Handcuffs in the Heather

by Dale Mayer

  “Okay,” Doreen said. “Oh, do you know any of Manny’s regular johns?”

  “Not really. Like I said, some were regulars, but a lot weren’t.”

  “What about the regulars? Was there anybody you would have known?”

  He snickered. “Sure. The bank manager. He came around all the time. But other than that, not really.”

  Doreen’s instincts prodded at her. “What bank manager was that?”

  “The one who used to be at the corner down here. He was fascinated with Manny’s genetic condition.”

  “Ah,” Doreen said, “the gender identity issue?”

  “Yeah, but still he was female, right? So …”

  “Right. Physically he was female, but he identified as male. Would you recognize the bank manager again?”

  “Probably,” Peter said, “but there wouldn’t be any point. He’s dead.”

  Doreen’s hope sagged. “I’m sorry to hear that. What happened?”

  “Killed in a car accident, I think.” Then he paused. “Maybe it was a hit-and-run? Or maybe he was driving?” He groaned. “Like I said, my memory is not the same.”

  “What about his name? Any idea of what his name was?”

  “Norbert,” he said. “Norbert Watkins.”

  “How often would he see Manny? Considering he was one of his regular johns.”

  “Once a week.”

  “And do you know if it was an actual …” She trailed off. She wasn’t sure how to put it. “What was it? A job? Or did he just like him and want to spend time with him?”

  “It was a job,” he said. “Manny used to laugh at him and talk about him all the time.”

  “That doesn’t sound very nice.” Doreen stared off in the distance, wondering at the conversations likely to happen after every prostitute had a session with her john.

  “Manny had his peculiarities,” Peter said, “so it made sense in a way. But he always used an affectionate tone when he talked about him. I think he cared.”

  “It’s also the lifestyle,” she admitted.

  “Exactly,” Peter said, sounding relieved.

  “What about a purse? Did Manny carry one?”

  “Not really. Meredith loved them, and Manny never quite got used to not having one. He kept one stashed in the back alleyway. Not money or nothing worth much. Just old IDs and stuff. And a ring that mattered to him. Only it was a fake one, so no one stole it. The cops took the purse after he disappeared. He had a few personal items in the purse, and I gave that to the cops at the time, but honestly I was so high back then, I think the bag had been already cleaned out by other people.”

  “Ah.” Relieved to hear that explanation, which helped tie the purse into the police station, but not the contents, which most likely were tossed randomly ending up in Richard’s yard, Doreen added, “I’ll try to look into that bank manager’s name a little more. Anybody else?”

  “No. Well, there were more johns before, but he slowly lost them.”

  “Why is that?”

  “I think it was the drugs,” Peter said. “We spent all our money to buy more drugs, didn’t have anything left for food or a place to stay. Manny used to have a nice room where he could take the johns to and then his tricks ended up being just in the johns’ vehicles or in back alleys. Sometimes the johns had a place.”

  “Right,” Doreen said with a wince. “And that’s the stage he was at when he hopped into the black truck, right?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Okay, well, if you think of anything else …”

  “Check your email,” Peter said.

  Doreen walked over to her laptop, opened it, waited for it to load, and then checked her email. “The scan here’s perfect,” she said. “Thank you.”

  “You’ll still try, right?” he asked in an anxious tone, as if worried Doreen wouldn’t continue to look for Manny. “I really want to know what happened.”

  “I’ll do my best,” she promised, “but I’m not a miracle worker. I’ve had some success, but I don’t want you thinking it’s a guarantee.”

  “No, that’s okay. It just makes me feel not quite so alone to think somebody’s still looking for him.”

  “And I’m sure he’s watching you from wherever he is,” Doreen said.

  There was an awkward silence, and then Peter asked, “Do you really think he’s dead?”

  Chapter 21

  Monday Morning …

  Doreen sat back and pondered that. “I guess it’s possible he did run away successfully,” she said. “But you know the stats as well as I do that men and women in vulnerable parts of society don’t have the greatest chance at longevity. And with a suspicious disappearance like this, of course … Unless he’s cleaned up somewhere in the last ten years, which would be great, but there’s a high chance he hasn’t.”

  “His body has yet to be found though,” Peter argued. “I mean, I know in my heart of hearts that he’s probably gone because he would have contacted me during these last ten years, but there’s always hope.”

  “And that’s something you might have to come to terms with,” she said. “If I do find out what happened, and we do find him, it could be that he’s dead, and then that hope is gone.”

  Peter sighed. “I know, but not knowing is worse. I keep expecting him to show up around the corner every time I look somewhere. And, even though it’s been a decade, and I know the chances of him coming back and showing up like that are pretty nonexistent, I still hope. Part of me knows, if he did get out, he’d never come back. I wouldn’t want to.”

  “It’s hard to say again,” Doreen said, hating that Peter was hurting over this again. “The best thing you can do is focus on you and try to get yourself to wherever you need to be.”

  “I know,” he said. “But, at the same time, it’s one of those things you never quite let go of.”

  “Exactly,” she said. “And that’s why I’m looking into it.”

  He rang off just then.

  Doreen sat at the kitchen table and read the letter attachment he’d sent her.

  “Dear Peter,” she read. “I know I’ve said this time and time again, but this time it’s for real. I’ve got a way to get out. I want to leave all this behind. He’s a good man. He’s honest and true. He’s somebody I trust. I know this is for the best. I promise when I get clean and healthy, I’ll come back. Always with love, Manny.”

  It even had his signature at the end. The letter was heartbreaking. Doreen downloaded it and then wrote an email to Mack and sent it to him. As she sat here, studying her garden, she wondered what it would be like to lose somebody you were so close to like that. It had to be devastating. Then she had to wonder if the letter had anything to do with it. Had the police considered one of her johns as one of their suspects?

  When Mack phoned a few minutes later, he said, “I’ve never seen that before.”

  She hesitantly told him about her meeting with Peter and him finding the letter in his backpack and sending it to her.

  “Wouldn’t it be nice if these people would give us this information at the time when the crime was fresh and leads were hot?” Mack complained.

  “Peter’s the one who contacted me this morning with the letter.”

  “Right,” Mack said. “That still doesn’t mean he didn’t make this up himself.”

  “Why would he though?” she asked as she studied the letter on her laptop. “It looks pretty scraggly.”

  “Exactly. It’s so hard to identify the handwriting.”

  “He was a drug addict,” Doreen argued. “I’m sure his handwriting changed on any given day.”

  “Maybe. I don’t know what handwriting experts would say about something like that.” He sighed. Fatigue was in his voice again.

  “Did you get any sleep last night?” she demanded. “That call that took you away doesn’t sound like you ever went back to bed.”

  “I’ve gotten a few hours but not too many.”

  “Will you tell me what it’s
all about?”

  “Nope,” he said briskly. “Keep your nose out of my business.”

  “Can you take a look into Manny’s file and see if the license plate letter Y was ever mentioned?”

  “What Y?”

  “That’s what Peter told me. It was a big black truck with those crosshatch-pattern metal step-up sides and matching bed liner and the letter Y was the last letter on the license plate.”

  Mack wrote it down and said, “I’ll have to check the file. It’s not a lot to go on.”

  “No,” Doreen said, “but given the type of truck and the license plate, surely not more than a couple hundred of them are here.”

  “Probably something like that. Maybe even less.”

  “It’s something to consider. Also, what about Norbert? Norbert Watkins, the manager from the bank downtown?”

  “What about him?” Mack asked in exasperation. “The name means nothing to me. So, tell me about Norbert.”

  “He was a regular john of Manny’s, once a week without fail,” she said. “And he worked around the corner. I asked if maybe they had more of a friendship than a sexual relationship, but Peter seemed to think he was a john, but Manny grew to care about him.”

  “Did he say why?”

  “No. Thinking about it now, it was probably a way to make their jobs and daily life easier.”

  “We all try to laugh about everything in life,” Mack said. “Sometimes it’s just a nervous reaction, and sometimes it’s as a way to deal with the hardship.”

  “Oh, Peter also said Norbert died in a car accident.”

  “Okay. Let me check that name,” Mack said, as he typed on his laptop.

  “I hate to admit it, but my first thought was that it was very convenient.”

  “Convenient?”

  “Yes,” Doreen said. “Convenient that he’s dead.”

  “Are you thinking he’s a suspect in Manny’s disappearance?”

  “Well, if he was a regular person in Manny’s life, you’d think that he would have been investigated.”

  “I’m pretty sure Peter was investigated pretty heavily,” Mack said, “because he was the closest person in Manny’s life.” Then Doreen heard some more clicks before Mack said, “Okay, I’ve got the file. It says he was killed in a hit-and-run car accident.”

  “So, was he in a vehicle at the time or was he walking on the street?”

  “He was crossing the road downtown on Bernard at the end of the workday but a bit late, around six o’clock. He was struck by a vehicle.”

  “Nobody saw anything?”

  “Apparently not,” he said. His voice was suspiciously bland. “You know what people are like. They don’t want to say anything.”

  “How long ago was that?”

  “Ten years ago,” Mack said, and then he stopped. “Damn.”

  “What’s damn?”

  “Well, that’s about the same time Manny went missing.”

  “Right. So was that death faked? Do we have any way to identify that body and make sure it was him?”

  “You’re saying he faked his death and took off with her?”

  “I don’t know what I’m saying,” Doreen said, “but do we have a positive ID on the body?”

  “I believe so. I have to find the autopsy reports.”

  She heard mumbling and clicking in the background.

  “His wife identified his body, and one of his employees came upon the body soon afterward.”

  “So he wasn’t alone after working late at night?”

  “Apparently this employee had gone across the street to have dinner, and, when he came outside, he found his boss lying on the street.”

  “So, it definitely was Norbert who died,” Doreen said with a clipped nod. “Good. We need some facts here.”

  “What?” Mack said in a drawl. “Is that you talking facts and not just theories? You actually want evidence?”

  “Not so much evidence,” she said. “Facts. And I wanted to know for sure Norbert was dead, and he wasn’t the designer behind Manny’s disappearance.”

  “You can’t know that though, can you? Because Norbert might have had something to do with Manny’s death and then was killed. Or something to do with Manny’s disappearance, if you’re thinking he’s still alive,” he said, but even his tone said it was doubtful.

  “I’m not really expecting him to be alive because of his line of work. We all know what a dangerous lifestyle that is.”

  “Unfortunately, yes. But anyway, this Norbert guy is dead.”

  “Can you give me a copy of that file, so I don’t have to write down all my notes?”

  “No,” he said, “you can do a search for it, and you’ll probably get a newspaper article on it because he was a bank manager.”

  “Fine,” she said. “Can you check on Manny’s case file to see if anything there mentions Norbert and that Y in the license plate?”

  “I will,” Mack said, “but I’ve got a meeting in ten minutes. I’ve got to go.” And he hung up on her.

  Doreen groaned but figured he’d get back to her when he could. “Hopefully he will,” she said.

  She sat at her laptop and looked for articles on Norbert’s death. And, sure enough, found a couple. Mostly hit-and-run news where nobody was ever caught.

  “Looks like it’s right up my alley,” Doreen said. “This is another cold case, indeed.”

  Chapter 22

  Monday Noon …

  Doreen checked the date that Manny disappeared and realized she didn’t have an exact date. She’d have to go back and ask Peter because she couldn’t just call him. She settled on looking at the date on Manny’s letter and realized it was one week before Norbert the banker’s death. With that noted down in her own case file, she realized she hadn’t checked to see if anything in Solomon’s files were about Norbert. And she hadn’t gotten as far as the Ws in those boxes either.

  Shaking her head hard, she had to get something done on the rest of Solomon’s files, at least preparing that index of the file names, completing her scans of each summary sheet, just to quickly know which case files Solomon had information on. As it was, she got up and headed to the closet, pulled out the third and fourth boxes, then found one with Norbert’s name on it in the final box. Excited, she pulled it out and wondered why she hadn’t thought about checking the complete digital copy she had made of all the files in these four boxes when she first had received them. But she had the paper file in front of her now.

  Doreen was certain Norbert’s file would make a fascinating read, but she was grateful for the summary. So much easier to grasp a lot of info in a short time. According to Solomon’s notes, the bank manager had been accused of stealing from the bank in the months prior to his death. It had ended up as an open issue at the time of his death. He had profusely denied any wrongdoing.

  Hence, even up to the point Norbert was killed, no charges had been brought against him. He’d died soon afterward. Doreen went back and checked what day of the week it was when he died. It was a Friday. That correlated with what Mack had said. That half-explained the other coworker having dinner across the street. A lot of people went out for dinner on a Friday versus during the week. But then that was a generalization she couldn’t necessarily apply here.

  Potentially Norbert could have just stepped out into the road and been killed, happy to have had an end to what could have been a humiliating and painful lesson about taking what didn’t belong to you.

  What Doreen found interesting, however, was that the area where Norbert died was just a few blocks from the corner where Peter and Manny lived and worked much of the time. Apparently that had been their corner forever. Was Norbert heading over to talk to Manny? Was he on the way to the beach to take a walk and to clear his head? Or was he just tired after working late and stepped off the road without looking first? Maybe he was heading out for another reason too, like going out for dinner. His vehicle had been still parked around the back of the bank.

  That was
odd. As she continued to read through Solomon’s notes, it revealed more tidbits that Solomon had gleaned about the theft from inside the bank. But then Solomon’s very last line was a question that asked if Norbert Watkins was guilty or if he had been set up. Set up? It was right in front of her in black-and-white. What if Norbert had been set up? His death could have been a pretty quick end to the investigation. A very convenient end to the issue if nobody kept looking for other suspects. Maybe someone else at the bank was stealing and saw Norbert as the fall guy? For that matter, maybe he wanted the money to run off with Manny?

  She frowned as she tapped the table on that thought. Then wondering further, she went back to her research and found out Norbert had a wife but no kids. He was older than his wife, according to the announcement in the newspaper. By twenty years. Her eyebrows rose. Did he have money as a bank manager? He had a decent job, but that didn’t make him superwealthy. Still, he must have had some spending money if he was keeping up a weekly relationship with Manny.

  And did his wife know about Manny? That would have been a hard thing to accept. At least, it would have been for Doreen. Yet, at the same time, Doreen wondered if maybe the wife was happy to have Norbert’s attentions focused elsewhere. She wrote down the wife’s name, which was Lynette, and how she had since been married to a Dean Porter.

  Noting that name, she tracked down Dean Porter. He was an investment banker. And so back into the banking world Lynette had gone. Maybe Norbert’s wages were decent, but did an investment banker make better money? He might be in a private business with his own company, but Doreen couldn’t find anything to prove that. But then she caught sight of the nuptials date—only thirty days after her husband’s death.

  “Wow, that’s cold,” Doreen said as she sat back. “That’s really cold.”

  Obviously it wasn’t a happy marriage if she had grieved, had buried her husband, and had fallen in love all over again within thirty days. No way to find an address online, Doreen checked the phone book and did find them listed. They lived on Dilworth Mountain. According to some tidbits she’d heard, Dilworth Mountain was one of the hoity-toity places.