by Nick Pirog
I waited for him to react, but other than a slight dip in his shoulders, he did nothing.
“You attend a weekly Gamblers Anonymous meeting, something that you promised your wife you would do. I checked at the community center. According to the guy who runs it, you’ve been going for the last six years. I’m sure that’s one of the deals you made with Joan when you two got back together. Maybe that’s where you ran into Lowry Barnes. His court mandated AA meeting started right after your meeting. It was part of his parole. You guys get to talking and you find out he’d just been fired from the Save-More. That’s when you get this brilliant idea.
“Maybe you thought about having Will Dennel killed, but all that would do is erase your eighty-thousand-dollar debt. If you get rid of Victoria Page, then you can access her account and her millions. You’ll be able to gamble to your dick’s content. But then you think, why not both?”
I watched him closely, then said, “I don’t care if you jump, but don’t do it until I’m finished.”
I waited for him to acknowledge me or jump.
He did neither.
“You offered Lowry Barnes half a million dollars to kill Victoria Page. Half up front, half on completion. Lowry Barnes was a desperate man and half a million dollars is life-changing money. So you stake out Victoria Page, see when she’s going to go to the Save-More. Maybe when she’s en route, you call Will Dennel and ask him to meet you there. Maybe you tell him you have some money for him.”
I debated telling him why Victoria was going to the Save-More. Telling him about the meeting. The one that Neil Felding had called. But it didn’t matter. It had nothing to do with why Victoria was targeted.
“When Will and Victoria are both inside the Save-More, that’s when you give Lowry the go-ahead. He goes in, makes it look like he’s there to settle the score with Odell, then rounds up everyone and shoots them.”
I took a breath, then said, “Lowry Barnes used to cut Victoria Page’s lawn when he was a kid.”
At this, Jerry turned around.
He didn’t know.
I said, “She was one of the only people who was ever nice to him. Fed him when he came over to cut her grass, even let him stay the night a few times when his old man was in a bad way. That’s why he couldn’t go through with it. That’s why he only shot her in the hip and the shoulder.”
Jerry snorted.
I didn’t blame him.
If Lowry Barnes had killed Victoria Page then Jerry would have been in the clear. He would have her money, and I wouldn’t be here now.
But he didn’t get her money.
And I was here.
I said, “I don’t know exactly where you got the two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. I’m guessing you took it from Victoria’s account late that afternoon. By the time she noticed it missing, she would be dead.”
Jerry looked as though he was about to speak, then decided against it. Maybe he was thinking about the big picture. About lawyers, and due process, what could be proved and what couldn’t, not to mention his chances of making it out of this with a wife and without being raped by a cellmate.
“Lowry is supposed to meet you somewhere on the outskirts of town where you were going to give him the second half of his money. But you never had any intention of paying him the second half. You get in the car with him, wrestle his gun away, and shoot him in the temple. He will already have gunshot residue on his fingers from his killing spree, and it will be deemed a suicide.”
I let out a long breath, then said, “Damn that felt good.”
I glanced at Wheeler.
Twice already, she’d believed she was in the presence of the person who had paid Lowry Barnes to kill her father. First with David Ramsey, then with Victoria Page.
“Say you did it!” she screamed at Jerry. “Say that you paid Lowry to do it!”
He didn’t say anything.
I took two steps forward and grabbed him. I yanked him toward the burner then raised his left arm.
It took him a moment to realize my intentions.
I pulled his arm straight and inched it near the flames.
“You heard the lady,” I said.
He whipped his head from side to side.
With my opposite hand I pushed down on the burner’s throttle. The small flame doubled. I moved his arm toward the flame.
“I did it!” he screamed. “I paid Lowry Barnes to kill Victoria!”
I wrenched his arm from above the burner and pushed him away. He sank to his butt against the basket wall, rubbing his arm with his hand.
Wheeler took two steps across the basket and kicked him. Once, twice, three times, until he was curled in the fetal position moaning.
I pulled her away, the tears running down her cheeks. “You motherfucker!” she screamed.
I held her for a long minute until her breathing calmed. Finally, I stepped back over to where Jerry cowered.
I said, “And you had him kill Will Dennel and everyone else there.”
He shook his head. His eyes were moist. “I told him he had to kill everyone in the store. That it had to look like a massacre. But I didn’t know Will was there.”
“Bullshit.”
“Will and I were friends. Hell, other than my wife, I probably talked with him more than anybody. And I had no reason to kill him. With Victoria gone, I would have had millions.”
Jerry’s face was pained and it wasn’t from Wheeler’s kicks.
Maybe Will being there had just been a crazy coincidence?
I asked, “Will didn’t threaten to tell Joan about your gambling if you didn’t pay?”
“No, Will was easy. He told me to pay what I could. But he said I couldn’t bet with him anymore.”
I said, “So let me guess, you started betting elsewhere. With other bookies. With that Graham guy?”
“Yeah, and Graham, he isn’t so easygoing. I got into him for about forty large. He told me I had till the end of the month, then he was gonna rough me up.”
Wasn’t easy going was an understatement.
He was terrifying.
I mentally kicked myself for missing such an obvious piece of the puzzle.
I said, “And if you came home roughed up, your wife would know right off that you were gambling again.”
He nodded.
After a couple seconds, I said, “Tell me about Mike Zernan.”
He didn’t answer and I kicked him in the ribs.
“Tell.”
Kick.
“Me.”
Kick.
“About.”
Kick.
“Mike Zernan.”
He held his ribs. Wheezed. Finally, he said, “I’d known Mike since we were kids. He was a couple years ahead of me, but he used to buy me and my buddies beer once in a while. When he got back from the war, I looked in on him, mostly because I was working my way up at the bank at the time and I wanted him to invest whatever money he made while he was in the military.”
He took a long wheezing breath. “He did and he would come in every couple weeks to check on things. Mostly, I think he just knew I would listen to him. We became sort of friends, I guess. After the murders, he started to come in a bit more often. I guess I was like his therapist in a way. He would tell me everything about the investigation.”
I said, “The investigation into the murders that you orchestrated.”
He nodded.
“And since Victoria survived, you wanted to know everything you could.”
“Yeah, that bitch.”
I kicked him again.
Victoria made some horrible choices, but she didn’t deserve to be shot. And if I was being truthful, I couldn’t muster the strength to dislike her.
“Keep going.”
Jerry grimaced, then said, “So Mike told me everything about the investigation. One day, I asked him about Victoria, asked if she had any suspicions. But, like everyone else, she just thought she was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
&nb
sp; “What about the two hundred and fifty thousand that you stole from her account to give to Lowry?”
“I don’t think she ever noticed. Or if she did, she never said anything about it to me.”
“How did you get it? Banks don’t usually keep that much cash around?”
“I ordered the cash a couple days earlier. No one would have noticed. I’m in charge of all that stuff.”
“And what about after the murders, did you and Victoria keep the same arrangement?”
“Yeah.”
“And how much were you getting?”
“Fifteen percent.”
“Of the sixty grand she got each month?”
He seemed surprised that I knew the exact number. “Yeah.”
So he got $9,000 a month. Roughly $110,000 a year. On top of his banker’s salary.
“You must be a shitty fucking gambler,” I said.
He bristled, but didn’t disagree.
“When did she first approach you about assisting her in her embezzlement scheme?”
“Twelve years ago. I was at a horse track in St. Louis. I ran into Victoria and it turned out that a couple of her horses were racing. After her horses finished up, we met for a couple drinks. I’d gone to the track to try to make some money to cover a couple bad beats that I’d taken with my bookie the day before. But I’d just gone deeper in the hole. I confided this all to Victoria after a few martinis and she proposed we help each other out. I couldn’t say no.”
“And then you helped her set up accounts and trusts at your bank?”
He nodded.
“Okay, back to Mike.”
He sighed, then said, “Mike kept me updated on the investigation. He told me that he was going through one of the victim’s belongings—the stuff they had on them when they died—and he found a notebook.”
“Will’s Moleskine, his sports book?”
“Yeah.”
“So what?”
“So, my name is all over that thing.”
“Fuzz?”
“Right.”
“So what?”
“So I’m thinking that if Mike traces all those bets back to me, that I owe Will eighty large, that he might see a motive and start, you know, digging a little deeper.”
“But the case was open and shut.”
“Not for Mike. He always thought something was off.”
According to Eccleston, it had been Lowry’s statements about being fired that had nagged at Mike. Mike thought they had come off as rehearsed—lines from a play.
I said, “Tell me how you killed him. And why?”
“You.”
“Me?”
“I heard you’d been to see him. I didn’t know who you were at the time. I’d just heard this new guy in town—who used to be a homicide detective—had been to see Mike.”
“So you went over there?”
“Yeah.”
“To get Will Dennel’s notebook?”
“When Mike was forced to retire, he confided in me that he’d taken the book. That he thought there was still something to it.”
Of course, Mike never thought there was really a connection to the sports book. That was his cover. What he really thought was that Lunhill was involved. I didn’t have the time or the energy to explain this to Jerry.
“So you strangled him with a garrote?”
He nodded. “I ordered one online.”
“But Mike was much bigger than you, it couldn’t have been easy.”
Now that the cat was out of the bag, it appeared Jerry was in the mood to talk. He said, “I went over to his house late Sunday night, the day after you went to visit him. I told him my car had broken down not far from his house and that my cell phone was dead. He offered to take a look at the car. I told him that would be great but asked to use his restroom first. When I came out of the bathroom, he was in the kitchen. I came up from behind him, then I wrapped the garrote around his neck.” He paused then added, “But since he was bigger than me, I did it like they show on YouTube and pulled him backward over my back.”
That was it.
Everything about my theory had fit, except that Jerry was right-handed. I knew this from golfing with him. And this didn’t fit with the bruising on Mike’s throat. But as Jerry described it, it did make sense. Since he was smaller than Mike, he’d pulled Mike onto his back, using Mike’s own weight to help strangle him. And putting the garrote around Mike’s neck, then crossing his arms and pulling Mike onto his back, things would have been reversed. Like looking in a mirror. So Jerry pulling harder with his dominant right hand would have resulted in deeper bruising on the right side of Mike’s throat.
I asked, “Then you searched for the notebook?”
“Yeah.”
“Where did you find it?”
“It wasn’t hard to find. It was in the drawer of his desk.”
That’s because Mike had just spent a day and a half copying the notebook to make a near replica that he’d sent to me.
“Then you made it look like a robbery?”
“Yeah.”
There were three loud chimes. It came from a small speaker nestled near the extra tank of propane.
“What was that?” Wheeler asked.
Jerry pushed himself up and gazed over the top of the basket. “Weather advisory. They want us to go back.”
According to the altimeter, we’d been floating along for the past ten minutes at right around three thousand feet. What I hadn’t noticed was that we were moving laterally toward the approaching storm.
“Take us back,” Wheeler barked. “Now!”
I guessed we were a few miles from the Pershing grounds.
Jerry pushed himself to his feet. “What are you gonna do to me when we get down there?”
“I’m gonna drive you to the Tarrin Police Department and you’re gonna tell them everything you told me.” I gazed down toward the ground. “Or you can jump.”
He gazed down.
He appeared to genuinely be considering his options.
“No!” yelled Wheeler. “He isn’t jumping. If he jumps, we have no way of getting down.”
I felt pretty confident I could get us down safely, I mean, it was pretty self-explanatory.
Fire, up.
No fire, down.
Jerry eased down on the throttle and we began to descend.
I joined Wheeler against the far wall, keeping my back to the basket so I could keep an eye on Jerry.
A few minutes passed in silence.
“Can you hurry up?” Wheeler said. “That storm is getting a lot closer.”
She was right. It would be on us in the next few minutes. I gazed down at the ground and saw we had moved farther from the Pershing grounds. Jerry was heading us toward the storm.
“Hey,” I yelled. “You’re taking us in the wrong—”
Jerry picked up the extra propane tank. I shielded Wheeler, thinking he was going to throw it at us. He didn’t. He tipped it over the edge and let it fall.
“What are you doing?” I screeched.
He ignored me, then began fiddling with the burner. It roared to life, sending the balloon soaring.
We caught a gust of wind, the balloon leaning hard to the right, and headed directly toward the thick gray clouds.
I pushed him out of the way and attempted to turn the burner off, only the throttle was gone.
“Where is it?” I said, grabbing him by the shirt.
He opened his hand. The large throttle was held tightly in his palm. I reached for it, but before I could grab it, he tossed it over the side.
I punched him in the gut.
There was a loud oof and he sank to his knees.
“What’s going on?” cried Wheeler, holding tightly to the corner of the basket.
“He just threw the throttle overboard.”
“Oh my God.”
I turned my attention back to the burner. I tried to get the flames to stop, but I couldn’t. We continued to rise. Continued directly
into the storm.
There was a lightning strike, then a boom unlike I’d ever heard. It was like an M-80 exploded inside my ear canal.
“If we survive this,” I screamed over the pelting rain, “I’m going to potato peel your entire body before I hand you over to the police.”
Over the last ten minutes we’d risen to nearly six thousand feet. The storm had overtaken us and the wind and rain turned us into its own giant washing machine.
“Thomas!” Wheeler screamed. “I’m scared.”
Yeah, me too!
I yelled, “It’s gonna be okay.”
A moment after I said these words there was a soft choking, the flames dying out. At first I thought maybe the rain put out the flame, but it hadn’t.
We were out of propane.
The flame flickered one last time, then went out completely.
The balloon halted its ascent, hung limply for a long moment, then slowly began to descend.
“We’re going down,” Wheeler yelled, a big smile on her face.
I glanced down at Jerry.
Going down was a good thing, right?
But then, why would he have dumped the extra propane tank?
A minute later, I realized why.
Our rate of descent was increasing. Without the hot air to slow us down near the ground, we were going to impact hard. And the parachute whipping in the wind certainly wasn’t helping.
I checked the altimeter. “Four thousand feet,” I said.
I began counting in my head.
When we hit three thousand feet, I stopped.
“You any good at math?” I asked Wheeler.
She nodded through the rain.
“How fast is a thousand feet in forty-six seconds?”
Ten seconds later, she said, “Right around fifteen miles per hour.”
“Shit.”
“Is that how fast we’re going?”
I nodded.