Eleven Little Piggies (23 page)

Ray asked Andy to go back out to Home Farm and take up where he left off when they all got called to the domestic disturbance, get Charlie and Elmer to show him the break in the fence, and explain how they fixed it without the tools that Owen never brought. He said, ‘Try to get them to remember the times when they did each of those jobs and when they got back to the house.'

Ray just about got all that out of his mouth when Pokey phoned and told him to hustle his butt down to the lab at County where he had just procured a room.

‘I know perfectly well,' Ray told me as he loaded up his kit, ‘that I shouldn't be this hands-on, and you shouldn't either, but what else can we do?'

‘Nothing. Let's just take it as it comes.'

‘OK, so will you anchor for me here again today?'

‘Sure. I'll put on my headset so I can bring my stats up to date and start the payroll while I talk on the phone.'

‘You can do that?'

‘Of course.' I thought I was bragging a little, but actually that was the way that day worked out, for me. I got almost all my outstanding dog-work done while I fielded the steady stream of calls that came in – because they were all essentially the same phone call over and over. I could have cut and pasted the answers.

Everybody in reach of a phone, which these days is everybody breathing, wanted to ask if it was true we'd found Maynard Phelps's body in Ethan Kester's car. Some of the callers didn't even know his name – it was the second death that got their attention. When the chief walked in just before noon I told him, ‘I feel like the boy who kicked the hornet's nest.'

He was just as curious as everybody else, so I asked LeeAnn to hold calls a minute while I told him where we stood. That conversation got a little awkward, because where we stood was in a widening gap between what we knew and what we needed to know.

It looked as if the man in the car might have overdosed on something, I told him, but we didn't know yet if that was true. Was Pokey's autopsy going to tell us? We hoped so but couldn't be sure. If it was true, he asked me, why would he climb into Ethan's car to off himself? No idea. Were they particularly close? On the contrary, Ethan claimed he didn't even recognize him.

‘This is kind of ridiculous,' the chief said. ‘You got any theories?'

‘The one thing I know about him,' I said, ‘is that he seemed to sort of spy on the Kester family and liked to talk about what he knew about them. So he might have been killed over something he knew – or said he knew.'

‘So again, that would point to someone in the family.'

‘Well, yeah. But if Pokey shows us he committed suicide, then that theory's out the window.'

‘If he did kill himself we don't need to care why he did it, do we? He's just a hired hand – he could be responding to something that happened at the last place he worked.'

‘That's a comforting thought. Why do I find it so hard to believe?'

‘Because it's been a hard week and you're not by nature a very optimistic fellow,' the chief said, getting up. ‘Keep me posted.'

‘Sure. You talked to the lab lately?' He gave me a blank stare and I reminded him, ‘You were going to try to expedite the DNA report from that cooler room, remember? Did you talk to them?'

‘I certainly did. And that's been, let's see . . .'

‘Tuesday, I think. Of course they all took Thursday off, but . . . would you mind giving them a nudge? If we could be sure that was Owen's blood, we'd at least have proved one thing.'

‘And maybe the tide would turn? Sure, I'll call them.'

The information flow did seem to reverse for a while after Ray got back from the autopsy. He was tired and tense from standing on a cold floor in a cold room watching two cold scientists carve up a human being. He had learned to tolerate autopsies and respect the information gained from them, but no amount of talk about their intellectual value could teach him to enjoy one.

The doctors, on the other hand, he said, had all sorts of zesty fun with this autopsy, because Maynard's carcass proved to be such an accurate catalog of his heedlessly greedy life. Ray had flinched and quailed as they competed with each other to identify the symptoms: the herpes sores and gonorrheal scars that signaled plenty of careless sex, the cirrhosis of the liver left by a lifetime of hard drinking, the yellowing eyes and high blood sugar of diabetes that indicated heedless over-indulgence in sweet and fatty foods.

When they got to deciding the cause of death, though, they got a little more anxious and whiny.

‘You're serious? Pokey whined?'

‘Well, he wasn't happy,' Ray said, ‘because the signs were all kind of . . . subtle, I think he said.'

The clinic doc was also anxious to come to a conclusion, Ray said, but cautious about deciding if the damage he saw was more likely homicidal or self-inflicted. His name was Mason, and he was young and kind of keen, Ray said. Seemed like he might be leaving any minute to go into rocket science.

‘The hyoid bone wasn't broken,' Ray said, ‘but they talked a lot about,' he read from his notes, ‘being pretty sure they saw a line of ecchymosis around his neck.'

‘What's that?'

‘I finally got them to tell me it means bruising, discoloration. Like from a garrote? Then Pokey pointed out what he said were petechiae in the eyes, those are blood spots, and they looked and said they thought they saw one or two in the mouth too. And later on they claimed they saw evidence of,' reading again, ‘cerebral hypoxia.'

‘I'm impressed,' I said. ‘What does it all mean?'

‘They're about ninety-eight per cent certain he died of strangulation. For some reason, they couldn't decide whether somebody offed him or he did himself. Either one is possible, they said, and agreed they'd seen examples of both. They had a high old time, for a few minutes, telling stories of the ways they'd seen people asphyxiate themselves. “You'll have to get that information some other way”, they said.'

‘Oh, for Christ's sake,' I retorted. ‘That's their job! Don't we have enough to do?'

‘That's what I said. But the docs said, “We can only tell you what we know”.'

So the autopsy report was going to confirm that Maynard Phelps died of strangulation, inflicted either by himself or another person. The doctors did not, of course, care to speculate on the presence of the shotgun, except to state that it hadn't killed Maynard Phelps. ‘Who doesn't, at least on the Internet, exist,' Ray said.

Winnie and Rosie had returned, as Ray had asked, by two, and were listening to the verdict.

‘Ethan was right,' Rosie said. ‘He's in the weeds.'

‘Except the motivation is crazy,' I said. ‘Why would Ethan Kester kill a guy he didn't even know?'

‘He
says
he didn't know him. We don't know that's true.'

‘Well, good, so add that to the long and growing list of things we don't know about Maynard, including his real name. How soon,' I asked Ray, ‘are we going to know anything more?'

‘Well, I already know one more thing about him than I was looking for,' Ray said. ‘Remember the hands you were so anxious to have me bag? The docs were taking a swab for a firearms residue test, and Pokey said, “Maybe we oughta make a swab for cocaine residue, his nose looks a little sore to me”. And Mason said, “Hell, we still got some urine from this guy, haven't we? I'm pretty sure we've got one of those quick tester kits here someplace”. He rummaged around in a cupboard and found it, and bingo.'

‘Maynard had coke in his urine?'

‘Yup. Tox screen will confirm, they said, and maybe other goodies as well. This guy was really pleasure-bent. Pokey's sending blood and tissue samples to BCA today. And fingerprints. The chief is already on the phone with the director up there, begging for a rush order. Probably have to wait in line for DNA and tox, but might get a speed-up on prints – if we could even get a match there, we'd at least have an identity to work with. I'll send his photo to the five-state area. I'm reaching out to guys I know to get it into BOLOs. We might get lucky.'

‘And pigs might fly,' Rosie said. ‘You ready for the news from the Lexus dealer?'

‘In a minute,' I said. ‘First I want to ask, how does a farm hand make enough money to buy cocaine?'

The whole table answered at once, ‘By selling cocaine.'

‘Isn't it fun the way this keeps growing? Now we need the name of his supplier and a list of his customers and oh, what else? The locations where he was moving it, I guess.'

‘I'll ask Bo to help,' Ray said.

‘Right. Now, Rosie. The Lexus dealer, tell me.'

‘They never saw Nicole Kester on Wednesday. They haven't heard about an electrical problem with her car. If they do they're sure they can fix it. If it means the vehicle is disabled for any length of time they will certainly furnish a loaner, since she is a premium customer whose comfort is their first consideration.' She watched us thoughtfully. ‘What nice smiles you both have.'

‘We do when you bring us good news,' Ray said. ‘What did you learn at Ethan's office?'

‘Precious little, because those lace collar ladies are a little, um, precious. They understand, Mr Robbins and the Messers. Kester made it clear to them that they must cooperate in this police investigation. But they want to be sure
we
understand they are not accustomed to sharing the confidential business of the firm with
outsiders
 . . . I now know exactly how it feels to be an outsider, don't you, Winnie?'

‘I come from people who fled Vietnam on a raft,' Winnie said, ‘I already knew that. But I agree, that lady with the brooch gives it new meaning.'

‘What is this, sensitivity week?' Ray said. ‘Did you get the log times or didn't you?'

‘Of course we got them,' Rosie said, slapping down copies on his desk.

‘But they said they don't gossip about fellow employees,' Winnie said. The corners of her mouth twitched.

‘So I told them, “Good, neither do we”,' Rosie said. ‘“But we ask very pointed questions in a homicide investigation, and one way or the other we always get answers”.'

‘After that,' Winnie said, ‘in response to some very pointed questions, they told us Patti types very well and leaves her desk neat but they wish she'd use something so the whole office didn't smell like sex after she works there. “First thing we have to do Monday morning”, Mrs Waycross said, “is air out the office”.'

‘I have to ask,' I said. ‘What did you find for a log-in time on the Esterhazy contract?'

‘Um . . .' Rosie picked it up and studied it. ‘Eight-thirty.'

‘Ah,' Ray said. ‘So Maynard gets an hour and a half of happiness a week. How like him to keep it brisk.'

‘And Jake Hines, sad to relate,' I said, ‘gets the booby prize for letting himself be fooled by a little newbie girl from the sticks.'

‘Oh, put a positive spin on it,' Ray said. ‘Patti Peterson gets the award for Best Actress in a Sordid Story.'

Ray's phone rang and he got into a long dumb-sounding conversation with Clint, mostly grunts and denials on his end. ‘Yeah. Uh-huh. No. No. You be in soon? Oh? So no. OK, bye.' He folded up his phone, made an impatient noise, and said, ‘They're having too much fun out there, admiring the milking machines. I think I'll put Josh Felder to work with somebody else tomorrow.'

‘They find anything useful?'

‘No, he says that place is just too damn spread out and open to search with any hope of success. Acres and acres of
cows
, he keeps saying. What else was he expecting at a dairy?'

Bo got back to the station around four-thirty. He poked his nose into Ray's office, where I was sitting while we mapped out strategy for the next week, and said, ‘Done.'

‘You got them both charged?'

He nodded. ‘The arresting officers showed the judge their scars. And two social workers came from the hospital to tell what they'd done to the kids. After that McGee wouldn't even set bail for Big Bad Dad. And his friend can't raise any money so it comes to the same thing. I think the friend actually wants to stay in jail so Mom can't get at him. I probably should have arrested her too but' – he sighed – ‘then the kids wouldn't have anybody. That older social worker, that Delia Delaney, you know her?'

‘Yeah, good head,' Ray said.

‘She's going to try to get somebody assigned to that household.' He got up. ‘Best I could do.'

‘Sit a minute,' I said. I told him about the dead farm hand with cocaine in his urine. ‘You ever hear that name, Maynard Phelps?'

‘No.'

‘Or see this guy?' I showed him the picture.

‘No.'

‘Well, could you make us a list of his probable suppliers?'

‘Sure. I better make a couple of calls first. If I just give you what I remember, half of them will be behind bars or gone back down the river since I quit working that beat. Things change fast in the drug trade.'

On that happy note we all went back in our workstations to type reports and answer email. The section was a hive of quiet taps and hums when Andy walked into it at four-forty-five a.m.

‘No need to stop for me,' he told us all. ‘I got no surprises, just a few notes about times.'

‘Good,' Ray said. ‘Come in here.' He pulled up the spreadsheet and I watched while they put in the times and events Andy had brought back in his recorder: ‘Four-forty a.m. to the road where the dead horses lay by the truck. Five-oh-five a.m., swap vehicles with Owen and go looking for the break in the fence. Riding the fence line looking for the break, maybe half an hour. Found it, called the boss shortly after six a.m. He said he'd bring supplies to fix it.'

‘It's fitting right into what we had, isn't it?' I said.