Voodoo Daddy (A Virgil Jones Mystery)

by Thomas L. Scott

  But he either did not hear me, or simply refused to listen amid the chaos of the events as they unfolded around him. He stepped closer and put his crutch against my hip, forcing me to remove my foot from Amanda’s back or lose my balance. “Step away from my wife, Detective. I insist you tell me—”

  I let go of Sandy and used my own momentum against him. I grabbed the still extended crutch and pinched it under my arm, swept his legs out from under him and had him on the ground before he knew what had happened. I yanked the crutch from his right arm and pinned his hands behind his back. His arms felt like tree limbs under his shirt, and I had the impression he could toss me aside if he wanted to. I also felt like he knew it as well. I looked over at Donatti who ran toward me and placed his handcuffs around Pate’s wrists. I leaned down and whispered into Pate’s ear. “You ever place your cane against my person again I’ll show you the other end of it. I’ve got the resume, sir, believe me.”

  “Release my husband this instant,” Amanda shouted at me as she stood up. “For God’s sake, Jonesy, he’s disabled. You’ve got a crippled man on the ground in handcuffs on his own property. What’s the matter with you? I demand to know what’s going on here,” she said. Why are all these police officers here?” She stomped her foot, her hands balled into fists at her side as she spoke.

  I reached into my pocket, pulled out the search warrant and handed it to her. “We have a warrant to search the premises, Amanda.” Then to Donatti. “Have your men take the file cabinets and everything in the desk drawers. You brought trucks and dollies?”

  “We’re good to go, boss,” Donatti said.

  “Alright, get started then. Get the computers, too. They probably have a central server somewhere. A closet, or a small office. Don’t miss that.”

  Pate mumbled something I couldn’t quite catch. “What was that,” I said.

  “It’s in the basement,” he said. “The door at the end of the hall.”

  I looked at him for a moment. He lay on his side on the floor to accommodate the handcuffs. Then he lifted his head and smiled at me. “I’ve nothing to hide, Detective. Nothing at all. You’ll see. Then you and I, well, we’ll talk again, I suspect.”

  I ignored his comments and nodded to Donatti who motioned for the other officers. They wheeled the dollies in and moved toward the offices. I looked at Amanda. Tears were running down her cheeks. She held the warrant in her hand, down by her side. “Read the warrant, Amanda. It gives us permission to search and seize anything in this building. Your house as well.”

  Her head snapped up, the whites of her eyes veined with red streaks at the corners. “What? My house? You’re going to search my house?’

  “Not going to, Amanda. Are. We’ve got a team there right now as well.”

  “You bastard,” she said. “If you think I’m going to let you get away with this you’re mistaken,” she said, her finger pointed at me like she was admonishing a child. “I’ll have your badge for this, Virgil Jones. You watch and see. You think we don’t have any influence in this town?”

  Samuel Pate looked at his wife and said, “Amanda, go home. Please, you’re not helping.”

  “But Samuel, can’t you see what they’re trying to do to us? We can’t just let—”

  “Amanda, I said go home. Keep your wits about you and get to the house and make sure they conduct their search in a respectful manner, then call Everett. Tell him what’s happened and have him meet me downtown. Can you do that for me, Amanda? Detective, is she free to go?”

  I nodded. Amanda looked at me, the veins on the sides of her neck still bulging with anger. “This isn’t over, Jonesy. Not even close.” But I did not hear the rest of what she said.

  Sandy was shouting as she pulled the rest of the drapery off their support rods. “Hey, I need some help here. Someone get a fire extinguisher. Those burner cans are still going. The drapes are on fire. Jonesy? Jonesy, I need some help over here.”

  The burner cans from under the chafing dishes had spilled to the floor when Sandy tackled Amanda, but in the commotion that followed no one had noticed the smoldering drapery. I helped Sandy yank the rest of the curtains down, then we grabbed carafes of ice water from the tables and dumped them on the hot spots. A few of the people who were present to preview the Sunday broadcast and the rest of the wait staff picked up the smoldering curtains and pulled them outside and tossed them into a pile on the sidewalk.

  Sandy looked at me and puffed out her cheeks. Her hands were shaking. “You okay?” I said.

  “Yeah. Sorry. Fire sort of freaks me out.”

  “Yeah, me too,” I said. “But I guess you knew that already.”

  Sandy smiled at me. “Well, all in all, I think that went just fine, don’t you?”

  “Yeah. Textbook,” I said.

  * * *

  My phone rang and when I looked at the screen I saw it was Cora’s home number, and I thought, Jesus, what now?

  “I know we talked about it a little,” Cora said. “But if I’m being honest with you, my head’s a little foggy this morning.”

  “How was your evening, Cora?”

  “It was, um, productive. That about sums it up, I think.”

  “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “I know. Listen, did you see everything you needed to over at that dilapidated church in Broad Ripple?”

  I took the phone away from my ear for a minute, picked up one of the chairs that had been knocked over and set it upright then sat down upon it before I spoke. “Yeah, pretty sure. Why?”

  “Oh, no reason. I guess last night while you were sleeping and Elliott and I were…uh, well, while you were sleeping, it blew up and burned to the ground. I just got off the phone with the watch commander. Looks like there was some kind of explosion. He said it blew the steeple right off the top. It’s laying in the alley behind the church. He said it looks like the pictures of the cockpit of that Pan Am jet they blew out of the sky over Lockerbie. Remember that?”

  “I’ll get over there as soon as I can.”

  “Slow down, Slick. There’s more. The firemen found a body inside the church. Unidentified female, but the car in the lot belongs to Amy Frechette, so you can do the math. Crime scene is on the way to the Frechette residence as we speak. Didn’t you tell me that’s where Murton Wheeler lives?”

  * * *

  When we pulled up to Murton and Amy’s house, two crime scene tech’s were waiting for us. Sandy hopped out of my truck, and when she did both of the techs said something to her, first one, then the other. I didn’t hear what it was.

  Sandy looked at them and shook her head. “Oh my God, how about we all just pull our dicks out and see whose is bigger?” She looked at each man individually for just a split second, then said, “I’d probably win. We may or may not need you boys. We’ll let you know. Why don’t you wait in your van? Go on now,” she said, as she gave them a little wave of her hand. Once they were gone, she looked at me and said, “you want the front or the back?”

  “Front I guess.”

  I had to pop one of the small glass panes in the front door to gain entry. Once we were inside I saw that Amy Frechette’s house was old, but in good shape. The walls were stucco instead of sheet-rocked, the ceiling was made of a biscuit colored stamped tin, and the walk-ways between rooms were all arched. The wall opposite the front door was covered from floor to ceiling with bookshelves, and each shelf was filled with row after row of both religious and psychology studies. For reasons I can not readily explain, I expected to find a good selection of fiction novels, the utilitarian surroundings suggestive of an individual who lived through someone else’s imagination, but clearly that was not the case. Instead, what I found was book after book whose titles were reflective of someone who sought greater understanding of the people she served. Amy Frechette’s home did not appear to be a place of sanctuary from her work, rather a place of continued study of the work to which she devoted her life.

  A hinged, two photo frame sat at eye level
on one of the shelves. One side of the frame held a sepia-toned picture of a young couple’s profile as they looked at each other, the opposite side held a color photo, yellowed with age, of a young man dressed in jungle fatigues standing next to an airplane somewhere in the tropics. Her father perhaps. But it was a single photo next to the others which caught my eye and reminded me of Cora’s comments about not being able to serve the State and my own personal agenda at the same time. The photo was one of Murton and me, taken just after we’d arrived home from basic training, before we were shipped out to fight in the gulf war. In the photo we stood side by side, our arms around each other, both of us smiling at the camera. Just off to the side, part of her face cut out of the frame of the photo, was my mother. She was looking at us and the flash of the camera caught the tears running down her cheek.

  I left the photo untouched and continued to search the room. A February 2006 issue of Psychology Today lay face up on the sofa, open to an article entitled, ‘A Field Guide to Narcissism.’ I wasted a few minutes as I scanned the article, but I ultimately decided I was not narcissistic, and tossed it back on the couch.

  The kitchen was extremely small, a nook really, with only one florescent light bulb that hummed above the kitchen sink. The flickering light against the dark paneled walls reminded me of the times I had spent as a child with my grandfather when I’d wake in the early morning to the smell of percolated coffee and toasted wheat bread before we would go out to fish on his neighbor’s pond.

  We spent close to three hours searching Amy Frechette’s residence, but the truth was, I did not know what we were looking for. I did not expect to find a ledger in Murton’s handwriting that detailed a master plan to kill Franklin Dugan. In fact, the best I could hope for would be to find nothing at all. I searched every drawer, every closet, the attic, the crawl space and every inch in between. In the end, we had made a hell of a mess but turned up no evidence whatsoever.

  My cell phone vibrated in my pocket and when I looked at the screen the number that showed was not one I had seen before. “Jones.”

  “You’re not going to find anything,” Murton said. “There’s nothing there. There never was. I’m not the man you think I am, Jonesy.”

  “Murt, what the hell is going on? That was you in the cab, wasn’t it? If you’re not part of this, come in and we’ll—“

  He laughed without humor into the phone. “We’ll what, figure everything out? Get me a lawyer? I don’t think so, Bud. We were going to be married, did you know that? Did she tell you that?

  “Murt…”

  “I left to protect her, Jonesy. I told them she didn’t know anything, that she was just a minister working with pre-school children. She was pregnant. We found out about a week ago. She died thinking I left her because she was pregnant. Jesus, what have I done?”

  I picked up the phone from the kitchen while he spoke and dialed 911. “Murt, I’m sorry. Let me help you.” I could hear the 911 operator in the background asking if someone needed assistance.

  “You know, I always sort of had it in my head that you and I might hook back up one day, but I guess that ship has sailed, but that’s not on you. Hey, what’s that we used to say? Pop ‘em and drop ‘em? That’s exactly what I’m gonna do. Tell your old man he’s the best, will you? And don’t bother trying to get a trace on this phone. It’s one of those pre-paid specials. It’s about to be road kill on the interstate. What a country, huh?”

  Sandy came around the corner and saw me holding two phones. “What’s going on?” she said.

  “I wish I knew.”

  CHAPTER NINTEEN

  Monday morning when I arrived at my office I discovered Amanda Pate sitting in one of the two chairs that front my desk. “Your assistant said I could wait in here,” she said.

  I walked past her and sat down at my desk. ‘What do you want, Amanda?” I said.

  “What do I want?” Then, as if she were either trying to digest my question, or make something clear to me, she repeated the question. “What do I want? For God’s sake, Jonesy, I want my husband released from that rat hole you’ve put him in. He’s been in there all weekend. What were you thinking?”

  I looked at my watch. “Arraignment is in two hours. He can bond out afterwards.”

  “Bond out? Have you lost your mind? I want the charges against him dropped and I want him released this instant.”

  “That’s not going to happened, Amanda. It’s time to get a grip on reality, here. Samuel is being held for assault on a police officer.”

  “Oh, bullshit, Jonesy. That is pure bullshit, and you know it. You’re holding him because you think he’s somehow mixed up in Franklin’s death, and that just isn’t true. God, you piss me off.”

  “If it’s not true, then convince him to talk to me so I can clear him and move on, otherwise, he’s our number one suspect.”

  “Our attorney has advised us—”

  I cut her off with a wave of my hand. “Yes, yes, your attorney has advised you not to speak with the police or answer any of our questions.” I shook my head at her. “That’s what attorneys do, Amanda. But the hard reality of the situation is this: The truth eventually comes out, and when it does, it’s one of two ways. Either a suspect talks to us and we clear their story, or we move forward with charges and the whole thing goes to trial. Which would you prefer?”

  She rose from the chair and stood in front of my desk, her face and neck red with anger. “You’re wrong,” she said. “Those aren’t the only two choices.”

  “I’m afraid that’s the way I see it, Amanda. If you or Samuel change your mind and want to get on the record, let me know. Otherwise, my office will be moving forward on the case with the evidence we’ve accumulated from both your home and your offices.”

  “What evidence? There is no evidence.”

  “We’re building our case, Amanda. I’m afraid that’s all I can tell you. If I were you, I’d advise Samuel that it’s time to get in front of this thing before it’s too late. Capital murder in the State of Indiana carries the death penalty. With a full confession, the D.A. might be willing to accept a plea deal of life without the possibility of parole, but I may be speaking out of turn here. I can check with him if you’d like.”

  She pointed her finger at me and I watched as it trembled, the fear and rage evident when she spoke. “Fuck you, Jonesy. Fuck you times two, you son of a bitch.”

  “Good bye, Amanda. Next time you want to speak with me, make an appointment.”

  When she walked out of my office I was left with the feeling that something wasn’t quite right. It wasn’t the exchange we just had, as I have had countless ones with other suspect’s spouses just like it over the years. This was different. Visceral in a way I was unable to define. It was as if my office was not the same after Amanda had been in it. The feeling was so strong I moved around the room and viewed it from different angles in an attempt to put myself at ease. In the end, I shook the feeling away and walked back over to my desk. When I looked out my window at the street below I saw Amanda as she stood on the sidewalk waiting for the light to change so she could cross and make her way to the courthouse.

  A well-dressed elderly man stood next to her, his small dog on a leash at his side. A city bus pulled up next to the curb just past where they stood as they waited on the light to change. When the bus started to pull away its airbrakes let out a blast of air and the dog jumped at the sound and managed to pull free from the man’s grasp where it darted out into the flow of traffic and was crushed under the wheels of a passing car that was unable to stop in time. The elderly man ran out into the traffic, his arms flailing at his sides like a bird that lumbers along in an effort to take flight. He scooped up the remains of his dog and I could see the animal’s head hung at an odd angle when he raised it from the street. It looked like a sack of furry triangles. He brought the animal up close to his face and buried his head in its fur, but the tragedy of the moment was lost on me when I looked at Amanda who still stood on th
e curb. She was bent forward at the waist, her hands over her face. She stood there like that for a minute or so, then turned and looked up at me in the window and shook her head as if she were unable to comprehend the twist of fate she just gave witness to, or perhaps it was an effort to communicate to me that I was somehow at fault for every tragedy that crossed her path. She stared at me until I moved away from the window and sat down in my chair.

  Sometimes you learn to trust your gut after it’s too late. A few minutes later when I got up, Amanda was gone, but the man still stood at the curb, his arms wrapped firmly around his dead dog, his shoulders rounded, his back to the world around him as a means to protect his pet even though fate had ensured it no longer mattered. Looking back though, I discovered that fate belongs to us all, and the event I witnessed out my window that day and the feelings I had were ones I should have given more thought. Had I done so, things may have turned out much different than they eventually did.

  * * *

  An hour or so later I was still at my desk when Agent Gibson knocked on the door jamb and walked into my office. He sat down in front of my desk, bit into the bottom corner of his lip then raised his eyebrows at me.

  “So maybe we got off on the wrong foot,” he said.

  “Heard you tried to brace the Governor,” I said. “How’d that work out for you?”

  “Hey, I’m trying here. You want my help, or not?”

  Good question, I thought. “What exactly do you want, Agent Gibson?”

  “Bottom line? I want you to drop the charges against Pate. His arraignment is less than an hour from now.”

  “You asked me if I wanted your help,” I said. “How exactly does my dropping charges against Pate help me?”

  “Look, Detective. You’ve managed to drop a turd in the punch bowl and now I’m the one who has to clean it up. We’ve been monitoring Pate’s activities for months trying to put our case together. You’re getting in the way. And this penny ante charge of assault you’ve got hanging over him is going to hurt our chances. And while you’re doing that, I have to wonder, Detective, is it helping your case at all? Is it putting you any closer to solving the murders you’re working on?”