Sassafras, Part 80

Rick


I could already connect Sneider and Stapleton to Santo’s disappearance, maybe his death. All I needed was to find out if Stapleton and Hollywood were the same person. Just because Stapleton was involved in the same fight as the man I was looking for didn’t mean he was that man. Maybe they were partners. I searched for any other complaints brought by Martin and found two others filed the same day for the same incident. Luckily, the other officers didn’t have parents as considerate as Stapleton did. There was a lot of information in their files. They both gave statements naming Stapleton as the man who attacked Martin. That pretty much connected all the dots as far as I was concerned.

By then it was time to hit the road. I called Boyd to give him the good news.

“Boyd.”

“Good news old man. Are you at your office yet?”

“Pulling in right now. What do you have for me?”

“Well, for starters I have statements from two other officers naming Stapleton as the man who Matt called Hollywood. Check your e-mail. I sent you enough evidence to connect Stapleton to both murders, and Sneider to Santos’s. You need to bring in Matt and question him.”

“Okay, okay. Hold your horses. You don’t need to tell me how to do my job. I had a hunch I was going to be heading to Sassafras. Already booked a hotel room in Bond for tonight. I’ll go over everything you sent me before I go. I want to stay away from the police or the sheriff’s department until I know for sure who’s dirty and who’s not, but I’m definitely going to talk to Matt.”

“How much longer until all this is over?”

“Small town life not agreeing with you?”

“I’m worried about Jenny’s sister, Joan. Sneider’s got a bug up his ass about her. I don’t think she’s safe. I’d really like to get her and her nephew out of town.”

“Now, just wait until I get a chance to talk to Matt. I don’t want you spooking anybody. Hopefully I’ll have a statement by tonight and this will be over by morning. Think you can wait that long?”

“I don’t guess I have any choice, do I?”

“Just be patient. You did good work, Rick.”

“Yeah, well it isn’t over until the fat lady sings.”

“I hear her warming up already.”

“I hope so.”

I left early, but the highway was still so bad I barely got to my PO’s office on time. At first I was pissed at how slow everybody was going, until I hit the first slick spot. I guess the locals know what they’re doing. Still, I counted three cars on the side of the road on the way in and the snow was still coming down. Then, of course, I ended up having to sit in the waiting room for a half hour. He’s not a bad guy, but doesn’t go out of his way to be nice. I guess he’s just overworked because he never has any idea who I am. This was the fifth time I’ve seen him and he didn’t even know my name.

He asked the usual questions. Am I still working at Purina? Do I still live at the Monte Vista? Have I been in any trouble? Then he told me my file was picked for a random drug screen. I tried to talk him out of it. Not because I wasn’t clean, but my crime wasn’t remotely connected to drugs, and I never tested positive while I was in prison. I didn’t see why I had to piss in a bottle now, but he said there was no getting around it. Rules are rules and all that. So he followed me to the bathroom and watched me take a leak.

I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket almost as soon as I got in his office, but I couldn’t answer it. When I got out of the building I checked to see who called. I smiled when I saw Joan’s number. Then I heard the voicemail she left and almost had a heart attack right there on the sidewalk.

“Hi, Rick!” she bubbled with excitement. “I have the greatest news. You’ll never guess. Billy found something on Jenny’s blog, an entry she never finished. Remember that drug dealer? That guy they found in his trunk? She knew who killed him! It was Sneider! She had evidence she was going to take to the sheriff’s department, but he must have found out somehow. I’m going to call Officer Stapleton, the guy she was supposed to meet, and show him the picture Jenny had. And don’t get mad at me for snooping. Billy found it, it wasn’t me, honest. I’ve been good.”

Shit, fuck, and holy crap! I had to dial twice because my finger twitched the first time, but finally I heard it ring. Please, God, let this be a nightmare. Let me wake up and start this day all over again. Finally she answered.

"Joan, this is important. Did you already call Officer Stapleton?"

"Yes."

Fuck. “Did you use your cell phone?"

"Yes."

Thank God. At least Sneider hadn’t heard it. “What did he say?"

"He said he'd meet me at the car wash at noon. Why? What's going on?" I looked at my watch. That was less than 15 minutes. It just gets better and better.

“You can’t go to the car wash, Jenny. Last night Matt said Stapleton killed Jenny.”

“What!” I could just imagine the look on her face. “You, you…Rick! Matt told you who killed Jenny and you didn’t bother telling me anything? You knew all last night and never said anything!”

“Hold on, hold on. I got Matt talking last night and all he said was that somebody he called Hollywood did it. I didn’t tell you because I wanted to find out who Hollywood was before I said anything.”

“You should have told me, Rick!”

“I couldn’t. If I told you anything you would have run right down to Tanner’s and started interrogating Matt. You know you would have.”

“Well maybe I would have found out more than you did.”

“And maybe he would have clammed up. What then?”

“We could have gone to the police.”

“And said what? To who? Hollywood could have been anybody, Joan. All I knew was he was a police officer and he wasn’t Sneider. That doesn’t really narrow it down, does it?”

“You still, you should have said something,” her voice shook as she talked. “You should have trusted me,” she whispered.

“I do trust you, Joan. Maybe I should have told you last night, but I know you. You wouldn’t have been able to stay home after I told you what Matt said. I couldn’t take that chance. I’m sorry. I didn’t find out who Hollywood was until right before I left for my PO meeting. I didn’t want to tell you what he said over the phone. I’m not going to. I’ll tell you everything he said when I get back, but you can’t go meet Stapleton.”

“But why would Stapleton want to kill Jenny? He didn’t even know her.”

“He knew Sneider. Look at the picture, Joan. He’s the man on the left, leaning against a car.”

There was a moment of silence. “How do you know who’s in the picture, Rick?”

Oh, shit. “Just trust me, Joan. I’ll explain everything when I see you.”

“Rick, how do you know who’s in the picture?”

This was going to get ugly. “I’ve seen it.”

“When? How?”

“It doesn’t matter, Joan. I swear, I’ll explain everything as soon as I see you again, but we don’t have time right now. You’ve just got to trust me. You can’t stay there. When you don’t show up at the car wash he’ll be looking for you. You've got to get out of there, now. Don’t wait for me, just get Billy and leave. Don’t take Jenny’s car. As soon as he realizes you’re not going to show he’ll start looking for it. Do you know someplace close where you can hole up that nobody will think to look for you?”

“Yes, I know a place.”

I waited a second, expecting her to tell me where, but all I heard was silence. I tried telling myself the only thing that mattered was that she was going to get out of there, but when I realized she didn’t trust me enough to tell me where it felt worse than that fiery slap she gave me Friday night. “But you’re not going to tell me, are you?”

“No. Not until you tell me the truth. The whole truth. I don’t know if you’re lying to me, or just not telling me everything, but you’re up to something. I can feel it.”

“Okay, okay. It’s probably better if you don’t tell me. Just lay low. I’ll call you when I get to town. Don’t trust anybody. And definitely stay away from all the cops. They are dirty. I should have told you a long time ago. I’m sorry, Joan.”

I heard her huff into the phone. “Yeah, that makes two of us,” she said and hung up.

Sassafras, Part 79

Rick

As soon as I got in my car I flipped open my phone and called Boyd. I was surprised to get through.

“Boyd.”

“Get my message?”

“Rick! Sure is good to hear from you. I was just about to send in the bloodhounds.”

“Don’t you check your voicemail?”

“Oh, I’ll get around to it. I was busy all weekend with a hostage negotiation in Branson.”

“I didn’t hear anything about that on the news.”

“Well, of course not. You never hear about half of the things I do, young man,” he drawled with that slow Texas accent of his. It was easy to think he was just a dumb country bumpkin if you didn’t know better, but I’d been in his office and saw the diplomas and awards on the wall, the pictures of him shaking hands with presidents, or in his Marine uniform. “Any time my job makes the news I consider it a personal insult. A job well done is a job unpublicized. What do you have?”

“Just a murder witness.” That ought to get his attention.

He gave a soft whistle. “Somebody’s talking about Santos?”

“No, not Santos. Jenny. That waitress I told you about. The one that looked like a hit and run? I have a witness saw her fighting with a county sheriff. Did you ever ID the man in the picture I e-mailed you? The guy with Sneider.”

“That would be Officer Stapleton. Not the brightest bulb in the package, but well connected. His uncle is a judge, his grandmother was Miss Missouri, second runner-up for Miss America. His step-father is the governor’s personal assistant. Old money, but not much of it’s left. Personally, he’s a real piece of work. Has a file almost as big as Sneider’s. Probably be bigger if his parents didn’t still clean up after him. Is he your man?”

“I don’t know. All I’ve got is a nickname, Hollywood, and that he was involved in breaking up a bar fight at Tanner’s last summer that left a man with a broken arm.”

“I don’t know anything about a Hollywood. Or a bar fight. I don’t have Stapleton’s file here in front of me. It’s back at the office. Any connection between Stapleton and Sneider besides a picture?”

I had to think for a minute. “I don’t know. I don’t have anything connecting Sneider to Jenny’s death besides hunches and a generally bad attitude about the man. He’s just been acting squirrelly ever since she died, but he never was exactly normal. I know somebody at the sheriff’s department has him sweating about it, but I don’t know who it is.”

I pulled in the parking lot of the Monte Vista and got out. “Look, I’m home now. I’ll get on-line and see what I can find out and call you back.”

While my laptop booted up I jumped in the shower. When I got on-line I looked up Stapleton’s police file. It didn’t take long to find a complaint against him for police brutality last summer, but there weren’t many details. The whole thing seemed to have been hushed up pretty thoroughly. All I got was the name of the person complaining, Andy Martin. I looked Martin up and eventually found him living in a high-brow subdivision in Jefferson City. A big step up for an auto mechanic. An auto mechanic who was treated for multiple fractures of the left arm last summer. I smelled a payoff. And a connection, however thin.

I decided to try calling him, but got his wife, girlfriend, some female voice on the phone. I said I was a lawyer for the sheriff’s department, but she didn’t have anything to say to me. When I mentioned Stapleton’s name she questioned his parentage and intelligence and hung up. I liked her attitude.

Sassafras, Part 78

June

I started cleaning the kitchen, while Billy went back in the living room and got on the computer again. A couple of minutes later he called my name.

“What is it?” I asked while I filled the sink with soapy water.

“Come here, Aunt Jo! I’ve got to show you something.”

“Okay, just a second.” I wiped my hands on a towel while I walked over to him. “What’s up?”

“Look what I found, Aunt Jo. I was going to put a post on the Asylum about Mom, but I found something she wrote the day she died but never posted. She must have written it right before she left that night. Read it, Aunt Jo, read it!”






November 3

I can't post this yet, but I am so excited I have to write about it. I think I finally nailed the cops here. They are all a bunch of crooks. I hear people talking about them all the time at the diner. I even hear the cops talking. They don't pay any attention to who might be listening, the bunch of retards. Anyhoo, I saw something on the TV last night about a dead body they found a couple of nights ago. They found out he was a big drug dealer in Chicago that had been missing for about two months. When they showed a picture of the guy I about fell off my chair. I recognized him from somewhere. I had to go through all my pictures, but I found one of him standing in front of Kroger's talking to Detective Sneider, the police chief of Sassafras. I don't know for sure when I took the picture, but there are signs in the window about homecoming, so it had to be less than two months ago. I called the sheriff's department and talked to Officer Stapleton. He wants to meet me tonight. He said not to tell anybody I was going to meet him, and to bring all my evidence with me.

This is just too cool. Nothing exciting ever happens here. I think the last exciting thing that happened in Sassafras was when a cheerleader was doing a flip and her top got snagged on somebody's class ring and came off mid flip. And that is only exciting if you like seeing topless cheerleaders, which I don't particularly look forward to.

I wish I could go ahead and post this now, but I don’t know who reads this. Maybe I’m getting paranoid, but if the chief of police finds out I have evidence he killed a drug dealer he wouldn’t hesitate to kill me too.









“I don’t understand. If this was on her blog, why didn’t we see it before?”

“She didn’t post it. Put it on-line.” He clicked to a different page. “See here, where it says ‘Draft’? She started writing this but didn’t post it. I guess she was going to finish writing it when she got home. I wouldn’t have seen it, but I wanted to let everybody who reads Mom’s blog know what happened, why she won’t write anymore.” He clicked back to the entry Jenny wrote. “I remember that,” he said. “What she wrote about the cheerleader. I was there. It was hilarious.”

“I’m sure it was. I wish she had posted this. If I read this the first night I got here I never would have called Sneider. I can’t believe all this time he was the one who killed Jenny. I can’t wait to tell Rick.”

“Rick? How do you know he wasn’t in on it? He was in prison. And Scott and Steve say he’s always at the police station. Don’t trust him, Aunt Jo. Call that sheriff guy she was going to meet. Stapleton. Call him.”

“Oh, you’re crazy. I think I know Rick a little better than you do. I trust him. Just because he was in prison doesn’t mean anything. He didn’t kill anybody. I don’t think he could.”

“Yeah, you trusted Sneider, too.”

“Well, I’m calling Rick. No matter what you think, he’s not a killer.” I called his cell phone, but just got his voicemail. We had real evidence now, something we could take to the police and clear all this up. I picked up the phone book and looked up the number for the sheriff’s station, but Stapleton wasn’t in so I had to leave a message for him.

I was almost finished with the dishes when the phone rang.

“Hello, this is Officer Stapleton. May I speak with Joan Weaver?”

“This is Joan. I’m glad you called back.”

”You left a message saying you had information about a drug dealer that killed your sister.”

“No, my sister had evidence connecting the chief of police with the death of that drug dealer they found in Memphis a week or two ago. She was supposed to meet you the night she died. I guess he killed her before she could meet you.”

”What day did she die?”

“A week ago. Monday night.”

I could hear him flipping papers around. “Monday, Monday. Yes, I had an appointment to meet a woman late Monday night, but she never showed up. She didn’t leave a name or number so I couldn’t follow up on it.”

“Well, I have the evidence she wanted to show you. My nephew found it on her computer this morning. Would you like me to bring it up to the sheriff’s station?”

“No, if the local police are involved I’d rather not meet you here, just in case somebody here is involved. I’d rather meet you in Sassafras somewhere. Do you know where the car wash is by the bank?”

“Yes. When would you like to meet?”

“How about noon?”

“Okay, noon is fine.”

“I’ll meet you then. Don’t tell anybody you’re going to meet with me. Bring all the evidence you found, and bring your nephew, too. I need to ask him some questions. I’ll see you then.”

Finally, I thought. This is all going to be over soon. I didn’t know that was really just the beginning.

Caution: TMI

I don't think I've made a secret of the fact that I'm not a spring chicken. I'd say I'm more of a summer chicken. I never really saw anything wrong with being old. It seemed stupid to think that the only 'good' age was early 20's, maybe early 30's. Like there's something wrong with being 50, or 60. I don't mind the occasional gray hairs, and I supposed if I looked closely enough in the mirror there's probably a wrinkle or two. But let me tell you, there is one thing that actually made me feel old. The first time I noticed a gray pubic hair. It was just wrong.