Barry Friedman - Dead End

by Barry Friedman

  Anderson’s eyebrows went up. “You didn’t get the word? Oh yeah, you were on the road all morning. We pulled in this drifter about six this morning. He had been hangin’ around town for about a week with two other bums. They were sleepin’ in an empty shack about a mile out of town. Come in every day to buy cheap wine and some grub. Our deputies’d kick ‘em out of the shack but they’d go back. We’d ‘a pulled ‘em in before all this happened but our jail space is so fuckin’ crowded. The last thing we needed was some more smelly bodies.”

  Maharos said, “You think he was the one that killed Hamberger?”

  Anderson leaned back, creaking the springs on his chair. “Oh he’s the one, all right. Had Noah’s wallet in his sack.”

  “Was he still in the shack when you found him?”

  “Nah. Bastard was on the road, State Route 39, tryin’ to hitch a ride. The other two took off. We’ve got a huntin’ party out. We’ll pick ‘em up.”

  Anderson sat forward and leaned his elbows on the desk. He peered intently at Maharos. “On the phone last night you said somethin’ about a connection between this case and one you’re workin’ on?”

  Maharos shrugged. “Well, before you told us about this suspect you’ve got, we thought the M.O. in your case sounded something like a case we’re running. Now I’m not so sure.”

  Fiala said. “Can we see your collar?”

  “Sure. He’s upstairs in the lock-up. We’ve got an interrogation room there. I’ll send one of the deputies up with you.”

  Maharos said, “Has he got a lawyer yet?”

  Anderson waved his hand, “Shit yes. We ran this by the book. The public defender is a young squirt just out of law school. I’ll get him down here. We’re runnin’ a NCIC check on the guy. Should have it on the computer in a little while. Want some coffee?”

  “That would be nice, thanks. By the way, did you get a gunpowder residue test on your suspect?”

  Anderson jutted out his jaw. “Hey, we may be country cousins, but we know all about that scientific shit—just like you big city boys. Yeah, the tech from the Mobile Lab is runnin’ the test. Don’t have the results yet though.”

  Maharos said nothing. The sheriff was obviously touchy about the city detectives questioning his handling of the case. He would have to back off. He might need the guy’s cooperation.

  * * *

  Maharos and Fiala were seated in the reception area outside the sheriff’s office drinking coffee. A guy in a suit, early thirties, tousled, sandy hair, came through the door and strode up to them. A wide grin on his freckled face gave him a Tom Sawyer-like appearance. “Hi, you the Youngstown detectives?”

  Maharos nodded.

  “I’m Harry Robinson, the public defender. I understand you want to talk to my client.”

  “If it’s okay with you—and him.”

  “Want to tell me what it’s about?”

  “We’re working a homicide by an unknown perpetrator, happened just outside Youngstown. A lawyer named Horner. Maybe you heard about it. We got word that the pattern of Mr. Hamberger’s murder has some features that resemble those of Horner’s. We’d like to talk to your man.”

  Robinson sat without speaking for ten seconds. Finally, he said, “Do you really think there’s any connection between the two?”

  Maharos said, “Frankly, we don’t know what to think. We didn’t even know anybody had been pulled in on the Hamberger case until we got down here a few minutes ago. We came down to get what information we could, check out the scene, that sort of thing. But, as long as we’re here and the sheriff has a suspect in custody, we’d like to ask him a few questions.”

  “I can’t see where it can do any harm,” said Robinson. “I’ll have to ask my client, of course.”

  In the elevator with Robinson and a deputy sheriff, Maharos and Fiala were quiet. Robinson said, “Mind if I ask, what’s the resemblance between this case and yours?”

  Maharos said, “Sure. Both were gunned from behind, two small caliber hits each, heads bashed in, too, and were left in their vehicles on dirt roads close to I 77. One of the things we wanted to check out was the ballistics from the Hamberger case to see if we’ve got a match.”

  Robinson asked, “Where near I 77?”

  “Portage Lakes.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Between Akron and Canton.”

  “That’s a long way from here.”

  Maharos shrugged.

  Robinson said, “When was your guy killed?”

  “About a month ago. In fact, just a month ago.”

  “Any prints in your case?”

  Maharos shook his head.

  “Any suspects?”

  “Nope.”

  “Was the guy robbed?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  The elevator door opened and the four men got out. The deputy walked ahead. Robinson turned and faced Maharos and Fiala. “Wait, let me get this straight. There are two homicides, both of which were caused by shots from behind, both had head injuries, the bodies were found near I 77 about 50 miles apart, both were robbed and you think there’s a similarity?”

  Maharos smiled.

  Robinson went on. “How many homicides were there in Ohio the past month? How many were shot? How many were robbed? How many people travel down I 77?”

  “When you put it that way, it’s pretty far-fetched.”

  Robinson rolled his eyes. “Boy! Still want to talk to my man?”

  Fiala said, “Well, we’re here. What’ve we got to lose?”

  “Listen, the best thing I could wish for is that both these murders were committed by the same person—and it turned out to be someone other than the guy in here.”

  They were standing outside the cellblock door. The deputy spoke into a wall phone and another uniformed officer unlocked the steel-barred door. He ushered them into the cellblock and clanged the door shut behind them. He led them down a narrow cement corridor. On either side were two barred cells. Maharos thought four cells was a little overkill for a community the size of this farm county. Still, each small cell held two prisoners who watched in silence from the double-decker bunks on which they sat or lay sprawled. The confined space smelled like the dregs of a wine barrel mixed with the odor of urine. At the end of the corridor was a windowless interrogation room furnished with a wooden table and four chairs. The three men sat waiting while the deputy went back to get the prisoner.

  Fiala placed a small portable tape recorder on the table and pressed the “record” button.

  Maharos said, “What’s your client’s name?”

  “Roy Young,” said Robinson.

  A moment later, the deputy returned leading a tall, thin-faced man in his early twenties, wearing a prison gray coverall stenciled in front with large black letters that read “Property of Tuscarawas County.” On the back, were even larger letters that read “Prisoner.” A lock of dark brown hair hung over one eye. A stubble beard covered the lower half of his face. His hands were manacled behind his back and his gaze was fixed to the floor. When he was seated, the deputy unlocked the handcuffs and remained standing alongside him.

  Maharos said, “You can leave him with us. We’ll yell for you when we’re through.”

  The deputy nodded and left.

  Fiala talked to the tape recorder. “Today is June 8. It is 11:45 a.m. and we are in the Tuscarawas County Administration Building. Present are: Homicide Detectives Al Maharos and Frank Fiala, Youngstown P.D., Harry Robinson, Tuscarawas County Public Defender and Roy Young, suspect being held in the County Jail.

  Robinson turned to the prisoner. “Roy, these are detectives from Youngstown. They’re working on a case up there and want to ask you some questions. Is that okay with you?”

  Young looked up for the first time. Creases appeared between his brows. “Youngstown?”

  Maharos asked, “Ever been there?”

  “I don’t even know where it is.” His voice was accented with an Appalachian drawl.

  Ro
binson held up a hand. “For the record, Roy, are you willing to answer their questions?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Say ‘yes’ or ‘no’.”

  “Yes.”

  Robinson nodded at Maharos. “All right Detective Maharos. You may proceed.”

  Maharos fixed his gaze on the young attorney for five seconds. He thought, kid’s just out of law school, already he’s a judge. He turned to the prisoner. “Mr. Young, do you have an address?”

  “Shit no.”

  “How long have you been in New Philadelphia?”

  Young shrugged a shoulder, “I don’t know, couple’a weeks.”

  “Where were you before you came here?”

  He looked at the ceiling. “Let’s see, I think in Wheeling, yeah, Wheeling.”

  “That’s West Virginia, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “Have you ever been north of New Philadelphia?”

  “Where’s north?”

  Maharos glanced at Fiala who was slowly shaking his head.

  “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-four.”

  “Where were you born?”

  “Kentucky.”

  “Where in Kentucky?”

  “Doylesville. Small town outside Lexington.”

  “When was the last time you had a job?”

  Young looked at Robinson. “Do I have to answer all these chickenshit questions?”

  The lawyer said, “Only if you want to.”

  Maharos decided he was wasting his time. “Look, Young, the sheriff told me they picked you up on suspicion of murder…”

  Young, for the first time came out of his sullen stance. He leaned forward placing his palms on the table. His eyes blazed. “You tell the sheriff he’s full a shit! I didn’t kill nobody.”

  Maharos went on quietly, “He told me they found the wallet belonging to the murdered man in your possession.”

  Young sat back. “Okay, I took the guy’s wallet. He’s layin’ in the back of the truck, right? I thought he was drunk and figured to roll him. I grabbed the wallet and ran. I swear, I didn’t know the guy was dead until the deputy picked me up and brought me here. I thought he was pullin’ me in for vagrancy. I figured I’d get a few meals off the county. I shoulda taken the fifteen fuckin’ bucks and thrown the fuckin’ wallet and the credit cards away. I never killed nobody.”

  Maharos had questioned enough people in his fifteen years as a police officer. He knew when someone was lying. Young was a bum, a drunk, a vagrant, probably a petty thief. He may have killed someone before in a drunken brawl, but he was telling the truth now. He turned to Fiala. “Want to ask anything more, Frank?”

  Fiala said, “Done any time, Roy?”

  Young shrugged, “A little. County joints. No hard time.”

  “Where?”

  “Kentucky, West Virginia.”

  “Ohio?”

  “Nuh-uh. I only been in Ohio a few weeks.”

  Maharos decided they’d had enough. He got up and rapped on the door while Fiala turned off the recorder and tucked it under his arm. The deputy returned, led the prisoner back to his cell, then escorted the three men back to the cellblock entrance and let them out. Robinson told Maharos and Fiala he would take them back to the sheriff’s office.

  Sheriff Anderson had left for lunch but the secretary in his office handed Maharos a sheet of computer paper. He recognized it as a report from the National Crime Information Center in Washington, D.C. “Sheriff Anderson said you could look at this. He said he’d be back in an hour. if you want to wait.”

  Maharos and Fiala glanced at the paper. It stated that Roy Young had not been arrested for any serious crime. Stapled to the NCIC report was a record that had been obtained from the Kentucky Bureau of Criminal Information. It listed Young’s previous arrests and convictions. There were half a dozen, all for vagrancy, public intoxication, assault and battery. His incarcerations had been in city and county jails, as he had told them.

  Maharos handed the paper back to the secretary. She said, “Sheriff Anderson said if you wanted to view the murder scene he’d have one of the deputies take you out there.”

  “We’d like that,” said Maharos. “Is there somewhere nearby to grab a bite?”

  “Uh-huh. There’s a cafeteria one floor up—if you don’t mind the food.”

  Maharos and Fiala were finishing their overcooked hamburgers when a deputy sheriff came to the table where they sat. He looked about twenty, pink-cheeked, light brown hair, wearing a uniform that looked as though it had just come out of a box. The nametag on his uniform read “L. Raymond.”

  “You Detective Maharos?”

  Maharos nodded.

  “I’m Larry Raymond. Whenever you’re ready I’ll drive you out to where they found Mr. Hamberger’s body.”

  “We’re ready.”

  Raymond took them to a black and white Dodge with a large star decal on each side door. He drove about a mile to the entrance ramp to Interstate 77. While he drove, he told them that he had answered the call when the report came in the previous afternoon that Hamberger’s body was found in the bed of his pickup. A farmer who lived off the dirt road where the truck had been parked had phoned the report in. Raymond had remained at the scene until after the coroner’s assistant had pronounced the man dead, inspected the body and removed it to the county morgue. A mobile unit from the Stark County Crime Lab in Canton had gone over the murder scene. They had dusted the truck for latent prints. No weapon had been found.

  About three miles north of New Philadelphia, Raymond took a freeway exit marked “Dover” and “State Route 39.” He drove for a mile on the State Route, then turned right on a narrow dirt road. A quarter of a mile further on he pulled to the side of the road.

  “Here we are,” he said.

  Maharos looked around. The road was bordered on both sides by a pine woods. Yellow plastic tape strips partially covered by dust, lay in the road and hung limply from the surrounding bushes, the remnants of the sheriff’s cordon.

  He said, “Did the Crime Lab technicians find anything?”

  Raymond told them that casts had been made of several footprints in the dirt around the truck but nothing else had turned up.

  Leaving Raymond and Fiala talking by the side of the patrol car, Maharos walked down the road in the direction they had come in. He looked to either side as he strolled. About 100 yards from where they had parked, he noticed a single tire track in the dirt by the side of the road. He traced it with his eyes; saw that it led, through a shallow ditch, to a dense clump of bushes a yard from the side of the road. One bush was flattened down, its twigs bent, as though pressed down by a heavy object.

  He called to Fiala and Raymond and they trotted to where he stood. Maharos pointed to the tire track and the partly crushed bush. “Looks like some kind of vehicle was driven in here.”

  Fiala said, “Single track. What are you thinking, motorcycle?”

  “Maybe. Sheriff Raymond, was this segment cordoned off?”

  Raymond looked up and down the road as though trying to jog his memory. “I don’t think so.”

  “Were there many gawkers?”

  “Yeah. It didn’t take long for the word to get out. A lot of the locals came over to see what happened to Noah Hamberger. I’m sure there were lots of people right here, especially kids, you know, young guys from the farms around. Especially since it was Sunday, they had nothing else to do. They couldn’t come close to where the truck was parked because we had the area cordoned. So they looked on from here and from the road beyond where the truck was parked.”

  Maharos scratched his chin. “Well, it wouldn’t do any harm to take a cast of this tire track and also take a closer look at the bush. See if there is anything there that might be helpful.”

  Raymond started toward the ditch but Fiala put his arm out restraining him. “Hold it. This is a job for the lab techs. How long do you think it would take the Mobile Unit to get back here?”


  Raymond shook his head. “We waited over an hour yesterday. They come from Canton, you know.”

  Maharos said, “I think we should send for them again.”

  Raymond hesitated and kept his eyes on the ground.

  Fiala said, “Is there a problem?”

  “Well, I’ll have to run this through my boss.”

  “Anderson?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Fiala said, “Well, go ahead. Get him on the horn.”

  They started walking back toward the patrol car. Raymond shuffled along slowly behind, obviously not anxious to put the request through to Sheriff Anderson. “I’ll put the call through on the cellular phone in my car. Will one of you ask him, you know, about getting the Mobile Unit back here?”

  Maharos said, “I’ll ask him.” Raymond was apparently a new kid on the block. Maybe he had gotten his fingers burned dealing with Anderson before. Anderson thought he had the case locked up with the vagrant he had in custody. Maharos was just as sure he had the wrong man in jail.

  The patrol car had both a radio and cellular phone. Raymond punched up the headquarters on his mobile telephone. More privacy than the radio speaker, Maharos thought. The call was patched through to Anderson. The deputy handed the phone to Maharos. He explained what they had found.

  “What do you think, sheriff, should we get the Mobile Crime Lab back here to take a closer look at those bushes, maybe take casts of that tire track?” His language was as diplomatic as he could make it.

  The sheriff’s voice came blasting through the receiver. “Shit no, I don’t think we need the lab unit back here! Do you know how many people’s been tramplin’ down ever’ bush up and down the goddam road? There were kids there on bicycles, motor scooters, mopeds. Shit, there were even a couple on skateboards, for chrissake. Skateboards on a dirt road! I ain’t gonna waste their time and the county’s money. Besides, I told you, we got the guy already. Lemme talk to Raymond.”

  Maharos handed the phone back to the deputy and watched his face turn to scarlet before he said a demurred, “Yessir,” and hung up.

  Raymond climbed into the driver’s seat. “He wants I should bring you back now.”

  They rode back in silence.