by Arthur Day
“Sorry for the surroundings,” he started. “I would much prefer a more congenial place to meet but this room keeps us in touch with what’s going on and it discourages random forays into unrelated subjects.” Buckmaster smiled as if to say ‘yeah, right’.
“At least it serves to remind us why we are here and that is to compare notes and come up with the next step. I’ll start the ball rolling. I interviewed Jessica Torrino, Mazzumo’s chief of staff. She couldn’t add much that we didn’t already know. She took a call from Warren, told him nothing that he probably did not already know but probably confirmed his knowledge without knowing it.” Buckmaster put on his reading glasses and checked his notes. “Told him that he would have to talk with the Peases.” He looked across the table at MJ. “Anything new?”
“Not since I talked with Julia again. She remembered Jacob and did not think much of him. Sort of a dark personality, totally opposite that of Pam. I told you that and you put out a BOLO on him. Nothing so far, I take it?”
“Nope,” Buckmaster admitted “but I’m hoping someone will spot him. We’re using an old picture of him from the New York DMV. It’s not good but it’s all we have for the time being”
“I pulled in a favor with a friend. If either Susan Bencham or Warren is in Rockmarsh this man will locate him. He has pictures of both”
“And if he’s in California right now?” Buckmaster threw out idly. “There’s been no sign of him since Pam’s body was found.”
“He’s not, Sheriff. I can’t prove it, not yet, but I am certain that he is still after MJ,” Dianne replied. She brought out her phone and scrolled to the small slightly blurry image of a young man with dark eyes and a cocky little smile on his face as if he knew something that nobody else knew and was not about to give up that advantage. It reminded her of a picture of smirking Lee Harvey Oswald standing with his rifle looking as if he thought he was king of the world. The similarity of expression caused goose pimples on her arms. This man was Pam’s suitor before she met MJ. Suddenly, she tells him to get lost. Hard for any one man or woman to accept and people have been killed for less. It seemed obvious that this Warren guy had gone postal. This thought brought on the realization that she was doing something similar to the man sitting beside her and looking over a copy of Buckmaster’s notes. She hadn’t meant to do so, of course, but wasn’t the end result the same? She was sure that, unlike Warren, MJ was not going to lose it. He was too much of a man, too emotionally strong for such a thing. Still, she was troubled by the comparison and similarities; she looked down at her notes in front of her as if to dispel them more quickly. “I think that Warren wanted both MJ and Pam dead and has not yet finished. I think that if they were both still married to each other and together much of the time that you would be investigating a double murder.”
Buckmaster scrubbed his face with his hands. He felt as if he had not slept the night before. His whole body was stiff and crampy. Was Dianne right? He wasn’t sure, but he knew he could not simply dismiss her theory. The Pease family was upset that Pam’s murderer had not yet been arrested. Julia Pease had called for a status earlier that day and he had little enough to tell her. Although the story in the papers had retreated to the back pages, it would explode again if MJ was killed. If this nut job was still in the area, then he might well be after MJ. Buckmaster had neither the men or the technology to protect the man all day every day. This was a sheriff’s department tasked with handling the law throughout a small but still significant county. It was not the U.S. Secret Service. The safest place was prison but Buckmaster doubted MJ would consent to that and people dying while in prison was not an unknown occurrence. Hell, even with lots of protection presidents got killed and shot. There was no guarantee. None. If Warren was still after MJ, Buckmaster figured that he would have a better than even chance of killing him. “What do you suggest?” he asked her. “I can provide some protection for a while but not forever.”
“Seems to me we need to make a few assumptions here,” MJ remarked as he studied Warren’s picture. “First, I think Dianne is right. He is still in this area, so I think we can eliminate my house. Second, I don’t think lightening will strike twice in the same place so I would eliminate the spot in the woods where he dumped Pam. That leaves Pam’s house. So, if I am to be the target that is where I think we can catch him.”
“Nuts,” growled Buckmaster. “Sorry but that general in World War Two said it best. We don’t know where this guy is or whether he can stay up here indefinitely. You can’t stay at that cabin forever. It gets cold here in a couple of months and there is no heat there. Sooner or later you have to return to the life you have in Mays Corners. Spend the winter writing a book about this or something. That fact might figure into his plans. He may not be in any hurry at all.”
“We can chase our tails forever,” commented Dianne “but we have to decide whether Warren is in a hurry of not. I’m thinking he is because he knows by now that we’re looking for him and sooner or later someone will spot him and call the police. He can’t afford to sit around waiting for a better opportunity. Every day he stays in this area is dangerous. You’re right, Sheriff. He should be on a beach somewhere enjoying the sunshine but he’s not.”
“Okay. What you say makes sense. So, the next step would be to put MJ in protective custody and get him off the street. I can’t see risking his life for this jerk. Warren will fuck up and be caught in due time. They always do, and they almost always are.”
MJ shook his head. “Sorry sheriff but I can’t just sit in a room and hope for the best. That’s not me.”
Buckmaster was not surprised. He looked at Dianne who gave a small shrug as to say well what are we going to do with him? Buckmaster was about to argue the point when his phone went off. He picked it up, looked at the message and then back at MJ and Dianne. “We found Susan Bencham.”
Something about the set of his face alerted Dianne. “And?” She had been hoping for a message from Garland but obviously that would come too late.
“She’s dead.”
BUCKMASTER
Buckmaster had never gotten used to the look of the human body in death. It had always seemed such a waste even when the victim richly deserved it. All the muscles slack, the eyes sometimes staring out at nothing. The skin cooling and losing its color. Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andie dolls looked better than a corpse and Buckmaster had seen more than his share of corpses.
Susan Bencham lay sprawled in the alleyway between a Hispanic market and an appliance store, a puppet with its strings cut. Her throat had been cut and she was naked from her waist down. The alley had been cordoned off and CSI and the medical examiners were almost obscuring the corpse. Buckmaster stood off to one side talking with the chief ME, an older thin gentleman with coke-bottle glasses covering watery blue eyes and a razor-sharp mind. “What do you say, Dan? Was the same knife used on Susan that was used on Pam Pease?”
“It might be. Same general shape but I can’t say for sure until we get the body back to the morgue. There are signs that she had recent sex, but I can’t tell if it was consensual or not just on an initial examination,” He took a handkerchief from his pocket and absently cleaned his glasses. “Rigor just setting in so I would put time of death last night between midnight and two in the morning.”
Buckmaster looked down at what was left of Susan Bencham as the last of the techs left and the ME crew was getting ready to put her in the ambulance. White lumpy legs outstretched, dark mass of pubic hair between them. She would never feel embarrassment again, he thought sadly. He would wait on lab results, but he was sure that Jacob had killed her. He did not know why except that maybe she had been a loose thread who could point directly to Jacob. He turned away and headed towards her apartment a few blocks away. It would have its own story to tell. One way or another they always did.
It was a dump and that was hardly a surprise. Buckmaster nodded to the policeman standing in front o
f the door and walked into a large room with a kitchenette stuck in the back corner and a door leading to the bedroom and bath on the wall opposite the kitchen. Purplish-blue paint was peeling of the walls and there was a large spot where a leak had come through the ceiling. The floor was covered with old magazines, pieces of clothing, brown paper bags filled with unidentifiable stuff some of which must have been food at some point because the room stank. Buckmaster walked across the room and into the bedroom. That was just as bad. A queen bed covered with filthy sheets took up most of the room. There was a small dresser with three drawers and an open closet with clothes hung from a length of clothesline strung across it. The toilet in the bathroom appeared to be stopped up. Buckmaster wondered what she or they had tried to dispose of. The sink was full of gray water on which floated gobs of hair. Yuchhhh. A deputy and a plumber would have fun finding out what went on in there. Susan had been a pig and whoever she was sharing the apartment with had been no better. It was the living place for someone who had long ago lost all self-respect or hope for the future, a place of smashed dreams and shattered ambitions until they became just words in a dictionary without meaning. It was a place without hope.
He walked back out into the main room. Sitting down in one of the rickety chairs by a cardboard table just to the right of the kitchen, he picked up one of the bags and, after putting on a pair of latex gloves he began to go through it. He called dispatch to have a plumber called and a deputy sent over to the apartment to help sort through all the crap. He hoped it was Ellison on tap. He didn’t like Ellison, a young man who acted as if his shit didn’t stink.
Decades before he had been friends with one of the girls in his class, Elizabeth Gore. She was not pretty but she liked him, seeking him out at recess and sitting next to him at study hall. It was a little embarrassing. Georgie Wilkins told him to stay away from her or his dick would turn green and fall off. He didn’t believe Georgie but, nevertheless, knew that being friends with Lizzy was not going to make him more popular. Dan Edwards hinted that he was just making up to her to try and get a cheap kiss. Since kissing was a big deal at that time, he let that statement ride but felt guilty for doing so. He didn’t want to kiss her. He just liked her. She was smart but not pushy. She liked chocolate cake and ate his whenever it appeared in his lunch bucket. She never bugged him when he was with his other friends and standing around commenting on the girls on the playground or bragging about how he had put down a teacher or one of the kids from the upper grades. When recess was over he would look around and see her off to one side staring at him, smiling a little, maybe a small wave of the hand. He hated her for doing that. He secretly loved her for doing that.
She came over to his house once when his mother picked them up in the new family Ford. She looked as if she had never seen a car before and sat wide-eyed throughout the drive. When his mother asked Lizzy about her parents she simply said they were working. Her mother looked at Lizzy in the rearview mirror and said nothing more. When they went outside to play at his house she acted like she’d never seen a swing set before even though there were several at the school. She seemed amazed that he had one all to myself and shrieked with delight when they were both flying back and forth on it. Even the cookies and milk that his mother served as a snack was special for her and she devoured everything on her plate.
Buckmaster sorted through another bag of trash. Yes Lizzy lived right on the edge of the school district in subsidized housing where there was nothing to waste and therefore nothing was wasted and he looked through the piles of rags and garbage and felt an overwhelming sadness so acute that it was a pain in his chest that Susan had grown up with what she needed and much, he supposed, of what she wanted and had ended up in such squalor turning cheap tricks just to survive. In one corner there was a whip used in BDSM. A small waste basket was filled with used condoms. The sheets on the bed had obviously been soiled by many men. He had found a torn page from what might have been her address book with her parents’ phone number. If she had called, they had never admitted it. Buckmaster had to assume that pride and hope had kept her from calling. Pride prevented her from telling them she had failed, and hope had led her on and on through what she must have seen as just a rough patch.
Ellison duly arrived with techs for trace and fingerprints and they went through everything in the apartment. A plumber showed up and started banging on the pipes in the bathroom. At the end of it all the two men looked at each other. Buckmaster found that he knew little more about Susan and whoever was with her in the apartment than he did before. In fact, the most glaring thing was what was missing and not what was there. Where was her cell phone? He had not seen it at the crime scene and there was no cell phone in the apartment. He called the morgue to double check. Susan had no phone on her, yet phones were so cheap that even she could afford one and almost no one went without one. If Jacob had been here, then Jacob might have taken her phone if only to keep that piece of evidence from the police. He would have the techs see if they could trace the phone, but it was probably a cheap burner.
“Bert,” he said to Ellison. “Get a couple of uniforms and go through the dumpsters and trash cans in this area. See if a cell phone or maybe just a sim card turns up.”
“Okay,” grumped the deputy. This was obviously not one of his favorite activities. He walked out the door motioning to the policemen outside as he did so.
Buckmaster pulled out his own phone and called MJ. “We still don’t have him,” he said when MJ answered. “If Jacob was with Susan then he has probably murdered her,” he continued “and, if that is true, then he is burning his bridges and may be coming after you as we speak. I thought you should know this.”
“Any proof of this or sign of Jacob?”
“Not yet. We’re processing the apartment now, but it will take some time. In the meantime, you should take extra precautions. Where are you? I can detail a deputy to help with security.”
“Pam’s place at Compton but don’t bother with the deputy. Dianne is keeping an eye out.”
Buckmaster shook his head. MJ was stubborn to the point of foolishness. “Okay. You know what you’re doing, and Dianne certainly does. Just calling you to make sure you know the score.”
“I appreciate that, John.”
It took Buckmaster a moment to realize that MJ had used Backmaster’s first name. He wasn’t sure whether he felt complimented or amused. “Okay. Talk to you soon.”
Buckmaster clicked off hoping desperately that he hadn’t told the biggest unintentional lie of his life.
McCAAL
I walked along the road slow and easy as if I was simply out for a late afternoon walk before cocktail hour and dinner, a sight unremarkable to the people living in the area and one duplicated many times by others. I was, however, looking at the houses and the forest on both sides of the road trying to find any disturbance or tracks out of the ordinary.
When our meeting broke up the sheriff went to check out the Bencham crime scene. I left the building with Dianne. We did not have anything to say. Dianne said that she had to return to her day job and I thought that I should stay at the lake and see if I could force Warren or whoever was murdering people to come after me. After all, if Pam’s body had been dumped where I would probably find it then why go to the trouble? The murderer had to be sure that I would find it and that meant that he was watching me and knew enough about me to take Pam’s body to that particular spot when he saw me visit the Dugan farm. He had to still be in the area, still watching me, probably waiting for the right moment to kill me as well. If he had been staying with Susan, then Buckmaster was right. The guy was burning his bridges and whatever he had planned for me would happen very soon.
Since we were not even sure who this guy was, I couldn’t begin to guess what his plan was or his timetable. What I could do was to search the immediate area around the camp to see if he had been there and left any traces. That was surely better than sitting in
the living room waiting for him to try and shoot me and it might upset him to the point where he made a mistake. Isn’t that what we’re always told? Criminals are dumb and make mistakes. Trouble with that idea was that this criminal was not dumb at all. Everything from Pam’s abduction to the disposal of the ATV to the murder of Susan pointed to someone who had thought this out in advance down to the last detail and he was able to do that because he knew more about me than anyone except for Pam and my parents, now both dead. It was not an encouraging thought and I tried to put it out of my mind.
I heard a grinding noise to my right down at the Finklestein camp. I walked down the driveway towards the gray shingled Cape Cod with the garage off to one side. Fred Finklestein was trying to get his mower started to shave his already neat postage stamp lawn.
RRRRRMMMMG “Start you fucker.”
RRRRRMMMG “Piece of shit mower. I should sell you for parts.”
RRRAAARUMMM “C’mon baby. Start for daddy. C’mon.”
“What’s up Fred?”
He looked up as he yanked on the starter cord again.” RRRRRMMMMG “Fuck. What do you want McCaal?” He shouted.
“Give it a rest. Maybe the carb’s flooded.” I held up my hands in a sign of peace. “Just saying.” I looked down at the mower. “Check the plug and wire connection?”
