Vengeance Road (13 page)

Deke told her how he was orphaned at the age of thirteen after a stranger had come into his family's home and murdered his father, mother and five sisters. The killer had never been found. Deke told her about his secret search for the killer
.

Belva believed in his cause but never realized its intensity until he took her swimming and she saw the words tattooed across his back.

“And I will execute great vengeance upon them with furious rebukes,” she read aloud.

“It's from Ezekiel,” he said.

Belva traced her fingertips over the words. Awestruck, she regarded Deke Styebeck as a warrior against all the bad in this world. Her hero.

A year after they met, they were married.

After several years, Belva gave birth to their first child, a son.

Karl Styebeck.

Two years later, during a difficult delivery that nearly killed her, Belva gave birth to a second son.

Orion Styebeck.

They lived a quiet life on a farm in a wooded, secluded tract outside of Huntsville.

During that time, Deke was promoted to a post on the prison's execution team where he took great pride, some said pleasure, in escorting men to their deaths….

 

“Excuse me, Mr. Styebeck? You can see Alice now,” the nurse said.

“Will she be okay?”

“She's groggy, but she'll be fine. Her heart rate is normal and all of her vital signs are normal.”

“Thank you.” Styebeck embraced the positive news.

He'd use it to prepare for the battle of his life.

J
olene Peller's silver cell phone sat in front of Anthony Sloan.

Its fading power light pulsed like a telltale heart.

FBI special agent Ron Garvin and New York State investigator Mike Brent faced Sloan across the polished table in a brightly lit meeting room of the FBI's new Las Vegas Field Office, near Martin Luther King Boulevard. The building's air-conditioning system hummed.

Sloan was sweating.

“Where's Jolene Peller?” Brent asked.

“I told you,
I've never heard of her.
”

“When are you going to tell us the truth?” Brent asked.

“What about you? You show up at my hotel, flash your badges, ask me to come here to help you on some urgent matter,” Sloan said. “I cooperate fully. Let you look through my things. But for the last hour you refuse to tell me what this is really about.”

“You know what this is about, Tony,” Brent said.

“The phone?”

“You see,” Garvin said, “with that kind of phone, when it's on and roaming, we can pretty much get a location, which led us to you.”

“How did you get the phone?” Brent asked.

“I told you, I picked it up somewhere by mistake. It's identical to mine.”

“Identical?” Garvin placed a slimmer black phone on the table in front of Sloan. “That's your phone, Tony. No resemblance.”

Brent's forefinger jabbed the silver phone.

“Jolene Peller is the owner of this phone. She's a single mother, from Buffalo, New York, and she's missing. Her disappearance is tied to a homicide in Buffalo. You're a mechanic from Illinois, in Las Vegas, making calls with a missing woman's phone and lying to us.”

Sloan swallowed.

“You hear that, Mike?” Garvin said. “I think Tony's sphincter just tightened.”

“Where's Jolene Peller?”

“I don't know.”

Brent put Jolene's picture in front of Sloan, who shook his head.

“I swear, I don't know who you're talking about.”

“Why did you call Karl Styebeck's home?”

“Who's he?”

Brent put Styebeck's picture in front of Sloan.

“This phone's been used to call Karl Styebeck's home in Buffalo. How do you know him?” Brent asked.

“Never saw him before in my life. Never heard of him.”

Brent nodded and considered another avenue to the truth.

He paged through his notes and a file folder of documents the FBI had faxed him before he and Esko flew to Nevada on a bumpy late-night flight out of Buffalo via Detroit.

“Bet you consider yourself a successful man, respected in the community,” Brent said.

Sloan didn't answer.

“Started as a mechanic, now you own a six-bay shop in, where is it again?” Brent asked.

“Naperville,” Garvin answered.

“Naperville. Worked hard to build your business up from nothing, I bet. You come to Vegas this week to meet some buddies and to have a good time. You make some calls, a couple of 900 numbers.” Brent scanned a page. “We got all the calls here.”

Sloan was silent.

“Your wife's a teacher. Your daughter's a Girl Guide. Son's in Little League. You help coach his team, you said on the ride over.”

“Sounds like you're living a nice life there, Tony,” Garvin said.

“But that little ditty about what happens in Vegas staying in Vegas,” Brent said, “ain't true for everybody. Now I want you to give it some thought. Try to envision how it's going to play with your wife, your kids, your business when it gets out in Happyville that the FBI has charged you—”

“Charged me? With what? Using a lost phone?”

“When the FBI charges you with obstruction of justice and it gets in the
Happyville Times
that Tony Sloan got himself mixed up with this missing single mom in Buffalo.”

Brent slid Jolene Peller's picture closer to Sloan. Next came Bernice Hogan's college ID.

“And tied to this woman who was murdered. Horribly murdered.”

Next came crime-scene photos of Bernice's body in the shallow grave.

“Christ!” Sloan looked away. “This is some mistake. I've never been to Buffalo in my life! I don't know this woman.”

“Then tell us how you got her phone!”

Sloan held back.

“How did you get Jolene Peller's phone?”

“I took it.”

“From Jolene?”

“No. No one. It was just left and I took it.”

“Where? When?”

“At a truck stop, just before I flew here. I was driving to O'Hare. I needed gas and filled up before I parked at the airport.”

Brent took notes.

“After I filled up and paid, I went to the head and there it was. Someone had left the phone on the shelf over the sinks. Must've forgotten it.”

Sloan gazed down at it on the table.

“No one was around. I picked it up and was going to the office to turn it in when I got a stupid idea. Why not keep it and have some fun? So I did. On an impulse I brought it with me to Vegas. Turned it on, made some calls. I was going to leave it in the john at McCarran. I don't know anything about those people you're talking about. That's the truth, I swear.”

“Be more specific about the truck stop,” Brent said.

“It was the Thousand Mile Truck Stop, where I-294 meets the Ike, near the turnpike by the North Avenue West Lake area.”

“Did you see Jolene Peller or Karl Styebeck at the truck stop?”

“No. How would I know if I did? I don't know these people.”

“Did you pay for your gas with your credit card?” Brent asked.

“Yes.”

Garvin slid a pad and pen to Sloan.

“Write down everything—dates, times, credit-card number. Give us a full statement about how you obtained the phone and used it,” Garvin said.

 

A large two-way mirror filled the wall at the end of the room. It was connected to an unseen darkened office. Inside, FBI special agent Reba Jensen worked at a computer checking information arising from Sloan's interview. New York state investigator Roxanne Esko worked alongside her, talking softly on a telephone and making notes.

When Sloan completed his statement, Brent and Garvin joined them in the office. The two men talked over the phone to FBI agents who were on-site in Illinois at Sloan's auto shop and to those en route to the Thousand Mile Truck Stop. Brent and Garvin also talked with police back in New York State.

During the next three hours the team of investigators corroborated Sloan's account. And they confirmed that for the period of time between Bernice Hogan's disappearance and leading up to her murder, Sloan was in Naperville.

He was driven back to his Las Vegas hotel without being charged.

In Chicago, FBI agents set out to intensify their investigation on the Illinois truck stop to determine if Jolene Peller or Karl Styebeck had been there, or find out who may have left her cell phone in the men's washroom.

 

At 11:45 p.m. that night, a twin-engine MD-80 lifted off from Las Vegas bound for Chicago with a connection to Buffalo. Once the jet leveled, Brent fell asleep while Esko switched on her laptop.

She spent a long time staring at a picture of Bernice Hogan and thinking about the horror they'd found near Ellicott Creek. She was meticulous as she updated Jolene Peller's file, reminding herself to check with ViCAP. When she'd finished, she went back to the phone.

How had Jolene's phone surfaced in a Chicago truck stop? Who called Styebeck? Were they going to find the corpse of another young woman?

Esko was exhausted.

She put her work away and stared out beyond the starboard wing.

J
ack Gannon needed a job.

It was the only way he could break the Styebeck story.

But the woman who answered his third call of the day to Kirk Tatum, assistant managing editor for the
New York Daily News
, didn't care.

“Yes, he's got your messages from this morning, Mr. Gannon.”

“I can freelance a major exclusive on the unsolved murder of a nursing student. I have inside information. The story will have national interest.”

“So you told us. One moment.” Gannon heard a keyboard clicking above the newsroom clamor. “Kirk sent something, here it is. He said he was sorry about your situation at the
Sentinel
. A
damn shame
, he wrote here.”

“He knows about that?”

“Apparently. He also said that he can't accept your freelance offer. His budget's tight and he has no openings for reporters as these are tough times for newspapers.”

“That's it?”

“Sorry.”

Gannon hung up, drew a line through Tatum's name on his pad.

Over the last few days, since learning that Jolene Peller's phone was used to call Styebeck's home, he'd
pitched the story to the
New York Post, USA Today,
Reuters, and the Associated Press.

No one wanted anything to do with him. He was a pariah, ignored by people he respected, editors like Kirk Tatum.

After Gannon's Pulitzer nomination, Tatum had called him at the
Sentinel. “Congratulations on the nomination. I'm impressed with what you did on the plane-crash story. Win or lose, you're Pulitzer caliber. Anytime you want to talk about coming to the
News,
call me.
”

Now Tatum wouldn't even take his calls.

And Gannon couldn't believe the response he'd received from Melody Lyon, a senior editor with the
World Press Alliance,
the international wire service. She was legendary for finding talent and guiding reporters to produce award-winning work.

The WPA operated a bureau in every major U.S. city, and two hundred bureaus in seventy-five countries around the globe, providing a nonstop flow of fast, accurate information to thousands of newspapers, radio, TV, corporate and online subscribers everywhere.

After his nomination, she'd flown him to New York and over lunch at the Plaza offered him a position as a national correspondent based at the WPA's world headquarters in Manhattan.

“I'll call you to confirm things in a few days, Jack,” Lyon told him.

One week later, a New York state trooper stood at Gannon's apartment, hat in hand, explaining how a pickup driven by a drunk driver had smashed head-on into his parents' Ford Taurus killing them both.

Gannon went numb and had to steady himself against the door.

His parents had heard through friends that Cora might
be living in Canada and were driving to the friend's house in Orchard Park to learn more.

Later, when he was able, he called Melody Lyon, explained his situation and declined the job,
for the time being.

Lyon had understood.

Weeks after the funeral, after he'd settled most of his parents' affairs, he'd followed up on the job offer at WPA. Melody Lyon was in Europe. Gannon spoke to an editor who worked with her.

“Unfortunately, Jack, our staffing needs have changed,” the editor said.

Gannon couldn't understand what had happened and confided to Stan Baker, a grizzled night copy editor at the
Sentinel
, who'd known his dad. No one knew that Gannon was going to leave the paper for a job in New York. Baker was the only person Gannon trusted. After Baker “quietly poked around some,” he pointed to Fowler.

“Word is Nate may have caught wind of your desire to leave when WPA was doing reference checks in town,” Baker said. “You know he can't afford to lose his best reporter.”

Gannon couldn't believe Fowler would somehow stand in his way.

And now, Gannon refused to believe that Melody Lyon would not respond to his calls. He'd checked with WPA. She was not sick. She was not on vacation, nor was she out of town.

Finally, after a few days, he got an e-mail from her.

 

Sorry about your situation with the retraction and everything. And I'm sorry I don't have any suitable openings at the moment. Stay in touch. M.L.”

What the hell was this?

He shook his head.

Why couldn't any of these editors see through the bullshit he'd faced at the
Sentinel
and trust that he had the inside track on a major story? This tip on the calls took it to a whole new level. Styebeck was not only linked to Bernice Hogan's murder, but he was tied to Jolene Peller's disappearance.

This story was going to explode.

But no Buffalo news organization had broken this new angle.

Yet.

It was all his. But if he didn't break it soon, someone else would.

He monitored newscasts and Web sites, anxious to hear from Adell.

She'd learned nothing more on the case from her sources. There was a tight lid on the investigation. All she knew was that Brent and Esko had traveled out of state on the phone break.

She was trying to find out where.

So was Gannon.

He took a moment to review his financial situation. He had his severance and vacation pay, and some money from his parents' estate, but not much. He was good for three, maybe four months.

Then he would need income.

Deal with that later, he told himself, resuming his examination of his growing stack of hard-copy files on Karl Styebeck.
Who was he? Where did he come from?
Styebeck had blamed his father for his dark side.

What's the story there?

Gannon had started digging into Styebeck's family history. So far, he'd learned that Karl Styebeck had been
raised in Texas. That his father, Deke Styebeck, had been a cop, or something like that, before he died.

Gannon didn't have much more on Karl Styebeck's background, like how he came to be a cop in suburban Buffalo.

Or how his old man died. Was it in the line of duty?

Gannon had a number of searches going. He concentrated on Texas because Styebeck had grown up somewhere between Houston and Dallas.

As Gannon worked alone in his apartment, scrutinizing his files for any angle or lead, his phone rang.

“It's me,” Adell said. “The calls to Styebeck on Jolene Peller's cell were made in Illinois from a Chicago truck stop. Got a pen?”

“Fire away.”

“The Thousand Mile Truck Stop, not far from O'Hare.”

“Anything else?”

“All I know is they're going to dig into the truck stop.”

As Gannon assessed the lead, his pulse quickened. The guys at the
Chicago Tribune
and
Sun-Times
would take this story from him if they found out what was happening in their yard.

This was his story.

Gannon tapped his pen, thinking that Chicago was, what? An eight-, ten-hour drive?

He slid his laptop and files into a bag and packed.