by Alex Kava
Apartment 410 was at the end of the hallway. A hand-braided welcome mat lay outside the scratched and battered door. The mat was clean, spotless.
Christine knocked and held her breath to avoid the hallway’s suffocating odors. Several locks clicked inside, then the door opened just a crack. A pair of hooded and wrinkled blue eyes peered at her through thick glasses.
“Mrs. Krichek?” she asked as politely as possible while holding her breath.
“Are you that reporter?”
“Yes. Yes, I am. My name is Christine Hamilton.”
The door opened, and she waited for the woman to back out of the way with her walker.
“Any relation to Ned Hamilton, owns the Quick Mart on the corner?”
“No, I don’t think so. Hamilton is my ex-husband’s name, and he isn’t from around here.”
“I see.” The woman shuffled away.
Once inside, Christine was accosted by three large yellow and gray cats rubbing against her legs.
“I just fixed a pot of hot chocolate. Would you like some?”
She almost said yes, then saw the steaming pot on the coffee table where another large cat helped itself to several licks off the top.
“No, thank you.” She hoped her voice disguised her disgust.
Other than the cats, the apartment smelled much cleaner than the hallway. The ammonia of a hidden litter box was obvious but bearable. Colorful afghans and quilts were draped over the couch and a rocker. Green plants hung above the windows, and crocheted doilies dotted an antique buffet and secretary’s desk. Both tops were filled with black-and-white photos of servicemen, a young couple in front of an old Buick and three colored photos of a little girl at various stages of her life.
“Sit,” the old woman instructed, backing herself into the rocker. “Oh, the pain in this shoulder,” she said, rubbing the bony knob sticking up through her sweater. “Such pain I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
Her bones did look brittle. Knobby knees stuck out from under her plain cotton housedress. Her round face twisted into a permanent scowl. Her brilliant blue eyes were magnified and distorted by the thick wire-rimmed glasses. Her white hair was twisted neatly into a bun, clasped by beautiful turquoise hair combs.
“It’s hell getting old. If it wasn’t for my cats, I think I’d call it quits.”
Christine sat and watched her navy skirt fill with cat hair. Two of the cats still circled her legs while one jumped onto the back of the couch to take a closer look.
“Rummy, get down from there,” the woman scolded, waving a bony finger at the cat. He ignored her.
“It’s okay, Mrs. Krichek. I don’t mind,” she lied. “I’d like to get right to what you saw the morning Danny Alverez disappeared. You don’t mind, do you?”
“No. Not at all. I’m glad somebody’s finally interested.”
“The sheriff’s office has never come here to question you?”
“I called them twice. In fact, just this morning before I seen your article. They hemmed and hawed like they think I’m making it up or something. So, then I called you. I don’t care what anybody says, I seen what I seen.”
“And just what did you see, Mrs. Krichek?”
“I seen that boy park his bike and get in an old blue pickup.”
“Are you sure it was the Alverez boy?”
“Seen him dozens of times. He was a good little paperboy. Brought my newspaper all the way to my door and laid it on my mat. Not like the kid we have now. He steps off the elevator and tosses it down here. Sometimes it makes it. Sometimes it doesn’t. It’s not easy getting this walker through that doorway. I think your paper should make sure those kids do a better job.”
“I’ll let them know. Mrs. Krichek, tell me about the pickup. Could you see the driver?”
“No. It was still dark out. I stood right at that there window. Sun was barely coming up. He pulled into the parking lot so that the passenger’s side was all I could see. He must’ve said something to the boy, ’cause Danny leaned his bike against the fence, came around and got up into the pickup.”
“Danny got into the pickup? Are you sure the man didn’t grab him and pull him in?”
“No, no. It was all quite friendly—otherwise, I would have called the sheriff sooner. It wasn’t until I heard Danny was missing that I put two and two together and called.”
Christine couldn’t believe no one had checked out this woman’s story. Was she missing something? The woman was old, but her story seemed believable. She stood and went to the window the woman had pointed to. Below was a perfect view of the parking lot and the chain-link fence. Even someone with poor vision could make out the events Mrs. Krichek had described.
“What kind of pickup?”
“I know little about cars and trucks.” The woman hoisted herself back into the walker and shuffled her way over to join Christine. “It was old, royal blue with paint chipped and some rust. You know, on the bottom part. It had running boards. I remember ‘cause Danny stepped up on it to climb in. And it had wooden stock racks, homemade ones on the back. The kind farmers put on when they’re hauling something. Oh, and one of the headlights wasn’t working.”
If the woman was senile, she had a creative imagination. Christine jotted down the details. “Were you able to see any of the license plate?”
“No, my eyes aren’t that good.”
A screen door slammed below, and a little girl raced out into a backyard on the other side of the fence. She jumped onto a swing and called out to the man who followed. He had long hair and a beard and wore blue jeans with a long tunic-like shirt.
“They just moved in last month.” Mrs. Krichek nodded down at the pair as the man pushed the little girl, and she squealed with delight. “The first day I saw him, I tell you I thought I was looking down at the Lord himself. Don’t you think he looks like Jesus?”
Christine smiled and nodded.
CHAPTER 28
Maggie watched Nick step carefully around the piles she had scattered all over the floor of his office. He cleared a spot and set down the steaming pizza and cold Pepsis. Then he joined her on the floor, his long legs stretching out next to her. A foot almost brushed her thigh. All day she had found herself acutely aware of his presence. She thought she was too tired to feel, but then her body surprised her every time his elbow accidentally brushed her arm or his hand grazed her thigh while he shifted the Jeep into gear.
She had removed her shoes hours ago and had sat on her feet until they fell asleep. Now she massaged them one at a time while she read the coroner’s reports on Aaron Harper and Eric Paltrow, the two dead, little boys whom Jeffreys may have erroneously been convicted of killing.
The pizza smelled good despite the gruesome details she read. She glanced up to find Nick watching her rub her feet. Immediately, he looked away as though she had caught him at something. He popped open a can of Pepsi and handed it to her.
“Thanks.” This time she was actually hungry. The ham and cheese sandwich from Wanda’s had sat on a plate with only two bites removed when young Deputy Preston had finally volunteered to take it off her hands. That was hours ago. Now it was black outside the window. Phones down the hall had quieted. Staff had thinned out. Some had been sent home to rest while others were sent back out to search for a little boy who seemed to have disappeared off the face of the earth.
Nick lifted a thick slice of pizza, pulling it expertly away so he didn’t lose the cheese. He plopped it down onto a paper plate and handed it to Maggie. She could smell green peppers, Italian sausage and Romano cheese. He had done good. She bit off more than she should have, dripping cheese and sauce down her chin.
“Jesus, O’Dell. You’ve got sauce all over your face.”
She licked the side of her mouth while he watched.
“Other side.” He pointed. “And on your chin.”
Her hands were full of pizza and coroner reports. She licked at the other side while
she fumbled for a safe spot to set something down.
“No, higher,” he still instructed. “Here, let me.”
As soon as his thumb touched the corner of her mouth, her eyes met his. His fingers wiped at her chin. His thumb rolled over her lower lip where she was certain there was no sauce or cheese. In his eyes she saw that he felt the unexpected surge of electricity, too. His fingertips lingered longer than necessary on her chin, moved up, caressed her cheek. His thumb took its time to leave her lip and wipe the corner of her mouth. Completely surprised by her body’s reaction, she shifted away, just out of his reach.
“Thanks,” she managed to say, now avoiding his eyes. She practically flung the plate with pizza to the side, grabbed a napkin and finished the job, rubbing harder than necessary in an attempt to wipe away the electrical current.
“I think we might need more napkins and Pepsis.” Nick scrambled to his feet.
Maggie looked up at him, and he seemed flustered. From the small refrigerator in the corner of his office, he pulled two more cans and added napkins to the pile already on the floor. This time when he sat down, he kept more distance between them. She noticed his charm had been put on hold, his flirting almost nonexistent since he had discovered she had a husband. So the touch, the caress had caught him off guard, too.
“There are so many discrepancies,” she said, trying to get her mind back on the coroner’s reports. “I don’t know why anyone believed Jeffreys killed all three boys.”
“But don’t serial killers change the way they do things?”
“They may add things. They may experiment. Jeffrey Dahmer experimented with different ways to keep his victims alive. He’d drill holes in their skulls that would incapacitate them but keep them alive.”
“So maybe Jeffreys liked to experiment, too.”
“What’s unusual here is that the Harper and Paltrow murders were almost identical. Both were bound, hands behind their backs, with rope. They were strangled and their throats slashed. The chest wounds resembled each other almost exactly down to the number of puncture wounds. The same knife was used to carve the X’s. Neither boy appeared to have been sexually molested. Their bodies were found in different remote areas near the river.”
She referred to several documents laid out in front of her, leaning carefully so she wouldn’t soil them. In the last hour she had started to feel the full impact of her exhaustion. Her eyes blurred as she looked over the coroner’s scratchy notes. George Tillie had not been as precise as he should have been. The Paltrow report was the only one to mention the body being clean with little residue found. None of the reports indicated a smudge of oil on the forehead or anywhere else on the body.
Maggie glanced at Nick, who slumped against the hard credenza and rubbed at his eyes. His hair was tousled from too many reckless run-throughs with his fingers. His sleeves were rolled up to the elbows, revealing muscular forearms. He had gotten rid of the tie and had undone several buttons on his wrinkled shirt, exposing enough of his chest to distract her. She shook her head, grabbed a report off the floor and tried to stay focused.
“The Wilson boy, on the other hand—”
“I know,” Nick interrupted, sitting forward. “His hands were bound in front with duct tape, no rope. He was stabbed to death—no signs of strangulation. His throat wasn’t slashed. A hunting knife was used. Though there were plenty of puncture wounds…”
“Twenty-two.”
“Twenty-two puncture wounds, but no carving.”
“The Wilson boy was also sodomized, repeatedly.”
“And his body was found in a park Dumpster, instead of by the river. Jesus, this stuff makes me sick to my stomach.” He shoved the pizza aside, grabbed his Pepsi and emptied the can, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Okay, there’s a lot of differences, but couldn’t Jeffreys have changed things? Even the sodomy, couldn’t that be seen as…I don’t know…an escalation?”
“Yes, it could. But remember the sequence was Harper, Wilson, Paltrow. It would be very unusual for a killer to change, to experiment, to escalate and then go back to the exact format. He uses one knife—something with a small blade—perhaps a fillet knife. Then he changes to a hunting knife, then back to the other knife. Even the styles are very different. The Harper and Paltrow murders are meticulous in detail. Both boys were murdered by someone taking his time—someone who enjoys inflicting pain. Very much like Danny Alverez’s murder. Bobby Wilson’s murder, however, looks like it was done in the heat of the moment with too much emotion and passion to pay any attention to detail.”
“You know, I always thought it seemed too easy,” Nick said wearily. “I’ve been wondering if my dad wasn’t so caught up in the media circus that he may have overlooked something.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you know how you hear about things getting missed in the excitement, the so-called rush to judgment? My dad’s always enjoyed being the center of attention. The year I started as quarterback for UNL, he’d meet me at the locker room, insisted on it, in fact—every single game. My mom said it was because he was so proud of me. Except there were too many times when he greeted the TV cameras before he even acknowledged me.”
Maggie listened patiently, then waited out his silence. Nick and his father obviously had a complex relationship. And though he was uncomfortable discussing it, she knew he was trying to tell her something important, something pertinent to the Jeffreys investigation. Did Nick really believe his father may have mishandled the case?
Finally, he glanced at her as though he’d read her thoughts.
“Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying my dad would purposely jeopardize any case. He’s very well respected and has been for years. In fact, I know I would never have been elected if I wasn’t Antonio Morrelli’s son. I’m just saying that it all seemed a bit too easy—the way my dad caught Jeffreys. One day there was an anonymous tip, and the next day they had Jeffreys babbling out a confession.”
“What kind of anonymous tip?”
“It was a phone call, I think. I don’t know for sure. I wasn’t living here at the time. I was teaching down at UNL, so I got most of this stuff secondhand. Isn’t there anything in the reports?”
Maggie searched through several file folders. She had read most of them and couldn’t remember any phone calls being mentioned. But she also had seen no phone logs of any kind, even for a hotline.
“I haven’t seen anything at all about an anonymous tip,” she said, handing him the file labeled Jeffreys’ Arrest. “What do you remember?”
He seemed flustered, and she wasn’t sure if it was his memory he questioned or his father. She watched him look over the reports filed and signed by Antonio Morrelli.
“Your father’s reports are very detailed, including a blow-by-blow of the actual arrest. He even includes the evidence they found in the trunk of Jeffreys’ Chevy Impala.” She checked her own notes and read the list. “They found a roll of duct tape, a hunting knife, some rope…wait a minute.”
She stopped to check that she had copied the list correctly. “A pair of boy’s underpants, which were later identified as belonging to…” She looked up at Nick, who had found the list in the report and was reading the same items she had in front of her. His eyes met hers, revealing he was thinking precisely what she was.
She continued, “A pair of underpants later identified as Eric Paltrow’s.”
Maggie rifled through the coroner’s report to double-check her memory, though she already knew what she would find.
“Eric Paltrow’s body was found with his underpants on.”
Nick shook his head in disbelief.
“I bet even Jeffreys was surprised to find all that stuff in his trunk.”
They stared at each other, neither wanting to acknowledge out loud what they had stumbled upon. Ronald Jeffreys had been framed for two murders he hadn’t committed, and there was a good chance the frame-up had been done by someone in the sheriff’s department.
CHAPTER 29
Tuesday, October 28
The day had not gone well, and Nick blamed the two hours of sleep in his office chair. Maggie had gone back to her hotel room at three in the morning to rest, shower and change. Instead of driving the five miles to his house in the country, Nick had fallen asleep at his desk. All day his neck and back had reminded him again that he was only four years away from forty.
His body certainly wasn’t what it used to be, although his concerns about sexual performance may have diminished thanks to Agent O’Dell. Last night, the touch of her lips against his fingers, the look in her eyes, the electricity. Jesus, he was grateful the county jail’s shower blasted only cold water. Even he had rules about married women. Now if only his body didn’t talk him into changing the rules.
Unfortunately, his stash of clean clothes at the office had been used up in the last few days. He had resorted to the uniform browns, a more appropriate choice for the morning press conference. Not that it had made a difference. The press conference had quickly turned into a lynch mob within minutes, especially after Christine’s morning headline: Sheriff’s Department Ignores Leads in Alverez Case.
He thought for sure Eddie had checked out where old lady Krichek lived, a long time ago, after her first call. Why the hell wouldn’t he have realized Krichek had a perfect view of the parking lot where Danny had been abducted? Jesus, he wanted to strangle Eddie or worse, offer him up to the media as a scapegoat. Instead, he let him off with a simple and private verbal lashing and a warning.
Hell, right now he needed every officer he had. It was no time to be losing his cool, which he almost did at the press conference when the questions got ugly. But O’Dell, in her calm and authoritative manner, had rapidly put things back in perspective. She had challenged the media to help find the mysterious blue pickup, making them a part of the hunt for the killer instead of hunting for faults in the sheriff’s department. He began wondering what he’d do without her and hoped he wouldn’t have to find out any time soon.
