Sticks and Stones Read online

  Ethan shrugged, shaking his head. “That’s a question your pa tackled with many years after that night at that shotgun shack.”

  Leah took another drink of coffee, considering everything she just heard. “Okay, so let’s say for argument’s sake Harry Stork wasn’t the Stickman and the real Stickman’s still out there. Why did he wait fifteen years to start killin’ again?”

  “I can’t answer that, either. All I can say is the MO and signature were perfect. Dead-on,” Ethan said. “No pun intended, by any means.”

  “Maybe Harry Stork told someone how he did it before he died?” Leah offered.

  “Maybe. Or maybe Harry Stork wasn’t the Stickman. Leah, the simplest answer is usually the right one. It’s why folk like things simple. Why complicate it? Harry Stork wasn’t the Stickman. Your pa shot the wrong guy.”

  “I can’t accept that.” She felt tears sting the back of her eyes. “I can’t accept that what Jacqueline Powers called ‘the Holy Grail of his career’ might be a . . . a mistake. This is my pa’s legacy you’re running down. I can’t accept it.” She shook her head, trying not to cry. “I can’t, Ethan. I just can’t.”

  “Well, until we capture whoever murdered that woman last night, you’re goin’ to have to consider the possibility. But for God’s sake, don’t let this case eat your life away like your pa did.”

  She wiped her eyes. “You keep puttin’ down my pa and I’m goin’ to quit.”

  Ethan raised a palm. “For Christ’s sake, Leah, I’m not puttin’ Joe down. He was one of the best men I’ve ever worked with. He just let things get to him the way I’ve seen them get to you. You’ve got to be able to go home and take off the badge.”

  “The letter was addressed to me, goddamnit,” Leah said. “I should’ve been called.”

  “I know. And now I wish we had.”

  “I hope you do, because in my opinion, some of that poor dead woman’s blood is on your hands for making stupid decisions.”

  “Again, I ask you to watch how you respect me.”

  Leah hesitated and took a deep breath. “You know, I’d like to call you a horse’s ass right now.”

  “Well, I appreciate you not doing that,” Ethan said. “Fighting ain’t goin’ to get us nowhere. Anyway, there’s somethin’ else I wanna tell you. I assume Chris told you about the final letter fifteen years ago?”

  “The one with Harry Stork’s initials on it?”

  He nodded. “The letters always pointed to victims. Dead ones. But there was no victim in that shack, Leah. Just Stork. And I have a theory ’bout that.”

  “What’s your theory?”

  “That the tenth victim was Harry Stork.”

  A laugh escaped Leah’s lips before she could stop it. It sounded nervous. “You mean it was all a game? He knew he would be shot?”

  “Or someone did, and set him up. Someone convinced him the police were goin’ to kill him whether he surrendered or not.”

  “So he committed suicide by cop?”

  “Pretty much, yeah. Your pa was already after him. Stork knew that. Maybe he was the Stickman and he’d had enough of being a slave to his emotions. Maybe he just wanted the madness to stop and figured death was the only way out. Maybe he just got tired of looking over his shoulder, hoping Joe Fowler wouldn’t be there, ready to take him down. If that’s the case, he became his own victim.”

  “Okay,” Leah said, watching the fan on the ceiling slowly turn. “I can buy most of this. But it still doesn’t explain who’s doing the killin’ now. Besides, Chris told me Mobile figured that last note was written by someone else.”

  Ethan turned up his palms with another shrug.

  “Knowing that Harry Stork got his wish when my pa shot him down really does nothin’ to progress the case. What drew my pa to Stork in the first place?”

  “Lots of things,” Ethan replied, tapping the foot-high stack of folders on his desk. “Two eyewitnesses reported seeing his company truck at the scene of the ninth victim. We found tire marks in the mud at two other scenes that turned out to be potential matches for that same vehicle. Before that, someone who knew Harry’s twin brother, Tommy, reported seeing him at a scene. The fact that he saw Tommy in profile and couldn’t remember seeing the scar on his face made us figure they might have been describing Harry. He later pulled Harry out from a photo lineup.”

  “Harry Stork has a twin brother? Identical twin?”

  Ethan nodded. “Except Tommy has a scar on his face and is missing two of his fingers. That’s why I mentioned the witness reported only seeing him in side profile. He wouldn’t have seen the scar. You’ll see it all in the reports. That whole family looks the same, even the old man. There’s more evidence supporting Harry being the killer. Here’s a big one: Victim number four all the way up to the last, every single person killed worked in hospitals. Harry had a waste removal company that did jobs for four of those six places.” He tapped that big stack of files again and repeated, “You’ll find everything in the reports.”

  “Those are all the case files?”

  “Pretty much everything you’ll want is here. Pictures of evidence, witness reports, background checks, medical records, pictures of the crime scenes, notes your daddy made over that year and a half, everything. You name it, it’s here.”

  “That’s a lot of paperwork.”

  Ethan nodded again. “I pulled it all for you last night. All the physical evidence is down in Mobile, but there’s copies of everything they had on microfiche that we didn’t. You should be fine with just this.”

  “ ‘Just this,’ hey? I’ll be lucky to get through all that by Christmas.”

  “I agree, it’s a lot of work.”

  Leah looked back out the window behind her. The mockingbird in the fig tree was gone, and now the tree just stood all alone, bending slightly in the wind. At least the air wasn’t still anymore. Christ, looking at the leaves blowing along the sidewalk, it looked downright windy.

  A thought struck Leah. “I was only eighteen during the original Stickman murders, but Pa used to come home and talk about nothin’ else. Do you remember a guy who came forward claiming to be the Stickman? I don’t think he was ever taken seriously.”

  “Yeah,” Ethan said.

  “What was that guy’s name? It was something like . . .”

  “Thomas Kennedy Bradshaw,” Ethan said, flatly. The name had obviously crossed his mind lately for him to pull it from his memory banks so easily. “And he didn’t just come forward once, he tried to convince us of his guilt three separate times. The last one was just after we searched Stork’s house and your pa put out a statewide search for him. About a week after that, Stork’s truck—camper and all—was found in the bottom of Cornflower Lake. We still have no idea why it was there or who put it there. We’re assuming it was Harry.”

  “Weird. Why was Bradshaw not taken seriously?”

  “Simple. We asked him to show us the murder weapon. We knew what we were looking for; if he had it, we’d have believed him.”

  “But he didn’t?”

  Ethan shrugged. “Said he did. Said he’d bring it in with him and then we wouldn’t see him again until the next time he decided to go wacko. There were other discrepancies, too. We did a handwriting analysis on him, comparing his writing to the letters coming in.”

  “Not a match?”

  “Not even to a blind man. And he hadn’t even truly done his homework by reading the papers. Simple details about the case that were public knowledge he couldn’t answer. We told the papers we found the actual gun during the raid on Stork’s house, but when Bradshaw came in that last time he still told us not to worry, he’d come back with the murder weapon. Of course he didn’t, and that was the last we saw of him.”

  “So, it wasn’t a hard leap to decide that—”

  Ethan nodded, cutting her off. “Deciding that he was nuts?” he asked. “No, not at all. I think he finally did go to the joint eventually, for armed robbery or somethin’, but it had nothin
’ to do with the Stickman. If I remember, they put him away for six years, probably did four if he behaved himself. I’m sure it’s in the reports, but just for clarity reasons, ask Chris to get you new information.”

  “I am capable of doing paperwork,” Leah said.

  He slowly shook his head. “This is goin’ to be a big case, Leah. You are starting out so far behind the eight ball. You have a year and a half of killin’s and investigation and evidence and all sorts of things you need to concentrate on. Use Chris all you can. The man’s good, at his desk. He’s not as good as you are in the field.”

  “Thanks. I just had a thought. What if Bradshaw actually was the Stickman, and had some disorder that made him confused?”

  “Anything’s possible, I guess,” Ethan said. “Anyway, you’ll find some information about him in the files, but there are lots of files and they all date back to 1974. Make sure you get Chris to pull something recent before you go confronting Bradshaw.”

  “Well, since I had no suspect when I walked in here, I think Thomas Kennedy Bradshaw just rose to the top of my list.”

  “I don’t think he’ll stay there long. He’s been out of the bucket for years, unless he went back. Why start up killin’ again, now? Besides, I’m willing to bet you still find him nuts. That boy was nuttier than Christmas cake.” Ethan turned his chair with another annoying squeak.

  “You really need to fix that if you want me to keep coming in here.”

  “Right now, I’m on the fence ’bout that.”

  Leah let a deep breath go. “All right, so just so I’m straight on this, you don’t think the Stickman slaughtering nine, well, ten, now—maybe—you don’t think that’s nuts?”

  “Different kind of nuts than Bradshaw. The Stickman knew what he was doing. His crime scenes were always carefully set up. Rarely did he make a mistake and leave any viable evidence behind. He was what those FBI guys call ‘organized.’ Probably the two biggest leads we had in the case for the longest time came from rounds that had become lodged in two victim’s skulls and Norm was able to retrieve them.”

  “Norm, the ME?” she asked. “He was the medical examiner even back then? How old is that man?”

  “I dunno, I think we’re having a contest. Who can just work his entire life and die on the job first. Some days, I believe he’s gonna win.”

  “So what kind of nuts is Bradshaw?” Leah asked.

  “I doubt the man could operate a Slurpee machine without assistance.”

  Leah laughed. “Well, if what you’re saying’s all true, and this is the work of the actual Stickman, there’s been two injustices done,” Leah said.

  “You think? And what might those be?”

  “A woman died last night whose killer might very well have been captured if you’d called me in to help, and Harry Stork might possibly have been wrongly accused, hunted, and shot for a crime he didn’t really commit.”

  Ethan paused at those words. “With that last one, always remember that your pa made decisions based on evidence and his protection. We had a lot of evidence against Stork, and when it came down to that fateful night, your pa had absolutely no way of knowing Stork hadn’t put any bullets in his gun.

  “And even Stork yelling for Joe not to shoot, telling him he was a patsy being set up—it didn’t matter, Stork still didn’t drop that weapon. Your pa thought his life was in danger. He did what the book says to do. And the fact is, he wasn’t trying for a kill shot, at least that’s what he told me and I have no reason to believe otherwise. He was trying for Stork’s arm—the one holding the gun.”

  She shook her head. “This unloaded gun thing doesn’t sit well with me at all. Why would Stork even bother carryin’ a gun with no bullets? It makes no sense. And if it’s unloaded anyway, why not just drop it?”

  “Your pa gnawed on that very question a lot throughout the years following Harry Stork’s death. Said he’d never felt closure on the case, figured he’d missed something. Something big and maybe obvious, I don’t know.”

  “Maybe Stork wasn’t aware the magazine was empty.”

  “You’ve felt the weight difference between a loaded nine millimeter and an empty one. Pretty easy to tell.”

  Leah clacked her tongue. “So, we’re right back to square one,” she said. “If not Stork, then who? From what I’ve heard, I tend to agree with you about Bradshaw. Of course, I haven’t met him yet, that could change. Like you said, even with the penitentiary sentence, it leaves a whole lotta years unaccounted for. So either an old killer has suddenly come back to once again take up his long-forgotten hobby, or a new killer has started up out of nowhere. And from what I know about profiling, one of the first things you want to establish is the event that caused the behavior to start. Nobody just gets up one day and thinks, Gee, I think I’ll buy a gun and take up a new hobby. I like to travel. And another thing: Did the police ever establish motive with Harry Stork?”

  Ethan took a deep breath. “We managed to assemble enough evidence to satisfy a judge into issuing a warrant. We tossed his house and found the murder weapon.”

  “Do you remember the evidence that got you the warrant?” Leah asked. “Just give me the high points.” She had her notebook in her lap and was taking a lot of notes.

  “Well, let’s see. Harry’s business handled medical waste management and he had a handful, I don’t know—maybe a half-dozen, major contracts with hospitals around Alabama. Now, don’t quote me on this, but I believe every victim from number four onward worked in hospitals or in the medical field somewhere.”

  A tingle ran up Leah’s neck. The evidence against Stork was growing. She wanted to see how big of a pile it would make. “And Harry Stork did work for all those different places?” she asked.

  “No,” Ethan said, bringing his palms down on his desk. “There were two hospitals we weren’t able to link him to. The others he had contracts with and did work for them on a fairly regular basis.”

  “Okay, I’m startin’ to see how you got the warrant.”

  “Well, what really nailed that for us were the statements we got from those two independent eyewitnesses. They claimed to have seen Stork’s work vehicle parked along the edge of Tucker Mountain Pass way down south. The time correlated with the guesstimate made by the medical examiner as to when the body was dumped. The location where the eyewitnesses claimed to have seen Stork’s truck was right beside a path leading into the woods we’d already determined the suspect had carried the body down.”

  Leah took this all in. “That is a lot of evidence, for sure. Enough that you’ve managed to pretty much convince me that this’ll all work out fine. Harry Stork had to be the Stickman. This new murder is someone else.”

  “Just wait,” Ethan continued, “there’s more. Like Stork going sub rosa immediately after we tossed his house and found the murder weapon. Forensics determined it to be the one used to kill all nine victims.”

  “He just disappeared?” Leah let out a slight chuckle. “Isn’t that practically an admission of guilt?”

  Ethan’s eyebrows went up.

  Leah thought all this over some more. “So, I s’pose my job is to prove Harry Stork was the original Stickman and to figure out how our new guy got inside information and why.”

  Ethan nodded. “Might be a fine approach to it. But, word of advice.” Ethan began carefully selecting his words. “Try not to be too influenced by your not wanting any tarnish to fall upon your pa’s legacy. We all know solving the original Stickman case was his biggest success. Christ, you made sure everybody knew that during your interview with the Examiner.”

  “Yeah,” Leah said quietly, scanning the floor at her feet. “That’s goin’ to be the tricky part. It’s hard not to be biased.”

  “Well, if it helps, I reckon we’ll find out this is a different Stickman. Fifteen years is just too long, unless this guy spent it locked away somewhere doing time for another crime and only just now got out.”

  “Not a bad theory,” Leah said.


  Ethan let out a big breath, his fingers tapping on top of his desk. Leah could tell he was trying to decide whether or not to tell her something. How much more could there be?

  “What?” she asked.

  “I dunno. It’s just something your pa told me a couple of days after Stork went down. He told me he didn’t feel right ’bout the way the case wound up. Too many loose ends were left untied.”

  “Like why Stork said he was set up?”

  “Yeah, there’s that, and . . .”

  “And . . . ?”

  “And your pa never did find the primary crime scene where the victims were kept and, as far as the medical examiner was concerned, were killed. Your pa always thought the key to breaking the whole thing wide open was to find that primary scene. He kept calling it—”

  “The slaughterhouse,” she finished, cutting Ethan off.

  Ethan sat back. “Now, how’d you know what I was goin’ to say?”

  “Remember, Ethan, I lived through that case, too. For a year and a half it consumed my pa’s life. I couldn’t help but absorb some of it, just by pure osmosis.”

  They both sat, silently thinking for a moment.

  “You know,” Ethan said, “if I were you, I’d check all the nearby federal penitentiaries and correctional institutions. Just ask who’s been recently released.”

  Leah wrote this on her pad.

  “ ’Course, there is yet another possibility.”

  “What’s that?” she asked

  “We’re seeing the work of someone taught to kill by Harry Stork before Stork died. Someone he’d confided in.”

  “Another interestin’ idea. How do I cover that?”

  Ethan shrugged. “Ask around at these same institutions. Ask if they have any talkers who like to collect information. There’s usually one or two inmates with a knack for gettin’ other criminals to cough up details of their crimes. ‘Talkers’ like these then squirrel that information away somewhere until the time comes when it might be valuable.”

  “Thanks. That’s good advice. Only, I doubt any of ’em will talk to me.”