(2012) Colder Than Death (21 page)

“And?” said Perry as he picked up the sheets of paper and glanced at them without much interest.

“The idea being that even though it's a low traffic area populated with graves of people whose relatives and friends are long since dead, perhaps the killer happened to be paying his respects nine years ago and... ”

Perry shrugged and tossed the list of names onto his desk dismissively. “I'm way ahead of you. I had Greg and Wendell check out all the names on those tombstones plus the dates that the people died and not a one was after Nineteen-twenty. I don't know exactly how many years make up a generation, but let's say it's twenty, twenty-five. That means nearly five generations of people have lived and died since the last person was buried in that Section. And your theory is that the average person won't visit a grave beyond his parents and grandparents.” He leaned forward and picked up the names again. “So these are all bullshit.”

What Perry said made sense, but I didn't want to give him the satisfaction of knowing I agreed with him.

“Then what's your theory, Perry?”

“Try this on for size. Two perfect strangers, cemetery buffs, encounter each other over a grave. They fall into conversation. Maybe they actually hit it off because they've found this weird common bond. They spend time together, checking out old graves and maybe this is the first girl the guy's ever met who had the same fascination with cemeteries as him. The guy hits on her, but she doesn't want to. She screams. The guy panics. He didn't want any trouble. He just thought he was gonna get lucky with this sexy fellow cemetery buff. She won’t stop screaming so the guy grabs her a little too hard and he doesn't
mean
to hurt her. He just wants her to stop screaming. He puts his hand on her mouth and she's struggling because she's still scared and before you know it they're on the ground and she hits her head on an old headstone and she's dead. It's not like the guy planned on it. It was an accident. If only she had stopped screaming. You think that could've happened, Del?”

“It's possible,” I said.

“Now, the killer has a problem. Does he call the cops and tell them what happened? Hell no. He's a decent guy. Just has a strange hobby. It's not like he came there to kill anyone. But he knows that if he calls the police and tells them the truth they might not believe him. He might be arrested. Have to go to jail. Get a lawyer. Go to trial. Maybe he's poor. Can't hire a good attorney. Maybe he has a nice career going for himself. He's watched enough TV and movies to know there might be some ambitious District Attorney who wants to nail him because it's an election year or something. Our boy knows his ass is grass if he does the right thing and reports what happened. So he thinks, ‘If I hide the body, nobody will know what happened.’ And since he's a cemetery buff he figures he'll stash the body in a place that wouldn't have a lot of people paying respects, so he looks for an old, out of the way mausoleum, breaks in, hides the body, seals it back up and he's gone. And he figures the odds are in his favor that the body'll never be found. And for nine years he guessed right. Bastard never figured that some teenagers would spoil his perfect crime.”

He looked to me as if he wanted my approval.

“You're assuming she was murdered there. If she was killed somewhere else and brought to the cemetery it changes your theory completely.”

“That's another scenario. All I can work with is something that sounds logical. What I just said sounds possible. But just to show you I can be open minded, let's call mine Theory One. Now let's talk about Theory Two. Del's theory--that she was killed somewhere else. I'll make this quick, because it's real simple. For argument's sake, let's forget about the fact that Brandy Parker was a cemetery buff. Let's say that on the day she was killed she picked up a guy in a bar. They went somewhere to do the dirty deed. For whatever reason, things get out of hand, and for whatever reason, he kills her. It's late at night. Again, let's assume the killer didn't plan on killing her. It just happened. Just like our guy in Theory One, he has to decide whether or not to call the police. He says no way. He has to hide the body. Now
this
guy's a cemetery buff. He figures he'll take his chances and hide the body in the mausoleum. Bingo! That's how she could've been strangled somewhere else and then brought to the cemetery.”

“You're pretty much basing everything on the idea that the killer's a cemetery buff.”

“Has to be. Or like I said to you the day we found the body it's somebody who knows that cemetery inside and out.” Perry turned back to the computer, punched a couple of keys and watched as something came onto the screen. He pressed the Print button and in seconds out came a sheet of paper.

“I made of list of the employees of Elm Grove, your Funeral Home and DiGregorio's. There's a grand total of nineteen people, including you. Take a look.” He handed the sheet of paper to me. I read the list of names.

Elm Grove Cemetery

Inside

Mel Abernathy (Manager)

George Granger (salesman)

Joanne Linley (bookkeeper)

Patricia Aimes (secretary)

Outside

Alton Held (Head Groundskeeper)

Vaughn Larkin (Night Watchman)

Will Polk (Gravedigger)

Nat Jaspers (Gravedigger)

Tim Wallach (Gravedigger)

Henderson’s Funeral Home

Del Coltrane (FD)

Lew Henderson (FD)

Clint Tristler

Nolan Fowler (Embalmer)

Elaine Whorley (Hair)

Digregorio'S Funeral Home

Tyler DiGregorio (FD)

Alphonse DiGregorio (FD)

Wilton Ging (Embalmer)

Elaine Whorley (Hair)

“Why do you have
Vaughn's
name on the list?” I asked.

“Don't get your balls in an uproar. I just put his name there when I listed all the cemetery employees. Far as I'm concerned, Vaughn's the only person in this town who's above suspicion. What about the other names? You know them all. Does any strike you as having a dark side?”

I looked at the names. Precisely because I
did
know them all I didn't put much stock in the idea that one was a killer, but as I stared at the names one thing began to alarm me. If the killer was someone on the list, it meant that I knew him. And despite Perry's refusal to consider the possibility that Brandy Parker had been murdered by the same person who killed Virginia Thistle and Alyssa, if the killer
was
on that list, it meant that someone I knew had killed the only woman I'd ever love.

“I can't believe any of them are capable of it,” I said.

“My father never trusted Alton Held.”

“Alton's a pussycat. What was not to trust?”

“His white trash southern accent bothered my father. He always had a hard on for people with any kind of accent. He did some checking up on Alton when he moved to town and found out he had a record back in Louisiana.”

“What was the crime?”

“Burglary, breaking and entering, passing bad checks, a bunch of drunk and disorderlies and assault and batteries.”

I wondered if Vaughn knew about Alton's record. “Was he arrested for any
serious
crimes?”

Perry smirked. “No. But coincidentally, Alton's been living here for twenty-five years.” I said nothing. “The guy comes out of nowhere with a record and hires on as a gravedigger, one of life's
great
career moves.” He rolled his eyes. “Gets to know his way around the cemetery pretty well. Could even be a cemetery buff... and even if he wasn't he probably sees some now and then. I'm thinking on my feet here, Del, so this might not be totally clear yet, but if your notion about one killer murdering three woman is right, the guy had to be around for all these years. Alton was and Lew, Alphonse, Mel Abernathy, Nolan Fowler and Wilt Ging.”

He leaned back looking satisfied with himself. “They were all around and they're all suspects.
All
of 'em!”

Chapter 18

“But there's
one
guy who wasn't around?” I said. “Kyle Thistle. He was in the institution when Alyssa was killed.”

“If she was killed,” said Perry.

“If. But under my theory, Kyle is eliminated. And obviously most of the names on your list aren't serious suspects. Like Vaughn and the women. And I can't believe you put Lew Henderson as a serious suspect?”

“Go back nine years. Lew would've been fifty-five. And old man DiGregerio would've been in his early Sixties. And interestingly enough, both men have always looked younger and stayed in good shape, especially Alphonse. And it was common knowledge that he was a pussy hound all his life. And based on what the girl just told us about her Aunt being turned off to young guys and maybe seeing an older man/father figure type, who would be more natural than Alphonse?”

“You're reaching, Perry.”

“It'd be convenient for everybody if he was the one. Not only would a nice deathbed confession have taken the heat off me to solve the damn murder, but it would save the County a fortune in court costs. I wish I could've talked to him before he died.”

“The man isn't even in the ground yet. I think a little respect for the dead is called for.”

“Screw the dead! I know what people are saying. I'm an asshole and I don't have a shot at finding the killer. I don't
need
a murder case in my life, Del. I'll take a lifetime of chicken-shit misdemeanors. I don't want to have to prove anything to anybody. And I don't want this to slip into the wind. And I most assuredly don't want to spend the rest of my life being haunted by a case like my old man.”

“Which case was your father haunted by?”

“Whattya think?” he snarled. “Not finding the body of Virginia Thistle.”

“But you said as far as your Dad was concerned, it was closed.”

“Only reason it got closed was because Kyle Thistle lost his mind. Sticking him in the nuthouse made things easy for everybody, especially my father. But he had his pride. No easy answer ever does anything for your pride. That case nearly drove him off the deep end. It's hard enough to find evidence for even the simplest of crimes, but when it's murder, not to have a friggin' body? My Dad worked his ass off trying to figure what happened to that woman.” Perry shook his head with heaviness. “Goddamn Pete Dinwiddy!”

“Who?”

“The so-called
witness
who claimed he saw Kyle Thistle dropping garbage in a couple of cans. Dinwiddy was a lush, but it was the only thing my father had to go on. There was pressure from the County DA so my Dad made an arrest. But he never believed him. As for the body being in the lake, it's standard procedure to make a search. You comb the area around the missing person's house. You scour the wooded areas. You drag Lake Dankworth. Ho-hum. But Thistle got put away and everybody was satisfied except my father. He wanted Kyle to be tried. Figured a jury wouldn't put much stock in the testimony of Dinwiddy because of his drinking. Dad was counting on a not guilty verdict. He figured people would've thought he tried to find justice.”

“Did he have a theory of what really happened?”

“He thought Virginia Thistle was kidnapped. Statistically, in kidnappings of adults, it's almost always a stranger. And the victim is almost always a woman. And the perpetrator is almost always a man. Or men. Seldom the husband. If the motive isn't a ransom, it's usually sex. Or sex and murder. They may not want to kill the woman, but they have to because she can connect them with the crime. And because it's usually a stranger, the officer investigating the case has to assume that some drifter did it, some psycho passing through, whether it's a big city or a small town. With all that in mind, you'd think that it would apply to the Virginia Thistle case, right?”

“Right.”

“That's what my father assumed when he began the investigation. But he kept having these gut reactions. Dad was always big on gut reactions, whether it was concerning somebody breaking into a feed store, me lying about a grade I got on a test in school and everything else. He operated the same way with the Thistle disappearance and his gut feeling told him a few things: that she was kidnapped and murdered and that whoever did it was someone in Dankworth... and that it was someone who knew her.”

“A friend? Neighbor? Co-worker?”

“No. Some guy who saw her and set his sights on her. Dad said that she was a nice-looking woman.” He reached into a drawer and pulled out a dirty, stained manila folder held together by two thick, red rubber bands. “After I saw Kyle Thistle at the Funeral Home I pulled out his file, figured I'd refresh my memory. This is all we had. Most of it's illegible. Because of the flood we hadsome records of old cases got waterlogged. Nobody much cared. They were closed. I have the basic data in the computer, but all the paperwork was in this folder. Not that it matters.”

“Why doesn't it matter?”

“I'm not working on the Virginia Thistle disappearance. That case is closed.”

“But if your Dad is right, the
real
killer could be walking the streets of Dankworth right now.”

“Yep. Or maybe he moved away. Wouldn't you move if you killed somebody? I would. Or maybe the guy's dead. Hell, maybe he was buried by your Funeral Home. But it doesn't matter. I’ve read lots of books and manuals on police work. I study the stuff. Most cases never get solved. All society demands is that somebody pay a price. Hopefully, most of the time, the right person pays the price. The rest of the time the wrong guy has to cough up with prison time or his life. But society is satisfied. Only time society gets pissed off is when nobody pays. Kyle Thistle paid and everyone's satisfied.”

“Not everybody.”

“You mean you and that kid?”

“I mean Kyle Thistle's daughter. If she found out everything you just told me, she could demand that the investigation into her mother's disappearance be re-opened.”

“She ain't gonna find out.”

“She will if I tell her.”

“You can tell her anything you want, but I'll deny saying what I told you. And I'll destroy what's left of the file.”

“Aren't you the least bit curious about what really happened to Virginia Thistle?”