by Jerome Wilde
There was silence on the other end. Then: “I done told them this morning. Don’t know where Earl’s got off to. Ain’t seen him in a coon’s age.”
“I’ve just read through your son’s file, sir. He was charged with molesting his nephew. That would have been your grandson, wouldn’t it?”
There was silence.
“There’s a note here that you, sir, vouched for your son before the court, which was probably why he got off on probation. I suppose I’m wondering how you could have vouched for him, and now you don’t seem to know where he is.”
“He done run off,” Whitehead said angrily.
“Is that right?” I asked. “I guess when you vouch for someone, it doesn’t mean much.”
“Now there ain’t no call for that.”
“Well, sir, I’m going to send your son’s file back over to y’all over there in Quincy, Illinois, and maybe you ought to read it again, and think about what he did to your grandson, and what he’s probably done to some other boy who’s dead now. And if you hear from Earl, I’d appreciate a phone call. That’s if you can be bothered.”
I was going to hang up on him—I was really in a mood and I had my reasons—but he said, “Now wait just a minute. What’d you say your name was?”
“Lt. Thomas Noel,” I replied.
“Like The First Noel?”
I rolled my eyes at the telephone.
“Well, Lieutenant,” he went on, “let me tell you something. Earl was a bit strange, and I’ll be the first to admit it. I tried to protect him. Of course I did, he’s my only son. But I’m well aware of what he did to my grandson, and although it ain’t in that police report, my wife and I have done everything we could to help our grandson and make it up to him. Earl’s got a screw loose. We know that. And if I had any idea in hell where he was, I would have told them this morning, and I would be telling you right now. But we don’t know. The boy don’t call. We haven’t seen hide nor hair of him for about eight years now. But what I’m meaning to tell you is that I think he joined some religious group down there in Missouri.”
When he said “Missouri,” it came out as “Mizzoorah.”
“Do you know the name of that group?”
“I couldn’t tell you,” the man said.
“Do you know anything about this group, how I might track it down?”
“Well, now, Earl sent us some literature once, a few months after he disappeared. It was about how the Holy Father was a heretic and weren’t the Pope no more and stuff like that. Me and my wife don’t go for that. We like the Latin Mass, but we don’t go for calling the Holy Father a heretic.”
“The Latin Mass?” I hadn’t heard anyone talk about the Latin Mass in years.
“Are you Catholic?” he asked.
“Sort of,” I said. An ex-priest was about as Catholic as you could get these days.
“Well, my wife and I, we’re traditional Catholics. We attend the Latin Mass.”
That was certainly fascinating.
“I need to know the name of the group that your son joined. Do you have any way of knowing that?”
“Well, Lieutenant, I couldn’t tell you. My wife is looking through her old letters and trying to find that literature Earl sent us, but she might have thrown it out. It’s been a long time, you know.”
Shit.
“Sir, if there’s any way at all you could find out—did he call you? Do you have copies of your old phone bills? Any way at all to trace his whereabouts?”
“I just can’t help you,” he said.
“Can’t or won’t?” I asked.
“I can’t, Lieutenant. I don’t know where he is. Now if he’s done something to hurt somebody, you can be sure that we’ll cooperate and do whatever we can to help you. I stuck my neck out for that boy once, and he done made a fool of me, and you can be sure it won’t happen twice. You have any kids, Lieutenant?”
“No,” I said.
“Well, sometimes you’ll do anything for your kids, even if it’s not right. But after everything Troy’s been through these past eight years—Troy’s my grandson—well, I guess I just didn’t understand what my son had been doing to him. Troy tried to kill himself, two years ago. Slashed his wrists. I think he meant it, too, because his mother had gone out for the evening but had forgotten her purse, and so she went back home to get it and found him in the bathtub. ’Course, if she hadn’t gone back, he would have bled to death. It wasn’t like he was timing it so she could find him and rescue him. You’re a police officer, you probably know about that.”
I did.
“Anyway,” he said, “if I knew where Earl was, I would tell you. I’d like to think that you believe me when I say that. We’s good people, and I just don’t know what went wrong with Earl, but he’s done embarrassed this family half to death.”
I could only imagine how he must feel, how embarrassing it must be to have a son who was arrested for sexually abusing a child, and who was now wanted in connection with a murder investigation.
“Let me give you my number,” I said, trying to sound more conciliatory, “and if you or your wife think of anything, or if you come across any old letters, anything at all that might help me track down your son, please call me. I don’t care what time of the day or night, just call me straightaway.”
I gave him my cell phone number and rang off.
V
I LOOKED at my watch. It was 9:45 a.m., and Lt. Harris was no doubt preparing himself to bask in glory.
I picked up the phone and called Harlock.
“I think we should run Earl Whitehead’s picture,” I said. “Harris could hand it out during his press conference. We could say he’s a suspect. Right now, he’s the only one we’ve got. If we get lucky, someone may recognize him. Parents haven’t got a clue as to his whereabouts.”
He considered this in silence. Finally, he said, “Do it,” and hung up.
I took Whitehead’s picture from the file and hurried off, Daniel on my heels. Harris was in his office, standing in front of a mirror, checking his teeth.
“You can’t just barge in here,” he said, giving me an embarrassed look after I had done just that.
“Why don’t we run Whitehead’s picture?” I suggested. “Position him as a suspect, because that’s what he is.”
He frowned. “I have to think about this.” He went back to prepping himself.
“I could just leak it,” I said, annoyed.
“I could have your ass.”
“I’d like to see you try.”
“Fine. Leave it on my desk.”
“By the way, this is my new partner.”
“So I gathered.”
“Daniel Qo, meet the ever-charming Mac Harris.”
VI
“ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI—what does it mean?” I asked Daniel. “Is the killer trying to tell us something?”
Daniel squinted up at me, leaned back in his chair, and gave this some thought. I already had my own ideas, but I was curious to see if he had any.
“Something about saints, holy rollers?” he suggested.
I shrugged. That was not quite right.
“Maybe the victim’s name has a ‘St.’ in it, like Susan St. James, or something?”
“That’s closer,” I said. “But what else?”
He continued to ponder but was stumped.
“First thing we’re going to do,” I said, “is fire up the missing persons database.”
I nodded at his computer. I did not have to tell him how this was accomplished; he already knew. He was apparently somewhat of a computer whiz. That would make my life easier.
“What’s the password to get in?” he asked, looking up to me.
“Use your own,” I said. Each detective was given his own system log on name and password, enabling them to access any of the databases we had available.
He typed in his name and password, and the introductory search screen came up.
“Now what?” he asked.
�
�Do a search,” I said. “Let’s look for someone named Francis. That’s the most obvious thing.”
He typed “Francis” into the list of keywords to search for and did not need me to tell him to restrict his search to males ranging in age from fourteen to eighteen in the state of Missouri. He then clicked on the “search” button and we waited for the system to start displaying results, of which there were exactly two, neither of which bore any resemblance to our victim.
“Now what?” he asked, looking up to me again.
“Why are we doing this anyway?” I countered.
“You think the kid might have been a runaway.”
“Yes, but why?”
He considered this but didn’t know.
“Did you read the reports?” I asked.
He nodded.
“And?” I prompted.
“Shit, man, I don’t know. You tell me.”
“First off, the kid is skinny, almost malnourished. That suggests he might have been living on the street and not doing a very good job of it. His teeth were also a bit of a mess, as though he hadn’t been getting proper dental care. That’s another sign of someone on the street. That’s why we look at missing persons first.”
“Oh.”
“So, try the same search, but with all the states included, not just Missouri.”
He did that, turning up a slew of hits, but not the one we were looking for.
“Why don’t I look for kids in Missouri and Kansas who have gone missing in the past four, five days?” he suggested.
I nodded.
He performed the search, and again we waited, then flipped through page after page of information, doing the same search for all the local states, but with no success.
“We may have to do this the hard way,” I said. “Maybe do a search for all missing white males ranging in age from fourteen to eighteen, and then look through them one by one, including all of them in the database going back however many years. If a report was filed five years ago, for example, we’d have to have the art department do an age progression, see if we can get a match.”
“That could take a long time,” he said, frowning.
“It very often does,” I replied. “There is one other shortcut.”
“What?”
“Francis is often shortened to Frank. Why don’t you see if you can pull up any Franks in the database who are the right age and race?”
He pecked away at his keyboard, then sat back, waiting for the results to start coming in.
“If no one has filed a missing persons report on this kid, then we’re wasting our time,” he pointed out.
“I know that,” I said. “But most white kids who go missing are reported, though most of them are runaways who don’t want to be found.”
“Why just white kids?”
“Because a lot of minorities don’t report a missing kid to the police, maybe because they’re afraid of the police, or afraid their immigration status will be affected, or something. Some of them don’t even know they should report a missing child, that the police will do everything they can to find that child. Sometimes it’s just a language barrier thing—the parents don’t speak English, are too intimidated to go to the police station. But most white kids, and black kids, too, for that matter, get reported.”
The results started appearing, and Daniel flipped through the screens. A few minutes later, fifteen-year-old “Frankie Peters” was staring back at us, and something about him looked very familiar.
“When was this filed?” I asked.
Daniel flipped through more screens. “Kid was reported missing two years ago, last May. From Liberty, Missouri.”
“Can you scroll to the bottom of the file, see who was the last person to access this record?”
The last person to look at the file was a patrol officer named William Dunning, at the Liberty County police station, who had left a note to say that the parents had called this past Friday to report they’d had a phone call from their missing boy, but that the call had been abruptly disconnected.
“Can you print this off?” I asked.
VII
MARY BETH paged me two hours later.
“Lieutenant? I have a Mr. and Mrs. Peters here to see you. Do you, like, want to see them? It’s about that crucified kid thing.”
Daniel and I both looked at the phone, frowning.
The crucified kid thing?
I hit the button to reply. “I’ll be right there.”
I walked down the hall to the receptionist’s desk, with Daniel trailing. Mary Beth gave me her doe-in-the-headlights look, which I did my best to ignore.
“Do you, like, want to talk to them?” Mary Beth asked.
“Is the pope, like, Catholic?” I replied.
She frowned. “I’m not sure. Is he?” She probably didn’t know. I tried not to think too unkindly of her; there were Americans who weren’t even sure who George W. Bush was. Which probably wasn’t a bad thing, ignorance sometimes being bliss and all of that—what else could it be if the subject was George W. Bush?
“Yes, I’ll talk to them. Do you suppose that’s why I asked them to come?”
She offered a beaming smile, which was odd.
I went into the waiting room. “Mr. and Mrs. Peters?”
They both stood.
“I’m Lt. Thomas Noel. I’m the one who called. This is my partner, Daniel Qo.”
The woman put a hand to her mouth, then turned to her husband.
“You think you’ve found Frankie? Is that it?” the man asked.
I nodded. “Would you come with us, please?”
I led them to my office and had them sit in the chairs opposite my desk.
“Can we get you something to drink? Coffee, water?”
Neither wanted anything to drink. Both looked to be somewhere in their forties. Both had gone soft around the middle. Both obviously shopped for their clothes at Walmart and pinched pennies to get by and had probably driven here in a pick-up truck. They lived in Liberty, Missouri, which was on the outskirts of Kansas City.
Daniel stood solemnly off to one side, watching me carefully, knowing he was going to have to conduct such conversations himself in the not-too-distant future.
“He ran away two years ago,” Mr. Peters said. “We haven’t heard from him since, don’t know what became of him.”
“Maybe the best thing to do is have a look,” I said, “and then you can decide whether it’s your son or not. Perhaps it won’t be.”
“We just heard from him Friday,” Mr. Peters said. “He called us up. Said he was in trouble and didn’t know how much time he had. We didn’t know what he meant by that. He was in quite a state. Of course we were surprised. Hadn’t heard a word from him in two years. We were starting to think we might never hear from him again. Out of the blue, the telephone rings.”
He fell silent.
Mrs. Peters looked like she might add something, but she did not.
“We stayed home,” Mr. Peters said. “We thought he might call again. We just sat around and waited. We saw the news about that crucified kid, but we didn’t think it would be Frankie. That sketch didn’t look anything like him.”
“Why don’t we go have a look?” I suggested as gently as I could. “Chances are, it’s not your son that we found. But then again, it might be. It might be best if we just settle this right away, and if it’s not your son, then we can talk about his phone call and figure out a way to find out where he is.”
I called Durmount over at the morgue, asking if we could do a viewing of the body.
“Right now?” she asked.
“If it’s possible, yes. We have parents who might be able to identify the body.”
“I’ll get ready.”
Mr. and Mrs. Peters looked at each other, and I could see hope fighting with fear in the gaze that passed between them. The husband stood up, refusing to look at me. The wife glanced in my direction and made a face.
“I’m really sorry,” I said
gently. “It’ll just take a minute.”
“It’s no trouble,” Mr. Peters said, but his voice was small and lost.
I led them through the maze of corridors, out the front door and down the street to the morgue, which was in a separate building. Durmount was waiting for us in the hall. She had pushed the autopsy table to the viewing area where there was a plate glass window. Viewers could stand outside in the hall and look through the window.
I introduced them.
“Thank you for coming,” Durmount said kindly.
They nodded.
“Are you ready?”
They again nodded.
Durmount went back into the autopsy suite and approached the table. Very slowly and very gracefully she pulled back the sheet to reveal the boy’s face and the upper part of his chest, then stood on the other side of the table so she would not obstruct the view. She had cleaned Frankie up as best she could, but there was no disguising the fact that he had been brutalized.
When Mrs. Peters burst into anguished tears, we had our answer.
VIII
“WHO did this to our boy?” Mr. Peters asked.
We were seated in my office once more, and this time they decided that maybe a bit of coffee would be good. They were both about to come unglued, and the age-old ritual of figuring out coffee needs had provided a necessary distraction. Yet when Daniel brought their coffees, neither drank so much as a drop.
“We don’t know yet,” I said, answering his question. “Can you tell me about the phone call you received from your son?”
Mr. Peters seemed bewildered, as if he were a man in a dream, where things weren’t quite right.
“He just called us,” Mr. Peters said absently. “Friday night. Was real odd. He didn’t talk much. Talked to his mother.”
I looked at her.
She was wiping her eyes, and if there had been even an ounce of wind in her sails when she first sat down in that chair, it was now gone. Losing a child had that effect.
