The Railroad (25 page)

“You’ve probably heard of him. He owns a big grocery store chain in this area. Bob Benoit?”

He stopped in mid-chew and put his hamburger down. “Benoit?”

“Yeah. I see you’ve heard of him.”

He looked at his wife and bit his lip. “Shit. I’m sorry I gave you a hard time, buddy. I’ve been watching Penny fall apart for weeks since her sister disappeared and I don’t want her to be hurt anymore.”

“You know Bob Benoit?”

“I met him a couple of times and I wish I hadn’t. He’s an asshole.”

“When did you meet him?” his wife prodded.

“Oh god. This is bad. I met him at your sister’s house. He’s friends with that asshole husband of hers. Carl had him over at least once a week from what I could see.”

“Oh no,” his wife whispered.

“They’re good friends or at least it seemed that way. They took me out into the woods behind the house. I didn’t know what they were going to do. I watched while they killed squirrels with BB guns. They thought it was real funny. I remember that Cassie’s husband ordered a couple of pizzas. He decided the bill was too high and he gave the delivery guy a hard time. Like people don’t know how much pizza costs, like it was a big surprise. When the pizza guy complained, the idiot pulls out a gun and points it at him. He and Benoit laughed for hours about that.”

Penny started wringing her hands. “What if this Benoit knows where…oh god, what if Carl…”

“If he does,” Samuel said, “I’ll fucking kill him.”

*

Anthony Greene walks through a darkened parking lot with his daughter Beatrice. The little girl holds his hand tightly, clearly afraid of the deserted parking lot. While Anthony tries to reassure her, even he feels a certain amount of nervousness. Though they are in a suburban industrial park, far away from any high crime areas, he knows he’ll feel a lot better once they’ve made it to the car.

Anthony carries some papers in a briefcase that he’s just taken from his office. While he’s concerned about being in a deserted place late at night, his need for the papers overcomes his fears. Beatrice looks furtively all around her.

A man detaches himself from the shadows surrounding a car not more than fifteen feet from them. Other human shaped shadows can be seen to the rear and to the sides. Anthony stiffens and pulls Beatrice behind him.

The first man walks up to them. He nods his head to point to a spot behind where they stand. “Keep going to your car.”

Beatrice begins to cry. “Who’s that Daddy?”

Anthony stares at the man. “No one, honey,” he answers, not taking his eyes from the man.

The man gestures with his thumb. “Your car.”

Anthony begins to walk. A man comes up behind Beatrice and firmly guides her forward. She watches as the man takes her father’s hand and quickly slices the tip of his index finger. She tries to run to him but the man holding her restrains her. She can see the man using her father’s hand like a writing implement, drawing some demented design on their front windshield.

With a sudden burst of strength, Beatrice pulls herself from the grip of the man holding her and runs to her father. She looks into his face and sees him wince from the pain of his wound.

“Daddy!” she screams.

Someone grabs her from behind. “Let’s go,” a voice hisses behind her. As she’s roughly turned away, she catches a glimpse of her father being pulled up and frog-marched away. Beside his face, on the windshield are numbers written in his blood: 4-5-1.

*

We agreed to meet again in a few days. Samuel, or Sam as he became once he decided he trusted me, said he would talk to his friends and find out more about his brother-in-law, and Benoit as well. If he found enough, we’d go back to the District Attorney and present our case. Penny and I had talked her husband out of the “walking tall” kind of justice he seemed to crave, making him agree to do nothing spectacular.

As if he sensed something, Benoit called me that night, around two. I’d just started drifting off to sleep when the phone rang. I was conditioned enough to my new life to wake up fully and take a good guess at who was calling me so late.

“Pedophiles for peace,” I said brightly.

“You’re a fucking asshole. Do you know that?”

I could almost smell the booze through the phone. “Whoa! You are shit-faced Bob. I thought the new Bob Benoit wasn’t going to get drunk and embarrass himself. At least that‘s what you told me the other night.”

He gratified me by responding to his full name, something that wouldn’t be lost on whatever telco type would be listening. “I don’t give a shit what I told you. You stole my wife and kid. I don’t have to give a crap what you think.”

“We’ve been all through that. People run away from you when you molest little children. No one likes a pedophile, Bob. Why do you think they make them report their presence when they move into a new town?”

“Hey, Mike! I’m glad to see you have friends visiting. Was that one of your fag friends from Manhattan?”

“You know you’re boring. Don’t you think I already know that you’ve got people watching me? You’ve played this hand already too many times. Do you think I’m impressed by the fact that you can hire someone else to follow me? It doesn’t take much intelligence.”

He blew up as I’d hoped. “I can do more than just follow you! How long did it take you to clean up your house after you had your visit? I can send people in there anytime I want. You’ll never know when it’ll happen asshole!”

“You don’t have the balls to break into my house.”

“Who do you think did...”

I guess he wasn’t as stupid as I’d hoped, even drunk, because he stopped. It must have occurred to him what he’d said. I waited until the silence dragged out. I could imagine him trying to think of something to say that would save face. “You’re not even good at being a bully, Bob. You’re too erratic.”

He hung up immediately. Not bad for a night’s work.

*

I called Ted Denello the next day. “Have you checked your, whatever the name is?”

“It’s a dial number recorder Mr. Dobbs. And yes I have. A very interesting conversation. We also checked your records and it seems that Mr. Benoit has called you at least seventeen times at two in the morning or later.”

“I just want to point out that we can assume he’ll say it was all friendly conversation.”

“I don’t think anyone will believe that.”

“I just wanted to let you know.”

“I’ve dealt with this kind of person before. Anyway, I’ve talked to my superior and he told me that if we get one more harassing call then we can contact the police and charge Mr. Benoit.”

“I’m not sure I should tell you this, but I’m not sure the local police will want to help you.”

“I’m used to dealing with state police. We usually have to since these kinds of harassment cases usually involve several jurisdictions. Mr. Benoit doesn’t live in the same county as you.”

“Okay. I’m just warning you.”

“I appreciate that. There’s something else I wanted to tell you. It makes the situation a little more confusing.”

“What?”

“Well you’ve mentioned a lot of silent calls. Are these calls short in duration, perhaps five minutes, and you’re the one who always hangs up?”

 “Uh, I’d say so.”

“That’s the odd thing. We have a number of calls of that nature, but none of them come from Benoit’s phone.”

“So where do they come from?”

“A number of different places. We have some from prepaid cell phones that can’t be traced. There are a couple from land lines, but they’ve been disconnected or the people who own the number claim they never called you. We think that some of these numbers might have been hijacked. Stolen, by a phone hacker I mean.”

“Does that make you think that it wasn’t Benoit? He could have gotten some of his friends to call.”

“That’s true. I can’t disprove that, but the cell phone calls seem to come from a wide geographic area. We can trace those through the cell towers that were used. They come from all over New England with a couple from New York State.”

I sat there, trying to figure it out. “It still could have been Benoit. I’m sure he knows some people who know how to do dishonest things like hacking phone numbers.”

“Very possible. But we can only investigate the calls that are clearly harassing. That should be enough if we can get enough evidence.”

“So what should I do?”

“We’re going to keep monitoring your calls. When we have enough evidence, we can make a formal charge against him.

*

That night the news reported another
Chapter and Verse
killing. This time it was a man who had disappeared. At first I was surprised, but I immediately realized I shouldn’t be; men could be victims as well.

This time Anthony Greene was missing. His car was found in an industrial park. Police reported that the crime scene indicated that he’d been abducted as he walked to his car with his four year old daughter, Beatrice. As expected, the numbers
4-5-1
were written in Greene’s blood on the windshield.

It seems that Greene had taken his daughter from the house of his ex-wife Kaitlin. Greene had accused Kaitlin’s boyfriend James Belding of sodomizing Beatrice. Greene’s ex-wife had denied the accusations despite the fact that Belding had immediately fled to Delaware.

As much as I tried to avoid the thought, I wondered if it would ever come to pass that I’d be hearing Eileen’s name coming out of the mouth of one of these oily reporters. It was hard for me to conceive of what I’d do then.

Almost as if on cue, the phone rang. I expected silence at the other end and I wasn’t disappointed. This time I didn’t feel motivated to bait Benoit to try to get a reaction from him. All I did was to sigh and hang up.

*

I woke up at 11:45 the next morning to the sound of the phone. It was Moskowitz. “You’re famous. Turn on channel nine and watch the whole News at Noon. Call me back at my office when you’ve watched it.”

I waddled out to the living room with nothing but a robe on. The news began with the standard murders and news of the invasion of Afghanistan. Then I saw a familiar face; Samuel looked taller on television, something I knew would please him. They showed him being led away by police. The reporter told us that Sam had confronted his wife’s brother-in-law with a gun, accusing him of engineering the disappearance of his wife’s sister, Cassie, believed to be a victim of the
Chapter and Verse Killers
.

They cut to Samuel who was screaming back over his shoulder as he was being led away. “This man killed my sister-in-law with his friend Bob Benoit. These idiots are taking me to jail and they’re going to get away with it. What about justice for Cassie!”

The rest of what he said was lost to the microphone. I sat there for a moment, considering the possible consequences. Samuel was too much of an asshole to have kept my name out of things so I could assume that Benoit would hear about it. That would just get him angrier.

There wasn’t much I could do about it. I called Moskowitz, figuring that if I didn’t admit to anything he’d never be sure what happened. “I can smell you in this, Mike,” was the first thing he said to me.

“Why?”

“It just fits. How would this guy know that Bob Benoit has anything to do with a runaway wife or anything else? Why would he connect him to this
Chapter and Verse
shit? Did you go meet this guy?”

“I actually wanted to talk to his wife. He came along.”

“God Mike, you’re a shithead! Do you really think you’re going to solve this case?”

“I have good reason to believe Benoit is involved.”

“Don’t tell me! I don’t want to know. That’s for the benefit of anyone who’s listening. All you’re going to do is get yourself into trouble.”

“If you thought that you knew that someone was killing people what would you do?”

“I’d go to the cops.”

“Fuck you, Moskowitz. You know my relationship with the cops.”

“You start a firestorm and you think you’re going to be able to control it? That it’s going to be constructive?”

“As far as I’m concerned, if I’m right about Benoit, the worst that will happen is that someone will be forced to watch him. I don’t care about his feelings.”

“Then you should care about your life. Has it occurred to you that the fact that you keep making weak accusations against him eats away at your credibility? You’ve just become a pain in the ass to the cops...”

“Who you told me I should go see.”

“-and they won’t listen to you again. And then they won’t protect you.”

“So I should go on letting people be killed.”

He grunted. “You don’t know who’s doing the killing, asshole.”

“Don’t call me that. I’m not taking the chance.”

“You know you just need to get out of here. All you’re doing is stirring things up.”

“Yeah. Fuck you.” I hung up.

*

It was four in the morning when Benoit called. I had tried to stay up for it, knowing that he would. Samuel had been all over the news for the entire day and evening. Benoit, being Benoit, had no choice but to call.