Sand City Murders

by MK Alexander

  “What exactly are we looking for?” Joey finally asked.

  “You heard the county court is ruling on this tomorrow?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, just want to be ready, get some background, lots of pictures and stuff.” I held up my camera.

  “Okay.”

  We walked around the main hall for a time, looking for a door that led anywhere useful. I found an odd annex room off the main corridor. It was perfectly circular, about fifty feet in diameter, and was oddly sectioned into two concentric tiers. There was an upper ring about three feet high that circled a sunken center, almost like a stage. The floor was badly damaged but I could still make out the remnants of what was once a beautiful mosaic. In the very center was a sunlike object and that was marked off with four compass directions. In each corner, though that’s not the right word, I could make out what seemed to be pictures of the elements… a watery scene, a cloud blowing wind, burning flames, and maybe, what could be a plowed field.

  Joey stepped into the room behind me.

  “There you are… I was looking all over.” He glanced around the weird circular room. “What’s this place?”

  “No idea. A stage maybe?”

  “Oh hey, I found a door leading down to the basement.”

  “Is it dark?”

  “Very.”

  “What’s down there?”

  “Looks like filing cabinets.”

  “Okay, let’s take a look,” I replied reluctantly. I didn’t exactly have a deja vu, nor did I have a memory of this place… but there was something in the back of my mind, gnawing. I felt unsettled.

  Downstairs was indeed some kind of records room, but every file cabinet stood empty, drawers strewn across the floor, and most of the metal cabinets themselves had been tossed to their side long ago. Some of them had been pulled up into a circle, as if for makeshift benches around what might have been a hearth. Well, not a hearth, but at some point there had been a controlled fire in the middle of the room. Charred bits of litter, wood and paper could still be seen. I wondered were the smoke would go.

  “Wow, somebody sure trashed this place.”

  “Kids, probably…” I flashed my light around the room and eventually stopped it on a heavy metal door. I walked over and Joey followed. It was locked up tight with a chain and padlock. I looked at Joey.

  “Let’s try it.” I said.

  “You mean break in?”

  “Yup.”

  Joey took out his bolt cutters and snipped the chain. The crowbar did the rest and we prized the heavy door open with some effort. It creaked and groaned against its rusty hinges and stopped about midway. The sound echoed through the whole building. I peeked inside with my flashlight and could see more filing cabinets, a whole roomful, but these were undisturbed. I noticed a thick layer of grime and dust over everything. No one had been in here for a long time. I turned and found Joey wrestling with one of the fallen cabinets. He was dragging it towards me, scraping it across the floor and it made a terrible noise.

  “What the hell, Joey?”

  “A doorstop.”

  “What?”

  “C’mon Patrick, don’t you ever watch movies?” He looked at me. “We go inside, the door slams shut, and we’re like trapped inside forever.”

  “Okay, see your point…” I helped him prop the heavy cabinet against our new door. I went in first and started to look around. The room was probably about thirty feet square and even darker, if that was possible. All four walls were lined with cabinets, and in the center of the room was a very large table with a few chairs. This was less like a records room and more like a library.

  “How do you suppose they filed things down here?” I asked Joey who had followed me inside.

  “By date?”

  “I was trying to work that out. What happens if you have a patient who was here for like, decades or something?”

  “See what you mean….” Joey agreed. “What exactly are we looking for, anyhow?”

  “You know, I’m not really sure, anything that looks interesting or historical, I guess.” I lied for now. “Or any famous names…”

  “Famous names?”

  “Familiar names… maybe we can do like a gallery of guests kind of thing.’

  “You mean inmates?”

  “Whatever.”

  Joey started to look at the drawers with his flashlight in hand. “Alphabetically…” he called out. I watched him slowly walk down the line. He stopped. “Let’s start with J…”

  “J?”

  “Sure. J for Joey, J for Jegal.” It was too dark to tell if he was smiling. “Hey, J for Jardel… there you go. Wanna see if any of your relatives were ever in here?”

  “Funny, Joey.”

  “Wow, some of these go back really far.” He took a whole drawer out and brought it to the table.

  I ran through my mental list and started my own search. I found nothing on Chamblis, Gannon or Hackney… No Jason Knobblers, or Jack Leaning either. I did find several Pagors: Earnest, Edwin, George, and Andrew, one of them very possibly Donald’s dad, and his cane-wielding father before him. I was also surprised to find quite a few Woods: Annabel, Penelope, Helen, Ronald and Edward, and even Eleanor.

  “Found a lot of files for James… like twenty in here,” Joey called from across the room.

  “James, like in Evan, our stringer?”

  “Uh-oh.” Joey said.

  “What?”

  His sullen looked returned. I could see it with my flashlight. He handed me a stained file. The pages inside were quite old, faded to a light brown and crumbling in my hands. Hard to read by flashlight, I glanced at the first page: Jardel, Patrick. I read it again. There was no mistake. Then I saw a date stamped in the corner: October 3rd, 1933. I was confused to say the least. I stood there in silence and I was probably swaying from side to side a little. Joey glanced over with a look of concern.

  “Who is it, your grandfather or someone?”

  Wait. Am I Mortimer’s accomplice?

  ***

  Dawn the next morning, I was rudely awoken by the alarm. Not the clock, the wake-the-dead fire alarm. Surely it was an air raid. The siren didn’t stop. I could hear the answering calls echoing from across Sand City, and five minutes later, a fleet of firetrucks roared by, horns blaring, diesels at full tilt. It seemed like they were heading up Bayview Road. I rose and sleepily walked over to my sliders. Wasn’t much to see, but I could smell something burning, and it wasn’t fish sticks or home fries. I ventured out to my deck. In the distance and to the north, I saw curls of black smoke, make that billows of smoke, white and gray as well as black. It was pouring into the sky, coming from Bayview Beach. How could the beach be on fire? I looked a little further north. Saint Alban’s was burning. I grabbed my camera and took off down my spiral stairs.

  chapter 33

  deputy despair

  In Fynn’s world, any series of events was perfectly plausible. If I was counting right, this was a third timeline, an amalgamation of the first two I’d experienced. And it meant some victims were murdered twice. Murdered twice? What am I even saying here? That’s crazy talk. And yet it was undeniable. There was hard physical evidence: a collar and a set of car keys. I was going straight to Durbin with this. With what? What evidence did I really have? I mean, hard, physical, tangible evidence? And what would it even mean to the good detective?

  To him it was all a question of alibis. Motive meant nothing. A psycho-killer doesn’t need one. That’s convenient. As for means and opportunity, that didn’t look so good for Fynn; he had both of those in abundance, and for all the killings. Durbin refused to consider a frame, and I couldn’t blame him for that. Framed by whom?

  On the other side, as for real evidence, the kind that would place Inspector Fynn at any of the crime scenes, there was precious little, make that none. No DNA, no forensics, no blood stained clothes, no witnesses. This was the weak link. And, if I could cast doubt anywhere else, Durbin’s case would come
crashing down like a house of cards.

  Alibis... So where was Fynn at the time of each murder? Probably thanks to his nemesis’ clever maneuvers, this Mortimer guy, and even my own initial doubts, Fynn was a potential suspect for the first two murders. There was nothing I could do there, at least in terms of alibis. The damage was done. Vague assurances that he was in Fairhaven were not going to cut it. For Jane Doe number three at Sunset Park, Durbin had the taxi receipt putting the inspector near the scene at the right time. I wasn’t so sure and made a call to Bert’s cab company. I picked up a copy of their dispatch records and talked to the driver, Oscar Fuentes.

  For Doctor Samuels, Fynn wasn’t so much in the picture— even Durbin conceded that. The inspector had every chance to call it an accidental killing and he didn’t. He worked hard to prove that it was indeed a murder. Not in his own best interest. As for the kennel killings, especially for its brutality, no one who knew Fynn would finger him for that either. For Durbin, saying psycho was enough to end all further thinking. That he was with me at Partners didn’t seem to matter. It was only remotely possible that he could have arrived at the bar minutes after those killings… and in fresh clothes.

  Spooky Park? The murder of a Luis sister, the placement of her body on the sculpture, the cane mark, the Italian shoes… none of that mattered. Where was Fynn? He was in the wrong place at the wrong time: walking on the beach with no alibi that is. And finally, there was poor Lucinda. Fynn had completely disappeared, inexplicably, and to Durbin, this was the final nail in the inspector’s coffin.

  I was doing the detective’s grunt work. Tracking down the things he had no interest in, but they were things he could not deny. An alibi for Lucinda’s murder was my best bet. To me, the items found in Fynn’s hotel were important. I thought I might find the coin dealer and started making calls that morning. He wasn’t too hard to track down, but he was a little hard to talk to, make that suspicious and defensive. Once I explained that I wasn’t the antiquities police, he opened up a little and actually became quite cooperative.

  It wasn’t too hard to track down the bus ticket either. Fynn had ridden on the Grayline. A couple minutes on the web told me they had a depot in Doylestown, PA. And there was even a live video stream. You could see what buses were pulling in or out, or waiting. Wasn’t sure what that was worth… But, okay, so there was video, maybe video to pull. My best reporter skills didn’t get me anywhere though. Only a court order would make those records accessible. Durbin could do this, I just had to talk him into it. For that to happen, I had to plant doubt in his mind, or at worst, completely mess with it.

  ***

  Kevin Marchand from the Historical Society gave me a ride to Fairhaven. He was heading to the Price-Fixer to do a little warehouse shopping, a little stocking up for the season, he told me. We talked briefly about Saint Alban’s, and especially about the fire which no one seemed to regret.

  “Do you know anything about that weird room, that circular annex up there?” I asked.

  “The planetarium?”

  “Is that what it is?”

  “You didn’t go inside, did you?” He gave me a look.

  “Well, yeah…”

  “Honestly, I wouldn’t go digging around up there, it can only mean trouble.”

  “What, like as in native American burial grounds?”

  “No, like missing persons. Countless people have disappeared from that place over its long and checkered history. Who can say where they are now?”

  “Really?”

  He dropped me off at the courthouse with the promise to pick me up in about an hour at the nearby diner. For now, I had a date with Wilma at the county office, guardian of the records. I was certain they would be my most reliable source of information, and I had to be sure what this timeline said, not to me, but to everyone else. It was all cut and dry: Clara, Debra and Elaine Luis, still listed as missing persons. I also picked up a copy of Elaine’s birth certificate. Thought it might come in handy. Traffic was killer on the way back. Pretty sure I dozed off for awhile.

  ***

  The next morning I pedaled up to the Sand City Police Department. Durbin kept me waiting in the lobby, busy talking to the new Bike Patrol, a squad of six men and women with strong legs and good lungs. This was their debut weekend, Memorial Day. I guess he had a lot to tell them. Sergeant Manuel finally led me into Arantez’s office and closed the door behind us. Durbin sat behind the desk. I guess I would have to get used to calling him Chief Durbin pretty soon.

  “What’s up, Jardel? I’m kind of busy this morning.”

  “Sorry to bug you then…” I started.

  “What’s this… about the fire?”

  “Not really.”

  “Well, you’re talking to the wrong chief. You should check with Paul, SCFD.”

  “Who? Chief Keller?” I asked.

  Durbin shuffled through some papers. “Told me it was a gas main break… not arson… One less headache for me really.” Durbin looked up from his desk. “Get any good pictures?”

  “I did. Got some great shots of the tug boat spraying water up from the shore.”

  “Nice… so, is that it?”

  “Actually, I’m just wondering how Inspector Fynn is doing.”

  “How the hell should I know?” Durbin’s anger surfaced quickly.

  “I’m just saying, you know you’ve got the wrong guy.”

  “Wrong guy, huh? Don’t start down that road again, Jardel.”

  “What if I could prove it wasn’t Fynn?”

  “I’ve got eight murders… Without Fynn in the house, none of them are solved… none of them even close.” The detective made a face of frustration. “He’s not saying much though.”

  “Talk to me, Durbin… please,” I said then paused, “Can’t we think this through a little?”

  Durbin nodded slightly. “Alright… I admit, I don’t see the big picture here. I get the barefoot killer… the young girls, but then the old lady? What the fuck? And how is Doc Samuels tied into this? He must be though, why else would anyone kill Emma and Alyson up there? And their murders are different… no barefoot bullshit… And then there’s Lucinda, the mystery girl. I’m goddamn fucked.”

  “I think you’re making this harder than it is,” I said.

  He looked at me, trying to understand.

  “Match the shoes and you find the murderer.”

  “Yeah, that’s what Fynn said too.”

  “Why won’t you call in the feds on this?”

  “You know what? I did go to the feds… I had a meeting with some FBI liaison in Fairhaven last week. The guy was a real asshole, started making jokes about Scully and Walter…”

  “Who?”

  Durbin ignored my question. “We got nothing…. without an ID on these girls, this is going nowhere.”

  “I think you’re wrong.”

  “What the hell, Patrick?”

  “Listen, it’s easy: you match the shoe prints to the shoe and you’ve got the killer. Six crimes scenes… same shoe, same killer, barring the swamp.”

  “Yeah… well okay, maybe you’re right about that. But how? How do I match the goddam shoe?”

  “I think that’s what Fynn was trying to do with his crazy Policeman’s Ball.”

  “What?”

  “Like Cinderella maybe… see who comes to the ball in those shoes.”

  “Got it… Pretty smart, pretty lame too. And that’s not gonna happen.”

  “Okay, show me your whiteboard then,” I said.

  “My what?”

  “Your whiteboard, that big flat thing with all the clues you’ve written down.”

  Durbin made a face, maybe an angry one, but he got up and beckoned with a finger. I followed him to his old office, smaller and certainly more modest. He gestured with his hand. I looked and there it was. Written across the top in black marker were the eight murders, each with a long list of details. On the bottom, in big letters it said, FYNN. That was circled and underlined severa
l times.

  “Can I fix this?”

  “What do you mean, fix?”

  “Can I change it?”

  Durbin nodded and sat down at his old desk to watch. It was obvious he had already done a lot of erasing and rewriting, though I couldn’t see past this current iteration. I grabbed the eraser and wiped FYNN from the board. I wrote Mortimer instead.

  “Who’s Mortimer?” Durbin asked.

  “Think of it as an alias. He’s the guy we’re looking for, the guy with the Italian shoes and the cane.”

  “Okay…” Durbin muttered.

  I erased Jane Doe number one and wrote Clara Hobbs. Durbin started to object. “Give me a second, okay?” I replaced Jane Doe number two with Debra Helling. And finally, swapped the names for Lorraine and Elaine. Doc Samuels, Emma, Alyson and Lucinda remained as they were.

  “What the fuck, Jardel?”

  I tossed a dog collar over to Durbin. The detective looked up at me.

  “What the hell is this?

  “A collar belonging to a yorkshire terrier named Roxy.”

  “What does it mean?” Durbin made a face. “Wait, Roxy, pet-of-the month?”

  “The very same.”

  “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “Read the back, the owner: Clara Hobbs.”

  “Who?”

  “Clara Hobbs, went missing in nineteen seventy-five. She’s on file.” I reached into my satchel and pulled out her missing persons report, courtesy of Wilma Peterson.

  “What the fuck?”

  “Trace her… Fingerprints, dental records, or something, DNA...”

  “There was no DNA in nineteen seventy-five… no fingerprints either, unless she was a major felon.”

  “I’m daring you to ID her.”

  “What are you saying? This is crazy shit.”

  “You have everything you need… now that you know who she is.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Match her to her birth certificate, dental records, family photos…anything. She is your first Jane Doe.”