Terry Odell - Mapleton 02 - Deadly Bones (37 page)

Irv sat a little straighter, a hint of pride flashing across his features. “Well, I thought a couple of those addresses rang a bell, so I checked the list.”

“Why didn’t you say something?”

Irv slumped. “I meant to. But things got busy, what with the fire and all, and I guess it slipped my mind.” He swiped the back of his hand across his nose. “I know I forget things once in a while. That’s another reason I’m resigning. Job’s too important to have someone who loses it sittin’ in that chair. Gotta be willing to face reality.”

“We’ll discuss that later,” Gordon said. “Right now, I need you to tell me everything you did, everything you know. Do you know what happened to Angie Mead?”

“No, Sir, and that’s the God’s-honest truth. I’m truly sorry about that, and if I knew anything, I’d be sure to tell you.”

“Are you positive it was the mayor you were talking to?” Colfax asked. “Not someone using his name?”

Irv scraped his fingernails over his stubble. “I never called him at his office or anything. I used the number he gave me, which almost always said to leave a message. One of those mechanical voices, though, not his. But since he’s the one who gave me the number, I had no reason to doubt it was his phone.”

“You said
almost
always,” Gordon said. “You mean he did talk to you on occasion?”

Irv cast a sheepish glance Gordon’s way. “The other night. When you came in. Marty had told me his project was all hush-hush, that I shouldn’t let you know about it. And since he was asking about what was going on with the fire—the stuff the Incident Commander was organizing, where resources were being assigned—it didn’t seem that what I told you was a lie. Except for not knowing who called. I kind of stretched things when I said I didn’t remember. But there
were
a lot of calls.”

“How did the mayor make his initial arrangement with you?” Colfax asked. “Did he call you?”

“Nope. I met him at a fund raiser picnic supper some time back. I started working in his campaign office, answering phones, making calls.”

Gordon told himself he couldn’t hold Irv’s political affiliations against him—although accepting the man’s resignation looked a lot easier now.

Irv continued. “He came in from time to time, chewed the fat. He cared, you know. Always stopped, asked how I was, about my kids, grandkids. When my sister was in the hospital, he sent her flowers.”

Like he’d said he was going to do for Rose. A twinge of guilt suffused Gordon. Irv had been working at the station for several years, and Gordon didn’t even know he had a sister, much less that she’d been in the hospital. Made it a little easier to see how Irv had gone along with the mayor. When Gordon accepted the job as Chief of Police, he’d stepped across the line between
one of the guys
and
the boss
—perhaps too far. He could pay more attention to his staff without trying to be best friends.

“Did he offer you money?” Colfax asked.

“No, nothing like that. We talked about my job, and he told me what I said before. Gave me a number to call to check in. I didn’t use it much at first—nothing much goes on in Mapleton, but when they found the bones, I thought he might want to know. And then, I started calling a couple of times a shift, because he asked me to.”

“Did he ever mention whether you were the only one… helping… him? Or if there were others?” Colfax said.

“Never said so, but I wouldn’t be surprised. I’m only here three nights a week.”

“Be right back.” Gordon made a quick trip to Dispatch and asked Connie to pull all her dispatchers’ logs.

“Mine, too, Chief?” Connie said.

Crap. He’d known Connie since he’d been a green rookie on the force, couldn’t believe she’d ever do anything shady, much less fall for the mayor’s sales pitch. If he was going to be looking at call log transcripts, it had to be across the board. “A formality, but yes, get yours—for the past ten days—to me. At your convenience.”

He hoped that was professional enough, but at the same time would let Connie know he trusted her completely.

He retreated to his office, where Irv, his water bottle empty, seemed less green.

“You know,” Colfax said. “I’ll bet the mayor has minions in more places than the P.D. Reporters feeding him information. Contacts everywhere. Who knows what else he wants to be on top of?”

Gordon sat behind his desk and moved his legal tablet in front of him. “If he met Irv at campaign headquarters, maybe he’s picked up some others there as well. Irv, can you give us some names of people you know from the mayor’s campaign—anyone the mayor might have spent a little extra time with? Any feelings that someone’s helping him beyond what they do in the office?”

As soon as Gordon uttered the word
feelings
, his thoughts flashed to Angie. Were they wasting their time asking Irv about the mayor’s compulsion to get insider information? Wasn’t that all in a day’s work for a politician? It was a big jump from collecting facts to abduction. Gordon wrote the names Irv provided without paying attention. Until one. His pen slipped from his fingers. “Would you repeat that?”

“Crazy Freddy. Fred Easterbrook. He shows up once a week—Tuesdays, I think—and stuffs envelopes.”

Another coincidence? Gordon had had enough of them.

“You noticed the mayor talking to him?” Colfax asked.

“Sure. But then, when the mayor came in, he talked to everyone. He might have spent a little extra time with Fred once or twice. Nothing he didn’t do with everyone else. Never thought much of it.”

“Fred ever talk to you?” Gordon asked.

“No more than to say hello. Mostly Fred talks to himself. Crazy ramblings about his wife and kid. And ranting about his fuddy-duddy neighbor, Mrs. Blanchard. We tune him out.”

Gordon recalled what Angie had said. That Fred seemed to have erased his wife from his life. But not his daughter. So why would he be talking about both of them? “Would you remember anything he said?”

Irv seemed to be searching the ceiling for answers. “Mostly how he was going to be seeing them soon, stuff like that. A grand reunion. How they’d finally be together, where they belonged. I figured he was going to go to wherever they were—but then again, maybe they were coming here. You know, for a visit. Doubt they’d be getting back together, at least from what I’ve heard. Something about a scandal, but I don’t know any details. I’ve only lived in Mapleton a few years.”

Gordon’s radar pinged. Not a red alert, but at least he’d be doing
something
. “Thanks, Irv. You’ve been a big help. Why don’t you go home, get some sleep, and we can talk tomorrow.” To Colfax, he said, “If you don’t mind checking into the other names, I’m going to pay Fred Easterbrook a visit.”

Gordon opened the back door for Irv, then went to his desk for his phone and keys.

A rap on the door announced Titch’s entry.

“Sorry to disturb you, Chief, but I wasn’t sure if you were monitoring the radio.”

Gordon swerved, turning up the volume. “Not for the last few minutes. What do you have?” He braced himself, dreading bad news.

“Solomon called in. They’ve searched the entire area, but no signs of Miss Mead.”

Emotions swirled within him, but Gordon didn’t know whether he was relieved or dismayed. “Thank you. Tell Dispatch to release the officers to resume their normal duties.”

“Will do.”

Titch looked as if he were about to speak, but Gordon didn’t need any awkward sympathy. “Tell Connie I’m on my way to Fred Easterbrook’s place,” he said, forestalling any platitudes. However, instead of looking sympathetic, Titch seemed confused.

“Sir? I thought you weren’t listening to the radio.”

“I wasn’t. Why?”

“You said you were going to Craz—to Mr. Easterbrook’s. I thought you must have heard the call.”

Gordon reached for the radio as if he could rewind it like a DVR player. “What call was that?”

“Mrs. Blanchard’s on the rampage again. Said Mr. Easterbrook was shooting, or blowing things up, and she thought she heard someone moaning. Female, she said.”

“When did the call come in?”

“Maybe five minutes ago, tops.”

Gordon didn’t think his heart could bounce around any more than it had today. Then again, Roberta Blanchard reacted to anything, and a car backfiring or a wolf howling would send her dialing Mapleton’s emergency number.

But, given the circumstances, he wasn’t taking any chances. His brain whirled. Was this nothing but another distraction?

“Colfax, I want the bone site covered like ants on a picnic. I also need coverage at Easterbrook’s place. How many of your units are still in the vicinity of Mapleton?”

Colfax held up a finger and reached for his cell phone. While he was talking, Gordon went to Dispatch. “Connie, what’s the status at Easterbrook’s place? You think it’s for real this time?”

“She was making less sense than usual,” Connie said. “Although that isn’t saying a lot. I don’t think I’ve ever heard her utter a calm, rational sentence.”

“What did you tell her?”

“To go into her bedroom and stay away from the windows. I dispatched a unit to her place. McDermott should be there in twenty.”

“Code?”

“One,” Connie said, already reaching for the radio. “You want two or three?”

“Two—if something
is
going on, I don’t want to make it obvious we’re coming. How are we on manpower? I need the bone site covered with at least three units. Colfax is checking on county resources.”

“You think Fred has Angie?” Connie asked.

“I don’t know what I’m thinking anymore. Someone seems to be manipulating our personnel so when they need to be somewhere, they’re somewhere else.” He told her about Irv’s collusion with the mayor, and his retirement announcement.

Connie sighed. “Frankly, I’m relieved that we won’t have to fire Irv. But the mayor? I may think the man’s politics are counterproductive to running the city, but I find it hard to believe he’s crossed the line into arson. Or vandalism. Or grave robbing.”

“Right now, he’s a person of interest, nothing more. I know you can’t coordinate routing the force via cell phone, but try to be as vague as possible over the radio. At this point, who knows how many people are listening in on scanners and reporting to the mayor.”

“Understood.” Connie flipped open the duty roster notebook. “On it.”

Gordon left her to do her job, itching to get to Fred’s. But when he got to the office, Colfax stopped him.

“Hang on a sec,” the detective said. “You’re not going to believe this. We may have found that key puzzle piece.” Colfax turned from the white board where he’d added not only the mayor’s name, but a new, unfamiliar one with two bold lines connecting them.

“At this point, I’ll believe anything. Who’s Sunny Flores and how’s she connected to the mayor—assuming she’s a she.”

“She’s a she, all right, and is—was—the mayor’s wife.”

“What are you talking about? His first wife died a little over a year ago, and her name was Jenny—Jennifer. I don’t know her maiden name offhand, but I’m sure you can look it up.”

“Immaterial for now,” Colfax said. “But she was wife number two, not number one. Martin Alexander and Sunny Flores were married in 1974 in a quickie ceremony in one of those Vegas chapels, said chapel no longer in business, of course.”

Gordon stood in front of the white board. “How long did it last?”

“That’s the strange part. We can’t find any record of a divorce.”

“So the mayor married Jenny when he was still married to Sunny? I can see him trying to cover up bigamy, but—” Gordon ground out the possibilities. His eyes widened.

“But the light bulb shineth.” Colfax tapped the board. “Sunny Flores was sixteen when she married Martin Alexander. He was barely out of high school. She was someone his family wouldn’t approve of, although based on what we could find, his family wouldn’t have approved of him at that time in his life, either. I called in a few favors—and we’re talking single malt again, Hepler—and found young Marty was picked up several times for drugs, both doing and distributing. Not the kind of thing someone trying to get into law school would want people to know about. It appears that Sunny was a poor influence on him. Living on the street, partying, hooking. Took some doing to keep that all off the radar, but Marty’s parents had clout.”

“So if Martin Alexander killed her all those years ago, and it’s her bones—at least one set of them is hers—buried in the Kretzers’ woods, how does this connect to Fred Easterbrook?”

Given this new information, Gordon thought Roberta Blanchard’s call was more likely to be one of her usual alarmist reactions to nothing. But if that were the case, then he was back to ground zero in finding Angie. It wouldn’t matter if they got a DNA sample from the bones. DNA profiling hadn’t come into the picture until 1984. Without a previous sample from Sunny Flores, it would be fruitless.

Even knowing the answer, he had to ask. “Do we have DNA, or anything else to match? Fred Easterbrook has a virtual shrine to the memory of his daughter. Maybe Sunny’s parents did the same. If they saved her hairbrush, or toothbrush—” Gordon cut himself off before he sounded too much like a blithering idiot.

“If we’re looking at the Easterbrook connection, you said his wife and daughter left him.” Colfax backed away from the board, still studying it.

“You think they’re the other two,” Gordon said.

“We haven’t been able to trace her. If she’s buried there, that might explain it. Ages match.”

Gordon wrapped his head around that one. Crazy Freddy was Crazy Freddy, a few steps over the line from eccentric. But a killer who might have Angie? He reached for his keys. “I’m on my way to his place.”

“Let me call for backup,” Colfax said. “No offense, but we have a highly-trained Emergency Response Team. If things hit the fan, they’re who you want covering your six.”

Gordon paused at the door. “How fast can you get them here? Because if Fred’s killed before, then he’s more likely to do it again. And if he has Angie—”

“You know how the ERTs operate. They don’t rush in blindly. I’m going to say an hour, and that’s being optimistic.”