“Bolts pulled right out of the concrete. Must’ve been failing over time.” Pulling down the sign from the store would’ve exceeded the manifestation of Williams’ powers that Harrison had witnessed so far. Then again, so did crushing a man with a car. “But, you might check with the bartender at O’Malley’s. He said Billy Hunt left the bar with someone else. Guy wasn’t a regular and wasn’t at the scene when Hunt was found.”
“Okay, thanks, I’ll check that out.” Harrison put the photo of Josh Williams back into his pocket.
Franklin eyed Harrison. “So do you really think your guy came after the abuser as some kind of vigilante justice?”
“It’s possible. I know Billy Hunt showed up in the blotter. Williams could be on the lookout for other people to bring to his version of justice.” Harrison rose to leave. “Thanks for your time, Detective Franklin.”
Franklin, his arms folded, eyed Harrison. “You know, if you think your guy is actually looking for victims in the blotter, we brought in another guy yesterday. But the wife dropped the charges and he got released.”
“Would it be possible for you to give me his name and address?”
“Yeah, sure, no problem. Just keep me in the loop.”
After getting the address from Franklin and thanking the detective for his help, Harrison headed into Windfall to interview O’Malley’s bartender and find the new domestic abuse suspect. And maybe, just maybe, he’d find Josh Williams out there, too.
35
Being able to find people never worried Matt. As a Private Investigator, he routinely tracked down people on tiny slivers of evidence through a combination of keen instinct, technological acumen, and old-fashioned determination. But he did sometimes worry that the person he was searching for would be inaccessible, moved away to some godforsaken little town, or in the case of most older folks, Florida. Harrison could always speak to such people on the phone, but those conversations often netted less information than face to face interviews.
Patricia Oliver did not move to Florida, however. She occupied the same house she had shared with her deceased husband, right in Woodside. So after a fifteen-minute drive, Matt knocked on her door. He paced around the front landing of the raised ranch house. The door creaked open and a slightly bent old lady with short, curly white hair appeared.
“Can I help you?” she asked.
“Hi. Are you Patricia Oliver?”
“Yes,” she answered, looking at Matt like he was trying to sell her new windows, or encyclopedias, or whatever it was people sold door to door these days.
“My name is Matt Harrison. I’m a Private Investigator. I was working an old case and your husband’s name came up. Could I ask you some questions about him?”
The woman seemed puzzled. “You want to ask me about George?”
“Yes, if it’s not too much trouble.” This was always the part of the conversation that Matt hated the most. He lacked the authority of a Police Officer, and people usually possessed negative perceptions of PIs. In this particular case, Matt didn’t even know how or if George Oliver was connected to the Stevenson Industries break-in, giving him a tenuous footing in the widow’s house.
“Sure, come on in.” Patricia Oliver held the door open for him and then shuffled toward the living room. The house felt dated, but circa ‘90s and not ‘70s as Matt often encountered in the homes of other seniors. Whatever the interior lacked in contemporary decor, it made up for in its tidiness. Matt saw no clutter anywhere, even on the shelves and mantle where pictures tended to accumulate as new children, grandchildren, and memories were birthed.
Oliver plopped down in a mauve recliner and Matt sat across from her on a leather sofa.
“It’s not often that someone from outside the family brings up George,” she said. Oliver wore her hair in the short, permed style popular among senior women. “He would’ve been eighty this year. It’s going on twenty-seven years since he’s been gone,” she said in a far off kind of way, before zeroing on Matt. “What kind of case are you working on?”
“I’ve been looking into the break-in at Stevenson Industries that resulted in Dr. Jerry Banks’ death. Do you remember that at all?”
The past event registered on the woman’s face as an expression of shock and concern.
“No one was supposed to know about that,” she said.
“About what?”
“It was supposed to be a secret,” she said, looking alarmed.
“Ma’am, what are you talking about?”
She eyed him closely. “You mean you didn’t know how George was connected to Stevenson Industries and Dr. Jerry Banks?”
Matt shook his head. “No, ma’am. Honestly, that’s what I’m here to find out.”
“Well, I guess after all this time, there’s no harm in telling.” She sighed and placed her hands on the armrests. “George suffered from a rare genetic disorder—Chapman Bowers Disease. Most people have never even heard of it. As his condition was starting to deteriorate, he received a call from Dr. Banks. Banks was working on some miracle cure. He’d made good progress and wanted to start human trials.”
“So your husband was part of a clinical trial?”
Oliver sucked in her cheek. “Not exactly. Banks wasn’t cleared by the FDA or CDC or whoever it is that approves these things. But Banks didn’t want to wait any longer. His own son suffered from the same genetic disorder, and he didn’t have much time.”
“So Banks used your husband as a guinea pig?”
She smiled slightly. “We didn’t think of it like that. George had been given a death sentence and we thought this might be our miracle. Honestly, we would have tried anything. And this wasn’t going to cost us a thing. We just had to keep it quiet. Couldn’t tell a soul. Our children still don’t know.”
“What kind of treatment did your husband receive? Was it a pill, or serum, or something else?” Matt asked, pressing to discover specific details now that he knew the general truth.
“George received injections into his brain.”
“Ouch. Sounds painful.” Matt involuntarily rubbed the back of his neck in the same spot he imagined Oliver was injected.
“They were, though probably not as painful as you’d think.” Patricia Oliver glanced down at her slippered feet before using the heel of her left to itch the shin of her other leg.
“Did they work?” Matt asked, fearing the answer to that question was already answered by George Oliver’s death.
“It’s hard to tell. A few of George’s symptoms improved but others didn’t seem to. He still probably had a year before things really went downhill for him, so it was harder to tell if the medication was working.”
“Were there side effects?”
“Headaches, which makes sense I guess.”
“Did your husband pass away from his illness?” Matt felt bad about pushing Patricia Oliver on the exact cause of her husband’s death but needed to know if there was some additional link between George Oliver, Jerry Banks, Thomas Wilson and Jack Walton.
“Yes and no. Lack of balance was one of the symptoms. George went out one night, just to get a bit of fresh air. He was feeling pretty good. But he must’ve fallen and hit his head while he was walking. Honestly, I thought it was a blessing. George would’ve become a vegetable if the illness ran its course. Dying early allowed him to die with some dignity.”
Oliver’s death didn’t completely fall into the category of natural causes. So far, Matt had one suspicious accidental death, one accidental death, and one outright murder to account for.
“About the break-in at Stevenson Industries that killed Dr. Banks—can you think of anyone who would’ve wanted to hurt Dr. Banks? Were there other people like George who were receiving the treatments, maybe? Or anyone who worked in the lab with Dr. Banks who was angry with him?”
Oliver shrugged. “I never went with George. He said he wanted to go by himself. Maybe he didn’t want me to see what was happening to him. But from what he told me, no one else was
ever in the lab besides Dr. Banks. He usually went into the office after the place was closed. Banks did all of his own work from what George told me; no nurses or lab technicians or anything.”
“I guess that makes sense if Banks wanted to keep this on the down low.”
Oliver nodded. “But there were others receiving the experimental treatments. One night when George went in for treatment, he met a handful of other patients. From what George told me, Banks wasn’t too happy about that, like it was a mistake of some sort. Anyway, there were four other guys in the program. I don’t think they were from around here. After that night, they sort of became friends.”
“Do you know how any of those guys fared with their treatments?”
“No. Once George died, I didn’t stay in touch with them. In fact, I only met them once when they came over to our house.”
“Do you remember any of their names or where they lived?”
“I’ve never been good with names. And like I said, I only met them once.” She gazed up at the ceiling. “Seemed like one of them lived in the Midwest and another lived in Oregon or Washington or someplace like that.”
“Did George keep their contact information anywhere?”
“If he did, it was lost after he passed. Believe me, I know where everything is in this house.” Patricia Oliver seemed to be mentally reviewing her last claim, scrolling through the different locations of the house where such information could be stashed. “Although, I remember having a picture of them together, somewhere. Would you like to see that?”
“That would be great.”
Patricia Oliver pushed herself up out of her chair and ambled over to a drawer in the gigantic hutch in the dining room. She flipped through a stack of photos before finding the object of her search. Photo in hand, she walked back into the living room and handed it to Matt. He looked at the pre-digital age picture. Five men sat together at a table, smiling. Harrison recognized George Oliver from the obituary photo Felicia had texted him as well as the many assorted pictures of him in the room. The other four men were substantially younger.
“I guess George was the senior of the bunch, huh?”
“The condition George had usually presented earlier in life. George was a bit of an unusual case, I guess.”
“Do you mind if I scan this? It could be helpful for my investigation.”
“Sure. I suspect everyone else in that photo has been dead and buried a long time, now.”
Matt took out his phone and scanned the picture. “Now you’re sure that you don’t have contact info for them? A name or anything?”
“I don’t remember ever seeing any. If you want, I could look through some old things of George’s today. Maybe there’s something I don’t know about it.”
“If it’s not too much trouble, that would be great,” Matt said.
He finished recording the photo and handed it back to Mrs. Oliver. This time, she took her time examining it. A misty-eyed look of nostalgia washed over her. “A few years before he was diagnosed, George and I hit a rough patch in our marriage. I didn’t think we’d make it. But somehow we did. In fact, those last few years before he was diagnosed may have been the best part of our lives. Though sometimes I think I should’ve just stayed mad at him. It would have made losing him easier.”
“I’m very sorry for your loss, Ma’am. And I truly appreciate you taking the time to talk to me.”
She smiled. “Oh, it’s no trouble. In a way, it felt good to talk about George again.”
“Just one more question if I may: did Robert Stevenson or any of the higher-ups at the company know about the trials?”
Oliver shook her head. “Not to my knowledge. If they did, they never talked to us about it. Of course, maybe they were afraid of lawsuits. But I don’t have any bad blood toward Dr. Banks or the company. They offered us a chance. It didn’t work, but at least we got to try.”
After saying goodbye, Matt Harrison left Patricia Oliver to her memories. He knew that sensation well, though his memories weren’t buried beneath quite so much time. One day he might speak of Sarah the same way Patricia spoke of George—with acceptance and resignation.
One more loose end in the case had been somewhat tied together. Harrison suspected the other four people in the photo might be knotted together in a similar fashion as George Oliver. He sent the photo to Felicia in the hopes that it would help her assist Richard Anderson in identifying the other faces from his dreams. They were getting closer to the truth, he was sure of it.
36
“I’m sorry, I don’t recognize any of them.” Richard Anderson, dressed in another freshly pressed flannel button down shirt that he had tucked into his jeans, leaned back in the chair next to Felicia. They had been poring over the obituaries from 1989, specifically the ones within the same month as the break-in at Stevenson Industries. When the obituaries from the Journal came up empty, Felicia moved onto some nearby papers that shared their records. But nothing registered with Anderson.
“It’s okay,” Felicia said. “We’re assuming all the people you saw in your dreams lived in the area and that might not be true.”
Anderson massaged the top of his nasal cavity. “It’s also possible that I tried to forget these faces for so long that I succeeded.”
“Twenty-seven years is a long time to be able to recall a face you only saw for a few nights,” Felicia said, scrolling onto another set of obituaries. But these were from two months after the break-in and offered little promise.
“These are harder to forget you can imagine. The dreams were so vivid. They stayed with you.”
Even as Anderson said these words, his expression was neutral and his manner calm. Perhaps after nearly thirty years of dealing with the memories, Anderson had found a certain peace.
“Doesn’t it bother you?” she asked, scanning his features.
“What, the dreams? Yes, the dreams bother me a great deal.”
“No, not just the dreams, but the feeling you can’t change something. Isn’t that still hard to accept?”
“Not really.” Anderson folded his arms together. “I never believed I could change the outcome of the dreams. In fact, I’ve never believed that I had the ability to change the world much at all. Maybe it’s because I grew up in a church that staunchly believed in God’s sovereignty and predestination, but everything feels like it’s out of my hands. Or maybe it’s because I’ve always seen myself as a small man who operated within a very tiny sphere of influence. Whatever the case, I never thought I could change the dreams or much else, for that matter.”
“So then what bothered you about the dreams?”
Anderson placed his hand on his chin. “Probably more the fact I couldn’t figure out what they meant. And they felt like they did mean something.”
As Felicia listened to Anderson, she envied his ability to write-off the potential impact he might have possessed. Maybe that was Felicia’s problem: unlike Anderson, she thought too much of herself. She always believed she could determine outcomes and meddle in affairs greater than her. Humility was a blessing Felicia lacked.
“I’m sorry to have brought you all this way to find nothing,” Felicia said. “I can’t think of anything else to show you.”
He smiled. “That’s okay. By now I should be okay with the hidden mysteries of God. I’ve lived this long with them—I can go a little longer.”
Felicia nodded, the notion of unsolved mysteries—whether divine or human—rankling her consciousness. “Here, I’ll drive you to the station.”
Before Felicia could get up, her phone chimed, indicating a text. Matt Harrison had sent her a picture of George Oliver and four other men. Along with it came a text briefly explaining Oliver’s involvement with Stevenson Industries, his rare genetic condition, and the cause of his death.
“Hold on,” Felicia said to Anderson, who had started putting on his jacket. “Look at this. Do you recognize anyone from this photo?”
As soon as Anderson looked at the pict
ure of the five men, his eyes went wide. “Yes, that’s them! That’s George Oliver, of course, but the two men on his left were the last two I dreamed about and the person next to George Oliver on his right is the third.”
Felicia scooted over so she could see exactly who Richard Anderson was pointing at in each case. There was one person he hadn’t mentioned, a younger man with a very ‘90s kind of hairstyle. The man grinned broadly for the camera.
“What about the guy at the end? You never saw him?”
Anderson looked again. “No. He doesn’t seem familiar to me. Where did you get this photo?”
“Matt Harrison—whom I believe you met—scanned it from George Oliver’s widow. Apparently, they were all participants in some experimental drug trial for Chapman-Bower’s Disease, a rare neurological condition. Dr. Banks was the one administering the trial.”
Anderson stroked his chin. “So they all are connected.” He chuckled but then his gaze turned serious again. “But why did I dream about them? Why me?” He looked to Felicia for an answer.
“I don’t know. But I wish we could identify these people. Are you sure you didn’t see them in any of the obituaries we looked at?”
“Positive. If they had been in the obituaries, I would have recognized them.”
“Is there anything else you can remember from those dreams that might help us identify them? Anything at all?” Felicia asked, fearing they were hitting a brick wall.
“Sorry. The most distinct part of the dreams was the faces. At this point, that’s really all I remember.” After another moment of silent contemplation, Anderson said, “Was this rare genetic condition fatal?”
“Yes.”
“Then I guess we know how they died.”
“According to Harrison, Oliver died of trauma to his head. People assumed he fell due to his condition. And so far, none of the other people in Grace’s or your dreams died of natural causes.”
“So then Stevenson Industries is the only common denominator for all these people.” Anderson frowned at the photo.
Felicia nodded. But a lot of people were associated with the giant pharmaceutical company. Why these people? And what bridged the almost thirty-year gap between Richard Anderson’s and Grace’s dreams? Questions still abounded. The one most prescient to Felicia seemed to be, who was the fifth man in the picture? At the moment, he was an anomaly. And anomalies bugged Felicia.
Death Prophets Page 16
