If it could work in the middle of Georgia, why not Northern West Virginia?
But first, they had to buy the land.
“Of course, we’re offering them tax abatements.” Bobbie-Joe Runson was Clark County Commissioner. She was middle-aged and plump, with dyed blonde hair and sharp brown eyes, wearing a lavender business suit. “You think this place is rolling in money? We’re not New Yawk, you know.”
“Hey,” Kurtz said. “I’m just asking.”
Bobbie-Jo Runson took a deep breath and eyed Kurtz like he was an insect that had just crawled out from under a rock. “Thirty years ago, Clark County had thirty-thousand people and two small factories. One factory made furniture from local pine. The other made lamp-shades and lamps. Now, both factories are gone and the population is down to seventeen-thousand. Like a lot of places in small-town America, globalization has offered enterprising businesses the opportunity to make more money, with less expense, somewhere else. The manufacturing jobs have moved to Mexico, China, Southeast Asia, India and Singapore.
“So, yeah, an organization like Premier Projects Development wants to move in and build something that will offer a couple of thousand jobs and re-vitalize the local economy? You bet we’re giving them tax abatements.”
“I’m not complaining,” Kurtz said. “I’m just asking.”
Bobbie-Jo Runson sniffed. “Yeah, well, a good many of our local citizens have been complaining. They don’t want our rustic, traditional, poverty-stricken lifestyle to be upended by any slick out-of-towners.” She shook her head.
“How likely is this project to go through?”
“Pretty likely, if the casino bill passes in the legislature. They really want that casino.”
“And how likely is this bill to pass?”
“That, I’m not sure of. There’s been a fair amount of opposition, mostly on moral slash religious grounds. Gambling, you see, is corrupting to the soul. Better to be poor and on the right side of God.”
“How determined is the opposition?”
Bobbie-Jo Runson shrugged. “Not as determined as it used to be. Premier Projects Development has been pretty generous with their support to the statewide politicos, also pretty persuasive.” She hesitated. “I think it will pass.”
Kurtz’ family had lived in Clark County, West Virginia for nearly two hundred years. His great-great grandfather had fought for the Union, and his brother had fought for the Confederacy. The farmhouse, originally a two-room shack, had been added to many times, and was now a sprawling place in different styles. The original shack had been enclosed and now served as the kitchen.
Kurtz’ favorite spot had always been the large, partly finished attic, filled with old trunks and battered bits of furniture no one had felt like throwing out. One of the trunks was filled with photos and brittle, yellowing newspapers, all more than a hundred years old, probably of some interest to a museum but too fragile now to be touched without crumbling into dust.
An old wooden desk stood under a dormer window. Kurtz had always regarded that desk as his own. The desk and the chair had been constructed by hand, out of the local pine, and had been made for somebody much smaller than Kurtz. It felt strange sitting in it, now. The chair, long ago, had been too big for him. He had put a cushion on it to reach the desktop and his feet back then had barely touched the floor. Now, he moved gingerly, afraid that his weight would shatter it.
The fields outside the window stretched out to a range of hills, falling into shadow as the sun set behind the house. His laptop lay open on the desk. Strange, how in a few short years, the internet had come to be so much a part of their lives. Turn on the computer, wait a minute or so, and the world is spread out in front of you.
The Charleston Gazette-Mail and WSAZ had followed the progress of the casino reform bill from the beginning. Gambling at race tracks had been legal in West Virginia since 1994. This bill would take it to the next level. Originally, there had seemed to be little controversy. Plenty of other states allowed casinos. Casinos provided jobs, attracted tourists and brought in tax revenue. It had seemed like the bill would breeze through.
It hadn’t. Opposition at first had been sporadic and disorganized. Then Tom Hawley had grabbed onto the issue. Tom Hawley had started out as a Baptist Minister before becoming a Disciple of Christ and then founding his own splinter movement, with his own congregation headquartered in a circus tent on the outskirts of the city. His sermons were full of fire and brimstone, repentance and salvation. More a Jimmy Swaggart than a Billy Graham, not that Kurtz was an expert on the old-time religion or any of its preachers. Unlike Jimmy Swaggart, Tom Hawley’s personal morals remained un-impugned. He was forty-seven years old, with a wife he had met in High School and four kids who had never been in trouble. Tom Hawley’s congregation ran a private religious school and contributed generously to a local orphanage. Tom Hawley, by all accounts, had always done his best to live the life he preached.
Tom Hawley hated gambling. There were rumors that Hawley’s father had blown the family savings in Las Vegas, some thirty years before. Regardless, Hawley had been against the casino reform bill almost from the beginning.
Tom Hawley had died in his sleep only a couple of weeks ago. He had been scheduled to address the West Virginia House of Delegates on the following Sunday. After his death, rumors began to float regarding a visit to a brothel in Louisiana, some years before. Nothing confirmed, only a rumor. A few pictures appeared on the internet and in local papers but the face was dimly lit and obscured. Maybe it was Tom Hawley. Maybe not.
Curious, Kurtz thought.
Chapter 19
A maintenance worker was the first to discover the body, lying on the grass in a town square in Sutton, West Virginia.
Shops and restaurants lined the square on all four sides and benches sat around the edges of the lawn. It was a popular place to stroll in the evenings, and in the warmer months, the square rarely emptied out until close to midnight. The body had not been there the previous evening.
The maintenance worker knew enough to leave the scene alone. He called the police, who arrived within ten minutes. The first cop on the scene was a long-time member of the force, who recognized, from the fact that blood had pooled on the upper side of the body, not the downside, that the girl had been killed elsewhere and dumped. He called the state police. Bill Harris, Drew Hastings and George Rodriguez arrived two hours later.
By this time, a tent had been set up over the body and the area cordoned off.
Drew Hastings knelt down next to her, careful not to touch anything. “Young,” he said.
George Rodriguez sighed. Bill Harris shook his head. “That son of a bitch,” he said.
Dark bruises lined her throat. Her tongue protruded from her mouth. She was naked.
“Move her to the crime lab,” George Rodriguez said. “Maybe they can tell us something.”
“What’s that in her hand?” Drew Hastings said. He crouched closer.
The right hand was lying open. The left was clutched tight, with a thin chain draped around the fingers.
“A clue?” Bill Harris said.
Lyle Simmons was a mountain man. Drew Hastings knew Lyle Simmons and wanted nothing to do with him. “This guy is mean as a pissed off badger,” Drew Hastings said.
The dead girl had been thirteen years old. Her name was Mirka Fedorov. She was neither a runaway nor a hooker. She had vanished on the way home from school in a suburb of Baltimore. Her father, an emigrant from Ukraine, worked as a plumber, her mother as a receptionist for a law firm. They didn’t have a lot of money but seemed like a tight, happy family. Mirka Fedorov had three sisters and a brother.
Like the rest, she had been raped and strangled. Also, unlike the rest, her dead body provided them one giant clue, a chain wrapped around the fingers of her left hand, and a pair of dog tags issued by the United States Army in the name of Lyle Simmons, sitting in the back of her throat.
No-knock warrants were not issued lightly, but Dr
ew Hasting had assured them that Lyle Simmons would never surrender without a fight. The FBI went in with a SWAT team from nearby Morgantown. Drew Hastings, Bill Harris and George Rodriguez were happy enough to sit back behind the perimeter and observe.
The team waited until after midnight, then broke down the door with a battering ram and threw a stun grenade into the one room cottage. The grenade exploded with a blinding light and a concussive roar. The team charged in and found Lyle Simmons still in bed, dazed and disoriented but not too disoriented to fight. He threw one punch that landed on nothing and was reaching for a loaded Smith and Wesson lying out on the nightstand, when six agents jumped on him.
He was handcuffed, shackled, loaded into the armored wagon and ushered off to jail, still struggling.
The forensics team moved in immediately. Bill Harris, Drew Hastings and George Rodriguez hung around to see what they could see.
The cabin consisted of one room with a kitchenette, plus an attached bathroom. There was a carport but no garage. The cabin stood on wooden pilings. There was no basement, no barn and no shed. A deer stand in a nearby tree was equipped with a folding chair and barely had room for one person to sit. Lyle Simmons did have an ATV, a Willy, but his only other vehicle was a battered old Ford.
Drew Hastings sighed. “I’m getting a bad feeling about this,” he said.
Bill Harris shook his head. George Rodriguez shrugged. “Let’s go talk to the suspect.”
Lyle Simmons had been read his rights as soon as he was arrested. He was not a dummy. He had insisted on being provided with a lawyer before speaking to the cops. The court had appointed Frank Cabot, a guy who had a reputation as a straight shooter. Frank Cabot had conferred with his client for nearly an hour. Lyle Simmons now sat shackled to the floor in the interview room with Frank Cabot sitting at right angles to his client, a pile of legal documents spread out on the table, across from Drew Hastings, Bill Harris and George Rodriguez.
“Do you understand why you’re here?” George Rodriguez asked.
Lyle Simmons looked at him and sniffed.
A bad feeling. Drew Hastings had a bad feeling about this. Drew Hastings, and Bill and George as well, were already entertaining the dismaying possibility that they were being played, though it was far too soon to admit it. The dead girl had Lyle Simmons dog tags in her throat. That fact was beyond dispute.
A few years before, The Silence of the Lambs, by Thomas Harris had been a best-selling book, which had been made into a critically acclaimed, Academy Award winning movie. The bad guy in The Silence of the Lambs, a truly evil psychopath, had deposited a large, tropical moth with a skull shaped pattern on its back into the throat of each of his victims. Eerie. Almost everybody has an aversion to large insects, especially ones with skull shaped patterns on their backs. Drew didn’t remember why the bad guy had done it, but the whole thing had certainly creeped out the audience.
Mirka Fedorov could have picked up the dog tags herself, of course, and bravely tried to swallow them, in an effort to provide a post-mortem clue to the identity of her murderer. She could have…but her body had been carefully washed with bleach, destroying any stray DNA that might have clung to her. The same solution had been flushed into her rectum and vagina.
It didn’t seem likely that a killer careful enough to do that would have missed either the chain or the dog tags.
This whole thing was a giant fuck you to the authorities.
“I didn’t even know they were missing,” Lyle Simmons said.
“You didn’t know they were missing,” George Rodriguez said. His tone was meant to convey both disbelief and disgust but it wasn’t fooling Frank Cabot and it probably wasn’t fooling Lyle Simmons, either.
“I already told you that,” Lyle Simmons said.
“When did you see them last?”
Lyle Simmons blinked. He screwed up his face, giving this question some serious consideration. “I couldn’t tell you,” he said. “I don’t usually wear them. I keep them in the top drawer of the dresser. I don’t know when I saw them last. I just don’t.”
All three men looked at him. The investigating team had already found, sitting in the top drawer of Lyle Simmons’ dresser, two B-cup bras and three pairs of women’s panties, one of which had already been identified as Mirka Fedorov’s.
Lyle Simmons had served in Afghanistan, had been shot twice and had his Humvee blown out from under him by an IED. He suffered from post-traumatic-stress-disorder. He drank a lot, was easily rattled, became offended at minor imaginary slights and got into pointless fights. He had no other record, however, and prior to his service with Uncle Sam, had been a pretty easy-going guy.
Drew Hastings sighed, at which George Rodriguez gave him an annoyed look.
“So,” George said, “we’re supposed to believe somebody wandered in, searched through all your stuff, stole your dog tags and planted a few items of women’s underwear? Really? Try another one.”
Lyle Simmons stared at him. “Underwear?”
All of them, including Frank Cabot, stared at him.
“You’re making that up,” Lyle Simmons said. “I’ve read about this. It’s a felony to lie to the FBI but it’s not a felony for the FBI to lie back. You are completely full of shit.”
“No,” George Rodriguez said. “We’re not.”
Lyle Simmons shrugged.
The sad, unfortunate fact was, however, that the real bad guy, if they were going to believe Lyle Simmons to be innocent, presumably had done exactly that.
“Nobody is going to believe your bullshit, Lyle.”
A thoughtful look crossed Lyle Simmons’ face. “I don’t care what you believe, you little fuck,” he said.
Frank Cabot frowned. “My client didn’t mean that.”
Lyle Simmons sniffed again.
In the end, Lyle Simmons was returned to his cell. The available evidence might be enough to obtain a conviction, since far-fetched theories regarding rogue, theoretical murderers randomly breaking into innocent veterans’ houses could and would be quickly discredited by any semi-competent prosecutor.
And maybe Lyle Simmons had done it.
But none of them, by now, believed it.
No, the fucker was still out there, laughing at them.
Seamus Sullivan wasn’t laughing but he was feeling pretty damned pleased with himself. A little misdirection goes a long way. Seamus Sullivan knew how bureaucratic organizations worked. He worked for one, himself. There would be doubts but everybody wanted to close the case. There would be skepticism, but the higher ups in the organization, those farthest from the facts on the ground, would be the least skeptical. Oh, the investigation wasn’t going to shut down, not yet, but at least half of the foot soldiers would lay back, convinced that they already had their man.
Now all Seamus Sullivan had to do was lie low. He wasn’t home free. He recognized that, but the heat was off.
Chapter 20
Drew Hastings, Bill Harris and George Rodriguez were sitting in Drew’s office, drinking coffee and feeling glum, when the door opened and a big guy with thick black hair and a craggy face, wearing a dark blue suit without a tie walked into the office. He looked at all of them, grinned, and sat down in a hard-backed wood chair. It took a moment for Drew to place him. Richard Kurtz.
They all stared at him. “Can I help you,” Drew Hastings said.
The big guy’s lips twitched. “I might have some information that you don’t.” He shrugged.
Bill Harris turned to George Rodriguez. “This is Dr. Kurtz. His wife found the first skull in the creek.”
George Rodriguez nodded. “Okay.”
Drew Hastings remembered Kurtz from High School. They hadn’t been buddies but they had both been athletes. They played different sports but Clinton was a small school and everybody pretty much knew everybody else. Aside from his skill at throwing a ball, however, Kurtz hadn’t made much of an impression on Drew. He never bragged, didn’t say much at all and kept to himself. He had a girlf
riend for a year or so, Leslie something or other, a cheerleader, who had wound up marrying a stockbroker and moving to Chicago.
Back then, Kurtz had seemed like a nice, low key, easy going sort of guy. He looked different now. He looked like some of the vets Drew Hastings knew, the ones who had seen a lot of combat, his eyes sharp, not quite suspicious but aware of everything around him. Ready, Drew thought. Like he had no doubts that whatever came along, he could deal with it.
“I know you’ve spoken to Lew Barent. I know he told you about the murdered girl in New York.”
Bill Harris cautiously nodded his head.
Kurtz sat back in his chair. The chair creaked. “I’ve had the opportunity to associate with a number of cops over the past few years. I’ve learned a little something about the way they do things.” He grinned. “You’ve got a serial killer on the loose. I have no doubt that you’ve looked into similar crimes around the country. Maybe there have been some. Maybe there haven’t. I wouldn’t know. This murdered girl in New York, though, she certainly fits the pattern.
“Have you asked yourselves: why New York? Why there?”
Bill Harris looked at Drew Hastings, and shrugged. “Since the bodies were discovered, his usual stomping grounds have become more dangerous.”
“There are closer cities than New York. Have you considered that maybe he had another reason to be in New York?”
“Like what?” George Rodriguez said. “Visiting his grandmother?”
“It wouldn’t be impossible.” Kurtz raised an eyebrow. “I’m just wondering if anybody else might have dropped dead that you don’t know about.”
Bill Harris puffed up his cheeks and let his breath out slowly. Drew Hastings winced. “That’s an idea,” George Rodriguez said. “We have considered it. No other victims have come to our attention.”
If a Tree Falls Page 12
