CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Highways and Headstones

“I got a hit on that Frimel guy,” Aaron Iverson called out when he saw Maggie Reardon enter the room. He was sitting at the computer with a big, mid-western grin washing across his face. “Delbert Frimel has an address and it’s not the vacant lot he had listed on his Ohio driver’s license.”

Maggie walked over and leaned against his desk.

“What’ve you got?” she asked. “Where’s his home base?”

“I’ve been going around and around with that name and finally found something,” he said proudly. “I even went on Ancestry.com and started searching birth and death certificates. The guy had to be somewhere.”

“Cut to the chase, Iverson.”

“Okay, okay. You’re an impatient one, anybody ever tell you that?”

A thousand times, Maggie thought. It was a comment that signaled Aaron was entering the comfort zone. It was better than having him tiptoeing on eggshells, worrying about saying the wrong thing or making the wrong move. He was finally right where he needed to be.

“No argument on that,” she said, unoffended. “Patience isn’t one of my virtues. Now give me the skinny on Frimel.”

Aaron cleared his throat.

“He resides in Sunbury, Pennsylvania.”

“The address?”

“Get this,” he said. “He’s sleeping peacefully in a plot at Holy Cross Cemetery.”

“Son of a…”

“Now it gets interesting. Our mystery man got his driver’s license a couple months after the real Delbert Frimel got covered with his dirt blanket back in Pennsylvania. I.D. theft. He probably just read the obits or walked through a couple of graveyards.”

“All you need is a copy of a dead person’s birth certificate. Somebody close to your own age. It’s easy. And even easier to get a driver’s license from that. Then you’ve got a nice, new identity with your photo to prove it.”

“Easy peasy. But it makes me wonder why he didn’t use those ID’s to get a passport and skip the country.”

“It depends what he was running from. It could’ve been anything from petty theft to murder to anything in between.”

“Or maybe he wasn’t smart enough to think that far ahead.”

Aaron and Maggie bounced their ideas back and forth like ping-pong balls.

“If he was stealing plates he was probably stealing cars.”

“If he was smart he lifted plates from cars other than the ones he stole. Old cars. Cops might keep on the lookout for recent models. They’re worth more. The owners would complain more. But older cars wouldn’t be worth the bother. If an officer stumbled across one fine, if not then no big loss.”

“Right. And he kept heading west. His target might have been Mexico.”

Aaron laughed. “Here in Arizona I’ll bet you don’t get many people sneaking across the border into Mexico.”

Maggie sat down and shuffled through the mess on her desk. She picked up the Polaroid photo of the license plates she’d gotten from forensics and studied it. A trunk full of tin, in no particular order stared back at her. She picked up the phone and called down to the evidence room.

“Detective Reardon here. You got the evidence in yet from the murder out at the Desert Museum? Great. I’m sending down Aaron Iverson.”

She hung up.

“Aaron, get downstairs and pull the box on this. There should be a big bag of license plates in the evidence locker. Bring those up here asap. We’ve got some traveling to do.”

Aaron took off and Maggie pulled up a map of the United States on her computer.

He returned in record time, the large bag of license plates in hand.

“Clear your desk. Push it up against mine,” she said, clearing off her own desk. “We need some room to spread these out.”

The sound was like the metal on metal screech of a train coming to a halt as he pushed his desk the few inches across the floor. He lined it up against hers, then dumped out the plates.

They counted seven.

“Okay,” she said. “The phony driver’s license was from Ohio, Delbert Frimel croaked in Pennsylvania. Let’s put some order to these.” She looked up at the United States map on her computer screen.

“Is there a plate from Ohio or Pennsylvania?”

“Both,” he said, handing them to her.

She placed the Pennsylvania plate on the left corner of his desk. “This was the starting point,” she said. “Logic says Ohio was step two.”

“He was running from something, or someone, and was good at erasing himself.”

Maggie hit the print key and the printer spat out the map. She rose from her chair and retrieved it, slapping it down on her desk. “This’ll make it easier,” she said, circling Sunbury, Pennsylvania with a black, felt tipped marker.

“Where in Ohio was the driver’s license issued?”

“Springfield.”

Maggie grabbed the Ohio license plate and placed it next to the one from Pennsylvania. “Step two,” she said. “What are the other states?”

Aaron shuffled through them. “New Mexico, Illinois, Oklahoma, Missouri. This guy sure made tracks. Oh, and Arkansas.”

“I’d bet there was a trail of stolen cars that followed the same path,” Maggie mumbled to herself as she studied the map. “Put Illinois next to Ohio. Put Missouri after that. Now Arkansas.”

She circled the states as Aaron lined up the license plates.

“Oklahoma next.”

“That leaves New Mexico as the caboose,” he said, placing it at the end of the line. “Oh, I checked it out and the Delbert Frimel driver’s license was first issued ten years ago, so it must’ve been close to that time that our guy hit the road and took on his new identity.”

“Ten years is a long time to be on the lam,” she said as she circled New Mexico. “A person can do six, maybe seven-hundred miles a day. Eight-hundred max, but that’d be pushing it. This guy settled awhile in several places…”

“He’d have needed money to keep on the move.”

“If Frimel was that hard to get a hit on he worked menial labor along the way.”

“Getting paid under the table. No record. No trail.”

“Dishwashing. Bussing tables. Day labor.”

She studied the map, running her fingers along the routes Delbert Frimel/John Doe might have driven. Instead of taking major arteries he likely kept to minor, less traveled roads. It would take longer but there was less chance of being spotted.

“No, Pennsylvania isn’t step one,” she corrected. “It’s step two. Step one, the location from where he started, would have been east of there. He’d have been on the road awhile before hitting Pennsylvania.” Her marker traced an outline of the United States from New York and all the way north to Maine. New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. One of those states had to have been his starting point. If he was on the run there was no way he’d have started in New Jersey or Maryland and headed north before veering to the west. He’s have looked for the fastest way to get the hell out of Dodge.

That narrowed the number of search states to six, eliminating a whopping forty-four.

“I’ve got another project,” she said, handing him the map.“Go back ten years on each of these states and bring up what crimes you can that happened within, say, a six month time frame before Mr. Doe found his new identity.”

“That could be thousands,” he said. “Counting New York it could be millions.”

“Narrow it as best you can. Look for ‘wanted’s’ that fit his general age and description. Start with felonies and work your way down. See if anything fits.”

“Geez Louise, Maggie.”

“It’s called old-fashioned police work.”

“It could take days.”

“You got anything better to do?”

* * * *

The young man had left another paper bag outside her motel room door. She didn’t answer when he knocked, but waited until the door slammed down the hall before opening her own and looking out. She picked up the bag then spun around, double locking the door behind her.

She plopped down on the bed, curious as to what his latest gift to her might be. On one level his game scared her, on another it was like opening presents on Christmas or her birthday.

When she reached inside the bag, her fingers felt something soft and fluffy. Slowly, she pulled it out, looking at it with puzzlement and confusion.

A sensation swelled and grew deep in her stomach as she stared at it. A feeling akin to emptiness—or longing—or something not quite remembered. She wondered why he had given her this old thing as she held it in her hands and studied it. Two black button eyes looked back at her. It was a brown teddy bear. She laughed at the small tear where it’s nose had once been, loose threads hanging from its wound like make-believe boogers. It must have been a child’s well-loved and cherished companion, as the fur was stained and the fabric was thread-bare where the child had carried it around by it’s neck. Her body rocked back and forth as she clutched the bear against her chest, holding it tightly and comforting it.

“I’ll call you Mr. Muggles,” she whispered into its ragged ear. One lone tear traced a path down her cheek. “That’s a good name, don’t you think?”

She recognized his knock.

This time she opened it, just a crack.

“It’s time we talked,” he said.

“I don’t know you.”

“You do. But you might not remember me. I’m David.”

At first it meant nothing to her. David. David. But his name held the same vague familiarity she felt when she’d decided to call the teddy bear Mr. Muggles.

“My name is Darlene.”

“No, your name is Darla.”

Reluctantly, she let him in.

They talked for a long time. After he left, he dialed a long distance number.

“I’ll make a reservation for a red eye flight that’ll have you here tomorrow,” he said. “I think she’s ready. I’ll email you the ticket info and boarding passes. When you get here take a taxi to the address I’m sending you.”

There was a pause as he listened to the voice at the other end.

“No. I don’t want her out of my sight. Do it my way. When you get here go to Room Twelve. I’ll be waiting.”

At the same time he was on the phone, the girl was dialing the number on Maggie Reardon’s business card.

“I need your help,” she sobbed. “My…husband…is missing.”

* * * *

The loud afternoon sun screamed across the car’s windshield, temporarily blinding Maggie Reardon as she turned west onto Miracle Mile. She was heading for the Pink Flamingo Motel. The Mary Smith girl, the one who had made the series of 911 disconnects, had refused to come to the police department to file a missing persons report. That was odd enough in itself. Then she’d said she wasn’t supposed to leave her room, which struck Maggie as even stranger. If her husband’s disappearing act was important, you’d think she’d be down there in a New York minute. It could be nothing more than a man out on a binge and Maggie could have written it off right there. Oddballs were everywhere and there was no crime in that. But something hadn’t felt right. Her curiosity was getting the best of her. She’d known the woman was lying. The what and why of it begged answers. If the young woman wouldn’t come to Maggie then Maggie would go to her.

It was time to fill in some blanks.

* * * *

Maggie’s conversation with the young woman was as strange as their first. And as guarded. She had finally confessed that her name was Darlene rather than Mary, but even that tidbit changed from Darlene to Darla and then back again. And she damn near panicked when Maggie asked her for her last name. It was as if she didn’t know. Or was afraid to give the true answer. The woman clutched a bag of animal cookies and nibbled on them nervously every time Maggie asked a question. She was as skittish as a feral cat and twice as wary. Maggie sensed that if she pushed too hard Darlene would stop talking altogether. She needed to rein in her impatience and gain the woman’s trust. A little information was better than none at all. At least for now.

Darlene had tossed the empty animal cookie bag into the wastebasket and replaced it with a worn out teddy bear, clutching it close. The most she was able to get out of her was a physical description of her missing husband, whose name also seemed to have escaped her.

His description sounded familiar.

He sounded a hell of a lot like her John Doe from the Arizona-Sonoran Desert Museum who had been removed from his cactus bed only to take up residence on a cold slab in the morgue.

But Maggie didn’t tell her that. She had the impression that Darlene was too fragile to digest it in one big dose. Instead Maggie wrote in her notepad, jotting down what little information Darlene provided. She’d have to get a few head shots of the man they found in the javelina enclosure and hope that Darla/Darlene could handle it when she had her identify the body from the photos.

They could take her in for questioning after that, whether she liked it or not.

There was also the chance that she was trying to cover up. If she and the man down the hall were lovers, one of them could be the killer. It’s not rare that the first person who offers assistance in an investigation is the perpetrator. They think their cooperation removes them from the suspect list, but more often than not the opposite is true.

“I’ll get back to you,” she’d said reassuringly.

She’d need to work through this in baby steps.