Terry Odell - Mapleton 03 - Deadly Puzzles (25 page)

After ending the call, Gordon sat, semi-stunned, for a moment. Then called Solomon to his office.
“Bring everything you have on these cases.”

A moment later, when Solomon arrived, Gordon almost snatched the file folder out of the man
’s hands. He spread everything on his desk, hunting for the copy of the newspaper article.

“
You going to tell me what’s going on?” Solomon asked.

Gordon found the clipping. Scanned it. An early report. No names released.

“Did you follow up on this?” Gordon waved the page in front of Solomon.

“
Huh?” Solomon snatched the page from Gordon’s hands. “No, we got sidetracked with other stuff. Stuff you thought—we thought—was important.”

“
It was. It is. But this is one of those pieces that connects a bunch of puzzle parts.”

“
Okay, Chief. Forgive me for not following, but what the hell are you talking about?”

Gordon regrouped. Slowed down.
“Turns out Jase Blackhawk was the frat brother who was driving Roni home.”

“
You’re shittin’ me.”

Gordon grabbed a marker and drew more circles and arrows on the white board.
“According to Blackhawk’s mother, Wardell felt guilty at first. She thought he’d gotten over it, and maybe they had. Apparently, the two men stayed connected, perhaps after finding themselves at the same mental health facility.”

“
Okay, I have to think about this for a minute.” He glanced toward Gordon’s coffee maker. “With real coffee. Be right back.” Solomon left, and Gordon poured himself a cup of his own brew. Would it hurt to have a cup of the real thing? No, he’d sworn he’d follow the rules for the next six months. He inhaled the aroma, took a sip, then called the freelance sketch artist the department used, who promised to get there within an hour or so.

Solomon returned, coffee in hand, and paced in front of the white board.
“I don’t think we’re going to get around HIPAA red tape, but damn, it would be good to know when their stays at the loony bin overlapped. Did they reconnect recently, or have they been hanging together for years?”

“
Not sure it matters,” Gordon said. “We know their pasts are connected, and they were together last week.”

“
Are you sure?” Solomon asked. “Is there a possibility they happened to bump into each other? Wardell, in all his craziness, at the B and B, and Blackhawk, who’s the wandering sort, ends up there on his own?”

“
Anything’s possible, but I wouldn’t buy
that
coincidence. I’d say Blackhawk was here because Wardell arranged it, so for now, we assume they were together.”

“
So, why was Blackhawk in the cabin? Why didn’t they both show up when Wardell did? Easy enough to say they were travelling together.”

Gordon shook his head.
“From what we’ve learned, I don’t think Blackhawk could have pulled it off. Maybe Wardell left him in the cabin, then did his crazed husband thing. Promised to pick him up later. Only he hadn’t counted on Raffi Yardumian’s renovation work. Hell, for all we know, Blackhawk could have been in any of the cabins. Maybe he came in after Yardumian left, because it was warmer. Or there was food. Or the lights were on. We might never know that. All we can do is deal with the facts we do have. Blackhawk was in the cabin, it caught fire, and he died.”

“
How would that have affected Wardell?” Solomon asked. “If Wardell showed him to the cabins, would that have dumped another bucket of guilt on him when his frat brother died?”

“
Would Wardell even know?” Gordon asked. “He would have been on his way from Montrose to Mapleton when it happened.”

“
Wait.” Solomon moved to the timeline. “All you know is Wardell couldn’t have gotten to the B and B in time to start the fire. But you didn’t get to Mapleton until days later. You were in the hospital, then you had your … procedure … in Denver, and a couple days off. Wardell could have been here in town, and we’d have had no reason to be looking at him. Heck, he could have been in a different disguise every day.”

“
Good point.” Gordon scratched his jaw. “But why would he have come here in the first place?”

Solomon stopped his pacing and stared into his mug.
“Maybe he wasn’t coming straight here. Maybe he had another destination. Maybe he did go to the Yardumians’ to pick up Blackhawk and found out about the fire then. Even if he didn’t, if he’d seen any new reports about the fire, he’d have figured out who the victim was. That might have flipped him.”

“
Valid assumption,” Gordon said. “Either way, we’re looking at this as though Wardell came here
after
he found out about the death of his friend.”

“
You’re thinking what I’m thinking, aren’t you, Chief?” Solomon went to the board, picked up a red marker and wrote Gordon’s name in large, block letters. He rapped it with the end of the marker. “He’s blaming you for his friend’s death.”

Gordon tried to maintain objectivity.
“That’s one hypothesis, yes. But—”

“
Don’t start looking for zebras, Chief. We’ve got a nutcase who thinks his wife is still alive. He steals your stuff from Angie’s apartment. He wants to get back at you.”

“
Let’s not narrow our focus too far. There could be other possibilities.”

“
It fits the facts,” Solomon said. “He finds out his friend died—maybe in a place Wardell had told him would be safe. He finds out you didn’t save him. He knows you’re from Mapleton—doesn’t he?”

“
If he didn’t, he would if he saw any news broadcasts,” Gordon said.

“
Right, so he comes here, does a little recon. Daily Bread’s better than the
Mapleton Bee
when it comes to knowing who’s up to what, and it makes sense he’d hang around there.” Solomon turned. “You know, he might come back. Maybe we should put his sketch by the register like we did with the ATM scammer. Get more eyes looking for him.”

“
I think that’s premature,” Gordon said. “And you’re leaving out one thing. If he killed his uncle, how does that tie in? The man who trashed Angie’s apartment and helped himself to a few incidentals doesn’t seem to fit the killer model. No destruction, no rage.”

Solomon stopped, his enthusiasm momentarily dampened as he appeared to be weighing all the facts.
“That all happened before the incident at the B and B, though. Could be two entirely different motives. And we haven’t
proven
that Wardell’s the killer in that case.”

“
We haven’t
proven
he’s the one who broke into Angie’s, either.” At Solomon’s look of protest, Gordon added, “Although he’s looking very good for it.”

“
You think he could have thought it was
your
apartment?” Solomon asked. “When he saw it belonged to a woman, not you, he got mad, tossed stuff, and then found whatever he did of yours and took it? He has spent time in a loony bin, after all.”

“
I have no way of knowing
what
this guy was thinking. If he was even thinking at all. Maybe he’s on meds that keep him on an even keel, and he ran out or stopped taking them.”

Solomon wrote
“Meds?” on the board. “Maybe we can trace that. I’m thinking a call to someone who knows him, who’s not governed by privacy laws, might shed some light. Family?”

“
And the Castle Rock address. Maybe someone there will know him.”

“
Yeah, could be he lives with family when he’s not in the loony bin.”

“
I wish you’d stop calling it that,” Gordon said.

“
Fine. The mental health facility. But loony bin is shorter.”

“
Yeah, but it’s not going to reflect well on us if you start using the term when you’re talking to his family.”

Solomon grinned, but Gordon knew his officer would be the picture of professionalism once he left the confines of the station. Solomon took off, and Gordon buzzed Laurie.

“I need a list of all the places people can stay in and around Mapleton. Motels, B and Bs, rooming houses. Within an hour’s drive, for starters.”

“
No problem. I’ve got most of those in a file. Give me a few minutes and I’ll have it for you.”

“
Have I ever—?”

“
Not often enough.”

Seconds later, she buzzed him.
“The sketch artist is here.”

“
Send her back, please,” Gordon said. This would give him something to show the innkeepers when he was hunting down Wardell’s whereabouts. And maybe he should follow Solomon’s “informed citizenry” approach and go beyond places to stay. The man would have to eat somewhere, too.

After an hour, Gordon had a sketch of Orrin Wardell as himself and as Carhartt Cowboy.
“I can run these through my computer program,” the artist said. “Change his hair, add glasses, stuff like that.”

“
I don’t know,” Gordon said. “Too many variations might confuse people, and they’d be seeing him everywhere.”

“
There is that.” She left him the two drawings she’d done. “I’ll work up some more and email them, for your departmental reference. Your officers are less prone to imagine everyone from great-aunt Mazie to cousin Billy is our guy.”

Gordon saw her out, then made copies of her sketches and took them to the shift officer.
“We’re looking for this man in connection with not only the break-in at Daily Bread, but also as a person of interest in a homicide.”

“
Which guy?” the officer asked.

“
They’re one and the same.”

The officer looked from one to the other.
“You’re kidding, right?”

“
Nope. And he might have half a dozen other disguises. I don’t want our officers stopping everyone they see, but I do want careful eyes on anyone they don’t recognize. And if they’ve seen this guy anywhere over the last few days, I want it called in forthwith.”

“
You want to address the shift?”

Gordon shook his head.
“You can handle it. I’ll get you a few more variations the sketch artist is going to come up with, too. Tell them to be careful out there.”

“
Always do.”

His personal cell rang. He smiled at the
C is for Cookie
ringtone he’d reprogrammed for Angie. “Hey. What’s up?”

“
Can you come over here and check the security video? I have a feeling there might be something important on it.”

Gordon refrained from rushing out the door. Although Angie had stopped referring to her
feelings
about events, whether past, present, or future, every once in a while, she reacted—or overreacted—to everyday happenings. However, nothing in her tone said this was an emergency. “What’s the problem, Angie?”

“
Patti thinks she saw that man—the one with the newspaper who might have set off the alarm. She was on her way out when he arrived, and didn’t remember it until she was halfway home. She called to let me know.”

“
Is he still there?” Gordon asked.

“
I never saw him,” Angie said. “Today or the day of the fire alarm. Right now, there aren’t any men here I don’t recognize. That’s why I thought you might want to look at the video.”

Damn right he did.
“As long as he’s not there, let me take care of a couple of things here first. Should be over within fifteen, twenty minutes.”

Angie
’s “okay” hadn’t sounded like she’d expected him to drop everything, so Gordon went down a mental “what if it’s him?” checklist. He alerted Solomon, and told Tessa in Dispatch to make sure there were plenty of eyes out for their suspect.

“
Make sure this gets into the notes for your change of shift when Connie gets in. All officers already have pictures of what this guy looks like.”

“
Got it, Chief,” Tessa said.

He let Laurie know he was leaving for Daily Bread.
“I’ll be back, but no need for you to work late,” he said.

“
I’ll have that list of accommodations on your desk,” she said.

Gordon wondered if he should call County and have deputies go door-to-door. A lot of manpower, but if Wardell was a murderer, they needed to find him. He
’d make that decision later, after he saw what was on Angie’s video.

Dinner seating was picking up as Gordon entered Daily Bread. Almost all the tables were occupied. He found Angie helping Ozzie in the kitchen.

“Things look busy,” he said. “Not unusual for people to want to take a look whenever something—positive or negative—happens. But it’s good for business, right?”

“
It’ll be short-lived, I’m sure,” Angie said. “It was nothing but a smoke detector going off. I haven’t said anything about the break-in, and I told the staff not to mention it.”

Until the next issue of the
Mapleton Bee
, Gordon thought. Charlotte Strickland would be itching to get out a special edition, but he knew Editor-in-Chief Lipsky would never allow it. Gordon’s fire
heroics
hadn’t been important enough, thank goodness, so a simple false alarm would never fly, even if there was a burglary to go along with it.

“
I’m swamped right now,” Angie said, “but the video’s in the office. I’m sure you know how it works better than I do.”

“
Where should I be looking?” Gordon asked.

Angie shut off the mixer and wiped her hands.
“I think Patti said table twelve. There’s a diagram on the desk.”

“
And when did Patti leave? You said the man was arriving at the same time.”

“
Morning shift ends at three,” Angie said. “She’d be tallying receipts, figuring her tips, making sure she left everything ready for the next shift. She’s pretty good about not closing out too early, so I doubt she left at the stroke of three.”

“
Gotcha.” Gordon found the diagram and cued up the video. After orienting himself to the diner’s layout, he found table twelve, then backtracked to a two-o’clock timestamp, hit fast-forward, and watched the action play out at triple speed. Table twelve had been occupied by two women and two kids. The resolution wasn’t ideal, but Gordon thought he recognized the kids from his crossing guard duty. First graders or thereabouts. Both were engrossed in cell phones. Games, Gordon figured, not using them as phones. He knew from talking to the kids that a lot of them had disabled, hand-me-down phones that were only good for gaming.

What happened to the days when kids went out to play? Or at least talked to each other. Heck, even a little mischief-making would be better than having their worlds revolve around shooting monsters on a three-inch screen. However, their mothers appeared to be grateful for moments of adult conversation.

Not his place to judge. And why the hell was he thinking about parenting?

On task.

In the video, Erin had dropped a check on the table at one fifty-three. He fast-forwarded again, as the mothers took care of payment and convinced the kids that they had to put their games away. They left at two-thirteen. Erin bussed the table, and it stayed empty until two twenty-seven, when Erin showed a woman Gordon didn’t recognize to the table. Since it was a four-top, Gordon wondered why the woman had been seated there. Waiting on others?

Sure enough, a few minutes later, two other women joined her. They accepted coffee, but waved away menus. They chatted away, seemingly happy. At two fifty-eight, one of the women dropped some bills on the table, and they all left. Office workers on a coffee break, most likely.

Gordon backed up the video, realizing he hadn’t been paying enough attention to the rest of the comings and goings in the diner. Because Patti thought the man was arriving when she was leaving didn’t mean he hadn’t been there beforehand, perhaps sitting off in a corner, and then got up to use the restroom. Or peruse the bakery counter. Or pay his bill at the register.

Gordon scanned the video. No single males arrived during the time he
’d been watching the women at table twelve. He caught the occasional glimpse of Patti going through receipts at the register and taking payments from other guests. She disappeared into the kitchen at three oh-seven and didn’t reappear. Gordon resumed watching the table.

But according to Angie, Patti had said he was at table twelve even though he was alone. Gordon remembered that the staff routinely turned the same tables rather than move into other areas of the dining room, so maybe table twelve was more convenient, even if it wasn
’t being used to its full potential. He stopped worrying about
why
someone was sitting at a particular table and started concentrating on the
who
again.

The table remained empty. Okay, the guy might be good at disguising himself, but no way could one of those coffee break women have been Orrin Wardell.

In case he’d missed something, he switched to the feed from the rear camera, the one focused on the area near the restrooms, storage, and the door leading upstairs to Angie’s. Nothing unusual. The only single man through the space was Lou, the garage mechanic.

He got up and went to the kitchen.
“Are you sure it was table twelve?” he asked Angie.

“
That’s what Patti said.”

“
Then are you sure she said he was coming in as she was leaving for the day? Maybe she left for something else earlier on.”

“
Maybe.” Angie grabbed some mitts and pulled a pan of brownies out of the oven, set it on a rack and faced him. “It was loud in here, I was super busy, and the reception from her cell wasn’t that great. I might have misunderstood.”

“
Can I have her number? I’ll call and ask her directly.”

“
Sure. It’s on the bulletin board above the desk.”

Gordon found Patti
’s home number as well as her cell. He tried the former, figuring if she were home, a land line’s reception would be better.

After talking with Patti, he discovered his hunch had been right. She
’d seen the man come in when she took a break to run to the bank. She’d been in a hurry because she only had a few minutes, and at the time, it didn’t register that the man she almost bumped into could have been the one they’d been looking for.

“
What made you think it was him?” Gordon asked. “From what you said before, you didn’t get much of a look at him the day the alarm went off.” Too often, people who
wanted
to see something projected that image onto completely different targets.

“
I can’t put my finger on it,” Patti said. “I just did. He had a newspaper. I’d been thinking about him ever since that day, trying to put together whatever I could remember. Of course, I could be wrong, but I thought I ought to let Angie know, just in case.”

Gordon feared it was simply a man carrying a newspaper who set off the bells for Patti. Still, he wasn
’t going to say it. Instead, he offered a few words of praise. “That was smart. Always good to err on the side of caution. Fewer people get hurt that way.”

“
Oh my goodness. Do you think he’s going to hurt someone?”

“
No. I didn’t mean it that way. That’s a generalization, nothing to do with this. But what I’d like to know is whether you remember what time you saw him come into the diner?”

“
Oh, sure. I was on my lunch break. It’s half an hour, so I skipped eating because I had to get to the bank. My break’s always at ten-thirty when I work the early shift, which I was doing today.”

That put a different spin on the timeframe. But things still weren
’t making sense. “One more question, Patti. If you were leaving, how did you know he was at table twelve? You said you were on your way out. Did you see him go inside? See him being seated?”

A pause, and when she spoke again, her voice was quiet. Apologetic. Embarrassed, even.

“No. I guess my brain was putting things together without bothering to verify they’d gone through my eyes first. When I left for my break, twelve was the only open table in Erin’s section, so I assumed that’s where he’d be seated, and when Angie asked, I told her table twelve. But no, I didn’t see him there.”

“
He wasn’t there when you got back from the bank?”

“
I don’t think so. Like I said, I didn’t realize he might be your man until after work, when I was halfway home, which was hours later. But twelve isn’t one of my tables, and it’s on the other end of the diner from mine, so I can’t be positive. I
think
I’d have noticed him if he’d been there when I went on duty. And if I had, I’d have told someone right then. I’m sorry. I guess I’m not a very good witness.”

“
Don’t worry. I have the video, and I can figure this all out. You weren’t looking for him, so no need to apologize. You’ve been a big help.”

Miscommunication all around. Patti filling in blanks, Angie not paying attention to what Patti was saying, not asking the right questions. And why should she? That was
his
job.

Gordon went to the video, rewinding it to ten o
’clock, to be safe. Before he started studying it, he took out the two images he had of Orrin Wardell and tried to fix them in his brain so he’d have a mental image for comparison.

Then it hit him. If Patti was right, and she and the man had almost collided, all he had to do was watch for her leaving to spot his guy. Gordon sped through the video until he caught Patti shrugging into her coat and heading for the door. He stopped the replay, then advanced it a few frames at a time. In slow motion, Patti stepped toward the door. He nudged the video a little faster. There. She
’d reached the door. No man in sight. Opened it. Stepped outside. Out of camera range.
Damn
.

But the guy should be the next man to enter the diner, even if he wasn
’t going to be at table twelve. But in the next few minutes, nobody came inside, and table twelve remained empty.

He watched until the timestamp showed eleven, when Patti came back. No lone males. At the eleven thirty mark, the lunch crowd started arriving. Gordon moved through the video at a crawl, comparing every male customer to the sketches in front of him. Damn it to hell, there was nobody who came close.