The Monolith Murders (24 page)

After checking all the trailer’s drawers, Donna went into the bathroom. When she came back into the living room, she had transformed into a gray-haired wrinkled woman of 80.
 

“Damn, you’re good!” he said.

She picked up her additional wigs and said, “I’ll call you tomorrow. You better get out of here soon.”
 

“No sweat, I’m almost on my way.”

Chapter 39

Maureen’s cell phone signal had been distorted by the heavy falling rain. The distant voice didn’t seem familiar to her; she feared that Donna had found her and was on the other end of the line.

“Hey, Maureen, you sound scared as hell—what’s wrong with you?”

“Sue?”

“Of course, who did you think it was?”

“I didn’t know, I—God, Sue, I’m so happy to hear from you. But how did you get my number?”

“You gave it to me one day last week, don’t you remember?”

Maureen had no memory of that conversation; but her forgetfulness wasn’t unexpected, considering the significant amount of stress she had been experiencing lately.

Maureen lied, “Yes, of course I recall now. How are you doing, and why are you calling me so early in the morning?”

“Early in the morning? It’s almost 10 a.m.”

“Oh, yes, there’s a 3 hour difference in our time.”

“Honey, where are you, on the West Coast?”

“Yes,” Maureen replied. “I’m in Seattle for the moment, but I’ll be leaving here soon.”

Suddenly Maureen realized she shouldn’t be giving out this information since somehow Donna might be listening in.

“I think I know why you’re out there. The buzz is that you’re running away from Donna Lang—correct?”

“Yes, and this cat and mouse game has me rattled, especially when I’m playing the lead role of the mouse. Sue, I’ve marinated in this horrible situation much too long. I’m not sure I can take it anymore.”

“I understand; and I bet you’re lonely, and hubby has to be in Sarasota to try to catch that bitch, right?”

“You got it.”

“Tell you what,” said Sue. “I have a solution that I’m sure you will like. And being best buds like the two of us are, it won’t put a single woman like me out at all.”

* * *

Fred had radioed in for police cars to be sent to the good Samaritan neighbor’s house and to the nearby trailer park. Officer Lewis had just entered the station when he was told of Anderson’s escape, and that a team was on its way to check a house and a trailer park for Donna and her boy friend.
 

Lewis said, “I want to be part of that; I want to capture her as much as Fred does.” One group of officers went to the house and another directly to the park.

The officers arrived at the park within twenty minutes from the time Fred had issued his orders. The park was visibly deserted; no cars were in the driveway, no lights on in any of the trailers—no activity anywhere. Fred didn’t accompany the officers he had sent to the park; instead he stayed with Anderson, hoping he would depart from his silent state and become communicative again. Lewis was the highest ranking officer at the park location; he radioed Fred, telling him of the deserted status at the park. Then Lewis asked, “What do you want me to do now?”

“Check each of the trailers to see if anyone has been there lately,” Fred replied.

“Okay, boss, but it sure looks like a ghost town to me.”

Sergeant Stewart checked the trailer closest to the park’s entrance. The front door was not locked; he called Sergeant Lewis, his superior who was investigating the home directly across from him. As both entered they could detect the faint odor of a woman’s perfume. “This might be it,” Stewart said. Seeing dishes with food residue, with no sign of spoilage, he added, “It looks like someone has been here recently.”
 

Stewart went to the laundry room, and then called in Lewis.
 

“Look there, that must be the vent pipe that Anderson was tied up to. My God, it’s unbelievable that he could somehow have broken it to get free. I guess when a person’s life is at stake they can do anything.”
 

Both officers checked the drawers in the trailer. They were empty. Lewis said, “We have to be more careful, we’re leaving our prints all around. But I think that’s academic since we already know who must have been here. From what I’ve learned from Fred, it had to be Donna, Anderson and Slim, the guy who helped Donna escape.”
 

“Maybe,” Stewart said, “but until we do the fingerprint check we can’t be sure.” Lewis returned to his car and radioed Fred at the station, notifying him of their findings.
 

Fred was delighted they had found the kidnapping house; but he was quite sure, knowing Donna as he did, that she had left no clues. At least we got close, Fred thought, as he called forensics to go out to the trailer. “If there’s so much as a mouse dropping,” Fred said, “I want it reported; I want to know what that mouse ate, its sex life—I want everything investigated.”

The next morning Fred was briefed on the results of what had been found in the house. The forensic team had found various hair samples. Some of the samples proved to be artificial hair. Most likely Donna has been in disguise, Fred thought. The strange thing was that one of the artificial hairs found was colored gray.
 

The team reported that fingerprints were wiped clean in most of the trailer; however, they did get a couple of good prints that turned out to be Donna’s and Jane Doe’s. A few of Anderson’s prints were found in the laundry room area; they found several smudged prints all over the house. The team leader said, “We had no luck in finding anything that might provide a clue as to where Donna was headed. However, we did find some additional prints.”

“Yes, and whose were they?”

“I hate to say; they belonged to Stewart and Lewis.”
 

Damn them, Fred thought, how could they be so careless! Disturbing a crime scene is unforgivable; both should know better by now, and Stewart has just been promoted to detective status.

“Don’t go too hard on them, Lieutenant,” the head of the team said. “It appeared that the prints below theirs were already smudged so we couldn’t have gotten good prints anyway.”
 

Fred said, “I don’t want you defending them. It was just luck that they didn’t do anything else wrong. Being careless at a crime scene is unacceptable.”

Fred called both of them into his office. It was his policy not to reprimand two officers together, but in this case they had committed the same violation at the same time.

He told them what they had done; “Fortunately, it appears there were no good prints below yours, at least to the best of the forensic team’s judgment. But that’s still no excuse.”
 

Stewart spoke up, “Sergeant Lewis told me I was leaving too many prints at the scene; I’m sorry, it won’t happen again. But when we entered the trailer, we had no idea it was the place where a kidnapped victim had been held. But again, I’m sorry and it will never happen again.”

“It better not—you can both go.”

Fred left the station for a bite to eat at Joe’s Diner. They had a great Thursday special with turkey, stuffing and cranberry sauce. As he walked down the street, he sensed that someone was following him. He turned, and as he did two men ducked into an alley. The men looked familiar to the ones he had noticed looking at him when he was meeting Debra Black at the diner a couple of days earlier. This time he wasn’t late for any appointment, so he had time to try to find out who they were. He turned around and ran at full speed to the dark alley where the two men had entered just seconds before. The alley opened up to another downtown street at the other end. When Fred exited the alley, both men had disappeared. He decided it wasn’t worth it to continue to try to find them in all the downtown stores they could have entered. But he wondered if they were henchmen of Donna’s.

Chapter 40

Fred called Sergeant Stewart into his office.
 

“Sergeant, I want you to check the background of Sue Granton for me. Find out where she lived before she moved to Sarasota. Determine if she was married, what her personal worth is, and if she ever had a police record. You know the routine, just be on the lookout for anything out of the ordinary.”

“But boss, that’s a lot of wasted energy. I met her at your house and she seems like a nice person. There’s just no way she would have a dark past. Why don’t you have me investigate someone else more promising as a suspect?”

Fred was mystified. Sergeant Stewart seemed to have his differences with Fred recently, but he had never argued blatantly against an assignment or questioned Fred’s decision making before.
 

“Sergeant, this is not a discussion. Please get on it right away and brief me as soon as you can on the results.”

Sergeant Stewart turned and walked out of Fred’s office without saying another word.

In the next five minutes Fred watched him from his interior office window, which provided him with a view of the desks of his subordinate personnel. As far as Fred could tell, Stewart was just shooting the breeze with fellow officers; there was no indication that he was in any hurry to start his investigation.

Fred started to call Stewart in to his office and ream him out, but instead he decided to conduct the investigation himself. Later he would deal with his uncooperative subordinate.

After an hour on the phone, it became evident to Fred that Sue’s background was clean. She had no money issues, had been single for at least the last five years, and there was not even the hint of any misconduct. He decided not to go beyond the five-year investigative period since it would likely be overkill.
 

One of Fred’s favorite expressions was, “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” Now, Fred muttered to himself, sometimes a friend is just a friend. I’ll call Maureen and apologize to her about questioning the legitimacy of her friendship with Sue. But I won’t tell her that I investigated Sue. If Sue Granton chose to live in a house surrounded by a huge wall like a fugitive, so be it. It might make her eccentric, Fred mused, but it sure doesn’t make her dangerous.

Fred took his mind off Sue and tried to deal with other things that had been bothering him. Fred’s gut was telling him to try to determine what Mrs. Brown wanted to tell him when he was at her house. He called the local Lancaster police again. They said there was still no progress on the murder of Mrs. Brown. Fred said, “I understand. Do you, or does anyone, have any background on her?”

“Not really, Lieutenant, this is a relatively young police force; and most of us haven’t been in the city for a very long time. All I know is that we never had a disturbance at her house in the past, and that’s about all I know about her.”

Fred’s next call was to Debra Black, his CIA contact.

“Debra, I need a favor from you.”

“What else is new?” she said sarcastically. “What do you need now?”

“I’m investigating the background of a deceased person who I would guess was in her 60’s. I need a copy of census records from the most recent time that it’s available until, let’s say, the 1960 to 1990 period. I admit I’m fishing but it might help.”

“That’s what I like about you, Fred, you never ask for too much. Census records are normally not released to the public for seventy years or so.”

“I know, Debra, but you’re not the public.”

“I’ll do it Fred, but I need the town, the state and the address. And by the way, her name would help as well.”

After Fred provided Debra with the information, she said she would meet him in his office in about an hour.

* * *

As promised she arrived about an hour after his call, her hands full of census record copies from various decades.

“Thanks for your help, Debra. Now take a seat and tell me what you have.”

“I couldn’t get the most recent decades, Fred, because they’re still being compiled; but I got them back to 1960 as you requested. The information varies somewhat based on the decade from which it was taken; but in general it provides limited information about anyone living at a given address.”
 

Fred leafed through the pile, not sure what he was really looking for. “Let’s start with the most recent decade, 1990, he said. “I see at that time Mrs. Brown was living alone. Apparently by then her husband had passed away.”
 

“And that means what, Fred?”

“Not a damn thing. But I note that she and her husband were alone in the house in 1980; however, in 1970, I see that there are other people in the house. My God, that’s interesting!”

“What’s interesting?”

Just then, Fred’s cell phone rang. Fred answered, and said, “Uh-huh. Good, I see. Okay, I’ll be right there.”

He hung up and turned to Debra. “You’ll have to hold that question until I get back. Right now I have to be at the county jail. I understand my kidnap victim is just waking up.”
 

* * *

A slender woman entered the county prison. She showed her identification to the first guard that she saw. “I’m Dr. Kies, I was asked to come here to see a patient.”