DIRTBAG CHAPTER 23

    Upon hearing the news, Elaine gasped.  She was truly horrified.
    Cecil felt bitter and he blamed her for Moore’s predicament.  “It must have been too much for him: the humiliation, the sanctions and perhaps, worst of all: being at home with nothing to do, but drink.”
    She was respectful of his feelings and said nothing, but she disagreed.  In her opinion, he drank himself into his current condition all on his own.  The sanctions were necessary and his reaction was the problem, not the commission that suspended him.
    “I hope he gets well soon.”  Elaine said and smiled.  “We’ll get a card, have everyone sign it.  Flowers too.”
    “The doctors are keeping him under, while his liver heals.  They have him on sedatives.  He’s asleep most of the time.”  He gazed down at his feet, thinking of taking the day off, to do what?  Sit around and mope, accomplishing nothing.  He had to keep busy and they didn’t need him at the hospital.  This was where he was needed.  “I see they have a suspect in the interview room.  Who is that?”
    “Doctor Tory Johnson, the man who performed the skin graft operation on you.”

    When Cecil got into the observation room, Lan and Stuart were interviewing the doctor.  Near exhaustion, from being up all night, the doctor kept repeating, “As I’ve told you for the hundredth time, I don’t know how the bloody scalpel ended up in my utility sink.”
    “It has your fingerprints on it.”
    “I swear to you, I would never perform an illegal operation.  My career is in enough jeopardy as it is.”
    “Tommy Lazar, name ring a bell, he said he introduced you to John Osbourne-”
    “I never heard of the man!  And if Quasar, I mean, Tommy said that, then he’s a liar!”
    “All right, Mr. Johnson you’re under arrest.  You have the right…”

    On her way out to lunch, Elaine stepped out onto the sidewalk and a limo pulled up to the curb beside her.  A door opened and a man in a black suit stepped out and asked her to “step in.”  Looking cautiously inside the vehicle, Elaine saw another man wearing a t-shirt, jeans and tennis shoes.
    It was Weiss.
    She entered the luxury car and someone closed the door and the car drove off, as she looked to Weiss for an explanation.
    “Someone is onto you.”  He said.
    “Excuse me?”
    “Your detective… Moore was watching you.”
    “Watching me?”  She was alarmed and incredulous at the same time.
    “Yes, my driver saw Moore the last time we met…  He was crossing the street and watching us from behind the bushes on the plaza.  He was following you.”
    “What?”  Elaine was shocked.  “You think he knows something?”
    “He knows we met together, secretly.  How much he knows beyond that is another question.”  He was looking out the window.  Now he turned to Elaine and said, “You need to find out how much he knows and who he’s been talking to.”
    “Me?”
    “You’re the only one who can get close enough to him.”
    She thought about this, then said, “He’s not going to tell me anything.”
    “That’s why you’ll have to persuade him.”
    “How?”
    “With this,” showing her a vile of some liquid substance, Weiss said, “Sodium pentothal: truth serum, and the best part is: he won’t remember a thing about you and your questions when he wakes up,”  He handed her a syringe.  “Find out what he knows.”
    “He’s under sedation and sleeping most of the time.  How is this supposed to work?”
    “Oh, right,” he just remembered, “give him this first.”  He handed her another vile.
    “What’s this?”
    “A mild stimulant.”
    She looked at the label. “Amphetamines?  What are you, trying to kill him?”
    “Just give him ten cc’s, not enough to kill him.”
    “What if that’s not enough?”
    “Then double it.”  Weiss said, feeling irritated.  The car pulled over, and the billionaire opened a door for her and the message was clear: she was now free to leave.
    Elaine complied, very unhappy about the circumstances.  And she barely cleared the door, before the limo peeled out of there.

    First thing in the morning, Cecil went over the evidence in the double homicide and came upon an interesting item: the fingerprints found on the shovel handle were in an odd place, positioned so the thumb was on one side, as if Nigel was bringing the side of the shovel blade down on the victims head, when the coroner said the injury to the victim was made with the blunt end or the back side of the blade.
    That afternoon, he was talking with Elaine, Lan and Stuart, about the double homicide at Nigel Mann’s house.  “I know this may sound far fetched, but we have to consider the possibility my abduction is somehow connected with the Mary Donovan, Dorothy Wilson slayings.”
    “How so?”  Lan asked.
    “My abduction occurred while I was working on that case.  The insignia found on Weiss’s gate on land used by the Junk Yards Dogs was the same Totenkopf tattoo found on the bikers necks, and the most damning connection of all, Nigel Mann had a connection to the Junk Yard Dogs: he knew Mike Aaron.  If the motorcycle gang was responsible for my abduction and Nigel was behind the murders, it only stands to reason-”
    “Cecil,” Elaine insisted on interrupting him, reaching across the table and grabbing his arm.  “The case is closed.  Get over it!”
    “The simple fact is: Nigel Mann could not have acted alone.”  Cecil insisted.
    Elaine raised an arm in futile surrender, while Lan and Stuart were still listening.
    “There were three sets of footprints in that basement, unaccounted for-”
    “Oh, come on,” Lan said, incredulous, “most of those were really old.”
    “The ones that were fresh are unaccounted for, and what’s more, the runes, the exercise in magic was well thought out before hand.  The killer, or killers were planning on it and carried it out methodically, scratching magical symbols into the basement floor, taking a lot of time to cut into one corpse.  His actions suggest planning and forethought; knitting the talisman before hand, hardly the actions of a crazed killer.  Even dumping one body in the ocean and leaving the carved up remains of the second body to be found.  The killer, or killers wanted us to find her like that.  Dorothy was never meant to be found.  That’s why her body wasn’t carved up, like Mary’s”
    Stuart asked, “What about the attempt to dig a grave?”
    Lan looked at her, like don’t encourage him.
    Cecil went on, “The theory that Nigel was interrupted while digging Mary’s grave by Dorothy, then had to kill her with the shovel… doesn’t make sense, when you consider-”
    “Oh, come on,” said Lan, “the shovel handle had Nigel’s finger prints and Dorothy’s blood all over it.  That’s concrete evidence of…  All you have is a lot of questions and circumstantial evidence.  While the physical evidence supports our conclusion.”
    “We should consider the possibility he was framed.”
    “What?”  Lan asked, having heard enough.  “We worked the case.  We solved the case.  Case closed.”
    “Even if Nigel was involved, I think he had some help.”  They all looked at each other in silence.  A tense moment passed and Cecil continued.   “I know I’ve said this before, but the bloody shoe print made by the killer?  It doesn’t match any of Nigel’s shoes.”
    “So, he threw them away.”  Lan said, “I believe the shoe size of the bloody footprint was approximately the same size as Nigel wore.”
    “Approximately?  A half inch off.  The ME measured Nigel’s foot at exactly nine and a half inches.  There’s no way a foot that large fits into a size nine shoe.”
    “I’ve seen shoes go either way.”  Stuart said.  “For example: my feet sometimes fit into a nine and a half shoe, even though I usually take a nine.”  Suddenly, she felt self-conscious about her shoe size.
    “Can your foot fit into an eight and a half shoe?  Because that’s what it would have been like for Nigel, who was size 10.  No, that shoe print belonged to someone else.  But who?  That’s what we need to find out.”
    Elaine said, “Sometimes I can fit my foot into a smaller shoe and I know a lot of women who cram their size nine dogs in a size seven shoe.  Believe me, it happens.”
    They all had a laugh, except Cecil.  He was tired of fighting the mediocrity, the blatant complacency, the contented outcome… So what if all the facts didn’t fit in with the accepted theory?  It was like they all stopped thinking and started using faulty reasoning to solve a murder investigation.
    “The evidence against Nigel was sound.  We found clothes with Mary’s blood on them in his closet.”  Lan declared.
    “They could have been planted.”
    “By who?  Come on.”  Lan thought Cecil’s suggestion was ludicrous.
    Elaine tried to be the voice of reason.  “I know you have a lot of concerns about the Mary Donovan case, but all the evidence points to one man: Nigel Mann.  Anyway, the DA has the case now, so all this is academic.”
    Cecil said, “I’m going run this by the DA?”
    “Ah, no, you can’t run it by the DA; he doesn’t want to hear your theories.”  She looked at Cecil with sympathy.  “We still have your abduction to solve.”  She looked at Lan and Stuart.  “Where are we?  What have you got so far?”
    “Tory Johnson, the doctor who performed the operation is a junkie.  In a search of his office we found drug paraphernalia and black tar heroin.  He is currently being booked on charges, that I’m sure will stand up in court.”
    Cecil thought it was interesting the doctor maintained his innocence.  Leaving a scalpel where anyone could find it, including his kids, was beyond irresponsible, even for a junkie doctor and he took pains to hide evidence in his office.
    “His affiliation with Josh Henderson is known and Quasar was his drug connection and the dealer admits to telling Osbourne about Tory Johnson.  However he denies introducing them and the doctor says he never met Osbourne.  I suspect he’s lying; we may never know the truth here, but all the evidence points to Doctor Johnson, so we charged him with felony assault.”
    “Where are you on finding this… Alexander Royal, one of the named co-conspirators by Mike Aaron?”
    “Believe it or not,” Stuart said, “he's on a mountaineering expedition, that has been in the planning stages for months.  He left three days ago for Nepal, believed to be somewhere in Kathmandu, on his way to Mount Everest.”
    “Unbelievable!”  Cecil shoved his chair back and paced around like a caged animal wanting its freedom, thinking there was a pattern here: Nigel found dead, Osbourne dead of an overdose, Alexander on a mountaineering expedition: Missing people keep ending up dead.  Nigel, Osbourne, the Junk Yard Dogs, they were just the tip of the iceberg.  There has to be something that connects them all, some common thread.  Someone has to be orchestrating things from behind the scenes.  He told Elaine, “I want to reinterview Dan Murdock and Gerard… ah Donaldson, see a… what their connection is to the Junk Yard Dogs.”
    They locked eyes, Cecil determined to have his way and Elaine peering at him for the truth.
    “If this is concerning the Mary Donovan/Dorothy Wilson case…?”
    “I just have a few questions about my kidnapping is all.”
    “Well, I’m afraid not,” Elaine said flat out.  “You’re not to leave the station until your doctor gives you permission to go out in the field.”  She could smell a back door angle into reopening the double homicide and she wasn’t going to allow that.
    “Did you ever check on that dry rot story?”  Cecil asked.
    “What dry rot story?”
    “Remember the manager of the cafe where I was abducted said they took out one wall and some floor boards due to dry rot?”
    “Oh, yeah,” Elaine said, “I remember now.”
    “Did anyone ever look into that?”
    She peered at him momentarily, then smiled and said, “It must have slipped my mind.”
    “Did you drop the investigation into Victor Weiss?  We should be looking into this guy, in connection to at least two different cases.”
    Elaine dismissed him with her hand, like she was saying, what are you talking about?  Weiss isn’t a criminal.
    “There is a connection between him, the Junk yard Dogs, Nigel Mann and Mary Donovan.”  Cecil was serious.
    Elaine was incredulous and asked, “Has anybody implicated Weiss in any crime?”
    “Not as of yet.”
    “Any direct evidence linking him to the crime?”
    “No,”
    “Then I suggest you better have something solid before you go after a man like Weiss.”
    “But-”
    “Just because the man owned the land on which a crime was committed doesn’t make him a criminal.  Go after the Junk Yard Dogs.  They’re the real criminals.”



 Copyright 2016  William Leslie