by M. Z. Kelly
“You mean like sticking your tits in his face?” Max said.
Penny shrugged. “God gave some of us extra equipment, why not use it?”
After Max did an eye roll, Laverne told us why they were working Records. “Penny and me got us a murder case to solve.”
Penny agreed, looking at me. “Yeah, while you and the parrot clean the grease outta barrels from the dark ages, we got real police work.”
“Who you calling the parrot?” Max said, leveling her dark eyes on Kurtz.
“We heard about your job as the mascot for that Brooklyn Brawlers baseball team before you became a cop. They called you the squatter, ‘cause you shit candy out the ass of your parrot costume. They shoulda called you Candy Ass.”
Penny and Laverne broke into fits of laughter. Max looked like she was going to come out of her chair and clock them before she also started to laugh. Her laughter went on, even after the two women had regained their composure.
“Glad you think it’s funny,” Laverne told her.
“I ain’t laughing ‘bout my previous occupation,” Max said. “I was just thinking about what Woody told me ‘bout you two the other day.”
They exchanged glances. “What’s that?”
“Woody said that rumor has it you guys are so easy they call you the trash twins. They even gave you each a nickname.”
“What are you talking about?” Penny demanded.
Max ignored her and looked at Laverne. “According to what I heard, you been dumped so many times they call you Laverne the Spurned.” She then fixed her gaze on Penny. “And word has it you’re known as Not-So-Mini Penny.” Her eyes lowered, taking in the woman’s enormous fake breasts. “Maybe that’s ‘cause you’re carrying around a shitload more than Mother Nature gave you.”
What followed was a screaming rant, directed at both Max and me. It got so bad that we decided to spend the rest of our day back in the seventies—as in sorting through the records from that era.
After digging through the barrels for an hour, Max held up some disintegrating files from the long ago decade and said, “This is so bad, I got that old Bee Gees’ song, Staying Alive, stuck in my head.”
I checked the clock on the wall, seeing that it was almost five. “I say we clean up and call it a day. I’m beat.”
Max smiled. “Why don’t you go on home. I’ll catch up with you later.”
I lifted my brows. “Sonny?”
“Yeah. We’re gonna get a drink.”
I chuckled. “I think one of these days Sonny’s going to get to meet Chucky.”
Max’s grin widened. “That’s a distinct possibility.”
***
I got home an hour later and found Amy with Mojo in our living room. Her employee had a big dopey grin on his face as he said, “My boss is finally paying me for my excellent work. It’s about time.”
“You’re only getting half what I owe you,” Amy said. “My client hasn’t paid me in full yet.”
“No worries. I’m getting by.”
I went over to him. “Does ‘getting by’ mean that you’re helping my aunt and uncle with their rent?”
“Of course. I’ll pay them when I get home.”
“I hope so. If I find out you’re not keeping your end of the bargain, your employment will be history.”
Mojo looked at Amy. “I don’t believe you can get along without me.”
Amy scoffed at him. “You think I can’t find somebody else who needs a lap dance?”
“I have inside sources that might be of use to you.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Just that I’m working my sources. You would do well to keep me on retainer for my services.”
I regarded him. “If you know something more about what’s been going on, you need to tell us.”
Mojo checked his phone. “Sorry, but I’ve got a date.” He looked at Amy. “I’ll be in touch.”
After he was gone, I told Amy, “I hope he’s not planning to stop by Katerina’s room.”
“I talked to her before he got here and made sure she locked her door.”
We took seats on the sofa as I said, “You really think he knows something more about your investigation?”
“I think he’s playing me, but he might as well join the club.”
“What does that mean?”
“Call it Jersey Girl smarts, or maybe it’s the result of me wearing my Brick City thinking cap, but I got me a feeling Sophia and her sister aren’t coming clean about everything. When I picked up my check today, Sophia’s sister was on her like glue.”
“You think Maria’s influencing her?”
“Yeah, and I think there’s more to the story that Sophia’s keeping to herself. I’m just not sure what the hell it is.”
“Maybe it’s worth keeping Mojo on retainer and having him snoop around.”
“Maybe, but it’s kinda like having a dog in heat on your payroll.”
“I can’t say that I disagree.”
Amy went over and found a bottle of wine and a couple glasses. “Where’s Max tonight?”
“Drinks with Sonny. I think it’s getting serious.”
She handed me a glass of wine and sighed. “Must be nice. Don’t forget we got our makeovers this week so I can post my mug on GuySwatter.” She then changed the subject, asking me about the Pierce brothers. “What we gonna do now that we know that Legend whack job is out of the nut house?”
“Not sure. Max and I talked about calling Jenkins and Hammond, but decided against it, since, the last time we called them, they told us to stay out of the case.”
“You would think Adam wouldn’t be that hard to find, since he’s got a bunch of crazy followers. Don’t you guys got some detectives that specialize in cults?”
“We’ve got detectives that specialize in terrorist groups, but I’m not sure the Strand qualifies. Maybe Max can get Rosie to work that angle.”
As if on cue, Max walked in the door. She had her coat draped over something that she was cradling in her arms.
“Don’t tell me that’s a giant doggy bag?” Amy said, eyeing the package.
Max removed her coat and set a box on the table. “Sonny and me had that drink, and he did me a big favor.” She regarded the box, then looked at me. “These are the closed investigation files from the Phantom case on Dorothy King.”
FIFTY-TWO
I walked over to the table and ran my fingers over the top of the box, drawing in a breath. I then lifted the lid, the now familiar musty scent of paperwork that hadn’t been touched in years hitting me.
“It looks like a lot of reports,” I said.
“Why not put it in three stacks, and we’ll help you out,” Amy said, bringing over the wine and glasses.
We all settled in, each of us with a glass of wine and a stack of papers in front of us. I’d reasoned that the paperwork would be sorted by the oldest files being at the bottom of the box and gave myself those. Amy got the middle stack, and Max, those on the top. We worked in silence for several minutes, before the others began telling me what they found.
“It looks like what I got here is mostly summary reports,” Max said. “They confirm that Dorothy King went missing from the New Beginnings drug program in April of 2000. The files indicate she’d been in the program about four months and apparently wandered off on the twenty-first of the month, never to be seen again.”
“What about visitors?” I asked. “Did the investigators take a look at who came to see her while she was in the program?”
“Yeah. Looks like they were all accounted for as family and friends, including her mother. There is a guy listed...” She shuffled the paperwork. “Name’s Westbrook...first name James. He was a boyfriend who they followed up with, but he said he’d lost contact with Dorothy a few weeks earlier and the lead went nowhere.”
“What about her mom?” Amy asked.
“She said Dorothy never contacted her after she went missing.”
“An
d my mother?” I asked. “Was she contacted by the authorities?”
“Yeah, she was questioned, along with other women in the program. Nobody had any idea where she went.”
Amy thumbed through her papers. “I got something. The investigators put together a summary that includes stuff on William Jeffers and Mark Banuelos. It confirms that Jeffers supplied heroin to Banuelos, who ripped him off. They speculated that Banuelos’s overdose, a week later, wasn’t an overdose, meaning he was killed by Jeffers, who also went after his family. His sister, Yolanda, was found shot to death in her apartment a week later.”
“That’s consistent with what Sam told me,” I said, “but I don’t think he knew about the sister. Anything about my mom or any reference to the Phantom in your paperwork?”
“There’s speculation that Jeffers might have been involved in the Raleigh victims’ deaths because he was in that area when the girls went missing. There’s nothing about your mother.”
I held up my stack of papers. “This is not in any chronological order, but it pretty much confirms what you both said. They had a theory that Banuelos might have been working with Jeffers to find his victims, in exchange for drugs, but there’s no proof of that. They describe Jeffers as ruthless and cunning.”
“I wonder where the hell the bastard went,” Amy said. “You think he’s still out there, stalking anyone who he thinks knew about all this, including your mother?”
I sucked in a breath and shook my head. “There’s nothing about where Jeffers might have gone, or anything about potential victims after King went missing, except a report that was prepared a few weeks later. It says that my mom went missing under circumstances similar to King. There’s corroboration that Banuelos and she were involved, and speculation that Jeffers might have gone after her, as well.”
“Doesn’t sound like anything we didn’t already know,” Max said.
I nodded and thumbed through my stack of paperwork. “There is something else. The investigators speculated there were nine victims tied to Jeffers, including the seven women who were killed in Raleigh. There were two other women who went missing under similar circumstances, but they couldn’t tie them directly to Jeffers. Dorothy King would likely have been his tenth victim.” I picked up a photograph at the bottom of my stack of paperwork. “This is a picture of my mother, taken when she entered New Beginnings.”
“She looks just like you, Mads,” Amy said.
I sighed, then turned the photograph over. “Eleven,” I said, showing them the number written in red on the back. “They thought my mother might have been the Phantom’s eleventh victim.”
FIFTY-THREE
“But we know your mom was...or is alive, and was living in Monticello up until a few months ago,” Amy said, as I put my paperwork back in the box.
“If Donna Wallace is, in fact, my mother,” I said, feeling beat down. “It might be that the FBI investigators got it all wrong.”
“You need to talk to Sam again,” Max said. “Make sure they had something solid indicating that she was your mom.”
“Eventually.” I put their stacks of paperwork back in the box. “Right now, I’m feeling pretty defeated about everything.”
“You’ll find her, Mads,” Amy said, trying to sound encouraging. “For the first time in over a decade, you finally got some definite information about her.”
“And none of it’s good.” I stood and put the lid on the box. “I’m going to turn in and look through this some more in my bedroom.” I lifted the box off the table and looked at Max. “Thanks for talking Sonny into letting us borrow the records.”
She smiled. “I got a feeling Sonny would do just about anything for me.”
After going to bed, I spent the next three hours rummaging through the paperwork again. I didn’t find anything that was new, but, in reading the reports, it made me sure that Jeffers had been involved in the death of Mark Banuelos and his sister, Yolanda.
The investigators also had evidence he’d been in direct contact with three of the girls murdered in Raleigh. They had little doubt that he was the Phantom, and, after leaving North Carolina, there was solid evidence that he’d moved north to this area.
It was midnight when I finally put the paperwork away and set the box on the floor next to my bed. As I’d read the reports, I’d pushed down the thought that Dorothy King and my mother might have both been murdered and buried in local cemeteries, maybe even the one where I was living. That possibility now assaulted me again, and while I wanted to believe that Donna Wallace was my mother and she’d somehow gotten away from Jeffers, I was beginning to have some doubts. I decided to call Sam tomorrow and ask for more details about her.
I was about to turn off my light when I picked up the photograph of my mother when she’d entered the New Beginnings drug program. It looked like an admission photo they’d probably taken for identification purposes. Despite the circumstances, the image of my mother was haunting. She was smiling and full of life.
Tears sprang from my eyes as I held the photo to my chest. In that moment, it occurred to me that the mother who had left me when I was twelve had missed out on a whole lifetime of memories that we might have shared.
“I love you, Mom,” I whispered, as I turned out the light and brushed my tears. “I will find you. I promise.”
FIFTY-FOUR
Tears filled Mary’s eyes as she got into bed. Today had been her first day back at school after being held captive by Adam and the Strand. Things had gone okay until she ran into Daniel at lunch. He was with Janet, one of the cheerleaders.
At first, she’d turned away when she saw them coming down the corridor, but Daniel had called out to her. “Mary! Wait up!”
She stopped and looked in his direction, seeing him talking to Janet. The girl shot daggers in her direction before saying something to Daniel and leaving him.
“I wanted to ask how you’re doing,” Daniel said when he got to her side.
Mary didn’t look at him, her heart nearly beating out of her chest. “I’m okay.”
“I heard you were...I heard someone took you.”
She nodded. “It was a difficult time.” She met his blue eyes for the first time. “I’m just glad it’s over.”
“Me too. I was worried about you.”
Mary nodded, her gaze drifting off. “I wish I could go back in time and change everything that happened.”
Daniel met her eyes. “I’m sorry things turned out the way they did.”
“Are...are we still...?”
“Friends.” He didn’t look at her. “Janet and I are together now.”
“Oh.”
She’d done her best to keep her composure, but, after Daniel left, her tears had come. Mary had then gone home sick, unable to stop crying. Except for what happened with the Strand, it had been the worst day of her life.
Mary took a deep breath, trying to forget everything and pulling the covers up around her. A few minutes later, she finally dozed off. Then she heard a distant voice. At first, she thought it might be a dream, then she heard the voice again. This time it was loud and angry.
“Get up! NOW!”
Mary sat up in bed and rubbed her eyes. Her window was open, and there was a man she’d never seen before standing beside her bed. “What’s going on? Who are you?”
The man came closer and she saw that he was carrying a pillowcase. “To answer your first question,” he said. “You’re going to die.” As he held her down and covered her head, he answered her second question. “My name is Legend.”
FIFTY-FIVE
Max and I spent an uneventful morning sorting and organizing boxes of reports at work the next day. We returned the records on Dorothy King, but I’d kept the photograph of my mother when she’d entered the drug program. I knew it was a violation of policy, but I reasoned no one would ever know and I knew it was the last photograph of my mother I might ever have.
On my lunch break I called Sam and filled him in on what I’d learned in
Monticello about Donna Wallace, the woman he thought could be my mother.
“She was renting a room in town from an elderly woman named Edith Long,” I said, “but she left in the middle of the night. Long thought a man had been bothering her, and, a few days later, a man knocked on the door, pretending to sell insurance. She described him as having sandy hair, gray on the sides. She thinks he was around fifty, tall and slender. Does that fit with what we know about William Jeffers?”
“Give me a sec to pull the records.” The “sec” turned into a couple minutes before Sam came back on the line. “We have a mug and descriptors on Jeffers from the late nineties, when he was popped on a minor drug charge. He was blonde, six feet, one-sixty, so he would generally fit the description, but there’s no way to know for sure, given the passage of time.”
“If Jeffers is still after her, and she is my mom, it means he’s still determined to kill anyone who had a connection to Banuelos.”
“It might also mean that he’s gone underground and has a new life, but he’s still determined to either take revenge or eliminate any possible connection anyone has to his old life.”
“Maybe my mother was one of Jeffers’ intended victims and she can still identify him, but she’s been afraid to go to the authorities all these years.” I sighed. “To tell you the truth, I’m feeling pretty discouraged. If Donna Wallace is my mother, she left Monticello over two years ago. There’s no telling what’s happened to her in the interim.”
After he tried to be encouraging, I told him about getting access to the records on Dorothy King. “The investigators pretty much confirmed what you told me, that there was a definite link between Jeffers and three of the Raleigh victims. He then apparently came north, and probably killed Dorothy King. My mother was questioned after King disappeared from the drug program, but the case went cold after that, except for one thing.”
“What’s that?”
