The Iron Ring

by Matty Dalrymple

  “There’s another problem,” said Philip. “I don’t know what happened to my phone.”

  Andy groaned. “Great.”

  “How thoroughly did the house burn?” asked Philip.

  “The house pretty much burned to the ground, except for the kitchen. Parts of the basement are relatively intact.”

  “If I dropped the phone in Pocopson, those are the areas it would likely be. There or outside.”

  Andy flopped back in the chair. “It definitely wouldn’t be wise for me to go snooping around Mortensen’s property.” He shook his head. “I think we just continue to lay low, and try to get you out of here and back to Arizona as soon as possible. Although you clearly can’t be discharged for a couple of days.”

  Philip smiled bleakly. “I’m a fast healer.”

  “Let’s not push it if we don’t have to. There was a lot of damage to your shoulder, and you lost a lot of blood.” Andy rested his head on the back of the chair for a moment, then hauled himself forward. “Oh, here’s a fun fact for you.” After a glance toward the door, he continued. “Mitchell Pieda can read minds.”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “I kid you not. Seems like Mitch had the old one-two punch in terms of weaponry—causing strokes and reading minds.”

  “My initials were on the list of George Millard’s jobs,” said Philip slowly. “And we know that Pieda came to my office for a consult under an assumed name. Maybe that woman I met at the Cowboy Club got me drunk so that Millard could bring Pieda to my house and read my mind to find out where Owen and Lizzy were. Although,” he added, “I think I would have noticed Millard and Pieda showing up at my house no matter how drunk I was.”

  “They might have given you something, like scopolamine or flunitrazepam.”

  “Jesus. How do you know about the mind reading?”

  “Because while he and Lizzy were rescuing you, he read Lizzy’s mind.”

  “Wait a minute—Mitchell Pieda helped rescue me?”

  “Yeah, Lizzy got his help getting you to the restaurant parking lot in exchange for letting him go.”

  “Jesus,” he said again. “Where’s Pieda now?”

  “Who knows. But what we have in our favor is that he has every reason to hate Louise Mortensen—as far as he’s concerned, she left him to burn behind the outbuilding where you guys had tied him up.”

  “Yeah. I guess that’s good for us.”

  Andy pulled out his cell phone and glanced at it. “Listen, I’ve got to run. Do you need anything? Other than having me make any semi-melted cell phones in Pocopson disappear?”

  Philip tried to sit up, and couldn’t contain a wince. “There is one other thing.”

  “Another thing?”

  “I need to talk with Lizzy.”

  Andy opened his mouth to protest, but Philip interrupted him. “I agree she shouldn’t come here—we don’t want her sitting here if the Lenape cops decide to drop by again—but if you could get me a phone, or loan me yours, I could call her.”

  “Why?”

  Philip hesitated. “I asked her to do me a favor, and now I realize I don’t need her to do it.”

  “What was the favor.”

  “I can’t say.”

  Andy raised an eyebrow.

  “It doesn’t matter in any case, since she doesn’t have to do it.”

  Andy sighed. “I’ll give her the message. I think it’s important to keep as many layers as we can between you and Lizzy. I’ve been discouraging her from coming to visit you, but if they do end up tying you to what happened in Pocopson, I’ve got to believe they’d check any calls you make, so a phone call from you to Lizzy isn’t a good idea. And since they can tie you to me, we probably shouldn’t even be making calls to Lizzy from my phone.”

  Philip lay his head back on the pillows. “Yeah, you’re probably right.”

  At that moment, the nurse came into the room and pulled up at the sight of Andy. “Dr. McNally, are you still here?”

  “I just got here,” protested Andy.

  “You may be a doctor at this hospital,” she said, “but in these circumstances you’re a visitor. I need you to let Mr. Castillo get some rest.”

  Andy sighed, then stood. “I’ll give Lizzy the message,” he said to Philip, “and as soon as you’re up and about—and out of PA—you can give it to her again yourself.”

  “Thanks, Andy.”

  The nurse cleared her throat loudly.

  “Okay, okay, I’m leaving,” said Andy. “Hang in there, Castillo. A couple more days, and you’ll be basking in the Arizona sun.”

  12

  Bruce Denninger trudged into the police station, a smear of soot on his cheek and a funk of smoke on his clothes.

  “Man, whoever burned the place in Pocopson really wanted it burned,” he said, tossing his coat toward the back of his chair, from which it slid to the floor. “Anything on the mugging?”

  Brady tapped on his keyboard. “I’m checking out Live Scan to see if I can find that girl at Dos Sombreros who allegedly found Castillo in the back parking lot. They said she had short red hair—real short and real red. Maybe she was in on the mugging but didn’t expect it to go down the way it did.”

  “Worth checking.”

  Brady turned his chair toward Den, crossed his arms, and leaned back. “Don’t you think it’s surprising that in a place like Lenape Township, in one night, the house of two local celebrities burns down with an armed man in the basement, and a guy from out of town gets shot behind a restaurant a couple of miles away?”

  “Sure, it’s unusual—hell, mischief night is a veritable crime fest around here—but what have you got to tie them together?” Den drew his eyebrows together. “You have something to tie them together?”

  “I had a productive morning,” said Brady with a grin. “I got the ballistics report back on the bullet they took out of Castillo. He got shot with the same caliber gun that the guy in the basement in Pocopson was carrying.”

  Den sat back. “Sig Sauer, right? Not exactly unusual, but it is interesting.”

  “That’s not the only thing. Castillo isn’t his original name.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “What do you think Mr. Castillo’s name used to be?”

  “I give up.”

  “Philip Casal.”

  “Okay.”

  “And guess what life-altering experience preceded Mr. Casal’s name change?

  “Damn it, Brady, can you ever just tell me something without playing twenty questions?”

  “Twenty questions is more fun,” said Brady cheerfully, “but if you’re going to be a spoilsport … he went to prison. And guess what—”

  Den wagged his finger at Brady.

  Brady sighed dramatically. “Casal did four years in Williams for second-degree murder.”

  Den sat forward. “You don’t say.”

  “I do say,” said Brady. “Got in an argument with some guy and knifed him.”

  “Did you get that from him?”

  “No, I did a search on the driver’s license he used to reserve his rental car.”

  “I wonder if the people whose medical records he was carrying would know anything we should know about Mr. Casal Castillo.”

  “My thoughts exactly,” replied Brady. He consulted the small notebook that lay open on his desk. “I got an address for one of the names on the documents. Mitchell Pieda. Want to pay Mr. Pieda a visit?”

  “Can’t hurt.”

  Brady stood, retrieved his coat from the back of his chair, and pointed to his cheek. “Soot.”

  Den pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and scrubbed at his cheek, then raised his eyebrows questioningly.

  Brady gave him the thumbs up.

  “How about the other document Castillo had?” Den asked as he tucked the handkerchief back in his pocket. “What was the name on that one?”

  “Elizabeth Ballard,” said Brady. “We’re still looking for her, but if she’s in the system, Dottie wi
ll find her.”

  13

  Mitchell was flipping through the issues of GQ that his aunt had saved for him when he heard a knock at the door. Neither he nor his aunt had friends who were in the habit of dropping by unexpectedly, so a knock inevitably meant someone asking for money, or asking if they had found Jesus.

  His aunt had left for the doctor’s office half an hour before, having declined his admittedly unenthusiastic offer to drive her. He pushed himself out of the Naugahyde recliner, which he had chosen over the couch that his aunt had been using as her sick bed, and went to the door.

  He looked through the peephole to see a black Chevy Impala parked on the street at the end of the walk and two men on the porch who didn’t look like they were there to ask for money or offer salvation. They looked like cops.

  He considered for a moment whether he could pretend he wasn’t home, but it was likely that they had heard his footsteps. He probed their minds, but the door seemed to present a mental as well as physical barrier.

  He opened the door.

  The older one held up a badge. “Good morning. Are you Mitchell Pieda?” He pronounced it PIE-da.

  “Pieda,” said Mitchell, emphasizing the long E, “like Piedmont. Yes, I’m Mitchell Pieda.”

  The older man put away the badge. “I’m Detective Denninger and,” he nodded toward the younger man, “this is Detective Plott of the Lenape Township Police Department.”

  “Hello,” said Mitchell.

  “We’re investigating some crimes that took place in Pocopson and we’d like to ask you a few questions.”

  “I can’t imagine how I could help you with anything that’s going on in Pocopson.”

  “Might be a wild goose chase, but we’d still like to ask you a few questions.”

  Mitchell shrugged and stepped aside. “Sure.”

  They entered and he closed the door behind them, then turned to them, his hands in his pockets.

  “Could we sit down?” asked Denninger.

  “Sure.” Mitchell led them to the living room and gestured them toward the couch. He perched on the edge of the recliner.

  The two cops lowered themselves onto the couch, and the older one got out a small spiral notebook and pen.

  “There was a fire in Pocopson a couple of days ago, and we’ve identified a person of interest.” He paused.

  Mitchell scanned his thoughts, but they were inaccessible. The younger detective, though, was easier to read.

  “Yes?” said Mitchell.

  Denninger took a paper out of his jacket pocket, unfolded it, scrambled off the couch, and held it out to Mitchell. “Do you recognize him?”

  Mitchell wouldn’t have needed to be able to see the image in Plott’s mind to know the photo Denninger was handing to him was likely to be Philip Castillo. He examined it for a few moments, then shook his head. “No, I don’t think so.” He handed the photo back. “What makes you think I might know him?”

  “He had a document that had your name on it.”

  Mitchell didn’t have to fake being startled—he hadn’t seen that coming. “Really? What kind of document?”

  “Some kind of medical record.”

  Mitchell sat forward. He tried to get more information from Plott’s thoughts, but either his own alarm or Plott’s excitement was interfering. “He had a medical record with my name on it?”

  “Not a full medical record, just one page. It looked like some sort of summary sheet.”

  “How could he have gotten that?”

  “We think he got it from the house that burned. It was owned by Louise Mortensen and the late Gerard Bonnay, who ran the Vivantem fertility clinic.”

  Mitchell scanned Plott’s thoughts to see if they knew that he was a Vivantem baby, but sensed nothing. He shrugged. “Sorry, I can’t help you.”

  “We’re just starting the investigation,” said Denninger, “and this and a couple of other documents that he had with him are the only leads we have at the moment. Maybe as we find more information, we can run it by you—maybe trigger some memory of where you might have crossed paths with this guy.”

  A couple of other documents introduced possibilities that ratcheted up Mitchell’s concern a few more notches. He scanned both their thoughts but could get nothing concrete.

  “Can I see the documents?” asked Mitchell. “Maybe I could tell you more if I saw them.”

  “I’m afraid not. The information in them would be confidential.”

  “I could just look at the one that had my name on it.”

  “We don’t have them with us at the moment, but we’ll keep your offer in mind.” Denninger nodded to Plott, and they extracted themselves from the couch. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Pieda,” said Denninger, back to the PIE-da pronunciation. “If you think of anything that might be helpful to the investigation—even if it doesn’t seem important to you—please give us a call.” He handed Mitchell a card.

  “Sure,” said Mitchell. “I’ll do that.”

  He followed them to the front door and watched as they drove away.

  What documents had Philip Castillo taken from the Pocopson house?

  14

  “Now, tell me about Elizabeth Ballard,” said Theo.

  They were again in the small dining room, finishing their entrée of brook trout.

  “She’s a naive young woman who has no control over her ability,” said Louise without hesitation.

  “An ability that’s considerably greater than Mr. Pieda’s, correct?”

  “Not when Mitchell’s on the steroid drug.”

  Theo swirled his wine. “Yes, if one were to compare Pieda’s steroid-enhanced ability to Ballard’s natural ability, Pieda might win more points. But what if Ballard’s ability was also enhanced? What then?”

  After a moment, Louise said, somewhat reluctantly, “I suspect it would be even greater.”

  “And mind reading? Any sign of that in Miss Ballard?”

  “Not that I’m aware of.”

  “Any sense as to whether she would have been more or less susceptible to Mr. Pieda’s mind-reading ability?”

  Louise considered, then said, “I don’t know. There’s nothing to suggest that the ability to cause strokes would have an effect one way or the other on susceptibility to mind reading, but it was an unintended consequence of an experiment that was aimed at achieving telepathy, so there may be a connection.”

  Theo took a sip of wine. “And it took her parents some time to realize what their daughter could do?”

  “Yes. By the time her parents—and Elizabeth, for that matter—realized that she was causing her mother’s strokes, her mother’s condition was quite advanced. They took Elizabeth to a family cabin in the Poconos to keep her away from people, and once her mother died—”

  “Of a stroke?” asked Theo.

  “Yes, of a stroke,” said Louise. “Once her mother died,” she continued, “her father brought Elizabeth back to the Philadelphia area, to a house as far away from the city as he could get and still commute to his job at William Penn University.”

  “How old was Miss Ballard when she killed her mother?”

  “Seven.”

  “That must have left quite a psychic scar.”

  “No doubt,” said Louise blandly.

  “And what then?”

  “Ballard’s father and Owen McNally spent a decade keeping her isolated, but then she killed a woman who harassed her and her father.”

  “Ballard killed the woman on purpose?”

  “I doubt it—hence my assessment that she has no control over her ability. She would have no practical reason for killing a stranger.”

  Theo nodded. “Please, go on.”

  “Her father needed to keep her away from the police. You can imagine the result if a group of law enforcement officers tried to take into custody a girl who causes strokes when she’s angry or frightened. Gerard stepped in and told him we could protect her.”

  “And then Mr. Millard killed her father.�
�

  “Yes. Gerard and I believed it was the only way we could keep control of Elizabeth. I must say we underestimated the tenacity and resourcefulness of her godfather.”

  “And you tried to kill Owen McNally with a dose of potassium chloride.”

  “Yes. In that case, I underestimated his weight,” she said irritably.

  Theo swirled his wine. “You said she causes strokes when she’s angry or frightened. I can imagine she would have been angry with the woman who harassed her, and no doubt as a small child she would have periodically been angry with her mother, as all small children are. But how do you know she can cause strokes when she’s frightened?”

  “We tested her.”

  “How did you do that?”

  “We locked her in a room with …” Louise’s voice trailed off, and she looked uncomfortable for the first time.

  “With someone who frightened her?” prompted Theo.

  “He was a small-time crook named Anton Rossi. Gerard told him that Elizabeth was,” she paused again, “a prostitute. That she had been told to pretend to resist Rossi’s advances.”

  “And so Mr. Rossi persisted even when Miss Ballard objected.”

  “Yes.”

  “Interesting,” said Theo, sounding unconcerned. He took a sip of wine, then set down the glass. “And what is the prize for Elizabeth Ballard?”

  “Her whole life has been built around creating an environment where her ability doesn’t pose a danger to others. That was orchestrated by her parents and her godfather, but she has bought into that goal. Or at least she had,” she said, her voice turning grim, “until she decided to kill Gerard.”

  “Which she did because she learned—or at least suspected—that Gerard was responsible for her father’s death. And, indirectly, for the death of her mother, as well as her other unintended victims.”

  “Yes.”

  “And then she came after you because she learned or suspected that you tried to kill her godfather.”