She stared at the photo. No, no way. Nobody changes that much over the course of a few years. Wrong nose. Wrong mouth. Wrong hair. Wrong eyes.
She went from the kitchen to the edge of the foyer. “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Reddick,” she said, “but I need to get back to my partner now. I enjoyed our conversation.”
The old woman drew the blanket from her chest and struggled to slide her legs off the sofa. “You can’t stay and watch Wheel with me?”
“I’m sorry, I can’t. Please don’t get up. Thanks again.” She strode to the door, didn’t wait to see if the woman managed to lift herself from the sofa or not.
Eighty-Four
Two troopers were huddled together looking at a computer screen, one man seated, the other standing, when DeMarco approached from the side. The area outside the little room where he had spent the past hour seemed inordinately bright, almost dizzyingly so. He said, “I need Trooper Boyd back home to shoot me a photo of Cheryl McNulty. If he emails or faxes it here, could you maybe print it out for me?”
The trooper sitting at the desk pulled a notepad his way, scribbled a number on it, tore the sheet off, and handed it to DeMarco. “There you go.”
The other trooper asked, “What’s it for?”
“Jayme thinks the woman we arrested isn’t Cheryl McNulty.”
“Seriously? But that’s the name she gave you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What makes Jayme think that?”
“Be right back,” DeMarco said. He went back into the little room, picked up his phone from the table beside Loughner’s incident reports, called Boyd and asked him to call the county jail and request a current photo of McNulty to be sent to his phone and also to the Troop C fax machine. “Here’s the number for the fax,” he said.
“Whoa,” Boyd said. “She’s out.”
“She’s what?”
“As of 9:30 this morning. She proffered to the prostitution charge, gave her statement under oath, and made bail.”
“Please tell me you’re kidding.”
“No, sir, I am not.”
“What did she swear to?”
“Same thing she told us. Sonny and the girl did it.”
DeMarco’s head was spinning. “You and Flores need to get out there right now, out to Reddick’s place. Get a few photos of her and send them to Jayme’s and my phones ASAP. And whatever you do, do not let her go anywhere.”
“If she’s not the real Cheryl, she’s been defrauding the U.S. government. Collecting the real Cheryl’s disability checks.”
“At the very least,” DeMarco said.
“How sure are you that she’s an impersonator?”
“Jayme’s 90 percent. She saw a photo of the real one at Reddick’s mother’s house.”
“Holy mackerel,” Boyd said. “So where is the real one?”
“That’s our second problem. Let’s take care of the first one first.”
“Roger that, Sergeant. I’ll let you know when we have her.”
DeMarco pocketed his phone. Stood there looking at Loughner’s papers. Took his phone out and checked the time. Twenty minutes until Jayme arrived. Laid his phone on the table and sat, pulled Loughner’s papers close, peeled off the top one and started to reread it. The letters swam across the page. Formed into words and broke apart again.
He pushed away from them and leaned back and stared into the overhead light, even though the neon glare stung his eyes. “What the hell?” he asked the light. “What the bloody hell?”
Eighty-Five
Pulling in, said Jayme’s text.
He texted back, Out in three.
Get the photo?
Sit tight.
He gathered up Loughner’s reports and slid them back into the accordion folder. Stood and left the room. To the trooper still at his desk, he held up the folder and asked, “Can I take these copies with me? I need to read through them again.”
“They’re yours,” the trooper said. “Joe said to give you whatever you needed. We haven’t received any faxes yet.”
“Yeah, cancel that. I’m having it sent to my phone. Thanks for everything, by the way. Thank everybody for me, okay?”
“Just let us know what you come up with.”
DeMarco nodded and turned away, took two steps toward the front door, then stopped. Turned and walked back. “You’re Lowry, right?”
“Yes, sir, I am.”
“Did you know Joe Loughner?”
“He retired before I came aboard. But he’s stopped by a few times to say hello, so I’ve been introduced to him.”
“How about his partner Stottlemeyer?”
“I’ve never met him, sir. He retired before Joe did. His picture’s on the Wall of Fame back in the lounge, though. They both are.”
“Hunh,” DeMarco said. “Joe was insistent that I have a look at his reports, but I can’t see why. Maybe I should read Stottlemeyer’s reports too. Do you know if he’s still around so I can ask his permission? Or just talking with him would be great too.”
“Pretty sure he’s in a personal care home,” Lowry said. “In St. Marys, I think. The captain might know which one, but he’s in town at a meeting now. HR could tell you, though.”
“I’ll try that, thanks.” From where DeMarco stood he could see out a large window in the far wall, saw nothing out there but a long sunlit field of high brown grass leading to a low blue wall of distant trees. “I thought I lived in the boonies,” he said, “but you guys are really far out, aren’t you?”
“Yes, sir,” Lowry said. “It’s too much for some guys. Me, I like to hunt, fish, got a bike I like to ride, so I don’t mind it at all.”
“Mountain bike?”
“Yamaha Road Star. 1600 ccs of rolling steel and sex appeal.”
“Cruiser,” DeMarco said, nodding.
“One of the best. I’ve been as far east as Maine on it, as far west as Montana.”
“Not to Sturgis yet?”
“One of these years. My wife’s afraid of it.”
“Afraid of the bike?”
“She loves the bike. She’s afraid of Sturgis. Thinks she’ll be expected to run around topless like you see on TV.”
DeMarco smiled. It would be nice to have a motorcycle, Jayme seated close behind with her hands on his waist, all that hair streaming out behind her helmet like a sunlit flame. Except that she wouldn’t want to be a passenger. Would insist on a bike of her own. That would be nice too, very nice. They could go anywhere they wanted to go. Stay, leave, wake up and go again, as free and easy as they wanted to be. Yeah but what about Hero? I’d get him a sidecar, DeMarco thought. Get him a helmet and goggles. The thought made him chuckle out loud.
Trooper Lowry glanced his way. “Something funny?” he asked.
“Thinking about me and my partner and our dog on motorcycles.”
“My dog rides a crotch rocket,” Lowry said.
“Oh yeah?”
“He’s hell on wheels. Costs me a fortune in speeding tickets.”
Eighty-Six
“Do you still want to see the elk?” DeMarco asked after he had slid the passenger seat back a couple of inches and buckled up.
“It’s up to you,” she said.
“I promised you we’d do it.”
“But you don’t want to now. I can tell.”
He shrugged, wagged his head back and forth.
“So where to?” she asked. “Home?”
“I’m not sure yet. Maybe just drive for a few minutes. I think better when we’re moving.”
She decided to head southeast, just in case they needed to visit Mrs. Reddick again. But she drove slowly, several miles under the fifty-five-mile-per-hour limit.
The sun was high and bright, the faded blue sky smeared with gray. DeMarco jumped a little when the phone r
ang in his pocket. Took it out. Boyd. Pressed Answer and then Speaker.
“You’re not going to believe this,” Boyd said.
“Don’t you dare tell me she’s not there.”
“Sorry, Sergeant. But guess who is back?”
DeMarco looked at Jayme. She gave him a quick glance, eyes open wide, then faced the road again and started looking for a place to pull over.
DeMarco said, “She’s gone and Reddick’s back?”
“And he’s acting like there’s nothing in the world wrong. Cool as a cucumber. Said he was off shopping for inventory, moving from swap meet to swap meet. He even showed me a bunch of junk he hadn’t unloaded yet from his vehicle.”
“And McNulty?”
“Said he tried to call her a few times when he got home and saw she wasn’t there. Showed me the calls he made, as if that proves anything.”
“And let me guess. He has no idea where she might be.”
“Correct.”
“Do we know who picked her up from the county jail?”
“She was seen walking out the door and heading down the hill toward 208. That’s all.”
“Somebody picked her up. Did you ask Reddick if her clothes are gone? Any sign that she had been there and left?”
“He said he couldn’t really tell. Of course.”
Jayme put on the turn signal and pulled onto an asphalt lane. Drove forward ten yards, pulled onto the shoulder and slipped the gearshift into Park.
“The IR camera!” DeMarco said.
“Already checked, sir. The only vehicle into the property was his, at 11:47 this morning. No other passengers visible. Doesn’t mean she wasn’t huddled up in the back somewhere.”
DeMarco tried to figure it out. “So if she was released at 9:30 a.m., and caught a ride with somebody…”
“If she went straight back to the house, she would have arrived around ten. But there’s no evidence that she did. I asked Mr. Shaner to check the camera from time to time to let me know if Reddick leaves the house or not. So far he hasn’t.”
“Which suggests either that she’s still at the house hiding out somewhere, or he never picked her up in the first place.” He felt like banging his head against the padded dashboard. Had Jayme not been present, he would have done so. “Just like that,” he said. “She’s gone.”
“I’m sorry, sir. We’re checking into bus schedules, cell phone data, everything we can. But right now we have nothing.”
“Nada y nada.”
“Sir?”
Jayme motioned for DeMarco to hold the phone closer. He did so, and she said into it, “Did you or Flores say anything to Reddick about Cheryl not being Cheryl?”
“We did not,” Boyd answered.
“Good,” DeMarco said. “Good. So he doesn’t know we’re onto that.”
“We’re working to ascertain if the suspicion is correct,” Boyd told them.
Jayme said, “I have three shots of the photo from Mrs. Reddick’s place. The one we know is the real Cheryl.”
“She certainly looks like a different person,” DeMarco added. “But you’re right, Mason. How do we prove it?”
“We do have the photo from when she was booked.”
“Thank God for that,” DeMarco said.
Jayme said, “According to what Mrs. Reddick told me, the last time she saw the real Cheryl was a few years ago. So that’s probably when the switch happened.”
“Could she give us a more specific date?” Boyd asked.
“I doubt it. She’s foggy on just about everything except Wheel of Fortune.”
“Okay,” Boyd said with a chuckle. “We have the info from the prescription bottles, so we can interview the doctor and the pharmacist and maybe get something there. But if neither woman’s fingerprints are in the system, and Jakiella is the only known associate…”
“And he’s only ever met the second one,” DeMarco said. “So he wouldn’t know that she isn’t really McNulty.”
“Exactly,” Boyd answered.
“We’re thoroughly screwed,” DeMarco told him.
“I wouldn’t say thoroughly, sir, not yet anyway. I sent a car up to watch the driveway, plus two officers from Greenville are watching the woods behind the house. We can’t legitimately stop him from going anywhere, not until we confirm McNulty’s identity. But we can slow him down and keep an eye on him.”
DeMarco gazed out the window. Up on a hill some two hundred yards away was a huge stone house with a five-car garage. In the front yard was what appeared to be a ten-acre lake with a stone wall around one end, fountains spraying high from the middle of the lake, the sun painting a little rainbow across the spray, the pin and red flag of an impossibly green pitching green off to the right. He thought, I wonder what the rich people are doing right now. Then answered himself, Not chasing their tails, that’s what.
Into the phone, he said, “Give our DA a call, Mace. Tell him he’s free to use McNulty’s statement for toilet paper.”
“Will do, Sergeant. Though not in those words.”
“At least tell him what a dumbass he is.”
“He’ll probably figure that out for himself.”
“Don’t count on it,” DeMarco said. He pressed End Call and looked at Jayme.
She said, “I forgot to ask. Anything helpful in Joe’s incident logs?”
“That was the second nada in nada y nada.”
“Joe seemed so sure you would find something there.”
“Yeah,” he said. He sat with his chin stuck out, lower lip pushing up the other one. Then asked, “Was there a park back in Benezette?”
“I don’t remember seeing one.”
“Okay. Well… No, wait! Swing east at the next left. Head for St. Marys.”
“What’s in St. Marys?”
“Maybe Stottlemeyer, Joe’s old partner. I’ll call HR and see if they know which personal care home. But first let’s find a quiet place to read through Joe’s logs again. Even an empty parking lot, I don’t care where. Maybe you’ll notice something I missed.”
“Sure, put all the pressure on me,” she teased.
Eighty-Seven
By the time Jayme parked the car in the corner of an Exxon station lot and shut off the engine, he was two pages ahead of her. He handed her those pages and kept reading. Every time he finished a page he laid it in her lap. When she finished a page, she picked up another one and laid it atop the previous page.
The only sounds inside the car were of pages sliding back and forth and the muted rumbling of traffic coming through the windows. With barely eleven miles between Ridgway and St. Marys, the traffic in both directions was heavy with pickup trucks, empty and loaded logging trucks, delivery trucks, and cars. DeMarco sat hunkered over, legs spread, holding each sheet of paper between his knees, concentrating hard.
He finished the final page and held on to it though he was no longer reading, just staring at the gray surface of the glove box, a blank wall for his thoughts. Then Jayme said, “You done with that, babe?”
He held it to her without speaking or looking. Stared at the gray.
A few minutes later, she said, “Okay. I’m done.”
He leaned back in his seat. Looked at her.
She said, “What do you think?”
“I would prefer to hear your thoughts first.”
“There’s only one report here, out of what, all fourteen days, that is of any interest whatsoever.”
“How so?”
“It doesn’t have anything at all to do with Luthor or Cheryl or any of that.”
“Then why is it of interest?”
“Well,” she said, “that’s the day of Reddick’s murder. When his wife found his body late that afternoon.”
“Yes?”
“Everything happens that day,” she said. “Starting
with the dentist’s appointment.”
“And how is the dentist’s appointment relevant?”
“I don’t know why it bothers me, but it does.”
“Keep going,” he said.
“So on the morning of”—and she thumbed through the pages—“the twenty-first. Early that morning, Joe called in to say he was going to be late. Said he’d lost a filling. So he needed the morning off to see the dentist.”
“Nothing unusual about that, is there?”
“Not until this entry for…11:14 a.m.”
“What entry would that be?”
“‘Observed adolescent female walking along South Second Street,’” she read. “‘Appeared to be under the influence. Stopped and questioned her. Took her home to her mother. Then returned to station house and reported for duty.’”
“We would have done the same, right?”
“Of course,” Jayme said. “And after that, for…the next five hours or so, it’s all routine. Nothing special.”
“Until?”
“Until Mrs. Reddick’s 9-1-1 call.”
“Responded to by?”
“Troopers Loughner and Stottlemeyer.”
“Okay,” DeMarco said. “Dentist’s appointment. Girl under the influence. Reddick’s murder. So how do they tie together?”
“Let me just check something,” she said, and gathered her phone from the cup holder. To the phone she said, “Dentists in Benezette, PA.”
“Okay, here you go,” her phone responded in a pleasant female voice, and provided a list.
“Three currently in town,” Jayme told him. “All with addresses on Front Street.”
“Some of them probably weren’t around back when this happened,” he said.
“Maybe none of them. But I’m betting that at least one of those offices has had a dentist occupying it all these years.”
“Okay,” DeMarco said. “And?”
“Reddick’s house is on Second Street. And that’s also where Loughner picked up the adolescent girl.”
“Probably just a coincidence,” he said.
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