So far, nothing had jumped out at him.
“We were,” Gilchrist said, nodding. “Greene was still on the scene itself, so I grabbed a guy named O’Shea from the one-six, who I went through the academy with.
“Spent over an hour out there, couldn’t find anything. Lot of junk, trash, stuff that should have been hauled off years ago, but nothing at all resembling evidence.”
It, too, jived with what Reed had thought. He nodded, patting Gilchrist on the shoulder. “Thanks for taking a look. Appreciate it.”
Gilchrist mumbled an indecipherable response as Reed passed through the door, Winters sitting up straight in his chair as he entered.
“Mr. Winters, my name is Detective Reed Mattox. I’m sorry you had to come down here this morning.”
In his experience when speaking with witnesses, opening with an apology seemed to work best, helping to avoid any hostility they had about being pulled in. Reed paused, hoping it would have the same effect on Winters, as he slid back a chair and lowered himself into it.
“Is there any chance we can make this fast?” Winters asked, the look on his face and the tone of his voice not quite matching up. “The school bus comes for my girls at 8:15, and I’m always the one to walk them down to the stop.”
Gilchrist hadn’t mentioned an address on Winters, though if it were anywhere nearby, Reed could understand his wanting to be there. By any measure he was an imposing man, the kind of person who would send a message to anybody who might be lurking around his children.
Without glancing at his watch, Reed nodded. “I understand, and I promise to be brief. I’m sure by now you heard what happened to your co-worker last night, so we’re trying to be as thorough as possible in our search.
“Anything you know, anything at all, would be appreciated.”
Winters pressed his lips together, looking over Reed’s shoulder at his own reflection in the mirror, as if trying to let whoever was on the other side know he was aware of their presence. He held the pose a moment before looking back, Reed expecting the old story about having not seen anything.
“Like I told the guy last night,” Winters said, “somebody tailed me inside. A lot of people work there, it might be nothing.”
The last sentence confirmed Reed’s prior thought, a hint that he was already wishing he had never mentioned it.
“But you seemed to think it was worth remembering,” Reed said. “Why?”
A loud breath came from Winters as he looked across at Reed. “15 years, and I’d never once seen the guy. Even the ones I don’t work with, like Durell, I know by sight.”
Reed nodded, agreeing with the assessment. He’d never seen the other three cops working the scene with Greene the night before, but he would now recognize them moving forward. That was only a single meeting, 15 years would give somebody quite a mental bank to work from.
“You didn’t think he might be new?” Reed pressed, just to flush out the thought a little further.
“No,” Winters said, his face scrunching up in a squint. “A new guy would have introduced himself after I let him in, at least mentioned what line he worked on. This guy just said thanks.”
“So you let him in?” Reed asked, careful not to make the question sound like an accusation.
“I did,” Winters said, the slightest hint of guilt crossing his features. “He came jogging up as I approached, lunch box in one hand, bag in the other, asked me to hold the gate.
“I’ve been there myself, so I helped him out.”
Reed felt his pulse quicken a bit. The early report had mentioned a lunch box and gym bag found in the front men’s restroom, both empty, most likely props.
“What did the guy look like?” Reed asked, fighting to hide any internal enthusiasm.
For a moment, Winters leaned back, fixing his gaze on the window again. He pressed his lips together and thought on it, shaking his head.
“I don’t know, pretty standard. White guy, curly black hair. Had a hat pulled down low, couldn’t see a lot of detail.”
“Tall?” Reed asked, scribbling the information down.
“Shorter than me,” Winters replied. “Maybe six foot?”
Reed nodded, continuing to write. “I know you have to get out of here, but I’d like to send a sketch artist by this afternoon if that’s alright. So far, you’re the only person we know to have gotten a look at the guy’s face.”
Even if the guy had in some way altered his looks, the black curls jumping right out to Reed as a wig, he couldn’t change his facial structure on the fly.
Another sigh came from Winters as he seemed to contemplate the request. “Okay,” he said after several moments, “but have them came by before 3:00. I don’t want my babies seeing them and asking questions.”
Reed nodded that the request would be met, writing it down at the bottom of the page. He hadn’t thought of it before asking, but if in Winters’s place, he would most likely do the same.
“Just one last question,” Reed said, “and then I’ll let you go. You said you only knew Durell by sight. Was there any talk around the place? Anything at all that might point out why he was targeted?”
After a half-shrug using only his lower arms, Winters said, “Like I said, he was in the back, so I didn’t really know him. Never heard anything bad about him, but can’t say I heard anything good either.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
From his second floor window he watched Winters jog out to his truck. With a cell phone pressed to his ear, Reed tried to ignore the elevator music playing through the line, a terrible brass rendition of Love is a Many Splendored Thing. He continued to stare as Winters started his truck and drove away, a trail of exhaust streaming from the tailpipe.
“Man’s got a bus to catch,” Reed said, drawing Billie’s attention up at him, her eyes blinking in response.
“Hello? Detective Mattox?” Dr. Solomon asked over the phone, the music falling away, snapping Reed’s attention back.
“Yeah, still here,” Reed said.
“Sorry about that,” Solomon said, not a trace of apology in her voice. “I wanted to check something quickly, make sure I wasn’t giving you bad information.”
“Not a problem,” Reed said. “To what do I owe a call this morning?”
The body of Mason Durell had been sent over less than two hours before. There was no way there had been time for a thorough examination yet, Reed willing to bet the doctor hadn’t been on for more than 30 minutes at most.
“On a hunch,” Solomon said, “that I will admit was no small part curiosity, I took a look inside the young man’s throat when he arrived.”
Reed’s eyes opened wide, and he raised his gaze to the opposite wall. In the commotion of the night’s events, he had forgotten that piece of evidence, the bag still sitting at home on his table, an oddity he wasn’t sure how to handle, so he had chosen not to just yet.
“Yeah?”
“It was there in this one too,” Solomon said.
Pushing out a breath, Reed fell back in his chair. “Same thing as last time?”
“I don’t know,” Solomon said, “I gave that one to you. I’d have to see them side by side to know for sure. What I can tell you is there was definitely a coin, certainly not American, placed deep in the victim’s throat.”
“Thank you,” Reed said. “That is very helpful.”
“I’ll get to the rest of the autopsy later today,” Solomon said, “another rush job request from your higher-ups downtown.”
Reed didn’t bother to point out the pressure levied was about to get worse now that the media had caught the scent of the story. Thus far, he had made a point of avoiding the television, but it was only a matter of time before somebody slapped a newspaper down on his desk.
Both sides disconnected the call without comment, Reed sliding the phone down on the desk.
This now made two consecutive scenes where the coin had been present, both placed there deliberately. Solomon hadn’t mentioned anything f
rom Mentor, though he guessed she would have already gone back to check, mentioning it if anything had surfaced.
“Coins,” Reed muttered, his voice just audible, barely enough to raise Billie’s eyebrows, her chin remaining on her paws. Swiveling his chair to the aging Acer perched on the corner of his desk, he called the computer to life and opened a search engine.
His first search was simply rare coins, a broad topic that brought back over 200,000,000 responses in less than three seconds. Reed scrolled down through the list and clicked on the first Wikipedia article, scanning it quickly, picking out a few key words before backing out to the search engine again.
The second search was for the study of rare coins bringing up half as many responses, many of them as scattered as the previous inquiry. Once more he clicked on a single link, hoping something would jump out at him before retreating.
Staring at the blinking cursor inside the search engine box, Reed took a deep breath. He sat with his elbows resting on the desk, body hunched forward, his fingers drumming the wood.
It was fast apparent there was no way he could educate himself on everything he needed to know about rare coins in the span of a few minutes at the computer. His first couple of stabs had proven he was clueless on the topic, barely able to formulate proper queries, let alone decipher usable information.
The third entry he attempted was someone who studies coins, the first response coming back as an entry from an online dictionary with the listing for numismatist.
“What the hell is a numismatist?” Reed whispered, clicking on the hyperlink.
Numismatist. A person who collects or studies coins, medals, tokens or paper currency.
“Nice,” Reed said aloud, backing out a final time to enter numismatist Columbus Ohio.
His hope was for a professor at one of the universities in the greater Columbus area, perhaps a national expert who happened to reside nearby. In a crunch he could speak to a person over the phone, but his hope was to take the coins by and have someone examine them, giving him a better heading on what they meant and how he could use them to track the killer.
What he found was a close second.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
A wooden signed was affixed to the fence running along the front of the building, deep-set letters welcoming visitors to the Greater Columbus Numismatic Association.
While hoping for a college professor of some sort, Reed had reasoned that the field was extremely narrow, the likelihood of any local universities having a specialist on staff being quite low.
Instead, he had settled on the association for the central Ohio region, speaking with a man who practically jumped at the opportunity to meet with him. Together they had set an appointment for early afternoon, giving Reed time to swing by the coroner’s office and grab the second coin.
A quick look through the evidence locker revealed a similar object tucked away in a mass of rubbish pulled by the crime scene techs at the Mentor scene, the misshapen disk recognizable at a glance.
All three were on the passenger seat beside him as he pulled into the small lot on the side of the building and parked in the closest stall. Only one other car was there, presumably from the man he had spoken to a few hours earlier.
“Stay,” Reed said, taking up a notepad and the coins from the seat beside him, a low whine rolling from Billie as he climbed out. It grew louder as he walked away from the car, not once looking back.
The building was small and squat, made of dark red brick with black shutters and black handrails leading along the walk to the entrance. A sign matching the one out front hung by the door announcing the shop hours, just four hours a day, three days a week.
A bell rang overhead as Reed stepped inside, the smell of pungent cleaning solution hitting him full in the face. Bright lights beamed down from the ceiling, spotlighting a room lined with glass cases. On each of them sat a desk lamp and magnifying glass, the space void of human life.
“Hello, there!” a voice called from the back, its owner appearing a moment later through the doorway on the opposite side of the room. “You must be the detective, come on back.”
Reed passed into a second room of equal size, the lighting reduced to table lamps, the cases replaced with bookshelves, the combined effect making the room seem much darker than the one before it.
“Reed Mattox,” Reed said, thrusting his hand out as he stepped through, his feet sinking into a thick woven rug on the floor.
“Jim Shatley,” the man replied, returning the shake, his hand weathered and dry to the touch.
On first impression Reed guessed Shatley to be in his mid-60s, the shop most likely a retirement hobby. He was dressed in jeans, a turtleneck, and a tweed jacket, a grey beard matching the hair on his head.
Combined with the handshake, Reed would have pegged him a former physician of some sort.
“Thank you for meeting with me on short notice,” Reed said. “I know it was an unusual request.”
“Bah!” Shatley said, waving a hand for effect. “You saw the sign on the way in. I would have been here anyway this afternoon. Talking to you for a while gives me a nice break from going through the new recruits.”
Reed glanced around the room once, seeing nobody.
“New recruits are what we call coins left to us when a member passes on,” Shatley said, offering the expected amount of solemnity in his face and tone. “Often times, the family has no real interest in them, and they know we’ll take good care of them, find them a proper home.”
It was a curious choice of words, the explanation sounding more like the way someone would discuss a pet than a coin collection.
Still, Reed let it pass without comment. He was there to obtain information, something that would become much more difficult if he offended his host.
“Ah,” Reed said, nodding as if he understood. “So you run the association here in Columbus?”
“That’s right,” Shatley said, nodding. “Been in charge here since retiring four years ago. There’s not a whole lot to it, but it gets me out of the house some, keeps the wife from getting sick of me.”
The last sentence was offered with a grin, an aging man’s attempt at levity. Reed humored him with a matching smile, nodding as if he knew exactly what Shatley meant.
“So, Mr. Shatley, I apologize in advance if I seem abrupt, but as I mentioned before, we are working under the clock on this. I’m sure you saw on the news last night what happened over at Midwestern Paper.”
The lead-in was meant to protect them both, giving Reed an excuse for avoiding any idle chatter and allowing Shatley not to be offended by it.
“I understand,” Shatley said, “and it’s actually Doctor, but please call me Jim.”
Reed twisted his head just a bit to hide the half smile curling up on the left side of his face, his original supposition confirmed.
“Okay, Jim,” Reed said, pushing right ahead. He reached into the front pocket of his hooded sweatshirt and extracted the evidence bags, offering them to Shatley. “I was hoping you might be able to tell me what these are.”
Shatley reached into the inside pocket of his jacket before accepting them, removing a pair of reading glasses and placing them on the tip of his nose. He took the bags from Reed and held them in either hand, lifting them up to the light and glancing at each in turn.
“Oh, my,” he said, a bit of reverence in his voice, the tone no louder than a whisper. “Oh, my.”
A long moment passed as Reed waited, allowing the man to continue looking, an expression of awe on his face.
“You’ve seen these coins before?” Reed asked, leaning forward.
Another moment of silence passed before Shatley pulled them down from the light. “Detective, these aren’t just any ordinary, old coins. They’re obols.”
Confusion passed over Reed’s features as he tried to place the word.
“Obols?” he asked, drawing a smile from the man across from him.
“Please,” Shatley said, standin
g and leading him into the adjacent room, placing each of the bags on the closest counter. He pulled a lamp across the glass and turned on the halogen light.
With his opposite hand he grabbed the closest magnifying glass, positioning it so both men could see the enlarged detail on the obols before them.
Shatley began, his demeanor taking on that of a teacher at work. “Obols come from ancient Greece and Sparta and were used as currency 1,000s of years ago.”
The look of confusion grew on Reed’s face as Shatley extracted a pen from the same pocket as his glasses, using the end as a pointer.
“See how they are non-uniform in shape? That’s because in those times they were made individually, not like the presses we have today. Every single obol ever created was unique, the same generally, but just different enough to stand apart.”
Reed nodded along with the explanation, not at all sure how it related to his work, but content to let Shatley keep going until something came out he could use.
“These in particular came from Greece, part of a matching set depicting King Demetrius. I’d guess them to be from somewhere around 180 BC, right toward the end of his reign.”
“What makes you say that?” Reed asked, leaning in for better view the obols.
Shatley arranged two of them so a different side of each coin was showing, the third moved off to the side. Starting on the right he said, “See here how the head of Demetrius looks to have an elephant on it, with tusks and trunk extended? This was late in his time as ruler, after he had brought Buddhism into the land.”
He moved to the other coin and said, “On this side is a caduceus, the sign of reconciliation between two fighting serpents, meant to portray the peace achieved between the Greeks and Sungas.”
Once more Reed nodded as if the information were directly pertinent to his case, casting his gaze upon the obols. As objects alone, they were quite exquisite, small in size but detailed to a great degree. Given that they had been made so many years before, they were a testament both to design and craftsmanship.
The Boat Man: A Thriller (A Reed & Billie Novel Book 1) Page 10
