by Claire Booth
‘Um … yeah. I found it.’ He held up a box full of haphazardly stacked papers. He set it on the desk and handed Hank the top two sheets. Then he smiled. For real. Not a forced response to something that someone said, but a genuine happiness from within. Hank hadn’t seen that since Pimental’s shooting.
He took the papers and stared. Unbelievable.
He looked from the xeroxed faces of Johnny Gall/Kalin and Patrick O’Connell back up to his deputy. ‘How on earth did you find these?’
Another smile. ‘Go-karts. You wanna do the big one, you gotta have a license.’ He patted the box. ‘It’s a pretty popular ride.’
‘You’re a genius,’ Hank said. ‘I mean it.’
Sam sat up a little straighter. ‘New Mexico has no record of issuing an ID to one John Kalin. Or Johnny Gall, for that matter,’ he said.
‘What about Minnesota?’ Hank asked, holding up O’Connell’s copy.
‘Same deal,’ Sam said. ‘And I called Mr Gunner, who said when he thought about it, he never actually saw Patrick’s ID. He never really had a reason to.’ He pulled his notebook out of his back pocket and read verbatim. ‘“It wasn’t like I carded him, son. He obviously had one. Why in tarnation would I ask to see it?”’
Hank sighed. ‘Maybe because the kid was some random groupie?’
Sam laughed. ‘So because of Mr Gunner’s, um, lack of curiosity, we don’t know if O’Connell had that ID all along or got it more recently.’
Sam had also been working on the Cluth Junior birth certificate. It was more difficult than Gall’s faked one. The clerk from the county where it was issued could find no obvious errors, but had no record of it in her archives.
Hank nodded. ‘Why don’t you check with the state vital records department, too, just to be sure there wasn’t a mistake on the county end. And I’ll get going on trying to track down the woman listed as the mother.’
He also planned to look into the model year for the pulverized sedan – check for any recalls, known maintenance problems, that kind of thing. He didn’t tell Sam that, though.
She was exhausted. It’d taken all day to process Euford’s dressing room and the rest of the backstage area. Which had been a whole lot of boring. Important, but boring. The only immediate gratification had been hearing from the tech back at the police station that one of the prints in the dressing room was a match for Johnny Gall. So he’d been there, at some point. As had Patrick O’Connell, of course.
She took off her duty belt and tossed it on the bed. What were Gall and O’Connell up to? She rummaged through her dresser for a pair of sweats and changed out of her uniform. One of them had to have dropped Lauren’s phone. After wiping it off – the damn thing was completely clean of prints, including Lauren’s. She’d get the girl’s password from her parents tomorrow and see if her texts were helpful at all. That was all she could think to do at the moment. After four days going nonstop, her brain felt like it was short-circuiting.
There was only one thing that helped when she reached this point. She put on a Mavis Staples album, laced up her running shoes, and set the treadmill for her favorite course. Three miles of mountain-range setting later, she stepped off and flopped down on the bed. Tyrone found her there, staring at the ceiling.
‘You OK, baby?’ He sat down beside her and smoothed the hair back from her face. She smiled at him.
‘Just thinking. ’Bout a whole lot of things that don’t make any sense.’
‘You still helping out with that Branson PD murder?’
She nodded, and gave him a rundown of her day while he changed out of his postal uniform. Then he asked about the funerals. She sat bolt upright.
‘What?’
‘They start tomorrow. The funerals for the kids in that car crash. The first one’s that Anderson girl. I heard it on the talk radio station update. Don’t you guys send somebody to stuff like that? Just for good politics?’
She flopped back down with a groan and pulled a pillow over her face. They would absolutely have to send representatives to all the funerals. And it couldn’t be Hank. She’d have to fight him tooth and nail on that. He’d want to be at every one. With guilt oozing out of him like radioactive waste.
Now in a T-shirt and shorts, Tyrone sat down next to her and peeked under the pillow.
‘Why is that a big deal? You guys always do that.’
‘Because this time, my boss thinks it’s his fault. That they’re all dead. Because he pulled them over, about twenty minutes before the crash. And he let them go with a warning.’
He gawked at her. ‘Oh, shit. Really? I didn’t know that.’
‘Nobody does, really. Just the Major Crash sergeants and me.’
‘And you’d really like it to stay that way, I’m guessing,’ he said.
Another nod. ‘Can you imagine what that asshole Tucker would do with that information? Probably start a recall campaign.’
Tyrone gently lowered the pillow back over her face. ‘I’d stay under there as long as you can.’
Sheila started laughing and threw it at him. He rolled off the bed and headed to the door.
‘My turn to fix dinner,’ he said. ‘I got a new flavor of Hamburger Helper.’ He did the little shuffle dance that he knew always made her smile and disappeared down the hallway.
She sat up and pushed the errant strand of hair out of her face. It would have to be her, for every funeral. It couldn’t be Sammy, not with his thuggishly shaved head and tortured scowl. And it couldn’t be Hank. Maybe she could distract him with his conspiracy investigation. Which, she was very reluctantly starting to admit, looked like it might amount to something. Not so far as the crash went. Just with the mysterious Johnny Gall. Who was obviously linked to the mysterious Patrick O’Connell. Who was possibly Cluth Junior.
She sat bolt upright. Had they ordered a DNA test on O’Connell’s body? She didn’t remember seeing any paperwork on it. If they could answer that damn question once and for all, it would clarify the kid’s motivation, and everybody would be happier – including, she’d bet, the senior Cluth himself. And her boss. She’d get him started on that in the morning. It was the perfect diversion from the funerals.
She hopped up off the bed and headed toward the kitchen, where her husband had finished cooking the only meal he’d mastered in their twenty-two years of marriage. She gave him a big kiss and settled in to eat.
The argument lasted an hour. There was a significant amount of yelling, a lot of arm waving and some swearing. The only thing Hank didn’t do was cry. Which was an achievement of sorts, he supposed, especially when he lost. Spectacularly.
She’d come in prepared. Perfectly calm and professional, probably fortified by a good breakfast of Wheaties or something equally appalling. How was he supposed to compete with that when he’d had nothing but half of a frozen waffle and what felt like an accumulated six hours sleep in the past five nights?
And now she was turning to leave. To go to the first funeral. He couldn’t find any more words as she walked out his office door. He sat down slowly and glared at his cluttered desk. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been staring at the numerous stacks of paper when his cell rang.
‘There were no prints on Lauren Blenkinship’s phone,’ Raker said. ‘Not even hers.’
‘So it was wiped,’ Hank said.
‘Yep. Which is not an innocent act, as far as I’m concerned.’
Hank agreed. ‘What about what’s in the phone? Her texts?’
‘Excruciating,’ Raker said. ‘I had to ask my fifteen-year-old nephew what half the abbreviations meant. Even then, it was still like reading a foreign language. Thank God my kids are grown.’
Hank thought about what was ahead for him in that area and cringed. Raker, who didn’t know Hank would be staring that horror in the face in a few short years, kept talking.
‘There are a few things of value, though. The text string from Saturday night had five people on it. Alex Danzig, Kayla Anderson, Gabe Schattgen, Johnny Gall, a
nd Lauren. I’ll email you a transcript, but basically it’s planning the meeting. Various whining about Matt Chorovich not being able to drive, then Alex coming through with his mother’s car. They readjust the timeline and agree to meet at that park at eight thirty.’
Hank interrupted. ‘According to Sheila’s interview with her, Lauren had already left her house by that point. She killed time by wandering around down by the creek until about eight fifteen.’
‘Right. During that time period, she sent one text to just Kayla telling her that. Just walking around. With a bored emoji.’
Of course. Hank grabbed a pen and paper as Raker kept talking. There was more here than he’d thought there would be. They all appeared to be part of the group text, and the names and details started flying.
At eight thirty, Raker continued, Kayla sent a text to the group asking Lauren where she was. There was no response. Just after that message, Johnny texted with a request that they pick him up farther up James Epps Road and 248. Kayla then asked if Lauren was with him. Johnny responded, It’s cool.
‘That,’ Raker said with an edge to his voice, ‘makes me think Kayla thought that was a yes – that Lauren was with him. From everything I’ve heard about those two girls, I don’t think one of them would leave the other hanging.’
Hank agreed again.
‘And this is the kicker,’ Raker said. ‘At nine-oh-two, Kayla sent a text just to Lauren. I hope you feel better. I’ll talk to you tomorrow, and a kissy-face emoji.’
‘What?’ Hank said. ‘You’re kidding.’
‘Nope. The only thing I can figure is that someone – say, the one who joined the group last, like Gall – delivered a message that Lauren wasn’t feeling well and had gone home.’
‘You’ve got to be right. But it doesn’t tell us whether Johnny just made that up to get the evening going, or whether he knew Lauren had been chased and forced down a steep hill.’
They both contemplated that for a moment. Then Hank asked if there were any other texts. Not on the group chat, Raker said. He had the phones belonging to the crash victims, but three of them had been damaged too badly to retrieve anything, two of them were working but locked and the parents were pondering what their kids’ passcodes could be, and no one had any idea what Gall’s code was.
‘I’m hoping the parents figure it out, so we don’t have to go through the bother of breaking into the phones,’ Raker said. ‘Although, we’re going to have to with Gall’s.’ Both men groaned at that.
‘And we still haven’t found Patrick O’Connell’s phone, have we?’ Hank asked.
‘No.’ Raker sighed. ‘And Utley is all over me. At least he’s taken my other cases off my plate for the time being. I was supposed to have a stakeout in this burglary thing and … well, anyway, Utley wants progress, and he wants it now. I think the city council is up his backside about it. It’s been three years since their last homicide, and the one before that was back in the aughts – they’re not used to ’em. Not like your politicians. They’ve had a lot of practice lately, what with that feud over the summer out in your backwoods. And the Branson Beauty showboat killing.’
Hank tried to laugh, but it came out as a dry, bitter chortle. ‘That’s sure as hell not the case. The county commission isn’t used to stuff like that at all. They turned on me damn quick when both of those things happened. And one of them still is out for my blood.’ He thought of Commissioner Edrick Fizzel, and felt his hands balling into fists. The spiky-haired blowhard had publicly accused him of incompetence for not solving the showboat murder within the first few days, endorsed Hank’s slimeball election opponent, and threatened to prosecute a priest who’d just been charitably feeding a group of undocumented immigrants during the backwoods homicide investigation. The little porcupine still stopped by Hank’s office on a regular basis to harass the staff. And he brought up the department’s not-exactly safety-inspiring homicide rate at every commission meeting, according to people who actually attended. Hank wasn’t one of them. He stayed as far away from that viper pit as he could.
He certainly sympathized with Utley having to face his own set of snakes. He’d have to take the Chief out for coffee after this whole thing was over. Or maybe a beer. He forced his hands to relax and tuned back in to Raker.
‘There is a little good news, I guess,’ the detective was saying. ‘We found O’Connell’s fingerprints in the theater dressing room, which we expected. But we also found Johnny Gall’s.’
‘More proof those two knew each other,’ Hank said. And more proof that Johnny Gall was key to this whole thing. He started to say that and then stopped. Before he harped on it with Raker again, there was one thing he wanted to check first.
THIRTY-ONE
Sam was really starting to hate identification documents. Especially out-of-state ones. Why couldn’t there be a nice, uniform system for everybody, where forgeries were easy to spot? Instead, he had different seals, different colors, different layouts. And he was on day two of combing through every single detail. It was so bad, little typewritten boxes had floated through his dreams last night.
He’d moved in to the conference room at the sheriff’s department in the county seat of Forsyth. He felt more comfortable here than at the BPD. No frowning middle-aged women poking their heads in to ask if he was quite finished. Because he wasn’t. Not by a long shot. The table was covered in samples of different counties’ birth certificates, scrawled phone messages on sticky notes, two laptops, and a cardboard container with the few cold French fries left from his lunch. He gnawed on one while he surveyed the mess.
He decided to switch over to tracking down the mother listed on Cluth Junior’s Tennessee birth certificate. The Chief had tasked him with that this morning. He pecked at laptop number one for a minute. Pamela Helbing didn’t have a driver’s license in Missouri. Which wasn’t surprising. Even, on the about two percent chance that she lived in the state, the odds that she still had the same last name as seventeen years ago were infinitesimal. He was about to call the Tennessee officials to have them run her name, too, when his cell rang. He didn’t recognize the number.
‘Young man, you need to get over here immediately. There is illegal activity going on downstairs.’ The voice sounded like it was coming from the bottom of a bowling ball bag. Sam barely managed to stop the groan that bubbled up in his throat.
‘Well? Hello? You are a police officer, aren’t you?’
One who desperately wished he hadn’t given Bitty Jean Vandeed his business card. He certainly hadn’t realized it was one that he’d written his cell phone number on.
‘What exactly is the matter, ma’am?’
She repeated herself. He asked for more specifics. She told him she wasn’t no Cagney and Lacey, and it wasn’t her job to go down and investigate. That’s what her tax dollars paid him for. He suggested she call the Branson police, since it was their jurisdiction. She suggested he get his baby-faced behind out to the complex and figure out what was going on.
Sam pulled his phone away from his ear and stared at it. Then he looked at the paperwork mess in front of him. It was a toss up, really. He told the lady he was on his way and pushed back from the table, the groan still lodged in his throat.
Euford was taking forever to answer the door. Hank started to think maybe there was something to him needing a helpmate around the house. The huge oak entry finally swung open. Behind it, the musician leaned heavily on his cane. He settled himself on the same leather sofa he’d used two days before. Hank sat across from him and asked how he was doing.
‘Horrible. It’s so quiet. Everything echoes, and I think it’s him. Come running down the stairs, or in from outside dripping water from the pool. But it’s not. It’s nothing.’ He raised his arms and then let them fall limply back in his lap. He looked like he hadn’t slept since Hank was there last. The lean lines of a distinguished old cowboy had withered into gauntness. Crags and fissures laced his cheekbones and hands. He plucked at his jeans and stared at the
wall behind Hank.
‘When was the last time you ate?’ Hank asked.
Euford couldn’t remember. Hank eyed him and then rose to his feet. He walked over to the kitchen tucked behind an island along the far wall and rummaged through the stainless-steel refrigerator. It was surprisingly full, considering the two people who inhabited the house – one who was barely mobile and one whose demographic suggested hot dogs and soda as main food groups. Vegetables, fresh grass-fed meat, organic yogurt, cage-free eggs. It was as if Maggie had been allowed to go grocery shopping with an unlimited budget.
He straightened and turned back toward Euford.
‘Who did the grocery shopping?’
Euford blinked, puzzled. ‘That coordinator lady who found us the house. Why the hell does that matter?’
Vivian Gillam. That’s what he’d thought. He nodded at Gunner, glad to see there was still some starch left in the guy, and turned back to the crisper. He stacked together a ham sandwich on gourmet cracked wheat bread and brought it out to the singer, using a paper towel as a plate. Euford thanked him, devoured half of it in about thirty seconds and then thanked him again.
‘What else does Ms Gillam do for you?’
Euford picked a seed out of his teeth. ‘Well, she set up the pool guy, which’ll stop soon ’cause it’s getting too cold. She does the shopping, so that’s about once a week she comes with that. There’s meals in the freezer, too. She brings those. Don’t know where she gets ’em, but they’re pretty good. That’s about all me and Patrick can do – could do. Heat stuff up. We didn’t have skills for cooking.’
His eyes filled, and he focused on his sandwich. When he was finished, he carefully folded the paper towel and set it on the coffee table before looking at Hank.
‘So why else you here, Sheriff? If it was with news, you would’ve said already.’
‘That’s true,’ Hank said. ‘I don’t have any new developments. I’m sorry. But I do need to ask you something. We need you to take a DNA test.’
Euford sat back and sighed. He looked at his hands and then turned to stare out the big back window. Hank studied his profile, wondering just how good – or bad – a view of humanity he had after fifty years of touring.