But if Wyatt Scrogger hadn’t taken Juniper Cole, who had?
Leo was still at his desk, shuffling papers and not doing much of anything. There was no reason to rush home; his wife had divorced him years ago, claiming that Leo—like most cops—was married to his job.
And, of course, she was right. But from personal experience, Leo Igler knew that any cop who wasn’t married to the job probably wasn’t getting the job done.
He opened the file again, started reading from the beginning, making sure he hadn’t missed anything.
Then the phone rang.
Leo was deep in thought and ignored it.
The phone rang again.
And again.
Leo was technically off duty, and the last thing he needed right that second was to catch another case. He reached out and answered it anyway.
“Detective Igler?” a female voice asked.
“Yes, who is this?”
“My name is Glenna Thomsen-True, and I have…”
“Spell that for me,” Leo said.
The woman spelled her name for Leo before continuing. “I’m calling because I think I saw something—something strange—and it’s been bothering me all day. I felt it was important to tell someone.” From the sound of the woman’s voice, she was very old.
“What did you see?” Leo asked.
“Well, my husband and I are visiting friends here in Savannah, and we were heading home after dinner when we passed that big hotel, what’s it called? Hang on, my husband’s saying something—yes, that’s it, it’s called The Forsyth Park…”
Leo sat forward in his seat and asked, “The Forsyth Park Hotel?”
“Yes, that’s it, on Drayton Street across from that beautiful fountain. Anyway, I saw a man helping a young girl into a brown car…”
“What time was this?” Leo asked.
“Oh, I’d say it was close to midnight.”
“And what was it that made it strange?” Leo asked.
“Because the young lady, well, she looked like she was drunk. Or drugged, maybe? She could barely stand,” the woman said.
“Do you remember what she was wearing?” Leo asked, feeling the hope begin to rise inside him.
“It was dark, but it was fancy—like a prom dress. I’d say it was green, or perhaps light blue?”
Bingo.
Juniper Cole had been wearing a light blue dress.
“Was there anything about the girl that stood out?” Leo asked.
“No, not really—other than her red hair, that is.”
Leo knew the next question would be the big one. “Mrs. True, did you happen to write down the license plate?”
“My husband said it was probably nothing,” the woman said.
Leo’s heart sank.
“But he’s never right about anything, so yes—I wrote it down, just in case. I have it right here in front of me.”
Leo wrote down the number, repeated it back.
“Yes, that’s correct,” the woman said.
“I need to get the name of the people you’re staying with, and a phone number where you can be reached,” Leo said.
There was silence on the other end of the line.
“Well, I’m not sure that’s something I’m comfortable doing, Detective,” the woman said. “We really don’t want to get involved.”
“I understand, but it’s important…”
The line went dead.
Leo called his contact at the Georgia Department of Motor Vehicles and told her what he needed.
The plates belonged to a 1973 Chevrolet Malibu coupe, color brown. The registered owner was Wyatt Allen Scrogger.
Chapter Thirty
Orlando, Florida
February 2, 2010
Dane Luckner liked being a good friend, but friendship had its limits—even when the friend was a billionaire.
Koda was behaving like a mad man. He spent nearly twenty-four hours a day sitting in front of the mirror he’d bought from the Forsyth Park Hotel.
The girl had not appeared. Not once.
And no matter what Dane said or did, it seemed impossible to get through to his friend.
Koda had neither shaved nor showered in a week.
He ignored repeated calls from his father, Bruce Mulvaney, demanding to know why he wasn’t in the office.
“Talk to me, Koda. I’m on your side,” Dane said again.
“Just go,” Koda said finally.
“What?”
“I said, go,” Koda repeated.
Dane didn’t understand what Koda was saying. “Go? Go where?”
“Anywhere, I don’t care,” Koda muttered. “Just leave.”
An hour later, Dane was packed. If Koda wanted him gone, fine. An hour after that, he was on a plane headed to New York. He hadn’t seen his parents in almost two years.
It was time.
From the Journal of Onyx Webb
So much in common, you and I,
So very much the same.
Most of all, the life we choose,
With no one else to blame.
The days they pass by quickly,
The minutes faster still.
A constant search for courage—
A testing of our will.
Can we make the right decision?
Will we choose the better path?
Accept the tasks presented
Or lay calmly in the bath?
It seems we share so many things,
From love, to goals and dreams.
But like an arrow, life flies by
As water flows in streams.
So much in common, you and I,
With lives we wish to tame—
But in the end our life depends
On how we play life’s game.
Chapter Thirty-One
New York City
JULY 8, 1933
“It’s a fairy tale!” Onyx said, gazing at the full-page ad the gallery had placed in the New York Times touting her first solo showing at the Schröder Gallery. Onyx’s mentor, Bavarian abstract expressionist painter Hans Hoffman, would be in attendance. “But they’ll be coming mostly to see Hans, not me.”
“So, what if they come to meet Hoffman?” Lucas asked. “When they leave, they’ll leave with a piece of Onyx.” And because the crème de la crème of the New York art scene would be there, Lucas told Onyx to wear her most-glitzy dress and lots of fancy jewelry.
Onyx had neither.
Onyx had hoped the great German artist, Hans Hoffman, would like her work and accept her into his class. He didn’t like it. He loved it.
“Extraordinary, unexplainable and indescribably original,” Hoffman had said when he saw Onyx’s work two years earlier, admitting her into his private study group in which many famous and notable artists took part, including Robert Beauchamp, Julius Hatofsky, Richard Stankiewicz, Anne Tabachnick, Wolf Kahn and others. Now the group also included a self-taught thirty-five-year-old woman from the swamps of Louisiana with no formal art training.
Onyx was painting every day, being challenged to develop her aesthetic eye, and she had never been happier. Then, one day, Lucas Schröder broke the news: “Hoffman says it is time to show your work to the world, Onyx. He wants you to do a solo show at the Schröder Gallery, and he plans to attend. Do you have any idea what an honor this is?”
Onyx was thrilled.
But she also knew it meant that Ulrich was going to find out she’d gone behind his back.
“If you want, I will be the one to tell him,” Lucas said.
“No,” Onyx said, “I’ll do it myself.”
It was the afternoon of Onyx’s show at the Schröder Gallery. Onyx sat at a table at Barbetta, an upscale Italian eatery on West Forty-Sixth Street, waiting for Ulrich to arrive. She’d told him only that she wanted to celebrate some good fortune.
Onyx was a ball of nerves because of the show but also because she had no idea how Ulrich would respond to learning of her betrayal of his trust.
“Okay, Onyx, here I am!” Ulrich yelled. “You have something to share with me, yes?” he called out loud enough for every patron in the restaurant to turn and look in his direction.
Onyx stood up at her table. “Come have a seat, Ulrich,” she said in a calm voice.
“There she ith,” Mohawk Joe said, slurring his words and pointing a dirty finger in Onyx’s direction.
Ulrich held up a copy of that day’s New York Times, opened to the ad for Onyx’s show at the gallery. “A wife does what her husband says,” Ulrich said. “Are you still my wife?”
Every eye in the restaurant was on Onyx now as she walked between the tables toward where Ulrich was standing. “Yes, I am still your wife, Ulrich,” Onyx said in a calm voice. “When I made my vows, I said for better or—”
Ulrich did not wait for Onyx to finish the sentence, unleashing a powerful strike to Onyx’s face, her head snapping backward from the force of the blow as horrified gasps escaped from the surrounding diners.
Mohawk Joe let loose with a howl and was so unsteady from the alcohol that he fell over, grasping at a table as he went down, pulling it on top of him, plates and glasses crashing to the floor.
Onyx wanted to reach up and rub her cheek but didn’t, knowing it was what Ulrich wanted.
“We are packed to leave,” Ulrich said. “If you are still my wife, as you profess, you will meet us at Grand Central Terminal in one hour.”
Getting on a train with her enraged husband did not sound like a good idea to Onyx. What scared her even more, however, was that Ulrich hadn’t said you will be on the train with me…
He said us.
Lucas Schröder stood in his office in the rear of the gallery, reading the art section of The New York Times for the third time that morning…
Though the artist did not attend her own showing, the premier of works by the mysterious woman known only as “Onyx” at the Schröder Gallery was, by all accounts, the art event of the year.
Lucas folded the article and placed it in the safe along with an envelope containing the $12,000 in cash the gallery took in from the sale of Onyx Webb’s paintings the night before, every last one of them.
Onyx’s failure to show up for her big night weighed heavy on him, not only because she’d missed the event—her shining moment in the sun—but also because he’d intended to tell her the reason why he’d refused to allow his brother back into the family business. The real reason.
Ulrich was a cold-blooded murderer.
This was not an opinion. Lucas knew it to be a fact because he’d watched Ulrich kill their mother with his own two hands—he’d seen him do it with his own two eyes.
Ulrich had claimed it was an accident, of course, but Lucas knew his younger brother was lying. Ulrich had been a compulsive liar for as long as Lucas could remember. And besides, how could a man as big as Ulrich—with hands the size of ham hocks and as strong as a vice—allow their mother to slip into the icy waters of the Atlantic Ocean?
Ulrich had her in his grasp, and then he let her slip away. No, it was not an accident—Ulrich had done it on purpose—of this Lucas was certain. Ulrich had murdered their mother.
By default, it meant that Ulrich was responsible for their father’s death as well, who—when he saw his wife drop into the dark waters—jumped in after her.
There were many such stories from the night the Titanic went to its watery grave, each more devastating and tragic than the next. But this story was his. This story was personal.
Lucas locked the safe and turned off the lights, then wove his way through the darkened gallery, pausing at The Veil of St. Veronica by Gabriel von Max. Even in the dark Lucas could see Jesus’s eyes open, looking directly at him, as so many visitors to the gallery had claimed to witness.
“Please protect Onyx Webb,” Lucas said. “I have failed her, but you should not.”
Lucas cursed himself for having waited, knowing he should have warned Onyx when he’d had the chance. Now all he had to offer was a prayer to a painting of Jesus.
He hoped it would be enough.
“We do not fear heights, we fear falling. Nor do we fear the darkness… but, rather, what we think may be lurking there. And in matters of life and death, we do not fear dying: only that it may be final.”
The 31 Immutable Matters
of Life & Death
Episode 3: Lily Dale
Savannah, Georgia
June 4, 1979
Detective Leo Igler had to make four phone calls before he was able to track down Judge Thornton Mays, who was attending a charity function at The Olde Pink House on Abercorn Street in Reynolds Square.
Leo asked the restaurant manager to get Judge Mays on the phone and was told a minute later the judge wouldn’t take the call. Leo told the manager to try again, that it was an emergency, and to drag the judge to the phone if necessary.
Mays was not pleased.
“Not much of an emergency if you ask me,” Mays snapped. “And you know I never sign a warrant without reviewing the evidence, Leo.”
“I’ve got an eyewitness to the abduction, Your Honor, and time is of the essence. The perpetrator may have the Cole girl at his place right now—alive, maybe.”
The fact that Leo did not know how to find the eyewitness was a detail he would deal with later.
“Bring the papers,” Judge Mays said and hung up.
Judge Mays walked outside onto the front stairs of The Olde Pink House, wearing a tuxedo and holding a tall mint julep glass, waiting for Leo Igler to arrive.
Leo arrived ten minutes later, search warrant in hand. With any luck the judge hadn’t changed his mind. Mays handed his drink to Leo and pulled a pair of reading glasses from his pocket. “I don’t like being made to wait, Detective,” Judge Mays said.
“Sorry, Your Honor,” Leo said. “I got sidetracked.” In truth, Leo had completely forgotten he was supposed to meet the judge.
“You got a pen?” Mays asked.
Leo dug a pen out of his jacket pocket and Mays signed the document. “You’d better be right, Leo. The only thing I hate more than waiting is being embarrassed.”
Leo radioed for a small team of uniformed officers—plus Elton Nahum, the department photographer—to meet him at Wyatt Scrogger’s apartment.
Sergent Elton Nahum was already there, sitting in his van, when three marked squad cars arrived at the Charlton Street address—sirens off, as instructed—parking down the street from Scrogger’s single-story apartment building. Leo climbed out of the first vehicle, signaled to Nahum that it was okay to get out of the van.
“What’s going on, Detective?” Nahum drawled.
“Just take pictures when I tell you, Nahum, okay?” Leo said.
Nahum shrugged. He was used to being treated like a second-class citizen by Leo Igler. However the detective wanted to play it was fine with him.
Leo looked up the street and spotted Wyatt’s brown Malibu and posted an officer next to it, and then directed two more to cover the rear of the building.
With nothing else to consider, Leo Igler headed to apartment 104—accompanied by two additional officers and Nahum trailing behind in his wheelchair—with the search warrant in his hand.
Leo knocked on the door and waited. Nothing.
He pounded a bit harder, and a moment later Wyatt Scrogger opened the door, rubbing his eyes and looking as if he’d been sound asleep.
The search of Wyatt Scrogger’s tiny apartment had turned up nothing, and Leo was beside himself.
“Judge Mays ain’t gonna be happy,” one of th
e cops said. Leo ignored him. The judge was the least of his problems.
The real problem was Leo had wasted the entire evening on an erroneous phone tip. And no closer to finding Juniper Cole.
“What about the car?” Nahum asked.
Christ, Nahum was right. Leo had almost forgotten to search the vehicle, which was particularly distressing since he’d gone out of his way to make sure he’d included the kid’s car in the warrant.
This wasn’t the only thing Leo had forgotten lately.
“May I have the keys to your vehicle?” Leo asked.
Wyatt Scrogger—who’d spent the last twenty minutes watching the entire exercise with amusement—shook his head and pulled his keys from his pocket. “You’re not going to find anything there either.”
Leo walked out and headed to the car with Sergent Elton Nahum rolling behind in his wheelchair. It only took a few minutes for Leo’s luck to change.
“Detective, there’s something you need to see,” said an officer from the back of the car.
Leo walked over and looked in. The rear seat had been pulled out and lying beneath it was a plastic bag containing what looked like a pair of yellow women’s panties, shoes, and an empty syringe.
“Nahum,” Leo said. “Get pictures of this, okay.”
“No problem, Detective. It’s what I’m here to do.”
“And Nahum?” Leo said quietly. “Thanks.”
“My pleasure, Detective,” Nahum said, pulling out his camera and going to work snapping photos.
Leo couldn’t believe he’d been so careless to have almost forgotten to check the vehicle. Maybe he was losing his touch. Maybe he was losing his memory.
Or maybe he was just getting old.
Onyx Webb: Book One Page 11
