Drowning Barbie (11 page)

Chapter Twenty-two

It had taken all the willpower she could muster but she'd found him—a phone number for him, that is. After all those years of angry silence, she'd managed to talk to her Marine. The conversation had been awkward, at first. She knew Mark had been through a lot since their time together back then—drugs, jail, and the other—the things her cousins and grandmother had predicted for him, warned her about. Oh, yeah, they'd made a point of letting her know every time he slipped and how they'd been so damned right about him all along. Still, it was she who'd ended the affair. She realized she lacked the courage to shoulder the risks, the burdens, involved in trying to save him from himself. She'd believed at the time that a good Christian woman could bring a man to his senses, even a weak one like Mark. But she'd wavered, given in to her kin and her own lack of conviction. Not quite the Christian woman she imagined she was. She'd turned her back on him and the one love of her life. She never forgave herself for that, for being too weak to stand up to them. Probably that's why she took such an interest in the daughter, the one who might have been hers. Well, too late now.

After a few awkward passes about those missing years, she told him she already knew about most of it and said she understood. That is when he'd told her he'd returned to Picketsville and though he hadn't meant to, he had hooked up again with George LeBrun who, he said, had just been released from jail. She said she knew. He said that before George arrived in town, Ethyl had been after him about Darla, and how she had started the process to restore her custody rights. He'd told Ethyl he wanted to find his daughter and she'd put him off. No way, she'd said, would he get within a mile of her. The phone went quiet and Leota thought she might have been cut off.

“Mark?”

“Look, I don't know how it happened, but I lost my temper and we went at it like the old days. I must have smacked her around a little. She stabbed me, Leota, in the arm. I managed to turn the knife back on her. I heard people coming and I panicked. Listen, I'm sorry but she…what the hell…”

He said he'd shoved her into his truck and took off over the back road to Lexington. He figured they both needed an emergency room, her more than him. Somehow, she got loose near their old picnic spot. Did Leota remember the picnic spot? She said she did. How could she forget? Of course, she did.

“Oh my God, Mark, what have you done? Is that how Ethyl ended up in the woods two weeks ago?”

“You knew she…? Leota, I guess I'd just had enough. She wanted out of the truck. I said, ‘Okay, fine,' and dumped her out. Stupid bitch. You know what she wanted Darla for.”

She started to tell him everything that had happened to Ethyl when she heard him shout.

“What the hell? Wait…”

She heard a pop and what sounded like a groan and the line went dead. Just like that. One second she heard his voice, his breathing, the next—nothing. Heart racing, she waited through a long pause.

“Mark, Mark, are you still there?”

No answer, then a sound like a bee buzzing and line went completely silent, only the gentle humming of a broken connection. She redialed and listened to a busy signal. She redialed again. The phone rang but no one answered. All afternoon the phone rang but no one answered. Finally, an automated operator announced the line was no longer in service. No longer in service? What did that mean?

She would drive back to Picketsville and talk to him—face to face. He needed to know what happened to his daughter after he left. Then again, he probably already knew most of it, maybe not the part she had. Why would he have gone after Ethyl like that after all this time? Why had he waited so long to come back and why join up with LeBrun? It didn't make any sense. Was the drug culture always so illogical? It must be, or he wouldn't have stumbled into that ditch again. And what was he about to tell her about LeBrun? She locked up her apartment, climbed into her truck, and headed west again. She had to see him at least one last time. She needed to know what he'd done to Ethyl.

***

Karl had the ME's report in his hand and had been staring at the same paragraph for what seemed like five minutes when Rita announced a call-out from the county fire department.

“I'll take it,” Ike said.

“How about I ride along?”

“Sure, Karl, why not? You can tell me what you found in the ME's report that has had you frozen in place for the last five minutes.” Ike jotted down the address, collected his gear, and led Karl out to a black-and-white. “So, good news in the report?”

“Not likely, the opposite in fact. According to my predecessor, Barbarini was missing a pinky finger. If your guy was intact, I'd have been home free and all this could be written off as a nice visit to the country.”

“I take it the ME reported a finger missing.”

“Right little finger missing…well, actually two fingers missing. That's interesting. It's also confusing.”

“How so?”

“One finger—the correct one—would confirm the body as Barbarini. Two missing fingers muddies the water. When and where did the other finger go missing?”

“It could have been lost in the dig or maybe an animal found our missing gangster and helped itself to a snack.”

“Why would it stop with one finger, then?”

“Good point. Either your report is inaccurate and he lost two fingers, not one, or you have either a reprieve or another problem. But for the moment, that piece of ID data is in the toilet.”

“The ME's report is unclear about whether the finger might have been lost in the process of unearthing the body. Whatever evidence there might have been of an animal disturbance would have been obliterated by the activity involved in removing the first body. I can't assume this guy died without his right pinky finger. Maybe he did and maybe he didn't. Why in the toilet?”

“Because you have reasonable doubt on the missing finger and since you cannot explain the second missing digit, you can toss it as an identifier.”

“I guess. Could a medical examiner tell from the remains of a hand if a finger had been removed prior to death?”

“I don't know, Karl. They do it all the time on TV. I assume those TV guys do their homework so there must be some validity in the process, but in reality? Who knows? You'll have to ask him to be sure. They can't get DNA done in an hour or two like they'd have you believe, but most of the rest is correct even if the timeline for getting the work done is fiddled to match airtime. Speaking of DNA, what about a match there? I could ask the doc to run one. Wait, the body was almost completely skeletonized. Would the DNA have degraded by now? Would there be any tissue left to test?”

Karl turned the pages and nodded. “There must have been. He already ordered the test.”

“Really? Good. That could take a couple of weeks but it could buy you some time. If this is Barbarini, you need to find out how deep the pile of horse manure he has created is before you report back. You should go for at least two out of three—positive on the dental, and/or the digit, and/or the DNA. The 3D trifecta. Anything less than that and you can in good conscience report ‘Identity Undetermined.' So far you have ambiguity on the missing digit, so you are down to two.”

“I guess.”

“We tried tracing the phone number on the bill found on the body.”

“And?”

“I think it's a dead end.”

“How's that?”

“Lots of people write phone numbers on bills for all kinds of reasons. If they got a bill like that for change, hardly anybody would tidy it up by erasing old numbers away. It could have changed hands a dozen, a hundred times. So, no real hope on the phone number. The bill's age is consistent with the stiff's presumed death time frame.”

“Then the dead guy may revert to being your problem.”

“We'll take it.” They drove in silence for a mile or two. “You really love working for the Bureau, don't you Karl?”

“It's all I've ever wanted to do since I was a kid.”

“So, if they don't buy ‘undetermined' or if the two-out-of-three trifecta doesn't hit and this business blows up in your face, what then?”

“I don't want to think about it.”

“Let's hope the DNA turns out not to match.”

“Yeah, let's hope. You remember what brought me to Picketsville in the first place?”

“You had a run-in with your boss. He's gone now and you were cleared.”

“True enough, but it's still in my jacket, Ike. There is a sheet in it that says I once had something go wrong with one of my assignments and, even though it's over and done and I was cleared, it still sits in there like a snake in a hen's nest, ready to bite you if you reach for an egg.”

“You think that if this job turns out bad—if you have to report the body as the one that's supposed to be somewhere else—higher-ups will take it out on you?”

“If they're embarrassed enough, or if their careers are affected, yes, I do.”

“That's tough. What will you do?”

“I don't know, Ike. Wait and see, I guess.”

***

Fire equipment blocked the narrow entrance to the trailer park. Ike and Karl pulled off onto the side of the road and walked in. Smoke from the fire had thinned out by the time they'd arrived but the acrid smell still lingered. Fires differ in how they reek, and few are pleasant. They grade from comforting to awful— fireplaces, outdoor grills, bonfires, house fires, and near the bottom of anyone's list, a burning trailer. The stench of gutted appliances, chipboard, aluminum, grease, plastic plumbing, and a decade of unsanitary living assaulted their senses. Worse was the unmistakable aroma of burned flesh.

Chief Hake Longanecker strolled over to Ike and pushed his helmet back from his forehead.

“This one looks like it'll end up on your plate, Sheriff. We'll be done here pretty quick except for hot spots, but there's no question you got yourself a stiff in that mess, and unless I'm off my game, the arson boys are going to say this one was deliberately lit.”

“Who is it, do you know?”

“The manager of this dump…” Hake looked around with ill-concealed disgust at the collection of ill-kept mobile homes, trash scattered across the open space, and the dead and dying trucks, cars, and ATVs, “…is over under that scraggly crab apple tree. He says the man is named Mark Simpkins. That may not be his real name.”

“Why do you say that?'

“Well, you know we always pull burning paper out and away from the flames and some of what we dragged from this mess was mail—envelopes, you know. I just happened to notice that the name on them papers was Dellinger, not Simpkins. Yes, sir, Mark Dellinger, so, either Simpkins didn't live alone—though the manager said there was only one of them in there, the guy was stealing mail—or his name wasn't Simpkins. I'm sticking with that last one.”

Dellinger. Ike knew he had heard that name recently. He shook his head. Five years before, a file marked “Dellinger, Mark” would have been neatly tucked in his brain along with the hundreds, thousands, of similar accumulations. It was the habit he'd acquired over a lifetime of living close to the edge. Bad guys, good guys, allies, enemies all mixed together—the history of his years living in the dark, in the light, and some just there because he liked the person and, well, you never know when you might need a friend in a strange town. Five years ago he had but to hear a name once and he would have it cataloged forever, complete with place and circumstances. Not anymore.

“I'm not that old,” he muttered.

Karl glanced at him sideways. “What?”

“I'm losing a step and I don't like it. I heard that name recently and I can't remember when or where.”

“Is it important?”

“That's the worst part. I don't know. I think so. Damn!”

“It will come to you.”

The chief tipped his helmet forward and went back to directing his crew's mop-up of the scene. “Okay, Sheriff, I'll leave you to it. The area should be cool enough for your medical examiner to look at the body in an hour.”

Ike put in a call to the ME's office, frowned and turned back to the chief's retreating bulk.

“Hake, you did say the name on the letters was Dellinger?'

“That's what's on the papers, yep.”

“I just remembered who Dellinger was. I need to poke through them if it's okay.”

“Help yourself. I'll get one of the crew to rake out as many as we can for you.”

Chapter Twenty-three

The medical examiner and his forensics crew arrived while Ike sifted through the dead man's singed and still-smoking scraps of paper. Ordinarily, the ME would have waited for the Arson Squad to make at least a tentative determination before assuming he had a crime scene, but Hake had declared it to be one and that was enough for Tom Wexler. He and his evidence techs eased the burned remains from the ashes and began their routine.

Ike stuffed as many pieces of paper as he could into an evidence bag. “Tom, it would be wonderful if you could lift a fingerprint off this guy. DNA will take too long and I really need an ID.”

“I can't promise anything, Sheriff. He's pretty crispy, but he was lying on his side with an arm tucked under, so there is a chance I'll have something for you in a few hours.”

“If this is Dellinger, that's one less possibility for the other dead guy we found. Of course, if what Karl here says is true, that went by the boards yesterday anyway.”

“What?”

“Sorry. Tom, this is Special Agent Karl Hedrick, FBI. You posted the dental chart and it got a hit. He believes he knows, or may know, the identity of the second body we dug up the other day. If he is correct, he has a problem, and you and I have one less.”

Karl looked questioningly at Ike. “Introduction?”

“Right, sorry. Tom Wexler, Karl Hedrick. As I said, Karl is here on FBI business. He needs to have a chat with you about that other set of remains we found with the dead woman last week.”

“What do you want to know, Special Agent Hedrick?”

“With all due respect, how accurate is your dental record on the guy? I have to ask because his chart matches a murder victim who is supposed to be at the bottom of the ocean a decade ago.”

“Interesting—which ocean? Never mind, I don't need to know. Okay, how accurate? I had a full jaw, both maxilla and mandible. I was able to make a complete set of X-rays, chart the work done, and send it in. There is always a possibility of a dental doppelganger
,
I suppose, but how likely is that? So, to answer your question, a very accurate record. The wonks in suburban D.C. ID'd him as Anthony Barbarini. Problem?”

“Problem—yes. You sent out a DNA sample. I know it is too early to expect anything yet, but any results back?”

“None, but I didn't expect any. It could be weeks. Now, if the Bureau wants to resubmit on their dime, I expect an ‘FBI Urgent' might get a match in a few days.”

“Consider it done.”

“Umm, Karl,” Ike said, “are you sure you want a quick result? I thought you would want to buy some time.”

“I know, but to tell the truth, I already know what I have to do, best to get it over with.”

“Anything else here, Doc?”

Tom looked at the charred body and shook his head. “You have another one, Ike. This lad, whoever he is, took a bullet to the head before he was burned.”

“Great. If you're done here, Karl, I need to get back to the office. What with all the distractions lately, I am losing traction with my original murder investigation. Or, it seems now, investigations.”

***

The children and their mothers were gone when they returned. Rita waved a stack of pink While You Were Out notes at Ike.

“Ms. Harris called you three times and your father once. Oh, and Billy said he put the report about the search of Ethyl Smut's house on your desk and he's sorry it took so long but he got caught up in the LeBrun thing.”

Ike took the reminders, sorted them by their time stamp, and then dropped them in the nearest trash bin. He made his way into his office and opened Billy's report.

“Where the hell is he, Rita?” he yelled.

“Who?”

“Billy. This report is blank. What did he do? Where's the kid, the intern? He rode with Billy. I need both of them in here, pronto.”

“I'll find them. Hang on.”

The intern arrived on the double in response to Rita's page. “Yes, sir?”

“Okay kid, I sent you out with Billy to scout out the Smut place. I have Billy's report and all that is in it is a list of interviews with neighbors. Not what the people said, but only how many were done. What the hell is this all about?”

“Right. I guess Billy would have said something sooner but, like, there was all the fuss about the man released from prison and Mrs. Sutherlin gone missing and—”

“Yeah, yeah, I got it. Just tell me what happened.”

“Yes, sir. Well, we went out to that trailer park where she lived and the pad where her address was? There wasn't anything there.”

“There wasn't anything…what do you mean there wasn't anything there?”

“She must have had her unit towed to some other place. So, no mobile home, just tire tracks and trash left behind. We went door-to-door, but those people out there didn't want to talk to us. We asked, like, everybody, but except for the manager, they all dummied up.”

“What did the manager have to say? No, let me guess. ‘She left while he was not in town and didn't leave a forwarding address' and she was what…two, three months in arrears on her rent,”

“Four months and, yeah, no forwarding address.”

“Okay, that is your next assignment, TAK. That unit had a tag on it. It is registered somewhere. If she landed in another park, they will have noted it. You get on the phone or the computer and track her down. I don't want to see your face until you do.”

The intern scuttled off.

Karl smiled “My, my, you sounded like a drill sergeant I had, Ike. Is this the new you, or is this kid something special?”

“Neither. He is an intern and I want him to understand that a cop backs up the person he rides with. If Billy was too preoccupied to finish this, he should have jumped right in and covered, not waited for me to tell him what to do.”

“Right. So, what do I do while I wait for my DNA?”

“I take it you don't want to go back to D.C.”

“We just got here. I'm signed out for the rest of the week.”

“You want to make yourself useful? Billy won't be worth a tinker's dam until we put LeBrun back in the slammer. How about you do some TDY in the Picketsville Sheriff's Department?”

“Sure, why not? What do you need doing?”

“There's a trash bag in the corner that is serving as an evidence bag. Go through its contents and, using your keen, FBI-trained intellect, tell me what it means.”

“Trash bag? What's in it?”

“Apparently someone's memories—old clothes, baby apparel, scraps of paper, someone's childhood. I would like to know whose and why he or she left it in an abandoned hay barn. More specifically, why they left it in my father's abandoned hay barn. Is that fact important? Did the person who dumped these things want me to find them or was finding them in my dad's place just a coincidence that may or may not play into what we are looking for?”

“You think this relates to one of your murder victims?”

“No idea. I would guess it has nothing to do with the decades-old stiff we currently share, but who can say? The stuff is as old as his murder, so maybe. Then again, there might be a connection to the Smut woman. I don't know whether I hope it does connect or not. There was an old photograph in there, I've asked Sam to show the intern how to run the software that would age it a bunch of years. Where is Sam, by the way?”

“She texted me that she and Essie went shopping. I don't know what for. I guess Essie is feeling safer now. Safe enough to be out and about, in any event.”

“Unless they went to Roanoke to shop.”

The intern rushed back into Ike's office. “Sheriff, I found it.”

“You found what, TAK?”

“The dead woman's new address.”

“Do you feel like taking another ride, Karl? TAK, go find an empty cruiser—you're driving.”