Desperate Measures

by M. Glenn Graves

  “You see a young woman come out here and get into a cab?”

  “What if I did?”

  Owens took out his badge, shoved it in the guy’s face while he held open his ugly sport coat so that the maintenance guy could see his weapon as well.

  “One more time, now. Did you see a young woman…?”

  “Yeah,” he interrupted the question before Owens could finish the second time. “Tallish, good looking, but a little messed up, you know. Leaving the hospital and all … She got into a cab and away she went.”

  “You get the name of the cab company perchance?” Owens said.

  “Oh, let’s see, it was one of those crossword puzzle cabs,” the maintenance guy said.

  “What?” Owens said.

  “You know, one of those that has those little squares, some black, some white on its sign, its thingamajig on the name.”

  He was struggling hard to be helpful. The badge and gun must have frightened him.

  “You mean like a checker cab?” Rosey said.

  “Yeah, that’s it. It was from Waltham. I saw that. Had a seal on the windshield reminded me of a vacation I took back in ’05. Yeah, Checker Cab from Waltham.”

  Owen grunted something at him and we went back through the hospital to retrieve my car parked out front. In the meantime, Owens called the Checker Cab of Waltham to get any particulars they might share as to the whereabouts of Sandy. He was still on the phone with the cab company when we got to the car.

  “Oh, I don’t know. Let’s say the cab picked her up about thirty-five to forty minutes ago here at Weston-Waltham Hospital.”

  Long pause.

  “Good. That’s probably the one. Where did they take her?”

  Longer pause.

  “Still en route?” Owens repeated and pointed to us and then pointed to the car. We all got inside and Rosey headed out of the parking area.

  “Stay on the phone with me. Let me know when the cab arrives at its destination. Say, anyway you can talk with the driver without the passenger knowing?”

  Good question, I thought. We waited for Owens to repeat whatever answer that came.

  “You’ll try. Okay, that’s good. See if you can have the driver take the long way to wherever he is headed,” Owens said.

  Short pause.

  “Okay, sorry. Tell her to take the long way to the passenger’s destination.”

  Long pause.

  “I know that’s not ethical. It’s not about ethics, lady. We’re trying to find out where this woman is going. She’s a suspect in a murder investigation.”

  Actually, I didn’t think that Sandy was a suspect any longer. I doubt if Owens believed it as well. But it was a good line, one that might help us find her.

  “Where?” Owens said quickly.

  Pause.

  “Okay, got it. I know where that is. Thanks. You’ve been helpful.”

  He closed the phone.

  “Cab took her to Fletcher’s place in Weston,” Owens said to us as we sped along the highway in the direction of Reverend Fletcher’s mansion.

  61

  Fletcher’s mansion looked the same as it had the other times I had gone there recently to question this dubious minister regarding Melody Legrand’s death. Stately. Cold. Perhaps even a tad foreboding. If the populace knew of my disdain for the man, then I could easily be accused of extreme bias if not exaggerated imagination. I think my feelings about him and his mansion were understated, if anything.

  The only thing missing which might add to its threatening ambience would be some intentionally placed gargoyles instead of the seven gables dispersed about the roof line. There were four gables across the front, one on each side, and three in the back. The black shingled roof added to its dark nature. I could see this place either in Poe’s stories or certainly Steven King’s works. Take your pick.

  The moment we pulled into the drive, the sun ducked behind a widespread cloud cover. The sudden darkness gave me pause for a few moments as we approached the front door. Funny how sunshine and diminished light plays on a person in certain circumstances.

  “I’ll go around back. Sam, you come with me,” Rosey said.

  Sam followed him.

  I nodded at Owens as if to say, you take the lead and I’ll cover you. He returned a two finger salute to me, drew his 9mm Glock and cautiously moved to the left of the door, the side where it was hinged. I had my .45 Smith and Wesson in hand waiting as Owens knocked.

  No answer. No sounds could be heard on the inside. No surprise there. The place was a veritable fortress even without the gargoyles.

  “Police! Open up!” Owen said in a raised voice. That’ll get ‘em running scared. Yeah, right.

  Silence.

  I was on the right side of the door opposite Owens. Using my left hand, I turned the knob to see if the door would open. It turned and opened. I pushed on it hard enough for it to swing wide. We had a good view of the long hallway inside. No one was visible.

  I crossed in front of him and he waited until I stopped about five feet inside the hall. He then moved to his right and traveled about ten feet down to the next doorway. He was using the door jam as a shield, but his massive body made his attempt to hide there seem ludicrous.

  “Too many doughnuts,” I said to him as I passed in front and moved ahead. I stopped at the next doorway a few feet down the hall across from where Owens was stationed.

  “Stay there while I check this room,” he said to me. I watched him disappear into the room. Less than a minute later he reappeared in the doorway.

  “All clear,” he said.

  He crossed in front of me and down another ten to fifteen feet. Another doorway. I moved behind him and crossed over to the door then stopped.

  “You’re not protecting that body of yours too well yourself,” he said when he crossed in front of me moving into the room where I had just stopped.

  “I’ll check the next one,” I said to him so he would know that I was not backing him for several moments.

  The room was empty and I returned to the hallway. Owens was waiting on me.

  We continued this same swapping of positions and checking rooms as we maneuvered down the hall. The rooms were all empty. The hallway ended at the entrance into a large kitchen. Owens took the left side and I checked the right as we moved through it. I checked the pantry and it was all clear.

  “All clear,” Owens said as he opened the door to the bathroom on his left.

  “We need to check the upstairs,” I said.

  The staircase was about midway down the long hallway in the center of the house. Owens and I crisscrossed each other several times as we climbed it. When we reached the upstairs floor, Owens moved to his left. I started to go right.

  “Let’s stay together,” Owens said and I stopped.

  “Faster if we split up,” I said.

  “Slower if you get shot.”

  “Might be slower if you get shot as well,” I concluded and followed him.

  I bowed to his notion and stayed close to him. A few minutes later we had checked all of the bedrooms and the bathrooms on the second level. We were standing at the head of the stairs. All was clear. Nobody was home.

  “Is there a basement?” I said.

  “I can help answer that,” Rosey said to us from the bottom of the staircase.

  We joined him at the bottom.

  “No outside windows or doors that suggest a basement,” he said. “You see anything on this level to indicate another floor below?”

  “Let’s recheck just in case we missed something. We couldn’t have been more than ten minutes behind that cab. It’s as if Sandy disappeared,” I said.

  “She couldn’t have known we were after her as fast as we managed it. Why come here if only to grab a vehicle and go somewhere else?” Owens said.

  We retraced our steps throughout the first floor of the house. We checked all of the closets and doors that might suggest a basement access. We found nothing.

  “She
said that her family was responsible for tying her and leaving her in her house on Garden Place. What family? Which member? All of them or just one? And, if it was her family, why come here?” I said.

  “Maybe it was her brother,” Rosey said. “Maybe he’s the one behind this whole mess.”

  “I thought we were close,” Owens said as we returned to the car. “We got nothing. Nothing.”

  He slammed his fist down on the hood of the car.

  “Yeah, know what you mean,” I said to Owens. “Even Sam couldn’t find a scent.”

  We drove back to the station and dropped Owens off.

  “I’ll call you tomorrow,” I said to Owens.

  “I’ll have some units stay on Fletcher’s house round the clock. If anything breaks, I’ll ring you. We can’t let these people just slip through our fingers.”

  Rosey, Sam, and I headed towards Boston. Twenty minutes down the road I had an idea.

  “Turn around and let’s go back,” I said to Rosey.

  “Back?”

  “Let’s spend the night here in Weston.”

  “What are you thinking?” Rosey said.

  “I’m thinking I need to talk with Rogers.”

  “You have a plan?” he said.

  “I wouldn’t call it a plan. Notion is a better term. A wild notion.”

  62

  It was after midnight before I called Rogers. I couldn’t sleep and I knew that she didn’t need to sleep. I could hear Sam snoring softly by the window of our motel room. Rosey had a room next door, but I couldn’t hear anything coming from that direction. He didn’t make noises in his sleep, at least not the times we had shared sleeping quarters on some cases. Nothing French mind you, just sleep. Tall, dark, and handsome he definitely was; but, he was my friend and I never thought about being intimate with him. Just wasn’t an idea I allowed to nurture. Nor did I need to nurture it.

  “Why aren’t you sleeping?” Rogers said.

  “Too much to mull over. Too many dead-ends which make no sense to me.”

  “Tell me what’s on your mind.”

  I told Rogers everything that I had learned and the actions we had taken since we had last spoken. She made me repeat some things as if she were taking notes and couldn’t write as fast as I recounted the botched plans and the empty attempts to find who was behind this whole thing.

  “Can you come up with anything or anyone?” I said.

  “Some possibilities. But nothing more than the usual suspects – Fletcher, Sandy, and Lenny. It all seems to come back to them.”

  “You ruled out the Duchess.”

  “I did. Given the info you have provided, Duchess Legrand is not smart enough to do all that has been done. Besides her lack of the necessary acumen, she drinks too much and too often to think clearly and plan what has occurred. Only the three I named have the gray matter to pull this off. Truth is, I suspect only one of them to be the brains,” Rogers said.

  “Who would you place your money on?” I said.

  “Fletcher. That’s the easy call. He’s the odds on favorite. But then, Sandy and Lenny might surprise me when you finally get to the end of this thing.”

  “You assume that I am going to get to the end of it,” I said.

  “I do. I have every confidence in you. Investigator extraordinaire,” she said.

  “Flattery will not help me. I’m about at my wits’ end.”

  “Maybe you need some more rest. You’re only human, you know.”

  I chuckled.

  “I have rested. In fact, I have rested more in this case than in any of my last several. Rest is not the answer.”

  “Then I’m open to other options,” Rogers said.

  “Okay. What do we know about Fletcher?”

  “He’s a sleaze-bag,” Rogers began.

  “Is that your technical evaluation? We don’t necessarily know that.”

  “You don’t think that’s a provable fact?”

  “Okay, maybe we can demonstrate it, but it’s still an opinion and nothing we could arrest him on.”

  “I’m working on that. Could be I can find a law somewhere,” Rogers said.

  “More to the current situation. He’s been in Weston, Mass. for, what … fifteen years or so?” I said.

  “Give or take. Close enough.”

  “Moved here with daughter Sandy and son Lee. Lee changes his name to Lenny and a few years later he no longer claims Fletcher as his father.”

  “Don’t forget that Fletcher changed his name from Chester Chatterworth to Reginald Fletcher at the same time. Both did the name change game in ’96,” Rogers reminded me.

  “So the daddy and the two kids moved east from Pennsylvania, western Pennsylvania,” I said. “You know anymore about the timeline from 1989 to 1996 for Fletcher?”

  “Yeah, found out that he first lived in Pulaski from 1970 to 1982. During that time he married Audrey. That’s also when he started that non-denominational church in Pulaski, Pa. Then he moved to New Castle, Pa. Started another church and stayed there until 1996. He was still Chester Chatterworth,” Rogers reported.

  “And Audrey disappeared during that time.”

  “Literally dropped off of the face of the earth, if you ask me. Could have been transported to another galaxy for all I have been able to discover.”

  “Any other details about Chatterworth during those New Castle days?” I said.

  “Let’s see, he built a large church there, built a home there, bought some real estate at a nearby state park, and seemed to be fairly successful during that tenure in Pennsylvania.”

  “What real estate did he buy?”

  “A place on Lake Arthur at nearby Moraine State Park. He bought a house near the lake. Actually it was a cabin. That’s what the photograph appeared to be, a small cabin in the woods just off Prospect Road in the Lake Arthur area.”

  “Does he still own it?” I said.

  “Couldn’t find any records that prove otherwise,” she said.

  “And did you discover any reason for him leaving his success in New Castle and moving to Weston, Mass.?”

  “Nothing documented. He just moved with his two kids.”

  “You have any contact information on that church he started in New Castle?”

  “Yeah, I have an address and some phone numbers,” Rogers said.

  “Give me the numbers … better yet, call them and let me talk.”

  “I doubt if anyone’s there now,” Rogers said.

  “Did the church close?”

  “Probably not the way you mean it. It’s the middle of the night. I doubt if they are keeping vigil unless they do midnight séances,” Rogers said.

  “Oh, yeah… it is sort of late.”

  “First thing in the morning I will call and you can talk to them,” Rogers said.

  “They might know something about Audrey and her whereabouts.”

  “Don’t hold your breath. I’m not holding mine.”

  63

  A lady answered on the fourth ring.

  “New Castle Church of the Redeemed,” she said. “How may I direct your call?”

  “I’m calling for information about a former pastor, The Reverend Chester Chatterworth. Can you help me with some information?” I said.

  Rogers had made the call but had connected my cell to the line so that I could actually do the talking. Rogers could have made the call using my voice, but I needed to do the talking on this occasion.

  “Oh my goodness,” the lady said as her voice rose at least an octave. “It’s been years since I have heard that name. Where are you calling from?”

  “Weston, Massachusetts.”

  “Why do you want information on him?”

  “Our church is considering him as a pastor. We’ve been searching for over a year now and his name has surfaced. We’re just doing our homework in checking out things about him. Can you help me?”

  “Yes, I probably can answer some questions, but I don’t know if I am supposed to be talking about
this,” she said as she lowered her voice to almost a whisper.

  “About what?” I said.

  “The circumstances of his leaving here.”

  “He left you more than ten years ago. Why did he leave?”

  “That’s the part I’m not sure I should be talking with you about.”

  “Is there someone else who would tell us what I need to know?”

  “That I don’t know. Our members here don’t like to talk about it. Some things you simply want to forget, you know,” she said, still speaking to me in a loud whisper.

  “I really need to know about Reverend Chatterworth,” I said. “Our church is new and we don’t want to be making any mistakes by calling the wrong pastor. You understand, don’t you?”

  Sometimes it pays to be a person whose heritage is informed enough to know the language that is used in church. I never thought my religious upbringing would serve me as a gumshoe. The dots do not always connect with those two entities.

  “Oh, honey, I do understand,” she said.

  Her term of endearment, honey, made me suspicious.

  “How long have you lived in Pennsylvania?” I said.

  “Moved her as a young woman from Tennessee. Came from Memphis. I’ve lived here more than forty years now. Why do you ask?” she said.

  “You called me honey,” I said. “That’s a Southern term. I’m from Virginia myself, only recently come to Massachusetts.”

  “Well, sweetie, we Southern girls need to stick together.”

  “So what can you tell me about Reverend Chatterworth?” I said.

  “Our church had to ask him to leave back in the 90’s. For many years he was a good pastor. Did a really good job of helping the church to grow. Then, he seemed to change. I think he got involved in some type of religious cult, I don’t know. Whatever it was, he was doing strange things, middle of the night, you know, having séances and building fires and all. Weird stuff, if you know what I mean.”

  “You think it was devil worship?” I said.

  “Oh, no. Not that. It may have been of the devil, but I don’t think it was that exactly. He just changed and began to do unholy things.”

  “Unholy things?” I repeated.