Sticks and Stones Page 6
Ethan shrugged again. “You’ve got nothin’ to lose. You’re gettin’ better at interrogatin’.” Leah’s station only recently added an interview room, and she still hadn’t done any sort of real interrogations. “Just try your best,” Ethan added.
“My best isn’t so good.” Her confidence in the matter was a mite shaky.
Ethan went on. “Just try to get names. Then check them out, thoroughly. I still reckon your best bet, though, is to find which inmates were recently released, say, in the past six months or so. I figure the killer would need time to adjust to freedom before startin’ to kill again.”
“Yeah,” Leah said. “I like that. It’s not a bad theory.”
“We run this shop on ‘not bad theories,’ ” Ethan said.
Leah laughed a little, surprised her anger had faded so quick. “I told Jacqueline at the Examiner I’d issue a statement before the day’s end.”
“What the hell will you say? We’re as befuddled as everyone?”
“No, Powers read me the riot act. Said folks will grow hysterical if I didn’t say something soon. She said even if I have to lie, I gotta make everyone at least believe we’re on top of things and that they’re all safe.”
“She’s a smart one,” Ethan said. “I’d advise listenin’ to her.”
“I know, I just hate making stuff up. Seems so . . . dishonest.”
“Well,” Ethan said, “maybe now you’ll find out the truth. Get Chris to run some checks on Thomas Kennedy Bradshaw. Everything he can find: background, medical, employment, anything applicable. Also, you’ll likely find a fair bit on the man in here.” Again, he placed his hand on top of the imposing stack of reports. “His damn name makes him even sound like a serial killer.”
Leah finished her coffee. It had gotten cold. Outside, the mockingbird returned, along with a friend. Now there were two.
“Findin’ out the truth,” Leah said with a sigh, allowing the idea to settle in.
Ethan nodded. “At the end of the day, truth’s all we’re ever really looking for. Funny how elusive it can be, yet it shouldn’t. Just remember, usually the simplest answer’s probably the right one.”
Leah bit her lower lip. “Know what?” she asked. “I reckon, I might not be ready yet to know the truth.”
CHAPTER 5
Me and Dewey rode our bikes to the police station to tell my mother that Dewey might have killed someone with his kite. I figured it was something she should know about, not just because she was my mother, but also because she was a police officer.
The ride along Cottonwood Lane and down Hunter Road was nice, although I could tell Dewey felt uneasy. Alvin was a really pretty town. I doubted many other towns were as pretty as Alvin, but then I hadn’t been to many other towns except Satsuma, and all Satsuma did was remind me of middle school, which I didn’t want to go back to after summer break. It wasn’t that I hated school, it was just that it took up so much of my time. Especially the bus ride there and back. Me and Dewey could always find things to do that would be better than that bus ride. Heck, hunting squirrels with slingshots was better than that bus ride.
Hunter Road was such a steep hill we just coasted down it. Pretty little houses nestled in the woods on either side. Most had old-fashioned porches and window shutters. Near on all of them had gardens full of flowers. We rode past Mr. Harrison’s Five-and-Dime and rang our bells to say hello, but I don’t think he heard us, on account of he never came out and waved. He was probably with a customer.
At the bottom of the hill, we took a left on Main Street and rode on to the police station, passing by the library first. The Alvin Library looked very similar to the Alvin Courthouse at the other end of Main Street—both had big white marble steps that led up to brick buildings—only there were no lion sculptures at the library, just a statue of someone sitting and reading a book. Apparently, it was someone famous, but I couldn’t remember who.
Most all the shops down Main Street had their doors open, probably trying to take advantage of the wind that had finally picked up. That same wind may have caused someone to die from Dewey’s killer kite.
I wasn’t too worried about coming clean to my mother about Dewey’s kite. After all, it was his idea and his fault the string broke. What kind of a moron goes to all that work to design something like that and then forgets to figure out what weight of string he’ll need?
Dewey, that’s what kind.
We arrived at the police station and set our bikes up against the shrubs that grew along the outside window. A butterfly had been fluttering about them and flew away when our bikes came down on the branches. Those shrubs always seemed to attract lots of butterflies.
When we walked inside, I could tell my mother was stressed about something. Now I was a little worried. Generally she didn’t like being bothered when something else was on her mind. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all.
“What are you two doin’ here?” she asked. There was no “happy to see you” in her voice and I really got the feeling we maybe should’ve waited.
“Um, we came to tell you somethin’ that might be important,” I said.
Dewey just looked at his shoes.
“Dewey,” my mother said. “Why in God’s name are you dressed for a Siberian winter?” She had finally looked up from the huge stack of folders she had in front of her.
“It’s all the clothes his ma washed,” I said.
My mother rolled her eyes. “Aren’t you sweatin’ buckets?”
Dewey said nothing. Just stood there, sweating buckets.
“Well, what’s so important?”
“Well ... I think Dewey should tell you.”
But Dewey just stood there, studying the floor.
“Come on, boys,” my mother said, “I haven’t got all day.”
“We built a kite,” Dewey mumbled, so quiet I barely heard him.
“You did what now?” Leah asked.
He finally looked up and into my mother’s eyes. “We built a kite.”
I didn’t like the “we” he kept throwing into his sentences. So I clarified. “Dewey made us construct a kite,” I said. I noticed I was talking a mite fast.
“I didn’t make us do anythin’,” Dewey said.
“Will one of you tell me why you’re here about a kite?”
“Well,” Dewey said, “this wasn’t no regular kite.”
“We built it out of two-by-fours we found in the garage. And used some of the industrial-strength plastic he had lying around.”
“Okay. So you made a kite too heavy to fly. That was silly.” My mother went back to the papers in the top folder on that ridiculously high stack. There must’ve been fifty of them. Well, at least a dozen. “Still doesn’t explain to me why you’re here,” she added, without looking up.
“The kite wasn’t too heavy to fly,” Dewey said, pulling out his notebook. “I made sure I did all the calculations necessary. And we caught a good wind.”
“Your kite flew?” my mother asked absently. “I’m impressed.”
Dewey scratched the back of his head. “Tell her,” I said.
“No, you tell her,” Dewey said back.
Finally my mother looked up at us again. “Will one of you please tell me? I’m quite busy, as you may or may not have noticed.”
“Dewey’s kite took off like a twister. It went way above the oaks in our backyard. It went so fast it ran out of string real quick.”
“And . . . ?” my mother asked.
“And the string broke from the roller,” Dewey said, again examining the tiles on the floor. “Or it was maybe never attached. I dunno.”
There was a hesitation while my mother processed this information and I knew we were in for it.
“What did I tell you about following stupid, Abe?” she asked. “And I’m sure Dewey didn’t make you do nothin’.”
I kicked at the floor. Behind me, the watercooler burbled.
“It went really good,” Dewey said, apparently trying to im
press her before she got mad.
“I don’t care how it went. How much did it weigh?”
“Five or six pounds,” Dewey said, almost sounding delighted he finally had a question he could answer.
“And the string snapped when?”
“Right at the end of the roller,” Dewey said. “Three hundred feet out.”
“First,” my mother said, “get that smile off your faces, both of you. Second, that puts our danger zone into Blackberry Trail, which is nicely populated with Douglas fir and pines, so you might’ve gotten lucky. I’m goin’ to send Chris out to see if he can find it.” She turned to Officer Chris. “Can you do that for me? I need to keep working on finding an answer to someone else’s mistake.”
I wondered who she was talking about, but from her tone of voice I knew it was best not to ask. It was almost like she was mad at Officer Chris for something. I think we picked a bad day to have a kite catastrophe.
“What about the phones?”
She shook her head. “Just let them ring. We’re on a phone break.”
“All right,” Officer Chris said slowly. “I guess I’ll go kite huntin’.” He spread his hands wide. The tips of his fingers were almost pink.
“And please, take the boys with you,” my mother said.
He picked up his hat from his desk. “May I ask why?”
“Two reasons. First, they saw what direction it took off in, and second, and most importantly, they deserve to spend the rest of their afternoon bored. At least you’re paid to look up in trees. They’re not.”
“Understood,” Officer Chris said.
CHAPTER 6
Once Chris left with the boys, Leah decided not to think about Dewey’s damn kite any longer. She had enough on her plate with this new Stickman murder. There were so many questions going through her head, it felt like it might explode. And now she had to come up with some sort of official statement about the murder scene she didn’t even get called in on last night.
She needed some advice and, probably, some emotional backup, too. So, after pouring herself a fresh cup of coffee, she called the man she’d been dating the past six months, Detective Dan Truitt, from the Birmingham Police Station.
“Well, hello, sexy,” Dan said, answering her call. Obviously he had caller ID on his phone, something Leah didn’t have the luxury of yet.
“I’m afraid this isn’t a social call, Dan,” Leah said.
“What’s up?”
She told him about last night’s murder.
“Yeah, it wasn’t in this morning’s paper, but I just heard about it on the news. I thought your pa killed the Stickman?”
Leah took a sip of coffee. She set her mug on her desk. “So did I. Apparently, he doesn’t die very easily.”
“You thinkin’ copycat?”
“Possibly, although there’s evidence against it.”
“What kind of evidence?”
Leah hesitated a moment. Should she be letting out the one thing her pa had managed to hold back from the press? At this moment she questioned how much she trusted Dan Truitt. She decided to go with her gut. That usually helped her out. It’s what Chief Montgomery said made her a good cop.
“There was stuff held back from the press on the original killin’s. It’s part of this new guy’s MO and signature, too.”
“I thought the holdout got released? I barely remember that case. I was just a beat cop, two years on the squad.”
Leah watched the second hand tick off two on the big white clock. “No, there was more that was held back.”
“What was it?”
Here it goes. Go with your gut. You trust him. “Every time the Stickman murdered someone, my pa was given a letter with a drawing of a stickman and a time and place the body would show up. We’re pretty sure the victims are already dead when they’re dumped at the crime scene.”
“So you get an address? Or . . . ?”
“No, nothing that precise. More like an area. Usually, a frustratingly big area.”
“Wow, no wonder that was held back. And last night’s?”
“We got the letter. Only it came addressed to me, instead of my pa. Leah Fowler, though, not Teal.”
“That’s scary. Almost like it’s personal.”
“Yeah, well, with my pa, it became personal fast. I get the feeling that’s what this guy’s planning this time around, too. My pa was the face of the task force, though. Ultimately, he was the one who killed Harry Stork.”
“So Harry Stork wasn’t . . .” Dan hesitated mid-sentence to gather his thoughts. “You think the Stickman was someone else?”
Outside, the sun glimmered off the leaves of the sweetshrubs. The red flowers looked like little spotlights. “I don’t know. Why would he wait fifteen years without a single kill?”
“Maybe there were two Stickmen. Harry Stork and someone else. Maybe it took fifteen years for this guy to find a new partner.”
Leah took another sip from her mug. The coffee was still hot. “See?” she asked. “This is why I call you. You come up with things I never think of.” She hesitated again, but decided she had to say the rest: “You realize I told you about the letters we received in confidence, right? You can’t tell no one. Only a handful of people know.”
Now it was Dan’s turn to hesitate. “You don’t trust me? After six months?” Leah heard disappointment in his voice.
“No, I do, it’s just—ever since Billy died, I have a hard time trusting anything, not just people. I trust you more than I’ve trusted anyone since.”
“Don’t worry, your secret’s safe. You really can trust me. I thought you’d know that by now.”
I hope so, Leah thought. And that goes for my heart, too. Some things were just so easily broken.
“So what do you think?” Leah asked.
Dan, in his ever-overreaching patois, replied, “I don’t know. It stinks like a festering carbuncle.”
“And I have to give a statement to the press today. It’s goin’ to be mostly fabricated.”
Dan hesitated, then: “You do what you gotta do.”
“If I don’t make somethin’ up, I got nothin’ to put in it that everyone don’t already know. We’re worried people will panic.”
“Yeah, I understand. Don’t sweat it. We lie to the public all the time.” She could hear him smiling. “It’s part of our job. So, what’s your next step?”
“Ethan says I should contact the federal penitentiary and all the correctional institutions and find out who recently got out.”
“That’s not a bad idea,” Dan said. “Listen, I have some vacation time coming up. How about I come down and give you a hand on this for, say, four weeks or so?”
Leah’s heart rose. “Four weeks?” she asked. “It better hell not take us four weeks to figure this out.”
“The first time ’round didn’t it take your pa near on a year and a half?”
A spike turned in Leah’s chest. It had been almost that long. She didn’t have that kind of time. She couldn’t go through everything she’d watched her pa go through.
“You there?” Dan asked. “You don’t want me to come? Why do I keep hearing phones ringing?”
Leah took a breath. “Forget the phones. And Dan, I would love for you to come down. But . . . four weeks? Can you really get that kind of time away?”
He laughed. “They owe me nine. I never take holidays.”
“Can you actually get—I mean, won’t they miss you if you’re gone that long?”
“Nah. I’ve been pretty much on glide for the past three weeks already. I’ll have to check with my boss, but I think he’ll be happy I’m finally taking off some of that time. Besides, I can work while I’m down there. I do most of my work at night. In the wee hours.”
Leah knew this about him already. She also knew he did most of his work in those wee hours accompanied by a bottle of bourbon. “You’ve been doing nothin’ for three weeks?” Turning around, she sat on the edge of her desk, coffee mug in hand.
“I read about the Cahaba River Strangler,” Leah said. “There was an article about it in the Examiner.”
“Yeah, I’m sure there was. Most folk around here have gotten used to it now, but it’s so frustrating. We’ve had five victims actually get away from him, we’ve got a blood sample, a partial fingerprint we managed to lift from a victim’s chin, if you can believe it, but nothin’ ever seems to cut us a break. Our best chance came about three years in. I remember it because it was Christmas Eve. The victim screamed so much some guy came running to her rescue and beat the shit out of the Strangler with a tire iron. Smashed up his fingers, his arms, and his back before he managed to get away. We put out a bulletin asking the public if anyone knew anything, but other than a few crazy reports, we got nothin’.”
“This has been goin’ on for some time, hasn’t it? Musta been five or six years ago I read that article.”
“Over ten years,” Dan agreed. “He actually went dark for four of them—well, at least we didn’t find any victims matching his MO. I’m sure we got some missing persons during that time, so who knows? There’s been some disappearances around the area we reckon are probably Strangler victims we just never found.”
“Sounds horrible. Lots of victims?”
“Sixteen that we know about. Another almost half dozen we’re pretty confident went his way.”
“The Cahaba’s a long river to search.” Leah took a drink of coffee and set the mug down beside her.
“Longest river in Alabama. Goes all the way from the Piedmont and the Cumberland Plateau until it finally empties into the Alabama. So far, though, the Strangler has been centering ’round the Birmingham area, or at least we think so. Haven’t heard about any bodies turning up near other parts of the river. None that match the Strangler’s MO, anyway.”
Leah let out a big sigh. “Him ‘going dark,’ as you say, sounds a bit like the fish that just hit my plate. Only mine appears to have gone dark for fifteen years. It just—it seems too impossible. At least to me. With you on the Strangler case and all, you sure you can get away?”