Disembodied Bones, page 34
Leonie winced. She stared up at Elan and saw for the first time that he really was just as insane as Monroe Whitechapel. It was different than the other man, but he was mad all the same. Abruptly she twisted her head and sank her teeth ferociously into his hand. She reached for him with clawed fingers, but Elan abruptly started to laugh, and Leonie stopped.
Gradually and with growing alarm, Leonie let her teeth relax. It felt as if she had been biting into hard rubber, not flesh.
Elan pulled back a little and showed her his left hand. She didn’t know how she had missed it. For a prosthetic device it looked as real as her hands. Then he deliberated put the hand in front of her face and showed how he could make the fingers move by using the muscles in his forearm. “State of the art, Leonie,” he said. “With a suit on and the right circumstances, no one is the wiser. And no one really notices the left hand isn’t quite as active as the right.” He paused to look deeply into her eyes. “You didn’t.”
Leonie deliberately glanced at the handcuff around her left wrist, so tight that it constricted the blood flow in her hand. Then she looked back at Elan. He nodded at her. “Yes, that’s exactly how I got out of it. Like a rabbit caught in a steel jaw. I did exactly what I had to do. Just like you’re going to do. That is, if you want the boy to live.”
-
What is it you have to speak?
But to answer you have to ask?
And to ask you have to speak?
And to speak you have to know the answer.
It is a riddle.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Sunday, July 28th
My children dressed in black or white,
Darkness or light might bring me calling.
I am oblivion, an empty void, to some,
And a haven for others.
In peace and war I conquer,
Even the tyrants fear me,
Yet the tortured bless my name.
Unmapped am I,
Uncharted are my waters.
I visit in dreams and reality.
I never make an appointment
But I’m always on time.
Laugh in my face
And I will laugh right back.
What am I?
The first thing that Gideon did was to shut the blinds tightly. The office had large windows that overlooked part of a parking lot and a soccer field. He certainly didn’t want the light to show while he was working. The second thing he did was to check out the hardware in the office. The computer wasn’t bad, top of the line Dell with all the bells and whistles. While it didn’t compare to the stuff in his house, it had a network hard line with a connection to the rest of the PD’s system. All he really needed was a password. He was guessing Linux or a recent Windows operating system was being used on the computer itself. Child’s play and I am so the child.
Gideon studied the desk for any kind of useful miscellaneous information. With a casual hand he turned the computer on, waiting while it went through its paces. The office’s occupant certainly wasn’t expecting to have someone sitting at the desk while he was absent and consequently it wasn’t secured particularly well. Neither was the security on the system as good as it should have been considering the surroundings. I will have to submit a contract to them, he thought ruefully. As if they’ll go for it.
The desks’ drawers weren’t locked and Gideon opened them one after another. Standard stuff in the desk for a police officer. Well, even for a sheriff. He had some pepper spray in one. Handcuffs were neatly placed next to the pepper spray for convenience. There was a bunch of pencils and pens with various law enforcement insignias on them. There was a book tucked away in the bottom called, Big Daddy’s Book on Birding by Dan “Big Daddy” Sully. Gideon shut the drawers. He looked under the desk calendar and even checked under the telephone.
Gideon sighed. So maybe Scott Haskell is a little more aware of security than he should be. He had a sudden thought. A big, tall bubba like Scott is a birder? He opened the bottom drawer again and pulled out Big Daddy’s Book on Birding. On the inside cover was a handwritten list of passwords, neatly inscribed with a steady hand and notations next to each what the password went with. Ah-ah-ah, not bad, but not good.
The computer’s little box that queried for a password had been up for a while, and Gideon looked at Big Daddy’s Book on Birding and typed in the appropriate one. The computer accepted it without pause. He was online with the Pegram County Sheriff’s Department internal systems. He could look at all their computerized records, arrest reports, active warrants, personnel files, and any other area that he cared to peruse. Really, really sad. That only took me six minutes and change.
Gideon had made a mental list of what he needed to do. He had attempted to prioritize his mission. He didn’t really know how long he would have before Malone discovered his absence, or how long it would take to mobilize a search team, or even how long it would take before it occurred to them to search the building. He wasn’t going to hide. Well, not really. He had things to do, and a computer to do them on, so staying put was part of the agenda. His expertise was urgently needed and in some desperate back part of his mind, he recognized that he couldn’t even begin to search the areas that would give him a clue as to where Leonie might be. He had to get something else first, something that would make Scott Haskell have doubts about Gideon’s guilt and proof of Leonie’s abilities.
He accessed the exterior Internet and started surfing. Gideon hadn’t done this kind of work in years. Sometimes it took a little finessing to get the right information. On a Sunday night he wasn’t sure he could get exactly what he wanted. It would have been better during business hours in the week. But then, he looked around the spacious office with the leather couch and framed Texas memorabilia on the walls, I wouldn’t have Scott’s office all to myself.
Picking up the phone, Gideon got an outside line and dialed a number he’d looked up on the net. A PBX with an androgynous computer voice answered and he had to wait about twenty minutes before he found a warm body to speak with. But the warm body’s name was Hope Mena and she was very helpful, more so after she found out she was talking to Scott Haskell, sheriff of Pegram County, Texas.
“Texas,” Hope said. “I always wanted to go to Texas. Is it true that all men wear cowboy hats there?”
“Yes ma’am,” Gideon replied promptly, using his best southern drawl. “It’s the law. And we have to tip them at the ladies, too, but I never minded that. Especially to a perty one.”
Hope giggled.
“We cain’t ride our horses to work, but we love a good pickup truck. Good for anything we need to carry, ma’am. But I digress, Miss Mena. It is miss, isn’t it?”
“Oh, heavens, no. I’ve been married for fifteen years, but you can call me anything you like, sheriff,” she said coquettishly.
“Well, Miz Mena, then,” he drawled deeply. “I surely hate to disrupt your evening, seeing as how you’re the on call administrator for the Social Security Administration, which is a very critical position of leadership. But it’s really important like that we find this woman.” Gideon decided he hated himself sometimes. He had sunk to a new low. “Real important. I cain’t stress that enough.”
“Oh, I’m just one of many, and I’m sure you have a good reason,” Hope said.
“Yes, ma’am,” Gideon said firmly. “It’s life or death.” And that ain’t no lie.
“Let’s see what we can do, then.”
Almost an hour later, Gideon was holding a sheet of names that Hope had sent directly to Scott’s private fax machine. They had accounted for all North Texas zip codes within a hundred miles of Dallas, right up to the Red River that divided Texas from Oklahoma. Gideon was privately praying that Jane Doe’s murderer hadn’t been so clever as to drive the body across state lines. If he had done so, all the way from Oklahoma to Dallas to dump the poor girl and her pregnancy out of his miserable life, then Gideon had a problem and a whole lot more names of elderly, black, blind women to search through. Hope had expressed the same thing, but he’d said, “Let’s stick with Texas for now, then if doesn’t pan out, we’ll move on up to Oklahoma.”
Gideon had helped Hope devise a strategy for eliminating women under a certain age and a specific race. Then they had added the qualifier of legally blind. Hope had been curious about how Gideon AKA Scott had known what to look for but she had restrained herself with a simple, “I guess it’s all about some murder case, huh?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Gideon had answered solemnly. “We’d like to prevent more and your help is more than critical, Miz Mena.”
It turned out there were more than Gideon would have liked. He eliminated the ones that lived in Dallas and Fort Worth. That excluded most of the list, leaving twenty-three women.
Diligently studying the names, Gideon wanted something to come to him, something to pop out and tell him the answer he needed so urgently, but there was nothing. The little black names on white paper didn’t ring any bells with him. One of them was probably Jane Doe’s grandmother, a woman who was missing her grandchild and in danger from her grandchild’s murderer, a man who was still lying to her. Like Leonie is in danger.
Is it a trade-off? Gideon froze in Scott’s comfortable leather chair. He couldn’t feel Leonie at all anymore. There was nothing there and he had tried so hard to “hear” her thoughts, feel what she was going through. The mental image of Leonie and Keefe inside some twisted duplicate of Whitechapel’s house made him want to scream his utter helplessness. It made him desperate enough to want to switch to the second part of his plan before he was finished with the first. Am I trading off this anonymous elderly woman’s life for Leonie’s and Keefe’s? Jesus.
But he firmed his resolve and started making calls. After a while Gideon became fairly proficient at pretending to be Scott Haskell. And the image that haunted him began to recede into the back of his thoughts.
Gideon paused once to peer out the edge of the blinds at the parking lot. It was full now, whereas before it had been almost empty. Several police vehicles with flashing lights were parked in front, and officers scurried like worker bees with honey to collect and a queen to please. He was counting on the fact that Scott seemed to be a hands-on kind of guy, rather than an I’ll-wait-in-my-office kind of sheriff.
Sure enough, Scott appeared a little later in the parking lot, all six foot plus inches of him, with bright red hair gleaming in the parking lot’s lights. He was directing a group of men. Once he pointed back at the building and Gideon almost ducked, but after a few minutes, the troops began to disperse. Oblivious to anything but their various missions, they left in droves. Off to road blocks, door to door searches, and someone was dragging two baying bloodhounds off to a pickup truck, just like a chain gang movie from the sixties.
Gideon’s eyebrows went up. But the dogs couldn’t get a scent in the parking lot and they didn’t have anything to give the animals a scent with. He touched his chest. He was still wearing the coveralls and he hadn’t left anything in the cell. He turned his back on the scene outside and got back to work. He needed to get as much done as possible before someone came in and caught him.
Twenty long and excruciating phone calls later, Gideon got to talk to J.C. Burke. J.C. was a Paris Police Department officer. Paris, Texas, that was, in Lamar County, just about on the Oklahoma border with Texas. J.C. was an amicable good old boy, who was bored stiff with being in the office on a Sunday night while the missus was off to Houston to visit their daughter, Delilah. “I never liked that name, Delilah,” confided J.C cheerfully. “Too biblical for my tastes, but the missus is a devout Christian and she named all our children after people in the bible. I got an Abel, and a Joseph, and baby Delilah, who is twenty. She’s lucky though she didn’t get named Deuteronomy or somethin’ like that.”
Gideon chuckled appropriately, withholding a disgusted sigh. His ear was starting to hurt and every time he heard a noise in the hallway he winced. He was beginning to think that he had wasted his escape and that his plan really stunk. “About my witness?”
“Oh, yeah. You got a material witness and you don’t know her name? I reckon that’s a hell of a story. Okay, I know most folks around here. Ifin I don’t, I bet I know who does.”
“An elderly blind woman,” Gideon put in quickly before J.C. continued to speak about God knew what next. “A very religious woman. She’s black. She likes to wear a hat with…”
“Cherries on it?” J.C. finished for Gideon.
It seemed surrealistic. Gideon was on his twentieth call and had gotten zilch for his efforts. As he marked off each name, he was rapidly coming to the conclusion that his master plan was complete bullshit and Leonie was probably well and truly screwed, if she were counting on him to rescue her. That was, if she isn’t already dead. No, not that. I would have known. “What?”
“Yep. Miz Sumetria Grimes. She’s out walking to the store and to the senior center every day. All the officers like to keep an eye on her because she’s a real nice lady and she cain’t see a lick. But she surely loves that hat. Bright red cherries on top you can see from a mile off. All the ladies just love that hat. Even the missus likes that hat and lemme tell you what, the missus got funny tastes about clothing.”
The twentieth name on the list was Sumetria Joella Grimes. Gideon focused on the black lettering and followed the line across with his finger. She was seventy-two years old, had disability for blindness, and lived in Paris, Texas. He blinked with a little puzzlement. When it came down to it, it had been disappointingly tranquil for the actual denouement.
“Yeah, buddy,” continued J.C. “That be a funny coinkydink, you know. Not two days ago, some dumbassed burglar done broke into her house. The stupid sonuvabitch caught Miz Sumetria’s entire sewing circle there and they chased him down the street with knitting needles. Some kind of stupid kid, hopped up on drugs.”
“They didn’t see who it was,” Gideon said, remembering what Leonie had said about the lady being in danger.
“He was wearing a ski mask. Just in case one of the neighbors looked out, I ‘spect. Which means that he’s probably from the neighborhood. The detectives will be putting a whomping on his narrow ass before long.” He paused and added, “Yeppers. Twelve pissed off old arthritic ladies with sewing utensils chasing some guy down the road. One of them threw her dentures at him and nailed him in the back of the head, although it dint stop him none. I wish I’d had a camera to get that on Youtube.”
Gideon lost his train of thought while he considered the mental image that J.C. was imparting. “Christ, me too,” he said finally and truthfully. “I’d of laughed until I cried.”
“So what could Miz Sumetria possibly be a witness to in your neck of the woods?” J.C. said. “She don’t get out of Paris much. As a matter of fact, I think she ain’t been out of town since her granddaughter off and went to someplace back east for school.”
“Do you know her granddaughter then?” Gideon perked right up.
“Shore. Gwendolyn Parker. Little Gwennie. She’s one sweet little gal. Goes to church like a little trooper. Takes care of her granny. Even sends her mama stuff while she’s in jail.” J.C. sighed. “Her mama had some problems with drugs and all. Got caught trying to drive a car full of cocaine over the Mexican border.”
“If I send you a photograph, could you identify it?” Gideon said slowly.
“A photograph? A photograph of who?”
“I’m sorry to say this, but I think it might be Gwendolyn Parker. We’ve got a Jane Doe up here who’s been here about six months. A homicide without any identification. I’ve had some information that indicates that she was related to an elderly woman who is blind, so I’ve been tracking down everyone who fits that description.”
J.C. was silent for a moment. “Shore. I’ll look at your photograph, but Miss Gwennie’s been back east at some…bible school. I think it’s been, uh, over six months. Miz Sumetria done talks about her every chance she gets, says that gal don’t…write enough…” There was another moment of silence. “Well, hell, that just about ruins my whole fucking day.”
“Sorry. You got email?”
“Yeah, lemme give you my address.” J.C. rattled around on the other end and gave Gideon an address. “You shore about this gal? There be a whole lotta gals out there and a few of ‘em got to have grannies who are blind, although I cain’t quite understand how you came to have that information and not know her name.”
“It’s a long story,” Gideon said. He felt a certain amount of elation. He tapped into the Dallas Police Department’s website and found a current list of missing people. There was a head and shoulders photograph of Jane Doe included. She had been carefully made up, her hair arranged and poised as if she were lifelike. The photograph made him shudder, but he copied it and forwarded it to J.C. Burke.
There was another problem he was cogitating on. The man who’d murdered Gwendolyn Parker had indeed gone back to kill the grandmother. In not the smartest move, he’d picked the worst time imaginable and angered a group of elderly women armed with all kinds of nasty sewing implements. But was Miz Sumetria still in danger? And here was a dilly of a pickle, how did he tell J.C. Burke who the bad guy was without sounding like a complete loon?
Gideon called J.C.’s direct line after five minutes and J.C. picked the phone up with a brusque, “Burke.”
“Yeah, it’s, uh, Scott,” Gideon said. “You get that photograph.”
“It’s downloading right now,” J.C. replied. “My server is as slow as an alligator in Alaska. I got the top of her head and it be working as fast as it can. Hold on.”
Gideon waited impatiently, closing his eyes as he listened to a distant police officer fiddling around his desk while he watched a photograph unfold before him.
