Clint Faraday Mysteries Collection B :This Job is Murder Collector's Edition (27 page)

“
I seem to have a nagging feeling that
I know something about that bunch. The name of the company seems
familiar, somehow. Maybe it’s connected, but not very
strongly.”

They talked about a lot of things, then Clint
went out to visit friend who lived at The Bluffs, then he went
fishing for about an hour for his supper. It was a pleasant
laid-back day in paradise.

He went to Isla Carenero to see how friends
there were doing that evening until about eleven, then home to grab
a good sleep. He got up at six in the morning, back to his normal
schedule.

Manny had sent a bit of new information on
the computer. It seemed there were some unanswered questions about
that company and some of the people who ran it. Someone had
disappeared a couple of years ago and there was a stink, but
nothing was ever proven on any of them. They claimed Robert Mesmer
had absconded with a large sum they couldn’t file charges on
through legal channels – which meant they were what’s commonly
called “Unreported income” in those circles.

There were some things to be learned from
Atlantic City and Chicago. He would have someone dig a bit for his
own curiosity.

This thing was stretching out into the past.
Clint decided he would try to find what had happened to anyone in
that company from its inception. He wanted to see exactly what this
was about. Was it some kind of survivor’s club where one or two of
them were trying to see that they were the survivors? Were more
taken in along the way?

Clint remembered a book he’d read long
ago called
The Hunter’s Club
.
It was a group who decided hunting big game was getting boring. The
standard targets had no way to fight back. A shot from a
high-powered rifle from 200 yards wasn’t much of a challenge. They
decided the only “worthwhile” game was man. The reactions of these
people showed it may actually be some sick kind of game they were
playing.

Sergio called and said the evidence they had
now, including the witnesses and type of physical damage was enough
to convict Stedmann. Should he proceed in that, or wait?

“
Serg, there’s something strange and
sinister about this thing. Let’s take a time out and watch them.
I’m gathering some evidence that this may be ... what it’s
beginning to look like. That’s very scary.”

“
What do you mean?”

“
Let’s see how far back this thing goes
if we can.”

“
We know about Costa Rica. We can’t
prove anything there except the connection. One and one is still
two.”

“
Depends on the math you’re using. It
can be a lot of things. I don’t think just two.”

“
Two we know about. It is our basic
pattern.”

“
Three, then. Mexico’s more certain
than Costa Rica.”

“
You know a great deal more than I do
about this. They aren’t going anywhere. We’ll take, as you say, a
time out.”

Clint called Manny when Sergio hung up to ask
if anything new had come up. Manny said there seemed to be some
kind of attempt to hide that company from public view.

They chatted about various things, then Clint
went to his computer. A Google search followed by a Yahoo! search
proved to be much more interesting. SfTSpec was a company started,
according to three hours of searching, in 1998 by a group of people
who owned businesses having to do with construction and home
repairs. It also had a member who had a heavy equipment parts
distributor company. There were twenty original members. Clint did
a search on all of them to find little except that Susan and Kyle
Long, who owned a lumber mill and a chain of retail outlets for
building materials had died in a car wreck when their brakes failed
in the mountains in Colorado in December of 1998. There was some
suspicion the car had been purposely damaged, but nothing was found
in the investigation. There was no apparent motive for anyone in
the area to want to harm them. The possessions were in a corporate
holding so no individual would profit very greatly. All the members
of the corporation were independently wealthy.

Clint sat back to think. There were a number
of questions to ask a computer from a number of angles. It was a
time-consuming task. (God! He was thinking in those terms?)

Well, onward and upward. Or downward. Or
sideways. How many?

He had Wilber Stenson. One, and he had Oliver
Haverton and Wanda Wentworth. Wanda wasn’t in the corporation. Was
that important? Did it take motive away from anyone?

What was the name Sergio’s cousin sent? Frank
Carlysle?

A check showed he was just a delivery
service. A deeper check showed there were a couple of complaints
against him for opening packages ... so that could well be motive.
He found something in a package.

What about Wanda Wentworth? They said no one
seemed in the least concerned that she was dead. She found
something, too? Hubby Dear left some papers around or
something?

Clint checked Texas and Mexico to try to get
a connection that wold involve her with something else.

Acapulco. James Smart, an original member of
the group and his lover, John Truman, had died in a boating
accident two weeks before on their way from California to Acapulco
in 2007. From what could be pieced together from the evidence there
must have been a gas leak and a spark set it off when they anchored
out from Acapulco and came in the dingy to spend two days there.
When they returned and started the engine the boat exploded in a
manner that indicated a poorly vented engine compartment. No
mention was made of the company. There was no connection anyone
knew about. Unfortunate accident.

How many others? One and one was now six.
Time to dig deeper into this.

Who was close when all of the deaths
occurred?

That couldn’t be traced easily. Some of it
was more than ten years ago.

All he could do was try. He called Manny and
told him what he’d found to date. Manny suggested any connection
could lead to other connections. They had something more to work
with.

He decided to see what he could see about the
company. Maybe the founders’ list would give him a clue. He still
didn’t know if it was one, two, the whole group, or what.

Donald Fieldman, Harold and Faith Richards,
John Truman, James Smart, Mark Stedmann, Eugene Williams, Oliver
and Anne Haverton, Donald Wentworth, Bart Green,Georgia and Samuel
Hicks, Barbara Manson, Lonnie Gene Michaels, Susan and Kyle Long,
Lucille Baldwin, Samuel Green, Wilber Stenson.

Were Samuel and Bart Green related?

Not according to what he could find. Green
was certainly not an uncommon name.

SfTSpec. Where did the name come from?

He checked over the list. Stedmann, Stenson.
Smart.

F? Not capitalized? A first name? Frank?
There was a Donald Fieldman.

T? Truman?

If it was Stenson or Smart and Frank Carlysle
– NOT a member. It most probably wasn’t him. That left only
Fieldman. If it was Smart or Stenson, Fieldman, and Truman, two of
them were dead.

Was Fieldman dead?

That would take some checking.

Clint worked until five thirty, then he and
Judi went out for a relaxing night on the town.

1+1 =
9

“
Well, Serg, it seems your one and one
is two is now one and one is six – and growing!”

“
I have traced a few things about
Stedmann. There is not much of a trail. He is in the company with
the others here. He has been involved with another person, this
Faith Richards, in another business deal, earlier, with a man
called Donald Fieldman. It was about some kind of stock exchange or
something and in the mid-nineties.

“
There are a lot of almost-dead ends in
this one.”

“
Tell me about it!”

“
I just did.”

Clint gave him the finger. They chatted a bit
more, but there wasn’t much new. Clint wanted to know something
about Fieldman, but simply couldn’t find much. The name had pages
on Google etc, but nothing that would make a positive connection
with the one he was looking for.

That’s the trouble with such search engines.
You can usually find hundreds, even thousands of references to a
certain person or thing, but simply knowing the name you want isn’t
enough to concentrate the search.

Clint narrowed it a bit by limiting the
search to Texas. There were only fifty six pages on Donald Fieldman
Texas. Clint followed twenty or so reference hyperlinks and learned
virtually nothing more.

Sergio called and said he’d found a little
bit. Markus J. Stedmann from Texas had connections on the web with
a Susan and Kyle Long and a Faith Newsom, who was now Faith
Richards. He was going to check on the Longs. They were in the
company.

Clint agreed and went back to the computer to
look for Susan and Kyle Long.

Uh-oh! Deceased in a fire that had trapped
them in their home in Carmel, California, in 2004. It was
determined the fire was “probably” arson, but was done so cleverly
that it was not provable. One and one now equaled eight. Were there
more?

Probably. This was one sick bunch of
people.

Well, now it could be pieced together in an
odd sort of way. Maybe one eighty degrees wrong, but something to
investigate.

Faith Newsom had business dealing with Mark
Stedmann. Was that the start? Maybe they were working together ever
since, which meant they would probably have been together
before.

Then why wasn’t Newsom part of the company
name? Did the company name have anything or nothing to do with
people’s names?

Assume the company was named for the ones who
started it. The purpose of the company was first ... this part
would depend on who the starters were. Stenson, Smart, Truman were
dead. Was that because they started the group and it got away from
them?

If it was Stedmann, it still got away from
Truman, so until he knew who “f” was he didn’t have much. If it was
Fieldman he had to know something about him. That was the really
hard part.

Past that. Get your mind into order and let
the tangents go until you have something to use to investigate. The
company was a survivor’s club that made them kill each other off
... this wasn’t making sense! If that was the deal, why travel
together? Was it even sicker than he dared guess?

Clint got in his boat and went to Almirante
and to the police station to talk with Sergio.

“
Serg, can you tag Stedmann and leave
the others out of it?”

“
I think so. Why?”

“
Because this is one chilling sick
mess! I can’t figure it but one way and that is so sick ... I
wonder if Stedmann’ll give himself up to protect the others to kill
off each other? I wonder if part of it’s that if you got caught
you’re out and the others must be kept in the clear, no matter
what? God! This has to be the sickest deal I ever heard of! Even if
I’m wrong on two thirds of it it’s still sicker than anything I’ve
run across in fifty years as a detective. Serg, I think this is
just a game to keep them from getting bored.”

“
They don’t seem to go for torture or
any of that. What do you mean?”

“
I’m out to kill you in any way I can.
The whole bunch of you. Vice versa for the whole bunch of us. If I
get caught I’m obligated to protect you and the game. This is sport
and nothing personal. We’re out to kill each other, but we can
still be friends.

“
That’s the best scenario. Part of it
has to do with ... I can’t figure anything this sick. I try to put
myself in the mind of anyone I’m after. I don’t have a reference. I
can’t put myself into that frame. It’s either completely sane and
logical from an unbelievably cold point of view or we have a whole
bunch of totally insane crackpots.

“
Serg, if there are that many, how did
they find each other? The number means it’s some kind of cult thing
or something – but there’s no evidence of that kind of
activity.”

“
TV movies,” Sergio replied. “They
watch all those violence and horror things and see that as a part
of life.”

“
They’re all too old for that kind of
influence in ... maybe not, but it would be the Manson ... I
wonder. Is Barbara Manson her real name or did she ... we have to
know a lot about that one. That may be our big connecting
clue.”

Sergio pointed to the comp on his desk. “It’s
personal. The office computer is that one on the desk with the
printer. Maybe you can ... I’ll give you her passport number.
That’s usually the best way to trace name changes and so forth. If
you have trouble with information from the states – and you will,
coming from Panamá – you can use the official connection with your
consul. They cooperate when the rest of your government won’t.”

“
Uh-oh?”

“
Some kind of deal where your FBI wants
us to arrest some people who they say are drug dealers. We know
some of them definitely aren’t. We aren’t about to start arresting
people because the big bad powerful United States gives us order.
They can fuck off if you ask me!”

Sergio never used maldiciones. Clint could
see he was really getting hot about it. That was the atmosphere
George W. planted. It got better for a few months after the
election, now was getting as bad or worse.

“
It’s not the gringos here. It’s the
ones who think being powerful in the states makes them powerful
here,” Sergio said. “Most of the gringos here are very good people.
It’s like that woman in Haiti in one of your cases
(
Comedy of Terrors
) who
thought the fact she could terrorize Haitians and Jamaicans into
doing anything she demanded by using their fear of voodoo meant
Panamanians would do anything she demanded. You saw how far that
got her! Panamanians don’t give a shit about some witch woman in
Haiti or about the all-powerful FBI.