I didn’t comment, partly because it didn’t sound like much progress to me, and partly because Duncan’s phone rang just as he finished talking. I sat quietly, eating my bagel and watching him as he took the call, trying to guess from his facial expression if the news was good or bad. But despite my supposed abilities and my best attempts to eavesdrop, I couldn’t discern if the call was even relevant to the Cooper case. Turned out it was.
“Well, this is an interesting development,” Duncan said when he disconnected the call. “We’ve found Valeria Barnes’s camper.” He punctuated the news with a bite of bagel.
“That’s great!”
“Not really,” Duncan said with a mouthful of cream cheese and bagel. I waited impatiently for him to swallow so he could continue. “The only thing that’s left of it is a burned-out hull. Someone called in a fire in an abandoned lot in West Allis and by the time the fire department responded, the thing was totally engulfed.”
“Sheesh, it’s like you can’t catch a break with this case.”
“It seems that way, I know, but you never know when some seemingly unhelpful evidence will suddenly provide a valuable clue. We’re going to air the Amber Alert again this evening and include a sketch of this Valeria woman this time. Maybe someone will recognize her. In the meantime, can I talk you into coming with me to look at what’s left of the camper?”
“Why? If the thing is burned up, I don’t think I’ll be much help.”
“You won’t know if you don’t try.”
I caved to his request but with a caveat. I insisted on staying at the bar long enough to greet my morning staff and ask them to prep for opening. Duncan agreed—it wasn’t like he had much choice, short of dragging me along with him—and we headed downstairs. Pete and Debra showed up minutes later and I told them I was leaving for a while. Then Duncan headed the two of us to the West Allis site where they’d found the burned-out camper.
The air outside tasted like white bread and I told Duncan the snow that was coming would be the light, fluffy stuff. He gave me an amused look but said nothing. It took us nearly twenty minutes to get to the abandoned lot where the camper was. The entire thing was cordoned off, along with fifty feet or so of ground in either direction, and there was a team of evidence techs along with some arson investigators scouring over the area and what was left of the truck and camper. Duncan made some introductions and then walked me over closer to the camper.
The stench of burnt plastic and other materials filled the air. There was a coat of white foam on top of the camper’s remains and the sight of it made my hands and arms feel sticky. I had a host of other reactions to the smells, the sounds of the crew working, and the various things I looked at, but none of them offered up anything unusual or different that I thought would be of any help.
Duncan spent some time talking to the detectives and arson investigators, leaving me alone in a far corner of the taped-off area around the scene. When he came back to me, he said, “The arson boys said it looks like she used—”
“Gasoline,” I said. “I can tell from the sound. The smell of gasoline sounds like rustling leaves.”
Duncan smiled. “I’m not going to tell them you knew that. They’ve spent a lot of time and money perfecting their ability to examine and analyze fire scenes, only to come up with the same conclusion. Your nose could put them all out of a job.”
I shrugged. “It’s not like it’s very useful information,” I said. “I imagine gasoline is a pretty common thing used to set fires, and anyone can buy it at any one of dozens of gas stations.”
“At least it doesn’t appear that there are any bodies in the camper or the truck,” Duncan said. “We were able to get a VIN number off the truck, but when the guys traced it, they found out that the last registered owner is an older gentleman who lives in Waukesha. He says he sold the camper a little over a month ago to a woman named Carlotta Solis. But we can’t find a Carlotta Solis anywhere and the truck was never registered after the sale.”
“Do you think this Carlotta woman is Valeria Barnes?”
“Probably, but it’s likely another false identity. The man who sold the truck said the woman paid in cash so he didn’t ask any questions.”
“So we’re still no closer to finding the kid.”
“Nope.” He paused and looked at me hopefully. “Unless you have some great revelation to share.”
I shook my head and gave him an apologetic look. His phone rang then, and when he glanced at the caller ID, he said, “It’s Cora. Maybe she’s found something.”
In typical Duncan fashion, he answered the call and then spent most of his time just listening. He didn’t say much beyond an occasional grunt or other noise of acknowledgment. When he was done, he thanked Cora, disconnected the call, and said, “Cora went searching through some genealogy sites and found a Valeria Barnes.”
“That’s great!”
“Not really. This Valeria Barnes was born in Milwaukee thirty-two years ago and she died six months later of pneumonia.”
I pondered this information for a moment. “Do you think our Valeria stole the identity of that one?”
“More than likely.”
“Bummer.”
“Yeah,” Duncan said, looking disappointed. “Another dead end.”
“No pun intended, I take it?”
Duncan smiled, but there was no real humor to it. “This doesn’t seem to be helping, so if you want, I’ll take you back to the bar.”
“That would be great.”
Twenty minutes later, I was back home. Duncan came inside with me for a few minutes to grab a cup of coffee to go. There was a good-sized lunch crowd by the time we got back, and once again we had to field questions about any updates on the Cooper case. Unfortunately, we left the group disappointed.
I worked for a couple of hours behind the bar, and during the late afternoon the predicted snow started to fall. The crime-solving group waxed and waned. Holly and Alicia came in for lunch just after one o’clock. Sam hadn’t come in at all, but Carter showed up around noon and joined Cora and the Signoriello brothers, all of whom had been parked in the bar since it opened, according to Debra. Dr. T was there, too, though she said she once again had to be at work by three. The group also had a couple of newcomers, two male students from nearby Marquette University—Rob and Allen—who said they were business majors. Everyone was trying to solve today’s riddle, which came from Frank and Joe Signoriello. And it was literally that—a riddle.
I wasn’t in the mood for games—little Davey Cooper had consumed all my thoughts and interest—so I wasn’t going to get involved. But when the Signoriello brothers urged me to play and told me that the answer to the riddle had a tie-in with the Cooper case, my interest was piqued. Besides, the brothers were so excited over their contribution to the group, I didn’t have the heart to snub them.
“It’s Tuesday, which means it’s Vandalism Day,” Joe said.
“That means Bad Attitudes are half price,” I said. “Who wants one?”
The Signoriellos took me up on the offer, as did Carter, Rob, and Allen. Dr. T, Alicia, and Holly all opted for a virgin version of the drink, which was made using coconut-flavored coffee syrup, some rum flavoring mixed with a little simple syrup, and then equal portions of ginger ale and pineapple juice, topped off with a touch of cloves in place of the spiced rum.
Cora, who seemed distracted by something she was doing on her laptop, had her usual glass of Chardonnay.
When everyone had their drinks and food, Joe said, “In honor of Vandalism Day, we came up with a bit of graffiti in the form of a riddle. In order to solve the case and find the perpetrator, or at least get a lead on him, you’ll have to solve the riddle.”
“Listen carefully,” Frank said. “Five hundred begins it, five hundred ends it, five in the middle is seen. First of all figures and the first of all letters take up their stations between. Join all together, and you bring before you the name of an eminent king.”
The group got busy with Allen writing on a napkin, and they started by jotting down the number five hundred twice with the number five in the middle: 5005500.
“Is it a phone number?” Allen asked.
The Signoriello brothers, both of whom were looking smug, shook their heads in unison.
“You have to add the rest of the riddle in,” Carter said. Then he wrote down the numbers on a different napkin. “The first of all figures is one, right?” he said.
“What about zero?” Rob posed.
“Hmm, good point,” Carter said. He then wrote down 50050500 and the group stared at it for a minute or so without anyone offering up a guess.
“If the fives were ones, I’d think it was some kind of binary code,” Allen said.
“We still need to add in the rest of the riddle,” Carter reminded the group. “The first of all letters is the letter A.” A new napkin appeared and this time he wrote down two lines of figures. The first one was 50050A500 and the second one was 50051A500.
Once again the group stared at the figures in silence, occasionally turning the napkin around and staring at the answer sideways and upside down. I did so as well and told the group, “The colors are all wrong.” They all looked at me as if I’d said the sky was pink, so I tried to explain. “Numbers and letters all have colors when I see them, and these don’t work. The letter is blue, but the numbers are red and yellow.”
I could tell from the looks I was getting that the entire group was confused by my comment. Allen and Rob probably thought I was off my rocker totally, since they were new to the bar and didn’t know about my synesthesia. I shrugged and said, “Welcome to my world.”
There was some more discussion about the figures, and guesses were put forth that they represented an address of some type, or a shipping container, or an identification number of some sort. The Signoriello brothers promptly shot each proposed solution down.
I was about to give up and go back to working the bar when I remembered Joe saying that the answer had a tie-in with the Cooper case. That’s when it hit me. In my mind, the numbers changed and the colors suddenly worked. “I got it!” I said. Not wanting to spoil it for the rest of the group, I walked over and whispered my answer in Joe’s ear.
Joe gave me a respectful look and said, “She figured it out.”
There was a chorus of moans from the others. “I’m not going to tell you,” I said. “I’ll let the rest of you figure it out so someone can win a free meal.”
“Can you at least give us a hint?” Holly said.
I looked at the brothers and they shrugged in unison. “Okay, here’s a clue. Think about who came up with this riddle and where they’re from.”
There were several seconds of silence, and then Carter said, “You guys are Italian, right?”
The brothers nodded.
More silence followed as the group tried to figure out how the brothers’ ethnicity tied into it—everyone except Cora, who was still occupied by whatever she was doing on her computer. Then Allen snapped his fingers and said, “I got it. The numbers are Roman numerals.”
As soon as he said this, the group grabbed another napkin and started interpreting the riddle using this idea. It took some discussion to agree on what the Roman numeral for five hundred was because some in the group thought it was a C, and others thought it was an M or an L. Eventually, they all agreed on D, and after a few seconds of rearranging things, they came up with the answer: DAVID.
Since Allen was the one who figured out the hint, I awarded him a free meal. Everyone congratulated the brothers on coming up with such a clever riddle, and it did my heart good to see them both basking in the praise.
That was when Cora finally looked up from whatever she was doing and said, “I have something. I need to call Duncan right away.”
Chapter 26
I led Cora, carrying her laptop, into my office and we used the bar phone to call Duncan. I was dying to ask Cora what it was she had found, but I held back, figuring I’d get clued in when she told Duncan.
After a brief greeting, she said, “I found the death certificate for Valeria Barnes and it listed Milwaukee Memorial as the hospital where she was born and where she died. That got me to thinking that whoever used her identity might have had access to her medical records. So I started searching for other people who had died at that same hospital at a very young age and then I started researching the names. Some of them were too common to be of much use, but I remembered you saying that Valeria looked and sounded Hispanic, so I focused on any names that sounded like they were of Mexican or Spanish origin and I found something interesting. Several names of babies and children who died young during the seventies and eighties came up as names with current IDs. And they didn’t exist anywhere that I could find up until the past two or three years, when they suddenly appeared in utility billing records, welfare applications, and with DMV.”
She paused and listened for a minute or two, and then said, “Do you really want me to answer that, Duncan? We’ve been down this road before. You know that what I do isn’t one hundred percent legal, so it might be better if you don’t know. Plausible deniability and all that, remember?”
She listened again and then said, “Yes, I realize it’s an issue for you from an evidence standpoint, but at least it gives you a lead. I’m thinking that the person who created Valeria Barnes, or perhaps even Valeria herself, might have access to those old hospital and death records. It’s worth a look.”
Over the next few minutes, I sat and listened as Cora read off the names she had found. When she was done, she said, “Yes, she’s sitting right here across from me. Do you want to talk to her?” She then handed me the phone.
“Hi,” I said. “This is good news, isn’t it?”
“It might be,” Duncan said. “Unfortunately, I can’t use the information she gave me to search the hospital records. No one will give me a search warrant based on some coincidental name similarities.”
“My mother was in Milwaukee Memorial Hospital when she died,” I told him. “It’s also where I was born. What if I went there and asked for a copy of her death certificate? The accident that resulted in my mother’s coma was a hit and run. The driver of the car was never found, so you could even say you were investigating it as a cold case or something, couldn’t you?”
“I suppose, but what good will that do?”
“It might get us into the medical records area at least,” I said. “We can get a look at how they do things and find out who has access.”
“I guess it’s worth a try,” Duncan said, though he didn’t sound hopeful. “And it’s all we have for now, so let’s do it. I can come by and pick you up in fifteen.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
Milwaukee Memorial Hospital was a sprawling affair that covered several city blocks. By the time we figured out which building we had to go to for medical records, it was nearing five o’clock and Duncan was afraid they would be closed.
They weren’t, but the receptionist who greeted us—who, according to her ID badge, was named Lisa—said that even though the department was open twenty-four hours a day, access for the general public did stop at five, a mere eight minutes from our arrival time.
“What is it you need?” Lisa asked.
“I want a copy of my mother’s ER report,” I told her. “She died here on June eighth of 1980.”
“Nineteen-eighty?” Lisa said, rolling her eyes. “That’s not going to be easy to find. It’s probably been sent to storage on microfiche. Can you come back tomorrow?” she asked with a pointed glance at her watch.
“I’m afraid this is a very urgent matter,” Duncan said, flashing his badge. If he hoped it would intimidate the woman, he was sorely disappointed.
“Why is an ER report from thirty-some years ago so urgent?”
Duncan started to say something, but I beat him to it. “My mother died as a result of a car accident. She was hit by someone who fled the scene and was never caught. She was pregnant
with me at the time and the doctors kept her alive long enough for her to deliver me. Then they removed the life support.”
Lisa’s expression finally softened, so I surged onward, not wanting to lose any momentum I had gained from my sob story. I never knew my mother, but that didn’t mean I didn’t grieve for her. I summoned up all the emotion I could and managed to get a few tears to well up in my eyes.
“Someone has come forth and said they know who the driver was,” I told her, letting my voice break. “So the cops are reopening the case. But if the person who hit her knows the cops are looking into it again, he or she might try to disappear. Please,” I pleaded, swiping at my eyes, “can’t you help me?”
Lisa frowned, and sighed. “Even if I can find the record, I can only release it to the cops if I have a release signed by the next of kin.”
“That would be me,” I said. “My father died nearly a year ago and I’m the only one left. Maybe you heard about his death? He was shot in the alley behind the bar we owned.”
Dawning spread across her face. “You mean Mack Dalton?” she said, and I nodded. “I remember hearing about that. I used to go to his bar when I was in college. There was something in the paper about it a few weeks back, wasn’t there? You finally caught the guy who did it?”
I nodded.
Lisa took one more look at my tear-stained face and her shoulders sagged. That’s when I knew I had her. “Okay, I’ll take a look,” she said. She shoved a clipboard at me. “Fill out this form and then sign it at the bottom. I assume you have some proof that you’re next of kin?”
“I have a driver’s license,” I said.
“That will do. Give me her name and date of birth and I’ll go see what I can find while you fill out the form.”
Murder with a Twist Page 21
