Murder on the Lunatic Fringe (Jubilant Falls Series Book 4)

by Debra Gaskill

  I looked at the clock on my cell phone: it was going on four-thirty. Duncan had only half an hour before we normally started milking. When Katya had come pounding on our door, I had grabbed a pair of dirty jeans from the bedroom floor and a tee shirt—certainly not the most professional attire to wear into work and I had that stupid focus group meeting at two.

  Maybe there would be time for me to run home and change, if Isabella or Duncan picked me up and brought me home after deadline.

  “Let’s do it,” I said.

  Nodding, Duncan put the Taurus in gear. He turned left at the next road, one that would lead us straight into Jubilant Falls.

  Nobody was going to beat me on this story.

  Chapter 23 Graham

  It was nearly ten o’clock Wednesday morning when I saw movement inside the motel room where I figured Benjamin was staying.

  It wasn’t difficult—the other pick-up truck I’d seen the night before pulled out at six, just as I was parking beside the wooden Travel Inn sign and the minivan I’d seen was gone. That left one room with a truck parked in front, an old rusting blue and white Ford with Indiana plates that I could now see in the full light of day.

  I made a note of the plates— I’d hand them over to Roarke to run them, in case he hadn’t already gotten them. It was the only thing I’d done in four hours and, as the sun warmed the car, it was getting harder and harder to keep my eyes open behind my sunglasses. Then a tall, gaunt man in jeans and work boots stepped from the motel room and I sat up, suddenly alert.

  I recognized him instantly from the police photo as Benny Kinnon. An unlit cigarette hung from his lips; his face was unshaven, but despite the homemade tattoos across his arms and neck he didn’t look like any of the junkies I’d seen over the years. He seemed alert, sober, almost feral in his body movements.

  He locked the door and, cupping his hand around the cigarette, lit it, raising his head toward the sky as he exhaled. He jerked open the truck’s rusty door; the ignition made a grinding sound as he turned the key and the engine finally sputtered to life. The transmission clunked as he put the junker in gear and pulled from the parking lot, staring at me as he passed.

  A shiver ran down my spine—I was that little boy again, cowering in fear behind my bedroom door, listening to my mother scream as he beat her.

  No, I told myself. This all ends today. Today I get my answers.

  I turned the ignition on the Mustang and pulled into traffic behind him, following him six blocks to a run-down convenience store.

  Benny parked the truck, watching me from the rear view mirror as I parked my vehicle at the other end of the lot. He shook his head and walked into the convenience store, returning in a few minutes with a forty-ounce bottle of beer. He leaned through the driver’s side window to deposit the beer and began walking toward me.

  He circled the Mustang twice, first from a distance, then closer, running his hand across the trunk, not speaking. Sweat beaded on my upper lip as I watched him go around the rental car: knowing Benny’s history, he could be armed and, here I sat, with nothing but a notebook and a pencil.

  He stopped at the passenger window and inhaled on the stub of his cigarette.

  “You’re obviously not a cop,” he said, flicking the butt into the center of the parking lot. I could see he’d lost his lower front teeth and most of his upper right molars and wondered if that happened in a prison fistfight. “A cop would do a better job tailing me.”

  “No, I’m not a cop.”

  He went around the car again. I felt like he was taking stock, appraising the car, singling it out for his next motor vehicle theft, while trying to figure out what I wanted. I took off my sunglasses as he made his way back to the passenger window and met his foxlike eyes.

  “Ahhh,” he said. “I see now. So the bitch finally had her fucking little whelp come find me, huh?”

  “Get in,” I said. “We need to talk.”

  “No. There’s a park down the road. Meet me there.” Benny pointed west and sauntered back to his truck.

  ***

  The park wasn’t much more than a metal swing-set and a couple of picnic tables that backed up to some scraggly woods before ending at a high fence that circled a junk yard. It didn’t look like any of the parks the city still maintained, but no one told that to the children from the housing project next door who were beginning to wander over to play. Benny and I parked our vehicles and walked toward a picnic table. Benny carried the forty-ounce, still in the brown paper bag, in one hand, and took a swig from it periodically.

  “So why did she send you?” Benny asked as we sat at opposite ends of the picnic table’s top, our feet resting on the bench seat, facing the road.

  “She didn’t send me. I wanted to see you.”

  “How’d you track me down, then?”

  “Does it matter?”

  He shrugged. “What the fuck do you want?”

  “I want to know about you and my mom.”

  Benny took another swig from his beer bottle and rested his tattooed arms on his knees. His knuckles were scraped and scabs were beginning to form over wounds on his fingers.

  Had he been in a fight? I wondered. Was he responsible for killing Jerome Johnson? Or the livestock on Katya Bolodenka’s farm?

  “Why? She’s a whore. I’m a thief. We did a lot of smack, and we got arrested. I did four years in the joint. She did two. What else is there?”

  “Why’d you hit her?”

  “I was cleaning my fist and her mouth went off, maybe? Junkies do a lot of stupid shit, kid, a lot of stupid shit, and your mother was the stupidest junkie bitch I ever saw.”

  So, the man who was reputed to be my father was an arrogant, self-absorbed bastard with no compunction about hitting women. Good to know. Bill, despite his repeated use of checkbook parenting, was beginning to look a lot better as a stepfather.

  “Why was she so stupid?” I asked.

  “She’s a woman — they’re all stupid. They all need to be put in their place, like a lot of other folks. They need to know that somebody— a man— is in charge, because they aren’t smart enough to do anything themselves. Why is any of this shit important?” Benny sounded irritated.

  I was a gnat flying around his face, one he couldn’t swat away and he didn’t like that.

  “Why do you care? You’ve obviously done all right— you’ve got a nice car, you dress halfway decent. I’ll bet you’ve even got some sort of fancy-ass job. What are you, like a bank manager? Insurance salesman? Why fucking worry about what I’m doing or where I’m living?”

  “I had a girlfriend. We thought she was pregnant for a little bit, then we broke up. The whole thing got me thinking.”

  “About what? That I wasn’t the kind of daddy you wanted me to be? That I didn’t play baseball or take you to the goddamn movies?” Benny sneered. “Let me tell you, none of us get the parents we want. You waste a lot of time wanting that, kid, because that isn’t ever going to happen, whoever you are. Just like your mother wasn’t fucking Cinderella, I’ll never be Prince Charming.”

  He struck a wound I hadn’t opened in a long time. In my first year of boarding school, I had a fantasy of my ideal father, mostly based on television sitcoms we were allowed to watch before lights out. I would lie on my single bed in my room, wishing for a father who came to visit me on weekends like the other boys, a father who took the time to throw a ball in the wide green campus commons with me or cheered me on from the sidelines as I, the star of the football team, scored yet another touchdown.

  Mother and Bill didn’t seem to want me within their orbit. Why else would they send me here? Lonely and homesick for a family I never had, I’d built the dream of an ideal father who didn’t exist to cover for a father who disappeared and a stepfather who wanted me gone.

  As time went by and I got older, I settled into school, made friends and got used to the idea that this father I made up was just the dream of a wounded little boy.
>
  Now that wounded little boy was back.

  “So are you my father?”

  “Is my name on your fucking birth certificate?”

  “Yes, but I heard Mother put your name down because the social worker made her name somebody.”

  Benny shrugged. “You know, all these years I always denied it—I just figured I was the only one whose last name that fucking idiot bitch could spell. I can see now, yeah, you probably are my son.”

  So it was true.

  “After you guys got arrested, I got put in foster care,” I said.

  “Shit happens.” He shrugged and took another swig from the beer bottle, not looking my direction. “Probably the best thing for you, between your mother and me.”

  “You don’t do heroin any more, do you?” I asked.

  “No, thanks to Indiana’s Department of Corrections, I was made to see the error of my ways.” Benny sneered again. “Although I am not averse to the occasional economic opportunity the marketplace provides.”

  “Mother got clean in prison, too.”

  “Well, good for her. She still a whore?”

  I wanted to punch him, but I sensed that was the reaction he sought. Instead I was silent.

  Benny took a gulp from his beer and stood up. I caught a glimpse of a blue-black swastika tattoo beneath the collar of his tee shirt.

  “I thought so. Listen kid, I don’t know why you came looking for me and I don’t fucking care. Just don’t do it again,” he said.

  He adjusted the crotch of his jeans and walked back to the truck.

  “Sorry, Benny,” I said under my breath. “I’ll be back in touch—and soon.”

  Chapter 24 Addison

  I was still working on the murder story when Dennis came into the newsroom shortly after seven. Bleary from lack of sleep, the words just wouldn’t come anymore. I’d looked at the story so long, I couldn’t tell if I was finished or not.

  Pulling his thick glasses down his nose, he looked at my dirty jeans, athletic shoes and tee shirt.

  “How long have you been here?” he asked.

  “Too damned long,” I answered, rubbing my tired eyes. “Duncan brought me in about four-thirty and dropped me off.”

  “I’m assuming that means we’ve got a breaking story,” he said, stepping behind me to see the screen.

  “Yes. Jerome Johnson, the farm manager at the Lunatic Fringe farm was shot. The owner said the men who did it were Russian mobsters,” I said. “On top of that, he wasn’t her farm manager—he was really a U.S. marshal. She was in witness protection and he was assigned to protect her.”

  “What?” Dennis jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Get up. You’re obviously out of your mind from lack of sleep. Did you just tell me Russian mobsters murdered a U.S. marshal in Plummer County?”

  “That’s exactly what happened. Katya Bolodenka, the lady with the llamas from last Saturday’s story, is a federal witness and she’s in hiding here, of all places.”

  “This is what happens when you ask for some unvarnished human misery, Addison.” Despite his dry tone, Dennis was just as excited as I was. He smiled at me as I stood and he slid into my seat.

  Say what you will about the state of small town journalism, I knew I had an excellent crew, staff I could depend on when the news broke.

  As I stood behind him, Dennis enlarged the text on the screen and began to read:

  By Addison McIntyre

  Managing Editor

  A Youngstown Road man was shot on the front porch of a local farm early this morning in a murder that could have ties to organized crime.

  Plummer County sheriff’s deputies discovered the body of Jerome Johnson, 31, shot in the head, at 68734 Youngstown Road.

  Coroner Dr. Rashid Bovir would not confirm any other injuries.

  Johnson’s death may be tied to another homicide involving an East Coast Russian mobster and a series of shady medical clinics.

  According to the farm’s owner, Ekaterina Bolodenka, Johnson was a US marshal assigned to the federal witness protection program, and had been protecting her.

  Bolodenka, who was featured last Saturday in a story about her work as a fiber artist, told the J-G she was really in hiding from her husband, Kolya Dyakonov, a reported Russian mobster, and was slated to testify against him in federal court.

  Bolodenka had previously told the J-G that she was born in Russia, but raised in Chicago where she studied at the Art Institute of Chicago. She claimed to have taught art history in Cleveland and purchased her first llamas and alpacas in northern Ohio.

  None of that was true, she said.

  Bolodenka said she was actually from a Brooklyn neighborhood called Brighton Beach, in New York City, and has never been to Chicago or Cleveland.

  Johnson had been identified as her farm manager, but that was also a ruse, Bolodenka said. He was on the farm to provide 24-hour protection until she was slated to testify.

  The couple was also romantically involved, she said.

  According to Bolodenka, two Russian men broke into the farmhouse where she and Johnson were sleeping. Bolodenka managed to escape, but Johnson was taken downstairs and shot.

  US Marshal Robert Peppin, along with a special witness protection response team, were also on the scene. He confirmed Bolodenka was in the federal Witness Security program, also known as WITSEC, but would not confirm the exact details of the case.

  According to Bolodenka, however, Dyakonov owned a series of New Jersey medical clinics and had been accused of Medicaid fraud. Associates reportedly brought homeless people into the clinics by van, where they were promised health check ups and medication, including reportedly highly addictive painkillers, such as Oxycodone, the cost of which was then submitted to Medicaid.

  With no follow up, patients were free to take the medication themselves or sell it on the street. They would also be free to return to the clinic for more prescriptions.

  Bolodenka said she witnessed Dyakonov murdering a man who threatened to report the fraud. Dyakonov is also a suspect in the murder of her sister, brother-in-law and their daughter.

  New Jersey authorities have long blamed unethical doctors and Russian mob-owned clinics for the state’s spike in drug overdoses and deaths, according to Associated Press reports.

  Bolodenka raises llamas, alpacas and cashmere goats on the Youngstown Road farm, which she purchased recently and named The Lunatic Fringe Farm, in a nod to her art. She recently won first prize at the Ohio State Fair for a woven tapestry.

  Two cashmere goats were recently killed and mutilated there, but she and Johnson declined to press charges or file a report, Bolodenka said. Instead, Johnson had requested extra sheriff patrols at the property.

  It was not known at press time if those livestock attacks are connected to Johnson’s murder.

  “Good God,” Dennis said. “Where did you get all this?”

  “Katya showed up on my doorstep about two-thirty this morning. Most of what I got, I got right from Katya, so the feds aren’t going to be real happy with us.”

  “Probably not.”

  “Hey, what about that fight at the feed mill Saturday? Should that be included in the story?”

  Quickly he typed in two sentences:

  “Johnson had also been the victim of an assault last Saturday at the Grower’s Feed Mill, following an argument there.

  “It is not known if the events are at all connected.”

  I looked at it critically and shook my head.

  “Take it out. Duncan told me that Doyle McMaster used the N-word and Johnson swung at him. The two have got to be unrelated—and we don’t have any proof of connection. I’m no organized crime expert, but I’ll bet McMaster isn’t smart enough to be wrapped up with the Russian mob—and they’re too smart to get wrapped up with him.”

  “You going to tell Earlene all this?” Dennis asked as he tapped the ‘delete’ key, erasing the two sentences.

  It had been my habit to meet with the previou
s publisher and Earlene’s father, J. Watterson Whitelaw, when we had a huge story break. He was an old newsman himself—he knew the value of a free press.

  Whitelaw kept the best media lawyers in the state on retainer. Before the story ever hit the page and the paper ever hit the streets, I would sit down in his dark, mahogany-paneled office, and tell him what was up. He would pick up the phone and let counsel know what we were doing, what questions he had and generally, give me the thumbs up once he knew the ramifications. He had no compunction about going up against the small-town powers that be. He knew Ohio’s public record law inside and out and had no problem pushing it to the limit, even when there was a possibility such action might cost him an advertiser or two.

  Earlene, on the other hand, with her concern over community opinion, might put the kibosh on this story in the interest of keeping everyone—especially the feds—happy.

  “I suppose I should. Is she here yet?” I sighed.

  I rolled my eyes, thinking about this afternoon’s focus group meeting—what I’d begun to privately refer to as the “fuck us” group. By two this afternoon, I would be running on empty and my patience would be running thin. It could get ugly—fast.

  What ground did she have to stand on? The radio dispatch was public and we had to follow up on that, not to mention the fact that Katya knew she was talking to the newspaper when she was talking to me. I had my damned notebook out, for Christ sake!

  “I didn’t see her Porsche in the parking lot when I pulled in.”

  “I’ll give her a couple hours and then go down to tell her about it. I need to call Roarke and Bovir to see if we have anything else from the scene that I can include before I talk to her.”

  “Go down to Aunt Bea’s and get some breakfast. I’ll handle things until you get back.”