If a Tree Falls

by Robert I. Katz

  “Sure, Hon.” Frannie went over to the bar and returned in a few seconds, placed a glass of white wine on a napkin, gave Mabel Stone a concerned look and walked away.

  “Thank goodness for Frannie. She’s been with us forever. So,” Mabel Stone said, “where was I?”

  “Nobu, Acquavit…”

  “Right. So, the point is that if the Stone House was in New York, or Chicago, or LA or a hundred other big cities, we would be mobbed every night. But we’re not. We’re in Clinton, West Virginia, a town with a full-time population of six hundred.”

  Pretty much the way Kurtz had figured it. “You’re losing money,” he said.

  “You bet, we’re losing money.” She sighed. “Maybe the place was a pipe dream from the beginning. I guess I was thinking, if you build it, they will come. It works for El Bulli. You know about El Bulli?”

  “El Bulli is supposed to be the best restaurant on Earth. It’s only open for six months a year; it has a two-year waiting list for reservations and it’s in the ass end of nowhere, somewhere out in the Spanish countryside.”

  “Exactly. I figured, if we were good enough, then people would come.”

  “So, what happened?”

  She gave him a scathing look. “We’re not El Bulli. We’re pretty damn good but we’re not the greatest restaurant on Earth. If things keep going the way they’ve been going, we’ll be out of business in a year.”

  Kurtz gave a sympathetic nod. “So, what’s the plan?”

  She drank half her wine and plunked the glass down on the table. “Specifically, Premier Projects Development wants to open a resort—a very big resort, where well-heeled vacationers will come to stay awhile and spend a lot of money.”

  “Okay…” Kurtz nodded. “Where do you fit in?”

  “They’ve offered me two options. One, we do nothing and stay where we are. Rich tourists expect excellent food, and we’re the best around. I wouldn’t have to do a thing. Two, they’ve offered me a franchise at the resort. I could open a second place there.”

  “And compete with yourself?”

  “That is definitely a consideration. If I were to open a second place, I would want it to be different: French-Continental, maybe, with an accent on molecular gastronomy…something cutting edge…avant-garde.” She sipped her wine and let her eyes sweep across the room. “This place is more old school rustic.”

  “Any other options?”

  She shrugged. “Isn’t that enough?”

  Kurtz sat back and considered. So far, it all seemed reasonable and above board, except for the one very obvious problem. “You do realize that this is all pie in the sky, don’t you? This resort we’re talking about doesn’t exist. It may never exist, and even if it does, it will take years to build.”

  “Yeah, it will take years, which is why they’ve offered to buy me out.”

  Kurtz stared at her.

  “Don’t look at me like that. It makes perfect sense. They purchase a majority stake in the restaurant and supply enough capital to keep the place going until the resort gets built.”

  “And if it doesn’t get built?”

  “Then I’ll still have the money and they’ll have a restaurant that’s gone out of business. Maybe I’ll move to New York and start over again.”

  Kurtz scratched his head. “You’ve heard of the Waldo Hotel?”

  Mabel Stone rolled her eyes. “Oh, yeah.”

  The Waldo Hotel was in Clarksburg, West Virginia, which was in Harrison County, not far from Clark County. The Waldo Hotel, built in 1904, had been one of West Virginia’s most luxurious hotels…until it went bankrupt and was abandoned in 1994. It stands now at the corner of West Pike and North 4th Street, an elegant, decaying wreck.

  “And the Greenbrier, of course, has been in operation for over two centuries and they’re having problems of their own. Why would this brand new place that doesn’t even exist do any better?”

  “A good question,” Mabel Stone said. She hesitated. “I have no idea.”

  Chapter 11

  At least forty so-called journalists had moved in, filling the only two motels in Clinton and occupying most of the accommodations in the immediate area. There was a bit of home-spun wisdom to the effect that every story told by a reporter is a lie to the people who actually know something about it, but Drew Hastings was frankly appalled by the nonsense and wild speculation that came over the TV and filled the pages of the local papers.

  “Hey,” Bill Harris said. “They’re just trying to make a buck. Ignore them.”

  “Easier said than done.”

  In a way, however, Drew Hastings did not actually mind the idiotic speculation. Presumably, the murderer was listening to it. Probably, the fact that almost none of it was relevant or even remotely truthful, was filling him with satisfaction, relief and over-confidence. Hopefully, he would do something stupid. Also, hopefully, if he did do something stupid, it would not involve kidnapping and murder.

  They had kept as tight a lid on things as possible, but the bodies of fifteen young girls could not be kept secret, and truthfully? They didn’t know much.

  The composite sketch from Pittsburgh had been pinned up in the office and distributed to every precinct in the state and beyond, but nobody had high expectations. “Cheek inserts, contact lenses, hair dye.” Bill Harris had shrugged. “It’s all pretty generic. If you squinted your eyes and looked at it just right, you could tell yourself it’s at least a third of every male over the age of twenty-five.” Better than nothing, perhaps.

  “Cause of death cannot be definitively determined,” Jose Alvarez had said. “There’s been too much decay. However, I would bet on strangulation. A couple of them have lividity around the neck, probably left from bruising. And he probably did it with a belt. The lividity is symmetric, about an inch across. There are no finger marks.”

  Jose Alvarez hesitated. “There’s been too much decay to say for certain, but it looks like they were raped.”

  “Raped and strangled…” Bill Harris grimaced. “Anything else?”

  “They were all young, all thin, all healthy, probably all good-looking. Ethnically, five of the fifteen were Hispanic, two were Chinese, one Malaysian, one Middle-Eastern—either Sephardic Jew or Arab. Also, two mixed race, primarily Caucasian, and one native American.”

  “Anything on the perp?”

  “You mean DNA?” Alvarez shook his head. “No. They’ve been in the ground too long. We’re able to extract the girls’ DNA from the bone marrow, but anything superficial? No chance. If it was there, it’s degraded.”

  “What do Hispanics, Chinese, Malaysians, native American and Middle-Eastern individuals have in common?” Bill Harris said to Drew Hastings.

  Hastings barely smiled. “Besides their common humanity?”

  “Yeah. That.”

  “Dark eyes? Maybe dark hair and dark skin?”

  “Maybe, but none of them were Black.”

  That was significant. If the perp was preying on a population less likely to be reported missing, then the teenage underclass would present numerous opportunities: hookers, addicts, runaways. A representative sample of the population of any large city in the Northeast would include some Black girls mixed in with all the rest, but there were none. The guy had preferences.

  What, really, did they know, anyway? Was it even a guy? Probability said so. Most serial murderers are male, particularly the murderers of young, attractive females. Probably fairly big and fairly strong, big and strong enough to overpower young and desperate women. Strong enough to strangle them. And, of course, rape them. It was barely possible that a large woman wearing a strap-on could have done it but as a theory, this seemed excessively far-fetched. Let’s go with male for now.

  And he was dumping the bodies in shallow graves in the woods in West Virginia.

  Which meant that he was probably not too far away.

  They had of course queried the national data-banks and the FBI was already on the scene. The guy who had shown up, G
eorge Rodriguez, wore a nice suit with a nice tie. He was clean-shaven and smelled faintly of cologne, but he was smart enough not to step on their tails. “We’ll conduct a concurrent investigation,” Rodriguez said. “We’ll share everything we know or can find out. We expect the same courtesy in return.”

  Drew Hastings glanced at Bill Harris. “Sure,” Harris said. “No reason why not.”

  Nearly half a million children go missing each year in the United States. Almost all of these are quickly found, but the ones who aren’t, add up. As of last count, approximately 100,000 people are listed as currently missing in the FBI database. How many of these are dead? Who knows? Probably most.

  A search on copycat crimes revealed that thirty-two girls of approximately the right age and physical appearance had vanished and never been found in the vicinity of Phoenix, Arizona during the past ten years. For whatever reason, Phoenix, Arizona was the kidnapping capital of the United States, second only to Mexico City on the North American continent. Three of these had been found buried in the Sonoran Desert. They had been raped but they hadn’t been strangled. They had been dismembered with an axe. Two brothers had been arrested for the crime and were currently serving life sentences.

  A few others here and there, twenty-eight in total, twenty-eight that they knew about, going back over ten years, dead teenaged girls, slim, very pretty, raped and strangled. And now, fifteen more, most probably just the tip of the iceberg.

  Fifteen men were known to have committed twenty-two of these twenty-eight murders. Ten of the fifteen were in jail. Of the five at large, one was Asian, one Hispanic, one Black and two Caucasian. Names, a brief bio and photos were included of all five. The remaining six victims had been killed by a person or persons unknown. Could have been one or more of the five. No way to tell.

  One factoid of immediate interest: a single pubic hair, not the victim’s, was found on a dead girl in Stockton, California. That was seventeen years ago. Two pubic hairs were found on another girl, also raped and strangled, in Skokie, Illinois, five years later. In each case, the guy must have worn a condom because there was no semen, but the Illinois girl had fought back. Skin and blood had been found under her fingernails. DNA recovered from the two victims was identical.

  The DNA had also revealed that the guy was white, primarily of Scots-Irish ancestry, with a good smattering of Scandinavian, pretty much the same as ninety percent or more of the population of West Virginia and the surrounding states. Still, it was something.

  Working his way across country? Two did not exactly make a trend but if the guy was going from West to East, then it was plausible that West Virginia could be the final, or at least an intermediate destination, on his route.

  The pubic hair had been dark brown in color. Pubic hair is often a darker color than the hair on one’s head. Pity. Still, hair color was probably light to dark brown. Of note, the hair in the composite sketch was blonde.

  The Illinois girl was twelve years ago. By now, the character could be anywhere, except that on the basis of what had been dug up in the woods, there was a pretty good chance he was right here.

  Jerry Mandell called in sick again. Kurtz didn’t blame him but he did wonder what was going through the guy’s mind. Jerry Mandell had been a surgeon for over forty years, a respected member of the community.

  We’re born. We flourish. We dwindle. We die. Kurtz shuddered. He had read that line once in a magazine article. He had shuddered then too, feeling the cold hand of doom hovering over his shoulder, and he had never forgotten it.

  Growing old is not for sissies; another bit of ancient wisdom. Of course, it wasn’t necessarily the end for Jerry Mandell. It could be something as simple as depression. There were organic reasons, too, that were potentially treatable. Diabetes, for instance.

  Kurtz brought his tray over to the table where Joe Partledge was sitting. Partledge looked up at him, not quite frowning. Kurtz smiled and sat down. “Having a nice day?”

  Partledge sighed. “You’re not my favorite person, right now.”

  “Don’t take it out on me. Nothing that’s happened here is my fault.”

  “No, but you’re the one who rubbed my nose in it.” Partledge shook his head and sighed again.

  “I assume you talked to Jerry. What did you say to him?”

  “I’m not sure I should tell you. It’s probably privileged.”

  Kurtz shrugged. “For the moment, and for the next few weeks, I’m working for the guy.” Kurtz took a bite out of his burger. “Doing his work is more like it. I think I deserve to know what to expect. And Dr. Philips, who will be arriving in just under a month, deserves to know what she’s getting into.”

  Partledge shrugged. “I told him that questions had been raised regarding his ability to safely care for his patients. He looked at me like I’d murdered his wife and kids.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said he’d been a little pre-occupied, lately. He claimed it was nothing serious.” Partledge fell silent. He frowned down at the remnants of a piece of blueberry pie. “I told him that he had to go for a full psych and neurological evaluation. I told him that, as Chief of the Surgical Service and as Chief of Staff, I could not ignore the accusations that have been made. I told him that if he refused, I would have no choice but to inform the State Medical Board.”

  Kurtz winced. Chief of Staff at a place like Clinton Memorial was most often an honorary position. It was a title that rarely demanded any sort of action. “You did the right thing,” Kurtz said.

  “I suppose. I still feel like a piece of shit.”

  “Well, hopefully, he’ll do the right thing, too.”

  Joe Partledge nodded. “Yeah. If he wants to continue practicing, then he’d better.”

  They might not have been runaways, but it seemed reasonable to assume that at least some of them were. And if they were runaways, then there was a good chance that at least some of them had been hookers. Pretty girls younger than sixteen do not have a lot of ways to earn a legitimate living.

  So, then…Clark County, West Virginia is not a populous area but it is within easy driving distance of other areas that contain millions of potential victims. Pittsburgh, Washington, DC, Baltimore, Richmond…

  Three years ago, a young Chinese-American girl living with her parents and younger sister, in Pittsburgh, had vanished after leaving school in the afternoon. The girl had been fourteen. She was a good student, a gymnast, a cheerleader and she played the violin.

  There were two similar instances from DC and one from Richmond. Another from Canton, Ohio. Any of these could have been among the fifteen victims buried in the woods. Or not. Local authorities were in the process of contacting the families, obtaining dental records and DNA samples. In a week or so, they might be able to identify these five…or not.

  If so, then routine police work might discover some clues. Some unknown guy who was seen in the vicinity. A license plate caught on a surveillance camera. A half-remembered comment about meeting a new boyfriend somewhere for some purpose unknown.

  Or not.

  The dogs had ranged throughout the woods but nothing more had been found. Not surprising. A search of law enforcement and FBI databases yielded the identity of four registered sex offenders living within a fifty-mile radius of the burial site. Each of the four had been questioned. Any of the four could have done it but two of them were married with kids of their own. It’s not easy to kidnap young girls, keep them captive for what might have been days or weeks, rape them, strangle them, transport them and then bury them, while the wife and kids are hanging around. The remaining two were certainly possibilities but there was no evidence whatsoever to implicate them or any of the four.

  Drew Hastings smiled to himself. In other times and places, an enterprising local cop might have been tempted to arrest one of these guys, lack of evidence be damned, just to clear the case. These days? Not so much.

  Chapter 12

  Lisa had put five racks of ribs in the smoker th
at morning and let them cook at 225 for eight hours. Damn, that woman could cook. Lenore, whose skills in the kitchen were close to non-existent, had observed the process with some minimal interest but had, to Kurtz’ chagrin, sadly expressed no desire to duplicate it once they returned to New York.

  Kurtz pulled the meat off his tenth bone with his teeth and wiped his fingers on one of the many napkins piled on the table. “You know, Dad, sometimes I think you’re full of shit.”

  Gary Kurtz paused with a rib halfway to his mouth and repressed a smile. “How so?”

  “It occurred to me the other day that the local party wouldn’t have nominated somebody without discussing it with them first.”

  Gary chuckled. “I don’t know, Richard. Sometimes you’re pretty easy.”

  Lisa’s eyes crinkled. Sharon gave Kurtz a smug teenaged smile. Lenore glanced back and forth between Kurtz and his father. “These ribs are really terrific,” she said.

  “Thank you, Darling,” Lisa said. “Have some more.”

  “Might as well.” Lenore used a pair of tongs to grab three more ribs from the tray.

  “You always hated politics. So, what changed your mind?” Kurtz said.

  Gary glanced at Lisa. He shrugged. “Maybe I’ve been sitting on my rear end for too long.”

  Gary Kurtz got up at the crack of dawn to work in the fields, seven days a week. Kurtz had never known him to ‘sit on his rear end.’

  “What about the farm?”

  “First of all, the odds are one in three. The Governor will look over all three candidates and pick the one he wants.”

  Now how was that going to work? Let’s see…graft, corruption, influence peddling, bribes…the governor of Illinois was currently in jail for trying to sell a seat in the United States Senate. “And what will determine the Governor’s decision?”

  The corner of Gary’s mouth twitched upward. “I have no doubt that the Governor will make the best decision possible for the good of the people of West Virginia.”

  “No. Seriously.”