Terry Odell - Mapleton 02 - Deadly Bones (41 page)

Her hand flew to her neck. “Oh my God. I didn’t know I’d lost it. Hal was carrying me upside down. It must have fallen off when he had trouble getting me up the steps.” She’d patted her belly. “Guess I need to cut back on the cinnamon rolls.”

He’d squeezed her hand then, and they’d ridden the rest of the way in silence, not needing to speak. The connection was there.

Gordon smiled, remembering. He thumbed the remote, but after a quick trip through the channels—why didn’t the hospital have a decent cable package?—he turned the volume low and closed his eyes. Or rather, stopped fighting to keep himself awake.

The door swung open. Gordon opened his eyes and smiled when Solomon entered.

“Hey, Chief, how’re you feeling?” Solomon came to the bedside carrying a dark brown gift bag. He set it on Gordon’s lap. “Thought you might want something to pass the time.”

Gordon raised the bed. Moving too quickly or sitting up by himself still hurt like hell. He peered into the bag and burst out laughing, which hurt like even more hell. He pulled out a Scrabble set. “Thanks, Solomon.”

“I still think
help
would have been smarter.” He slid a chair to Gordon’s bedside.

“I trust you came here for more than giving me a game,” Gordon said. “Things keep fading in and out. The doc said it’s normal with a concussion.”

“You remember kissing Angie, don’t you?”

Gordon felt the flush rise on his neck. But he didn’t think there was a concussion strong enough to erase that from his memory. Or a need to answer Solomon. “Did you see her?”

“Yeah. She had a bunch of stitches. Hal sliced her ribcage—superficial, nothing deep. Megan’s in with her. They’re talking about some new project they’re working on.” He winked. “I told her what room you’re in. I’ll bet she’ll come give you a good night kiss.”

More heat suffused him. “Solomon, just tell me what went down on the cop front.”

“Colfax should be here any minute. Might as well get it all at once.” Solomon grabbed the remote and flipped through the channels, punched it off, apparently as dissatisfied with the choices as Gordon had been. He tossed the remote onto the bed.

Colfax showed up, carrying a thick envelope and a cardboard cup of coffee. He set the envelope on Gordon’s night table, dragged a second chair to the other side of the bed and collapsed onto it. “I think I feel worse than you look. You want to change places?”

“No, thanks. Now that everyone’s here, tell me what went down.”

“All in those reports.” Colfax pointed to the papers. “Which represent countless man hours of intensive labor, I might add.”

“Give me the Cliff Notes,” Gordon said.

“The mayor’s denying everything, but that was to be expected. He says Hal and Fred are unreliable, although they both sang like Lady Gaga. We’ve got Fred as one of the rock-throwers, and he claims he did it under orders from Marty. Likewise, Hal’s our firebug, again under Marty’s command. Irv’s and Fred’s stories matched, and so did what my research team was able to reconstruct, so I don’t think he’s going to be able to spin it worth a damn. But that’s up to the lawyers and the courts. Irv’s testimony connects the mayor to the break-ins, the fire, and the disappearing bones. Alexander distanced himself by having other people buy the burn phones, but it’ll eventually come together and bite him on the ass.”

“I only got bits and pieces,” Solomon said. “I’d like the condensed version myself.”

Colfax sipped his coffee. “Once upon a time…”

“Colfax, my head hurts. Cut to the chase,” Gordon said.

The door swung open again, and Rose appeared in a wheelchair, pushed by Sam. Megan and Angie slipped through the door behind them. Angie, pale, and leaning on Megan for support, gave him a finger-wave, and Gordon’s chest twanged.

Megan whisked back the curtain around the second bed in the room and arranged chairs for Sam and Angie. Angie shook her head and nudged Gordon over so she could sit next to him. “You take the chair,” she said. “I’ve got a more comfortable seat here.”

Gordon would have embraced her, but her bandages reminded him that she’d been hurt worse than he had. He dovetailed his fingers through hers. “They let you out?”

“Shh,” Angie whispered. “I’m not really here.”

“Anyone else coming?” Colfax asked. “Or are we waiting for everyone in Mapleton?”

“I see no need for sarcasm,” Rose said. “We wanted to make sure Gordon was all right. If you’re explaining what happened, we would appreciate being included. We’ve been through quite a bit, you know.”

Colfax’s mouth gaped like a fish.
He
flushed red. “My apologies, Mrs. Kretzer.” He cleared his throat. “Years ago, Abraham Pinkerton financed Otis Evans’ medical education. When Pinkerton’s grandson, Martin Alexander, found himself in a sticky situation, having arranged for someone to murder his drug-addict first wife, Pinkerton called in the favor. Evans created a fake death certificate in New Mexico, on the off chance that someone might have missed her and gone looking.”

“Wait,” Rose said. “
First
wife?”

Colfax explained the mayor’s checkered youth and Sunny Flores.

“So who killed her?” Rose asked.

“Hal Osterback. It gets a little iffy in here,” Colfax said, “but what we’ve pieced together is this. The Osterback brothers moved to Mapleton, with their sons, Clark and Hal. Hal, in case you didn’t know, was what we’d now call
challenged
, although back then, they called him mentally retarded. Nice enough kid, but had trouble understanding right from wrong, especially if you worded things so they sounded innocent enough.”

“Did you ever find the connection between the Easterbrooks and the Osterbacks?” Gordon asked.

“That,” Colfax said, “is still one of the gray areas. Near as we can tell, they hooked up because one of them noticed the similarity in names. No bloodlines that anyone could find, but Fred’s parents became chummy with both Osterback families, and the kids—at least Fred and Clark—were friendly enough.”

“Nathan Romash said he didn’t see Fred and Clark hanging around together.”

“Because of Hal,” Colfax said. “Clark and Hal were always together, and Fred didn’t want to be seen in public with a
challenged
kid. In private, he got along with both of them. We assume Martin, Hal, and Clark hooked up in the Denver area. Clark was going to school there, and so was Martin.”

“University of Denver’s a huge place,” Solomon said. “That going to be enough to connect them?”

“We’re working on it,” Colfax said. “Sports, fraternities, classes—it’ll take a while, but if they ever bumped into each other in the men’s room, we’ll find out.”

“Did Hal kill Fred’s wife, too?” Gordon asked.

“No, and things get kind of complicated here,” Colfax said. “We’re not sure why, but Fred’s wife was going to leave him. He wasn’t going to let that happen, so he killed her and buried her in his woods. Not far from where we found Angie.”

“Her death certificate?” Gordon said. “That she died of natural causes in New Mexico?”

“Faked,” Colfax said. “Evans probably matched it to a Jane Doe.”

Rose gasped. “And the little one?”

“Fred was already unglued at this point, but he loved his child and couldn’t bear to hurt her. He got a prescription for sleeping pills from Evans and overdosed her.”

“But if he buried her in his woods, how did she end up in ours?” Sam asked.

“You have to remember, we’re dealing with unbalanced people. Martin told Hal to bury Sunny someplace where nobody would find her. Hal knew Fred buried things on his property—probably helped him get rid of his garbage from time to time. So Hal buried Sunny at Fred’s place. Fred, however, did not approve of anyone else burying anything on his property. He dug up the bones, and for whatever twisted reason, decided to move both Sunny and his wife and daughter. To make it easier, he dismembered them and moved them in installments.”

“The child?” Rose asked. “He cut her apart, too?”

“Not the child,” Solomon said. “Because he doted on her.”

“Did the mayor know his wife had been moved?” Gordon asked.

Colfax frowned. “We don’t think he knew where she was. When the dog found the bone, he was afraid it was his wife’s. Early on, he just wanted to make it go away.”

“Which is why he kept trying to keep me from the site. So he could get the bones himself,” Gordon said.

“But it all went sideways,” Solomon said.

Colfax went on. “When the dog found the first bone, everything started to fall apart. The mayor was afraid someone would identify the bones and connect them to him, so he wanted to get rid of them. Fred had this thing about a dead family reunion, and wanted his wife’s and kid’s bones. The mayor did what he could to keep the bone site unguarded so he could get rid of the bones, but forensics already had most of the adult skeletons. The night Angie was taken, Fred and Hal went to get the daughter’s bones and when he saw Angie’s car, he told Hal to grab her.”

“He didn’t know I was there?” Megan asked.

Colfax shook his head. “Apparently not.”

“So, we got that one wrong,” Gordon said to Colfax.

“Can’t get everything. In the long run, it worked in our favor. We’d never have known Angie was gone if Megan hadn’t been there.” Colfax nodded in Megan’s direction. She smiled.

“Glad to have helped,” she said.

“I’m sure the mayor—ex-mayor—would have let us know via one of his minions,” Gordon said. “Since he took her to get to me. So why would he come offer to set up a search party?”

“Maybe to lure you to a place of his choosing,” Sam said.

“Or because he knew how stubborn you are, so he figured you’d do the opposite,” Angie added. She rested her head on Gordon’s chest and closed her eyes.

“Whatever,” Gordon said. “We’ve solved three homicides.”

“Wait,” Sam said. “What about Rose? Did this Hal person do that, too?”

Colfax shook his head. “That’s way outside Hal’s capability. Fred and the mayor both deny any culpability. Then again, the mayor’s denying everything across the board. But, through his grandfather and Dr. Evans, he has a lot of connections, and with Doc gone, we might never know.”

“I must believe that Dr. Evans died hurrying to help me, not to finish the deed,” Rose said.

“I’m sure you’re right,” Gordon said, remembering Doc’s final words. “He seemed to be apologizing when I spoke to him last. He’d accepted Pinkerton’s money, and regretted where it had led him.”

“There’s more,” Colfax said. “We know Alexander set Doc up in practice in Mapleton, so it’s possible Doc felt obligated to help him.”

“Or setting him up in a Mapleton practice could have been Doc’s reward for the false death certificate. We might never know,” Gordon said.

“The past is the past,” Rose said. “I will organize a memorial service for Dr. Evans.” From her tone, Gordon figured she’d have things rolling before she checked out of the hospital.

“Did you find out who caused the doctor’s accident?” Sam asked.

Colfax stood and tossed his empty cup into the wastebasket. “We printed Fred and Hal when we booked them. It was Hal’s print on Doc’s steering column. He says Fred told him to do it. Fred says the order came via Martin. So, we’ve got Hal for the execution, but we can’t prove it was the mayor behind it… yet.”

“If you can’t handle it,” Rose said to Colfax, “Gordon will.”

“Count on it. He’s like a terrier with a bone,” Angie murmured.

“Woof.” Gordon tilted her face to his and kissed her. Some days it was good to be the chief.

Acknowledgments

Although I write alone, there’s no way this book could have come together without the help of those much more knowledgeable than I. And although I tried to keep things true to the facts these wonderful people shared, mistakes happen. They’re my fault, not theirs. And then, there’s the fact that this is fiction, and sometimes truth is distorted for the sake of the story. Just like on television!

Thanks to Doug P. Lyle, MD and Tom Adair for their forensic assistance. To C.J. Lyons and Susan Ganzhorn for medical advice. To Lee Lofland for answering my barrage of questions about just about everything related to law enforcement procedures. To Kate Newman of the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department, and to Carl Blesch of the Jefferson County Coroner’s Office who told me so many ways to identify bodies from skeletal evidence. I wasn’t ignoring your advice—you showed me what I had to hide from my characters. To Jerry Last and Sgt. Roger Sandefur, Teller County Sheriff’s Office, for sharing the amazing feats of police K-9s and cadaver dogs in particular. To Wally Lind and the gang at crimescenewriters. You’re always there. And to Dr. Elizabeth Murray who enlightened me about NamUS, and the importance of giving identities to the countless missing.

To Nicole Drummer for her help with my rusty German, and to Jessica Odell for her brainstorming. To Mom, Dad, and all the rest of my relations for providing a family history I can draw upon. And, of course, to Dan, who’s always supporting my efforts, even if it means fending for himself in the kitchen, and providing a bone for the cover image.

To my crit partners, Karla Brandenburg and Steve Pemberton. Could never get through a book without you. Special thanks to Dave Fymbo for his hard work (and everlasting patience) on the cover design. And by no means last in my thoughts—thanks to my editor, Brittiany Koren of Written Dreams, who takes my dream and nurtures it into a book.

About the Author

Terry Odell began writing by mistake, when her son mentioned a television show and she thought she’d be a good mom and watch it so they’d have common ground for discussions.

Little did she know she would enter the world of writing, first via fanfiction, then through Internet groups, and finally with groups with real, live partners. Her first publications were short stories, but she found more freedom in longer works and began what she thought was a mystery. Her daughters told her it was a romance so she began learning more about the genre and craft. She belongs to both the Romance Writers of America and Mystery Writers of America.