by Dan Kelly
It’s a plastic lighter. The FBI guy says, “I’ll go check the footprints for a match with the ones we found here.”
As he’s walking away I say, “Maybe we’re finally going to get a break. Maybe there will be identifiable prints on that lighter and they’ll belong to our killer.”
Don says, “Don’t get your hopes up. This lighter could belong to any of the golfers that played the fifteenth hole this morning before the Crusader showed up. Up until now, this guy has been very cautious about leaving anything that will eventually lead to him and I’m finding it hard to believe that he would drop something like this now. It might even be a false clue, left by him deliberately with someone else’s prints on it. We’ll just have to wait and see what the lab people come up with.”
“If there’s a Pessimists Anonymous, Don, you’ve got to be a charter member.”
“Chet, George Will the well-known newspaper columnist, journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner is credited with saying, ‘The nice part about being a pessimist is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised.’ I became a convert the first time I read that and have never regretted it.”
“Gee, you must be a fun guy to hang around with.”
“You should hear me pontificate when I’m drunk.”
“I’ll pass.”
“We’ve been interviewing the people who teed off an hour or less before the Secretary did and an hour after and so far no one’s seen anything or anybody suspicious. We’ll keep at it here. There’s no need for you to hang around unless you have something you want to pursue here.”
“No, there are no brilliant ideas pounding on my skull to get out. I’ll head back home and touch base with you sometime Monday morning.”
“Okay. Call me on my cell if a brilliant idea does show up before Monday.”
“Will do.”
Chapter 10
At eight-thirty on Monday morning, I’m sitting at my desk racking my brain trying to come up with something that will help us zero in on this Crusader and drawing a blank. I haven’t heard from Janet Vanderhill, so I decide to give her a call to see if she’s come up with anything that might be helpful.
I forgot to get her direct number at the newspaper or her cell phone number when we were at Morey’s so I figured on getting some static when I went through the operator to reach her. She’s well known in the D. C. area and I’m thinking the operator probably screens her calls to shunt the crazies away from her. Sure enough, when I tell the operator who I am and that I would like to talk with Janet Vanderhill she asks, “May I ask the nature of the call.” I say, “It’s personal. Please let her know I’m on the phone. She knows who I am and will take the call.”
The operator is an excellent gatekeeper and says, “One moment please.” A minute later she comes back on the line and says, “I’m sorry, but I can’t do that as she’s in a meeting right now. If you’ll leave a number you can be reached at, I’ll give it to her when she returns.”
Janet may or may not be in a meeting, but I’m sensing I’m not going to get anywhere with this lady no matter what I say, so I leave my number and go back to racking my brain. Five minutes later my phone rings. It’s Janet.
“I’m sorry about the run around, Chet. I get all kinds of calls from kooks and cranks and the operators try to keep them out of my hair. I’m sorry I haven’t gotten back to you, but I’ve been assigned two other stories to work on, one involving campaign fraud and the other involving ties La Cosa Nostra might have with some Congressmen. These stories coupled with these Crusader killings have really stirred things up over here and our bosses are screaming for copy.
“I have managed to do some poking around in our archives and have come up with some possible candidates for further investigation, but I haven’t had the time to follow up on them. You’re welcome to come over and follow up on them and do some poking around yourself. Two heads are always better than one anyway.”
“I’ll take you up on that. I’m not getting anywhere sitting here looking out the window hoping a brilliant idea is suddenly going to appear.”
“Great. When are you coming? I’ll meet you in the lobby and clear the way for you to come up to my office and work from a spare desk I have here.”
“I’ve got a few things to take care of here first. How about I meet you in the lobby at 10:30?”
“I’ll be there.”
I’m wondering if Don Ericson has received any results from his fingerprint people with respect to the lighter found on the fairway, so my next call is to him.
I tell him about my arrangement with Janet and then ask him if prints were found on the lighter and if so whose.
“One clear thumb print was found and when it was run through our data base it was found to belong to one of the grounds keepers. We questioned him, but if he’s the Crusader I’m the Pope.”
Before he can say I told you so I say “I don’t care what George Will says. Being an optimist is more fun.” I hang up, but not quickly enough to avoid hearing his self-satisfied laughter.
I meet Janet in the lobby of her building at the agreed upon time, but instead of going to her office she ushers me to a cafeteria in the basement of her building.
“What’s up, Janet”
“Change in plans.
At this time of the morning the cafeteria is practically deserted, but she heads for a table off in the corner behind a pillar and once we’re seated says, “What I’m about to share with you is going to sound like something out of a Clive Cussler novel, but it happened. As I was clearing off the desk in my office that I said you could use, I checked the drawers to see if the former occupant had left anything behind that should be forwarded to her family. I used to share the office with another journalist, but she was killed in a car accident and the powers that be said I could keep the office for myself. I kept the desk because occasionally I have use for it.
“As I was checking the drawers, one of them got hung up on something and as I fiddled with it I saw that an envelope was jammed in the track. I managed to pry it loose with a letter opener and when I opened it I almost fainted from the shock of seeing who had written what was in it.
“Chet, it was a letter addressed to me which I never saw and it was signed, The Crusader. It was dated six months before the killings started and I assume the woman who was my office mate intercepted it and opened it out of nosiness and when she read what was in it decided to keep the info to herself for a story she was planning to write. I know it’s not nice to speak ill of the dead, but I never did trust her all that much. To me she had back stabber written all over her, but I never caught her doing anything out of line.”
“What did the letter say?”
Reaching into her purse she says, “Here, read it for yourself.”
The envelope and the short letter inside are quite mangled and torn in spots, but the letter is legible and, surprisingly, it is handwritten. It might have been a spare of the moment thing and he didn’t have a computer handy.
January 22, 2013
Dear Ms. Vanderhill:
I am writing to you because I know you cover the House of Representative for your newspaper and know a lot of people in Congress. I would like to recruit you to assist me in bringing those responsible for some terrible wrongs to justice by putting the spot light on them through exposes in your paper and motivating some of the more powerful and trustworthy of our elected officials to get involved and make this avaricious scum pay for their crimes along with those allowing these things to happen.
The young men and women in our military are being sent into harm’s way with inferior weaponry and other equipment of war so the providers of this hardware can line their coffers with additional millions of taxpayers’ dollars by cutting production costs with substandard material, completely ignoring the blood that’s being shed by our marines, soldiers and sailors because of their actions.
This cannot be allowed to go on any longer. Please show you care by getting involved
. I’ll know your answer by what you write in your column.
Crusader for Justice
“Wow! If you had gotten this letter and agreed to help him, all of these killings might have been averted, especially if you were able to verify some of his claims or at least were able to raise suspicions high enough to warrant the powers that be to reopen their investigations.”
“It looks to me like this person was initially trying to accomplish his goal in the right way, but when his pleas for help fell on deaf ears he decided to take matters into his own hands and became a vigilante.”
“Well, this is an interesting development, but it doesn’t help us identify who our killer is.”
“Maybe not, but it gives us a place to start looking. The postmark tells us this letter was mailed from Frederick, Maryland. That’s only an hour’s drive from here and with a population of around 65,000 people it still has a small town ambience about it. If we do a little poking around, act like we’re tourists, strike up conversations with the locals and ask the right kinds of questions, we might hear about someone being more than a little upset about how our military is being equipped to confront the fanatics in the Middle-East.”
“We? Will your bosses let you go traipsing off on a wild goose chase when you have other assignments with more newsworthy potential to work on?”
“Why not? My nose for news is picking up the scent of one hell of a story and this letter could be the key that opens the door to something that will make my editor drool with anticipation.”
“Okay, when do you want to go?”
“As soon as I clear it with my boss. He usually trusts my instincts and lets me have my way within somewhat flexible parameters. Wait for me here. I shouldn’t be long. He was in his office when I came down to meet you in the lobby.”
She practically runs to the elevator while I sit there wondering if we were going to be looking for the proverbial needle in the haystack.
Chapter 11
When we arrive in Frederick it’s the noon hour and our stomachs are telling us it’s time to eat, so we stop at a little Italian place called D’Antonio’s to "mangiare". The family restaurant is owned and operated by a husband and wife team who, like many Italians, love people and live to talk. It’s as good a spot as any for us to slip into the roles of tourists, so we do so with cameras hung around our necks and a map of the city sticking out of Janet’s purse to sell the image.
As we’re looking over the menu, we engage Loretta D’Antonio in a little conversation and Janet says, “We’ve just arrived in Frederick, but what we’ve seen of the town so far it appears to be a wonderful place to live. Like most communities today, you probably have to deal with some petty crime, some vandalism, a few juicy scandals and maybe even some political activist disturbances, but it sure seems to be a nice relatively safe place to live and raise a family. Am I right on or am I off the mark?
“You’ve pegged it pretty good. My husband and I opened this restaurant twenty years ago and live only three miles away. We’ve raised four kids here without a bit of trouble and wouldn’t move away if you paid us a million dollars, for two million we might consider it.”
She says this last with a mischievous glint in her eye.
I follow up with a question of my own. “You’re only an hour away from D. C. Does that proximity foster any political rabble rousing locally? You know, do people get up on a soapbox in the park and try to convert passersby to their way of thinking or to their cause or pass fliers out to folks on the street or stuff them in windshield wipers?” Stuff like that?”
“Frederick has its moments. Environmental issues, gun control, dissatisfaction with some of the people in Washington get the most attention around here which I think mirrors the concerns of the people in most communities.”
Janet asks, “Does anyone stand out?”
It’s like someone threw a switch. Loretta stares at Janet for a moment and then says “I better get back to work or I’m going to have some angry customers. What would you like to order?”
I order the linguine and clams with the red sauce and a glass of Chianti and Janet orders the Pasta Pomodoro and a diet soda. When Loretta leaves Janet says, “I’m sorry. I blew it. I got too pushy. I’m used to dealing with people who expect me to be pushy. She’s not buying the tourist bit any longer.”
“No harm done and we did learn something useful. People who live here do get involved in issues of the day. Dig in. Let’s fill our bellies and then get out and mingle with the town folk. Before we do that that though, I’d like to stop by the local police station and make some inquiries there. They might be able to save us some time and trouble.”
The meal is out of this world delicious and to top it off I have a dish of spumoni. Janet passes on dessert and instead has another glass of diet soda. Although she loves to eat, she has the discipline to control how much she eats. That self-control and her frequent trips to the gym have given her a body that many twenty year olds would envy and aficionados of the female form like me greatly appreciate.
As we’re leaving the restaurant a police car is just pulling into the parking lot, so we ask them for directions to police headquarters and fifteen minute later we’re sitting in front of a Sergeant Mancuso explaining what we’re up to and why and asking him for his input regarding anyone he might be aware of that might fit the profile we’ve created on the Crusader.
“We get our share of weirdos, crackpots, trouble makers and complainers who like to create a scene just to get attention, but this Crusader seems to fit into a category all by himself. I remember the uproar that was created by the news media over the possibility that our fighting men and women in the military were being issued faulty equipment and when the ensuing investigations failed to find any truth to the accusations some folks around here really went berserk. There are more than a few families that live here who have lost loved ones in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and they were up in arms over what they thought was a cover up.”
Janet asks the same question she asked Loretta D’Antonio. “Does anyone in particular stand out in your mind?”
Sergeant Mancuso doesn’t answer right away. He’s slipping into that trancelike state we all do when we’re trying to recollect something we haven’t thought about in a while. After a minute or so he says, “It was a while back, but I remember a few instances where several men got into a scuffle over the outcome of the investigations and we were called to break them up. No one was arrested. We just sent them on their way. In each instance though, different people were involved. As I said before, tempers were high when the results of the investigations were released. I’m sorry I can’t be of more help.”
Janet responds with, “I understand. Do you remember where these incidents took place?”
“I sure do. One was in front of Casey’s Pub. I remember that one because Casey’s is my favorite watering hole. One was outside of Tony’s barber shop and the other was, believe it or not, in the parking lot of St. Peter’s church. Wait a minute. I just remembered something about one of the guys in the parking lot of the church. He was a husky guy about six feet tall and he had hair like a zebra. It was thick and wavy and jet black with wide snow white streaks in it. He was the most rambunctious of the bunch and wouldn’t shut up. He kept screaming things like ‘The political gangbangers in Washington are no better than those in the streets of our major cities.’, ‘They’re killers and should be dealt with like any other killers.’, ‘We’ve got to make these murderers pay.’, Stuff like that. He finally quieted down when I threatened to haul his ass off to jail. As I think about it, he might have been involved in the other incidents and I didn’t notice him because he was wearing a hat.”
I ask, “Would you have any objection to us stopping by these places to see what we can learn about this zebra haired man from people who might know who he is?”
“As long as you don’t harass anybody I have no objections. I hope you come up with something helpful.” He looked up the addresses for u
s and when he handed them to me he said, “When you stop by Casey’s, ask for Barney and tell him I sent you. He’s been there the longest and knows a slew of people.”