False Front (6 page)

‘A guy who works here saw some of what happened and we have some forensics to back up his story.’ The sheriff led him to about the halfway point near a cluster of suited-up techs surrounding the body. Jake saw the indentation in the chain-link fence right away. The curb beneath it streaked black with tire rubber. Possible paint scraped onto a link. And what appeared to be blood flecked here and there on the metal.

‘Seems to me that poor guy over there tried to climb over the fence to get away but he got nailed by the vehicle,’ the sheriff said.

‘Had to be terrifying running for your life down this cattle chute, praying for a hidden exit. Makes me wonder, though, what was he doing here in the middle of the night?’

‘Store closes at one a.m. so he wasn’t here for shopping.’

‘If the store was closed what was our employee witness doing here?’

‘Restocking the shelves,’ the sheriff said.

They walked over to the body and the techs parted to let them into their circle. ‘Whoa, you weren’t kidding about the possibility of visual identification.’

‘’Fraid not. Like I said: even Jesus wouldn’t recognize him now. The guy you talked to have any DNA or prints on file?’

‘Yes,’ Jake said. ‘I brought a flash drive with the digital prints as well as a hard copy of a fingerprint card.’

‘Some of his fingers are squashed and flattened but there’s a few that’ll give us good prints. We’ll do that at the morgue first thing. We’ll be ready to move the body in a few minutes if you want to stick around and ride down there with me.’

‘Sure. I’d like to get answers to the identity before I leave.’

‘Why did he have your card?’

‘If it’s who I think it is, he came to me wanting protection. I thought he was a crackpot. If it is him, I made a huge mistake. A horrible misjudgment.’

‘Even though it will make my job harder I hope, for your sake, it’s not him. But you can’t win ’em all, Bud.’

‘No you can’t. But you sure don’t like to lose this spectacularly.’

‘I hear that.’

Jake paced while the fingerprint expert peered through magnifying lenses, comparing the two cards. When the man pushed back from his desk, he said, ‘It’s a match.’

‘Damn!’

‘Looks like this is your case as much as it is ours, Lovett,’ the sheriff said. ‘The search warrant is signed and sealed. We’re fixin’ to deliver it to his last known address. Figured you’d want to come along.’

‘But how did you get that search warrant? We just established his identity.’

‘I suspected you knew what you were talking about or you wouldn’t have come roaring up here in the middle of the night. I guess I sort of jumped the gun on the victim ID and called a buddy down at the Norfolk PD . . . But, hell, all’s well that ends well.’

‘The apartment’s in Norfolk?’

‘Yep. Not too far from the naval shipyard.’

‘I gotta ask you, Cummings. I don’t always find this much cooperation when I horn in on a local case. Are you normally this open with the FBI?’

‘Hell, no. I’m usually confrontational.’

‘But . . .’

‘But, you see, we might have a lot of jurisdictional squabbles with the local cop shops. And I might get ticked when the Feds hire up one of my investigators just as he’s hit his stride. None of that, though, stands in the way of our willingness to share gossip.’

‘Gossip?’

‘Yep, gossip says you play well with others. That you’re not a glory hound and you don’t push the locals around. I’m taking a chance that you’ll prove that rumor true.’

‘Appreciate that, Sheriff.’

‘Make sure you consider this a probationary period. You piss me off and everything changes.’

‘I’ll do my best to avoid that.’

‘Bear in mind, Lovett, I’m not a glad-hand politician. They might call me Sheriff Good Hair behind my back, but I earned the trust of the people of this county as a deputy for twenty years before I ran for sheriff. I’m not some tough-talking, marshmallow-middle, promise-breaking blowhard.’

Jake smiled. ‘Is that your campaign slogan?’

‘Should be,’ Cummings chuckled. ‘Let’s roll.’

During the hour drive, Jake turned over the meeting with Rowland in his mind. What had he missed? Why hadn’t he taken the man seriously? How had he reached the conclusion that Rowland was nothing more than a paranoid conspiracy nut? Even Rowland’s pathetic routine of dropping to the floor and hugging the chair leg hadn’t moved him from his skepticism. It had only increased it. The drama seemed more the hallmark of a scam artist than a sincere man who needed help.

The mistake eroded his self-confidence and filled him with doubt of his abilities. No matter how many times he’d read a situation or a person right, it still didn’t make up for one fatal error. Even in retrospect, he didn’t see any red flags warning him that he was going down the wrong road – one that led to a literal dead end.

Maybe Lucinda could spot where he went wrong, he thought. Maybe she could help him figure out why he thought nut or scam artist but hardly considered the possibility of Rowland as a potential victim. He’d hash it out with her first chance he got. Whenever that might be.

NINE

D
own a flight of trash-littered stairs they found Rowland’s basement apartment. Three white trash bags were piled on top of one another by the door. Empty beer cans were scattered on every surface. The place had the sickly sweet, malty smell of overripe garbage and spilled beer.

Jake flipped on the kitchen light and watched cockroaches race for cover. Past a sink filled with greasy water and dirty dishes stood an old wooden table, the one nearly clean surface in sight. Surrounded by three mismatched chairs, it had only two items on it: a pencil and a legal pad.

He looked straight down at the yellow paper. Across the top, it read ‘Tess.’ Beneath that name, a dark line dug into the paper where the pencil went back and forth, underlining it with emphasis. Underneath, numbered one to four, he had written: me, Candy, Bonnie, unknown.

Beside Candy, there was a phone number with a question mark followed by Eagleton and another question mark. ‘FIND HER!!!’ was written by Bonnie. Next to unknown, he’d scrawled, ‘Is there anyone else?’

At the bottom of the page were several skull and crossbone doodles and the word ‘danger’ written multiple times. Who were these people and what did it mean? Were they all connected to the threat Rowland received? Jake pulled a small notebook out of his pocket and recreated the note there. He asked a forensic tech to bag it and mark it as evidence.

He pulled out his cell and called the number on the note. The phone rang – and rang – ten times in all before it clicked off without going to voicemail. He’d keep trying but he imagined that he’d have to match the name and the phone number to an address and pay the mysterious Candy a visit.

Jake walked into the bedroom. A single bed and a dresser barely fit in the space. The soiled socks and underwear strewn across the floor gave an added claustrophobic dimension to the tiny room.

On the top of the dresser, an old faded color photograph of a teenage couple at a prom looked oddly out of place. Jake lifted it with a gloved hand and noticed the sheen of a layer of dust underneath it. Obviously the snapshot had not been there long. Jake carried it over to a lamp and switched on the light. He could see Rowland’s features in the boy’s face – considering the age of the photograph, it had to be him. The girl smiling beside him looked vaguely familiar but Jake couldn’t figure out why. He’d have to find out where Rowland went to high school and get his hands on a yearbook and see if he could find the girl. Could that lead to a suspect? Who knew? It was a lead and it needed to be followed until it ran off track or hit a dead end.

‘Anybody find a cell phone or address book?’

A chorus of ‘no’ ran around the apartment. ‘If you do, let me know. If you even find a stray phone number jotted down anywhere, let me know.’

Jake walked out the door where the sheriff stood keeping track of everyone going in and out of Rowland’s place. ‘Sad place, Sheriff.’

‘Poverty looks even uglier when you know the person who lived in it is now dead.’

Jake briefed him on the two items of interest he’d found inside and said, ‘I’ll follow up on the legal pad note first and see if the field office from his old stomping ground in New Jersey can run down a yearbook for his high school class. I’ll get back to you as soon as I have anything. Call me if you need me or if your techs find something they think I need to see.’

‘We’re doing a search for family but so far zilch. I kinda suspect there isn’t anyone who cares if he’s alive or dead.’

‘Somebody must have. They killed him.’

‘So all we have to do is find the one person in the whole wide world who cared enough to run him down.’

‘When you put it that way, it sounds so simple,’ Jake said and followed it with a rueful laugh. ‘Anybody around who can give me a ride back to my car?’

‘Here, take my keys. Hand them over to one of the techs at the crime scene and ask them to drive it back to the office when they finish up there.’

‘Thanks. Later, Sheriff.’

By the time Jake was halfway back from Norfolk, he had an address and a name to go with the phone number written next to the name ‘Candy.’ He punched it into his GPS and headed straight there. Maybe he’d get lucky. Maybe Candace Eagleton at the address and Candy on the note were the same person. Maybe Candy could make sense of it all. He sighed, doubting that it would be that easy. But at least, he thought, I’ll be able to scratch that lead off the list.

TEN

L
ucinda made two steps past the front desk before Kristen spoke. ‘Lieutenant, you have a visitor.’

Lucinda spun around and raised an eyebrow.

‘Molly Smith,’ Kristen said.

Kristen’s habit of delivering information in bite-size morsels aggravated Lucinda and taxed her patience. She raised both hands and shrugged.

‘Candace Eagleton’s daughter,’ Kristen said.

‘And?’ Lucinda said.

‘And what?’

Lucinda blinked her eyes and breathed deeply. ‘And where is she, Kristen?’

‘Oh, interrogation room number one,’ Kristen said with a smile, seemingly oblivious to Lucinda’s irritation.

‘Thank you, Kristen.’ She paused for a moment as a number of sarcastic comments raced through her head. She swallowed every word and headed down the hall. She slipped into the observation room to observe her visitor.

Molly had long, medium-brown hair pulled back in a barrette at the nape of her neck. Her thin face was pale and drawn, making the redness of her eyes more prominent. She wore a plain maroon T-shirt, a pair of blue jeans and dark blue suede clogs on her feet. A tiny gold hoop graced each ear lobe and a simple gold cross and chain hung around her neck. Her left hand clutched a tissue. Her right hand moved around erratically from her face to the table surface to undefined locations in midair, like a little bird that did not know where to land.

Lucinda walked into the room with an outstretched hand. ‘Lieutenant Lucinda Pierce.’

Molly rose, two bright pink spots of color flaming in her cheeks as she shook the detective’s hand. Lucinda tried not to show her disappointment at the soft bonelessness of the other woman’s grasp. ‘My mother did not commit suicide,’ Molly said.

‘Fine,’ Lucinda said. ‘Let’s sit down and get a little background first. Do you live nearby?’

‘No. I drove most of the night. From Maine. Northern Maine. But what does that have to do with my mother?’

‘It helps me to have a complete family picture, Mrs Smith. The fewer unknowns I have, the easier it is to recognize the relevant facts.’

Molly sighed. ‘I haven’t lived at home in ten years. Not since I graduated from high school.’

‘Did you go to college?’

‘Yes. For a week,’ she said with a laugh. ‘It didn’t really suit me. But it did lead me to the man I love.’

‘In one week?’

‘When you’re eighteen, a week seems like forever. And Matthew was so full of goodness, it radiated from his pores. He broke through my spoiled, materialistic interior and plunged into my soul the first time we met. We married seven days later and I haven’t looked back since.’

Lucinda forced her face to remain placid and her tongue to stay still. To her, Molly sounded like a groupie rather than a wife. ‘Have you been living in Maine ever since?’

‘No, we travelled around to campuses delivering the Good Word to anyone who would listen. Then, when Peter was born, we moved north. We wanted to raise our children in the bosom of nature – close to God, away from the materialistic trappings of the modern world.’

Lucinda struggled to keep her eyes from rolling in her head. ‘Children? You have more than one?’

‘Yes.’ Molly smiled. ‘We have five. We planned for four. We thought four would be perfect. But apparently God did not agree. The fourth time I got pregnant, we had twins – Ruth and Esther. They’re six months old now. But, please, although I love talking about my family, there are things I need to tell you about my mother.’

‘OK, Molly. Why did you say that she didn’t commit suicide?’

‘Because she didn’t. I am sure of it. I spoke to her the night before she d-di-died.’ A sob strangled off her speech. She held up a palm, facing Lucinda as she swallowed and pulled herself back under control. ‘My dad is a bully, Lieutenant. And you know how they say if you stand up to a bully, he’ll back down? Well, not my dad. Mom stood up to him again and again but he’d always lash back. And, in the end, he usually got his way. And you know how he did that?’

Lucinda shook her head.

‘He threatened me and my brother.’

‘Threatened?’

‘Oh, not physically. He never hit us or my mother that I know. He threatened to take away our favorite toys when we were little – our cars or other prized possessions when we were older. Sometimes, he threatened to send us off to boarding school, at someplace far away. She always buckled. But she kept standing up to him just the same. At least until I went away to school for that short week. She seemed to change. She just acceded to his demands without question. It was like she became his robot. A machine made to do his bidding. Until recently, anyway.’