The Pact: A Detective Locklear Mystery Page 21

  “I look free to you, mister?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Grant finished her fries and wiped her greasy hands on her jeans. She sat back and began tapping her foot against the metal leg of the table.

  Locklear waited but the woman said nothing and stared at the mirrored wall on the opposite side of the brightly lit restaurant.

  “Ling said you were close to your father’s mother,” he said then. “I checked her out and she was never married – Grant was her birth name so she was a direct descendant of John. Didn’t she ever mention him?

  “Just to say that he was no good.”

  “What did she mean?”

  Locklear watched as Letitia’s face hardened.

  “Wasn’t ever anyone any good in my family except my grandma. Only one ever cared about me. All she said was that John was shot for treason or something like that. Any Grant came after him was no good neither. We all been to prison. All thieves.”

  “It doesn’t have to be your story.”

  “It’s already my story, mister.”

  “Well, it doesn’t have to end that way.” Locklear looked down at the art books on the seat beside her. “Ling says you’re a talented painter.”

  A weak smile washed across her face. “She believes in me. Sometimes she believes in me so much it hurts. Feels like I might let her down. Feels like I need a lot of strength not to let her down. Don’t want to. Want to finish my course, go to college, go straight – but it feels like all these bad Grants are always pulling me towards them, pulling me down. My grandma said we be cursed because of John Grant.”

  Locklear’s attention focused. “Cursed?”

  “Yep. She said she remember her grandma saying someone cursed him and now we all cursed as well.”

  “Did she say who?”

  She shook her head and looked at the food counter.

  “Are you still hungry?” Locklear asked.

  “No,” she said.

  A lie, he thought.

  “Did your grandma say anything about John Grant leaving behind an old box?”

  She stared hard at him and then returned her gaze to the mirrored wall. Her lips moved slightly. He could see he had the woman’s attention.

  “No.”

  Another lie. Locklear would have expected questions, what was in the box, what did it look like, but the woman did not look at him and did not move her eyes from her reflection.

  “Come on, you know all that but you don’t know that John Grant stole a box from a young soldier and took it back to New York before he was arrested? I think he knew it was valuable but he didn’t know why. He probably never figured out why. I think he passed it on to his wife and that she passed it on to her children and so on, and that the story of its origins was lost. Now, someone has the box and thinks it’s a family heirloom. Fact is – it is an heirloom but not what you’d think.”

  “What is it then?” she asked without even looking at him.

  “It’s a box that has resulted in generations of a family committing suicide and is responsible for the murders of several more. Getting that box back will stop this.”

  “Must be valuable to cause all that.”

  “It isn’t. It isn’t valuable at all. Not in a monetary sense anyway. It’s only valuable to the people from whom it was taken.”

  “I got nothing, mister, and that’s the truth. I don’t even got a photo of my parents. Got no brothers, sisters. No aunts, uncles. Don’t have another living relative in this world and got nothing of theirs neither.”

  Locklear knew the woman was lying but he didn’t know why. The Grants would have realised decades ago that the box was worthless. There must be, he reasoned, another reason why they had kept it.

  “If you can help,” he said, “then now is the time to do it. If you don’t – and you continue to hang onto stolen property ...”

  He saw her eyes widen. The woman did not need any heat.

  “Look, mister. If I had some antique metal box, I’d have sold it for a fix years ago.”

  Locklear looked down at the woman’s tattered jeans and focused on the nervous tic in her legs. He knew there was no point in pushing it – not right now. He would take Ling’s advice and treat Grant gently.

  He stood and threw his paper coffee cup into the bin and turned to stand directly in front of her. She looked away, unwilling to meet his eyes. He threw his card onto the table and pointed to his number.

  “I never said it was metal.”

  It was almost eleven by the time Locklear drove from the airport in Charlottesville to the Dayton Kindred Hospital, the four-hour wait for his flight from Newark having delayed his return to base. He hadn’t intended going to the hospital but somehow found himself driving down the narrow back streets towards its back entrance. He tapped gently at the screen door of Sara Fehr’s prison and went inside. Maria Whieler was, as usual, at her post. She stood and flung herself at him and cried in his arms.

  Surprised at the woman’s sudden affection, he had no idea what to do except raise his hands to her head and soothe the lonely woman as best he knew how.

  “He’s gone,” she said.

  Locklear moved back and looked at the sleeping woman in the bed.

  “I know,” he replied.

  Marie Whieler returned to her seat and lifted a large sealed envelope from her bag which had been hidden under her chair. She stood and walked the few paces to Locklear who had placed himself at the end of Sara Fehr’s bed.

  She locked her fingers around the end of the bed frame and looked at Sara.

  “I think she knows they’ve all gone. She’s been running a fever since. It’s like she’s got nothing to live for and she’s giving up. I’ve been talking to her, telling her to hang on – that Luke will be back. Sir, he didn’t kill Mrs Wyss and he’s anxious for me to say that to you.”

  “You saw him?”

  Whieler raised the envelope up, on both her palms like an offering.

  “He said to give you this.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s the notes my mama kept. Luke said it’s everything you need.”

  Locklear thought about the moment he walked away from Letitia Grant. The book was not everything he needed. It would help, he was sure of that, but Maria’s mother was dead so she would not be here to be a witness in court and, even if she were, Shank’s lawyer’s would tear the mentally ill woman to pieces. He needed that box and, if he had read the woman correctly, he expected that he would hear from Letitia Grant, sooner, he hoped, rather than later.

  Tears formed in Maria’s eyes. She moved closer to Locklear and wrapped her arms tight around his body.

  “If she dies, I’ve got nothing. Got no one. I’ll be alone.”

  Locklear placed his hands around his back and loosened her grip.

  “She won’t die,” he lied.

  Marie Whieler rubbed the tears from her face and wiped her nose into her light cardigan.

  “Thank you,” she said weakly as Locklear opened the screen door and disappeared.

  Maria returned to her station. She lowered her tired body into the hard seat and listened to the beats of her friend’s heart on the monitor. She knew those beats, that rhythm, by heart. She closed her eyes and listened to the deafening sounds of Sara’s pulse as it slackened, as it dimmed, and slowed.

  Chapter 25

  Locklear arrived at the station before dawn, anxious to get to work, and found Carter already at his desk, once again studying Sara’s letters to her friend.

  Locklear had dreamt of Sara the night before, sitting up in her bed, staring at him with eyes identical to those of her siblings.

  He growled a greeting.

  Carter looked up and seemed to be about to say something.

  “What?” said Locklear irritably.

  “Later,” Carter said and turned back to the letters.

  Locklear sat at his usual seat and began poring over the book given to him by Maria Whieler only hours befor
e.

  Mendoza joined them an hour later and placed a hot coffee in front of each of the two men. Carter drank his coffee then stood up and walked to the table in the centre of the room. He picked up his former girlfriend’s suicide note. Mendoza sidled up to him and looked at the note as he studied it.

  “I’ve been trying to work out what’s wrong with the note since I first laid eyes on it,” she said.

  “Something is,” said Carter.

  He went back to his desk, retrieved one of Sara’s letters and brought it back to the centre of the room.

  “It’s not her handwriting,” he said.

  Locklear, deep in thought, looked up. “What?”

  “That’s not Sara’s handwriting.”

  Mendoza looked intently at the two pages he held. “Lee, it looks the same to me.”

  “It’s very similar – but I know it isn’t hers. And that’s not all.”

  “What else?”

  Carter read the second line of the note aloud: “‘I’m going to put things right I’m sorry. The children need you more than me Sara’.”

  He looked at Locklear.

  “And?” Locklear snapped.

  “It’s not from her but to her,” Carter said. “See? There’s no full stop after me. There’s a gap and the handwriting is shaky, as though the person writing the line was upset or in a hurry but ‘Sara’ is not a signature – the writer meant: ‘The children need you more than me, Sara’. The gap was unintentional and, properly punctuated, there should be a comma.”

  Mendoza took the note from his hands and read the line quickly. “That’s why it bothered me. I knew something wasn’t right.” She looked up at Carter. “Then who wrote it?”

  “Luke Fehr wrote it,” Locklear said.

  “Sarge,” said Mendoza, “Ricci said when he and his partner got to the farm to tell the family about Sara’s accident, Luke was locked in an outhouse – a car had been driven up to its door so he couldn’t have killed himself if he wanted to.”

  Locklear stood and took a seat at the centre table.

  “Exactly. It was Sara who locked him in there. I read your notes. Ricci said there was also a noose hanging in the barn and that Luke had been vomiting. I think he wrote that note and left it for Sara. I think he then couldn’t face what he had to do and ran to the outhouse where he was sick. That’s when she drove his car into the door, that’s when she decided that she’d do the ‘honourable thing’ and take his place. They were twins.”

  “And they were both 21 years old that very day,” Carter said quietly. “When Luke heard about Sara he couldn’t kill himself. He had to take care of the children.”

  “The noose was Luke’s!” said Mendoza. “Maguire said that! He said women don’t normally hang themselves.”

  “Rarely anyway,” Locklear added.

  “But why, Sarge?” said Carter. “What could possibly make two young people want to take their lives?”

  “That’s what we have to find out, Carter. Whatever insane pact was, and is, going on between the Shanks and the Fehrs, it was strong enough for them to come after Andrew on his 21st birthday.”

  Locklear walked back to his desk and lifted the book. “I got this from Maria Whieler last night. Luke Fehr gave it to her for me.”

  Mendoza and Carter each took the thick tome in turn and leafed through it.

  “At the front there’s a note from Maria’s mother to her only child. She says that in the event of her or Maria’s father’s death, there are four families she was to go to for protection.”

  “Let me guess,” Mendoza said. “The Yoders, the Ropps ...”

  Carter attempted to finish the sentence. “The Wysses and –”

  Locklear beat him to it. “Eric Stoll.”

  A silence settled into the room while the group absorbed the revelation.

  “The book provides evidence that they were organising to have Shank removed from ministry. They’d written to Bishop Rahn and asked for a meeting.”

  “But they never got there?” Carter asked.

  “No, but they had told him enough for him to send the Pletts in to minister until he found a permanent replacement.”

  Mendoza sat down and drank her coffee which had gone cold.

  “Then, someone must have been telling Shank about them … someone close to them.”

  Locklear and Mendoza both moved their eyes to Carter.

  He shook his head violently. “No, my father knew nothing about this. He would have mentioned it. I’m sure of it!”

  “Then who?” Mendoza asked.

  Locklear sat back down to study the next section of the book.

  “We’ll soon find out.”

  Mendoza fanned herself and pulled her desk up beside Carter under the only window that would open and took half of Maria’s Wheeler’s letters from her colleague. The trio settled down to study what were now their only leads in the investigation in the stifling hot room. They read until the shrill drill of phone calls began to cut into their consciousness. Carter walked to the door and closed it tight to try to dim the noise. He had barely got back to his seat when the noise rose to a deafening level and it seemed like every extension in the station was ringing off the hook.

  The three stood in unison. Something was wrong. Carter was the first down the corridor. He stopped at reception and listened as three cops answered 911 calls. Another phone rang continuously so he answered it. It was Karen Mason, a receptionist at Shank Creamery. Carter cupped his hand over his other ear as he tried to listen to the hysterical woman. All over the room he could hear the same words, over and over: Shank Creamery, Peter Wyss, gunshots. He handed the phone to another cop and followed Locklear and Mendoza outside. Already cars were screeching off the lot, sirens screaming.

  The first thing Locklear noticed about the reception area of Shank Creamery was that the semi-naked statue, once pride of place, had been shot through. The upper segment of the naked woman lay face down in the water fountain and the lower half of the fake marble sculpture lay in pieces on the floor. He followed behind heavily armed riot police as they tried to move trapped staff from the building. A familiar man passed him carrying a briefcase with two bullet holes in it. Locklear stopped. He was the same man who had been amused by Locklear’s ramblings in the foyer when he had come to visit Shank for the first time, except this time he was not grinning. The bespectacled, balding man was pale as a ghost and was clinging onto to whatever was in his briefcase. Locklear stopped and the man’s hands shook as he handed the sergeant a business card. Locklear glanced at it quickly. J. Stein- IRS. It was clear from his expression that Stein expected Locklear to call him. He placed the card in his trouser pocket.

  “Now is the time to handle your weapon,” Locklear said to Mendoza. He suppressed an urge to tell her to stay outside and away from danger. His trooper would accuse him of sexism and she was partly right, but it was mostly because he cared about her and didn’t want her kid growing up without a mother. Peter Wyss was armed and, having emptied two rounds from a semi-automatic rifle into the walls of the foyer, was somewhere in the building, presumably looking to kill Samuel Shank.

  Maguire, dressed in a bulletproof vest, came from the elevator and informed them that two further shots had rung out from an upstairs floor since Wyss had rushed the stairs of the building forty minutes earlier. Locklear removed his gun from its holster and began to climb the stairs to Samuel Shank’s offices. When he reached the top of the stairs, he motioned for Carter, Mendoza and Maguire to stay low.

  Two heavily armed police brought Locklear to a windowless room and updated him. It was over twenty minutes since they’d heard the last shot fired. All staff had been evacuated from the building and, as far as they could tell, only Jacob Shank and his father Samuel were unaccounted for and according to Shank’s secretary most likely trapped in the suite at the bottom of the corridor. Wyss, as far as they could tell, was in the room with them and was insisting on speaking with Locklear alone.

  Mendoza’s
face was telling him not to do it while Carter remained silent.

  “It’s a trap, sarge,” Maguire said. “He says he wants to tell you something but Peter knows he’s not getting out of here to go home. He’s got nothing to lose. He’s here to settle scores and you’re one of them.”

  “Carter?” Locklear asked.

  Lee moved his gaze from Maguire to Mendoza and then rested his eyes on his sergeant.

  “I say talk to him.”

  Mendoza’s mouth dropped open.

  “Carter, I reckon this is the first time you and I have ever agreed on anything,” Locklear replied.

  Mendoza moved to the front of the small group.

  “Don’t do it, sarge, please!” she begged.

  “You want to get home to your kid or not?” he asked.

  Mendoza didn’t answer.

  Locklear followed the lead riot cop to the end of the bright corridor. “Burke” was sewn into his jacket. He wondered if Burke had said goodbye to a family this morning and if he’d wondered if he’d be coming home that night.

  Burke pressed the button on his phone. It rang three times. Locklear could hear it ringing on the other side of the door. It answered. Locklear couldn’t hear what was said but Wyss’s voice sounded urgent, angry, afraid, dangerous.