He made no comment.
“But you’re going over there now?” she asked. “To the Mosier place?”
“I am. Kruse is going with me.”
“How’s your own son?” Tallman seemed to catch herself in a mood and was trying to be more congenial.
“He’s okay.” Reed returned the cordiality: “You have kids?”
“No. Never did.”
He said, “My son – since you asked – he’s got pressure, too. They all do. They always did, but I think it’s a different kind of pressure now.”
She started chewing on a pen, swung a little back and forth in her chair. “I didn’t peg you as a softy.”
“I’m saying we live with constant change.”
“Hmm.” She kept looking at him. “I think it’s always been this way. There’s always been change, unrest. Great Depression, Vietnam, Civil Rights movement. What’s changed are the excuses. Kids have more excuses now, and they use them.”
Reed let it drop. Whether today’s youth were worse off was debatable; what wasn’t debatable was how communication was wholly different today – people could connect at light speed over vast distances. Even if information had moved slower twenty-two years ago, when Melanie Hollander was killed, a recent obsession with that case could have spread to some dark corner of the internet.
He really wanted Virginia here; she’d been scouring the web – Kasey’s and Tyson’s social media accounts, Aaron Mosier’s website. Reed had a Facebook account he hadn’t checked in two or three years. Did they get deleted from inactivity? He didn’t think so. He thought even the dead still had accounts.
Something flickered in the back of his thoughts, too quick and unformed to catch.
“All right, so tell me about going down to Hume,” Tallman said. “About the ways this could connect with the Melanie Hollander cold case.”
He gave her the highlights of the Roy Hollander interview. “There’s no question they’re connected – the symbols do it. But so far I’m unlucky linking people between Hume and Elliston.”
“Well, it’s possible someone carved that symbol into Kasey Stevens to throw us off. Get us looking for a connection, when anyone could’ve seen the symbol on the website.”
“It’s possible.”
She folded her arms and grunted. “You don’t think so, though.”
“I don’t know. I’d say we’re not looking for a killer who operated twenty-two years ago and again now. But the ideas…the ideas behind it have persisted.”
“Symbols carved into bodies,” she said. “Spiritual viruses. Different killers, but for the same reasons? Then why wasn’t Kasey Stevens raped and thrown out of a moving car in the same way?”
“I don’t know. Might just be circumstances. And the other thing is, if there’s a component of sexual abuse in the Kasey Stevens case, it might not be one rape at the end, just prior to her death. She could’ve been assaulted in ways we’re just not seeing.”
“By whom? Snow?”
“Or others. Lots of men hanging around Ida Stevens. And then, of course, there’s Aaron Mosier, and Kasey babysitting for the family. Which is where we’re focusing efforts right now.”
Tallman soaked it all in, then stared off into space.
He rose from the chair. “I’ve really got to get going.”
She stood, too, and reached out for a handshake. “Sorry I got a little testy.”
“Testy I can handle. Let’s hope the next time we talk, it’s about evidence.”
18
We have a winner
The Mosier place sat on a hilltop. There was a large deck with a hot tub on one side of the house, a street-level garage on the other. An unmarked police SUV was parked in front of the garage, and Jeremiah Mosier stood beside it, talking to Kruse, who sat behind the wheel. They both saw Reed approach.
Reed put on a smile. “Morning.”
“I called you last night,” Jeremiah Mosier said.
“I know, I’m sorry.”
“This is getting crazy.”
“This is procedure,” Reed said. “We have reason to take a look around your home, and we’ve obtained a court order to that effect.”
Mosier waved his hands. “Of course. No, I understand that. I’m just…” He bit his lower lip. He was a big man with long sideburns and short graying hair. He reminded Reed of some old-timey preacher. Fitting, perhaps, for a funeral home director. “I’m just concerned about my son,” he finished. “That’s what gets me… I’m sorry for how I might’ve come across. He’s… Aaron has always done his own thing. When he got his first tattoo–”
Reed held up a hand. “I’m happy to talk. Let’s just allow Investigator Kruse, here, to get started. He’s been out straight with this case and has more to do today.”
Kruse exited his vehicle and headed for the garage, asking, “The door have a button or a code?”
“Code,” Mosier said. “Go through the side door, if you would, please. I unlocked it.” He leaned against the containment wall along the driveway and crossed his arms. He watched Kruse go around the building and open the door.
“Won’t take long,” Reed said. “You were saying? Your son’s first tattoo?”
Mosier took a long breath and shook his head, looking down. “I just mean, he marches to his own drum. Always has. So it worries me how it looks.” He glanced up. “I can understand how police officers might get fixated on a… on someone who is outside of the mainstream.”
“He was still rolling on Ecstasy when I first saw him yesterday morning.”
Mosier dropped his head, as if ashamed. “I can’t believe what he did.”
“The tattoo designs on his website – I guess you could say, lots of drug-related art. What they call psychedelic stuff.”
Mosier’s eyes came up. “He designs those things for other people.”
“Like who?”
“Anybody. I don’t know.”
Reed changed the subject. “Does Aaron sleep in the house? Or does he bag out in the tattoo parlor?”
Mosier’s jaw twitched, as if resentful of the questioning, the implications. “My son is twenty-one. We had an arrangement that if he left school–”
“I know, I remember. Is your wife home? Your daughter?”
“Of course not. They’re at work and school. I wasn’t going to keep them from their lives because of this.”
“But your wife was able to come up with the dates Kasey Stevens babysat?”
“Yes. She did. It’s inside. Follow me, please.”
“Thanks.”
This Jeremiah Mosier guy was wound up tighter than a two-dollar watch. He’d seen it before: guys like Mosier put on their big smiling face to the world, but the smile collapsed quickly under pressure. Mosier was used to getting his way, having people listen. Nothing wrong with a God-fearing, law-and-order Republican, so long as they let other people be and do what they wanted.
Mosier struck him more like Reed’s own old man – controlling – the kind to go after the belt when you weren’t toeing the line. He bet that if he checked, Aaron’s youth was checkered with bruises at the hands of dear old dad.
Part of that hunch had come when Reed’s violence had slipped out and Aaron had flinched.
The guilt twisted his stomach as he trudged up the concrete steps behind Jeremiah Mosier, toward the front door. The house was white; the door was red with a half-circle window. Mosier opened up. It smelled nice inside, like a better breakfast than the one Reed had scarfed down. The carpet was golden and buoyant, the space open and bright, big wide stairs going up from the living area, which featured two couches and a TV large enough to swallow a car.
“Here,” Mosier said, taking a sheet of paper from the coffee table. “Please, sit.”
Reed found a space on the couch and read what Mosier’s wife had written. Kasey Stevens had babysat for them seven times, going back two years. The most recent had been Christmas the year prior. That was the one Aaron was home for, it seemed.
“She was very capable,” Mosier said, sitting in the easy chair across from Reed. “My sister babysat us kids when she was eleven.”
“You had permission from her mother, of course.”
“Of course.”
“Do you know Ida that well?”
He seemed to consider it. “Not really. I mean, I know most of the people in town. Death touches everyone.”
Oddball thing to say. “Right. But I mean how did she… how did you know to hire her? Usually that’s, like, a referral thing, right?” He was thinking of Delilah. She’d first sat for Mike when she was sixteen and he was nine or ten.
Mosier said, “We just asked around. Got a list of three or four girls. I think my wife knew most of them. Kasey Stevens was the first to be available, and the kids thought she was great. So did we.”
Reed nodded. He folded up the paper and put it in his pocket while mentally mapping the exits to the house – an old habit.
Mosier said, still in that dry tone, “She babysat for several different families. Have you talked to them?”
“Do you know their names?”
“Oh, well, the Porters, the Egglestons, the Blaines. At least that many, probably more.”
Reed kept nodding, and scratched his leg – the stitches were driving him nuts. “Thanks.” On the coffee table, a pair of ivory angels reached up, their arms circling a thick candle. He wanted to give Kruse a little more time. “I always wondered what it was like running a funeral home,” Reed said.
“It’s a round-the-clock job.” Mosier seemed relieved to change the subject. “Assisting the grieving doesn’t have a punch-in, punch-out time. You’re on their schedule. Death can happen at any time.”
This guy talks funny.
“I understand you lived there for a while? At the funeral home?”
“When the children were young, yes. I bought the place in…” He looked up. “1995. Aaron was born a few years later – he was actually born in the home. We had a home birth. After that, though, Annalise wanted to go to the hospital.”
“Was it difficult? My kid was born in a hospital, so I wouldn’t know.”
Mosier blinked. He’d transitioned back to his gregarious preacher persona. “Well, that’s just it – hospital births aren’t traditional. For the vast majority of human history, babies were born right in the home. A hundred years ago, ninety-five percent.”
“Huh. I guess that makes sense. Isn’t that something? You know – to have that here: the whole cycle of life under one roof.”
Mosier just met his gaze and smiled faintly.
Reed said, “Apologies for asking, but any strong religious beliefs in your family?”
“We’re Pentecostal.”
“I was raised Roman Catholic,” Reed said when Mosier didn’t elaborate. “I actually wanted to be a priest.”
“Really? Huh.”
“Yeah. I had a good mentor, though. He could’ve – you know – tried to persuade me to stick with it to serve his own interests. But he didn’t. He thought my calling was a bit different.”
“Was he right?”
“Jury is still out on that,” Reed said, giving Mosier the full megawatt smile. Then he patted the jacket pocket where he’d stowed the babysitting dates. “Thank you for this. Thanks to your wife.” He stood up. “I’m gonna go see how Investigator Kruse is doing. Can you show me the way?”
Mosier led them out of the living room and headed down a short hallway. He opened the door to the space above the garage.
“Does Aaron keep this locked?” Reed asked.
“He does.”
“So you had to go in and unlock it this morning?”
Mosier looked at Reed. They were in close proximity. Mosier was a few inches taller. Reed could see the hairs in his nose. “I knew you were coming.”
“You didn’t touch anything in there? Move or remove anything?”
“Why would I do that?”
“I don’t know. You might’ve been tidying up. You seem like a very neat person. Thanks – I’ll let you know when we’re done.” Reed stepped in the room, and Mosier closed the door, his angst showing full and clear before he disappeared.
Kruse stood in the middle of the room. He was breathing hard, his hair sticking up, eyes darting over the space. “We might need to get a team in here,” he said.
“No luck, huh?” Reed looked around. Floor-to-ceiling shelves formed two walls of the space. It was all nicely renovated and included a small bathroom and a corner kitchenette. The daylight burned around the edges of blinds closed across a bank of windows. Dust motes drifted.
“I’m looking for a key,” Kruse said. He pointed to a chair that resembled something from a dentist’s office. Beside it was a large swing light, the kind with a bendable arm. A stool for the artist to sit on. A large toolbox on wheels.
Reed moved to the toolbox and went through the top drawers, full of tattooing needles and the ink cartridges. The third drawer from the top was locked.
“I can’t find it,” Kruse said, almost whining.
“We’ll find it,” Reed said.
He took a look around. A high desk sat by the door; a lounge area with leather furniture and a low coffee table filled a third of the room, like a waiting area, replete with magazines and binders of tattoo designs. “The kid knows what he’s doing – this looks like a legit business.” Reed flipped through one of the binders: no wetiko symbol, but they were definitely going to want to have a look at every one of these images.
Two framed posters adorned the space, both of bands – TOOL and Soundgarden. For a youngster, Reed thought, Aaron Mosier had decent taste in music. Kruse took a book down in his blue-gloved hands and looked inside. “What was that movie? A prisoner kept a rock hammer in a Bible?”
“Ah… The Shawshank Redemption.”
Kruse slapped the book closed, slid it back into place on the shelves and put his hands on his hips. He shook his head. “How does someone acquire so many books?”
“See anything about Native Americans?” Reed picked up the empty ashtray on the coffee table, gave it a sniff. Smelled like soap.
“No. There’s some commie-looking stuff, though. That Noam Chomsky guy. And this one’s called The Silent Takeover. Here’s one… who’s Go-eth?”
“Goethe.”
Kruse pulled the book out, read quietly to himself a second, then aloud: “‘None are more helplessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.’” He put the book back. “Comforting.”
Reed looked in a beverage cooler: empty. He moved to the high desk. It was less a desk and more a maître d’ stand, a kind of podium. “Got the laptop,” he said, and pulled it from a lower section and set it on top. He opened it and waited for it to boot up.
Kruse said, “Bet the father is twisting his shirt with us in here.”
“He’s got a little pent-up anger. But he could’ve kept us company if he wanted. I didn’t tell him to stay out – he just chose to. Like he didn’t want to see. You know anything about him? The family?”
“I mean, just what everybody does. They’re from somewhere else. Connecticut, I think. Came up here in the early nineties, bought the funeral parlor. That was family owned and operated for fifty years before that. It went into a trust, and then Jeremiah Mosier bought it after a year or so. I can’t remember. I was still running around like a heathen back then.”
“You from here?” The laptop prompted Reed for a password.
“Yeah, more or less. Willsboro.”
Reed thought about a password Aaron Mosier might use. He tried wetiko, but the computer shook him off. He tried tattoo and a few others, but he’d never been any good at guessing passwords. He could just ask Aaron, anyway. Reed shut the laptop and rubbed a hand over his jaw, gave the whole place another look. The key to that drawer could be anywhere, and then, there might not even be anything inside it.
But, come on.
Kruse joined him and held the toolbox steady as Reed worked the screwdriver back and forth until the lock popped with a satisfying jolt. Reed set the screwdriver down on the top of the box and opened the drawer.
It contained some loose tools, including a lancet. Reed pinched it between his gloved thumb and forefinger, held it in the air for Kruse to see.
“Ladies and Gentlemen,” Kruse said, his eyes crossing a little with the close proximity, “we have a winner.”
The lancet went to Albany for fingerprints and possible DNA. Reed didn’t think they’d get any – among Aaron Mosier’s supplies were a number of cleaning chemicals and astringents, bleach. He was in the business of making people bloody and then cleaning them up.
He also had a box of blue latex gloves, the kind used by surgeons and cops alike.
Presently, Aaron sat across from Reed and Kruse. He looked tired; he’d been in holding at the trooper barracks for almost twenty-four hours and, according to MacKinnon, had yet to sleep. He was wired and edgy.
Beside him was Dodge Terrio. Apparently Jeremiah Mosier had called Terrio the moment Reed and Kruse left Mosier’s house.
Reed held out his phone, showing a picture of the lancet he’d taken at the scene. “That yours?”
“My client can’t confirm ownership of an item on your cellphone,” Terrio said dryly.
Reed swiped to another picture, broader view, with Kruse standing beside the tattooing chair, holding the lancet.
“How about now?” Reed asked.
Terrio said, “We don’t know if that officer was carrying that tool when he entered the room.”
Reed nodded and set his phone aside, leaving the image there for Aaron to see. “Let me ask you this, then. Would a tattoo artist ever have a tool like that?”
“No need to answer,” Terrio said to Aaron.
Rough Country: A gripping crime thriller Page 17