The Morelville Mysteries Collection

by Anne Hagan

  “I see. So what do they call you?”

  He blinked several times, rapidly. “They don’t call me nothin’ man. I told you, I just started runnin’ with them.”

  I knew that he was lying again but I was getting too much actual information from his inexperience at being interrogated to call him on it. “So, how do you connect with Sticks?”

  “He uh, he texts me.”

  “He texts you and tells you where to pick up the ‘shine?”

  He was again quiet for a long time. I could see the wheels turning in his head trying to remember everything he’d told me. “What was the question again?”

  “How do you find out where the drop off point is going to be?”

  “Oh, like I said, Sticks, he texts me.”

  “So you know exactly where the moonshine is being stashed from a text?”

  His head shot up and he stared at me. “Um, what do you mean?”

  “Surely you meet with Sticks somewhere so he can give you detailed directions to get to the drop off location?”

  “No. I uh, I’ve never even met him...”

  He was lying again. “Not at all?”

  “Nah and I don’t want to.”

  “Okay...So then I gotta ask; how does a twenty something guy like yourself get hooked up to run ‘shine under the direction of someone you’ve never met who is the middleman for someone else you’ve never met? I have him now! He looks like a deer caught in the headlights.

  A knock sounded at the door. I kept my eyes on him as I answered it to find Kelly Rice standing there holding the rap sheet for Levi Jones.

  “A word Sheriff?”

  I stepped out of the room and closed the door firmly behind me. This better be good! “Go ahead.”

  “You said Levi Jones was a 20 something year old guy?”

  “Yes, that’s what Aiden Quinn told me.”

  “The Social Security Number you gave me from his employee record was for a Samuel Levi Jones, deceased in 2001. He’d be nearly 50 now, if he were alive. I did a little digging. Samuel Jones has a son, Levi Jones; different Social Security Number, obviously. This is his rap sheet.” She handed me the printout.

  There were three pages of charges with convictions for petty theft, battery, possession, OVI, open container...you name it. All were minor crimes for which there would have been little jail time but what was on it was enough of a bad record that Quinn wouldn’t have hired him if he did background checks on his employees. He probably pulled the scam with his dad’s info get the job and nobody caught it. The question was ‘why’? I thought I knew the answer.

  “Thanks Kelly. I need to work on this guy some more and this will help.” I tossed my head toward the interrogation room. “Have you even started working on that flyover yet?”

  “I put a call out.”

  “See if you can get it for noon or later.”

  “Roger.”

  She left and I stepped back into the interrogation room. Funk was still sitting in his chair, his cuffed hands resting on the table top. He had somehow managed to work up a sweat in my absence. His forehead showed beads of perspiration which I figured for nervous sweat. I’m about to make you sweat a whole lot more!

  I took a seat across from him again and laid the rap sheet for Jones face down in front of me. He stared at it.

  I leaned across the table toward him and spoke softly, “Do you really want to help yourself and possibly lessen the impact that the things you’re charged with are going to have on you?”

  He nodded.

  “Then you need to start leveling with me.”

  “I’ve been straight with you...”

  I held my hand up to stop him. “I wasn’t born yesterday.” I paused for a beat but he said nothing. “Okay, look; let’s talk about something else for a minute.” I pointed at the papers on the table. “This is a rather lengthy rap sheet for a buddy of yours.”

  He was all ears now.

  “How long have you known Levi Jones?” I was taking a shot but I had a pretty strong hunch.

  Funk slumped in his chair. “I’ve known him for a minute.”

  And my hunch pays off! “How about defining that for me. A year? Longer?”

  “Couple of years, maybe.”

  “Did he recruit you for this?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Is he ‘Sticks’?”

  Funk hung his head. His “yeah” was barely audible. And hunch number two also pays off!

  ###

  Tuesday, June 3rd, 2014

  Genesis Hospital

  Shane Harding checked in at the security desk and then proceeded to the nurses’ station. Liberty Tracy was being housed on a locked psyche ward in the upper reaches of the hospital for her own protection.

  When he made his way down the hall and stepped into her room, he found her awake and alert if not a little the worse for wear.

  “Mrs. Tracy, I’m Detective Harding with the Muskingum County Sheriff’s Department.”

  Libby looked him up and down.

  “I need to ask you some questions ma’am.”

  She motioned him into the only visitors chair and looked at him expectantly once he was seated.

  “How are you feeling today?”

  “Okay...better than yesterday.”

  “Do you know why you’re here?”

  “On this looney ward no, but I’ve been told I was brought here to detox...again.”

  Shane held back a wince at her barb. “Do you remember what you took yesterday that landed you here?”

  She shook her head, “Not all of it, no. You people must think I’m some sort of addict...”

  He ignored the remark. They’d told him at the nurses station that a routine drug screen performed when she was brought in showed the drugs in her system that he and Mel had already suspected she’d taken, marijuana and barbiturates. “Were the drugs you ingested yesterday supplied by Esteban Perez?”

  Libby Tracy looked away.

  “Mrs. Tracy?”

  “Yes, they were.”

  “What is your relationship to Mr. Perez?”

  “He’s my lover.” She had the good grace to blush. “I know he’s the reason you’re really here. Look, I don’t like talking to cops in general but I keep landing here after seeing him and, well...something just doesn’t feel right anymore.”

  Harding adopted a gentler tone, “How long have you been seeing him?”

  “A, a few months...”

  “Ma’am, let me step you backward a little bit. The Monday after your husband died you were brought in here in an extremely agitated state. Your lab tests then showed that you had the highly potent hallucinogenic drug DMT in your system. Do you recall anything about that day?”

  “I told the Sheriff a little bit about that morning before but I didn’t tell her about Estaban.” She paused and got a faraway look in her eyes. “He was there that day. He came later in the day; after I dealt with Ben’s family on the phone and then slept again. I didn’t sleep well Saturday night or Sunday. Anyway, he said he’d heard about Ben’s death over the weekend and he thought someone should be with me. We just sat for a while and talked...talked about Ben. We don’t usually talk a lot...”

  “Were Ben and Estaban acquainted?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Did he offer you any drugs that day?”

  She blew out a heavy breath. “We normally do a little LSD when he comes over. He brings just a little good stuff that usually gives me a nice trip. He said he didn’t have any that day but he did have something that would help me relax and rest. I took the only one he had. That’s all I remember about that day at all. I woke up Tuesday morning in the hospital.”

  “Did you see him after that?”

  “I guess you could say that. He, he came to Ben’s funeral service. He wanted to talk to me but I couldn’t talk there...not with Ben’s mother and sister there.”

  “Do you know what he wanted to talk about?”

  She shook h
er head no.

  “Mrs. Tracy, I know this is hard but I need you to answer honestly,” He waited for her nod and then he continued, “Do you believe that Estaban Perez is a drug dealer?”

  “Estaban? No, no! He’s just...he always...I don’t think so...”

  “Do you know where he works? Does he have a job?”

  “He’s a...a consultant for the music business, he told me.”

  “Did you meet him because of his job?”

  She shook her head no.

  How did the two of you meet?”

  Libby thought for a minute. “We were introduced at a party, I believe.”

  “Who introduced you?”

  “I don’t remember exactly...”

  He sensed that she wasn’t being honest but she was cooperating where it counted so he didn’t press it.

  “Just a few more questions ma’am. I need to talk with you about the restaurant.”

  “The Hive? What about it? I don’t know what I’m going to do with that...I remember that...that’s one of the things that Estaban and I did talk about that Monday after Ben died”

  “Oh? How so?”

  “The Hive was Ben’s baby. I never had anything to do with it. I don’t know anything about it. I’m not interested in operating it and I don’t really need the money. I think I should probably just close it down or sell it but I, I just don’t know who would want it.”

  “Has Manuel Perez offered to buy the place?”

  “Manny, the cook?”

  “Yes.”

  “No...not that I’m aware off. Certainly not to me, anyway.” She paused. Now that I think about it, Estaban told me after Ben died that if I decided I wanted to sell it, he had some contacts who might be interested.”

  Harding nodded. “Did he give you any names?”

  “No. We didn’t really go into it.”

  “One last question ma’am and I’ll let you rest; Are you aware of a downtown revitalization project that will affect several buildings in the vicinity of the restaurant?”

  She waved her hand in the air “They’ve been talking about that for years. Nothing ever comes of it.”

  “Actually, the project is slated to get underway this summer. Everything has been contracted. The buildings across the street from The Hive are scheduled to be gutted and interconnected. Inside, they’ll be developed into a theatre and concert hall venue. Outside, the old façade will be preserved.”

  Liberty Tracy looked genuinely shocked.

  “Mrs. Tracy?”

  “I had no idea...That would make the restaurant prime...” She didn’t finish the thought. Her eyes clouded over and she began to tear up. “Do you...do you think Ben being killed had something to do with that? That maybe somebody knew this and wanted...wanted to get the restaurant property to, to...I don’t even know what to say...”

  Chapter 22 – Bzzzz

  Tuesday, June 3rd, 2014

  Somewhere over Quinn land...

  Kelly Rice managed to convince the Ohio BCI to do a helicopter flyover of the Quinn property I wanted to get a look at and to let us join them. The situation wasn’t ideal; I didn’t want the Bureau sticking its collective nose into my investigation but Muskingum County lacks the aerial resources to do overhead recon. Beggars can’t be choosers.

  We were in the air a little after noon. I was up front with the pilot, Max Sherry. Rice was in a jump seat behind him so we’d have eyes on both sides of the bird. The three of us were all helmeted and mic’d up so we could talk to each other over the noise of the helo.

  “We’ll be over the area you want to get a look at in just a few more minutes Sheriff. It’s pretty heavily wooded there and the trees are in full leaf. I’ll get as close as I can so you can get a better look but I can’t promise a lot.”

  I’d brought along binoculars so I got them out and got them adjusted while we flew towards the Blue Rock State Forest.

  “Okay ladies, heads up. Here we are.” He began a slow descent over the open field areas of Quinn land and then began to fly a long loop around all of the heavily wooded area. “I’ll do a wide circle first and then we’ll close it in further.”

  With my first overview I looked for anything that would indicate steam or smoke from a cabin, from a still...anything. There was nothing like that. I was looking hard down through the trees with my naked eyes but we were still too high up for me to make out much through the canopy. I started alternating in the binoculars whenever anything looked a little darker or a little lighter than what surrounded it but I had no luck.

  Max waved off of his first big loop and then he flew the chopper in tighter and just a little lower. We all scanned the area in silence for a couple of minutes. Other than the pump jacks that Dallas Granger had serviced, there was nothing to see but endless trees.

  “Max, can we do one more loop getting a little tighter in on the coordinates that mark the edges of the Quinn/Blue Rock boundaries north of that last pump jack we flew over?”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  After a minute of peering down through the trees, Kelly’s voice came through my helmet. “There’s a tiny clearing I can see off of my side but I can’t see into it very well from this angle.”

  We were less than a half a mile north of the northernmost pump jack. Max leaned his head against his window and peered down. “I see it. Let me get us spun around Sheriff so you can get a good look at it with the binoculars.”

  Once we were in position just over the edge of it, I looked at it with my bare eyes first. Again, I saw nothing. There was no still, no cabin...nothing. I was beginning to feel like we’d struck out completely but I went ahead and raised the binoculars to examine the edges of the clearing anyway as Max hovered the craft. I moved the spyglasses slowly along the tree line. I scanned right over something and then jumped back to it. Rather than the universal white, it was a bee hive stained a wood color to let it blend in with the forest behind it.

  “I have a visual on a bee hive!” I kept looking along the same tree line, opposite our hover position. They were really tough to see but I picked out a couple of more.

  “Max, can you circle around please and hover over the opposite edge of the clearing?”

  “Roger Sheriff.”

  Once he’d maneuvered the helo around, I resumed my scan of the tree line and picked out several more hives on the opposite side of the clearing. We’d found what was likely the crux of McClarnan’s honey producing operation.

  “Kelly I can confirm at least seven hives. There are possibly more. They blend in well. Wherever his bees are, he can’t be too far away.”

  “Whose land are they on though Sheriff? Is it Quinn’s or is it part of Blue Rock?”

  I looked at Max. He shrugged and checked his GPS reading. “It’s real close Sheriff but I’d say that little clearing is at the very edge of Quinn’s land.”

  I voiced the thought in my head out loud, “It makes me wonder if it was always a clearing or if McClarnan cleared it quietly over time? Bet in the summer we see lots of stuff worthy of peak season pollination and honey production down there.”

  We spent a couple of more minutes examining the forest around the clearing. If anything was down there, it was well camouflaged. To find anything else, we were going to have to recon on foot.

  Tuesday, June 3rd, 2014

  2:00 PM

  My duty cell rang as Rice and I were headed back into the station. It was Shane Harding.

  “Where are you Shane?”

  “I’m near The Hive. Sheriff, you’re never going to believe this; a vehicle registered to Rojas is parked behind the building. They just closed for the day so I’m sitting here watching it, waiting for him to leave so I can nail him. Your hunches about what Liberty Tracy knows and doesn’t know seem to be correct.”

  “Okay.” I was confused. “What’s wrong? Do you need backup?”

  “Well that’s just it; another vehicle, a capped camo painted pick-up truck just pulled up and two guys jumped out, grabbed some b
oxes from the bed and went into the restaurant with them. One of them is McClarnan.”

  “Holy shit!”

  “Exactly! What should I do?”

  I started to think fast. Both men were suddenly in easy reach and we needed to nail them both but Shane couldn’t do that alone, especially since there was a third man present. I was too far away to get there quickly enough to do a bust and radioing patrol could alert the men if they were listening to our radio traffic and put Shane in a very tight spot. “I’ll tell you what, forget Rojas for now. We know where to find him. Wait for those other two to come out and tail that truck. I’m on my way to assist so we can switch off.”

  “Roger boss.”

  “Do you have a plate number?”

  “I can’t read the front one. It’s covered in mud. I’ll call you when I get a look at the back one.”

  “I’m headed your way. Be careful!”

  I grabbed the keys for an unmarked from the Desk Sergeant and high-tailed it back out the door. I was easily five minutes away from Shane on a good day. Traffic downtown was rarely good on a weekday afternoon.

  As I was pulling out of the lot, my cell rang again. It was Shane. I put him on speaker and rolled out headed in his general direction.

  “Sheriff, they’ve left the Hive but they’re still in the downtown area.”

  “Where are they now?”

  “They’re headed south on 7th toward Market.”

  “So you aren’t far but that’s one way going south and I’m already south of you.” I was thinking on the fly. “Tell you what, I just came out of the back lot with an unmarked. I’m going to cut across Fountain to 6th and come north and then work my way east toward 7th. Keep this line open and keep me posted.”

  “They just turned west on California and they’re pulling into a lot.” He was quiet for a minute. “They both got out again. Sheriff, it looks like they’re just making routine deliveries...”

  Of all the dumb luck! “You know what, let’s let them do that. Once I get there, I’ll take over and tail them around. We really need to get to McClarnan’s operation. I didn’t have a whole ton of luck this morning. Maybe this guy that’s hauling his ass around will take him back there and solve our problem for us.”