Authors: Nadja Bernitt
Mendiola rang the bell a second time. In seconds, Tina Wheatley’s angular frame moved through the dining room.
Meri Ann stood firm with her knees locked, eager for the encounter.
Tina opened the door and the smoky, salty-sweet scent of frying bacon wafted out. She couldn’t have been in the kitchen very long. Wet tendrils of her dark hair draped over her shoulders, as though she had recently taken a shower. Her eyes widened with disbelief, as though the presence of her two visitors was beyond comprehension. “Oh,” was all she said.
“Morning, ma’am.” He showed his badge. “I’m Jack Mendiola with Ada County Sheriff’s Office. This is Meri Ann Fehr.”
“What are you doing here? Is this something about Robin? Is he all right?”
“As far as I know he is. We wanted to talk to Mr. Wheatley, ma’am. But it sounds like he’s not here.”
“He’s out. He runs in the mornings. Usually leaves before I’m up.” Tina inched back, but didn’t invite them inside. One hand held the doorjamb, the other the door as if braced for an attack.
Meri Ann struggled for a comparison between Tina and the woman on the street, the prowler, too. But her view had been from three stories up at the first sighting and she’d seen nothing but a flash of cloth at the second. The only time she’d knowingly faced Tina in the last fifteen years was in Wheatley’s office. Her threats, her wild eyes and her blustering movements were etched in Meri Ann’s memory and in no way compared to the calm, calculating woman in the doorway.
“Where does he run?” she asked.
Tina stiffened, as though the sound of Meri Ann’s voice grated on her. “Out of your jurisdiction, aren’t you?”
“Ms. Fehr’s serving in an advisory capacity and we need your help. Can you tell us where we can find your husband?”
Tina’s jaw moved from one side to the other as though she was chewing tough meat. “I don’t know where exactly.” Her hands waved in a flourish. “He runs down Harrison Boulevard. Around the neighborhood. The foothills, Camel’s Back Park.”
Mendiola shot Meri Ann a sideways glance. “What time did he leave?”
“His usual time I suppose, six or six-thirty. Oh, dear, the stove.” Tina turned, hurried in the direction of the kitchen. The bacon smelled burned.
Mendiola opened the screen door. “Wait here while I give Mrs. Wheatley my card.” The door banged behind him as he went inside.
Meri Ann took a seat in one of the wicker chairs on the porch. Tina’s comment about being out of her jurisdiction struck a vague connection between Sarasota and Boise. The discovery on Table Rock happened on the heels of her interview on national television. Had the killer seen the program? If he had that might have triggered his need to relive the murder? Murders, she corrected, admitting the possibility of a serial or multiple murderer on the loose.
The front door opened and banged shut behind Mendiola, his cellular phone to his ear. “. . . Well, get someone here in the next few minutes. I’ll wait.” He clicked the phone off and clipped it onto his belt.
“Fifteen years ago, I dealt with Wheatley, and here I am again.”
She thought this over, trying to reconcile Wheatley’s sincerity as she had seen it, yet considering his involvement with her mother. Could it be what she first suspected, a typical foiled love affair. The race isn’t always to the swift, but you bet them that way. And husbands or lovers don’t always murder their wives or lovers, but you bet them that way. So why couldn’t she?
“He seems like the perfect suspect,” she said, “and it’s odd he’s not here. But I can’t see him setting up these crime scenes.”
“Why, because he’s got a perfect house? Reality check, Detective: the man engineered Albertson’s corporate offices. It’s an easy stretch to say he’s capable of laying out a partial skeleton. Especially if he’s done it more than once.”
That gave her the creeps but not enough to shut her up. “Camel’s Back Park is around the corner, practically in his backyard. As you pointed out so well, the man’s not stupid.”
“Well, ma’am, here in Boise we read close proximity as opportunity.” He sounded every bit as testy as she’d been earlier that morning.
“And what about his wife? Maybe she hates him enough to set him up. He did her wrong, didn’t he?”
“Mrs. Wheatley had an alibi, a religious retreat in Salt Lake.”
She doubted the alibi was foolproof, with Salt Lake a forty-five-minute flight from Boise. She wondered who if anyone watches over devout parishioners while they wander around meditating. The question wasn’t worth pursuing at the moment. Tina wasn’t her first pick.
Meri Ann shrugged. “I just want you to expand the possibilities and acknowledge other suspects with motive. Actually, I like Graber. I like him a lot. He’s a recluse and a hunter. He was a medical student.” Even as she said it, she realized how weak the case sounded. “And don’t forget he thinks the bones on Table Rock were my mother’s.”
“So? He guessed right—if those are her bones. Don’t worry your head about Graber,” he said. “The old coot’s clever as a fox, but he had nothing to do with your mom’s disappearance. Very tight alibi.
“Where was he?”
“Taking care of an injured neighbor who lives a ten miles north of him even further up in the hills. Try to understand, the man had no definitive motive.”
“But you didn’t really investigate it.”
“No, ma’am. We had—”
“Wheatley.”
“That’s right.” His lips pressed tight together in a thin, dark line.
“I understand the need to question Wheatley,” she said, “but I don’t think he warrants sole consideration.” She tempered her comment. “I’m just voicing an opinion.”
He shoved his hands into his front pockets. “You forget this case was worked, reworked, and worked again.”
“What are you telling me, that after fifteen years you can’t take a fresh perspective?”
He removed his keys from his pocket. They jingled in his hand, and he used one to scratch his chin. “Maybe you’re too close to the case, ma’am. I appreciate that reality is a pretty hard pill to swallow.”
“Just tell me, Mendiola. How many suspects did you have, Wheatley, Wheatley, and who?” But she’d spoken too soon, and she counted the beats until he said it.
“Your father.”
She hardened herself. “Spouses always get a going over. I’ve done it, too, but with a modicum of sensitivity, and I back off when I see I’m wrong. You were a hundred percent wrong, Mendiola. My dad nearly died from grief and on top of it, the stress from your accusations. I blame you and the lead detective for Dad’s stroke.”
“Come on Ms. Fehr, motive, means, and opportunity—nothing’s sacred, not the victim, not her husband,
nada
.” Mendiola rolled his dark eyes skyward, then back to her. “Personally, I think Dillon’s decision to let you in was premature.”
“Well, I’m here. And while we’re at it, Mendiola, I prefer Detective Meri Ann Fehr when I’m introduced and Fehr for informal.”
He quieted the keys. “Fehr. Yes, ma’am, Fehr.” He said it with a hint of a grin, a disrespectful shit-eating grin. He added, “Folks call me Jack, but Mendiola’s fine, too. As I said, I’m versatile.”
He pivoted around and headed for his Blazer, tossing his keys in the air like a ball. She heard him say, “Fehr,” as he went.
“Passive-aggressive jerk,” she said as she cranked her engine.
She fumed, caught in a revelation of just how much he disliked her and just how much she disliked him.
# # #
Tina tossed the burnt bacon into the trash, but her eyes were on the detectives at the curb. Joanna Dunlap’s daughter had stood at her door, the walking embodiment of the plague. Tina felt like disinfecting the porch where the whore’s offspring had stood, but more pressing issues nagged her. What did they want with Robin?
Tina headed to the basement. Robin had built a sanctuary for himself—private rooms where he escaped when Joanna’s cloud came over him. She’d hear his footsteps sneaking down the stairs when he thought she was asleep. It seemed unlikely, but she wondered if somehow he’d gone down there now, tricked her into thinking he’d gone running.
She tapped on the door. “Robin, are you in there?” She jiggled the door handle. It was locked. He’d kept it locked since the day he found her rummaging through his files for letters from Joanna, photos in his darkroom.
She placed her ear against the door and listened, but no papers shuffled, no pencils scratched, no music played. She hugged her arms and listened to the silence, felt the darkness come down like a curtain.
Death must be cool like this, and peaceful.
Die,
a small voice said to her.
He’s
a
killer,
and
he’s
killing
you.
And
he
doesn’t
even
know
it
.
It would be so easy to die, to exact revenge in the passive dark of eternity, to find peace from the torment. They’d never found Joanna’s grave, but Tina would have one. She clasped her hands and closed her eyes. “I’ll have a proper headstone to remind him, I am his wife in the eyes of God,” she said, as though there were someone there to hear her.
She pictured Robin, sobbing over the fresh mound of earth. Hers at last. Robin’s family, their friends, the church elders, everyone would realize what he had done to her. He would beg forgiveness.
She considered this for a few minutes, concluding the scheme lacked one critical measure of vengeance. Somehow she must include just punishment for Joanna’s child.
Behold
against
this
family
I
am
devising
evil,
from
which
you
cannot
remove
your
necks;
and
you
shall
not
walk
haughtily,
for
it
will
be
an
evil
time.
Micah,
2:3
She imagined the cool blue steel of Robin’s revolver in her hand and the arrogant expression on Meri Ann’s face turning to horror.
M
eri Ann paced from one end of Becky’s kitchen to the other, the portable phone to her ear. She gave instructions to her family’s former dentist regarding her mother’s records. “Yes, a technician from the Bureau of Forensic Services will be there within the hour to pick them up… No, I really can’t discuss the case. Thanks very much.”
She clicked off the phone and rubbed her stomach which gurgled in a language of its own. She hadn’t eaten a morsel all morning and she had been up since before dawn. This time her ex husband had nothing to do with her lack of appetite. In forty-five minutes she’d be sitting in Lt. Dillon’s office—and she hoped—officially on the case.
She opened the bread drawer, looking for some easy sustenance and found the bakery goods she’d bought the day before. “Want a piece of toast? Or a blueberry muffin?” she called to Becky.
“Hold on, kid. I’m trying to figure out how to open Meg’s e-mail.”
Meri Ann went to her and clicked on the message.
“Oh,” Becky said sheepishly. “I forget how easy it is.”
Meri Ann gave her a pat on the back and returned to the kitchen. She toasted two slices of the bulgar wheat bread. The act seemed normal enough. But her fingers felt like butterflies, as she buttered the toast, and the first bite stuck in her throat.
She might be physically at Becky’s, but her mind was still at Camel’s Back park, haunted by the skull and those hideous, vacant orbs. It could be anyone’s skull, perhaps her mother’s. Short of archeological anthropologists who reconstruct facial features from skeletal remains, who could tell? She traced the line of her jaw, felt the skull beneath her skin—hers like all the others.
“The toast smells good.” Drawn to the toaster, Becky slathered her piece with butter and jam. “You might convert me to health foods yet. Make Meg happy if you did. By the way, she says to tell you her closet is your closet. You know, if you need clothes to wear to work at the Sheriff’s office?”
Meri Ann looked down at her weary khakis, and though she wasn’t a clothes horse herself, she enjoyed the thought of something else to wear to the office. “That’s very generous of her, and actually I do need something other than the same pants I’ve worn for the last two days.”
“Maybe something warmer,” Becky said.
Meri Ann pushed her half-eaten piece of toast aside. “Guess I’m not that hungry.”
Becky reached for it and ate it as well as her own. “I’m starving. Must be nerves. I still can’t believe this is happening in Boise. If it were New York City, I’d take it in stride, say what do you expect?”
“I know. The crime scene shook me, Becky. Try to imagine a skull with Mom’s earrings.”
“I’d be scared. Do cops get scared?”
“Sure they do, which is not all bad. Fear pumps up your adrenaline, keeps you alert. It’s part of self-preservation and normal.”
The idea of normal buzzed in her head. In the aftermath of her mom’s disappearance she sometimes thought her mother had been killed. She considered an accident, or a rape or robbery gone bad or a crime of passion. She had never considered a serial or repeat killer. “Two victims,” she said.
Becky shivered. “I’m scared for you. And me.”
If only she knew the degree of danger they were in. How she wished she had some encouragement for Becky. “Whoever it is doesn’t want you.”
“Great, just great. When will it be over?”
“We don’t know. But at least with me working the case, they’ll have another person to check facts and do interviews.”
“You know, kid, this whole thing freaks me out. Let’s talk about something else, okay? Come on. I’ll show you Meg’s closet.”
Meg’s mini-boutique gave her more options than she’d imagined possible. She ended up with black corduroy jeans and a moss-green sweater.