have a license to practice psychotherapy?
Dixie crammed the appointment card into her trash bag. Vernice’s creepy insights hit too close to home. She’d rather get at those files through an open window.
A quick phone call told her Marty and Parker were still gallery hopping, which gave her time to drop in on Smokin and Pearly White. They’d been hacking out information for her since early morning.
When she reached the Heights, a near-town community, genteel Victorian mansions shoulder to shoulder with crumbling apartment complexes, Dixie turned down a dead-end street, passed through a gate posted with bogus HIGH VOLTAGE signs, and entered an alley behind a shipping company. A set of stairs opened into a narrow, musty-smelling hallway that turned twice before arriving at a plain wooden door, identical to others along the hall.
Dixie heard voices raised in argument as she started to knock.
“You have to tell her.” Smokin’s voice.
“No, I don’t, old man. I don’t. We made no promises to tell her anything.”
Dixie frowned, listening, but heard nothing more. She rapped on the door. Seconds later, Smokin’s voice asked, “Who is it?”
“Dixie.”
He opened the door a crack, seemed reluctant, but finally drew the door wide enough for Dixie to enter. A delicious coffee aroma overpowered the cigarette odor Dixie expected.
“Got a mess of stuff to show you, Dixie. Yep, yep.” Smokin’s enthusiasm sounded forced. “Pearly, where are those printouts?”
Pearly White sat at her keyboard, rigid as a mannequin. “Get ’em yourself, old man.”
Smokin shook his head, exasperated, and waved a hand toward his wife. “Pearly’s got a bone in her craw. Don’t pay her no mind. Take a gander at these while I pour the coffee.”
He patted the recliner on his own side of the black tape line, which extended the length of the room, computers at one end, television and recliners at the other. Everything on one side of the tape was duplicated on the other, except the big-screen TV-VCR, which straddled the line. As much as they squabbled, Dixie wondered how the couple ever agreed on a program to watch. When she sat down, Smokin handed her a stack of paper from the laser printer.
Uptown Interdenominational Church, she discovered, was thirty-seven years in business and had recently acquired a new pastor. Church of The Light had been founded only four years ago. None of the board names was familiar.
Considering the volume of information represented in the stack of printouts, Dixie merely scanned for names, laying aside the pages that referred to Marty and his Dallas gallery, Edna, Lucy Ames, Vernice Urich, Terrence Jackson, Lonnie Gray, and Jessica Love. She itched to look into those, but first she needed the information on Art Harris and Ted Tally.
The printouts showed the standard graduation announcement for their police academy class, a wedding announcement for Art Harris, Peggy’s birth announcement, and a short piece about Ted Tally catching a bullet in the leg while capturing a burglary suspect. Nothing suspicious in the mix. Dixie noticed that Ted, twenty-six, was three years younger than Art. Both were too young to be dead. Ted had a bachelor’s degree in psychology.
Smokin returned carrying a bright green tray with mugs of coffee, cream, and sugar. Legs unfolded under the tray, turning it into a snack table that he placed beside Dixie’s chair. The aroma drew her attention from her stack of papers.
“Smells delicious. Vanilla?”
Smokin beamed. “A teaspoon in every pot.”
She sipped it, burning her tongue. “Did you give up cigarettes?” she asked him.
“Hah!” Pearly hooted.
“Nah, the old woman bought me one of those ashtrays that sucks up the smoke. Find what you wanted?” He indicated the pages Dixie held.
“Not yet. What about financial records? DMV records? Military service?”
“No military time for either of ‘em. Clean driving records—you should have the printout there.”
Dixie shuffled through the pages and found it. Neither officer had any traffic tickets during the past three years—no big surprise. Ted drove a new Chevy pickup and Art owned a four-year-old Cougar.
“Nothing exciting here,” she told him.
“Pearly’s the one can get the financials for you.” Smokin rose abruptly and headed back toward the kitchen. “If she’s not too peevish.”
“I have the bank records up,” Pearly said primly. “No printout, but you can pull that stool over and read them on-screen.”
Dixie moved the wooden stool and perched on it, a good ten inches too high to comfortably see the monitor. Scanning the meager sum in the Harris account gave her an ache in that place around her heart she reserved for tear-jerk movies. Art Harris provided for his entire family for a month on less than smooth-talking wizards like Terrence Jackson spent on private club fees.
“If the Mayor’s new budget includes an HPD pay increase, it’ll get my support,” she told Pearly.
The hacker glanced at her, then as stiff as ever, looked back at the monitor.
Dixie scrolled through Ted’s bank records. He spent more freely than Art, saved less, and suffered an occasional overdraft. Nothing the least bit suspicious.
When Pearly keyed up financials for Jackson, Urich, Gray, and Love, Dixie whistled and jotted notes on the respective printouts to review later. Edna’s records held no surprises. Lucy Ames had made a modest salary, spent everything she earned, and paid her bills promptly.
“Go back to Urich’s file,” Dixie said. When Pearly brought it up, she asked, “What does ACH mean?”
“Automatic checking. Electronic debits and credits—no paper.”
Dixie understood the concept—marginally. She paid toll fees and property maintenance fees by automatic transfer.
“Those all look like credits.” Columns of transfer amounts in one-hour-fee increments marched across the screen.
“That’s correct,” Pearly snapped.
Apparently, Vernice had set up her clients on direct-transfer payments. Her total monthly income was startling. “Can we see how far back these go?”
Pearly scrolled backward four years; the same account numbers appeared over and over. Recent months showed payments for more hours than a psychologist could physically handle. Either Vernice had an associate, or she worked twenty-four hours a day.
“Can you find out who these payees are?”
Pearly patiently accessed each account. One that began in December and continued to the present belonged to Edna. Lucy’s name didn’t show up. Dixie jotted down a few names whose accounts had been paying consistently for the full four years—LeRoy Haines, Beatrice French, Dolly Mae Aichison, Rose Yenik. Dixie recognized none of them.
Terrence Jackson’s numerous bank accounts ran into the millions, but because he invested the sums, Dixie didn’t find that surprising. With her meager financial skill, she noticed nothing unusual. Jessica Love’s business account at the Unique Boutique had acquired a sixty-thousand-dollar ACH transfer during the past month, just in time to avoid overdrafting her account.
“Can we see where this amount came from?” Dixie asked.
Pearly cross-referenced to an investment account managed by Terrence Jackson. No surprise that Jessica trusted her investm
ents to the Millennium Midas. So far, Dixie had seen nothing suspicious in Jackson’s business.
Lonnie Gray operated Artistry Spa at barely above breakeven, while his personal account supported three sizable mortgages and two sizable monthly automobile payments.
“Is that it?” Pearly asked sharply when Dixie looked away from the monitor.
Despite an ache across her shoulders, Dixie leaned down again to meet Pearly’s gaze.
“You know I’m not out to damage the reputation of these dead officers, don’t you?” What else could account for the hacker’s surly attitude?
A muscle in Pearly’s jaw knotted.
“All I want,” Dixie continued softly, “is to prove that the HPD’s chief suspect didn’t kill them—which he didn’t. If I found proof that convinced me otherwise, I would never protect a murderer.”
The woman’s rigid posture relaxed a fraction.
“What did you discover, Pearly, that you’re not telling me?”
“Nothing … in the financials.” She looked down at her hands.
“Then what?”
Pearly shook her head. “You have everything I can give you.”
From what Dixie’d already seen, Art Harris grew up in Dallas. Smokin and Pearly White had lived in Dallas. And Art’s neighbor, Janet Easton, indicated that he might’ve been in some trouble back then. Had Pearly uncovered a skeleton in that Dallas closet? Clearly, she didn’t intend to say, and Dixie respected their relationship too much to insist.
As Smokin returned with a slice of homemade chocolate cake and a refill on the coffee, one more question occurred to Dixie.
“How easily could I access pornography on the Internet?”
Smokin’s face fell, and he shot a glance at Pearly.
“Ask Mr. Smut-lover himself,” she hooted over her shoulder.
“Not true!” He turned innocent eyes at Dixie. “The question should be, how to avoid the stuff once you’re tagged as a looker.”
“What do you mean?”
“Suppliers trick you into hitting their Web site, then you’re bombarded with dirty mail.”
“I still don’t understand. How do they trick you?”
“Key your search engine with an ordinary word—smooth, three, cabriolet—”
“He knows them all!” Pearly said.
“You’ll end up at Lovin’ Threesomes or Smooth Moves. And there you are, staring at more flesh than you’ve seen in sixty years.”
“And this is free?”
“Yep. Plenty of free stuff floating around. Unless you click on a button that won’t open without an access code, you can look all you want, never pay a dime.”
“But to access the heavy … pornography … you need a credit card?”
“Yep.”
“Unless you have Smokin fingers,” Pearly amended.
“Not true,” Smokin declared. “Looking’s one thing, stealing’s another.” Yet the guilty gleam in his eyes suggested he might’ve stolen a peek or two.
Dixie couldn’t decide whether this knowledge made her feel better or worse about Ryan’s secret pastime. Hacking into protected pornographic files could land her nephew in bigtime legal trouble. The alternative worried her even more.
Leaving the hackers’ apartment with her stack of computer printouts, Dixie worried Pearly’s strange behavior around in her mind. The couple worked from a self-determined code of ethics that Dixie had never questioned. They would either tackle a job or not, but never before had they refused to part with the information obtained. Only one reason made sense to Dixie: Pearly had learned something that might damage the reputation of one of the officers—and thus bring disgrace, ridicule, or possibly danger to his family.
Fortunately, Dixie’s network included other sources. The one she phoned now knew dirt on law enforcement officers in every backwater town in the state. Anything Slim Jim McGrue didn’t know, he could find out in an eye blink. Jim was scary in other ways, too. As she punched in his cellular phone number, Dixie pictured Jim’s six-foot-eight, sticklike body folded behind the wheel of his State Trooper patrol car. McGrue’s grim good looks—leathery skin stretched tight over a keenly chiseled skull—had frightened many a highway speed-demon into becoming a born-again safety advocate. At least once a year McGrue tossed out a hint that he’d like to be more than a network resource in Dixie’s life, and at least once a year Dixie gave the idea a passing consideration. McGrue fascinated her. He was an interesting friend; he’d be terrifying as an enemy.
“Jim,” she said when he answered. “This is Dixie Flannigan.”
“Always a pleasure. What’s the occasion?”
She related briefly her situation with Marty.
“He’s no killer, Jim. But if we accept the scenario that Ted Tally and Art Harris were assassinated in retaliation for the Granny Bandit shootings, he appears to be the best candidate. I’m thinking there’s something deeper going on. Maybe digging around in the officers’ backgrounds won’t unearth any bones that connect with the body of information I’m assembling, but the coincidences can’t be ignored.”
She explained the officers’ friendship, dating at least back to the police academy, then admitted her verbal attack on Art after Edna’s death.
“If the shooter was on the scene, perhaps he homed in on Art because he thought I singled him out for a reason, then took out Ted Tally because he saw them together at some point.”
“Dixie, I’ll do this for you.” Slim Jim allowed a long breath of silence before he continued. “But if your friend crawls out of the facts as the doer, I’ll smash him.”
“Yeah, Jim. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Chapter Forty-seven
Chief Ed Wanamaker lifted his dress uniform from the closet, hung it on the back of the door, and examined it through the cleaning bag. He’d worn it last at Christmas. A happy occasion. Not like today. This was the saddest damn day he could remember. Not enough that two good men died, the whole town had to take up sides over it.
He ripped the plastic off and unbuttoned the shirt.
“Aren’t you going to shower?” Mira sat on the bed behind him pulling on panty hose.
“I showered this morning.” He sniffed his armpit.
“You’re wearing that beautiful, fresh, clean uniform without a shower?”
“Woman, aren’t you listening?” He watched her in the dresser mirror as he buttoned the shirt. His wife was a graceful woman, even at a task as ungraceful as stuffing herself into panty hose. “I showered this morning. It’s not like I’ve been mowing the grass.”
She popped the elastic on his jockey shorts. “What did you eat for lunch?”
“Stopped at a Greek place.”
“I didn’t say where, I said what.”
“Greek salad.” Better not to mention the fried seafood platter.
She draped the towel over her shoulders. Damned if she didn’t look sexy standing there.
“Ed, do you ever think about … moving back to Arkansas?” She said it softly, without the ever-present barb in her voice.
He glanced at the photos on the dresser, their daughter—as a newborn, a six-year-old, a graduate, and finally an Arkansas police officer. “Sometimes. You?”
“Never more than I’ve thought about it this week.”
He put an arm around Mira’s shoulders. She was tall, something he appreciated most on the dance floor and in the sack.
“Even a small-town police force can have a bad week,” he reminded her. He nibbled her earlobe. “You like this new house, don’t you?”
“Oh, absolutely.”
“You joined a bridge club, the Ballet Guild—”
“I can unjoin anytime you say the word.”
He turned her so he could see her face.
“Mira, are you saying you want to leave?”
She met his gaze squarely. “I’m saying you’re a good man, Ed Wanamaker. And you don’t have a thing to prove. I heard those newscasters taking their shots at you.”
<
br /> “Do you believe I’m ashamed of the job I’ve done here?”
“You’re the best damn Chief this city’s ever had. If they don’t see it, that’s their problem. Your friend Banning didn’t warn you the Houston academy turned out officers without enough judgment training.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
She blinked. “With better judgment, don’t you think they might’ve found another way—”
“Mira, don’t listen to that crap. When an officer says, ‘Put down your gun,’ and instead an actor aims and fires, it’s the officer’s duty to shoot.”
“What if it had been a child?”
“A child with a gun?”
“It’s happening, kids carrying guns to school, shooting each other.”
Ed grabbed a photograph from the dresser.
“Our daughter, Officer Wanamaker, faces down a twelveyear-old kid with a gun. She says, ‘Put the gun down,’ and he cocks it. Mira, is she supposed to take the bullet?”
She stared at him a second, her face twisted with the pain he’d caused. Then she pulled away and stalked toward the bathroom, turning to fling her towel at him.
“I hate this!”
Ed watched her slam the bathroom door behind her, then he looked down at the picture he held. That gal looked so damn proud, fresh out of the academy. Setting the frame back on the dresser, he noticed the folded photocopy of The People’s letter, where he’d tossed it when he started changing clothes. He tucked it in his wallet. He hadn’t shown the letter to Mira.
In the bathroom, Mira’s hair dryer was going. He pulled on his pants. Then he opened a dresser drawer and felt around in back for the bottle he knew would be there.
It’d been a lot of years since a shot of Wild Turkey was all that kept him going.