Barry Friedman - Dead End (9 page)

She shook her head slowly, “No, I’m sure he
didn’t.”

Bonnie Graves confirmed that her late husband had
a gambling compulsion. She tried to get him into a rehab program but he was
convinced that he would hit it big someday and denied he had a problem. She was
pretty sure he had paid his gambling debts; in fact he would often clean out
their bank account so that he would not be blacklisted by the bookies he dealt
with. “He saw other guys with busted kneecaps, so he was careful about paying
up front when he made a bet.”

Bonnie did not know of anyone with a reason to
kill her husband.

She became teary-eyed after she had finished her
second drink. For all his faults, Marlon was a loving, faithful husband. They
had been married for twelve years, for both it was their first marriage. He had
no insurance, so Bonnie had to keep the job she had held all during their
marriage. They had no children.

Maharos was toying with the idea of asking her if
she was busy that evening, when she brightened and coyly revealed that she was
dating a guy who seemed serious about marrying her “as soon as his wife gives
him a divorce.” Uh-huh, he thought, that’s the kind of gamble that kept her
late husband broke.

Maharos gave her his card and told her to call if
she thought of anything further.

On the drive back to Youngstown, the picture of
Bonnie Graves fresh in his mind, Maharos recalled that it had been more than a
month since he had gone out (or stayed in) with a woman. He was beginning to
hate the mating dance each time he took out someone new: The posturing, the
casual touch of hands, the tentative invitation “your place or mine,” the
fumbling with clothing. Afterwards, he would debate whether to continue a
“relationship” or terminate it causing as little hurt as possible. Often
enough, the decision to end it was not his.

Sure, they’d tell him he was fun to be with. Even
exciting. His stories about his life with the sleaze kept their attention. He
neither exaggerated nor minimized the danger. The truth was he did most of his
work with his head. Only once had he fired a shot at a person.

It’d be easy if he had an eight-to-five job. But
something always came up at the wrong time. He couldn’t count the times when
the promise of an evening of fun and excitement, was canceled. It might be two,
three days before he could get around to calling again. He’d promise to make it
up to them, but the same thing could happen a second or third time. No lady
will stand around by herself, all dressed up and reeking with something
expensive from Chanel, twirling the stem of an empty cocktail glass, waiting.
Not more than twice or three times if she’s in her right mind. It doesn’t
matter how exciting he might be, if she’s not sure he’ll be there.

Now that he was getting close to fifty, he
thought that the time had come for him to find someone with whom he could
comfortably spend his leisure moments. In a few years he would be eligible for
retirement. Then he could take his pension and supplement it with a cushy part
time job, maybe selling security systems, or something like that.

In the past, he had given some thought to moving
to Florida or California where he would get a police job in a small town. The
deterrent was Annie. He knew that once he left Youngstown, he would rarely see
the child; she would forget her father. He wanted to watch her grow, at least
until she left home to go to college.

When he got back to headquarters, he stopped at
Frank Fiala’s desk. Fiala was typing up a report.

Maharos said, “Frank, a few weeks ago, you said
Henny had someone she wanted me to meet.”

Henny was Frank’s wife and the mother of their
six children. She had fixed Maharos up with more than a dozen dates since his
divorce. Each time, after some emergency had forced Maharos to call it off at
the last moment, she vowed it would be the last. But there isn’t a married
woman alive who can stand to see a healthy, eligible male eating and sleeping
by himself when there are healthy, eligible females around.

Fiala looked up from his typewriter. He winked.
“Uh-huh. Horny again.”

“Don’t be crude, Fiala. Since I no longer have
you around to listen to my brilliant conversation, I decided to share it with
some appreciative person of the opposite sex.”

Fiala fished in his desk drawer and came up with
a slip of paper. “Speaking of sex, here’s her name and phone number.”

Lieutenant Ed Bragg leaned back in his swivel
chair while he chewed on the remains of a pizza. He beamed at Al Maharos
sprawled in the chair in front of his desk. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

Maharos ignored the “we” reference. All the
information he had, and was sharing with Bragg, he had gotten by relentlessly
sniffing into every cranny that seemed promising. Now he sat with Bragg telling
him that he had uncovered another homicide that fit the pattern of the murders
of George Horner and Noah Hamberger. Also, he had finally received Hamberger’s
autopsy report. From it he learned, without surprise, death had been due to .25
 
caliber bullet wounds through the spinal cord
at the level of the seventh cervical vertebra and another entering from the
level of the seventh thoracic vertebra, passing through the heart. Both bullets
had been recovered and examined for characteristic markings. He had called down
to the Medical Examiner’s office and asked that photomicrographs of the spent
missiles be telefaxed to other ballistics laboratories in the state for
comparison.

Any question that Hamberger had been the victim
of the same killer who had murdered Horner and Graves, was now erased. He could
now account for murders on the seventh of January (Burnstein), March (Graves),
and June (Horner). It looked as though the killer was selecting a victim on the
seventh day of alternate months.

Bragg said, “I got a call from that lawyer in
Canton, the one who’s defending the swishy decorator.”

“Lavant?”

“That’s the one. He got an extension on the trial
date. He figures maybe you’ll dig up some evidence that’ll help his case.”

“Meantime his guy sits around in jail.”

“Better a little more now than a lot more later.”

“If we can nail someone else for the job on
Burnstein.”

“Anyway, you can expect to be subpoenaed as a
witness when the trial comes up,” said Bragg.

“Do they have a new trial date set yet?”

Bragg rummaged through the pile of papers on his
desk and came up with a memo note. “Yeah. Wednesday, July 8th.”

Maharos jotted it down in his spiral notebook.

 
Bragg
said, “Okay, Al, what’s our next move?”

“Well, I’m not finished bird-dogging the list
I’ve got. There may be more than just the three homicides we know about. I
could use some help.”

Bragg shook his head slowly. “I wish I could
spare someone, but I can’t at the moment. In another week you can probably have
Fiala back. Meanwhile, you’re doin’ great on your own. Keep at it.”

A great cheerleader. At least he was finally out
of Bragg’s doghouse, something to be thankful for.

Bragg’s phone rang. He listened for a moment. “A
call for you, Al.”

“I’ll take it at my desk.”

The woman’s voice said, “Hi, this is Bonnie.”

He thought for a moment.
“Bonnie?”

“Yeah, Bonnie
Graves, remember?”

The picture of the well-built blonde sipping
vodka and tonic flashed into his mind. “That Bonnie. Of course.”

“You told me to call if I remembered anything?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Well, when you showed me that list of names, I
thought one looked a little familiar but I wasn’t sure so I didn’t say anything
at the time. Wasn’t there a Gibson on the list?”

Maharos sat up sharply and pressed the receiver
to his ear. With his free hand, he reached behind to the pocket of his jacket
hanging over the back of his chair and brought out his list of homicide
victims. He had gone over the names so many times, he was sure he remembered
them all. He wanted to be certain. Yes, there it was in the column of April 7th
homicides. Henry Gibson; gunshot victim; jurisdiction, Stark County Sheriff’s
office.

Bonnie Graves was saying, “First I thought the
name was familiar because I had read about it in the newspapers, you know, like
that other guy whose name I told you looked familiar?”

“George Horner?”

“Yeah, Horner. But no, I hadn’t read anything
about Gibson. Then, after I got home, I looked through a list I had kept of
people who sent me condolence letters after Marlon died last March. I meant to
answer them and thank the people who wrote. I never did, but I kept the list.
Anyway, there was one from this guy named Hank Gibson. I don’t even know how
Marlon knew him. I thought he might be one of the guys Marlon worked with at
the clothing store or maybe one of his bookies. I don’t know if he’s any
relation to the Gibson you have on your list but I thought maybe I should tell
you.”

Maharos said, “Do you have the letter?”

“No. I threw it away. I didn’t want to keep those
things. They just made me feel sad.”

“Do you have Gibson’s address?”

“Yeah, it’s right here on the list. Sterling
Wholesale Hardware Co., 2337 Henry Street, Canton, Ohio. Funny, I didn’t know
Marlon even knew anyone from Canton. Shows you how little you can know about
people you spend most of your life with.”

“I don’t suppose you remember what the letter
said? Like, how he knew Marlon?”

“No. I got a lot of letters from people who said
they read about Marlon in the papers. Many of them were people I didn’t know.
Some said they had been Marlon’s customers. Some were, you know, bookies. They
really miss him.”

Maharos said, “What’s the name of the clothing
store where Marlon worked? I may want to do some checking.”

“Simpson’s Men’s Wear. It’s on Market Street in
Akron.”

“Bonnie, do me a favor?”

“Sure, what is it?”

“Don’t say anything to anyone about my
investigation— either our conversation the other day or today. If the
newspapers get hold of this they’ll make a big story out of it. Whoever killed
your husband probably thinks the police have given up looking. We want him or
her to keep thinking that.”

“I understand. I won’t say a word,” said Bonnie.

Maharos’ first call was to the Stark County
Sheriff’s Office in Canton. Deputy Sheriff Karen Vandergrift told him that
Henry Gibson’s murder and robbery was still unsolved. There were no suspects,
they were open to suggestions from him, and he was welcome to look at their
file. Gibson, she said, had been a salesman for a wholesale hardware company in
Canton. It was the same Gibson.

The 40-mile drive to Canton took him an hour.
Thirty minutes after he sat down with Henry Gibson’s file, Maharos knew he had
filled another gap in his hunt; he had located an April victim of the serial
murderer who deposited his kill along isolated stretches of northeast Ohio
country roads.

Maharos now had an important new lead: Henry
Gibson had known Marlon Graves. For the first time since he started the
investigation, he had two victims who knew each other. Although the link
between the two murdered men was still unknown, it now appeared that the
killings might not have been random. It opened up the possibility that all of
the victims were in some way related to the killer.

The bad news was that if Gibson’s murder was one
of the series, the theory that the killer struck on alternate months, went out
the window. Gibson had died on April 7th. Maharos now could account for
similarly patterned slayings on the seventh of January (Frank Burnstein), March
(Marlon Graves), April (Henry Gibson), May (George Horner) and June (Noah
Hamberger). Was February 7th omitted for a reason, or had Maharos overlooked
someone?

It was now June 17th. What would happen on the
7th of July, and the 7th of August, and the next month? Could he look forward,
each time the calendar clocked a “7”, to another corpse with bullet holes in the
neck and between the shoulder blades, lying on some dirt road? More important,
could he act promptly enough to prevent another death?

With Henry Gibson’s file in front of him, Maharos
was staring at the ceiling when Karen Vandergrift came in the file room. Her
tan, sharply creased uniform slacks did not hide a good figure. She said,
“What’s up there, spiders?”

Maharos grinned. “Thinking. That’s how I think.”

“Think about any way to find out who killed
Gibson? We sure haven’t.”

“Maybe. I’m not sure.”

Vandergrift flattened her palms on the table,
leaned forward, her face a foot away from his. “You serious?”

Her light blue eyes were wide open. Her face
framed by honey-colored bangs.

Maharos briefly told her where his inquiry had
led, starting with Horner as his index case. When he had finished, Vandergrift
said, “Sounds like you’re on to something. I think we’d better talk this over
with my boss.”

Sheriff Sherman McAllister sat with his hands
folded across his stomach as he listened, unsmiling, to Maharos. His
wire-framed glasses, perched on a thin nose gave him a professorial look. When
Maharos finished, McAllister turned to Vandergrift. “Who did the autopsy on
Gibson?”

“Dr. Hanson, at the Stark County Medical
Examiner’s morgue.”

He asked Maharos, “Where was the autopsy done on
the male nurse?”

“Burnstein’s autopsy was done by the Stark County
Medical Examiner’s office too.” Maharos could see where McAllister’s questions
were leading. If the same medical examiner had performed the two autopsies, why
weren’t the similarities in wound sites recognized?

McAllister picked up the phone on his desk and
spoke to his secretary. “Get me Dr. Harry Hanson in the Medical Examiner’s
office.”

While they waited, McAllister asked Maharos, “Are
you working this case by yourself?”

“Yeah. I had a partner but we were short-handed
and he was taken off for another investigation.”

McAllister turned to Vandergrift. “You’re not
working anything special at the moment, are you?”

“No sir.”

The phone on his desk buzzed. He listened, then said,
“Dr. Hanson, I’d like to know who performed the autopsies on two homicides that
were done in your morgue. One was Henry Gibson the other was—,” he gestured
with his chin to Maharos.

“—Frank Burnstein. It was done around January
8th.”

McAllister repeated the information and waited
with the phone at his ear. His face remained totally impassive. This is a
no-nonsense guy, thought Maharos. A few moments later, he said, “I see. Did you
go over Dr. Browning’s autopsy report?…Uh-huh…Do it and get back to me…No,
I won’t tell you what I’m looking for. I don’t want to influence your opinion.
Goodbye.”

He placed the phone back on the cradle and spoke
to the other two. “Dr. Glen Browning did the Burnstein autopsy. He was working
in the Medical Examiner’s office while Hanson was on vacation. When he
returned, Hanson briefly went over all the cases Browning had done, but
apparently not in detail. Says he was swamped with other work. We’ll soon find
out if the wounds were similar.” He spoke to Maharos. “We’re as interested in
this as you are. I’m going to assign Deputy Vandergrift to work with you. Do
you want to discuss this with your chief?”

Maharos nodded. “Can I use your phone?”

Ed Bragg listened when Maharos told him about the
sheriff’s offer. He was enthusiastic in his acceptance. Maharos wondered if he
would be as thrilled if he knew that Deputy Vandergrift was an attractive
woman.