7 - Rogue: Ike Schwartz Mystery 7 (19 page)

Chapter Thirty-seven

Scott Fiske left the interview with the deputy sheriff determined to find Sheila. She’d been AWOL for two days. What was she up to? Why did the police want to know about the damned phone? He drove to her apartment and rang the bell. No answer. He pounded on the door. Did the curtain flutter? If she was home, why not answer? Really, for an aide she was acting strangely. Why would she do that? He tried to peer through the window but the curtains were too tightly drawn. He tried the bell and knocked again. Still no luck. He fumbled in his pocket looking for his notebook. His heart sank. He must have left it on his desk in his rush to leave. Would that cop stop to look at it? Well, so what if he did? There wasn’t anything in there that could hurt him. Just those numbers and…just those numbers.

He found a used envelope in his jacket pocket. He slit its two sealed edges and pressed the inside flat to make a rectangular sheet. He thought a moment and wrote a note detailing his visit with the police, their questions about the phone, and suggested he had some important questions to ask her. He decided to leave that part vague and slightly threatening. That should get a response. Shivering—he’d left his overcoat in the office as well—he tried to slide the note under her door. It crumpled up and would not push through. He guessed the weatherstripping kept it from sliding under. There was a mailbox attached to the wall next to the door lintel. He dropped it in and hoped the box was in fact in use and not merely decorative. So many apartment buildings had installed community mailboxes at various locations in the complex. He guessed the Postal Service must be trying to save money.

***

“Hey, Escobar, you know that truck you reported parked in the pull off?”

“Yeah, so?”

“There was an APB put out on it. The guy who owns it is wanted by the police. There’s a warrant out for his arrest, too.”

“No kidding. That for real?”

“Yeah. Some cop’s here and wants to talk to you about it. Wants you to tell how it was or something.”

“Sure, I talk to the guy. Where he at?”

Frank had cooled down a bit after his meeting with Fiske. Ike wasn’t answering either of his phones—probably at the hospital. He could have had him paged, but he’d wait. He’d just hung up when he received the call from the State Police who relayed the information about Smith’s pickup being found. He figured if he couldn’t work Ike’s case, he’d work his own.

“Right here. I understand you’re the guy who found the pickup we’ve been looking for.”

“Yeah, that would be me, I guess. What’d the guy do? Maybe he kill somebody or what?”

“Shot a dog.”

“That’s it? He shoot a dog. What kind of crime is that? He kill a dog. Was an expensive dog or something?”

“Somebody else’s dog. They were very annoyed. Animal cruelty is a crime in this state, especially dog cruelty, you know.”

“I hear that, yes, but, so, okay he kill the dog. That’s all he do?”

“No, there was a little problem of theft and possible accessory to murder. He was a very bad boy. Now, you want to tell me what you found and what you did. I sent a forensics team out there but I want to know everything about how you found the truck. Did you touch anything, for instance? If so, I’ll need your fingerprints.”

“Why you need my prints? I don’t do nothing. I find the truck, I report it to my boss. He calls the policía, yes? That’s a good thing, no?”

“Yes it is. But I need your prints on file to eliminate them from any others I might find on the vehicle. So did you touch the truck?”

“Okay, I touch it a little. You don’t want my fingerprints please. I only do it a little.”

Frank studied the little man. He was more than upset. He looked like he might bolt out the door at any moment.

“Jorge, that’s your name, right? Jorge, I’m thinking you might have a problem with ICE, is that right? Whoa, don’t run. Immigration’s none of my business. That’s between them and you. I have a different interest here. Okay, so here’s how we can work it. You tell me exactly what you touched. Exactly, you got it? And everything you touched. If you do, I probably can work around without taking yours, okay?”

“Okay. Give me a minute.”

Jorge screwed up his face in concentration, clenched his fists, and began muttering in Spanish under his breath. One by one he extended fingers from a closed fist. He stopped at seven, then closed them again.

“Okay. First, I check the door to see if the truck is locked. Is not. Then I walk to the back and look at the bed. No, wait, I have it backwards. First, I look in the bed. I touch the side near the driver side back wheel, you know?” He waved his hands in the air. “So, then I check the door on the same side and look in. So prints on the handle. The window is open and I poke in the mess he make with a stick to see if this truck is there when it rains. Dry floor, so no. Let’s see…then I go to the back. Maybe I steady myself on the side again. I write down his number plate. I go back to the cab and open the door again. I reach over and push the lock knobs down on both doors, roll up window, and I slam the door. Palm of the hand for that one for sure.”

All seven fingers were once more freed from the palms of his hands.

“That’s it? You’re sure?”

Jorge nodded, counted out on his fingers once again, and smiled. “Sure.”

“Okay. You need to make yourself available in case we need you. No skipping, you hear, or I will make a call to ICE. Got it?”

“Yes. Got it, gracias.”

Frank drove to the park and found the pickup. The forensics team had already arrived and had the truck’s doors open.

“There’s a palm print on this side of that door. Pull it. It’s of the guy who reported the thing. You can use it to eliminate any other place he touched. What have you got?”

“Nada, Deputy, just redneck mess in here and back in the bed. Paper cups, McDonald’s wrappers, crushed beer cans, the usual crap.”

“What’s that on the hood?”

“Oh, yeah. Your guy left a little notebook under the seat. Looks like a record of sales, and the dates they were made. And, there are initials next to each entry. Maybe you can figure out who bought whatever he was selling. There’s a few newspaper clippings stuck inside, too.”

“Hay. He was stealing hay and reselling it. There’s a market in hot hay. You believe that?”

“You’re not kidding? He was stealing hay?”

“Yep. Bag the book. When you’ve finished dusting it for prints, make a copy of everything and then send it over to me.”

“You got it.”

Chapter Thirty-eight

The next morning, Ike officially returned to his office. The mayor remained in absentia and business returned to near normal. There had been no further calls made on the cell phone they decided belonged to Fiske. Ike sat in his chronically squeaking chair and contemplated the pile of papers on his desk. His father called to remind him he had a rally to attend that afternoon. Essie brought him a cup of coffee and sat down across the desk.

“So, when are we going to bust Jack Burns?”

“We’re not, Essie. He had nothing to do with Ruth’s crack-up. He isn’t our guy.”

“I don’t mean for what happened to Ms. Harris, I mean for his involvement in the hay thing.”

“You think he had something to do with his nephew’s midnight business? Why?”

“Ain’t it obvious? Look, he’s got no job anymore, right? He just moved over here from Buena Vista, but he hasn’t sold his house over there, and he’s spending money to get elected. So where’s the money coming from?”

“I really hadn’t thought about that. It’s a possibility, very good, Essie. Let me think a minute. On the other hand, if we look into the mayor’s campaign kitty, we could possibly find some large withdrawals. You want to do that?”

“Frank has me and Billy calling around. I guess he doesn’t want us in the field. I’m sorry about the dust up in the bar over there. Billy gets a little loud sometimes. But if it don’t bring down that stuck up Burns, I guess it ain’t worth my time.”

“It could. It depends whether he declared the source in his own accounting. If he didn’t, or doesn’t, he could be cited.”

“You think?”

“Maybe, but this is personal isn’t it, Essie? You don’t just want him because he’s running for sheriff or anything recent. What happened between you two? ”

“Not to me, to my dad.”

“Essie, let it go. It’s not worth the effort. Your dad is dead and no one can make that right.”

“I got a baby, Ike, and I don’t want him to have to listen to all the sh…stuff I had to hear growing up. ‘Your daddy’s a convict, nyah, nyah a nyah, nyah.’ You got no idea how that is.”

“No, I don’t. But short of a posthumous pardon from the governor, you can’t change that either. Not even if we bring Burns down. And, Essie…”

“Yeah?”

“Before you do anything funny, go back and read your dad’s case file.”

“You’ve read it?”

“Yes, when I first took the job as sheriff, I checked everybody out. Under the circumstances, I had to, you may recall.”

“Yeah, I guess. What did it say?”

“First, as near as I can tell, Burns wasn’t the lead in that investigation. Second, your dad was caught pretty much red-handed at the 7-11 with stolen goods and drugs in his possession. The drugs were for your mother, the goods he stole to support her habit. Your mom wasn’t much help. I’m sorry, Essie, but it was a clean bust.”

Essie sat for a full minute staring at her shoes. “What do I tell Billy junior?”

“He’ll benefit more if you tell him the truth, than from lies. Look what your mother’s did to you.”

Elroy Heath knocked and entered the open office door. Essie rose and left.

“Essie, on your way out, get me Frank on the phone, will you?”

“Yeah, okay.”

***

Frank had studied the little book found in Smith’s truck. The entries didn’t tell him much but he guessed the newspaper clippings in the back might have something to do with Duffy’s murder or maybe his disappearance. Nothing leapt off the pages, however. He drummed his fingers on his desk and, frustrated at what he perceived as a dead-end, left to get some air. Maybe drive around.

Whether it was instinct or plain dumb luck, he found himself driving back to the park where the truck had been found. It had been towed away the day before so there was no reason to stop there, but he did. The leaves were in full color, one major benefit granted to people who chose the Shenandoah Valley as their place of residence. Whatever else might be said about the midsection of Virginia, fall was spectacular in the Blue Ridge. He stepped out of his cruiser and circled the area where the truck had been parked. There wasn’t much to see. The area had been trampled by the forensic team’s footprints. There was no way to tell if the other tire prints were recent or old.

So where was Smith? He walked absentmindedly to the verge and looked at the ground. Something caught his eye and he stepped away from the parking area and into the woods. It looked as if the leaves might have been disturbed. He didn’t know why he thought that. The damned things were constantly falling and all over the place, but he could have sworn someone had created a path through them as if they had walked in and out of the woods at this particular point. Leaves that had been scuffed by feet looked different somehow than if they hadn’t been disturbed. Had Smith left the truck and walked in here? If so, where did he go?

He followed the path, if you could call it that, deeper into the trees. Here and there the wind had swirled leaves into clumps and piles of various sizes. He kicked at a few of them. The last one did not give to his boot. Perhaps the pile had formed around a stump or a log. He reached down with a gloved hand and scattered the leaves. That’s when he saw the boot and the leg attached. He knocked a few leaves to one side and realized why no one had been able find Smith. He was under the leaves, very dead, and had been for a while.

He called Ike. He got Essie.

“I was just calling you. Ike wants to talk to you, too.”

***

“She been crying, Ike?” Elroy asked as he watched Essie make her way back to her desk.

“Maybe a little. What have you got for me, Elroy?”

“Well, it took some doing. I had to borrow a cop from the Roanoke force to get to it, but I finally dug out a description of the man who leant the phone to her.” He inspected his notebook and read the name. “Miss Tammy Bonwell. I had to find her friend, Tina, first. Tina didn’t want to talk to me. Her parents raised a fuss about me being from out of town and such. That’s when I had to call in the Roanoke officer. Then she dummied up. Finally, I had to tell her it was an investigation into an attempted murder and withholding information could be considered obstruction of justice. That’s when her old man got all nervous and said she’d tell what she knew or she’d be grounded for life.”

Ike gestured for Elroy to take Essie’s seat.

“It turns out that these girls, maybe five or six of them, meet at the mall and they tease older men, I guess you’d say. They flirt with them, get them to treat them to pizza and so on and then duck into the restrooms and ditch the guys. It’s a little like playing chicken, I guess. They think it’s funny. I mentioned the few cases we have had involving teenaged rape and disappearances to her, but I don’t think she heard. The Roanoke cop was taking notes, anyway.”

“Okay, so what did you learn, besides something about the abnormal psychology of hormone-driven teenagers?”

“She finally gave up her friend, Tammy, who is very much into this stuff. I found her at the mall chatting up a banker from Toledo who blew into town for a meeting. He beat a quick retreat when I flashed the badge. Tammy, after a little persuasion, gave me a description of the so-called ‘Old Perv.’ She claimed she didn’t know his name. I got the impression she didn’t dump him right away like the others and that maybe she had a sideline going. I am not real sure about that but, well, I told the Roanoke guy what I suspected and he said they’ll keep an eye on her. The description she gave me matches your man. I showed her the picture. I’m sure she recognized it, but she played dumb.”

“Not dumb, Elroy. Stupid.”