by Lauren Carr
Francine shoved him back down into his seat. “Nowhere in our bylaws does it state a minimum age requirement to be eligible for the Geezer Squad.”
“When did we write up bylaws,” Ray asked, “and why didn’t I get a copy of them?”
“We don’t have any bylaws,” Bruce said. “If we did, we’d insist that our members learn something about wine.”
“Since we have no bylaws,” Francine said, “that means we have no rules saying that this hunk of beefcake here is too young to belong to the Geezer Squad.”
“And since his father was our founder, and he is retired,” Elliott said, “then I vote that we let him in.”
“Don’t I have a say in this?” Chris stood up. “Maybe I don’t want to belong to a group that calls itself the Geezer Squad. What it is you guys do anyway?” He held up the book. “I suspect it has nothing to do with reading.”
“You better hope we decide to let you stay, Christopher.” Bruce poured the last of the pinot noir into a goblet and held it up to the light. “At this point, you’ve seen too much. So if you don’t join our group, then we’re gonna have to kill you.”
“Are you serious?”
“No, he’s not,” Jacqui said with a laugh.
“Yes, I am,” Bruce said. “It’s in our bylaws.”
“You don’t have any bylaws,” Chris said.
“Well, if we did have bylaws then that rule would be in them right before the paragraph about knowing the proper way to drink wine.”
“When did we say that group rejects would have to be killed?” Elliott took a sip from the goblet.
“Hey, I’ve never been a reject in my life,” Chris said, “and I’m not about to start now.”
“Don’t you remember back when we came up with our group name? Kirk said that it was imperative that no one know about us, especially Doris, on account that she’d kill—”
“Shh!” Elliott hissed at Bruce, who, seeing Chris’s questioning expression, drained his glass.
Chris looked at each person around the table. “You’re all retired law enforcement. You’re not reading books. You’re working—what? Are you private investigators?”
“Kind of,” Jacqui said.
Elliott turned in his seat to face Chris. “Your father never wanted to retire. After he got shot, he was itching to get back to work, but he loved your mother more than anything. She became a nervous wreck worrying about losing him.” He shrugged his shoulders. “He retired to make her happy, but he was miserable. He told me that he felt like an old fire horse locked in the barn unable to run when the sirens went off.”
“That was when he started adopting retired race horses,” Chris recalled.
“I think your mother saw how unhappy he was,” Elliott said, “but she didn’t want him to be out on the streets.”
“The worst thing isn’t so much not being out there,” Ray said, “as much as it is not being allowed to use your mind.”
“Seeing that,” Elliott said, “your mother suggested that your dad join her book club. That’s where I’d met him.”
“The book club that you two got kicked out of,” Chris said.
“So, we started our own,” Elliott said.
“But it wasn’t a book club.”
“We had every intention of it being a book club, specializing in mysteries and suspense and thriller books. With us all being retired law enforcement folks, we’d be free to go off on our tangents—the type that got us kicked out of your mom’s group.”
“Man!” Francine said. “We ripped those books to shreds.”
“The book club lasted two meetings,” Ray said.
“Then what happened?” Chris asked.
“The book we had read that month struck me too close to home,” Ray said. “The plot was too similar to—well.”
“It was the case that kept Ray up at night,” Jacqui said.
“You know the type of case we’re talking about, don’t you, sweet cheeks?” Francine said.
Thinking about his conversation earlier that day with his daughter, Chris nodded his head.
“So,” Elliott said, “we decided to look into Ray’s case. Reopen it. Each of us using our own separate area of expertise to investigate it.”
“Ray invented cybersecurity at Homeland Security,” Jacqui said. “I’m Jacqui Guilfoyle, a retired medical examiner from Pennsylvania.”
“And I’m a retired investigative journalist from the Associated Press,” Francine said.
“Suddenly, this group of geezers came to life,” Elliott said. “We each had something to contribute to thaw out the cold cases that kept us up at night. That’s when we became the Geezer Squad.”
“Each month, we look into a different cold case,” Francine said.
“What case kept my father up at night?” Chris held up his hand to stop her before she could answer. “Let me guess. The Mona Tabler case.”
Everyone sitting around the table nodded his or her head.
“And the Shirley Rice murder, too,” Jacqui said.
“Dad was convinced the same guy killed both women,” Chris said, “even though they’d been raped and murdered five years apart.”
“There’s no physical evidence to connect the two cases,” Bruce said. “Nor does there appear to be any connection between the victims.”
“Except the M.O. and the victim profiles are the same,” Chris said.
“Generally.”
“You must have been a defense attorney at some point,” Chris said.
“No, I was a prosecutor, and I was very good at it. Do you know why?” Bruce tapped his temple. “Because I knew how the other side thought. By the time I retired, I could figure out the other side’s strategy before they did.”
“Bruce became a criminal lawyer after his mother’s murderer got off on a technicality,” Francine told Chris in a low voice. “He was one of the most ruthless prosecutors east of the Mississippi.”
“Which is why they made me attorney general,” Bruce said. “They figured I’d be less dangerous behind a desk and out of the courtroom.” He chuckled. “They were wrong.”
“Both victims were middle-aged women,” Elliott said. “Mona, the first victim, lived alone in a big house next to Morgan Park in Shepherdstown.”
“Two-fifteen Morgana Drive,” Ray said while referring to his notes. “Divorced. No children.”
“She was the restaurant manager at the Stardust,” Francine said.
“Over thirty years with the racetrack,” Ray said.
“Davenport kept her on after Penn National Gaming bought the track and renovated it to add the casino with a fancy hotel and fine dining,” Elliott said.
“Mona had quite a reputation for running a tight ship,” Chris said. “When I was going to college at Shepherd, a few of my friends got jobs waiting tables at the restaurant. One guy walked out in the middle of his shift. He said she reminded him of a guard in a women’s prison. Cold as ice.”
“That’s why Davenport picked her to manage the casino’s restaurants when he became CEO,” Ray said. “She only lasted a couple of years before someone killed her.”
“It’s also why Dad had a suspect list as long as his right arm. She’d made a lot of enemies. There was one guy,” — Chris scratched his ear — “What was his name?” — he snapped his fingers — “Opie! Opie Fletcher. He had actually told people that he’d done it. The police department was flooded with calls saying that Opie was bragging about how he’d killed her. Mona had fired him years before when he had been a dishwasher. Dad brought him in for questioning. Turned out he was mentally challenged and he was telling everyone he’d done it for attention.”
“He ended up getting more attention than he’d bargained for,” Francine said. “We actually managed to track down the source of that rumor. After getting fired as a dishwasher,
Opie got a job cleaning stables at the track. He was having lunch in the cafeteria when everyone was talking about Mona Tabler’s murder.”
“One of the guys at the table told Opie, joking of course, that he’d better be careful or the police were going to catch him,” Elliott said. “To which Opie announced that he did it. He whacked her. A bunch of folks heard him and there the rumor got started.”
“Were you able to prove Opie didn’t do it?” Chris asked.
“He’s officially off our suspect list,” Francine said.
“Then five years later, Shirley Rice was beaten, raped, stabbed, and her home torched,” Bruce said.
“Shirley Rice was on the county commission,” Chris said. “She was separated from her husband, a plastic surgeon with a wandering eye. She lived in Martinsburg. Just like with Mona, she had been raped and murdered.”
“Both assaults were extremely violent,” Jacqui said. “Blows to the face. Dozens of stab wounds.”
“The murder weapons were taken from the victims’ kitchens,” Chris said. “Then, the killer set fire to their homes.” He held up a finger for each point of similarity. “Both victims were middle-aged women. Beaten. Raped. Stabbed. And then arson. Five points of similarities.”
“Killed five years apart and there’s no connection between the two victims,” Bruce said.
“That’s because the killer’s other victims were out of Kirk’s jurisdiction,” Ray said. “Kirk didn’t learn about them until after the Geezer Squad got on board.”
“Other victims?” Chris asked.
“When your dad told us about Mona and Shirley, I did a search of the federal database to find cases matching theirs,” Ray said. “I found three other victims. All middle-aged women—beaten to a pulp—raped, stabbed and their homes torched. One was in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. That was in 1995.”
“That’s three years before Mona’s murder,” Chris said.
“Another was in Mount Airy, Maryland, in 2000. Then we had a woman killed in Fairfax, Virginia in 2006.”
“Sounds like a serial killer with a long cooling off period,” Chris said.
“That’s exactly what it is,” Jacqui said.
“Two women with similarities in their murders does not a pattern make,” Bruce said. “But five? Now that’s a pattern that’s difficult for a defense attorney to discount.”
“So we contacted the investigators of the other cases and we’ve been comparing notes and evidence,” Francine said. “I found where the victim in Lancaster had told a friend of hers that she felt like she was being watched just ten days before her murder. That tells me that the killer stalked his victims and learned their patterns before he attacked. That’s why he’s so hard to catch. He knows when to strike.”
“But we haven’t figured out how he picks his victims,” Jacqui said. “We need to identify his hunting ground.”
“With them living so far apart,” Chris said, “the killer must have a job that includes some sort of travel—like a truck driver. As a restaurant manager, Mona would have dealt with delivery drivers on a regular basis.”
“But not Shirley, who was on the county commission,” Francine said.
“Still, that’s progress,” Chris said with a grin. “Have you identified a suspect?”
“Unfortunately, not yet,” Elliott said.
“But we have given him a name,” Francine said.
“A name?”
“All serial killers need a name,” Francine said. “Otherwise, how do we know who we’re talking about?”
“It’s a media thing,” Jacqui said. “Notorious psychopaths have to have names.”
“We call him the Graduate Slaughterer.”
Chris thought about the name for a long moment.
“Too long, huh?” Jacqui turned to Francine. “I told you it’s too long.”
“It is not too long,” Francine said.
Jacqui ticked off on her fingers. “The Zodiac Killer. Jack the Ripper. Son of Sam. They’re all names that roll off the tongue. The Graduate Slaughterer is too clunky.”
“I don’t get it,” Chris said. “Graduate of what?”
“Did you ever see the movie The Graduate?” When Chris shook his head, Francine let out a deep breath. “Dustin Hoffman and Anne Bancroft? Mrs. Robinson?”
“In The Graduate, Dustin Hoffman was a young college graduate who’s seduced by his middle-aged neighbor, Mrs. Robinson,” Elliott said.
“Is the killer a young man?” Chris asked.
“It’s a fair bet that he started out that way,” Jacqui said. “I did a psychological profile. I believe he was in his early twenties at the time of the first attack. Definitely has mommy issues. I also believe that the first murder was not his first rape. With each murder that we identified, he has become more and more brutal.”
“So, if he was in his early twenties at the time of the first murder in…” Chris searched to recall the date.
“The mid-ninties,” Ray said. “He’d be in his late forties or early fifties now.”
“But you haven’t identified a murder since 2006,” Chris said. “Either he’s committed other murders that you haven’t identified, or he’s stopped killing for some reason.”
“He’s either in jail for another crime or he’s dead,” Bruce said.
“Or he’s worked out his mommy issues,” Francine said.
“I doubt it,” Jacqui said. “His murders were getting worse not better. The only way the Graduate Slaughterer will stop is if he’s made to stop.”
“We’ll catch him,” Elliott said. “We geezers have a lot of time on our hands and we don’t give up.”
Those around the table bumped fists as a sign of comradery.
Francine turned to Chris. “So, now that you’re a member of our team—”
“I never agreed to join your group.”
“Oh,” Francine said, “are you saying that you sleep well in your bed every night, angel? In all your years of working law enforcement, there is not even one case, one victim, one face that you see when you close your eyes?”
As she leaned toward him, Chris pulled away and looked around the room in silence.
“Give us a name,” Jacqui said.
“Sandy,” Chris said in a soft voice—barely above a whisper. “Sandy Lipton.”
Chapter Four
“Sandy Lipton disappeared twenty-four years ago last month,” Ray reported from notes he had found in a law enforcement database. “She was eighteen years old and nine months pregnant.”
Chris was afraid to ask where Ray found his information. In the short amount of time he had spent with the Geezer Squad, he saw each one had maintained sources to a wealth of information since retiring.
Pacing around the table, Bruce would pause to pick up a slice of cheese from the tray while reading notes over other squad members’ shoulders.
Before launching into their research, Bruce had opened a fresh bottle of white wine and poured glasses for everyone. After tasting it, Chris declared it “tasty,” which Bruce found to be as offensive as “good.”
In her seat next to Chris, Francine scoured the internet using the library’s wi-fi and scribbling notes on a yellow pad. Each discovery caused her to utter a sound of either pleasure or displeasure. She pursed her plump red lips and arched her copper-colored eyebrows during the hunt.
Jacqui searched the internet as well. Occasionally, she would check with Ray on what he was finding on his end.
Elliott used the old-fashioned means, making phone calls to friends. Chris recognized some as being former colleagues of his father.
“If she disappeared twenty-four years ago,” Jacqui pointed out, “you would have been only—”
“Twenty-two when all this happened,” Chris said.
“Did you—” Bruce started to ask.
“I
never touched her.” Chris narrowed his eyes to gray slits at what he assumed they suspected. Even Elliott, who had known Chris for years, regarded him with doubt. “Her disappearance was the worst thing that ever happened to me.”
“From the looks of it, it was the worst thing to happen to her, too,” Bruce said. “After all these years—I assume she has been declared presumed dead.”
“Declared dead eighteen years ago,” Ray said.
“I’m very aware of that,” Chris said. “The sorest point for me—and my family—is that all of this happened because I did a favor for a sweet girl who I considered a friend. What do I get in return? Accused of something disgusting and perverted and my reputation in this town is ruined.”
He uttered a deep sigh. “I guess I hoped it would go away and folks would forget about it. Thing is—today my daughter heard about Sandy Lipton at school.” He swallowed. “Now people are telling my daughters that their father killed some girl after taking advantage of her.”
“Anyone who knows you, knows you’d never do something like that,” Elliott said.
“No offense, Elliott,” Chris said, “but there are a lot of folks who love to speculate about my dad using his influence to keep me out of jail for murder.”
Francine closed her tablet. “Well, now’s your chance, sweet cheeks, for us to uncover the truth and clear your name—not just for you, but for your family, too.”
“Tell us about this favor that ended up with this young pregnant girl going missing,” Jacqui said.
Chris looked around the table. Except for Elliott, they were strangers to him. For the last twenty-four years, he had never told anyone—not even his late wife—about Sandy Lipton and the dark heavy cloud of suspicion that hung over him.
Somehow, never speaking of it—ignoring it—rendered it non-existent.
He was wrong.
He was suspected of murder and would continue to be until he found the real killer.
“There used to be a diner next to the racetrack before it became the Stardust Casino,” he said. “The Sure Thing Diner, owned and run by the Liptons, who also owned a low rent apartment complex. A lot of jockeys and horse people lived there. The diner had good bacon cheeseburgers and fries that were really cheap. I used to stop there for lunch a couple of days a week. Back then, I’d work as a courier for the libraries in the area. If a patron made a request here for a book that was at the library in Summit Point, I’d be the one to drive out there to get it and bring it back here. Sometimes, I’d stop at the Sure Thing for lunch during my runs.”
