The Scavenger's Daughter: A Tyler West Mystery

by Mike McIntyre

  “Just tell us where they are, sir. We’ll get ’em.”

  “In the kitchen cupboard, left of the sink. The remote on the key ring opens the garage door.”

  Walton nodded at two more officers. One of them retrieved the keys from the cupboard, then the two men left to search the van.

  Shard had used the van less than an hour ago to dump Dick Cameron’s body. It had to contain trace evidence.

  One of the cops upstairs said, “Let’s check up here.”

  I heard a ceiling panel slide open, then the sound of a cop lifting himself into the attic. There were thuds and thumps as the officer crawled around. I tried to block out the gruesome image of what he might be seeing.

  About ten minutes passed.

  The two officers from upstairs came down. They joined Walton in the living room, along with the two other cops who had searched downstairs.

  The cops shook their heads. They hadn’t turned up a thing.

  Walton’s face twitched.

  Hang in there, Walton. Wait till they finish searching the van.

  Shard looked bored. He raised his eyebrows and shrugged at Walton, as if to say, I told you so.

  I heard footsteps on the landing. Walton walked to the front door to meet the two cops who searched the van.

  “Nothing, Detective,” one of them said.

  “That van hasn’t been driven tonight,” the other cop said. “The engine is cold.”

  CHAPTER 93

  “I told you, Detective,” Shard called to Walton from the dining room table. “It’s all a big mistake.”

  I was stunned. The Billboard Bandit had seen the van on Dehesa Road an hour earlier. How could the engine be cold?

  Walton glared at me. I sensed he wanted to cut his losses and leave. I couldn’t let him.

  “Get his fingerprints,” I whispered.

  He shook his head. “We never found any prints at the crime scenes.”

  I pulled my notebook from my back pocket. Tucked inside was a folded photocopy of one of Friar Tom’s letters. I gave it to Walton. “The handwriting,” I said.

  Walton studied the distinct scrawl. I watched him weigh his options.

  “You’ve almost got him,” I said.

  He suddenly snapped his fingers at me and said, “Give me that notepad.”

  I handed Walton my notebook. He opened it to a blank page and pulled a pen from the inside pocket of his jacket.

  Walton sat down next to Shard. He placed the pad and pen in front of him. Next to the pad, he smoothed out the letter.

  “Mr. Shard,” Walton said, “please copy this, word for word.”

  Shard picked up the letter and began to read aloud: “To the heretics of San Diego, welcome to my Inquisition…”

  Shard dropped the paper to the table like it burned his hands. “This is a trick!” he said. “You want to frame me for the murders!”

  “Calm down,” Walton said. “We’re only trying to eliminate you as a suspect. Friar Tom has a very distinctive style of handwriting.”

  “No, this is outrageous!”

  Shard leaned back in his chair and folded his arms. I watched from the couch as he tried to wriggle from the trap.

  “If you like, we can all go downtown,” Walton said. “You can spend the rest of the night in jail and we can continue this conversation when I come on duty tomorrow afternoon.”

  Shard turned amiable again. “No, no need for that, Detective. If this exercise can eliminate me as a suspect, then here you go.”

  Shard picked up the pen and started to write.

  “Wait,” Walton said. “Don’t do it in cursive. Print it.”

  Shard stopped writing and looked up. “Detective,” he chuckled, “I haven’t printed anything since I was in the third grade.”

  “Mr. Shard, as you can see, the letters from Friar Tom were printed. Your handwriting sample is no good unless you print it.”

  Shard fidgeted. He rocked in his chair and shook his head.

  “Shall we go downtown, then?” Walton said.

  “This is absurd!” Shard said. “I’ve never even jaywalked. You’re way off base here!”

  “Let’s go for a ride, sir,” Walton said, standing from the table.

  “Oh, alright then, I’ll print it,” Shard said. He abruptly picked up the pen and began copying the letter.

  My skin started to tingle.

  When Shard finished, he threw down the pen. “There, I hope you’re satisfied.”

  Walton picked up the notepad and the letter and compared the two. Apprehension filled his face.

  “You see?” Shard said. “My handwriting is nothing at all like this Friar Tom’s.”

  Walton tore the top sheet of paper from the pad. He set the pad and letter back down in front of Shard.

  “Okay, if you’ll indulge me,” Walton said, “please print this again.”

  It’s hard for most people to disguise their handwriting in the same exact fashion twice.

  I saw a bead of perspiration slide down Shard’s temple.

  “I’m very thirsty,” he said. “I need a glass of water.”

  Walton nodded at one of the uniformed cops standing in the kitchen. The officer pulled a glass from the cupboard and filled it from the faucet.

  “Not tap water,” Shard said, “filtered water.” He started to stand and added, “Here, I’ll get it myself.”

  Walton placed a hand on Shard’s shoulder and eased him back into his chair. “Officer Cooper will take care of you, sir.”

  Cooper emptied the glass in the sink and refilled it at the Sparklett’s Water dispenser next to the refrigerator. He handed the glass to Shard, who drained it in four long gulps.

  “Shall we continue?” Walton said.

  “If this wasn’t so serious, it would be comical,” Shard said, shaking his head. “But I can see there is no point in arguing.”

  He picked up the pen and re-copied the letter. He wrote quickly, as if to prove that there was no way he could be disguising his handwriting.

  Walton lifted the new sample and compared it with the first one. His shoulders slumped.

  “If we’re through here,” Shard said, “I’d like to go back to bed.”

  Walton frowned. Shard likely had grounds for a lawsuit. At the very least, Walton faced disciplinary action, possibly a demotion.

  “Just one last thing,” Walton said.

  Shard looked up.

  “Print it again,” Walton said. “Only this time, do it left-handed.”

  CHAPTER 94

  That explained it! Shard was left-handed!

  “Enough is enough, Detective,” he said. “You break down my door at four a.m. and make these ludicrous demands. I’ve been patient with you up till now because I know how important this case is. But I believe I’ve become the victim of police harassment.”

  “Mr. Shard, you can’t imagine how harassed you’ll feel if you don’t comply with this simple request,” Walton said.

  “But I don’t even think I can write left-handed.”

  “Give it your best shot.”

  Walton glared at him without speaking. Shard returned his stare.

  The standoff ended when Shard blinked and looked down at the notepad. He shrugged and picked up the pen. He labored to print the letter with an unsteady left hand.

  It took a long time. He formed the last period with a hard jab to the pad, clutching the pen like an ice pick.

  Walton stared at the writing sample in disbelief. He didn’t ask him to re-copy it, apparently sure that Shard hadn’t penned the Friar Tom letters.

  Suddenly, Walton’s demeanor changed. I could almost see the light bulb switch on.

  “What about the license plate?” Walton said.

  Shard looked convincingly puzzled.

  “A-U-T-O-D-F-E,” Walton said. “Auto da fé refers to torture during the Spanish Inquisition.”

  Shard smiled. “Does it? I never knew that. The van belonged to my wife.”

  “Your wife
?”

  “Dana Felicia,” Shard said. “Auto, D for Dana, F-E for Felicia.”

  Walton looked like he might fall off his chair.

  “So, Detective,” Shard said, “how about it, can I get a little shuteye now?”

  “Mr. Shard, sir, I don’t know what to say,” Walton said, standing. “It seems we were acting on some bad information.” He shot me a nasty look.

  Shard said, “Hey, no harm, no foul.”

  “Please accept my apologies, sir,” Walton said. “The department will pay for the damages to your door. Send me the bill. I’ll personally see to it myself.” Walton gave him his card.

  “Thank you, Detective. Don’t beat yourself up over this. I know the strain you’re under, and if this small inconvenience to me helps solve the case, it was worth it. I just hope you catch the guy soon.”

  “That’s very understanding of you, sir,” Walton said, shaking Shard’s hand. He turned to his men and said, “Let’s go.”

  As they walked to the door, he glared at me and said, “West, I’ll speak with you outside.”

  I glanced at the family picture on the end table.

  “Ask him about his daughter,” I shouted.

  Shard looked at me. “What about my daughter?”

  “Where is she?”

  “She’s away.” He turned to Walton and added, “Audrey has cerebral palsy. After her mother died, I…I tried.” Shard trembled. “Her condition was too much to handle alone. I was able to place her at the Peterson Center, up in L.A. It’s the finest facility of its kind.”

  Shard’s eyes misted over and he bit his lip. Walton offered him a compassionate nod.

  “That’s bullshit!” I said, charging across the room. “She got in the way of your Inquisition, and you killed her, just like you killed the others. Now, where’s Jordan?”

  Walton stepped between Shard and me. He grabbed me by the Kevlar vest and pushed me into the grasp of an officer. Another cop helped restrain me.

  “Get him out of here!” Walton barked.

  They pulled me toward the door as I continued to struggle.

  On my way out, Shard said to Walton, “I can only imagine what he’s going through. It must be devastating not knowing.”

  “He’s definitely lost it,” Walton said.

  “Mr. West,” Shard called to me.

  I turned my head.

  “I’m sorry about your wife,” he said.

  I tried to break free, but the two officers got me onto the porch and down the steps.

  Walton caught up with us in the driveway. He looked toward the street and said, “Shit!”

  A mob of reporters waited at the curb. Word of the raid had no doubt come over their police scanners. The entire block was lit up. Everyone was there, even CNN and FOX News.

  “Detective Walton, have you arrested Friar Tom?” someone yelled. “Is he inside?”

  “Ty,” another reporter shouted, “is Jordan alive?”

  Walton pressed toward his car, but the crowd blocked him. He raised a hand, asking for quiet.

  “The investigation into the Friar Tom case continues,” he said, stiffly. “We are fielding dozens of leads and following up on every one of them. Our business here was a routine stop in the course of this investigation.”

  “At four o’clock in the morning?” someone shouted, prompting laughter from the rest of the pack.

  It wouldn’t wash. By noon, Walton and his men would be portrayed coast to coast as incompetent Keystone Kops.

  Walton waited for the commotion to subside. “The individual at this address has nothing—I repeat, nothing—to do with this case. There is no news for you here, so pack up and clear out. I have nothing more to say.”

  The onslaught continued. Walton was a deer in the headlights.

  He turned to me and hissed under his breath, “Tell me, West, do you ever get tired of fucking up?”

  CHAPTER 95

  Luther Shard stalked inside his house, enraged.

  Tyler West was a nuisance. It didn’t matter that nobody else believed that Shard was Friar Tom. West had turned the spotlight on him. He was no longer anonymous. It was too risky to snatch a new victim, let alone visit Jordan Sinclair in his torture chamber.

  He couldn’t sleep. He ached in the pit of his stomach. He needed to maim, mutilate, destroy. He couldn’t hold out any longer.

  He descended the stairs to his basement, where his latest victim awaited.

  The cops had searched his whole house but they had missed it. They were so stupid. They only saw the obvious.

  The police had found an ordinary workshop stocked with common household tools. But to Friar Tom, it was a substitute torture chamber fitted with exquisite instruments of agony.

  The claw hammer pulled nails, but it also gouged eyes. The belt sander smoothed rough surfaces, but it also removed layers of skin. The heavy-duty vise held lengths of pipe, but it also gripped a human head.

  And that wrecking bar in the corner? Well, it was called a wrecking bar, after all.

  Screwdrivers, hole punches, chisels—in Friar Tom’s workshop, they all had their alternate uses.

  He pulled an eight-inch by eight-inch block of wood from the scrap heap and secured it in the vise. He sculpted the wood with a skill saw and a router. A crude likeness of a human face took shape. He carved it some eyes, ears, a nose, a chin, a mouth.

  Nobody else might see it, but to him, it looked like Tyler West.

  He ran a flat utility chisel across West’s “forehead.” He pinned the reporter’s “ears” to the sides of his “head” with a nail gun. He drilled holes into the “skull.”

  As he worked, he imagined West’s screams and cries for mercy. This was pure joy. West’s agony, his ecstasy.

  The sight of the power drill in his hand pulled him from his fantasy. Like all the other tools in the basement, the drill was a leftover from Fifth Avenue Hardware. He was reminded of his failed business.

  He had forgotten more about hardware than his father had ever known, but that hadn’t saved his store. He never had a chance. He was a victim of timing.

  The drill he now held went for a rock-bottom $49.99 in his old store, but HomeMart sold them for $39.98. He had to sell the belt sanders for about two hundred bucks, but HomeMart let them go for one-fifty. And the ten-inch Phillips screwdriver resting on the workbench? Shard used to charge $4.99, but HomeMart practically gave them away. The little guy was indeed screwed.

  Shard removed a hickory-handled hatchet from a hook in the workshop’s pegboard wall. He ran his thumb gently across the blade. I guess you could say that I have an ax to grind.

  Too bad his father wasn’t alive. He’d like to lock him inside his torture chamber for a year or two. Everyone remembered Al Shard as jolly Mr. Fixit, not the brutal tyrant Luther knew.

  Al’s final blow to his son came from the grave. After the old man’s death, Channel 13 reluctantly agreed to let Luther take over the “Mr. Fixit” spots. He was a disaster, as stiff as one of the two-by-fours he sold at his store. He was canceled after two appearances. “I’m sorry,” the programming director had told him, “but you’re not your father.”

  No, I’m not, he now thought. And by the time I’m finished, dear old Dad will look like Mother Teresa.

  He swung the hatchet at Tyler West. Chips of wood flew everywhere.

  There was a new Mr. Fixit in town. He’d fix it, alright. He’d fix everything.

  CHAPTER 96

  If I wanted to get Walton to take another look at Luther Shard, I had to do what I do best: dig.

  I did a computer search of the local newspapers for the past several decades, hunting for any new details on Shard.

  Nearly all of the stories related to his father Al, most in connection with his Little League team and his TV spots as Mr. Fixit. His obituary contained one of the few mentions of Luther. He was listed as his father’s lone survivor.

  Luther had no relatives who could tell me more about him.

  Shard is
an unusual name. The only other one I found in the papers was a Leah Shard. Her name appeared several times in the Sun’s weekly children’s section in the early-seventies for making the Honor Roll at Sherman Elementary.

  I called Al’s old friend Vern at his floral shop in the Gaslamp.

  “Ever hear of a Leah Shard?”

  “That’s Al’s daughter,” he said.

  “She wasn’t mentioned in his obituary.”

  “No, I don’t suppose she would have been. She and Al had a falling out, and he disowned her.”

  “Know where I can find her?”

  “Not a clue. Leah was a free spirit. She took off before she finished high school. After that, Al never spoke of her again.”

  Vern had said that Al had run the hardware store into the ground. I hoped it was an exaggeration. If Al’s estate was worth more than $100,000, his will would be filed in Probate Court.

  I drove to the Probate Court on Fourth Avenue and plugged Al Shard’s name into the computer. I was in luck.

  I obtained the folder from the clerk and gave the will a quick read.

  The value of the estate was $103,688.42. It had been divided equally between Luther Shard and a Leah Hollinger. Hollinger had to be the daughter’s married name. Al had not disowned her, after all.

  The will contained an address for her as of 2004. It was in Seattle.

  There was no listing for a Leah or L. Hollinger in the Seattle phone book.

  I called Seattle and hired a courier service to deliver a message to the address in the will. I asked that the note be given to Leah Hollinger or the current occupant. If the Hollingers no longer lived there, the current residents might know where they went. The message asked the recipient to call me. I had the courier service mark it urgent.

  I was in bankruptcy court, pulling the file on Luther Shard, when my phone rang.

  It was my editor.

  “I wanted to give you a heads up,” Rudy said. “We just got a letter from Friar Tom.”

  “In the mail?”

  “No, hand delivered. We’re putting it online now.”

  “What’s the letter look like?”

  “Same as the others, that weird scrawl.”