Orphans of Wonderland (11 page)

“That was a long time ago,
Detective
Rossi.”

“Cops don't forget.”

“Well, good for them. And yes, I give a shit. I never wanted to hurt anyone, least of all the police. I made some mistakes, I admit it, and I'm sorry for that. It's easy to pile on me too, don't forget that. I paid for my sins, Detective, trust me. And I wasn't entirely wrong, but—”

“But nothing. You're not a cop. You're not an investigator. You're not even a reporter. You're a joke, a sensationalistic, half-baked, almost-was has-been, and a piece of shit.”

“Jesus, don't hold back.”

“If you think I'm here to debate the merits of your character, Walker, you're out of your mind.”

“Fine. Then why are you here?”

“To let you know we've got this situation well in hand, thanks.”

Joel laughed lightly. “Is this where you tell me to get out of town before sundown?”

Rossi's expression made it abundantly clear that he was not amused. “Do yourself a favor, Walker. Go on back up to yahoo land and do whatever the hell it is you do up there these days. You know, like get those local Little League scores out to the masses and whatnot. And let us do our job.”

“Are you aware of the fact that Lonnie worked part-time for a company called Tuser Industries in New Bedford?” Joel asked.

“Yes, we are aware of that.”

“That's interesting, because his family had no knowledge of it.”

Rossi shrugged. “As I mentioned, ongoing investigation.”

“Do you know anything about the company?”

“They do research and development.”

“What kind of research and development?”

“What am I, your personal assistant?”

“Gimme a break.”

Rossi sipped his Coke. “And why would I do that?”

“How about professional courtesy?”

“The only professional at this table is me.”

“Okay, how about just two guys talking?”

Several seconds lived and died before Rossi answered. “They're a privately owned company. They handle some government contracts, several with military applications, but they don't discuss them due to national security, which is standard operating procedure when it comes to such things.”

“Thank you.”

“You're welcome. Why are you so concerned with the company?”

“I was told that many of the difficulties Lonnie was experiencing started right around the time he began employment there.”

“He was the night watchman, for Christ's sake.” Rossi smiled, but there could not have been less humor in it. “Wait, let me guess, it's all a big cover, isn't it? It's a secret satanic cult company, part of a huge network of secret satanic cult companies that span the entire country, maybe the whole
world
. And almost everybody's in on it. Plus they eat babies, you know, whenever they can get hold of one, am I right?”

“I'm glad you can find such humor in the murder of Lonnie Scott, Detective.”

“Don't get self-righteous with me, you fucking turd,” Rossi snapped, sitting forward and stabbing a finger at him. Then just as quickly, he seemed to recall that he was in a public place. Relaxing his posture, he lowered his hand and his voice. “There's no connection to Tuser Industries and the murder of Lonnie Scott.”

“You're certain?”

“Yes. Why the hell would there be? Only in your twisted mind would some place he worked part-time in the most menial of positions be connected to this.”

“Are you aware that he often slept there? At one point, during a vacation from his regular job, he worked a week straight and slept there the entire time.”

“So?”

“You don't find that odd?”

“Unusual maybe, but not unheard of. They must have employee barracks.”

“For a night watchman in the most menial of positions?”

“There is no connection between Lonnie Scott's death and Tuser Industries, understood?”

Joel knew Rossi might very well be correct, but he wasn't ready to dismiss there being any connection just yet. “And how do you know that?”

“It's called investigation, Walker.”

“Investigation or assumption?”

“They're not under any suspicion or investigation in these matters, is that clear? I suggest you stay away from them.”

“Why's that?”

“Because, as I just explained, they have nothing to do with this.”

It was a gamble, but Joel rolled the dice anyway. “Have you been told to leave them alone, Detective?”

Something shifted in Rossi's dark eyes. Something telling. “I never said that.”

“You didn't say no, either.”

Rossi finished his Coke and put it aside. “I didn't say anything. Know why? Because I was never here and this little get-together never happened.”

“In that case, do you have any leads?”

“I can't discuss the case.”

“Now there's a solid no. Is it already on the back burner?”

“But Jesus
Christ
, you got some fucking balls on you.” Rossi shook his head in apparent disbelief. “You're lucky you're technically old enough to be my father. Otherwise I'd drag you outside and teach you some fucking manners.”

“Ever considered anger management? They have classes for that, you know.”

“You here to do comedy, jackass? Huh? You a stand-up, a clown?”

“I just want to know what happened to my friend.”

“You sure? You sure you're not here to get yourself back in the game by trashing decent, honest, hardworking people?”

“I'm sure.”

“Your friend was likely involved in illegal narcotics.”

“Come on, the guy smoked a little weed now and then, he was hardly a—”

“It very well may have been a drug deal gone bad. Choirboys don't get executed in the street, Walker.”

“He was a mall cop.”

“Go home. You came, you snooped around a little and you came up with nothing. No shame in it; you gave it a shot, right? Now go home, cuddle with your wife, give her the baloney pony and forget all about this. Lonnie Scott's dead. You let us handle the investigation.”

Joel continued as if he hadn't heard a word Rossi said. “You know Lonnie claimed he had no idea how he got the brand on the back of his shoulder, right? Not a tattoo, a
brand
. He told his daughter ‘they' had marked him.”

The detective stared straight ahead, offering nothing.

“He was also convinced that whoever ‘they' were had plans to kill him,” Joel pressed. “You don't find that troubling?”

“I find it troubling when people drink too much or do too many drugs, do stupid shit, then blame it on other people or some paranoid delusion those things cause in the first place. Is that what you mean?”

“You're saying you believe Lonnie was—”

“Did I mention Mr. Scott? I already explained I'm not at liberty to discuss an open and ongoing investigation, didn't I? You got wax buildup or you just deaf?”

“I'll be sure to pick up some Q-tips.” Joel flashed his best contemptuous smile. “Meanwhile, Katelyn told me there was an unidentified bottle of pills that were taken from Lonnie's medicine cabinet. They were to be analyzed, but they were supposedly lost.”

“Misplaced.”

“Misplaced. Of course, misplaced. Any luck un-misplacing them yet?”

Rossi remained stone-faced. “Afraid not.”

“She also told me you guys have Lonnie's laptop and cell phone. Are you planning to hang on to those indefinitely?”

“They'll be returned to Mrs. Burrows the moment we're done with them.”

“Find anything interesting on either one?”

“We're done here.” Rossi stood up, purposely positioning himself next to Joel's chair so he'd be towering over him. “Stay out of my way and let me do my job, Walker. I'm warning you.”

“Sounds like a threat.”

“It is. I'd take it seriously if I were you.”

“One last question if you don't mind.” Joel remained seated but looked up at him. “Are you having me followed?”

“Oh, of course. It's not us though.” Rossi looked around dramatically, as if to be sure no one else was listening. “I'm not saying it's aliens but…it's aliens. Satanic cult aliens, actually. Mean little fuckers.”

“You really have trouble with the whole yes or no thing, don't you?”

“I hate to disappoint you,
Agent Mulder
, but you're not important enough to warrant a tail. You're not even important enough to warrant this meeting. I'm just trying to help you out, save us both some trouble and do my best to be nice.”

“This is you nice?”

“Positively cheery, motherfucker.”

“Your charm does appear to be effortless.”

Rossi slapped him on the shoulder far harder than necessary. “Have a drink, something with an umbrella in it, maybe some lunch—the moo goo gai pan is out of this world—and then when you're done, go back to Maine like a good boy.” He leaned closer, his mouth less than an inch from Joel's ear. “And fucking stay there.”

Chapter Twelve

Joel hadn't even driven a block from the restaurant when he noticed the Crown Vic was back in play. He drove directly to his motel, watching as the tail followed his every move, staying several car lengths back just as it had before.

When he turned in to his motel lot, the car continued on past. Joel parked but kept it in sight, watching as it took an exit and slid onto the highway. Within seconds it was gone, swallowed by heavy traffic.

As he stepped from the car, he noticed his room door was ajar. Assuming it was only housecleaning, he grabbed his case and approached the room with caution, as he couldn't be sure. He pushed the door open but remained outside. “Hello?”

The room was empty.

Nothing seemed disturbed or out of place, until he checked for his suitcase, which he'd left on the far side of the bed, sandwiched between it and the wall. It was no longer there, but had been left instead on the bathroom floor. It was open, and his clothes and toiletries, which were all he had in it, were scattered about the room. A quick inspection of the suitcase revealed nothing was damaged and nothing had been stolen. Still, the fact that whoever had done this hadn't even attempted to hide what they'd done was troubling. Their obviousness wasn't an accident. It was designed to send a message. They'd come into his motel room and done whatever they wanted because they could get to him whenever they felt like it. And they wanted to make damn sure he knew it. Heart racing, Joel packed everything back into his suitcase then headed for the motel office.

The same disheveled college-age kid who had been there when Joel checked in was propped behind the counter on a stool. Slumped forward and reading a comic book, he looked up with disinterest when Joel came through he door. “Help you?” he said, as if mustering a complete sentence required far more effort than he could possibly expend at that moment.

“I'm in number 7,” Joel told him. “I went out this morning and just got back. Someone was in my room while I was gone.”

His bleary eyes narrowed into a squint. “No way.”

“Whoever it was went through my suitcase. Nothing's missing but—”

“Cool.”

“Cool? Who the hell was in my room?”

“I don't know, dude. Only ones it might be is housekeeping, but they aren't here until tomorrow. Is the door jacked up?”

“No. It's fine. So is the lock.”

He laughed for some reason, even doing that in slow motion. “So they didn't break in then. They had a key.”

“Apparently, or they were able to pick the lock.”

“You give your key to anybody?”

“No. I've had it with me the whole time.”

“Maybe you forgot to lock the door when you left.”

Joel glared at him.

“Okay, whatever,” he said, the apparent humor he'd previously found in the situation no longer quite so amusing. “You want to file a complaint? I can give you a form. Or I can call the cops if you want, but they're not gonna do anything if nothing's missing.”

“I don't suppose you saw anybody coming in or out of my room?”

He shrugged.

Rather than strangle him, Joel checked out, paid his bill and five minutes later was back on the road. It was later in the day now, but he still had a couple hours of daylight left and planned to have a new base of operations before dark. Although the events were unsettling, whatever he was into was important. He knew that now. Cops didn't threaten you to back off and people didn't follow you or ransack your motel room unless you were onto something. But if Rossi was telling the truth, and at least at that point he had no reason to think he wasn't, who the hell was following him? More importantly, how had they known he was in the area, and even if they had, how had they found him so quickly and easily?

As he followed Interstate 195 toward New Bedford, he made the Crown Vic in his rearview again. Either this guy was the best tail Joel had ever seen, or there was more than one car following him. The use of multiple vehicles was not unusual when it came to tailing someone—especially when it was a police operation—but far as he knew, using identical cars was.

His GPS led him out of Fall River and, skirting his hometown of Westport, into North Dartmouth, where he found an inexpensive chain hotel not far from one of the malls where Lonnie had worked. From this location, which was less than five minutes from New Bedford, Joel could easily check out Tuser Industries when the opportunity presented itself.

Once he got into his new room, he fired up his laptop, ordered a pizza from a local place, then checked his email. He found nothing of any importance there, so he organized his notes from his chat with Bea. After going through them again, Joel decided to look into the shortwave radio angle. Bea had told him Lonnie had said the notebook was directly related to that subject, and unless there was some other Jerry in Lonnie's life no one knew about, odds were he'd been involved with Jerry Simpson, which in turn—directly or indirectly—brought Tuser Industries into the mix.

But what possible connection could there be between a night watchman and the head of human resources? At least on the surface, it seemed an odd pairing. Besides, Lonnie worked there nights and weekends while Simpson certainly worked the day shift, Monday through Friday. Perhaps they'd met when Lonnie was first hired, as it was standard in most companies for employees to go through the human resources department at the time of hire. Maybe they'd hit it off due to a shared interest in ham radios? Although Lonnie told Bea he'd been to Simpson's home and listened to his radio, there was no evidence to suggest Lonnie had any interest in shortwave radios whatsoever. Even if he had, there was no way to know for sure until he spoke with Jerry Simpson personally, so Joel rummaged through his bag, found the notebook Katelyn had given him and flipped through it again.

All those numbers written over and over again, page after page—it was more than a little creepy. Why would Lonnie have furiously jotted them down again and again? They had to be a code of some kind, but what could they possible mean when there was no variance? They were identical numbers, written in the same order.

Joel checked the notebook again, going over it far more carefully this time, and while inspecting the inside front and back covers, noticed something he hadn't previously. A single set of numbers had been written in black pen in the bottom left corner of the inside front cover. They were different from those written on the pages, and were followed by the letters kHz, which Joel knew stood for kilohertz. It had to represent a frequency of some kind to a specific station or program, but he knew virtually nothing about shortwave radios and how they worked, so he plugged the numbers into his search engine.

The only thing of value the search returned was a basic site that explained the number fell within the Amplitude Modulated (AM radio) carrier frequencies, which ranged from 535 to 1605 kHz, and that carrier frequencies of 540 to 1600kHz were assigned at 10kHz intervals, whatever the hell that meant.

Joel put his laptop aside, then went through his notes until he came across the names and numbers Katelyn had given him of the two men Lonnie was closest with through work: Brian Currant and Pete Fernandez.

He got through to Currant first, introduced himself, explained how he'd gotten his name and number, and why he was calling.

“Was hoping I could ask you a few questions,” Joel said.

“Captain Scott was a good man,” Currant said in a deep, very officious voice. “I hope they get the bastard that did it, pardon my French, but I don't want to get involved in anything that isn't related to the official investigation.”

“This is completely off the record,” Joel assured him. “Just one friend of Lonnie's talking to another. You have my word. None of this will end up in print or anywhere else. I'm just trying to find some answers, that's all.”

“All I know is what I read in the paper or saw on the news, sir.”

Standing and wandering over to the window, which overlooked the back parking lot, Joel said, “Katelyn said you and Lonnie were friends.”

“He was my superior officer and my boss,” Currant explained. “But we also socialized off-hours occasionally. We enjoyed shooting pool, or sometimes we'd have a beer or a bite to eat after work and talk shop. Law enforcement is highly stressful and it's important to decompress.”

Referring to a security guard job at a mall as “law enforcement” seemed a stretch, but it fit perfectly with Currant's official tone and cop-speak phrasing.

“Unless you're part of the brotherhood, it's hard to understand,” he added. “I'm forty-six, been doing this for decades, and there are still days it gets to me. But that's how it is. You put the uniform on, you accept what comes with it.”

Was this guy serious? “Yes, I'm sure it must be difficult,” Joel managed.

“At any rate, Officer Fernandez spent more time with Captain Scott than I did. At least in a social context.”

“Pete Fernandez?”

“Affirmative. He may be able to tell you more than I can, if you can find him.”

“What do you mean?”

“Officer Fernandez doesn't work for the company anymore,” Currant told him. “Just up and quit one day, no notice, nothing. Word on the street was he left the area for a while and no one knew where he was. He was having issues before all this, some sort of personal problems, apparently. Not long before Captain Scott died, he was back in the area, from what I heard, but since then he's moved out of his house—he owns a cottage in New Bedford over by the airport—and dropped out of sight. Strange, but then Fernandez always was an oddball.”

Pot
, Joel thought,
meet kettle
. “Does he still have the same cell number?”

“I really don't know, sir.”

“Any idea where he is these days, still in New Bedford or—”

“No idea. I haven't heard from him in months, and frankly, I'm fine with that. The last thing I need is more drama.” A burst of background noise rumbled through the line, and it sounded as if Currant tried to cover the phone. “Hold on, Mom! I'm on the phone!” Once back, he cleared his throat. “Sorry. You were saying?”

Joel felt himself grin. “Did Lonnie ever talk about shortwave radios?”

“Not to me, sir, no.”

“Do you have any theories regarding Lonnie's murder?”

“Negative. Since I'm not personally involved in the investigation, I feel it would be irresponsible of me to discuss or form any theories at this time, as they'd be pure conjecture.” Currant breathed heavily into the phone for a few seconds before he continued. “Captain Scott was hardworking, honest, a stand-up guy. I know of no one who had anything against the man. All I can tell you is that he started having problems a few months before he was killed, and I could tell he wasn't sleeping and had a lot on his mind. He wasn't himself. We weren't that close outside of work. I'm sure there were things going on in his life I was unaware of and know nothing about. But as to why anyone would want to kill the man? I really don't know. Then again, in our line of work, once you put the badge on, you never know what might happen. There's a lot of scum out there who have no respect for law and order, and even less for those of us who dedicate our lives to upholding it. Take down one of us, you make a statement.”

Okay, Dirty Harry.

“Sure, I see what you mean,” Joel lied. “Did Lonnie ever mention a company called Tuser Industries?”

“Doesn't sound familiar.”

Joel believed him. He asked a few more cursory questions, but got similar responses. For all his bravado, it was obvious Currant was uncomfortable sharing what little he knew. He also didn't sound terribly upset about Lonnie's death, but perhaps that was just his manner; Joel couldn't get an accurate handle on it over the phone. He thanked Currant for his time and asked if it would be all right to contact him again, should more questions arise.

“I'm sorry about what happened, and I'll always have very fond memories of Captain Scott, as I'm sure you will. I appreciate that you're a family friend and trying to help—it's admirable, sir, and you have my respect—but I'd appreciate it if you didn't contact me again. No disrespect intended. I just think these matters are better left to law enforcement professionals.” More sudden background noise, followed by what sounded like an elderly woman calling for him. A muffled sound came next as Currant hastily put his hand over the phone again. “Mom, hold on! What the hell!” A moment later he came back on the line. “I have to go, my
girlfriend
has dinner on the table. I wish you the best, sir, and please give my best to Captain Scott's family. But please don't call again.”

The line clicked.

Joel watched the parking lot a while. No sign of the Crown Vic. It had been a long day, but he'd learned more in his first two days here than he'd expected in total. He didn't yet know what this was all about, but it wasn't nothing, as he'd originally hoped and even suspected. Lonnie's murder hadn't been a random killing or some drug deal gone wrong, as the police were evidently planning to frame it, and none of this was going to be easily explained away. Of that much he was certain.

Maybe Taylor had been right. Maybe he should've stayed where he was and lived his life. But it was too late for all that now. He'd already jumped into the deep end. Nothing left to do but swim. He kicked his shoes off, stretched, and then returned to the table, sat down and called the number he had for Pete Fernandez.

It rang numerous times but never went to voice mail. Joel was about to hang up when it was finally answered. “Who is this?” a jittery male voice asked.

“Hi, it's Joel Walker, I'm a friend of Lonnie Scott's. Is this Pete Fernandez?”

He muttered Joel's full name again and again in rapid-fire succession, like some scatterbrained mantra, and then said, “Where are you from?”