Barry Friedman - Dead End (6 page)

“Where?”

“Kentucky, West Virginia.”

“Ohio?”

“Nuh-uh. I only been in Ohio a few weeks.”

Maharos decided they’d had enough. He got up and
rapped on the door while Fiala turned off the recorder and tucked it under his
arm. The deputy returned, led the prisoner back to his cell, then escorted the
three men back to the cellblock entrance and let them out. Robinson told
Maharos and Fiala he would take them back to the sheriff’s office.

Sheriff Anderson had left for lunch but the
secretary in his office handed Maharos a sheet of computer paper. He recognized
it as a report from the National Crime Information Center in Washington, D.C.
“Sheriff Anderson said you could look at this. He said he’d be back in an hour.
if you want to wait.”

Maharos and Fiala glanced at the paper. It stated
that Roy Young had not been arrested for any serious crime. Stapled to the NCIC
report was a record that had been obtained from the Kentucky Bureau of Criminal
Information. It listed Young’s previous arrests and convictions. There were
half a dozen, all for vagrancy, public intoxication, assault and battery. His
incarcerations had been in city and county jails, as he had told them.

Maharos handed the paper back to the secretary.
She said, “Sheriff Anderson said if you wanted to view the murder scene he’d
have one of the deputies take you out there.”

“We’d like that,” said Maharos. “Is there
somewhere nearby to grab a bite?”

“Uh-huh. There’s a cafeteria one floor up—if you
don’t mind the food.”

Maharos and Fiala were finishing their overcooked
hamburgers when a deputy sheriff came to the table where they sat. He looked
about twenty, pink-cheeked, light brown hair, wearing a uniform that looked as
though it had just come out of a box. The nametag on his uniform read “L.
Raymond.”

“You Detective Maharos?”

Maharos nodded.

“I’m Larry Raymond. Whenever you’re ready I’ll
drive you out to where they found Mr. Hamberger’s body.”

“We’re ready.”

Raymond took them to a black and white Dodge with
a large star decal on each side door. He drove about a mile to the entrance
ramp to Interstate 77. While he drove, he told them that he had answered the
call when the report came in the previous afternoon that Hamberger’s body was
found in the bed of his pickup. A farmer who lived off the dirt road where the
truck had been parked had phoned the report in. Raymond had remained at the
scene until after the coroner’s assistant had pronounced the man dead,
inspected the body and removed it to the county morgue. A mobile unit from the
Stark County Crime Lab in Canton had gone over the murder scene. They had
dusted the truck for latent prints. No weapon had been found.

About three miles north of New Philadelphia,
Raymond took a freeway exit marked “Dover” and “State Route 39.” He drove for a
mile on the State Route, then turned right on a narrow dirt road. A quarter of
a mile further on he pulled to the side of the road.

“Here we are,” he said.

Maharos looked around. The road was bordered on
both sides by a pine woods. Yellow plastic tape strips partially covered by
dust, lay in the road and hung limply from the surrounding bushes, the remnants
of the sheriff’s cordon.

He said, “Did the Crime Lab technicians find
anything?”

Raymond told them that casts had been made of
several footprints in the dirt around the truck but nothing else had turned up.

Leaving Raymond and Fiala talking by the side of
the patrol car, Maharos walked down the road in the direction they had come in.
He looked to either side as he strolled. About 100 yards from where they had
parked, he noticed a single tire track in the dirt by the side of the road. He
traced it with his eyes; saw that it led, through a shallow ditch, to a dense
clump of bushes a yard from the side of the road. One bush was flattened down,
its twigs bent, as though pressed down by a heavy object.

He called to Fiala and Raymond and they trotted
to where he stood. Maharos pointed to the tire track and the partly crushed
bush. “Looks like some kind of vehicle was driven in here.”

Fiala said, “Single track. What are you thinking,
motorcycle?”

“Maybe. Sheriff Raymond, was this segment
cordoned off?”

Raymond looked up and down the road as though
trying to jog his memory. “I don’t think so.”

“Were there many gawkers?”

“Yeah. It didn’t take long for the word to get
out. A lot of the locals came over to see what happened to Noah Hamberger. I’m
sure there were lots of people right here, especially kids, you know, young
guys from the farms around. Especially since it was Sunday, they had nothing
else to do. They couldn’t come close to where the truck was parked because we
had the area cordoned. So they looked on from here and from the road beyond
where the truck was parked.”

Maharos scratched his chin. “Well, it wouldn’t do
any harm to take a cast of this tire track and also take a closer look at the
bush. See if there is anything there that might be helpful.”

Raymond started toward the ditch but Fiala put
his arm out restraining him. “Hold it. This is a job for the lab techs. How
long do you think it would take the Mobile Unit to get back here?”

Raymond shook his head. “We waited over an hour
yesterday. They come from Canton, you know.”

Maharos said, “I think we should send for them
again.”

Raymond hesitated and kept his eyes on the
ground.

Fiala said, “Is there a problem?”

“Well, I’ll have to run this through my boss.”

“Anderson?”

“Uh-huh.”

Fiala said, “Well, go ahead. Get him on the
horn.”

They started walking back toward the patrol car.
Raymond shuffled along slowly behind, obviously not anxious to put the request
through to Sheriff Anderson. “I’ll put the call through on the cellular phone
in my car. Will one of you ask him, you know, about getting the Mobile Unit
back here?”

Maharos said, “I’ll ask him.” Raymond was
apparently a new kid on the block. Maybe he had gotten his fingers burned
dealing with Anderson before. Anderson thought he had the case locked up with
the vagrant he had in custody. Maharos was just as sure he had the wrong man in
jail.

The patrol car had both a radio and cellular
phone. Raymond punched up the headquarters on his mobile telephone. More
privacy than the radio speaker, Maharos thought. The call was patched through
to Anderson. The deputy handed the phone to Maharos. He explained what they had
found.

“What do you think, sheriff, should we get the
Mobile Crime Lab back here to take a closer look at those bushes, maybe take
casts of that tire track?” His language was as diplomatic as he could make it.

The sheriff’s voice came blasting through the
receiver. “Shit no, I don’t think we need the lab unit back here! Do you know
how many people’s been tramplin’ down ever’ bush up and down the goddam road?
There were kids there on bicycles, motor scooters, mopeds. Shit, there were
even a couple on skateboards, for chrissake. Skateboards on a dirt road! I
ain’t gonna waste their time and the county’s money. Besides, I told you, we
got the guy already. Lemme talk to Raymond.”

Maharos handed the phone back to the deputy and
watched his face turn to scarlet before he said a demurred, “Yessir,” and hung
up.

Raymond climbed into the driver’s seat. “He wants
I should bring you back now.”

They rode back in silence.

At the County Office Building Maharos and Fiala
retrieved their car and left without returning to the sheriff’s office.

Early June in Ohio. While Fiala drove from New
Philadelphia back to Youngstown, Maharos sat alongside gazing at the landscape.
The gently rolling hills were green with freshly sprouting alfalfa and hay and
corn. Every few miles they passed farmers riding tractors plowing fields
alongside the interstate highway. Traffic on I 77 was light with a few cars and
trucks. In cars or RV’s they passed, kids pressed their noses against the
windows or waved at the detectives. School was out and families were on the
road towing their cars or boats behind the tall RV’s.

Maharos watched the shield-shaped signs flash by.
On top, the red background with white letters that said, “Interstate.” Below, a
blue background and white numbers that read,”77.”

Near Youngstown, a lawyer had been shot dead and
left in his car on a side road off Interstate 77. Near New Philadelphia, a hay
and feed dealer had been shot dead and left in the bed of his pickup truck on a
side road off Interstate 77. A month apart. Exactly a month apart.

Logikos
. Maharos could hear the deep voice of his
father, a man who had less than a fifth grade education in the old country. Who
knew that Pi was the sixteenth letter of his alphabet, but knew nothing of its
mathematical significance, yet knew his plow made a circular furrow three times
longer than the distance across the center of the same circle. Think. Reason.
These you don’t learn from books, Alexander, he would say. My testicles, he
would say, gave you what my father and his father got from their
great-great-great grandfathers, men named Socrates and Aristotle.
Logikos
. Coincidence is a lazy man’s way
of thinking. There had to be a connection between the two events that appeared
to be separated in time and space.

Fiala glanced at Maharos out of the corner of his
eye. “When you don’t say nothing for half an hour, you’re either asleep or
thinking. You ain’t asleep.”

“I’m thinking.”

“I know. You’re thinking the same thing I’m
thinking.”

His eyes half-closed, Maharos nodded. “Uh-huh.
Maybe the Youngstown P.D. could save one salary and get rid of one of us. No
sense duplicating.”

“Better be you. I need the dough.”

Maharos said, “When we get back, call the Crime
Lab and ask them to send us copies of their findings in the New Philly case. I
want them to compare their ballistics with ours on Horner. I also want to see
the autopsy report on Hamberger.”

“You want me to call Sheriff King Kong and ask
him for it?”

“I guess we’ll have to go through him, much as I
hate to.”

Fiala said, “Want to send the Mobile Techs down
to cast that tire track, take a closer look at the bush?”

“You mean on our own? Forget about Anderson?”

“Yeah.”

Maharos shook his head. “Nah. You know who’ll be
getting the bill, don’t you?”

“The city.”

“Damned right. Ed Bragg’s over budget now. He’s
not gonna sit still for that. Maybe Anderson is right. There have been so many
people through that dirt road, there’s no way to know who made the tracks.”

*
  
*
  
*

Lieutenant Bragg wiped flecks of Danish muffin
icing from his mouth. “So what did you find out?”

Maharos was seated across from Bragg. He knew the
lieutenant liked to get to the bottom line with as little detail as possible.
“Fiala’s writing up his report now. The main thing is, they’ve got a collar in
their lock-up who’s the wrong guy. We’re waiting for the lab and autopsy
reports, but I’ve got a hunch whoever killed the guy in New Philly is the same
one who killed Horner.”

“What makes you think the guy they picked up is
the wrong one?”

Maharos related briefly their interrogation of
Roy Young. Bragg nodded idly. He said, “I’m going to have to take Fiala off the
case. We caught a jewelry store robbery where the owner was shot dead last
night. I’ve got Hassler on it and I need Frank to help him. You’ll have to work
on the Horner case alone.”

“Okay.”

“And Al, I’m getting some heat from the Bar
Association. They don’t like losing members. They want to know why we haven’t
figured it out yet.”

Maharos shrugged. “I’ll try harder.”

Karen Hennessy a civilian employee in Records,
held at arm’s length the request form Maharos handed her, as though it had
germs on it she might breathe. She said, “You want me to punch up all the
homicides in Ohio that occurred on the seventh of the month?”

Maharos said, “You read it right.”

“The seventh of each month?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Starting when?”

“You can start with last November.”

“Last November? This is June.”

“I know how to read a calendar.”

“And you want to know where each one occurred?”

He counted to five, slowly. Finally, “Why is it
every time I hand you a request you go through a major interrogation? It’s
written there in plain English.”

She put up her hands defensively. “Okay, okay.”

“I need it by tomorrow afternoon.”

As he walked out, he saw her reflection in the
glass part of the door, her tongue pointing at his departing back. Without
turning around, he said, “And put your tongue back in your mouth.”

He heard her mutter, “How does he do that?”

At his desk, Maharos read through the report from
the Stark County Sheriff’s Crime Lab.

Casts taken of footprints in Hamberger’s barn
were of two types. One matched the work shoes Hamberger had been wearing. The
other was from a size three Adidas gym shoe. The approximate weight of the
wearer was 125 to 130 pounds. A similar set of footprints was found near the
pickup truck where Hamberger’s body had been found.

A woman?

He read on. The back of the shovel found on the
floor of the barn was covered with blood that matched Hamberger’s. No, not
likely a woman. There were no latent fingerprints on the shovel. No prints?
Hamberger must have used the tool. The absence of any prints probably meant
that the handle had been wiped clean. It was used to bash in the victim’s face.
Why didn’t the killer simply shoot him rather than knock him out first and
shoot him later? Although he hadn’t gotten the autopsy findings yet, he’d be
willing to bet that Hamberger, like Horner, had suffered a cerebral concussion
before he had been shot dead.

Maharos pieced together the information. The bloody
shovel in the barn told him that Hamberger had been clobbered there. Blood in
the bed of the pickup where the body was discovered, indicated that the victim
had been driven, probably unconscious, to the dirt road where he was shot and
left to die. Why not finish him off in the barn?

The lab had found no latent prints anywhere in
the truck except those belonging to Hamberger.

The bullets had been sent to the Crime Lab from
the medical examiner. They were from a .25 caliber handgun, probably a Colt. Spent
shells found on the floor of the truck cab verified that the gun was an
automatic, which ejects its shells. The ballistics specialist found that the
bullets did not match those that had killed Horner, nor did they match any
others on file.

Hair and fiber analysis from the victim’s
clothing and the truck seat showed mainly an assortment of vegetable fibers.
One sentence in the report leaped out at Maharos: “Several fibers removed from
the front of the victim’s overalls were of a Navy blue wool.” Wool? On a warm
day in June? Were these the same type of fibers found in the vacuumed material
from the carpet of Horner’s car? Hamberger had not been wearing anything made
of wool. Probably the wool fibers had adhered to the murdered man’s overalls
from contact with the killer’s clothing.

Maharos was becoming more and more convinced that
the same person committed the two murders. Since most serial killers selected
their victims at random, there was probably no connection between the two
victims—if there were only two. And if they were both killed by the same
person.

The computer printouts that Maharos had picked up
from Karen Hennessy were still fan-folded. He tore the four sheets apart at
their perforations before he started to read them.

The homicides were listed in four columns. The
first column consisted of the names of the victims; the second, the
jurisdiction charged with investigation of the crime; the third, the type of
homicide; and the fourth column, the status of the case, whether closed by a
conviction, trial pending, or open, meaning unsolved.

He started with November 7th.

Victim………….Jurisdiction….Type…Status

11/7

Benson,Carl…Cincinnati
PD..MV..Conviction

Jackson,T. R..Cleveland PD..St…Conviction

DeAngelo,A.J..Columbus PD..GS..PendingTrial

12/7

Bannister,J.J…Fairfax Sheriff..MV..Conviction

Carson,Ed.N….Dayton PD……MV..Conviction

Masson,Herb…Cincinnati PD…MV..Conviction

Thompson,E.T……Cleveland PD….GS….Closed

Thompson,Abdul-K.Cleveland PD..GS…Closed

Thompson,Emily..Cleveland PD…GS..Closed

1/7

Borden,Isaiah..Cincinnati PD…St…Pending Trial

Burnstein,Frank..Canton PD..GS..Pending Trial

Lancaster,Victor..Toledo PD…MV..Conviction

Maharos fished a yellow, lined pad from his desk
drawer and examined the list of November 7th homicides. Benson was a motor
vehicular homicide, undoubtedly hit and killed by a drunk driver. Not
interested. He put a line through the name. Thomas Jackson was a stabbing
victim in Cleveland. A little out of the territory, and stabbing was not the
M.O. he was looking for. He placed a question mark next to the name. DeAngelo
had been killed by gunshot and was being investigated by Columbus police.
Although a suspect had been apprehended and was awaiting trial, he knew from
experience that they could have the wrong person—e.g. Young, Roy vs. Tuscarawas
County. He circled the name.

The December list contained no likely candidates
for further study. The three Thompson homicides in Cleveland, he recalled from
reports he had read at the time, were all members of the same family. One had
killed the other two and turned the gun on himself.

In January, the suspect who had gunned down Frank
Burnstein in or near Canton was waiting to be tried. Here it was June. What had
happened to his constitutional right to a speedy trial? Canton was in the right
vicinity for his investigation. Maharos drew a circle around “Burnstein.”

He went through the list eliminating the
vehicular homicides. The stabbing victims he separated from those who had been
killed by gunshot. He subdivided the list into geographic categories. When he
had finished, he had the names of fifteen people—including George Horner and
Noah Hamberger— who were possible gunshot victims of a serial killer.

Now came the legwork.