The Weight of Living Page 19

  Ramirez took a deep breath and pursed her lips. “Well, then what I’m gonna tell you falls into that general black hole of weirdness.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The photos of the six girls? The bodies are the same girl. The heads are different.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Someone edited the photos to add five different heads onto the one girl’s body,” Ramirez said. “Let me use your computer and I’ll show you. Okay, look how the ankles are crossed, and the hands folded — exactly the same. The turn of the shoulders is the same and they are sitting the same distance from the bed post in each photo. But here’s the real proof: All their boobs are the same size. Girls develop at different rates, Frank, not like that.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “Don’t know. But when I saw that layout I thought of a catalogue, something for sale.”

  “Oh, Maria, let’s not go there.”

  “Hey, Frank. We’re already there.”

  Ramirez’s footsteps faded and the office settled into a deep and nervy silence.

  That no one had heard from Calista Knox was troubling, he thought. But at least Dawson was back, and full of piss and vinegar was he. First day back in Ironton and he had written a scathing story about his arrest, complete with photos of the two trucks.

  Turned out they belonged to a pair of Ironton firefighters who were paid cash to block in Dawson’s car. They were the same pair who had followed Dawson weeks before. One needed the money to pay his rent and the other was behind on child support. They said the money came from a big dude, “A cop we think.”

  McCann.

  Nagler leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers behind his head.

  How do they find these people, all of them, in need?

  Maybe Calista was right. Being a victim makes it easier to spot another — or create one.

  His phone rang while he pondered the meaning of all that.

  “Yeah, Nagler.”

  Silence, but breathing.

  “Where are my books?”

  Nagler smiled, even as a chill ran up his spine. Hello, Tank.

  “Not even a proper introduction before we discuss business? How rude. It’s books, now? I thought you wanted the girl.”

  “Please, Mr. Nagler, I’m sorry, Detective Nagler,” spoken slowly, a pause between detective and Nagler. A voice eerily calm and well rounded, devoid of an accent. “You already know me. I believe you referred to me as ‘Tank.’”

  “How would you know that?” Nagler asked, forcing his voice to be calm.

  “I heard it from an Atlanta police detective.”

  “Not the one I know.”

  “Can you be sure?”

  Okay. Can I? I can be unnerved, which is what he wants, or I can attack. Attack. See if he makes a mistake.

  “Well, either way. We in New Jersey call you Randolph Garrettson. In Georgia, I believe you may be Arthur Harrison and Randolph Garrettson. Do you ever get them mixed up, your multiple identities? What do they call you in Nebraska, where they are investigating your apparent death, or in Florida, and Alabama and the other states that are seizing your assets?”

  “Do not taunt me, Detective Nagler.”

  That was a thin-skinned response, Nagler thought, Poke, poke, poke.

  “Sure. I’ll treat you with the respect you deserve. Oh, wait. You don’t deserve any.”

  There was short brutish laugh.

  “I merely want my books.” The voice, darker, more threatening, insistent.

  “Well, they’re down in lock-up.”

  “Check your security tapes. We examined those boxes last night and the contents were not what we had expected.”

  “That’s right. We moved them because we knew you were coming. And how is Commissioner McCann? Well, they must be in Leonard’s warehouse. But, oh, you already know that we caught your little sneak thieves after they set off enough alarms to wake the dead. Did you enjoy the magazines? And no, they are not at my house, either.” Not anymore, anyway. “Oh, and what are you all driving? We have your SUV, but I suppose you’ll just steal another one.”

  “I was told you were clever. But everyone is vulnerable. Will you be as clever when I take her back?”

  Nagler smiled. Heard that before, but the threat to the girl? Play it.

  “So, that was either an offer of a bribe, or a threat, and Tank, the people who told you I was clever, probably also told you I don’t scare. And, no, you won’t get the girl.”

  “I’m not trying to scare you, Detective. But there is a cost to everything. And how do you know that I don’t have her now?”

  “Ah, Tank, because if you had her, you wouldn’t be on the phone with me. So, look, this is what I know. There are a least six states shutting down your Ponzi scheme, so your cash flow is drying up, and a dozen towns in Jersey are in court to claim your properties so you’ll have no place to stash the cash, and we’re picking off your associates one by one and they’re all singing like canaries. And you know all this, so you know the circle is getting smaller. We will find the kids that you raped, and I’m guessing that the statute of limitations has not run out on all those cases, and then, of course, there is the potential for multiple murder charges out of Georgia, isn’t that right? Guys like you don’t win, Tank. So, let’s find a way to end this. Or you can try to flee to a country that doesn’t have an extradition treaty with the U.S., either way. But with your photo plastered all over the world, you’ll find no place to go. But we’ll get you before you try to leave.”

  A snort. “I don’t run.”

  “Tank, you’ve been running for your entire life.”

  The phone went dead.

  Nagler sat with his eyes closed. That was either brilliant or colossally stupid. How desperate was Tank?

  Crap, Guidrey.

  He dialed his phone asking himself, what the hell happened in Atlanta?

  “Yeah, hello.” A dry, hollow voice.

  “Hey, John, Frank Nagler from New Jersey. I was just speaking to our friend Tank; you know, Garrettson, or whatever he calls himself. He mentioned that an Atlanta cop told him we called him Tank. That wasn’t you, was it?”

  A short, stifled laugh. “No, Frank, I’ve never talked to Tank.”

  “Something’s going on?”

  “I’ve been suspended,” Guidrey said wearily. “Under suspicion of skimming drug money from evidence.” A voice between anger and misery. “Never, ever did it, Frank. I’ve been a detective for fifteen years... never.”

  “Hey, John. I believe you. We never met, but I could tell that you were a good cop, just by the way you jumped on the Tank Garrettson thing.”

  A breath. “Appreciate that. But it jumped back, man. He got to some higher-up. I told you we’ve had a drug war here; bunch of murders and drive-bys. But made about twenty arrests of top distributors.”

  “Good work.”

  “Yeah...thanks. But after the last batch I get hauled before internal affairs accused of taking a couple grand. A couple grand? Why would I blow my career for two thousand bucks? I didn’t, and the union attorney and my personal attorney proved it quickly, it was so transparent, but they have to go through the process. I’ll get cleared, but my career is effectively over. Instead of stripes on my sleeve I’ll have the word ‘accused.’” A pause, a sigh. “I don’t want to become a mall cop, Frank. I love this job.”

  “Hey, John, tell me who to call. I’ll put in a good word. The tips you gave us on Tank are really paying off. We’re close.”

  “Don’t get too close. I mean catch the bastard, but that’s what happened to my captain. Got too close, got compromised. Garrettson found something and used it.”

  “Why is Garrettson so good at that? Finding the weak spot?”

  “I’ve thought a lot about that, Frank. I think it was because he had all the things that we rely on stripped away and used against him: His youth, his gender, the love for his parents and siblings, all the positive thi
ngs of life twisted by others to become weapons. So, he used them as such and attacked others. Life for Tank is not joyful, it’s about revenge and hate.”

  “That’s what it seems, John. A young woman here who claimed, in one version of her life, to be a Garrettson, said living in that Georgia household was about being a victim taught by victims.”

  “Wow. What’s her name?”

  “Calista. Calista Knox.”

  “Okay, that’s made up.”

  “Ya think?” Nagler laughed. “She said she was the daughter who escaped by digging out of the root cellar.”

  “No shit! I had wondered what happened to her. Think it’s true?”

  Nagler wearily placed the phone to his forehead. Then said, “Anything is possible, John. Anything.”

  “Okay. Look, ask her what she used to dig the hole.” Guidrey was genuinely excited. “I read it in one of the interviews and I made a private note. Somehow it was not made part of the official record. Just had a feeling. Right now, since that officer died, she and I might be the only people who know the answer to that question.”

  “What’d she use?”

  “A three-foot long iron pick, used for mining. Let’s just say I set it aside. For safe keeping, you know? I’ll send you a photo. Inch around and heavy. It had a ragged cutting edge, a battered, flat end that clearly had been struck by a heavy hammer many, many times, and stamped into it was Union Iron. Ironton NJ. That mean anything?”

  Nagler smiled and slapped his desk. “Maybe everything. The Union Iron Mill was the center of this town for years. A big, hulking, smoky thing. Thanks, John.”

  Nagler hung up the phone and sat stunned. How did that tool get to Georgia? It could tie Calista to Garrettson in Georgia, tie Garrettson to New Jersey and potentially tie the Mine Hill Foundation to everything.

  He called Calista’s phone, but it went to voicemail, which was full. We keep losing track of people, he thought. Dawson’s back, but Calista’s gone.

  ****

  “Look at these guys,” Jimmy Dawson said, as he flipped through the pages of the large album Warren Appleton had complied. “I recognize a lot of their names. This guy expanded the railroad, and this guy supplied the money. They named a street after this one, and this guy built two blocks of Ironton’s east side.”

  Nagler nodded in agreement. “Impressive men, impressive careers. But look at the other collection.”

  Nagler watched as Dawson’s eyes widened and he bit his lower lip, then closed his eyes and sighed as he saw those impressive men with naked girls on their laps, tying their hands to bedposts, standing over them as they laid face down on a bed.

  “My God, Frank. This is just pornography. What happened to these guys?”

  “Don’t really know. Appleton, the owner of the house, was exposed and ruined. The rest...” he shrugged.

  Dawson flipped through the album of formal photos and then through the other collection, and mouthed, “Wow.”

  “Hell of story here, Frank.”

  Nagler smiled. “Yeah, but I can’t let you have it yet,” and then held up a hand, “And don’t give me right of the press, First Amendment, whatever. This is part of an investigation. It’s possible that this is tied to the Mine Hill Foundation, which owns the Catholic Sisters’ Home, so I need to keep it. But I can tell you that in 1932 the family of a woman named Sarah Lawton sued Appleton after she was found hanged in Berkshire Valley. Sister Katherine claimed that Sarah Lawton was her sister. Just saying. Here’s a clip.”

  He slid over a copy of the old newspaper story on Sarah Lawton’s death. If anyone could build that into a real story, it was Dawson.

  “But be careful if you work on this,” Nagler said. “Garrettson is still looking for the foundation books that Bruno sent to Leonard. He’s ruthless, as you’ve tasted, and I’m guessing desperate. He knows we have his financials, but there must be something else in those books he wants. He called me the other day and asked for them back.”

  Dawson coughed. “He called you? From where?”

  “He called my cell phone.”

  Dawson smiled and shook his head. “You can trace that, you know, online? Websites that, um, track phones and owners. Cost you ninety-nine cents, but then you’d forget to cancel the subscription and you’d be paying forever. Besides, you’re a cop, Frank. There are ways.”

  “Yeah, I guess.” He leaned over the table. “But understand that if you start poking at Sarah Lawton, and he finds out, he may act. He seems to have little paid moles all over the place.”

  Dawson held up both hands in a “stop, now” posture. “You actually want this story written to draw him out?”

  Nagler waved his head back and forth slowly, then scratched his jaw. “Well, maybe.”

  “All you had to do was ask,” Dawson said. “By the way, where are the books? I heard someone, probably McCann, went to the police evidence lock-up looking for them and they weren’t there.”

  Nagler smiled. “They weren’t at Leonard’s warehouse either, or my house. God knows.” He raised an eyebrow.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  The golfer, the elephants and the compound

  “You the cop?”

  “Yup. You George Dickinson?”

  “Be so.”

  “Then we know who we are.”

  “That’s a fact.”

  George Dickinson claimed to be a distant relative of the old New Jersey governor on whose family’s land iron ore was discovered, boosting a centuries-long industry that put Ironton on the map. While the forges and mills filled Ironton’s sky with black smoke, miners cracked open holes in the ground in the northern hills to drag out the ore.

  The forested hills were deeper and darker than Nagler recalled, as if the sunlight skipped over the tops or was absorbed by the dense forest. Nightfall would come early here, he thought. Steep-sided valleys carved by glacial water and ancient rivers split the hard-rock hills into segments that made up a mining district that ran to eastern Pennsylvania and produced iron ore, zinc, slate, coal, and limestone. He had read somewhere that the hills he had driven through had once been clear cut of all the trees as the need for wood outstripped Nature’s ability to replace it.

  The narrow river valleys left no room for roads, so old Leni Lenape Indian paths that hugged the valley floors had first become trails for settlers, then wider paths for wagons, until finally a couple rail lines were cut for the mines.

  That’s all gone now, Nagler had thought as he drove through the beautiful yet unsettling landscape; overgrown, collapsed on itself, the history of industry and struggle worn down through time; it was a closed-in and moody place, perfect, he decided, for the twisted visions of Remington Garrettson.

  There’s probably nothing left of the old compound, he guessed, even if Lauren spotted a power line. But after a couple weeks of poking into every vacant fallen-down shell of a building in the city, every empty home with windows of gray, soggy plywood and some of the addresses attached by paperwork to the Mine Hill Foundation, there had been no evidence that Tank Garrettson and his buddies had been staying in any of them.

  We’ve looked nearly everywhere else, so why not here?

  There was some dispute about George Dickinson’s ancestral claims, but Nagler didn’t care. He had lived in the area for eighty-five years and his family settled in these hills before the Revolution, whether it was the right Dickinson family or not. Besides, Nagler thought, how could you not like a man playing golf in a lime-green shirt, red knickers, a white hat and shoes and knee-high argyle socks?

  “I play every day since they turned that chemical dump into a golf course.” Dickinson winked at Nagler. “That was a pleasant change. But I had played here as a kid. There was a little course of water and I used the old sheds as a green.”

  Nagler shaded his eyes from the sunlight with one hand. The clear blue sky rose like a dome above the green valley. I’m never ready for this stuff, he thought with irritation. I never bring a hat and always leave my sunglasse
s in the car.

  “Those walls the remains of the elephant sheds?” Nagler asked. He nodded toward a stone framework with arches in the middle of one of the golf holes. A stand of medium-tall trees grew near the sheds; Nagler imagined the tree from which Sarah Lawton was hanged would have been taller.

  “That’s it. Can you imagine? Old Ringling had about a thousand acres for himself, built that mansion down the road that’s now owned by the church, and had lions, tigers, and elephants and what-all here. They used to drive the elephants down the valley road to the train stop. What a sight!”

  “Can imagine. Were there more trees near the sheds back then? The land’s been worked.”

  “I recall a stand of oaks, maples, and ash trees back then, but the chemicals probably killed them. Lot of dead wood and soil was taken out of here to build the golf course. Why?”

  “Just wondering. Beautiful spot. Can see why folks settled here. How many people lived up here?”

  Before Dickinson could answer, the echo of a distant explosion rolled off the hills and across the golf course.

  Nagler flinched. “What the hell was that?”

  “Ha! That’s the arsenal. They develop weapons there and once in a while blow stuff up. It kinda announces itself without warning,” Dickinson said, winking.

  “Damn it. So how many people...” Nagler asked again.

  “Few hundred, scattered. The end of the mining cleared it out pretty much. When Ringling was here in the Twenties, there was the start of a lake settlement. When old Remington Garrettson lived here, weren’t many others. He managed to find the one flat spot of land up on the mountain, worked a stand of apple trees, and then by luck after a washout, found an iron vein right near the surface. There’s two versions. One, he worked it hard for a couple of years, set aside some reserves and fixed up the house and all; and the second, that he barely made a go of it. Truthfully it’s somewhere in between. Mind if I play through here? There’s a foursome three holes behind me. They let me play as long as I don’t hold up the paying customers.”

  Nagler smiled. “Swing away.”

  Dickinson settled the ball on a tee and pulled out a driver with a head the size of a grapefruit. Nagler recalled a line from Jimmy Dawson, who said in other sports the players took steroids, but in golf it was the equipment that grew.