The Names of Our Tears (24 page)

“Oh?”

“She’s not coming back. And Dent’s phone is never on.”

“I’ve got a feeling that Jodie’s not coming back, either,” Branden said.

“Anything from the DEA?”

“Ricky and Ray Lee are over there now,” Branden said.

“I’ll call them,” Robertson said. “Where are you headed?”

“We’ll check today at Tapp’s trailer, once or twice,” Branden said. “But if she doesn’t show up at home, then Ray Lee says she’ll be on a beach somewhere.”

“Or on a Greyhound bus,” Robertson complained.

“So, it comes down to what the DEA can do on the Molinas,” Branden said.

“That, and Pat Lance.”

“What does she have?”

“Don’t know yet. She’s up in Barberton with Stan Armbruster. Barberton PD is gonna show them through the boarded-up Molina house. At best, it’s a long shot.”

“Looking for what?”

“I don’t know, Mike. Really, at this point, I don’t know.”

“THIS WAS once a nice house,” Lance said to Armbruster. “It was somebody’s home.”

They were standing in a cold drizzle outside a small frame house. A tired concrete stoop hunkered in front of a boarded-up doorway. The porch shelter over the stoop had been pulled down and discarded. Tall weeds had overtaken the front lawn. Like a final insult to the house, rain pelted against the rotten plywood slab over the front door; the plywood had long ago started to crumble under the assault.

Where an entryway roof once had been fastened to the front of the house, there was now only a long ugly gash through the weathered siding above the door. The structural beams behind the exposed siding had taken a soaking over the months, and one had cracked and sagged into a weary angle. Flanking the door, twin dilapidated plywood slabs covered the two front-facing windows. The single dormer window on the second floor had not been boarded over, and there, broken glass and splintered framing showed the damage from the numerous stones and bricks that had been pitched at the side of the house.

Altogether, the front of the house looked like the weary face
of a tattered B-movie monster—blank eye patches at the two windows, a ruined scab of wood for a nose, a long slash through the front siding for brows, and the cracked and bloodless lips of a concrete stoop.

“It’s a Halloween nightmare,” Armbruster remarked. “Somebody should take it down.”

“Must have been somebody’s home,” Lance said again, sounding even more despondent.

The policeman who had met them returned from the back. He waved them down a weedy path between the side of the house and a chain-link fence along the property line, saying, “We can get in at the back.”

In the rain, Lance and Armbruster followed the policeman to the rear door, where he put a key into a padlock and turned it. With the lock off, he pulled the flange apart and used a second key to unlock the dead bolt on the back door.

Inside a utility entrance at the back of the house, he said, “The power isn’t on, but see what you can, as best as you can. The cutting table was in the front living room, and the one bedroom upstairs is where they slept.”

Lance peered into the dark interior of the house and said, “Everything’s boarded up. What were you going to do if we hadn’t brought flashlights?”

The policeman shrugged. “My captain said to let you in. That’s all I know.”

Armbruster switched on his flashlight and said, “This could take a while.”

To the policeman, Lance said, “You don’t have to stay.”

With a shrug, he handed Lance the two keys on a brass ring and said, “Captain Andersen gets the keys. You’ll drop them off?”

Lance nodded, and the policeman left through the back door.

Armbruster led the way into a fifties-style kitchen with a green linoleum floor littered with fast-food wrappers and assorted trash. An old refrigerator stood in the corner near the chipped porcelain sink, mold and foul aromas spilling out around the edges of both. Flattened cardboard boxes had been
stacked in a corner next to a curb-sized green plastic garbage bin with broken wheels on the bottom.

In a small dining room with a worn and scratched hardwood floor, there was only an old black rotary phone sitting on the floor in a corner. They lighted their way into the adjoining living room and saw that it had similarly been stripped of all its furnishings. Lance shined her light on one of the front windows and saw that the glass had been broken in before the opening had been boarded over with plywood. Rainwater was seeping in at the bottom edge and had started to ruin the wall, baseboards, and floor under the window. The wet patch had expanded over the weeks to reach the edge of a ratty area rug that showed only the vaguest residue of a reddish tint that once might have given some life and color to the drab room.

With his flashlight Armbruster found the stairs to the second floor, and he led Lance up. In a short hallway at the top of the stairs, there was a narrow table against the wall, and in its single drawer Armbruster found a scattering of take-out dinner menus and one pamphlet from a bank in Tampa, Florida. He pulled the pamphlet out with forceps, bagged it, and said, “Might be prints.”

They briefly inspected the one bedroom at the front of the house where the dormer creased the roofline, then descended the stairs. Lance played her flashlight onto the floor and walked along the edges of the old rectangular rug. At each corner she lifted the rug to search underneath it, and when she let the corners down, they puffed up dust from the dirty floor.

Armbruster wandered back through the dining room into the old kitchen. Lance followed momentarily, and they stood in the middle of the room, shining their lights into open cabinets above a chipped, red-tiled countertop. They found nothing there. No dishes, no boxes of cereal, no bags of flour, no glasses, no plates or bowls—nothing on the shelves.

Lance said, “Captain Andersen said they pulled everything out when they boarded it up, but he also said the dealers didn’t keep much here anyway. It was a roof over a cutting table, and that’s all it meant to them.”

Armbruster shined his light on the bank pamphlet from Tampa. “Captain Andersen didn’t have the Florida connection.”

“Or they just missed that,” Lance said. “It’ll mean nothing if there aren’t any prints on it that we can match to someone.”

Armbruster stepped toward the gray light at the back door and said, “Robertson isn’t going to like it, that this is all we’ve got.”

Lance followed him out and locked up. “He knew there was nothing here.”

“Long shot,” Armbruster said. “But at least we have something.”

In her car with the heater and defroster running on maximum, Lance said, “Robertson gets two things, Stan. We can match prints on that pamphlet. Maybe.”

“That’s thin,” Armbruster said, blowing warm breath onto the tips of his fingers.

“And he gets to check off the last thing we had to do here. He’s done everything he can up here in Ohio. The rest is going to happen in Florida. He must have figured that all along.”

“Florida, or wherever they find the Molinas,” Armbruster said. “But that could be anywhere.”

Lance pulled away from the curb, and rain fell harder against the windshield. She flipped her wipers faster and said, “I’m sick of dreary springs.”

Over the labor of the fans, Armbruster said, “We’ve got prints from those plastic wrappers I found in the bottoms. But they don’t match to anyone in the system.”

“It’s all straws, Stan,” Lance said, sounding defeated. “We’re grasping at nothing but straws, here.”

“A bank in Tampa, though. That solidifies a connection to Florida.”

Lance stopped at the police department to return the keys and then drove out to SR 21 South, to head toward Massillon. “All we can do is hand over our print collection to DEA,” she said. “Two cents’ worth. And we already knew there were connections to Florida anyway.”

Heavier rain fell, and Lance switched her wipers to maximum speed. With the backs of her fingers, she wiped at condensation inside her windshield. “Baggers aren’t runners, Stan. And runners aren’t shippers, and dealers aren’t bosses, and this is a big outfit. We’ll never get them all.”

“Trouble is,” Armbruster said, “the ones we don’t get? They’ll just set up business somewhere else.”

Muttering, Lance said, “I’m just sick of this rain.”

“I’m sick of being ten steps behind,” Armbruster said. “We’ve got nothing for Robertson.”

“One lousy bank brochure, Stan.”

“It’s circumstantial,” Armbruster admitted. “Even if Dewey Molina’s personal prints are on it, it won’t tie him to Zook’s murder.”

As they skirted downtown Massillon on the bypass, a dark cover of clouds settled low over the roads, and the streetlights switched on, their night sensors fooled by the darkness. Soon, rain was falling so heavily that cars on the bypass were pulling over to the side of the road to wait out the storm. A fine sleet mixed with the rain, and then hail started pinging off the roof of Lance’s car. She pulled over, too, and turned on her hazard flashers.

Stopped on the berm, Lance complained over the din. “We have no leads on Dewey or Teresa Molina. We have no results from Robertson’s BOLO on the Humvee or the Buick. We’ve got no contact with Fannie Helmuth or Jodie Tapp. There are no good leads on this outfit in Florida. There was no evidence on Ruth Zook’s body or at the murder spot. Ricky says he’s found nothing useful other than some spent rounds they pulled out of that boat in Bradenton Beach. And we can’t get a decent description of Teresa Molina from the Helmuths.”

“We do have a mug shot of Dewey,” Armbruster said. “And license plates.”

“Switched by now,” Lance scoffed. “I’m sick of this rain. Sick of this case.”

“The prints are going to match someone,” Armbruster said.

“And that might be useful at a trial,” Lance said. “But not useful at catching anyone. Not unless they’re already in the system.”

The downpour eased, and Lance started driving south again. She crossed over the US 30 interchange at the Walmart strip mall south of Massillon and turned onto SR 62, heading south and west through the countryside toward Millersburg.

“We need to call Bruce,” Lance said. “Tell him we don’t really have anything new here.”

Armbruster pulled out his phone. “Maybe he’s in a good mood.”

He punched in Robertson’s number, waited, and then said, “It’s Armbruster.”

Lance drove and listened.

“Nothing, really, Sheriff. Maybe a pamphlet we can lift some prints from.

“No. A bank in Tampa.

With a puzzled glance at Lance, Armbruster then said, “Yes, sure. It is another connection to Florida.

“OK, good. We’re headed back now. And thanks. Yes, I will.”

Then Armbruster switched off and sat quietly for a moment. Eventually, Lance asked, “What?”

“Sheriff says, ‘Good work.’ He really didn’t think we’d find anything.”

“You’re kidding,” Lance said, brightening somewhat.

“No. He’s happy we got this much.”

“But how did he sound?”

“Happy. I think. He’s out at the Zook farm. Going to talk with the people from the EPA.”

“And he sounded happy?” Lance asked.

“He sounded pleased.” Armbruster chuckled. “The big sheriff sounded pleased with himself.”

WHEN HE hung up on the call with Stan Armbruster, Bruce Robertson was standing under his umbrella, on top of the broken dam behind the Zooks’ tallest barn, watching rainwater sluice out of the bottom of the pond and run down into the lower terrain beyond. Like all the other low spots in the county, the Zook bottoms were filling up fast. At least five watercourses emptied into the lowlands beneath the sheriff’s location, and with a degree of satisfaction that he couldn’t ever acknowledge in public, Robertson watched the water rise steadily over the tops of the wheels on the EPA’s gasoline generator. Already the water had reached the top steps leading into the EPA’s forensics trailer, and knowing the topography well, Robertson estimated that water would begin seeping in under the door within the half hour. He smiled under cover of his umbrella. Old high-water marks on all the trees in the bottoms should have been an indication to the bothersome federal authorities that down in the lowlands was not the best place to park a trailer filled with electronic equipment.

The sheriff was dressed for the weather—watertight hiking boots, jeans, and a flannel shirt under a long, black, western-style
slicker that reached his ankles. A gun belt, he thought. All I need is a gun belt and a six-shooter.

With his phone still out, he tried Howie Dent’s number on a whim, but it rang straight through to a corporate answering service. Robertson punched out.

As he slipped his cell phone into the shirt pocket under his slicker, the gasoline generator down in the bottoms began to sputter and cough. He pulled the collar of his rain slicker tighter around his neck and shook water off his umbrella.

He had called Agent Wellings, hadn’t he? Earlier that very morning. Just after he had declared a flood warning for his entire county. Now Wellings would have to come the long way around from Millersburg, since the roads were posted where they were already impassable, at the lowest spots beside creeks and streams. And here he stood alone now, Robertson thought. No Wellings yet. Wouldn’t arrive in time. Sad to see, really. Water rising.

Thinking about Ruth Zook, Fannie Helmuth, and Jodie Tapp, Robertson stood at his post under his umbrella for another ten minutes, waiting for Wellings and the rest of the EPA. When Wellings arrived, the man came racing up the muddy bank of the dam, the smooth soles of his new shoes slipping as he struggled. When he had climbed at last to Robertson’s position, Wellings looked disbelievingly down at his testing site, all his equipment surrounded by a rising sea of dirty brown water, the wheels of both the generator and the trailer now completely submerged.

As Wellings caught his breath atop the dam, Robertson remarked, “Sorry I didn’t notice sooner, Robert, but waters rise fast out here. It’s a shame.” Pleased by the earnest tone he had affected, the sheriff added, “I can’t let you down there now. I’ve declared a flood warning. A flood emergency, officially. I’m surprised you got through on the roads.”