Every Dark Place

by Craig Smith

‘I can give you Roby’s squad. They’ve swept the river from here to Bethel Falls and looking to help somewhere.’

  When I had finished with Max, Irene Follet said, ‘Did you say crime scene?’

  ‘Yeah. Everything but a body. I want to take a look at anything he touched,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t they use some kind of powder to get fingerprints?’

  ‘There are different ways to locate prints, but powder is simple and easy. Plus, the average sheriff’s deputy can lift a print – assuming the surface is decent.’

  ‘Messy?’

  ‘A little, I guess. I mean it’s a powder…’

  ‘Oscar is going to have kittens.’

  ‘Oscar?’

  ‘Mr Wirtzmyer.’

  ‘He seemed like a nice enough man.’

  ‘That’s because you didn’t tell him you were going to make a mess.’

  IT WAS A FEW MINUTES PAST nine when we arrived at the front door of the library. The place was locked up tight, but Wirtzmyer was waiting for us. He saw Irene Follet next to me and asked her excitedly, ‘Do you remember seeing him?’

  ‘Three visits to Special Collections.’

  Wirtzmyer looked at me. ‘That explains it. You see, if he was in there, nobody else would have noticed him. Special Collections has its own room.’

  In the parking lot two sheriff’s cars pulled up wthewn ro"1eith lights flashing. ‘I’m afraid I have another favour to ask you,’ I told Wirtzmyer.

  He studied the activity in the parking lot, then looked at me almost accusingly. ‘I’m not going to be happy about this, am I?’

  Joe Roby came toward us on the run, three men following him. I introduced Roby to Wirtzmyer and Irene Follet, ‘...our witness.’

  As we walked back toward Special Collections, Irene whispered for only me to hear, ‘ our witness and my fiancé... ’

  SPECIAL COLLECTIONS WAS fairly extensive, with an office made of glass walls and a couple of study niches tucked in here and there. Irene pointed to a lonely corner hidden away from view, ‘He was there mostly, I think, but also at the microfilm machine a few times.’

  One of the deputies walked to the drawers where the microfilm was stored and began dusting. Joe Roby asked Irene, ‘Did you see him get any books?’

  ‘He had books every time I saw him. Lots of books. Most of them from over here...’

  Wirtzmyer nodded sagely, and I looked at him. ‘Maps and Directories,’ he told me.

  From the cabinets the deputy called, ‘Got something, Joe!’ We walked over and saw a smudged mark on one of the handles. ‘Could be his,’ the deputy explained, holding up a copy of Booker’s prints that every deputy was now carrying because of the fiasco with the prints on the bat. ‘Wouldn’t hold up in court, but I’ll bet he opened this drawer.’ The drawer carried the local newspaper on film; the dates were from ten to fifteen years ago. ‘Do you want me to lift it?’

  ‘Just open the drawer,’ Joe answered. ‘Maybe we can figure out which reel he was looking at.’

  I pointed at one box almost at once. ‘Try that one,’ I said.

  Joe Roby looked at me curiously but told the deputy to dust it. When he got a print, he compared it to Booker’s, and looked at Roby. ‘It’s his. A good one, too.’

  ‘Go ahead and lift that one,’ Joe Roby told him. Then he spun around on me, ‘How did you do that, Rick?’

  Irene was impressed too, and I hated to give away my secret, but I thought I’d better.

  ‘This is the local paper from ten years ago.’

  ‘That’s when he was raising hell around here...’

  ‘Booker was in here reading about himself, Joe.’

  The deputy asked Roby. ‘Keep going?’

  ‘Max said everything.’ The deputy nodded, and began the process of extracting all the boxes from the drawer, meticulously checking each one of them.

  I walked over to Maps and Directories and watched another officer moving down the shelves, pulling each volume, dusting it, and checking anything he got against Booker’s prints, then moving on. The books he left behind were stacked on the floor in filthy piles.

  ‘What I want to know,’ Wirtzmyer asked me quietly but with grave concern, ‘is who is responsible for cleaning up after you finish?’

  I looked at Joe Roby, and I could see he didn’t care to answer the question either.

  ‘Civilians,’ I said.

  Wirtzmyer’s face twitched, but that was all.

  I looked back at Roby, ‘I’ll get our witness back to her friends, if you don’t need her anymore.’

  ‘Take your time,’ he answered. ‘We’re going to be here a while.’ The detective looked at Wirtzmyer, ‘There’s no sense all of us losing a Friday night, sir. If you leave me a set of keys, I’ll make sure we lock up when we’re done.’

  Wirtzmyer stiffened, ‘I’ll be back in my office. You need anything, just let me know.

  And do try to be as neat as you can.’

  Chapter 72

  Friday 9:21 p.m., March 26.

  STANDING OUTSIDE IN THE SNOW, Irene Follet told me, ‘Could you just take me home?’

  ‘Sure. You live close to the Shamrock, don’t you?’

  ‘Just around the corner.’

  ‘Prime real estate,’ I told her.

  I headed east down Ohio as far as Fourteenth before turning north. As we drove, we talked about people we both knew, bars we liked, bars we stayed out of. She asked about the life of a prosecutor’s investigator. Was it as boring as it sounded? I wanted to know what a special collections coordinator did all day.

  She gave me a coy smile, ‘I usually keep an eye peeled for flashers. Anything to stay awake. But mostly, I just walk the genealogy buffs through the material. Thrill a minute.’

  ‘Are you ever going to do anything else?’

  ‘I do something else. I’m a poet.’

  ‘Yeah? Ever publish anything?’

  ‘Six books.’

  ‘Six books! That’s a lot! You must be doing all right…’

  She laughed. ‘Yeah, I’m really rich. I just don’t like to show off my millions.’

  ‘They pay you for them, don’t they?’

  ‘Have you ever read a poem that you didn’t have to, Rick?’

  I felt like a Philistine. ‘I can’t say that I have.’

  ‘That puts you in a very large majority.’

  ‘So why do it?’

  She offered that smile of hers again, very private, very beautiful, ‘Because I’m good at it.’

  I pulled up in front of a big house on Fourteenth a block north of the Shamrock. Like a lot of the big houses in town, the thing had been chopped up into apartments.

  ‘You want to come in? Maybe have a cup of coffee? The guy said it was going to be a long night, and you look tired.’ She had no idea how tired. I hadn’t slept since the kids had been taken. I had hardly been back to the house, except torivofferp h shower and change clothes. I figured if I sat down I just might pass out.

  ‘I’d love to, but I need to get back.’

  ‘Well, you know where I live now.’

  She leaned over and kissed my lips. It was a soft, quick kiss, but no mistaking her meaning, especially not with the long look that followed. ‘Don’t forget me this time. Huh?’

  ‘I won’t.’

  She started to open her door, then stopped herself. ‘Do you know why Methodists don’t make love standing up, Rick?’

  I smiled. ‘I can’t say that I do.’

  ‘They’re afraid it might lead to dancing.’

  And then she was gone. I watched her climb up a wooden stairway at the side of the

  house. I saw the light go on in her place and marked the window where she lived, so I’d know how to find her. I even thought about following her. Get some coffee, have a talk about nothing in particular, steal just one more kiss, and maybe just ask for one more dance…

  But I couldn’t. I had a maniac to track down.

  Chapter 73

  Friday 10:09
p.m., March 26.

  ‘WE GOT THREE MORE PRINTS, Rick!’ Joe Roby announced when he opened the door for me. ‘Two on microfilm boxes, one on a city directory.’

  I had stopped on the way back and was eating a sandwich and sipping a Coke. I swallowed and looked at the man curiously. ‘City Directory?’ I asked.

  ‘Current year. We tried the pages but we couldn’t get anything more than a few smudges here and there. The pages are too porous.’

  I followed Roby back to Special Collections and looked at the book. There were four

  sections to it. Businesses, with business owners listed; then the metro residents were listed three ways: by address, by phone number, and by name. A lot of the people had their professions listed and quite a few entries included family members. A madman’s shopping list.

  ‘You can get a lot of information about someone here,’ I said, pointing at the directory.

  ‘These days most people just Google it.’

  ‘From everything we know about this guy Booker never touched a computer.’

  ‘Too bad for us.’

  ‘If he was using this he could have had a phone number or maybe an address. From that he could find out everyone who lived there.’

  ‘What does that get him, Rick?’

  ‘If you’ve got names, you can call folks and set up an appointment, like to show a vacuum cleaner or sell them insurance, maybe deliver some bogus prize – you know, get them to open the door without a fuss.’

  ‘An appointment? That’s something we hadn’t thought of.’

  ‘Rolly Tincher has already checked the calls from the Merriwem"ointiow, get eather house,’ I told him.

  ‘Same with the phone in his hospital room. But he could have made a call here, couldn’t he?’

  ‘According to the sign out front,’ Roby answered, ‘there are public phones downstairs.

  Of course, these days he might have borrowed someone’s phone...’

  ‘Let’s check the phones; any calls going out, we’d better do a drive-by on the property.’

  Roby pulled his cell phone out, while I wandered over to look at the microfilm boxes.

  Bernie Samples’ series on Booker’s case in federal court was in one of the boxes with Booker’s prints on it. Long winded florid swill about crooked cops, an ambitious prosecutor, an innocent man... and the preacher who wouldn’t give up. I’d seen it all as it came out and had no inclination to go through it again. This was about Will Booker’s vanity. The other box, though, was a long reel of microfilm and no reason that I could see why he wanted to read it. Had he touched it to move it aside? I didn’t think so. It was the most current. It was maybe just a read-through for current events, or maybe there was something in it he wanted. I had nothing better to do, so I threaded it into the machine and started reading.

  Roby snapped his phone off and told me, ‘We’re getting the phone records tonight, Rick.’

  I looked up and nodded. ‘You might want to make sure they do the same on the hospital’s public phones.’

  I SCANNED EVERY STORY for an eight month period, from politics to obituaries. What I found out is the local paper carried more about sports than any other topic, with the obits coming in a distant second. When I had finished our local paper’s offering for the year, I fished out the local maps Booker had touched and began scouring them for stray pencil marks.

  We wrapped it up shortly after midnight. A dozen more of Booker’s prints had emerged.

  Business annuals, high school and university yearbooks, the local Rotary newsletter and a couple of other service clubs. A few thousand names – but most definitely the interest was local. Joe Roby took everything with him. Third shift was under way. He wanted to get fresh eyes to begin making lists and looking for connections.

  BEFORE I WENT HOME, I swung by Missy Worth’s place, slipping out of the car a block away, crossing the railroad tracks and coming in through the blackest part of the shadows, stepping as softly as I could through the crackling snow drifts.

  Missy Worth’s house was pitch-black. There was no garage connected to the property, so the place would not have caught anyone’s attention on Max Dunn’s search. Of course, Will could have left the car somewhere else, like at the bottom of the river, and then walked back into town that night. I slipped up on the back door with a feeling of excitement and dread. I checked the door; it was locked. But anyone could take this lock and not even damage the door. I went around to the side of the house looking into the windows. The curtains were all drawn tight. I passed the front of the house and then slipped along a dark strip between Missy Worth’s house and the back of a vacant commercial building next to it. Finally, I found a curtain that was pulled loose. I put my face to the glass and peeked in. That was when I heard a footstep on a brittle patch of snow a few feet behin I gh Misd me.

  ‘WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING AT, PERVERT?’

  ‘DOO!’ I shouted, recognising the voice at once. ‘It’s Rick Trueblood!’

  That stopped him. I could see his form in the pale streetlight almost directly behind him.

  ‘Who?’ Cautious. Maybe friendly, but still not certain.

  ‘Rick Trueblood,’ I answered. ‘With the prosecutor’s office. I was looking for Will Booker.’

  ‘Here?’ He stepped closer and I saw a bat hanging from his hand.

  ‘Sorry, I sneaked up on the place,’ I said, ‘but I thought Will Booker might be hiding here with the Merriweather girls.’

  Doo laughed suddenly. ‘Now wouldn’t I just love another chance at that boy? Answer to my prayers, man!’

  ‘You’re staying here?’ I asked.

  ‘It was that or take the cat out to my place. You ever try to move a tom cat on a Harley?’

  ‘Missed the pleasure.’

  ‘Missy’s cat has got a bad attitude, man. Besides, this place is okay.’

  ‘When are you going marry this woman, Doo?’

  ‘I’ll tell you what, man. If you put us in the same house, one of us would end up dead

  inside a week. Hey, you want a beer? I got a couple cases in the house. We could bring in the dawn, if you want!’

  ‘Another time, maybe.’

  I was almost to the railroad tracks, when Doo called out: ‘You’re all right, man!’ I turned and saw the big man with that bat of his hanging off one shoulder. ‘You’re a good man in my book!’

  ‘Why do you say that?’ I asked him. I was curious about what had excited his affection.

  ‘Them two girls are already in the ground, but you’re still out looking for them. I admire that.’

  Chapter 74

  Darkness.

  PENNY STANDS OVER TAMARA Merriweather. The bloodied bat lies at her feet. Will has tied Tamara to a chair. Her mouth is sealed with tape. Will stands off to the side, his gun in his hand pointing benignly at the floor as he whispers his bargain.

  ‘Give her to me, Penny. If you do, I’ll let your family live. Go on, take the bat. Don’t worry, no one will ever know you did it. They’ll say I was the one. They won’t know... not even Benny or your father will ever know.’

  Penny stands in silence, staring into Tamara Merriweather’s frightened eyes.

  ‘Your father and Benny are going to die if you don’t get them help, Penny. You kill them if you refuse me. No choice at all kills two people – kills family – but if you pick up that bat and use it, four people live.

  ‘Tammy here is the one who called out when your dad was going to try to break you free.

  She’s the same one that got your mother shot. Give her to me, Penny. I’ll never tell. It will just be our little secret. Show me you love your family. You do that and I’ll let you have them back.

  Protect this one and watch your dad pass on first, then Benny after him. One way or the other, someone is going to die. It rests with you to say if its family or a traitor...’

  Chapter 75

  Saturday 7:52 a.m., March 27.

  I SLIPPED HOME LATE, GOT A SHOWER and thought about sleepi
ng until Monday, but the next morning I was dreaming about my mother pulling my brothers and me into a rundown shack with a cross on the front of it. A fine gentleman in black with a fondness for hell’s fire and brimstone was naming all the things I couldn’t do.

  I shook it off slowly, the nightmare of my Pentecostal youth, and came into the light with the feeling that I hadn’t quite stepped into the right reality. I was sober, yet feeling hung over. I had done nothing but think about the case, the salvation of two girls I didn’t even know, and yet I was feeling defiled. Impure thoughts about a certain librarian? I didn’t think so. I think it was that I was lost in time, coming to the end of my search for Sarah’s killer and knowing I was going to fail.