Authors: Nadja Bernitt
There was still no word on Graber.
She set down the magazine and glanced at Renee, who was applying the finishing gel to the fellow’s blond-tipped spikes. When she’d got it just right, she removed his cape with a Zorro-esque flourish, motioned to Meri Ann. “Next.”
The stylists to Renee’s left and right were drying their client’s hair and the noise of the music and the dryers added to the salon’s frenetic fervor.
“I had no idea you’d be this busy.” Meri Ann spoke above the hair-dryer’s buzz as she settled in the chair.
“It’s always this way.” Renee adjusted the seat for height. “Jason has offered to cut your hair, by the way, if that’s okay with you.”
“Fine with me.”
“Actually, it’s a bonus. I’m very good, but he’s won national awards.” Renee patted Meri Ann on the shoulder. “Let’s get you washed.”
Renee led the way to a row of porcelain sinks, bright fuchsia with gold fixtures. Meri Ann took the only empty chair in an assembly line of reclining men and women, each in various degrees of being washed, dried, colored or massaged.
Renee tucked a towel around her neck and Meri Ann leaned back, enjoying the eucalyptus-scented shampoo. Renee’s fingers massaged in small relaxing circles. Suddenly she stopped.
“I’ll finish here,” came a masculine voice.
Meri Ann arched back and smiled at Jason. His black on black attire, unfortunately accentuated the dark circles around his eyes. “Good morning.”
“Nice to see you.”
“Jason,” Renee said. “About last night—”
“No need to apologize. I’ve forgotten it.”
But his troubled expression led Meri Ann to believe he remembered Renee’s every word. He removed his jacket and pushed the sleeves of his sweater half way up his biceps, revealing the tip of a tattoo. She tried to see what it was but he grabbed a towel and slung it over his shoulder, covering it up. A lot of people had them these days. Still it was hard to imagine fastidious Jason with his arm bared to an ink gun amid cartoon-like posters of dragons, snakes, and Celtic designs.
He touched his temples. “My head’s pounding, Renee. Would you change the CD. Some jazz or Celine Dion, anything but that Eminem.”
“Your office was locked,” she said accusingly.
“Well, it’s open now.” He clipped his words. “Just do it!”
Her bottom lip quivered and Meri Ann felt sorry for them both. Having just been through it, she knew all too well the tension that foretells the end of a relationship.
“You’ll have to excuse me, Meri Ann.” He gently centered her neck against the sink’s rim and began to rinse. “Seems I’m always hurting her feelings. God knows I’m stressed. Mother’s in terrible pain. I stayed with her most of last night. Sick as she is, she asked me to do her hair this morning. I’ve always done her hair.”
“You must be exhausted. I’m sorry about your mother,” she said. “If this is too much—”
“No. No, it’s not. I need this break. Just lean back and let me finish.” He lowered the water temperature and massaged her scalp. “It feels good to work.”
The firm touch of his masculine hands relaxed her. After a few minutes, he turned off the water and wrapped Meri Ann’s head with a fresh towel.
Eminem went silent. “That’s a relief,” he said. Three seconds later the music of a classical, steel-string guitar drifted through the shop.
He led her back to his station, where the jug of piranhas sat on one end. “I almost knocked your fish over yesterday.”
“My red-bellied Caribes.” He peered into the tank, then back at her. “Their teeth are so sharp that the ancient Amazon Indians used them as scissors. Not sure how but they probably used the lower jaw bone with them in it.” He continued admiring the fish while blotting her hair with the towel. “I find them fascinating.”
“Then you wouldn’t want to lose them.” Meri Ann pointed to a brace beneath the marble shelf. “Looks like it’s pulling away from the wall.”
“My handyman checked it out, says it’ll be fine till he gets here next week. Me, I’m worthless with a hammer. Funny, considering my father was a craftsman, a fine cabinet maker. He built furniture, among other things.”
She wiped a drop of water from her forehead. “I love the smell of fresh sawn wood.”
He nodded. “My father worked for the wealthiest families in Boise.”
They chatted for a few minutes about old Boise. Then Meri Ann guided the conversation to Graber. “What can you tell me about Harold Graber?”
“We’ll tackle that later.”
Jason cradled her head in his hands and tilted her face upward. The high-intensity lamps had a pink tint that made her skin glow. “Feet on the floor, shoulders straight,” he said.
She did as he asked, watching as he studied her reflection. “Classic features, straight, even. And your hair… It’s really very good hair.”
Rolling a strand in his fingers, he said, “Mahogany striations in a deep, rich brown, very close to the texture and color of your mother’s.”
It wasn’t unusual for people to say they remembered this or that about her mother. But she wished all the same that he hadn’t done it, driven home the fact that she’d forgotten the hint of red in her mother’s hair.
“How much shall I take off?”
“You be the judge.”
He pulled back his jacket, as a gunfighter might, and reached behind him for a velveteen pouch that held a formidable pair of scissors.
She broke into a smile at the gesture, his sensitivity to her dark mood. “Clever,” she said.
“Thought you’d get a kick out of that.” He beamed for an instant, then started on her hair. The task consumed him and he didn’t speak till he’d finished. “Perfect, absolutely perfect.”
And
very,
very
short
.
He handed her an ornate silver mirror and swiveled her around for a view of his handiwork.
He pulled a chair up beside hers. “Ask me whatever you’d like.”
“Let’s start with Harold Graber, Jr. I know it was a long time ago, but is there anything more you can tell me about his personality, his interests and habits?”
Jason stroked his chin, the way people do when they’ve got a bone to pick. “You went to his place, didn’t you?”
She nodded.
His lips drew into a disapproving flat line. “After you left I wished I hadn’t been so outspoken about him. I’d feel responsible if anything had happened to you.”
“I’m a cop, not Little Red Riding Hood,” she reassured him. “I needed to talk to him and still have questions for him. Last time I went up there he was gone. From the looks of his cabin, he left in a hurry. Any ideas on where I might find him?”
Jason fidgeted with the scissors before returning them to the pouch. “He’s gone you say?”
“Does that worry you?”
“Absolutely not,” he said unconvincingly. “But, I… I wonder. I saw him in Boise about two weeks ago.”
The timing sounded suspiciously close to the discovery on Table Rock and that piqued her interest. “Two weeks ago, you say. Can you remember the exact day?”
“Wish I could but no.”
One step forward, one back, she thought. “Harold’s got a shed full of stuffed animals and taxidermy equipment in the shed beside the cabin.”
“Yes, I’ve seen it, his father was a taxidermist. It fascinated Harold, watching him wrap flayed skins of animals over mannequins. I never saw him working, couldn’t have stood the stench of decaying flesh and blood. But that’s a moot point; I’d never have been allowed to watch him. Taxidermists are a brotherhood and keep their secret formulas to themselves.”
“Think Harold, Jr. did more than watch? Did he work with his father? Did he know the chemical equations, proportions, the methods? From what you say, the gore didn’t bother him.” She stopped the barrage of questions which seemed to be overwhelming Jason. In a slower cadence she asked, “Just how weird is he?”
Jason glanced away, as though reluctant to tell stories on a friend. He frowned and shook his head slowly. A memory obviously bothered him.
“You have to understand—Harold was eight years older than me. I idolized him. I used to see him at least twice a month. We’d walk the hills and talk, fish, hike. We played war games and practiced survival techniques. We scouted like solders. Harold tracked me. He’d give me an half an hour’s start, then come after me. His skill was on par with a blood hound’s. I never got away.”
She wondered where this was headed. “Kids-play?”
“At first,” he said. “Then one day we hiked through the woods below Bogus Basin to a place he called his secret meadow. He showed me an animal skeleton. It looked like a wolf’s or coyote’s. He told me he’d watched ants strip the carcass. Said he’d found the animal just after it died. He laid it beside an ants nest. He watched them swarm over the carcass and kept coming back to check on it. Took twelve days to strip it clean.
His eyes glittered like a madman’s when he told me that sometimes you don’t need the chemicals to get down to the skeleton.”
The skin crawled on her arms. “Bizarre.”
“Gets worse.” Jason’s jaw tightened. “Later, he admitted it wasn’t a wolf, but his own retriever, which he claimed had been run over by a logging truck. But I remembered seeing stakes in the ground. Dead dogs don’t need to be staked.”
She thought of the unwavering trust dogs have for their masters. The blood drained from her face. “My God, his own dog.”
M
eri Ann paced back and forth on the front porch of Chez Jay’s, trying to comprehend Harold Graber’s grisly act. She shoved her hands deep into her coat pockets, racking her brain. Thinking, thinking, thinking. At one point she bumped into the mannequin on the porch swing and said Excuse me.
A car’s horn honked and she glanced up to see Mendiola’s dark green SUV at the curb, a welcome sight. She’d expected him, but not the degree of welcome she felt at his arrival.
She hustled down the stairs and climbed into the cab. The familiar scent of his soap caught her, the same soap she’d used only hours earlier in his shower. Had she really done that—yes.
The visor of his baseball cap partially shielded his eyes. “Morning. Where’s your car, at Becky’s?” He didn’t wait for her answer, but pointed to her hair. “Whoa, that’s short.”
She smoothed it back. “I suppose it is. So how was the staff meeting?”
“Like a circus with a fourth ring.”
He picked up an open can of Dr Pepper from the console cup holder. “I don’t have another but you’re welcome to share mine.”
The newfound familiarity and her relaxed attitude about it would take some getting used to. “No thanks. Just tell me what happened.”
He took a drag from the can and set it back down. “We’ve identified the victim at Camel’s Back Park.”
Meri Ann’s eyes widened. “So fast?”
“We got lucky. Forensics came up with a dental match on a woman from Twin Falls, named Barbara Schoonover who disappeared about three months before your mother. And here’s the kicker. She worked in the same building where Wheatley’s has an office. You knew he had an office in Twin Falls, didn’t you?”
“Yes. Your Aunt Sylvie mentioned Wheatley’s out-of-town business. But did he have that office when the woman disappeared?”
Mendiola nodded. “Sure he did. The weekend that Schoonover disappeared, he and Tina had been visiting her parents who live there. What’s more, Wheatley’s alibi for the Friday your mom went missing was also Twin Falls. It’s only two hours from Boise.”
She knew the logistics. “So we’re back to Wheatley.”
“Yup. Dillon’s scratched the TV interview and dropped surveillance from Graber.”
Meri Ann fastened her seat belt and flashed him a questioning look. “So we’re doing nothing at all about Graber?”
“Pushed to the back burner. Right now I’m headed to Wheatley’s. We’ve got a search warrant for his house. Dillon’s gonna meet us there. You want to come along?”
“Definitely, but if the search is a bust, I want to continue with Graber.”
Mendiola turned on his blinker and shifted into drive. He blended into traffic. “I don’t get it. Even when we find a skeleton in Wheatley’s backyard and identify the victim as having worked in the same office building as he did, you hold out for Graber?”
“Jason’s known Graber since they were kids. He said Graber knew everything there was to know about taxidermy.” She repeated the gruesome story about the ants and her stomach churned as badly as when she’d heard it the first time. She said, “He killed his own dog.”
Mendiola stared in disbelief. “The hell you say.”
“Jason saw him in town two weeks ago, which coincides with the discovery on Table Rock.”
Mendiola mulled this over. “I see what you’re saying, but right now, Wheatley’s in prime position. With his medical background and close proximity, we’re thinking something transpired between your mother and him. It’s logical to think he followed her to the supermarket, that she called him Birdie—his name’s Robin. Something in his freaky relationships with women triggered his killer instinct. Maybe he had a thing with the woman in Twin Falls, too.”
Meri Ann turned to the window, her breath clouding the glass. “What about the chemicals found on the bodies? And the taxidermy materials we found in Graber’s shed?”
Mendiola shook his head. “Yeah, I thought we had our man for sure, at least till Dillon hit me with the forensic report on the second victim, implicating Wheatley. Seems we’ve still got two suspects, Wheatley and Graber. And they’re playing leapfrog for first position.”
At least his willingness to acknowledge Graber’s guilt encouraged her. “I’m thinking as soon as we get to Wheatley’s, we’ll eliminate one of them.” Him she thought.
She recalled her early suspicions of Wheatley. But after their confrontation, he had changed her mind. She had interviewed enough liars to know how to read truth or falsehood on their faces and in the movement of their eyes. Her skills were excellent and unless he had perfected lying, she believed that he’d told the truth. Mendiola would find that out for himself.
Her head throbbed and she rubbed it.
“Tired?”
A wry smile tugged at the corners of her lips, evoking memories of showering in his bathroom. “I had a late night.”