Murder on the Lunatic Fringe (Jubilant Falls Series Book 4) (18 page)

“I know that newspapering is a dying business, and I know that small town papers probably won’t be around fifty years from now. We need somebody who can lead this newspaper, somebody who can take it into the future. The perception here is that you came back with a pile of cash from your last divorce with no place to put it and a lot of time on your hands.”

Earlene was silent and I saw I’d just poked the bear—a tall over-dressed blonde bear.

“I’m sorry, Earlene. You can fire me or whatever you want to do. I’ll be gone by five o’clock if that’s what you want,” I opened my side desk drawer and began to sweep the pictures of Duncan and Isabella, as well as Suzanne’s family Christmas picture from my desktop into my purse.

“Let’s quit the dramatics, shall we? I don’t know what you’ve heard about me over the years, but let me tell you one thing—I am the owner of this newspaper and as such, I will run it the way I see best,” she began. “And as such, you will look into Mr. Spotts’ complaints about his neighbors.”

“You’re kidding me. What’s next, barking dog complaints?”

“If that’s what I want covered, then yes, you’ll do stories on barking dog complaints!” Earlene said sharply. She sighed. “After you left, the meeting got really out of control—Mr. Spotts just wouldn’t quit jawing about his neighbors and their loud parties, but it is clearly something that he feels is an issue and if he sees it as a problem, we need to do what we can do to fix it. I’m also angry that you didn’t called me to tell me about the murder I see splashed all over my front page.”

“I don’t have your cell phone number!” I shot back. “Nobody in this building does!”

She held up her hands. “You will have it by the end of the day. And another thing, I want you to know that my father is the only reason I won’t let you go through with quitting.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I stopped cleaning out my desk.

“He’s put a lot of stock in you over the years, for whatever reason. As far as I’m concerned, what I’ve seen here today is someone who’d rather go her own way rather than take any kind of new direction.”

This from somebody who has a four-foot tall equestrian self-portrait behind her desk? Someone whose editorial sense is limited to how soon she can spend her dividend check and who lives on alimony? The words almost slipped from my mouth, but I bit my tongue.

“Earlene, I’m the one who made the first call to the sheriff about that homicide,” I said instead.

“You were?” Earlene’s eyes, framed in Bambi-grade false eyelashes, widened.

“Yes. Katya Bolodenka came to my door at two this morning, scared out of her wits. We took her back to her farm and called Sheriff Roarke.”

“I wasn’t aware of that.”

“That homicide call went out over the radio,” I continued. “Everyone with a scanner in three counties heard it. The television remote trucks were practically blocking the road out there at the scene. If we hadn’t covered something that big, in our own backyard, we would have looked like…”

“Fools,” she finished for me. “I had a long talk with Daddy before I came up here and while he said our first obligation is to our readers and you’re the best at doing that, I have not been impressed with your attitude.”

I set my family photographs back up on the corner of my desk, but didn’t speak.

“That said, my father doesn’t want you fired,” she repeated. “He’s still the majority shareholder in the newspaper, so until such time as that changes, I have to listen to him. But what I want is somebody to get out there to Mr. Spotts’ house as soon as possible and find out what the hell—” In Earlene’s fake Texas accent, the word sounded like ‘hail’—“is going on out there. And if I think the story is worth doing, the story is worth doing. You hear me?”

This time, it was my turn to sigh. What the hell else was I going to do? Go home to the farm and make Duncan and Isabella crazy?

“OK,” I said. “I’ll stay.”

“Oh, and I’ve had two messages from some guy who says his name is Agent Peppin,” she said.

I swallowed hard. “What did he want?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t called him back yet, but when I do, I’m going to tell him that I stand behind the story and you, despite the kind of crap I’ve had to deal with here today.”

She left, slamming the door behind her. I caught a glimpse of Marcus, Elizabeth and Dennis, all wide-eyed at what they’d overheard.

I laid my head on the stack of papers on my desk and tried to get my bearings. No matter what she said, the barking dog thing was going to wait until tomorrow. I needed sleep and food, but more important, I still needed to know what happened at the Lunatic Fringe Farm.

I needed to get back out there and soon.

Knowing Terrell—or Jerome, as I wanted to keep calling him—had a fondness for getting involved with the wrong woman couldn’t have been easy for Dr. Reed or Dr. Simms. I didn’t believe it was the sole reason he was killed.

Katya Bolodenka’s refusal to follow WITSEC’s rules got him killed.

By entering her tapestry in the state fair, and by consenting to a story for the
Journal-Gazette
, she’d broken the rules to keeping her safe—and those around her alive.

We had just done what we would normally do, what any other small town paper would have done: celebrated the accomplishments of our residents. Did putting the story up on our website—as part of that newsgathering process—lead to her husband and his thugs locating her? Probably. But what was I supposed to do? Am I supposed to start asking story subjects whether or not they’ve got some deep dark secret that puts their lives at risk before I run every story?
Pardon me, you don’t happen to be in any kind of protective federal custody, do you? I need to know before I do this story.
That’s just plain nuts. She had the chance to say no to the story when Elizabeth first called her.

I sat up and reached over to the window behind my desk, pushing it open. Between the focus group, Earlene’s rant and my conversation with Terrell’s/Jerome’s parents, I needed a cigarette.

Finding a pack in my center desk drawer, I lit one and drew the smoke into my lungs, exhaling out the open window. My thoughts continued to churn.

Katya hadn’t committed a crime—she’d only witnessed one, the murder of the homeless man in the basement of her Brighton Beach home. How fair was it that she be forced, for her own safety, into a situation where she couldn’t contact those most dear to her? How would I react in that situation?

It might be easier for the gangsters themselves to step away from the life they’ve lived and assume another identity. I’d read books on Italian Mafioso who turned states’ evidence and disappeared into witness protection. They had to know their new identities and lives were the true reason they were still alive and one word, one hint at who they’d been could get them killed.

But what about their family members, the wives and families, who, like Katya, never committed a crime? Whose only sin was to fall in love with a crook? It had to be harder for them to have their lives upended, their identities wiped away and any connection to home severed.

Clearly, Katya was trying to maintain ties with those she loved as often as she possibly could, with disastrous results. She repeatedly contacted her sister Svetlana against her handlers’ orders—and then Svetlana, her husband and her baby daughter, all ended up dead at the hands of Kolya Dyakanov’s thugs.

Then she’d relocated again, this time from Virginia and with animals acquired from another protected witness, here to Jubilant Falls.

How long had she been here, anyway? I didn’t know. Duncan and I rarely drove down that road—we would have seen the animals if we had.

Regardless of how long Katya Bolodenka had been there, she’d had to find something to fill her time. Figuring she was safe, figuring no one would look for her in rural southwestern Ohio, she wants to get comfortable, settle in. She couldn’t do any of those things that most folks would do—take a cooking class, learn to sew, join a book club—without having to repeat her intricate new life story, a life story she’d been given to keep her safe from harm, the result of a crime she did not commit.

So, she turned to her art. Where she learned weaving and dyeing was anyone’s guess. But, she’d literally worked with what she’s got—the fleece from the animals in her barn, and the life story she’d been forced to tell.

So she’d woven a tapestry, one she wanted to be recognized for. And, like anyone else, she wanted to reach out into the new community she found herself living in. So what could hurt if the state fair likes what she does? Who was going to come looking for her in Jubilant Falls?

She didn’t count on me.

I wondered if she’d even told Jerome she’d entered the tapestry. Did she have to drive up to Columbus to enter it or could she have mailed it in? She knew how to drive—she’d come down to the newsroom to see me about the slain animals while I was in a meeting with Earlene. Graham and Elizabeth spoke to her and Graham took her over to the police department to see Gary. Somehow, though, I couldn’t see her driving the hour to Columbus without protection—and Jerome would have likely put the kibosh on her entering anything. If she mailed it in, that marshal at her side would never have known about it. So, when the tapestry won, it was no surprise that the photo didn’t have her in it. Our story had seriously blown her cover.

Over the years, I’d seen the damage that secrets could do—every one of the big stories I’d covered had hinged on someone unearthing a truth that someone else never wanted uncovered. I’d even seen the damage secrets that do within my own family. But those secrets were different, based in shame or whatever the current definition of sin was.

Katya’s secrets weren’t based on her shame or her sin. Her secrets were truth, the life she’d lived and the connections she’d treasured. So when she did the right thing by reporting a murder, she’d been thrown into a world not of her own making, a fiction she was forced to uphold for her own life expectancy—at least until she testified against her husband.

She was given a new name, a new history, taken from all she had known and all she had loved, and then stuck in what anyone else in her Brooklyn neighborhood would undoubtedly have thought was deep in the sticks.

Lonely and alone, she’d turned to the man who was sworn to protect her. How did that happen? I’m not sure I really wanted to know, but the things people did for love, or sometimes, just sex, boggled the mind. Did she even know Jerome’s true identity? I doubted it. His identity needed to be protected as much as hers.

I drew the precious nicotine into my lungs again and exhaled out the back window, tossing the cigarette into the alley below.

I still couldn’t figure out the argument Dr. Simms and Dr. Reed overheard. Who was Katya arguing with? Was it one of Kolya’s thugs? Someone else? I needed to get over to the farm to find out.

***

The Lunatic Fringe farm was bathed in summer’s late afternoon sun as I steered my Taurus up the gravel drive. It was hard to believe that fifteen hours ago, this driveway had been clogged with law enforcement officers and the road with television remote trucks.

The sound of the wind rippling through the corn was all I heard as I pulled up to the old farmhouse and parked my Taurus.

It was one of those perfect summer afternoons that made me glad I lived in Plummer County. Down the road, cows grazed in the fields and birds, balancing on the electrical wires, sang out boldly. A bee flew past my head, buzzing loudly as I swatted at it.

I stepped up onto the porch and knocked, then turned around to survey the land around it. I was close enough to smell the fresh paint on the porch and front wall near the door, where the man I knew as Jerome Johnson had laid in a pool of his own blood, just a few hours ago.

No answer. Maybe she’s in the barn, I thought to myself.

Back down the front steps, I stepped backward into the driveway to get a look at the upstairs windows. The front windows were open, the curtains fluttering in the summer breeze.

“Hey! Katya! It’s me, Addison!” I cupped my hands around my mouth and yelled. “You here?”

Silence.

I followed the gravel drive as it curled behind the house, walking toward the little cottage and the barn.

Thwack!
I spun around as the old screen door slapped against the back door frame.

“Katya?” I called.

Still no one. The wind caught the old wooden screen door again and again, and it flapped like a broken wooden wing.

Why would that door be open? I wondered. Could something have happened? Had Luka or any of Kolya Dyakanov’s other creeps returned? What if they’d killed her? I pulled the door open and stepped into the house.

In the kitchen, breakfast dishes sat in the sink—a coffee mug, half full, and the remnants of a bowl of cereal, a spoon.

“Katya? Katya? Are you here?” I called.

From the kitchen, I walked through the dining room and into the living room where we’d first met.

Katya’s tapestry hung in two slashed pieces on the wall and the pictures of the murdered Svetlana and her daughter in front of St. Basil’s Cathedral lay on the floor next to the cheap, particleboard coffee table. The chairs were overturned and someone had ripped the cushions open on the cheap, brown couch, as if searching for something.

I knelt and picked up one of the photos. The glass was broken and a shard had pierced Svetlana’s face. If Katya was gone, if she’d disappeared back into witness protection, she wouldn’t have left these behind.

I ran upstairs. I remembered the master bedroom was at the front of the house, when the Larsens lived there. I threw open the door to see two enormous looms and the spinning wheel Katya had used for the story we’d done. One loom had a thick and heavy project on it, maybe a rug. The other was serving as a catch all for finished tapestries, weaving tools and partially wound skeins of yarn. Fleeces sat in black plastic trash bags, yarn overflowed from baskets and books littered the room, but it looked more like creativity flowing than a raid.

“Katya?” I called again. “Katya, are you here?”

In the next bedroom, the mattress had been pulled from the frame and bedclothes covered the floor. The dresser drawers were open and clothing hung over the sides. The closet door was open and more clothing lay strewn across the floor.