“Don’t forget the dog,” Charlie said.
“Actually, I hadn’t. But I am pretty sure he doesn’t figure into this scenario. The odds, as I was saying, are huge. Picketsville is not Juarez or Detroit. It is a sleepy little town in the heart of Virginia. It’s not Grover’s Corners either, but it’s not close to being a high-crime venue. So, we take a different tack. Up to this point we have pursued the killing of Duffy and Smith separately from the attempt on Ruth, and assumed Fiske was connected to her. What if we have that backward?”
“How’s that?”
“We have several choices. First, they are not connected. Duffy died for one reason at the hands of one killer, Smith at the hands of another, neither is connected to each other or to Fiske and/or Ruth. Possible? Yes. Probable? No. What have we then?”
“I have no idea.” Frank’s forehead began to take on the appearance of an old-fashioned washboard.
“Second, they are connected someway and the connection is in that book of yours, Frank. Much more likely Duffy and Smith are connected. Third, all three murders, Duffy, Smith, and Fiske, and, therefore, the attempt on Ruth, are all connected. Again, possible? Yes. Probable? Well, I admit it’s a stretch.”
“Ignoring Fiske for the moment, how do you connect the murders of two local yokels engaged in petty larceny to an attempted murder in Washington, DC?”
“I don’t know. I’m just saying. Maybe I should have a look at the book.”
“You left out a fourth scenario.” Charlie said.
“What’s that?”
“There is the will business which we can probably discount, but one person has the same cause to be angry, maybe even murderously so, and wish to bump off Fiske, as you do. She also has motive, means, and opportunity, and she listens.”
“Who? You don’t mean…”
“Eden Saint Clare.”
“No, I’m not going to go there again, Charlie. I concede that on paper it’s a remote possibility, an extremely remote possibility, but I’m not willing to even consider it now, thank you. So where are we? We need something to link murder number one to number two, one and two to Washington, and so on. Frank, take us from the beginning. Start on Sunday.”
“Sunday? Well, the attempt was made on Ruth that night and—”
“No, wait. Go back. Monday morning, or was it afternoon? It doesn’t matter. When I called you, you said two things happened Sunday night or thereabouts. A ruckus at the Roadhouse and a truck was reported missing and then not missing. Have I got that right?”
“Yeah, but I don’t see what—”
“I don’t either but we need to put down everything. So Roadhouse—not likely, and a truck reported out of place. Jesus, the truck. Frank, tell me about the truck.”
“What’s to tell? In addition to being used to steal hay, which probably explains why it ended up in the wrong place that morning, we know it belongs to Callend. They use it for general hauling, trash, leaves, deliveries, and so on. In the winter they attach a…oh my God.”
“They attach a snowplow. The bumper of that truck has been modified to accept the low-blade snowplow the school occasionally needs to clear its parking lots and driveway. How much do you want to bet they also painted that bumper with black Rustoleum after they made the modifications?”
“It was black all right, and scratched up a bit. So you think Fiske took the truck to DC and waited for Ruth? But how would he know when and where to find her?”
“Ruth received a call that evening. She didn’t tell me who called or why. It was not like her, but she didn’t. I assumed it had something to do with me and she preferred not to say anything just then. We know from the ME’s report,” Ike shuffled through the stack of papers on the desk and pulled up a sheet, “that Fiske owned the phone or at least had it on him when he died. If the surveillance tapes from the drugstore are to be believed, Fiske bought the phone and had it in his possession that Sunday night. He calls, tells Ruth something she can’t repeat to me, and arranges to meet her at a specific place and time.”
“He waits, sees the car and his opportunity, whacks the car, and hightails it back to Picketsville. In his excitement, he parks it in the wrong place. But why a truck?”
“He needed something that had three things going for it. It was big and heavy. It was available, and it would be the last thing a suspicious mind would think was following him, or in this case, her.”
“So you are back to Fiske. Fine, and that connects to your other two murders, how?” Charlie said.
“I don’t know, do you, Ike?”
Essie stepped into the office and dropped the ME’s reports on Ike’s desk. He glanced at them, started to put them aside, and then looked more closely.
“Well, this is interesting. Ballistics shows that the automatic found at Fiske’s house is the gun used to shoot Smith.”
“We’re getting somewhere—Fiske killed Smith.”
“Not yet. All it says is the gun was the one used. You are assuming Fiske fired it. But, it’s been wiped and then one set of very iffy prints were found on it.” He read further. “Fiske’s. No other prints.”
“So, it could have been a dead hand and drop.”
“Could have. Or not. Let’s see how it fits first. Try this: our hay heisters have been using the truck for a month or so. Duffy goes to collect it that Sunday night and it’s gone. ‘What’s this?’ he says, and calls Smith to see if, by any chance, he’s beat him to it. He hasn’t. Duffy is interested in who else is moonlighting with the school’s equipment and periodically checks to see when and by whom it is returned. He sees our guy. He thinks that’s interesting. He wonders if he can stiff the guy for a few bucks by threatening to report him for unauthorized use of school property. He doesn’t know that the stakes are considerably higher and he discovers that fact only after he’s conked on the head and killed.”
“Very neat,” Charlie cut in. “But you still have to weave in Smith, and even when you do that, you still have a very dead Fiske to explain away.”
“I know, I know. You don’t have to remind me. If Smith went with Duffy, they’d both be killed at the same time. If he didn’t, what put him in harm’s way?”
“Do we start over?” Frank looked weary. He placed the notebook on the desk. “I need a break. Anyone?” Ike waved him off. Charlie shook his head. Frank left and rummaged through the drawer of the credenza holding the coffee urn. “Essie, what happened to all the tea bags?”
Essie looked up from her crossword puzzle. “Amos Wickwire used them all up. I told him we would bill his department, but he only gave me a dirty look. Drink coffee.”
“I hate coffee.”
Ike picked up the reports again.
“They found a .45 shell casing in the woods near Smith’s body with a thumbprint on it.”
“Fiske’s?”
“No, not his. That doesn’t any make sense. Maybe it’s from another time and…no, what are the chances? I mean, how many .45’s are discharged in the woods right where we find a body? Something is screwy here. Someone else had the gun first.”
Charlie scratched his chin. “Which begs the question, does it not? Was the gun found in the house the one that shot Smith? Yes it was. So then, did the gun actually belong to Fiske? Maybe not. We have doubts, yes? And finally, maybe it was his, but someone else loaded it. That opens another door. Do you want to go through it?”
“Later if I have to. There are antecedent things to be considered. Too damn many things to be exact. Let me see that notebook.”
Ike retrieved the book and slowly leafed through it. He paused once and then began again at the first page. “I didn’t make Smith out as much of an organized man, and I don’t think he would keep records like these. This must have been Duffy’s book.”
“That was my thought, too.” Frank had perked up.
/> “If so, when Duffy didn’t score his big hit, but ended up suffocated in a school vehicle instead, Smith must have wondered. He found the book and, as unlikely as it seems, he figured it out as well. Then he went for the score himself and ended up the same as Duffy, only shot, not asphyxiated. The gun suggests it was Fiske whom he met.”
Charlie tilted back in his chair and closed his eyes. “Smith and Duffy notwithstanding, the real question is, as I have said repeatedly, who killed Fiske? If you don’t unravel that one, you have nothing.”
Ike nodded and sifted through the contents of the notebook. He removed the newspaper clippings and arranged them on the desk. “What are all these about?”
Chapter Forty-five
Frank leaned over Ike’s shoulder. He sorted the clippings by date and then pointed at each in return.
“The older ones are articles about Smith or Duffy, mostly Duffy, their arrests, a softball game in which one or the other played, and so on. And there’s this old coupon for a discount on an oil change.”
“An oil change coupon? Why would he keep that? It’s lapsed.”
“Probably forgot about it. My mother has a drawer in the kitchen overflowing with lapsed coupons. Ask any coupon clipper and they will tell you the great drawback with coupons is the lapse at different times, and unless you are super organized and cross-reference them by type and date, you will, on any given day, have many more useless coupons than good ones.”
“Am I hearing the voice of experience?” Ike picked it up and frowned. He tossed it back on the desk and it fluttered and turned over, revealing its reverse side. “Wait. It’s not the coupon. This is an article about Ruth and what they were calling her accident. That’s odd. Why would Duffy have saved that?”
“You’re sure it’s not the coupon? It makes more sense, given Duffy is doing the clipping.”
“No. I’m not sure. But, let me think a minute.” Ike picked up the clipping again and read it. It wasn’t easy, but he did. At the bottom, he saw an awkwardly written series of numbers. “What’s this?”
“Numbers. A date?”
“No, can’t be. Too many digits. There are ten in a row. Dates have a minimum of four and a maximum of eight. What has ten?”
“A phone number?”
“Exactly. So, whose phone number did he write on the clipping and why?”
“You could call it and see who answers.”
“Wouldn’t do that,” said Charlie. He lowered the front legs of his chair to the floor with a crash. “Look it up. If it’s connected to the rest of this, and you call from here, it could spook the party at the other end.”
“Essie,” Ike yelled through the door, “Look up this number.” He read off the digits.
“Don’t have to,” She yelled back. “I already know whose it is.”
“Who?”
“It’s the Overton woman’s direct line at the university. I just called her back. She left her raincoat. Why do you want to know?”
“Overton? What the hell?”
***
Ike instructed Essie to have Sheila Overton wait in the interview room while he shuffled through the papers on his desk once again. He read, paused, and closed his eyes. His fingers drummed rhythmically. He repeated the process. Papers moved from left to right and back again. His face brightened. He walked to Grace White’s bailiwick and handed her the file with the findings about the shell casing from the woods. While she manipulated her computer to log onto AFIS, he reviewed the surveillance tapes from the drugstore. Grace typed in a query to the DoD and Ike made a call to the president’s house at Callend. All this took twenty minutes. Finally, Grace handed him a sheaf of print-outs, her eyebrows forming a ragged question mark. Ike smiled his thanks and then, face set, he entered the interview room.
Sheila Overton sat exactly as she had earlier, her raincoat in her lap, and a worried look on her face. Ike laid a stack of papers on the table between them.
“I’m sorry to have to inconvenience you again, Ms. Overton, but since you were here earlier, some new information has come to light and I need to ask you a few more questions.”
“Sure, what do you want to know?”
“How do you know Martin Duffy?”
“Who?”
“Duffy, Marty Duffy. He worked in the maintenance department at Callend. You must have seen him around campus.”
“Gosh, I guess I might have, but I don’t know. Maybe.”
“I ask because your direct-line phone number appears on a slip of paper we believe he carried before he was murdered.”
“He was murdered. I thought it was a suicide.”
“You know about his suicide? You said you didn’t know him.”
“I just remembered. I mean, I work…worked for the acting president. We knew, of course.”
“Of course you would. So you did know him.”
“Like I said, I worked in the…He had my phone number? I don’t see how. I mean, no, I didn’t know him like that.”
“I see. Tell me something else, then. You mentioned in your earlier statement to us that you were aware that Doctor Fiske padded his CV. Is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“You also mentioned that you thought he was being blackmailed. Is that also correct?” Sheila nodded. “Is it possible that the person blackmailing Doctor Fiske was Duffy?”
“I don’t know. Why would he—”
“Or Bob Smith. Might he have been the person blackmailing Doctor Fiske?”
“Who is Bob…who did you say?”
“Smith, Bob Smith.”
“I have no idea. You think these men were blackmailing him over the CV business?”
“Not quite. You mentioned that Fiske said he’d done something. When I asked you what is was, you said you didn’t know. But you do know, don’t you?”
“No, I don’t know what you mean.”
“Come, come, Ms. Overton. What is it you believe Fiske did?” Sheila’s lower lip began to quiver. “It’s no good, we know you know. You all but told us and then you pulled back.”
“I didn’t want to say. He was my partner, I loved him, you know, and since he was dead I didn’t think it mattered anymore.”
“What did he do?”
“He said he tried to kill Ms. Harris. The reason he missed our evening together was because he was in Washington trying to make her car crash.”
“We thought so, too. We were at his house to arrest him for it, did you know that?”
“Arrest him? No, how could I?”
Ike shuffled through the various reports on the table again. “He had a second cell phone. It was that phone we queried him about, and he panicked after that and came to you, is that right?”
“Yeah, I guess so. I should have told you what I knew but I thought, well, like I said, we were more than close. We were supposed to get married, but I guess he wanted to wait until he got a president’s job.”
“He said that?”
“Not in so many words but, anyway, it wasn’t working. God knows he tried, but no matter what we did, he never connected. I don’t know why, but it never happened.”
“It never happened, Ms. Overton, because he was a phony. Academics tend to be fuzzy about most things in the real world, but they know their turf. Your boy tried but never quite got it, and eventually they would have suspected something was not right. So, he was never given a shot. Probably never would be. Doctor Harris all but told him so.”
“That snotty bi…. Yeah? Well, he said he was tired of all that and he decided if he knocked off President Harris, he would naturally fall into her place—worst case he’d have a couple of years as Acting to make a record and land what he wanted. I don’t know, but I didn’t approve, of course, naturally, but it made some sense, you know?”
“Your boyfriend had reached his position in accord with the Peter Principle—he’d attained the highest level of incompetence. It’s unlikely he would ever advance from there. And it was only a matter of time before he was exposed. Indeed that process was already under way, as you know. If you hadn’t been besotted, you’d have seen it. But that’s neither here nor there. Someone shot him and my job is to find out who pulled the trigger.”
“Who did it?”
“Indeed—who?”
Chapter Forty-six
Ike shuffled his reports again and kept Sheila Overton in the corner of his eye. Her nervousness seemed to escalate with every page he turned. She crossed and uncrossed her legs almost synchronously as each piece of paper moved from left to right. She searched her purse and then popped a stick of chewing gum in her mouth.
“You know, I am easily distracted sometimes, Ms. Overton. For reasons about which I am not proud, I generally think of a man when I’m looking for a person who has committed a crime of violence. Doctor Harris is always taking me to task about that. She says I am a male chauvinist. She’s probably right about that, actually. Anyway, it makes it difficult for me in those few instances when the criminal is female, you see?”
“See what? Who do you think killed Scott?”
“In a minute, in a minute. You used the words, ‘someone higher up.’ What did you mean by that?”
“Umm…”
“Did you think someone like me might have killed Doctor Fiske? Perhaps you thought I found out about the phone call and put the picture together and killed him, right?”
“Well…I mean…”
“In some police departments, the chief, or in my case, the sheriff, sits in an office and directs traffic, so to speak. He could slip out, knock off someone like your friend, return, and who would suspect him, right?”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean anything, but I guessed you’d be pretty angry and all, and it seemed like it could have been you or one of her friends.”
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