Murder on the Lunatic Fringe (Jubilant Falls Series Book 4) (11 page)

Chapter 18 Graham

By the time I pulled up to the curb in the rented black Mustang, darkness had fallen. The only light shining on at the Plummer County sheriff’s offices came from Judson Roarke’s office. It was on the fourth floor, above the first three floors that contained the jail administration office and jail on the second floor, the county’s dispatch center on a windowless third floor and an entire first floor of records.

I called his personal cell to let him know I was downstairs. Within minutes, Sheriff Roarke was at the main door, unlocking it to let me in. I followed him to the elevator and we rode up to his office. Neither of us spoke until we were seated.

Roarke’s office was very different than Chief G’s city-issue metal chair and desk. Portraits of previous Plummer County sheriffs circled the room. Each portrait had a small brass plate with their names and dates they served, nailed into the bottom of the wooden frame.

His desk and chair were heavy wooden relics, ornate with scrollwork, from those previous men’s administrations, but clearly, there had been funds through the years to keep them polished and in good condition. Despite the heavy air of history, the office had an atmosphere of accessibility, maybe because Roarke was just starting the first year of his second term and hadn’t settled into the permanence of the last sheriff, a throwback to a time when becoming a deputy was a matter of patronage and old boy networking, not professional law enforcement abilities.

Roarke had done a lot to change that perception.

He’d worked himself up from road patrol to chief deputy over his career and he’d seen the department from the inside out. He worked well with the press—I cringed at some of Addison’s stories she told about how inaccessible the office had been, particularly to her—and cleaned out any old guard who didn’t see his vision.

Right now, he had other things on his mind. Sheriff Roarke looked over his reading glasses at me.

“You don’t have to do this.”

“I know.”

“Does your boss know what you’re doing?”

“No. I’m officially taking vacation time because of a family health crisis.”

Roarke nodded.

“I’ll remember that. Chief McGinnis knows what we’re doing—this is a joint operation. We’re not going to have you wear a wire, just yet, but that may come in the future.”

“I figured.”

“Right now, we just want you to get to know him, get him to trust you and find out what his activities are. If he’s seriously involved in any white supremacist activity, we need to watch that. If he’s just a blowhard, running his mouth, then he’s not a lot unlike his buddy Doyle McMaster. Either way, most likely he’ll end up here as one of our taxpayer-subsidized guests.”

“OK.” My cell phone, the ringer turned off, vibrated in my pocket. I pulled it out and glanced at it: it was a text from Elizabeth. Without reading it, I stuffed the phone back into my pocket. I had more pressing things to worry about.

“You understand the risk you could be taking,” Roarke was saying. “These guys are violent and if they think you are not trustworthy in any way, they’ll hurt you—or worse.”

“Yes.”

What Roarke didn’t understand was my need to look Benjamin Kinnon in the face, find out what he was about and then exorcise him from my life, no matter what it took. I’d come through an essentially rough start just fine, rose up from drug addicted parents, came out of the foster care system and got an excellent education—thanks, whether I wanted to admit it or not, to Bill and his money.

My fears over Elizabeth’s possible pregnancy made me think deeply about the relationship a son should have with his father. Except for contributing half of my DNA, Benny Kinnon had been only a small part of my life. There was something else about this man I needed to know, though. What made him the way he was? Why did he turn to a life of crime and drugs? And most importantly, might I become like him?

A long string of men wandered in and out of my mother’s life on an hourly basis in my young life. Benny Kinnon’s connection had been only slightly more frequent: apparently, he used my mother when he needed laid, a lookout or a fence and he paid her back with drugs or violence.

He never claimed me as his son. In that way, he wasn’t much different from Bill. Both kept me at a distance: I was an inconvenience, an obstacle standing between them and my mother. Benny used drugs and violence; Bill used a checkbook.

Roarke slid a piece of paper scrawled with Ben’s west side address on it across the desk.

“When are you going to meet him?” he asked.

“Probably not until tomorrow—Wednesday. If he’s a junkie, I figured he probably wouldn’t be coherent much before lunch.”

Roarke stood and extended his hand. “There’s not many people who would take this kind of risk, you know.”

“I know.” I shook the sheriff’s hand. He escorted me back down the elevator and to the front door. Neither of us spoke until Roarke opened the door.

“Be careful.”

“I will.” I slid into the front seat of the Mustang and pulled my cell phone out to see Elizabeth’s text message.

Where R U, Kinnon? Don’t believe Indy,
she’d texted.

U R right—not Indy, but out of town. Don’t believe? Check airport garage 4 my car,
I texted in reply.

It’s easy to lie to someone who breaks your heart. Maybe more lies would come as easily tomorrow when I knocked on my father’s door.

Chapter 19 Katya

Cringing behind the safe room wall, I hung on the ladder inside the wall, listening in terror as Luka, roaring outside wardrobe door, tried to break through the reinforced back.

He threw himself against it over and over, shaking the walls of the old farmhouse. The marshals assured me I wouldn’t be hurt behind the wall of the safe room, but that didn’t mean I wouldn’t be scared. I know what Kolya’s thugs could do. If he broke through, my death would be slower and more painful than Jerome’s.

The metal held. Terrified, I flattened myself against the back wall as, with a roar, he pulled the wardrobe’s front door off in frustration, the hinges groaning.

“I know you’re in there!” he raged in Russian.

A hail of bullets sank into the reinforced wardrobe back—and stayed there. Luka roared again in fury.

I exhaled as his footsteps faded into the distance. He was leaving—but was he leaving the house? If I went downstairs, would I find him sitting on my couch, waiting for me? Had my call to the emergency team gone through? Were they on their way to save me? I couldn’t take the chance.

Carefully, I slipped down the ladder, back into my bedroom closet. Stepping away from the false back door, I peeked out of the closet. The room was empty. On tiptoe, I went to the window and moved the curtain aside to look. The big SUV still sat in the driveway.

Were Kolya’s thugs still in the house? Were the marshals on their way? Who knows? I slipped back into the closet and up the ladder, back into the panic room.

Stepping across to the wardrobe’s reinforced back, I ran my fingers across the raised metal lumps and shivered.
I must leave. I must get out.

I opened the false door and slipped outside. In a few steps, I was at the attic’s rear window.

I stepped out onto the roof and shimmied down rain gutter to the rear porch roof until I felt safe enough to jump to the ground.

A siren echoed in the distance, blue and red lights lighting up the night. Was it the marshals? Were they coming down my road? Had the call gone through? Were they coming here? Would I be safe now? The sound of footsteps pounding up the stairs told me I couldn’t wait to find out.

I jumped from the porch roof to the ground and, as bullets rained around my feet, ran into the night. Once again, I was escaping, running in terror for my life.

Chapter 20 Addison

Away from work, my taste in books tended toward something I could quickly get lost in. Maybe it was the snail’s pace in the newsroom that was drawing me toward the lurid true crime story that I held in my hands.

I was reading in bed when Duncan, wearing a pair of pajama bottoms, entered the bedroom, fresh out of the bath and rubbing his wet hair with a towel. I looked up at him and smiled. The hair on his chest was dotted with silver now. The six-pack he had when we first married was a little less defined and had a little more of a paunch, but with his wide shoulders and narrow hips, after twenty-five years, he was still the man of my dreams.

Tossing his towel across the back of a chair, Duncan flipped back one of Grandma McIntyre’s Depression-era quilts and slid into our antique Jenny Lind bed.

Our bedroom was basically the front half of the old McIntyre farmhouse’s second story. It was a large but narrow room, with a small closet, like many other houses from the 19th century.

We’d never updated the house since taking over the farm from Duncan’s parents, so Isabella’s bedroom was at the back of the house, next to a small bedroom we sometimes used for guests, but which was used mostly storage for out-of-season clothes. The three of us shared the single upstairs bathroom with a claw foot tub.

Because of their large family, Duncan’s parents turned a downstairs back parlor into their own bedroom. That parlor now did double duty as the farm office and a seldom-used formal dining room.

“So it looks like Izzy’s happy with her new car,” I said, laying my paperback in my lap.

“Yes, I think so.” Duncan leaned back onto a wall of pillows propped behind his head, and with the remote, turned on the TV atop his dresser. “It looks good mechanically and I think she’s going to enjoy it for a long time.”

We were silent as the ten o’clock newscast’s opening theme song played and the program began.

Truth be told, it wasn’t until after those first few news stories that I could really relax and think about something else other than the
Journal-Gazette
, knowing that no one else had beaten me to a story.

The opening segment was a young male reporter standing in front of yellow crime scene tape. There were police cruisers and a fire truck barely visible in the back of the dark shot.

“Police are investigating what they are calling a hate crime, after someone set fire to a car parked at a local volunteer’s home,” he began.

“Duncan! Turn that up!” I pointed at the screen as the camera panned to the burned-out frame of a small car.

“The owner of this car is an African American, who declined to appear on camera, but he is a volunteer at a local community center,” the reporter droned on, staring into the camera. “He told police that he had a confrontation with a young white man last week at a local mall when he and two teen agers, members of the community center’s Black History Club, were selling candy as part of a fund-raising effort.”

“Oh my God,” I said. “Graham Kinnon told me that Gary McGinnis suspects the guy that hit you—Doyle McMaster—of being involved in hate crimes. You think he could be behind this car fire?”

“Wouldn’t surprise me a bit,” Duncan said.

“This is the third such incident to occur here in Collitstown and police believe they are connected.” The camera panned from the reporter, back to the burned-out car and the police cruisers. “They have a description of the man, but are not releasing that information.”

“Holy shit,” I said, sinking back into my pillow.

“It’s not a story until they charge him—if they charge him—so don’t worry,” Duncan said, patting my leg.

I nodded and sighed with relief after a few more stories played, all no consequence to Plummer County: a downtown crash between a Collitstown city bus and a motorcyclist, the opening of a new restaurant in a county further north.

My ears perked up as the scanner on my dresser crackled. A county ambulance was being dispatched for a frantic mother’s call on a baby with a high fever—a family’s crisis, but not a news story. I relaxed and turned back to Duncan, comfortable now that no one had beaten me on a story. I could worry about other things, family things.

“It’s not going to be long before Izzy is done with college,” I said.

“Yup.” Duncan nodded, staring at the television, one arm slung behind his head.

“Have you guys talked at all about what she plans to do?” I asked. Since our daughter had been born, Duncan shouldered the majority of the parenting responsibilities. It made sense for our situation—he was certainly at home more than I was; my job brought the insurance benefits and cash into the family equation.

That didn’t mean I didn’t feel guilty about it.

More than once, I’d left Duncan with Isabella, whether she was a squalling baby or sullen teen, to go chase a story. Sometimes, I did it intentionally, when I felt I’d reached the end of my very limited parenting abilities. He’d been the one who found her when she’d tried to commit suicide in high school. It was the only time in years I’d taken time off from work.

Duncan shifted against the pillows, but kept looking at the television. “She’s talked about doing more with Henhouse Graphics, building that up unto a full-time operation,” he said.

Henhouse Graphics was Duncan’s part-time business that he ran during the year after the crops came in and farming slowed down. He ran it exactly from where it sounded like—the old henhouse beside the barn. He took only the occasional job: yard signs and buttons during local political campaigns, logo designs or the occasional sign.

“Does she want to live here after college?”

“I think so. I don’t have a problem with that, do you?” He glanced over at me. “We could sure use the help.”

“No, not at all.” I put the paperback on the nightstand beside me and turned on my side toward him. “I know this sounds weird, but what about the farm? Has she ever asked about running the farm?”

Duncan looked away from the television. “When did you start worrying about passing on the farm?” he asked softly.

“I don’t know,” I shrugged. “Just seeing Katya and Jerome here on Sunday, knowing they live in the Jensen’s old place—it’s been kind of eating at me that Larry and Denise had to give up that farm, even though it happened a couple years ago.”

He patted my thigh. “We haven’t ever really talked about passing on the farm. I wasn’t really sure she was ready for that conversation.”

“Are you going to bring it up?”

“Sure.”

“When?”

“Not before she graduates from college. Would you want to be young and confident, with the whole world ahead of you, and have your dad hand you a bucket and ask if you want to help bail water out of the Titanic?”

“Is it that bad, really?”

“Selling a couple heifers would get us a little bit ahead, but that puts me in a position where I’ve got to hope next year’s calves aren’t all male and that there will be a female in there that will produce decent amounts of milk down the road. I mean, our bull is good, he passes on great traits, but there’s always the chance when we need it most, he won’t. Money’s tight, but it’s always tight.”

Duncan sighed as he rearranged the summer quilt around himself.

“You haven’t had a raise in years, and everything I do depends on milk or grain prices,” he continued. “There are days I think about getting out of the dairy business and just going into grain production. We’re one of the few dairy farms left in the county.”

I nodded. “Do you want to keep the farm in the family?”
This time Duncan was silent for a moment. He had two brothers and four sisters, all of whom shared the three upstairs bedrooms in their childhoods and then ran as fast and as far away from Plummer County as they could after graduation. Duncan had been the only one who wanted to keep the farm.

“Yes, of course I do, but if Izzy doesn’t want it, we need to talk to my brothers and sisters about it,” he said. “Right now, let’s not worry about it.”

He reached across me and pulled the string on my bedside lamp, leaving the room bathed in the television’s blue light. He drew me into his arms.

“Are we doing OK—you and me?” I asked softly, settling comfortably against his chest. “With my job and all the stress you’ve been under, I know this sounds strange, but, sometimes I wonder if I still make you happy.”

“Always.” Duncan kissed my forehead, then my cheeks, then my lips. “Always.”

I reached over and took the remote from his side of the bed and clicked the TV off. Duncan raised a devilish eyebrow and smiled as the darkness enveloped us.

***

Her screams woke me before I heard the pounding on the door.

“Help me! Help me! Help me!”

Duncan and I jumped from the bed, slipping into our clothes as we dashed through the hall and downstairs to the kitchen, where the old clock above the sink read two-thirty five.

It was Katya, standing barefoot on the stoop outside the kitchen door, breathing heavily, sticks and leaves caught in her loose black curls. Her arms and bare feet were scratched bloody; one pants leg was torn.

“Help me! Help me, please!” She threw herself into Duncan’s arms as I opened the door.

Together, we guided her to the kitchen chairs and sat her down. I filled a glass with tap water and set it in front of her.

“Katya, what’s going on?” I asked.
“It is Jerome! They’ve killed him!”

“What? Who?” Duncan asked. “Doyle McMaster? The guy he got into a fight with at the feed store?”

“No, not him—someone else.”

“That’s it. I’m calling the cops,” I said, my hand on the kitchen wall phone.

“No, no, no—” Katya took a gulp of the water. “Don’t call police. We need to call someone else.”

“Who?”

“Witness protection. U.S. marshals.”

“Witness protection?” Duncan and I asked simultaneously.

I let go of the phone and sat down beside her. “Katya, if there’s been a murder, we have to call the police.”

“How do you know Jerome is dead?” Duncan asked sharply. “Did you see the body?”

“He’s dead! I know, I just know!” Katya began to wail hysterically.

“I’ll be right back. We need to get over there.” Duncan slipped out of the kitchen.

“No! No! No!” Katya cried out. “We can’t go back there — Luka, one of Kolya’s thugs, he is at farm waiting for me!”

I grabbed her by the shoulders. “Calm down, Katya! Who is Luka? Who is Kolya?”

“Please, you must forgive me. Everything I tell you in story about farm, it is lie. Everything Jerome tells you, it is lie.”

Before I could answer, Duncan came downstairs, his father’s old double-barreled shotgun in one hand, a pair of my summer flip-flops in the other.

“Here,” he said, handing Katya the shoes. “Put these on. They will at least protect your feet. You can tell Penny your story in the car—let’s get over there. We can call the sheriff on the way.”

“What about milking?” I looked over at Duncan.

“You want to stay here and milk those heifers while a man could be dying? They’ll wait. C’mon—let’s get going,” he said.

I grabbed a flashlight, a reporter’s notebook and a pen from the kitchen counter. We piled into the Taurus and Duncan turned the ignition, bringing it to life. Gravel spit from beneath the wheels as we roared down the drive. I sat in the back seat, the shotgun upright beside me like another passenger.

Flipping open the notebook, I leaned between the front seats as Duncan drove.

“Tell me the truth Katya. Tell me your story.”

“I am not from Chicago. I am not art instructor. I have never been to Cleveland and Jerome, he is not from, how you say? Ashtabula? I am wife of Russian mobster from Brighton Beach.”