It Takes Two to Strangle (13 page)

Damon sat down beside them and asked if they knew of David Johnson who coached the local Battle Park high school team.

“Sure do,” the man replied, wiping a smear of butter from his upper lip with the back of his hand. “My son, he’s in the bullpen out near left field, is on the junior varsity team at Battle Park. He’s trying out for Coach Johnson this fall. The kid has a great arm, but still has some control issues we need to get in order.” He pointed toward the bullpen where six or seven youths sat bowlegged having what appeared to be a spitting contest.

“I pitched in school, too,” Damon said casually, without detailing his post high school career.

They discussed the merits of a few recent changes in pitching styles, then Damon asked whether he knew if Coach Johnson was at the complex that evening.

“Not tonight,” responded the man, chewing through another handful of kernels. His wife looked on, horrified at the sight of him eating with his mouth open while speaking. “I happen to know that he’s on vacation this week. A group of former hurlers, including Coach Johnson, run summer pitching camps and our son is in one of them. But my boy told me the coach left this weekend to take his family up to Cape Cod.”

“You wouldn’t happen to know if he coached the Battle Park team fifteen to twenty years ago would you?”

The man laughed heartily, then coughed as the skin of a popcorn kernel caught in his throat. He made a series of hacking gestures, chewed what had apparently come back up into his mouth and re-swallowed. His wife, now completely mortified, turned to face the opposite direction, pretending to be enamored with the game even though her son remained in the dugout.

“It definitely wasn’t Dave Johnson, that’s for sure. He’s closer to your age than mine. The coach back then was Randy Wadecraft. Randy was there as long as I can remember. Son of a bitch cut me after my sophomore year. Granted, I couldn’t see a change-up coming to save my life. But I played a mean third base.”

“Do you have any idea where I might find him?” Damon asked.

“That’s easy,” he said with vivacity. “He should be right here at the complex. His grandson catches for a team from just south of Pittsburgh and they’re playing tonight. Randy never misses a game.”

He turned to the woman beside him. “Hon, do you need another soda? I’m going see if I can locate Randy Wadecraft for this gentleman and can get a Diet Pepsi while I’m down there.”

She nodded her head and gave Damon a sugary smile.

The man, who by then had introduced himself as Charles—“but everyone calls me Ducky”—Traduck, led Damon down to the concourse. Walking quickly for a man of considerable girth, Ducky soon spotted the green and gold jerseys belonging to the team from outside of Pittsburgh. He approached the edge of the field, first searching the field and pointing out Wadecraft’s grandson crouched behind home plate. He turned his attention to the bleachers, scanned for a few seconds and spotted his prey. “Randy Wadecraft,” he said to Damon. “Fourth row up, a few feet in from first base. Old guy sitting by himself with the shaggy gray hair and jean vest.”

Damon thanked Ducky with a firm handshake before Mr. Traduck set off for the concession stand.

As Damon made his way over to the former high school coach, the pitcher flung a wild ball into the dirt. It skipped past Wadecraft’s grandson to the backstop. The boy flipped up his mask, and sprinted after the ball. A runner on first base used the opportunity to take second, then dug in his heels and raced for third. The catcher saw the move, picked up the baseball and whipped a bullet straight and low into the outstretched mitt of the third baseman, who tagged the runner out before he could complete his feet-first slide into the base. Each Wadecraft, the elder in the stands and the younger trotting to the dugout, pumped a fist in the air.

“Heck of an arm on that catcher,” Damon said with enthusiasm taking a seat one step down from Randy Wadecraft.

“You better believe it,” he replied with pride. “That’s my grandson.”

Damon admitted he knew the two were related because Ducky Traduck had pointed out the pair of them.

“Charles Traduck,” Wadecraft said. “I remember him. He couldn’t hit worth a lick thirty years ago. I think he still resents me for cutting him. No wonder he didn’t come over to say hello.”

“Have you seen his son pitch?” Damon asked, hoping to establish a rapport with the elder coach.

“Sure, a few times,” he said crinkling his eyes, which accentuated the ceases in his brow. “He has a pretty good fastball for a kid his age, but his accuracy needs work.”

“That’s what Ducky said.”

Randy laughed. “So I hope you’re a college scout looking at Damon,” he said.

“Damon?”

“My grandson who just cut down that runner at third.”

“You confused me. My name’s Damon as well. Damon Lassard.” They shook hands. “And no, I’m not a scout.”

“Too bad,” he replied, crinkling his eyes again, which Damon now recognized as a mouthless smile.

Damon recounted his own baseball history, this time not leaving out the parts about college and the Japanese leagues.

“Pretty impressive, son,” Randy said when Damon finished his story.

They stopped conversing to watch Damon Wadecraft stride to home plate for his turn at bat. He was a strapping young man wearing a jersey shirt a size too small, which accentuated his chest and arm muscles. Damon wondered whether there was a particular high schooler he was trying to impress or if his mother had just washed the uniform too many times. After taking two pitches for balls, Damon Wadecraft tore into a fastball and sent the ball skyrocketing toward center field. It landed in the center fielder’s glove, only feet from being a home run. But the team’s runner on third base easily tagged home.

“Solid sacrifice,” Damon said to shore up the good graces he had established with Randy. “No doubt about getting the runner home with that hit.”

“Every RBI helps pad the stat sheets,” Randy replied and then turned to face Damon squarely. “But you didn’t come over here to talk about my grandson, did you?”

Damon blanched, but raised his courage and supplied Randy with an abbreviated history of his current position, the murder at the fair and finally, Anthony Weams. Damon said Anthony had been brought into the investigation because of his relationship with the murdered man’s daughter who grew up in a suburb of nearby Morgantown. He didn’t detail the scandalous nature of the relationship between Anthony and Clara.

Randy Wadecraft took the account in stride and didn’t ask why Damon rather than a police officer was sitting next to him.

“Tony Weams was a good kid and a pretty good infielder,” he said. “Smart, too. He didn’t take the dummy classes like some of the players.”

“Do you remember a girl named Clara Jovanovic hanging around with him?”

Randy considered the question thoughtfully. “I can’t say that I do,” he said and used the back of his hand to flip unkempt gray hair from the back of his neck.

“I’m not surprised. She’s probably seven or eight years younger than Tony, and I can’t imagine a high school ball player knowing someone that young, unless she was a friend of the family or the sister of a buddy.”

“I agree with you there,” Wadecraft said. “It’s a long time ago so I don’t remember everything, but I don’t specifically recall Tony having any friends outside of Battle Park. And I’m pretty sure he had a girlfriend at the school, too.”

Suddenly the coach’s wrinkled eyes began to gleam. Specks of blue shined out from behind gray irises. “What’s that surname again?” he asked sharply turning to face Damon.

“Jovanovic. Clara Jovanovic. The father who was killed was named Lirim. The mother was Tabby or Tabitha.”

He tapped his forefinger against the wrist of his opposite hand. “Son, there’s something there all right, but it has nothing to do with Tony Weams, at least I don’t think it does.”

Damon raised his eyebrows, urging Randy to proceed.

“Lirim Jovanovic. I never met the man, but I remember where I heard the name. Maybe fifteen or sixteen years ago or so, there was a rumor floating around the school. In the teaching and coaching circles that is. It was about a guy from Morgantown who was peddling photographs of little girls. The naked kind.”

Damon’s jaw didn’t drop, but his mouth reflexively opened.

“Word was going around in case anyone saw someone approach one of our students. Though I don’t think he was interested in high school girls. More like ten- or eleven-year-olds was the story. Anyway, I heard he had a few dozen pictures and he was in some sort of business where he traveled a lot and sold them on the road. At the time, I figured he was a trucker, but I suppose a carnival owner would work just as well.”

“And you think it was Lirim Jovanovic?” Damon asked.

“I do. I remember somebody saying the Morgantown sheriff was looking into it. After a week or two of talk at the school, we didn’t hear about it again.”

“How did the school come to hear about it in the first place? Did Lirim approach one of the teachers trying to sell the photos?”

“I couldn’t tell you, Damon. I just don’t know. You should try the sheriff’s office down in Morgantown. They might have a record of it.”

Damon knew that would be his next stop. He thanked Randy and waited in line at the concession stand for a foot long kosher hot dog that he doused with thick orange cheese from an oversized squeeze bottle.

He ate in the front seat of his car, mopping cheese from the corners of his mouth with a tissue, and considered the ramifications of Lirim Jovanovic as a small-time child pornography distributor. At least Damon assumed he was small-time.

Had word trickled down at Battle Park from the teachers and coaches to the students? To Anthony Weams? No, assuming the coach had his timeline correct, Anthony would have been in college by then.

Was Lirim taking pictures of his own daughter? It would account for Clara’s animosity toward him. She would have been thirteen or fourteen at that time. Older than the ten or eleven cited by Randy Wadecraft, but Randy had only heard rumors. And what was to say that Lirim hadn’t been in that line of business for years by the time word spread to Battle Park from Morgantown?

Damon considered the impact of the information on Lirim’s murder. The killer could be totally unrelated to Big Surf—a former victim who decided to seek her revenge. Or after going through years of therapy, a victim recounted her tragic childhood secrets to her current husband or her father who hunted down Lirim Jovanovic and choked the last breath out of him.

Chapter 12

The sun was inching down toward the horizon when Damon left the baseball complex. He drove south toward Morgantown. The West Virginia University emblem emblazoned everything from street banners to bumper stickers. He found a Hampton Inn and registered for a single night.

Using a public computer on the first floor of the hotel, Damon conducted basic searches using Lirim’s name and different terminology that could relate to child pornography. No positive results turned up, and more than half of the sites that his searches found were blocked by the hotel’s computer security system. He wrote down directions to the sheriff’s station in town and to the Jovanovic home, using the address he located by a search of the county’s electronic property tax database.

He debated dialing Gerry but decided to wait until after he had spoken with the sheriff in case he learned something useful. Not that he was sure a sheriff would speak about a potential criminal matter with someone outside of the law enforcement profession.

After breakfast the following morning, Damon easily found the Monongalia County sheriff’s station, a squat unremarkable structure on a side street. Damon entered an empty lobby. It was small and furnished with a pair of brown stuffed armchairs and a worn navy blue sofa. Framed portraits of mayors, city council members and the sheriff hung above brass name placards.

Damon considered Sheriff Ravi Anbani’s photograph and wondered how many people of Indian descent resided in Morgantown. His contemplation was interrupted by a gruff “Can I help you?” coming from the direction of an interior aperture at the back of the lobby. Through it, Damon saw a thin hatchet faced woman smacking gum inside her red lipsticked mouth.

Damon tried to disarm her with charm, but she had been fending off ordinary citizens, whether well-intentioned or not, for too many years to be taken in. As she repeated for a third time that it was simply not possible for Damon to see the sheriff if he didn’t have an actual crime to report, the front door opened and Ravi Anbani strode in wearing casual dress. He looked ten years younger in person than in his portrait. His face was thinner and he had a wiry build that was not visible in the picture.

The sheriff’s demeanor was the antithesis of the desk clerk’s character.

“Good morning,” he said to the receptionist with a wave. “Good morning sir,” he said in Damon’s direction. “Is Carla taking care of you all right?”

Carla interjected before Damon could speak. “He wants to talk to you, Sheriff, but he’s not a county citizen and he doesn’t have a crime to report.”

Anbani looked closely at Damon, but with bemusement. Damon suspected that the sheriff and receptionist didn’t always see eye-to-eye on matters of protocol. “Where do you hail from, young man?” he asked with artificial gruffness which belied his deportment.