(2012) Colder Than Death (26 page)

As I hung up Gretchen's phone I said, “He wants to see the photograph of your mother. Can I borrow it?

“Sure.” She handed the framed photo to me. “What about Quilla? Should we be worried or not?”

“I don't know. For now, maybe you should call her friends back in case she contacted any of them. And keep on trying Viper.” She nodded yes. “I'd better go, Gretchen.”

“I'll walk you to your car.”

As we passed through the hallway that gave entranceway to the kitchen, I noticed the empty space on the wall where the picture I held in my right hand had hung. Despite the seriousness of what had transpired during the last few minutes, I felt an urge to connect with Gretchen on a different level. Something personal. It seemed obscene for me to ask her to go out, considering how Quilla's disappearing had brought us together, but I had to say something.

“This is so odd.”

“How do you mean?” she asked.

“We're surrounded by death and sadness and long term grief and...had we met under different circumstances I would've asked you out for dinner or a drink by now...but considering the forces that brought us together...even thinking about doing something normal seems tasteless.”

“I'd like to have dinner with you,” she said warmly as we stepped outside and walked to my car.

“Maybe once we know Quilla's safe we can pick a night?”

“Sounds good.” She opened the driver's side door of my car, then smiled awkwardly. “Since we met it seems that all we've done is talk about secrets--family and personal. Virtually everything's out in the open. And maybe that's good. There won't be any skeletons in our closets.” I nodded in agreement. “That's why I have to ask you this, Del: you were a kid when Alyssa vanished. Now you're a grown man. After all these years are you still in love with her?”

“Quilla asked me that too. And I've thought about it a lot the last couple days. I think I'm in love with the promise of what I lost. It's like my mother always loved James Dean. And he died so young...something like twenty-four. All that's left of him are three movies. You watch them and you wonder what he would've accomplished if he'd lived. When I think about Alyssa it's the same thing.”

“An incompleteness?”

“Yeah.”

“I don't think you're ever going to be complete until you find out what happened.” She sighed. “Me neither. Until then, we're damaged goods. Maybe we won't be all that good for each other.”

“We're all a package deal,” I said.

She smiled. “You better scoot on out of here.”

“Yeah.” I got into the car. She closed the door. “I should warn you that Funeral Directors' social lives are a lot like doctors. If I get a call during dinner...”

“I'm flexible,” she said. “Good-night, Del.”

“Good-night.”

I started the car and backed out, my headlights flashing on Gretchen for a fleeting moment. As I pulled away I beeped the horn. She waved back, a brilliant smile on her face. As I drove away, thinking of Gretchen, I realized that I hadn't felt this happy in years. As I thought about Quilla, I realized I hadn't felt this sad in years.

******

I had never been in the Dankworth Police Station at night. Oscar was sitting at the dispatcher's desk, reading a Field & Stream and listening to an oldies station. Lyin' Eyes by the Eagles was just ending. Oscar waved me over and quietly said, “What gives? Perry never comes in at night.”

“Why did he say he was here?”

“He didn't. He just snarled at me and went into his office. On the other hand, he snarls at me most of the time.” I laughed. ”Why are you here, Del?”

“I'm helping Perry out on something, Oscar.”

Oscar nodded and went back to his magazine as I walked to Perry's office. The door was closed. I knocked on it twice. From inside Perry snarled, “Come in.”

I opened the door. Perry was at the computer, typing. He was out of uniform, wearing a Cleveland Indians T-shirt. “Sit down. Want something? I have beer. Coke. Some other shit.”

“Nothing, thanks.” I sat down.

He didn't look up from the monitor for about thirty seconds. It was as if I weren't there. I was getting upset, so I said, “What are you doing?”

“What you asked me. Searching through thirty-plus years of missing person reports for young broads.”

I couldn't believe he was acting so fast.

“Hold on. I'm printing something out.” He sat back in his chair. His eyes fell to the framed photograph of Virginia Thistle on my lap. “Lemme see the picture.” I handed it to him. He stared at it for several seconds. “This was taken when she was thirty?”

“Yes.”

“I'll be damned. If you told me she was in tenth grade I'd believe you.” He set the frame on his desk, then removed a sheet of paper from the printer. He put it next to another sheet of paper on his desk. “Did a printout of all the missing person cases from ten years before Virginia Thistle disappeared until three months ago. Then I broke it down to females in their late teens and early twenties. And for what it's worth, besides your girlfriend and Brandy Parker, there were two other names who fit a pattern.” He picked up one of the sheets of paper on his desk and read from it. “Linda Helfer and Connie Birch.” One's twenty, the other's seventeen. Linda Helfer vanished two-and-a-half years ago and Connie Birch disappeared nineteen years ago.” He returned the piece of paper to his pocket. “Now, this isn't a pattern that's neat and clean, but if you look at the timetable starting with Virginia Thistle twenty-four years ago and ending with Connie Birch two-and-a-half years back...it seems that every four or five years a young--or in Virginia Thistle's case, young-looking--girl disappears.” He leaned back in the chair.

“But you don't know if these two other girls have been heard from since?”

“There's no record of their parents contacting us to say that they came home. I'm gonna be contacting the families... or at least trying to. Odds are the one from two-and-a-half years back will still have people here, but the one from nineteen years ago...I don't know. You know how people are around here. You either stay here awhile, then go...or you never leave...like us.”

“Things are finally starting to fall in place, Perry.”

“So? Where's it gonna get me? What started out as an almost impossible task trying to solve
one
murder, is turning into an even more impossible job trying to solve two, three, four and maybe even five additional murders. I've been thinking that if I failed at getting to the bottom of Brandy Parker's death people would be understanding, considering that so much time had passed since her death. But now...if word gets out that there's been some kind of serial killer around here all these years...I'll have to deal with something even bigger.”

“What?”

“I'd hate like hell to have it come out that all these other women were done in while my dad was Chief.”

“People aren't gonna blame anybody...whether you get results or not.”

“You're dreaming, Coffin Boy. If somebody doesn't get nailed for Brandy Parker, they could let it by. But if it gets out that all these other girls might've been killed by the same guy...they're gonna get on my tail. I'll never live it down and my father goes to his grave in disgrace. Shit!”

“Don't you think you're being a little premature in your doom? See what you can learn about the two new girls you found. Maybe they're both alive and well. And maybe Alyssa is too. And so might Virginia Thistle.”

He sneered as he said, “Oh, now you're having a change of heart? Now nobody's been killed but Brandy Parker? All this crap about other victims started because of you!”

“I'm just trying to be supportive, Perry. I know you're frustrated. I feel sorry for you.”

“I don't want your fucking pity!” He stood up. “I don't want anything from you.”

“You seemed to want some of the information I gave you.”

“Yeah, well, all your cemetery buff bullshit hasn't led me anywhere. I wish you'd never brought it up. I'd have been a helluva lot better off. I'm beginning to think that whoever put Brandy Parker's body in that mausoleum did it out of dumb luck.” He suddenly turned off his computer. “Here's what I'm gonna do. First thing in the morning I'm contacting the families of these two new girls. If they're both alive and well I'm not gonna give one second of time to the Thistle's case or your old girlfriend's. I'm gonna do whatever more I can on Brandy Parker, then, I'm gonna keep the case open... and forget about it until the day comes when I or someone accidentally stumbles onto something that leads to a killer.”

“You want me to do anything more?”

“No.”

“Not even acting as a liaison between you and Quilla Worthington?”

“Just stay out of my way and keep doing what you do best...burying people. By the way, speaking of Quilla Worthington, her mother called in here. She hasn't come home for two nights. Disappearing must run in the family.” Perry leaned back in his chair.

“She's been investigating the case herself.”

Perry smirked. “Right!”

“Maybe she accomplished what you couldn't.”

“What are you saying?”

“Maybe she found the killer and he's got her.”

“Bullshit.”

“You think you have problems now? If anything happens to that kid you might have six murders to account for. You talk about being disgraced in this town, let me tell you something, you'll be tarred and feathered.” I pointed to his computer. “It's a good thing you're so adept on that thing. If Quilla stays vanished you'll be spending the rest of your life making eight bucks an hour as a word processor.”

I turned and left, nodding good-bye to Oscar in the outer office. As I headed back to the Home I wasn't sure how I felt. A part of me was relieved that I didn't have to be around Perry and think about the case. But another part made me wonder if Perry would half-ass his investigation and deny Quilla, Gretchen and I the closure we so desperately wanted.

It was close to midnight when I swung into the parking lot of the Home. I was surprised to see a vehicle parked in the lot. It was Viper's ancient VW bug. I pulled alongside it, got out of my car and looked inside. Viper was sleeping. I nudged his right calf a couple of times, waking him.

“Hi, Mr. Coltrane,” he said, rubbing the sleep from his eyes and sitting up.

“Did you get my message?” I asked. I assumed Gretchen had finally reached him and that he'd come to see me.

“What message?”

“From Gretchen.”

“I didn't get any message from anyone today. Our phone was out of order all day.”

“Then why are you here?”

“To pick up a magazine from Mr. Fowler. Yesterday, Quilla and I went to his house to get a bunch of 'em and...”

“You saw Quilla yesterday?”

“In the afternoon. She went with me to Mr. Fowler's.”

“And she was okay?”

“Yeah. Why wouldn't she be? I can't believe I fell asleep.” He glanced at his watch. “Whoa...I've been out here for three hours. Mind if I get out and stretch my legs?”

“Go ahead.” He opened the door and got out. “Quilla didn't come home last night or the night before and as of a couple hours ago, she hasn't been home tonight.”

“She stayed at my house night before last.”

“Why didn't she tell her mother?”

“We kind of got drunk and forgot. She's mad at you.”

“Why?”

“Because you were giving up on finding the killer.”

“Did she stay at your house last night?”

“No.”

“Where could she have stayed?”

He got a bemused look. “She has a few other places to crash, but that's only when she's pissed at her mom. She said they're getting along good since her Aunt's funeral so she wouldn't have had a reason
not
to come home last night. I'm starting to feel weird about this. In fact, I think I'm gonna, like, pass out.”

Suddenly, Viper fell into my arms. I picked him up and carried him inside, into my office where I placed him on the sofa. I took an ammonia pellet from a drawer and opened it under his nose. He regained consciousness instantly.

“Wow,” he said, sniffling and coughing as he sat up. He looked around the office. “How'd I get in here?”

“You fainted. Are you alright?”

“Yeah. Fainting. It's like, such a chick thing. Would you promise not to tell anyone, especially Quilla?”

“Promise. When was the last time you saw Quilla?”

He paused for a few seconds, scratching his head and scrunching up his forehead. “We went to Mr. Fowler's to get the mortician magazines he wanted me to look at. We stayed there about ten minutes. No. Wait. That's wrong. We went to Mr. Fowler's
after
we went out to the cemetery.”

“What were you doing at the cemetery?”

“Checking out gravestones. By the thing where her Aunt's body was found. Quilla said you and she went up there at night and checked 'em out, but she felt you guys might've missed something because of the dark. She's got this idea that nobody'll be able to solve her Aunt's murder except her, so she's putting a package together to give to a private detective she was gonna hire.”

“Where'd you two go after you left the cemetery?”

“Her laptop’s broken so we went to my house and she typed the names in alphabetical order. There were a bunch.”

I glanced at my desk and noticed the detailed printout of the names that Perry had given me when he showed up after Alphonse's funeral. I reached for it. I was curious if they had managed to find some additional names that Quilla and I might've missed.

“Would you know how many names you two came up with?” I asked as I held Perry's printout in my right hand. There were fifty-six names in two columns. Column A contained forty-five names that Perry labeled as Typical/Normal. Column B had the eleven oddly spelled foreign surnames that Perry felt could have been Americanized into shorter names.

“Not off the top of my head,” said Viper. He reached into his shirt pocket, removed a flash drive and glanced at my computer. “I can plug this in and pull up the list for you.”

“You always carry a flash drive with you?”

“It’s Quilla’s. Forgot to give it to her.”

Viper inserted the flash drive into the back of my computer. Within seconds I was looking at the list of names he'd typed up. They weren't numbered, so I had to count. He stood behind me and counted, as well.