by Carol Coffey
Burke snapped the phone shut and held his gun up. He motioned for Locklear to move to the door. Burke stood back as the door slowly opened.
Peter Wyss stood on the other side with his automatic pointed directly at Locklear’s chest.
“Get in,” he said.
Locklear obeyed.
“Sit on the floor there,” Wyss ordered.
Locklear did a quick reckoning of the room before his view would be marred by his position on the floor. Samuel Shank was seated at his large wooden desk. His hands were loosely tied and he was writing on a large pad. Blood oozed from a bullet wound in his left shoulder. He’d survive. On the floor at the far end of the desk was Jacob Shank in a supine position. The single shot to his head most probably killed him instantly.
Locklear sat on the floor facing Shank and willingly raised his hands while Wyss bound them tighter than he had bound the old man’s. Locklear was far more of a threat. He looked under the desk at the old man’s legs which were bound tightly with a rope.
Wyss followed his eyes. “I would have used the rope from my Helena’s neck but I doubt they’d have given it to me.”
Wyss looked up to the ceiling. Locklear knew what he was thinking. If there was anywhere that Wyss could have swung a rope, Jacob Shank would have got a much slower death.
He turned to the elder Shank who was looking at Locklear.
Locklear recognised his expressions: fear, hope, pleading. “I’m not here to help you,” he said. “Write!” Wyss screamed at Shank.
Shank looked away and stared out the window.
“I said write!”
Shank lifted the pen and returned to his prose. Wyss stood over his shoulder and watched as the old man wrote several lines. Locklear could see his chin tremble.
“Now read it. Read it aloud so the sergeant can hear.”
Shank shoved the paper away and looked at the body of his only son on the floor beside him.
Wyss pulled a chair up beside the insolent old man. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small handgun and held it to Shank’s temple.
Samuel lifted the page and read the first line. “I, Samuel Shank, am responsible for the deaths of Noah and Eva Yoder.”
Locklear moved to his knees.
“Sit down!” said Wyss.
“It won’t work – he’ll say you forced him to confess to things he didn’t do. It won’t work, Peter,” Locklear said.
“I know what I’m doing!” he spat.
“Am I your witness?” Locklear asked. Now was as good a time as any to find out what plans Peter Wyss had for him.
“Yes.”
“I’ll have to say you forced him to write it.”
Wyss moved towards Locklear and raised the gun. He swung back to strike him on the face but stopped halfway.
“My wife liked you. She was upset that she said you had no redeeming features. She didn’t mean it. She said you had a gentleness to you that no one could see. But she could see it. Helena will be glad that I got a chance to tell you that.”
Locklear, tense and ready for the blow, relaxed.
“We’ll see what you have to say when he finishes his speech,” said Wyss.
Wyss moved back to Shank and returned his gun to its position at his temple.
Shank squinted at the writing and read. “I forced them to sell me their farm. I forced Noah Yoder to make me his sole beneficiary to his assets. My granddaughter Bethany Stoll assisted in this matter.”
Locklear’s stomach churned. He already knew, or suspected, everything Shank was saying but the sheer evil of the man dressed in Old Order Mennonite clothing in front of him sickened him.
“Next read about the Ropps.”
“I organised for the killing of David Ropp and forced him to name me as sole beneficiary in his will.” Shank stopped and swallowed. “My… my granddaughter … Bethany Stoll assisted in this matter.”
“Forced him?” Wyss snapped. “That’s not the word I told you to use. David Ropp and the Yoders were kind, simple people. They would not have understood what they were signing. You didn’t force them. You lied to them. You cheated them.” He tapped the gun against Shank’s temple. “Go on.”
“I direct my estate to return the entire sum to be used for the care of his daughter.”
Locklear’s focus sharpened. Wyss was going to kill Shank and he was going to do it soon.
“Next!” Wyss screamed.
Locklear sensed the man’s anxiety rising. Wyss knew that the riot police were at this very moment planning to storm the room. He was running out of time and he knew it.
Shank began to read.
“I arranged for Helena ...”
“Not us – leave me and my wife until last. The Fehrs.”
Shank looked at Locklear. His expression told the sergeant the man still thought he was going to get out of this room alive.
“Read it,” a voice said only this time it was coming from Locklear.
Shank was going to die soon and Locklear needed to know what the Shanks had against five orphaned children.
“I … arranged for the killing of Aaron Fehr. I arranged for the assault on Andrew Fehr and I intended to kill him. I …”
Shank threw the paper across the room. It landed at Locklear’s feet.
“I’m not reading this. Just kill me. Just get it over with.”
Wyss started to laugh. He lifted the pages from the floor and slapped them down in front of the old man.
“Read!”
Shank swallowed. It was the first emotion the man had shown reading his litany of crimes, his despicable acts.
“Iforced Sara Fehr to attempt suicide.” He looked at Locklear. “It’s not true!” he cried. “He made me write it! It was the boy we were after … but I don’t know what happened … she drove herself off the bridge!”
“So you admit everything else?” Locklear asked.
“Yes,” he said meekly.
“Why? Why did you do all these things? What drove you to these … to this evil?”
Peter Wyss lunged towards Locklear. He knelt beside him and moved his angry face inches away from the sergeant’s.
“He won’t tell you why because there is a little piece of him that is ashamed. A tiny piece of God that speaks to him. But I will tell you why, Mr Locklear. Gold is why. Gold. Money and power are Pastor Shank’s God. Isn’t that so, Pastor?” He got to his feet gain. “Now, read about me. Read about Helena.”
Shank’s lips trembled.
“Read! Read! Read!” Wyss screamed.
Shank lifted the paper. His hands shook.
“I forced the Wysses out of the life they loved. I refused to do business with them. I forced others to turn their backs on them. I …”
Locklear’s phone rang.
Wyss swung around and raced to him.
“Don’t answer that.”
Locklear raised his bound hands upwards.
“I can’t – but, Peter, I asked Maguire to phone me if the results of Helena’s autopsy came in. The phone is in my pocket. Answer it, please.”
“The results do not matter to me. They can’t help my wife. Only I can now help my wife and this is why I am here.”
“Don’t you want the police to catch her killer?” Locklear asked.
“I am looking at him.”
The phone fell silent.
“Read!”
“I killed Helena Wyss.”
Shank finally crumbled.
“I didn’t do it!” he cried.
The phone rang again.
“Don’t you dare deny it!” Wyss screamed. “You may not have cut her, you may not have strung my beautiful wife up but you are as guilty as the one you got to do your dirty work. Say it!”
Samuel Shank’s red eyes implored Locklear.
“Don’t do it, Peter,” Locklear begged. He knew what was coming. He knew it.
“Say it!”
“I arranged to have Helena Wyss killed.”
“Why?” Wyss shouted.
> Shank began to sob. He lowered his face onto his bound hands. Gone was the script. He didn’t need it. These were fresh acts, fresh evil. He needed no reminding.
“To frame Luke Fehr. To put an end once and for all to the man and to the Fehrs.”
Wyss turned and looked at Locklear.
“Have you got all that?”
Locklear nodded. “Peter, if you kill him I will never find out what is going on here. I won’t be able to protect the Fehrs so they can come home. You don’t need to do this. Stop, please. Put the gun down … for Abigail’s sake.”
Wyss’s eyes filled with tears at the mention of the vulnerable girl who had known him as her father. “I am doing this for Abigail. I have to do it, Mr Locklear, because the law will not stop him. He will get away with my wife’s murder the same way he got away with all of the others.”
Wyss lifted the pages and placed them into Locklear’s hands.
“There’s more there. Everything you need. Get Beth Stoll. Put her behind bars. The confession was for me and for Helena. Somewhere, she can see me. Helena can hear me.”
“No! Peter, no!”
Wyss turned and pointed his gun at Shank and fired one close-range shot into his chest. He turned and smiled at Locklear.
“My wife liked you. Do the right thing,” he said as he raised the gun to his head.
He took one last look at Shank and his son, pulled the trigger and fell with a dull thud onto the ground. From his position Locklear could see the open, lifeless eyes of Peter Wyss staring at Jacob Shank from the floor on the opposite side of the desk.
Samuel Shank’s still body lay over his desk. Locklear saw the old man twitch – the last murmurs of life and with it his hope of solving a one-hundred-and-fifty-year-old case.
He did not hear the outside door smashing or notice the crowds of riot police pour into the room. He was blind to the medical staff whisking Samuel Shank away, the worried faces of Mendoza and Carter. He was oblivious to the adrenaline rush and subsequent drop, the weakness, the paralysing shock that rose up his body in the minutes after he walked alone from the building, past the bald man who had wanted to talk to him, past his troopers, past the crowds, the noise and the blinding blue sky.
Locklear sat in Mendoza’s car and in a daze, drove the car to Harrisonburg alone in search of quiet, calm and intoxicating peace of mind.
Chapter 26
The bar on S. Main Street was exactly the sort of place Locklear was looking for. Aside from two old men playing chess in the corner, Jack’s Hideaway was empty, dark, quiet and cool. He took a seat at the bar and ordered a Jameson. Neat. No ice. Locklear clenched his hands which were still shaking. He threw a bill on the counter and returned them to his lap out of view. The barman placed the amber liquid in front of him and Locklear inhaled the bitter-sweet aroma. He did not lift the drink but fixed his eyes on his reflection in the grubby mirror behind the bar. At times like this he would ring Kowalski, his mentor, but he didn’t think his boss would want to hear from him right now and the only conversations they would be having would be to discuss the rising body count since Locklear took on the case. Both men were recovering alcoholics but Kowalski had developed his disease from his one-time party lifestyle. Alex was a family man now and had replaced his habit with his love for his wife and children. Locklear was different. He was a stress drunk, a man who could not handle his emotions, good or bad. Locklear believed he had the worst kind of alcoholism – the world was full of emotion so he had worked hard to protect himself from such by avoiding connections, strings, from hurt. He could see the barman eye him carefully from the corner of the bar.
“Something wrong with your drink?” he asked.
Locklear pretended not to hear him and fixated on his image, sitting on a barstool with a drink on front of him. The smell of the liquid continued to waft up towards him. His forearm twitched nervously, his fingers imagined themselves wrapped around the cool glass. His mouth opened. His throat practised the beautiful swallow, the rush, the bite, the killing of feelings, the drowning of anger, regret. Another and then another. And then oblivion. Beautiful oblivion, nothingness, silence, void. Peace. He knew if he lifted the glass, it was over. His struggle for sobriety, his thirty-year quest for a straight life, a better life, a life free from the captivity of addiction. He had been here before, in this exact position, sitting on a barstool staring at the short gap that stood between control and powerlessness, between peace and hell. His throat was dry.
“Water,” he said.
The bar tender put down his newspaper and poured Locklear a tall glass of ice-cold water. He lifted it and downed the entire glass in one gulp.
Twenty minutes passed and Locklear had still not lifted the drink as an internal war raged deep within him. His mind, for the most part, wanted to relent, to take that step into forgetfulness. But one part of his brain knew better, knew that if he lifted that drink it was over. It spoke silently to him, quietly, gently. But he was losing. His hand reached forward and shook as it touched the glass. He pulled back and watched his reflection as his face creased and crumbled. The coward in him rose up and shouted, his failing strength whispered back.
The door opened and someone was beside him. Mendoza. She struggled to lift herself onto the high stool beside him and sat in silence. He saw her glance at the untouched whiskey. She moved her fingers to his lap and squeezed his trembling hands.
“Kowalski said this would be the kind of bar I’d find you in.”
Locklear ignored her.
“Are you OK?”
Locklear trained his eyes once more on the mirror and imagined himself lifting the glass to his throat. It was a method he’d developed during the rough times he’d faced since he’d quit. He imagined the feelings that would surface after that first swallow, that first embrace, the warmth, the poison. He inhaled deeply and pictured the chaos that would ensue because he knew it would not be one drink but several and it would not be one day but a daily battle to return to sobriety once he’d given it away.
“You want me to go?” Mendoza asked nervously.
Locklear stood abruptly and made his way to the door, leaving his worried trooper behind. On the street, he could see Carter sitting in the passenger seat of an unmarked car on the opposite side of the road. Back-up, Locklear reasoned. He rounded the corner and made his way on foot to his motel. He lay down on the bed, placing his shaking hands underneath his body. He willed himself to sleep but the vision of Peter Wyss’s body crumpled on the floor of Samuel Shank’s office thwarted his quest for quiet. The itch he had felt beneath his skin earlier slowly calmed. He had won – again – and only for now.
When he woke four hours later, Locklear was surprised to find that he had slept and that his dreams were not filled with the events of the day. He rose and drank a cold coffee from the pot in his room while he pondered his next move. On his way to the station, he passed Mendoza’s car parked outside a diner. He slowed and saw her sitting in the booth with Maguire and a couple of cops he did not know. She had obviously recognised his need for space and was leaving him to come out from whatever spell she had found him in earlier.
When he reached the station, he found Carter sitting at the desk in the incident room.
He looked Locklear up and down and, seeing the man was sober, smiled.
“I’m glad you’re OK, sarge.”
“Where are we at?” Locklear responded, not wanting to admit to, or discuss, his moment of weakness with the clean-living trooper.
“I’ve been to the morgue. Peter Wyss and Jacob Shank were lying side by side. Life’s strange, isn’t it, sir?”
Death – Locklear thought – the Great Leveller.
“Samuel Shank is in surgery. Mendoza went to the hospital. It doesn’t look like he’ll make it. We’ve an APB out on Bethany Stoll. So far no sighting of her. Looks like she slipped away.”
“We’ll find her.”
“Any sign of the Fehrs?” He was aware now the Luke Fehr would soon be th
e only person that could answer his questions.
Carter shrugged. “Whole state is looking for them.”
“How can a man with three siblings and no money disappear?”
Carter had no answers.
Carter stood and placed the results of Helena Wyss’s autopsy in front of Locklear. He pointed at one line on the second paragraph. Tissue had been found under three of Helena’s finger nails. Foreign tissue. Female tissue.
“Please let it be Beth Stoll’s,” Locklear said aloud.
He looked up at Carter.
“How’s your father?”
“He’s hanging in there, thanks, sarge.”
Locklear knew the innocent trooper had seen more in the last few days than most rural cops saw in a lifetime. Gone was the boyish smile and the ever-present ball was missing.
“Are you OK, Lee?”
“Sara has pneumonia. It doesn’t look good.”
“I’m sorry,” Locklear replied although he didn’t mean it. He hoped she would die soon. He hoped Sara Fehr would pass on and find peace and that those who had loved her could move on with their lives.
Locklear stood and slowly paced the room while his trooper looked on.
He glanced at the clock over the door. It was only four o’clock.
“You can go home, Carter. Phone Mendoza and tell her to head back to the motel if she wants. Before you go, I have something here for you.”
He reached under his desk and handed the trooper a box that he had meant to give Carter days before. A puzzle he had favoured as a child for Carter’s son. A map of America. Lee opened the battered box and shook its contents.
