Sticks and Stones Read online

  Mr. Harrison thought this over. “While that does sound like fun,” he said, “I’m not sure how you’d go about doin’ it. A real robbery would involve a thief, likely wieldin’ a gun. Or maybe a baseball bat.”

  “Do you sell bats?” I heaved my duffel bag full of investigating stuff up onto his counter.

  “Nope, no bats, sorry. What you got in the bag?”

  “This is all that I need to use in solvin’ the crime once we fake it.”

  “I have a thought,” Mr. Harrison said. “We don’t sell baseball bats, but we do sell peashooters. They’re right back here. Let’s say your perpetrator robbed my store by threatening me with poison darts.”

  “Okay.”

  Mr. Harrison gave me a peashooter and a package of peas. I frowned. “I ain’t got no money with me.”

  “That’s fine. Today’s robbery is on me!”

  “Thank you. That’s mighty kind.”

  “Think nothin’ of it. Now, you be the robber and let’s say you fire off one pea to show me that they really are poison darts to make me scared enough to give you everything you want.”

  “Okay.” I did as he said and fired a dart right past him. The pea hit the wall behind him so hard it stuck right into it. “Sorry,” I said, looking down at my bag.

  “Think nothin’ of it. Okay, so I say, ‘What do you want? Please don’t kill me, just take whatever you need’.” I was finding out Mr. Harrison was a good actor. He also talked pretty fast, something I never noticed before today.

  “Okay,” I said, “so I’d probably steal some gummies . . . oh . . . And I s’pose all the money in the register, of course.”

  “Of course,” Mr. Harrison said. And he gave me a bag of gummies.

  “What?” I asked. “Can I . . . um, keep these?”

  “Of course! I don’t want to die!”

  I smiled. He was really good at this.

  “Now, I’m just going to pretend you took all my money,” he said. “You don’t get to keep that.” Hitting a button on the till, he opened it with a ding. Then he counted the cash inside and said, “Looks like you got away with ’bout eighty-six dollars and twenty-seven cents.”

  “Actually,” I said, “I should open the register, not you. That way my fingerprints will be on it.”

  “Good idea.” He closed it back up and I came around to his side of the counter and he showed me what button to press.

  “Now, you better get runnin’ on account of I just pressed the silent alarm.”

  “You have a silent alarm?”

  “No, not really. But I do have a video camera.” He pointed up to the corner of the ceiling above his head.

  “Geez, I should have worn a hood and a mask,” I said.

  “That’s okay, we’ll just pretend you did. Do you want the video? It’s time for me to change it anyway.”

  “Sure!” This was great.

  He stood up on a stool that was on the floor beside him and ejected the tape from the camera. It was VHS so I could watch it at home. He took a new video cassette from a drawer beneath the register and slid it into the camera and started it back up.

  “All right, now that the robbery’s done,” I said, “it’s time for me to start collectin’ evidence.”

  I pulled the Polaroid camera from my bag first. I had to use it and some drawings to document exactly how I found the scene. I took pictures of my muddy footprints coming into the store—which I also apologized to Mr. Harrison for. Then I snapped shots of the video surveillance camera, the cash register button—where my fingerprint was actually visible; I must’ve really pressed it hard—the pea stuck in the wall, and finally, I took a picture of the big cylinder of gummies where the ones I “stole” came from.

  I used a set of tweezers to dislodge the pea from the wall so I could analyze the “poison dart.” The tweezers came from my forensics kit. When they made it, they pretty much thought of everything. I dropped the pea into an evidence bag, initialing it and dating it just like the book said to do before I placed it in my duffel bag.

  I read about the initialing and dating of evidence in the same chapter I learned about something called the “chain of custody.” Basically, anybody who handled the evidence had to always date and initial it. This kept the “chain of custody” intact. If it was ever broken, there was a chance someone might’ve corrupted the evidence and it wouldn’t be usable in court. I couldn’t believe I remembered all that.

  “Did I touch the glass counter at all?” I asked Mr. Harrison.

  “Yes, I think you did. Why?”

  “Because the fingerprint on the register is good, but any I may have left on the counter might be even better.” I used the blue flashlight to find the print. Sure enough, it showed up, plain as could be. I used the fingerprint kit to lift both prints. After initialing and dating those, they went into my bag, along with the VHS tape. I didn’t put the tape in an evidence bag. It was too big.

  “Well,” I said, “I think that’s it. Now I’ve gotta walk back home.”

  “You gonna do your ‘analysis’ tonight, then?”

  “No,” I said. “I have some readin’ I want to get done. ’Sides, I’ll probably wait till Monday when Dewey can come over and help me.”

  Mr. Harrison grinned. “I wish you the best of luck in solving this crime, young detective!”

  I turned right before leaving and waved. “Bye!”

  Mr. Harrison waved back.

  Once I was out of the store and on the sidewalk again, I started eating my “stolen” gummies. According to my watch, it was ten to six. I was goin’ to be a little late gettin’ home. I hoped my mother didn’t mind.

  I started back up the hill just as a burst of lightning lit up the sky overhead. Slowly, I started counting. “One Mississippi. Two—” And that’s as far as I got before thunder roared across the sky louder and angrier than any lion I’d ever heard. It was as though the sky had cracked open, releasing all the rain that fell down hard upon me like a million peas being blown from a million peashooters.

  Heaving my duffel bag over my shoulder, I tried to speed up my walk, but Hunter Road was steep and I still couldn’t go very fast. I could feel myself getting wetter by the minute.

  I thought again that Dewey really needed to invent a better rain slicker.

  Oh, and something for grumpy wet cats, too.

  * * *

  Jonathon drove past me just as I was coming down Cottonwood Lane toward my house. He honked and waved, so I waved back with a smile. I liked Jonathon. I reckoned he was good for Carry, not like that boyfriend she had a couple of years back. I got the feeling my ma was much happier with Jonathon than that other one, too. So far, at least, she hadn’t threatened to “blow his balls off” like she had with the other one.

  When I went inside, my mother and Dan were in the kitchen, where my mother was fixing supper. As I pulled off my boots and my slicker, I felt guilty about going through her files and worried that she had noticed. Then I worried that she’d notice I looked all guilty. I wound up with these thoughts circling in my head while I just stood there, dead in my tracks in the middle of the kitchen. It was like all of a sudden I had no idea what to do. Guilt and fear had taken me over.

  My mother was at the stove with a frying pan, and the whole kitchen smelled of onions. I guessed she was making hamburger steak.

  Dan was leaning with his back against the sink. He looked at me, frozen in place, holding my wet duffel bag.

  “What’re you doin’?” He laughed. “Why are you just standing there? And your hair is soaked. You look like a drowned possum.”

  “I ain’t doin’ nothin’ . . .” I said. “I’m just . . . I dunno. I’m . . . um . . . goin’ to my room to read.”

  “You’re sure readin’ a lot these days,” my mother said without turning around. “I’m guessing you like your birthday present?”

  “Yeah, it’s pretty cool. Haven’t really started usin’ it yet. I want to finish the book first so I know what we’re doin’.�
��

  “We’re?” Dan asked.

  “Yeah. Me and Dewey.”

  “Haven’t seen him ’round in a while,” my mother said.

  “Yeah. He was off visitin’ his grandma today, and tomorrow his ma says he can’t play on account of they’ll be busy with church and something else I can’t remember. ’Sides,” I said, “he doesn’t like the rain. Sort of like cats.”

  “What?” Dan asked.

  “Cats don’t like the rain,” I said again, wondering what part had him confused.

  My mother took the pan off the burner and turned toward me for the first time. Again, I started feeling conspicuous. I wasn’t sure why I hadn’t continued down the hall to my room yet, but my feet were refusing to follow my brain.

  “So,” my mother asked me, “how was your . . . whatever it was you were doin’ out there walkin’ around by yourself?”

  “My robbery?” I asked. “It went great!”

  “Good,” my mother said, using a knife to push the onions from the frying pan onto a plate. “Supper will be ready in ’bout fifteen minutes.”

  I finally got control of my feet and left the kitchen, continuing down the hall, heaving my duffel bag over my shoulder the whole way.

  As I entered my room I heard Dan from the kitchen ask my mother, “Did he . . . um . . . did he say ‘robbery’?”

  I just smiled and closed my bedroom door behind me.

  CHAPTER 21

  Monday found Leah at the station, waiting for Gary Carmichael’s call. She had left Dan asleep on the sofa after reading a note he’d left saying he hadn’t gone to sleep until 5 A.M. and not to wake him. She thought the rest of the note said “see you in the afternoon sometime,” but it was only a guess. The writing was obviously done in a drunken stupor, emphasized by the empty bottle of Jim Beam Kentucky straight bourbon Dan had left beside the note. Leah hid the bottle with all the others she’d collected each morning, stuffed in a black plastic garbage bag relegated to the kitchen closet where old coats and footwear were stored.

  Once again she vowed to come to some sort of decision about Dan’s obvious addiction problems soon.

  For now, though, she had to concentrate on work. She decided to continue reading through the files. She’d brought her yellow notepad from home. It was the only thing she had to worry about taking back and forth. Xeroxing everything else had been a good idea.

  “You’re not getting through those files very fast,” Chris said. He was being unnaturally quiet today, but Leah had no complaints about that.

  “I don’t want to miss anythin’,” she replied.

  “I understand.”

  She went down the stack of remaining folders, finding the point where she’d read up to. Placing the next folder in front of her, she began to read about victim number four: a forty-three-year-old woman named Maggie Ledbetter.

  Ledbetter worked at Providence Hospital down in Mobile, and Leah knew she had found the start of the pattern Ethan told her about. From here on in, all of the victims would be employed by the medical industry.

  Leah flipped back to the list her pa had made of all of Harry Stork’s major clients. Sure enough, Providence was not only on the list, it was one with an asterisk beside it.

  Ledbetter had been missing three days before police found her body dumped down along the edge of the Old Mill River, a deep river that splashed and dashed violently through a narrowly cut gorge all the way down the eastern side of Alvin until emptying into the Anikawa. Cypress flanking the length of the river blocked out the sun, rendering the river near on invisible. The clamorous sound of rushing water seemed to just spring from the blackness of the gorge’s bottom.

  Five days after finding Ledbetter’s body, Leah’s pa organized his task force, pulling in four cops and detectives from Mobile.

  Coincidentally (a word that made Leah cringe), the fifth victim, a man named Travis Moyer, also worked at Providence. His last known whereabouts had been at the Mobile Regional Airport. Security cameras recorded him coming off a flight from Atlanta, where he’d been visiting his mother. Four days later, police discovered his body staked into a field at Shearer’s Cotton Farm, a blanket of land that lay along Highway 17 on the outskirts of Alvin.

  Later, the medical examiner pulled a .38 Special slug from Moyer’s skull, which forensics inferred might have come from a Smith & Wesson Model 10.

  At the crime scene, tire marks were found off the side of the road, indicating a vehicle with a 117-inch wheelbase and fourteen-inch tires. Shoe prints, less distinct than the tires, were also discovered. Forensics’ best guess was that they belonged to a men’s size seven Nike Blazer basketball shoe. On both pieces of evidence, it was indicated that the time the impressions were made could not be discerned with any reliable certainty.

  However, an eyewitness driving past the cotton farm around the time the ME calculated the body had been dumped reported seeing a yellow car parked along that area of Highway 17. The witness believed the automobile to be an AMC Rambler. In regard to this, forensics noted that the Rambler’s wheelbase was only a hundred and six inches.

  This new murder grew the task force by three more, all detectives from Atlanta.

  Leah had just come to the end of that file when the phone rang. She looked up to the clock as Chris answered it. It was a quarter of ten.

  “For you,” Chris said to Leah after answering. “Gary Carmichael? DA from Talladega?”

  With a deep breath, Leah lifted her telephone receiver and pressed the HOLD button, taking the call.

  “Mr. Carmichael,” she said. “Thanks for getting back to me.”

  “I said I would. I don’t say things without following through on them.”

  “Well, that’s good.” She felt anticipation course through her. A lot was riding on this phone call.

  Carmichael got right down to business. “Now, I know how important what I’m about to say is to you. And I agree with what you said, this new Stickman can’t be allowed to continue killin’ folk. And if—and that’s a big if—this Stanley Bishop character or ‘Duck Fuck’ or whatever he’s called can help, then I reckon there should be some sort of deal cut.”

  Leah let out a relieved sigh. Now she braced herself. She didn’t expect him to be too generous. She waited to hear just how bad his offer would be.

  “I say we take your advice. Go in with an offer of one year’s grace on his sentence and an upgrade to his cell. If he takes that deal, we’ll call that our best case. I am, however, given the weight of the situation, prepared to offer a reprieve of two years if we have to, but I really don’t want to. His suggestion of three is out of the question.”

  Leah’s heart leaped into her throat, bouncing all the way back down. This news couldn’t be any better if it came on a golden ticket found in a Wonka bar.

  Carmichael continued. “I’m heading in to the correctional facility this afternoon to pitch the deal. I would like you there with me. I do not want Dan Truitt there, do I make myself clear?”

  “Yes, sir,” Leah said. “Very clear.” Dan will be so pissed.

  “And, for the record? I’m doing this in memory of your pa. He was a good man, and I don’t want to see his name tarnished by some bogus criminal re-creating crimes originally orchestrated by a mastermind only outsmarted by Joe Fowler.”

  “You think Harry Stork was a mastermind?” Leah asked.

  “I’m just goin’ on the few times I met your daddy. He was good at what he did. For him to be outsmarted by someone for so long, Stork had to be pretty smart, I reckon. If I was you, I wouldn’t worry about tarnishing your pa’s name. He shot his man. I’m convinced of that. But you know what? Even if it turns out Harry Stork wasn’t the Stickman, at least your pa shot the man he was after. Remember that. And it’s not like Stork was some innocent bystander. He was bran-dishin’ a gun. Your pa did what he had to. His life was on the line. Even if this winds up goin’ back to court and it’s decided Harry Stork wasn’t a serial killer, in my mind Joe Fowler still goes do
wn as a hero.”

  Until now, Leah hadn’t thought of the case being retried. The thought twisted inside her like a broken Slinky. What if the courts decided her pa was guilty after all? What would he get? Manslaughter? Now she had worse things goin’ on in her head than just hoping her pa didn’t turn out to have mistakenly shot the wrong man. She wasn’t sure she could handle it if things went that far.

  “How long do you think it will take to get here?” Carmichael asked.

  “To your office? Dependin’ on traffic, three, maybe four hours.”

  “Okay. Leave as soon as you can. Then we’ll head out to the correctional institute together. I reckon this ‘Duck’ has a better chance of takin’ our first offer if there’s a woman in the room.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Just a hunch. I work on hunches.”

  She hung up and Chris must’ve read her face. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “I just . . .” She picked the receiver back up. “I don’t want to make this call.”

  “Who are you calling?”

  “Dan.” She dialed her home number.

  Abe answered. “He’s still sleepin’,” he said. “Snoring away. Sounds like a train.”

  Leah told Abe to wake him up. Dan could always go back to sleep. She just hoped he wasn’t still drunk.

  “Gary Carmichael called,” she said, once Dan groggily came to the phone. Leah detected a slight slur in his speech.

  “And?”

  “He’s willin’ to take up to two years off Duck’s sentence along with giving him a nicer cell.”

  “Wow. He must’ve found a pretty nice hooker last night. Has he offered it yet?”

  “No. There’s something about that.”

  “What?” Dan said, still sounding a bit drunk. Leah was glad he’d be staying put.

  “He wants me to drive up there now and be with him when he makes the offer.”

  “Okay, I’ll pick you up in ten minutes. Call Gary. Tell him to expect us in three hours, tops.”

  “Um, yeah, about that.”