Murder at Willow Slough (14 page)

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Picnic

They sat on a picnic table. Puffy clouds scudded above Lake Murphey as the wind made whitecaps on the water. Willow Slough was lovely in its loneliness.

“I’ve heard there’s a suspect. But I’ve stayed away from that, I didn’t want to fit my facts to a pre-existing theory.”

“How logical your approach is. Your job isn’t to find some serial specimen, but the killer of Glenn Archer Ferguson.”

“Now that it does seem connected, it’s time to examine all available data. Do you know anything about their suspect? Who is he?”

“I don’t know much. Other people know more.” Jamie fiddled with his camera bag. He wanted mug shots of the sergeant, but now wasn’t the time.

“Tell me what you know, how you think about him.”

This headed onto dangerous ground. Why should I tell this cop about the phone calls?

Half a dozen maple seeds had blown off a nearby tree. Jamie picked up a seedpod, turned it over in his fingers, tried flipping it into the water.It pooped out after three feet. “When we were kids we called these whirlybirds.”

Kessler picked up a seed and with a sidewise flip, sent it spinning. It landed in the lake thirty feet away like it was supposed to. “We called them helicopters. I wonder how the wing helps the seed take root.”

“It doesn’t. It disperses the seed beyond the tree’s canopy.” If Jamie didn’t share his information with this cop, he would find out about it soon enough from Bulldog or Blaney. Maybe he already had, and he would never be able to trust Jamie again.

If he did share it, and Kessler misused it somehow, Jamie might end up dead.

He looked at the cop, sailing another maple seed. The sun and breeze made whitecaps on the black waves of his head. He was dazzlingly handsome.

I won’t make this decision based on that. I refuse to.

Jamie thought of Aaron Haney, of Kelvin, of Riley Jones—of Glenn Ferguson lying 200 yards away in the muck.

Jamie had no choice. It could be the break that Kelvin needed. Young and handsome, a miniature Casey. The trooper had shared a lot of information with him, more than most cops would; Kessler deserved to know everything if he was going to catch the Strangler. “Quincy County has had a suspect for years. Two guys, Tommy Ford and Jerry Lash. They’re friends, and there’s one other thing. Ford is Roger Schmidgall’s ex-lover.”

Kessler whistled through his teeth, “Whee-oo!” The screech was unlike any Jamie had ever heard.

“Ford and Schmidgall lived together years ago in Eastwood. One liked blood, the other one hates it. Or so Bulldog’s theory goes.”

“Eastwood. Sleepy farm town close to Crab Orchard, the Barlow death scene.”

“And there’s the place they lived together, the home of Dr. Randolph Scott Crum, Schmidgall’s sugar daddy.”

“Man oh man.” Kessler worked on his breathing. “The three of them together?”

“Plus Lash, who didn’t live there. He’s a more recent Ford associate. But Bulldog suspects him.”

“What’s a sugar daddy?”

“Older man who pays a younger man for sex. Crum has a long history of that, even before Schmidgall.”

“Jeez. This is real sick.”

“It’s sick because of murder, not their sexual orientation. Remember the drag queen thieves.”

“You’re right, Jamie, I won’t forget. Keep going.”

“When Crum was on trial in the Barlow case, Ford drove Crum’s sports car around Indianapolis. It’s an ongoing relationship.”

“So the theory is, there are really three or even four killers here. But only one’s ever been convicted.”

“And that was probably a bad conviction. Schmidgall’s lawyer’s still trying to get him off posthumously. She’ll never succeed, but if she did, she might take down the whole bunch.”

“Donna Quixote? Who does she say did it?”

“Crum paid for Schmidgall’s apartment in Chicago where Chuckie Pont was killed. Crum bought the original lawyer. But stick with the apartment. Why would a guy in rural Indiana pay for his boy’s apartment in Chicago? He wasn’t getting any services out of him.”

“Blackmail?”

“Bigtime. Crum was Schmidgall’s meal ticket.”

“And meanwhile Crum goes free; and these other friends of theirs go free.”

“No one’s ever officially connected the two sets of murders—the stabbings, allegedly committed by Crum and Schmidgall, who liked to see blood—got off on it—and the strangulations, allegedly committed by Ford and Lash, who aren’t into blood. Blood after all is messy, strangulation is more sanitary. Nothing to clean up afterward, no stains to worry about. No DNA to leave behind, no HIV to catch. Just hyoid

bones to crush.”

“Was there something else about photos, maybe?”

“If Schmidgall was telling the truth, and I firmly believe he was, Crum likes snuff pictures.”

“Good Lord.” Kessler said it quiet as a pallbearer.

“At Crum’s trial, a man testified that twenty years earlier, when he was 15, Crum used to buy him things in exchange for taking nude pictures of him. They never had sex; Crum wanted the pictures. Then Crum moved to Eastwood, met Schmidgall and his lover, moved them in and took pictures of them. Schmidgall did his first stabbing, and Crum paid the victim’s medical bills. Schmidgall went on to kill 21 young men and Crum got him an apartment in Chicago—in part to get rid of him, because the cops were closing in. When Schmidgall was charged with the Pont boy’s dismemberment, Crum paid for his lawyer. Along the way did he lose interest in pictures of naked young men?”

“You make a compelling case. Snuff pictures. Now that’s a sick man.”

“He’s worse than that. He’s evil.”

“I’m amazed you compiled all this information.”

“Now let’s see if we can tie it to your case. When Roger turned on his old man and accused him of directing the Barlow murder like a filmmaker, Crum went on trial and Ford, the ex-lover, was seen driving Crum’s car. What’s that about? Was he taking advantage of Crum? Doing him a favor? Or doing himself a favor? This other set of strangulations had started up, all the victims from Ford’s home city, all discovered in rural areas out of town. The killer had to drive there to dump the bodies. He didn’t transport them with Crum’s sports car.”

“He used his own. Which he was happy to park once he got access to Crum’s. What does Ford drive?”

“An old, beat-up, brown Toyota.” Geese scattered, regrouped on a nearby sandbar. Jamie shivered. The wind was cold now. “Ford knows he’s a target. But his full name has never been in the papers.”

“Why not?”

“Police haven’t officially named him; my paper and the Straight daily in Dayton are the only ones that follow these cases, and the day I got my scoop, the Oxford murders went front-page nationwide. Four students at Ole Miss knocked us out of contention. The lower the status of the victims, the less likely the murders will get publicized. With no publicity, there’s no pressure on police to commit resources.

“Serial murder investigation is hugely expensive. Bulldog’s never lacked for dedication; what he lacks is budget from the county commissioners. That’s why he and Hickman decided to go it alone, investigate on weekends, with no publicity. If Quincy County ran a million-dollar investigation, how many sheriff ’s deputies, court clerks and schoolteachers would the commissioners have to lay off?”

“Man, you’re taking me to school.”

“That’s why Gay people have to be included in the Hate Crimes Act, it provides Federal funds so rural counties don’t bankrupt themselves when a Black man’s lynched in south Georgia. But Trent Lott and the Republican bigots oppose including Gay people, they’re in favor of hate crimes.”

“But what makes hate crimes different from any other kind of crime?”

“The number of victims. Burn a cross in front of a synagogue, you intimidate every Jew in town.”

Kent felt like his brain was exploding. “Steer us back to this case, Jamie?”

“It was infuriating to watch four college kids become more important than a dozen Gay guys. Oxford was a textbook in how not to do it.”

“What happened down there?”

“There were police leaks left and right. Departments competed with each other, jealous and suspicious, every one trying to show how responsive and committed it was. Then someone leaked a suspect’s name. But the cops couldn’t pin the murders on him at all, while the guy’s life was destroyed. Two years later they got a guilty plea out of someone else. Classic. So The Ohio Gay Times learned not to publish the names of unconfirmed suspects.”

“Cops and jurisdictional fights. Competing with each other instead of cooperating. Leaking stuff. We studied that in college, we go over it at the academy all the time. But it never changes, unless you’ve got total pros heading those departments. And most of them are political bozos.”

“Bulldog’s got a colorful term for it: cops in a little boys’ pissing contest.”

“Little boys and their wee-wees.”

Jamie smiled. “But Ford knows he’s a target.”

“Why is that?”

“He and I have talked on the phone about it.”

“What!” Kessler swung around to face him.

Jamie glanced at him, stared back at the lake. “He’s called me several times. It took him three or four tries before he got up his courage the first time.”

“How do you know it was him?”

“I don’t know for absolute sure. But I know that the phone line that called my office was registered in his name—and this is so stupid, he calls on our 800 number. He doesn’t want his long-distance records subpoenaed, so he figures he’ll outsmart the cops. As if any call you make isn’t traceable. So I have them traced, and the phone company gives me names, dates and times. We have Caller ID now. Several calls were made between his home number in Indianapolis and my office, including one lengthy one where the phone company’s data matches the notes I took.”

“What did he talk about?”

“He was strange. He called to complain about my coverage of Schmidgall’s confession in the Barlow murder. How Schmidgall was innocent, what a nice guy he was, a real sweetheart. He’d just confessed! But now he’s Roger the choirboy.

“Conversely, Ford also wanted to praise my coverage. I was the only one doing anything, he said. Then he talked about the strangulations, which Schmidgall had nothing to do with. He was already in jail in Illinois when the strangulations started, so why bring them up at all, if he was calling about Schmidgall?

“Thus he linked the two sets of murders himself.”

A chill raced down Kessler’s back. “Man, you’re onto something major.”

“He wasn’t calling about Schmidgall, he was pumping me for information about the Strangler, to see how much I knew. So I strung him along, kept the call going as long as I could. As soon as I gave him the reassurance he wanted, he abruptly hung up.”

“That he wasn’t a suspect. Even though he is.”

“I hate lying. I couldn’t believe he fell for it.”

“What else did he say?”

“He turned on this big Gay rights routine, the media don’t care, the cops don’t care, they’re all homophobic, how terrible for the victims. Lots of anti-cop rhetoric.”

“No doubt. Did you record this?”

“No, I didn’t know the technology then. We knew he had been calling and we thought we were prepared, but we weren’t. We only had two lines then and we were going to put it on our answering machine, but it only records on line one; when he called, line one was busy, so the call kicked over to line two. I didn’t realize there was technology to allow me to record from any phone.”

“Gosh. That would have been a golden opportunity.”

“Right. I blew it.” Thank you, Columbia, for your useless, elitist education. “Afterwards Bulldog supplied me with some $2 microphone you can buy at any shopping mall. Ford’s called again and I’ve recorded it, but the conversations are nowhere near as revealing.”

“Did you make notes?”

“Sure, while we were talking, then as soon as I got off the phone I wrote it up. Bulldog thinks they may not be admissible, but some courts have held that reporters are trained observers and our notes are given a certain weight. It’s not the same as tape recordings and voice prints, but…”

“Who has these notes?”

“I do, and no one else. Quincy has my statement based on those notes, which I wrote immediately afterward. I don’t give up the originals, so don’t even ask. Both Ohio and Indiana have reporter shield laws. Journalism is not an arm of government, we practice our craft unfettered.”

“I know. I enforce the First Amendment too.”

“We volunteered the summary so you’d understand his state of mind. He’s scared you’re getting closer.”

“So this guy Ford reads your paper.”

“Right.” Jamie watched the geese playing in the reeds.

“Jesus H. Kristofferson. Everything you write…”

Silence.

“Everything you know…”

Silence.