Murder Mountain (6 page)

I got out of my car and told him who I was and why I was there. He told me he had no other information to give me other than what he’d told Coop, and then politely asked me to leave.

I stayed put and looked straight at him observing his serious and grim expression. Looking closer, I could see a touch of sadness in his eyes.

“I don’t believe you, Matt. I’ll lay everything I’ve got on the table saying you’ve got a lot more information than you let on. And the bottom line is that I’m not leaving until I get it.”

“Oh, c’mon, man! I don’t need this shit on me right now. I swear I told that other cop all I know,” he half-whined, seeming tired, drained.

I noticed he was holding a blank compact disc with writing on it in his left hand. My mind worked in overdrive for a minute and, being as brilliant as I am, I found something to hang on him. It was chicken shit, and I had no idea how I was going to do it, but I thought,
here goes nothing.

“What’s that in your hand?” I asked.

Matt gave me a funny look and said, “It’s a Led Zepplin CD, why?”

“Just wondering. Is it a copy?”

“Yeah, burned it this morning. Why? You like Led Zepplin? I can make you a copy if you want, but you gotta fork over the blank CD,” he said, looking skeptical.

Then I went in for the kill. “Did Led Zepplin give you permission to copy their CD?” Matt just stood there with a blank stare on his face. “You know,” I continued, “the Feds just raided a house for copyright infringement. Oh, they’re really cracking down on it. They’ve even put those above drug cases. I’d have to look, but I’m pretty sure it’s a felony. And if I call one of the Feds, who happens to be a close friend, he’d be more than happy to come down here with his friends and seize all your computer equipment and take you to jail.” I said this in the know-it-all voice I used when I had no idea what the fuck I was talking about—which I didn’t. It just sounded like I did.

Matt stood there with his mouth hanging open, saying nothing for a moment, and then said oh-so-sadly, with the same grim look, “Man, it ain’t right the fuckin’ games you people play. You ain’t no better than them dirty cops I was talkin’ about. I’ll talk to ya on one condition. You gotta promise me my name ain’t gonna get brought out.”

I agreed, and we walked around to Matt’s back patio to sit and talk. Matt began his story going two months back. He had been caught shoplifting again, and his court fines were building up. He’d also had a drunk driving charge, which had resulted in the loss of his driver’s license a year before. This had prevented him from getting steady work, and had made him desperate for money.

It was around this time he’d been in the Roseland Tavern one day having a beer and spilling his guts out to the bartender, a guy he knew from high school. A guy a couple stools down had said that he couldn’t help overhearing Matt’s conversation, and he might be able to help if Matt was interested. Matt had said that, being in the position he was in, he felt he had no other choice but to be interested. The guy had called himself “Bob,” and had given Matt an address on Fairfax Avenue where they were to meet in an hour to “talk about the future.” Bob then promptly left, which gave Matt an opportunity to ask the bartender if he knew anything about the guy.

I interrupted Matt then and asked, “Why? You already said you were desperate, so where’s the limit on whether or not you would go to the house?”

Matt responded reasonably, but serious, “Well, I just wanted to make sure the guy wasn’t some fuckin’ faggot that wanted a rim job from me, because if that’s what I’d get paid for, fuck that! I’ll starve and go to jail, no problem.”

Matt then told me that the bartender had told him he didn’t know much, but the guy kept to himself for the most part, coming in a couple times a month, several times with some young blonde. Hearing that Bob was with a girl had made Matt feel better about the guy’s sexual preference, so he’d gone to the house.

I interrupted Matt again, asking him for the address and whether Bob had a last name. Matt gave me the address but said he never knew Bob’s last name, and had never asked because, as he put it, “My own rule of life is to know as little as possible about anyone, as that keeps me out of trouble.”

“So, what you’re telling me is, you already knew that whatever ‘work’ Bob was going to offer you would be illegal, so the less you knew about him the better, is that right?”

“Well, no shit! You don’t need to be no doctor to figure that one out. I mean, a guy in a bar telling you he can help you make money!” Matt thought quietly for a second, then added, “A Roseland bar, too. I knew it and I didn’t give a fuck!”

Then he went on to tell me about how, after arriving at Bob’s house, he hadn’t even been sure if it was Bob’s own house. Then Bob had started telling him how he could make a lot of money. Bob had a business, a big business, that could earn Matt anywhere from two to three thousand dollars a month if he worked hard, and, most important to Bob, if he was someone who Bob could trust. Trust was the biggest issue for Bob, and no one worked for him if there was even a hint of disloyalty.

“And here I am, rattin’ out to the cops. I might as well go dig my grave now because you don’t fuck Bob; if you do, you’re dead. Not just from Bob, but from the people Bob works for, y’know?” he sighed, his pained look returning, “Now, those are the scary ones, but I’ll get to that.”

Matt went on to tell me how he’d told Bob that he could trust him and whatever he had to do to prove it, just say the word. He then said that he’d started to ask Bob about the
business
more specifically, but Bob had immediately cut him off. Bob had told him that all he needed to know was what he was asked and getting paid to do, and that he was not, ever, to ask any questions.

Bob had then told him that he employed about twenty people, called “runners and grabbers,” for the business. If new people in proved themselves as grabbers, they moved up into the runners’ positions, where the big money was. Then Bob had given him his first job, at a payment of $500 if all went well. Matt was to go to any county co-op store and steal anhydrous ammonia and deliver it to Bob by the end of the week.

There it was, and before Matt tried to explain, I waved my hand at him. This was all about methamphetamine labs, which were the most dangerous and becoming the most lucrative drug labs to hit the country. Meth labs started out west years ago with the bikers, but slowly crept east until Ohio has had an explosion of them over the last couple of years. Meth labs in the Midwest and the East have doubled and tripled within two years.

Anhydrous ammonia was a key ingredient for making meth, and was the easiest to obtain. Meth is made from nothing more than household products, with the exception of the anhydrous ammonia.

Called the Nazi method of making methamphetamine, cookers used anhydrous ammonia, which is fertilizer used by farmers. A lot of states, including West Virginia, are starting to limit their supply of the chemical. The waterless version of the ammonia is 82 percent nitrogen, and sells for around a dollar a gallon. Meth thieves, however, steal it because it runs for around a hundred bucks on the black market. The thieves get a high return. A gallon of anhydrous ammonia can be used to make three to five thousand dollars worth of meth.

Usually, when any police agency has a rash of thefts of anhydrous ammonia, operating labs are located within a few miles of where the thefts occurred. I immediately made a mental note to get with our drug task force, METRICH, to see if we’d had any thefts of the chemical recently.

“Yes, Matt,” I said sincerely, “this is clearly useful information, but I have to ask you what this has to do with Lizzie Johnston.”

“Man, I’m gettin’ to that! You said you wanted to know, and it’s a long story. You want to hear it or what?”

I looked at my watch and saw it was getting late. Selina had a softball game that evening and I’d told her I would be there, but I knew I needed this information from Matt. The more he talked, the worse the feeling I had about the fate of Lizzie Johnston.

“Go ahead,” I told him.

”Okay,” he looked at the ground again, and then at the sky. “I did steal some ammonia from the co-op store in Olivesburg. You know where that is? It’s way out in the northern part of the county, way the fuck out there. This was back in April.” He paused, took a deep breath, looked at me, and said in careful voice, “I want my cooperation to count if you’re gonna have me charged with the theft.”

“I’ll think about it. Keep going.”

He said that Bob had paid him the five hundred dollars as promised, and had then told him that he could now start running. This was when he had met Lizzie.

About three weeks before I came calling, Bob had told Matt that his first job as a runner was coming up in a week or two. It would pay fifteen hundred dollars. He was to go to an address in West Virginia that Bob would give him, deliver a supply of anhydrous ammonia to a man whom he was only to know as E, and leave.

That was it. Lizzie would drive him. Matt thought that was the easiest thing in the world to do for fifteen hundred bucks. He told me that he didn’t know where this supply of the ammonia came from, but suspected another grabber had probably stolen it.

“You drove in a car with anhydrous ammonia to West Virginia?” I yelled at him. “Do you have any idea how dangerous that is? If that propane tank would’ve leaked, you and Lizzie would’ve gone into instant respiratory distress, not to mention the possible explosion!”

“Hey, for fifteen hundred bucks, I’d a’ walked there naked with a hypodermic needle stickin’ outta my ass! I’m not in your league, detective. People like me don’t see money like that much, if ever.” He sounded sour, defiant, and sad all at the same time.

I just sat there and shook my head. Matt kept talking. He and Lizzie had made the drive in Lizzie’s old maroon Buick Regal to some hick town in West Virginia. Lizzie would just refer to it as “Murder Mountain,” which he’d known obviously wasn’t the town’s real name. Matt hadn’t paid too much attention to the directions or the address because Lizzie had done the driving.

I asked him what he and Lizzie had talked about, and if she’d given away any other details about the business. Matt answered me, “No, but she did tell me she was also getting fifteen hundred bucks for the trip, and reminded me that we weren’t supposed to discuss anything with each other.”

He thought quietly for a moment.

“She was nervous the whole time,” he finally went on, “which I thought was strange. Bob told me that she’s one of the main runners and has done this a lot. She kept saying that when we get there I was to say absolutely nothing; just hand E the bag and get the hell out of there. She actually had me a little nervous, so I asked her how bad can this “E” dude be, ya know? She said she’ll tell me one thing but I ain’t never to tell anybody she tole me. She said, ‘He’s a cop.’ And I’m like, ‘Sweet-jesus-fucking-mama! Turn this fuckin’ car around!’ I thought she was trying to set me up! But then she said he wasn’t a cop tryin’ to bust us; he was dirty. Then she got scared and says she wasn’t talkin’ about it anymore.”

He described going up one of the big mountains on a dirt road that was lined with trailers. About half of a mile from the top, they’d stopped at a light blue trailer with junked cars in the yard. Matt hadn’t known what he was supposed to do, so he got out of the car like Lizzie did, and they just stood there.

“After we’d been waiting there a couple of minutes.” he went on, “A big dude came out of the trailer. And I mean a big dude! He never said a word. He just walked over to us and stood in front of Lizzie with a weird smile on his face. Lizzie looked, like, terrified, especially when that E took a strand of her hair and started smelling it, but she kept her nerve. The girl had heart. She just handed E the keys to the car and he walked around behind it and opened the trunk. Y’see, there was a hidden compartment underneath the trunk for carrying the ammonia. E knew just what to do and hauled it out. Then he handed Lizzie a plain white envelope from out of his back pocket, y’know, and started walking back towards the trailer.”

Matt then took a deep breath and said, “And then, y’know, E stopped and turned around and looked at me and said, ‘Ya done good boy, be seein’ ya soon.’ And then he looked over at Lizzie and said, ‘I’ll miss that pretty face of yers, girlie,’ and then he walked into house.”

Matt leaned forward and started talking faster. “Lizzie started shaking, yelling at me to get into the car. So I got into the car, y’know? Then Lizzie peeled out, going down the dirt road about 60 miles an hour. I kept asking her what was wrong, and she kept saying, ‘Did ya hear him? Didja hear him! I’m dead!’

“I didn’t understand what she was talking about, but halfway to Ohio she started insisting that we were being followed, y’know? I tell ya, by this time I was too scared to turn around and look, and by the time we got back and Lizzie’d dropped me off here, I tell ya, I ran in and locked all the doors, y’know?”

I waited, but it seemed as if he was finished, so I asked, “Then what happened?”

“Nothing. That’s it. That was the last time I saw her; exactly ten days ago.”

I just sat there for a few minutes, soaking it all in and thinking about how it was such a far-fetched story, but, damn it, for whatever reason, I believed him. Matt seemed scared to death, constantly looking around us as if we were being watched.

“Well, maybe there’s some more, I think,” Matt blurted out, interrupting my thoughts.

“Well, go on then and tell me everything.”

“No, I mean I think there’s more girls that are gone. I can’t prove it, though,” he said quietly.

“Matt,” I said, keeping my voice low and urgent, “you better tell me what you know, and now. I haven’t heard of any other girls missing.”

“You probably wouldn’t. These girls live by themselves and keep to themselves. They usually don’t talk to their families much, so who’s gonna report ’em? Anyway, the reason I said that is I’ve heard Bob on the phone, y’know? I don’t know who he was talking to, but he said, ‘I got me another runner spot; the big boys fired another one.’ And when he said fired, I don’t think he meant they got put on unemployment.”