Start with Chapter 1
CHAPTER 18
January 12, 1979
Dean dropped off Jenny with his mom the next morning and drove to the station. The chief was meeting the mayor for breakfast, so only Laura and Etheridge were in the station. The winter so far had been brutally cold, but at least not like last year’s blizzard. Still, it kept even the limited crime of Zion down to a minimum. Accidents, however, were more frequent. Slide offs mostly. Last night, a businessman traveling through Zion on Route 23 had hit a patch of ice or fallen asleep, slid off the road, slammed into a tree, and was thrown thirty feet into the field. Etheridge described how he could follow the blood trail across the snow to the crumpled up body.
Dean nodded his understanding of that grim scene. He had seen plenty of such accidents during his days on patrol.
After settling in at his desk, he asked Laura to call the State Police and get any info they had on Charlie McCord. He then picked the phone up from the cradle and held it. He dialed the number for the Beacon and asked the person who answered to be connected to Paige.
After a couple of minutes being on hold, Paige picked up the phone and said, ”McFadden.”
“Detective Wallace.”
“Ah, so the chief talked to you?”
He was glad he was on the phone so she could not see him flush with anger.
“He’s savvy about the press and my boss made a call,” she continued. “I’m doing my job’s all.”
“Right. So—.”
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to bust your balls.”
“Yeah, you did.” He smiled.
“You’re right. I did.” She chuckled. “So this Nimitz thing. It’s a homicide?” And he gave her most of the details. He left out The Communist Manifesto but told her about the cash. On the question of did he have any suspects, he said they did, but not enough evidence at this time to do much about it. She agreed to not phrase it so harshly but still get the point across.
He promised he would keep her in the loop.
“You know, we can be friends,” she said. “You never know, what I write might prompt someone’s memory.”
“Might,” he said.
They exchanged good-byes and hung up.
When Guthrie came in a few minutes later, they met to discuss the plan for the day. Dean wanted to talk to Zorn in the afternoon. They decided to split for the morning. Guthrie would interview the Pratts as well as get a look at the crime scene. Dean had spoken with Wayne Pratt the day they found Billy, but a more thorough interview was necessary. Given Dean’s connection with the Pratt family, Guthrie needed to do it. Dean, however, would talk to Billy’s parents again, asking specifically about the money and book and using the recent interviews with Billy’s friends and girlfriend to elicit more information about their son. They agreed to meet back at the station at lunchtime.
Dean knocked on Billy’s parents front door. Archie answered and led him to the kitchen table. He motioned for the detective to sit before doing so himself in front of a cup of coffee going cold. Emily was cleaning a stack of dishes from the food friends and neighbors had brought over. Many casseroles and what looked like the remnants of a ham.
Archie took a sip of his coffee. “Have you found out anything, Dean?”
“We’re re-interviewing some people based on the, the fact that this is a murder investigation now. And we have information, but we’re trying to make sense of it. I’m hoping you can help there.”
Archie nodded. The tink of dishes from Emily placing plates in the drainer.
“We interviewed Sarah Esposito. From her statements, she and Billy were more than friends in recent months.”
“He didn’t talk about her much, really. It seemed to be an up and down thing, and it seemed down at the time.”
“Why do you say that?”
Emily placed the hand towel over the top of the drying dishes. “Because he acted the way he always did when they were broken up. He started worrying about money. He was very keen to give her nice things, but he wasn’t a lawyer or a doctor. She expected too much.”
“Any nice things in particular?”
Emily grabbed Archie’s cold mug. “No. Not anything he told me specifically.” She threw the cold coffee down the drain and refilled his cup, adding two Sweet’n Lows.
“Anything else that indicated they were back to the just-friends stage?”
She set the mug in front of Archie, who said, “No. That was it. And he was moping around. Not sad like. I know some think he—”
“Neither the police department nor the coroner think it was anything but a homicide.” He said it with more force than intended, and he frowned at the bluntness of the remark.
Archie patted his left hand. “Thank you.”
Emily set a mug in front of Dean and poured hot coffee into it.
Dean wrapped his hands around the warm mug. “So when I looked in William’s room when I was here last, I found something. And I’m hoping you can shed some light on it. On the floor and in the corner of this closet, I found thousands in cash.”
Emily raised her hand to her chest. Archie’s eyes opened wide.
“From your looks, I take that as a surprise?”
“Yes,” said Archie. “How did he get that kind of money?”
“I was hoping you could help explain that.”
“How could we do that?” asked Emily. She pulled a chair out and sat down.
“I thought perhaps you had found it in the past or he had talked about it.”
“He never mentioned it. I knew he was making decent money from McCord’s, but I thought it was all the overtime he was working.”
“According to Charlie, Billy didn’t work that much overtime.”
A tear moistened the edge of Emily’s eyes. “News to us. Why didn’t you tell us when you found it?”
Dean scratched his chin. “If it had turned out to be a suicide, I wanted to be able to give it back to you quickly. Now it’s evidence. I’m not sure when—”
Emily teared up and waved her hand at him. “That’s okay. I don’t need to know any more. I don’t care about the money.”
Archie put his hand over hers. They shared affection in ways that Dean had never seen his parents do. He did not doubt Eric and Jessica loved each other, but it was not what he had seen between the Nimitz’s. He imagined they still held hands while walking, something he had never seen his father and mother do.
Dean said, “I found another item with the money. A copy of The Communist Manifesto.” When both parents looked at him blankly, Dean said, “Did William read any political philosophy?”
Archie snorted. “You saw his room, sir. He was interested in baseball and cars. What he read matched those interests. I think the only philosophy he read was what was required at school.”
Dean let go of the mug. “Thanks. It’s probably nothing, but I wanted to ask.”
Emily asked, “How’s the money and the book got anything to do with Billy’s—with his—our son’s—?”
Dean stood up. “Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. It’s something we need to explore.” He left them, with more questions than answers and a reminder their son had been murdered. The frigid air outside seemed warmer than the Nimitz’s kitchen.
* * *
Dean closed the door of the car and turned it on, cranking the heat to full. A blast of cold stunned him before switching to warm then hot air. If he turned it up high enough, he knew the heat could be too much, but it felt so good, he let it go for awhile.
The radio crackled, and Laura’s voice filled the car. “Unit 141?”
Dean lifted the handset and turned up the volume. “This is 141.”
“Victim’s car has been discovered.”
“Nimitz’s?”
“Confirmed.”
“Where at?”
“Old Range Road. Two miles north of 23.”
“Acknowledged. 141 is heading up there now.”
“Tow is already on its way.”
“Tell them to not touch anything until I’m there.”
“Acknowledged.”
“And can you tell 142 to meet me there?”
“Yes.”
“141 out.” Dean put the car in reverse and backed out of the Nimitz’s driveway and drove toward Route 23 and the Pratt farm. A mile west of the Pratt farm turnoff, Dean turned his car north on Old Range Road. The road led to a number of homesteads that ran along the Canadian border. Cattle and crops.
The road curved east near the border. As he approached the two-mile distance, he saw a familiar car pulled alongside the road, a set of tires on the road and the other on the grass to the side. Tony’s blue and white Oldsmobile Cutlass S.
Dean stopped the car behind Tony’s and stepped out. Tony got out of the driver’s seat. “Hey.”
“Morning. What are you doing out here?”
“I found a car off the side of the road.” Tony gestured over the top of his car. “I think it’s the one you and dad were talking about.”
Dean stood on his tiptoe and looked. In the woods, he could make out Billy’s yellow Dodge Challenger. “How’d you find it.”
Tony rubbed his gloved hands together. “I do my running out here sometimes. There’s a spot another mile down to park. I was heading there today to do that.”
“How often do you run out here?”
“All the time. All the time. Anyways, I saw it and drove to the house down the road a bit and called the station. I came back to make sure nothing happened in the meantime.”
Dean walked past Tony and the front of his car and down a slight embankment into the lightly wooded stretch before a snow-covered field. In the summer with the full bloom of the trees, the car would have been well hidden from the casual passer-by. The trees denuded of leaves and the snow offered no cover. Only the lack of traffic and curiosity by those who did see it prevented it from being reported earlier.
Billy had backed the car off the road. Dean noted the deep tire tracks in the snow. The tires had made contact with the surface of the field. Bits of grass, small rocks, and dirt lined the tracks and the small mounds of snow either side of them.
No tracks from the road to the car, but from the driver’s side a set of faded tracks entered the field.
A car squeaked to a stop and Dean walked up the embankment and watched Guthrie get out of his car. He looked at Tony. “Hey.”
Dean waved him over. “Tony spotted the car on his run.”
Guthrie nodded at Tony and walked over to Dean. Both walked down toward the car.
Dean pointed at the tracks in the snow. “Those lead to where we found him.” A light layer of grime coated the hood and wheel wells. “You didn’t touch anything, right?” asked Dean.
After a pause, Tony realized the question was directed at him. “Of course not. I know better.”
Tony was not a field agent, but he did know better.
A car pulled up followed by a tow truck, which passed by Billy’s car, stopped, and then put the truck into reverse.
“Tell him,” Dean waved at the truck, “to wait.”
Tony nodded and disappeared along the driver’s side of the truck.
Reggie walked up, his right hand draped over his holstered pistol. He took off his large mirrored sunglasses. “That Billy’s car?”
“Yeah. Well, I think so. Still looking it over.”
“Right. Sweet ride.”
Guthrie walked behind the car and wrote down the license plate, gave the paper to Reggie, and asked him to run it.
Dean tested the driver-side door. It opened, so he bent down and looked in the car. Black leather seats. Chrome and leather steering wheel. Box of cassette tapes. Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Lynyrd Skynyrd. Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon was open on the seat. Dean pushed the eject button on the dash’s cassette player. He sawThe Dark Side of the Moon’s label.
The front and back seats were clean and free of clutter. The dash’s bright shine and lack of dust suggested to Dean a recent Armor All wipe down. He reached under the dash and pulled the trunk release. Other than the spare tire and jack, the trunk was clean.
Dean told Reggie and Guthrie to get the car towed to the station’s locked lot on the west side of town. “I’ll meet you back at the station before we head over to Zorn’s.” Guthrie casually saluted.
Dean thanked his brother for calling it in and started to walk out into the field, following the tracks, which had melted at the edges. Tony stomped down behind him. “Care if I join?”
Dean smiled. “Why not?”
Tony followed Dean, who walked alongside the tracks. Billy had crossed the field heading south and when he reached a line of trees about a half-mile from his car, he had turned east and kept to the boundary of woods and field until he walked into the wooded area at the eastern edge, where the tracks became elusive. The snow was not as deep. Dean gave up a dozen yards in. Walking over the underbrush had effectively hidden whatever tracks Billy had left behind.
Dean stood in the woods, hearing his brother breathing behind him. “He came out here to meet someone. One set of tracks. So he wasn’t forced.” He faced—as best he could tell—the direction of the clearing where they found Billy’s body. “At least, not at gunpoint.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. It’s possible, I guess, that someone had something he wanted or threatened his family to force him out here.” Dean shook his head. “Just thinking is all.”
“Whatever it was, it didn’t go well.”
“It did not. But did the person he met end him or was there someone else?”
“Most likely, the person he met.”
“It’s the simplest answer, that’s for sure.” Dean sighed. “It’s cold as hell. Let’s get back.”
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