Deadly Connections Page 19

  “You’d never seen him watching the kids at other times?”

  “No.”

  “Did Ivan ever express any interest in having other students be models for him?”

  “No, at least not to me. Oakley might’ve heard differently from some of the teachers, but I never heard that Ivan was interested in that.”

  “You never caught Ivan with a child alone, never saw him try to leave the school with a child?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know of anyone else who was concerned about Ivan, anyone who questioned his behavior around children?”

  She pursed her lips. “No.” Another glance at the watch. I knew what was coming. “I’m sorry, but I do need to go,” she said. “I told all this to Detective Oakley. Except for that part about Ivan being in the parking lot.”

  I stood up. “Thank you for your time. He and I talked, and he wanted me to hear for myself what you had to say.”

  She headed to the door, and waited until I went into the outer reception area. The quiet in the school was eerie. “I hope it was helpful. If I think of anything else, I’ll call Detective Oakley.”

  She walked with me outside, and the door locked behind us. The mother and her girl were gone from the playground, and it was empty. I walked to my car, and Susan got into an older model Subaru. She waved at me as she drove out of the parking lot. I was about to leave when I got a text. I looked at it. Harry.

  Meant to text earlier. Hang in there. I love you.

  I stared at the screen for a minute. It was the perfect thing right at that moment, when I was irritated about how things had gone down at Merrick’s gun shop and how unhappy Rizzo was with me. I texted Harry that I loved him, too, put my phone away, and then drove out of the parking lot.

  Chapter Thirty

  I called Oakley from the car.

  “What do you think?” he asked, a curious edge in his voice.

  “I see why you wanted me to talk to Susan Palmer.” He laughed. I told him about my conversation, and that Susan Palmer had remembered that Eklund had been at the school the previous Friday. “Eklund had a thing for Logan Pickett,” I said. “But my questions are, did he have something for any other kids? From what I’ve heard, the answer is no. And was Eklund really just looking for a model, a subject for his art, as he said, or was he looking for a victim? The security officer, Susan, didn’t think Eklund was asking about other kids, just Logan. What about any other teachers you talked to?”

  “That’s a dead end. We interviewed every teacher at that school that had dealings with Eklund, and none of them said he showed any unusual interest in the kids, or Logan, for that matter. When Eklund was around, things seemed on the up and up. He was nice to the kids, but nobody saw anything suspicious. We’ve also talked to several of the parents, and it’s the same thing. Those that met him say he seemed aboveboard in every single way. I had a lengthy conversation with the principal, and she said the photography firm they use does background checks, and I checked with that firm. Eklund passed the check. Everything with him looked good. I can’t find anything screwy in his background or from checking with other people who knew him.”

  “Yeah, Ernie Moore has been going over the records you provided.”

  “There’s a lot there. Moore told me that you noticed that Eklund was recently reading a militia group website. Does that pertain to your investigation?”

  “It might. The boy’s father may be involved in a militia group.”

  “You have any other possible suspects in the kid’s death?” he asked.

  I’d turned onto Broadway. I hadn’t told Ernie, but I was going to talk to Gary Pickett again. There were a lot of things he needed to account for. “I’m still looking at the family. I’ve got some suspicions about his dad, but nothing concrete yet.”

  “If I find anything more on Eklund, I’ll let you know.”

  Before he ended the call, I said, “Have you heard anything on Eklund’s autopsy yet?”

  “No. Jamison thought he might have it this afternoon or early tomorrow, but nothing yet. He said you were looking for a rush on it, and he’s trying to get to it.”

  I laughed wryly. “Yeah, it’s taking longer than I’d wish. We need to know whether Eklund committed suicide or not.”

  “I do too. If it’s a suicide, I want to move on to other things.”

  It was a blunt statement, but true. He ended the call, and I drove in silence, my mind whirling on everything I had. Lots of pieces of information, but nothing yet that connected into a cohesive story about how and why Logan Pickett died.

  It was almost five when I neared Gary’s house. I parked in front, knocked and rang the bell. He didn’t answer, so I went back to my car and looked up his office address, then drove there. His silver Toyota Tacoma was parked in front. I parked next to it and walked inside. The reception counter was deserted, and seventies rock was playing on a radio. Beyond the counter was a short hallway and a door. I waited a moment, then heard Gary’s voice. I moved around the counter and down the hall without announcing myself. I tiptoed around a corner and looked in a doorway. Gary was sitting behind a long oak desk, the phone to his ear. He was staring at a computer monitor, and then he looked up. Anger flashed across his face.

  “Hey, I need to call you back,” he snapped to whoever was on the other end of the line. He slammed the phone down and swore at me. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  I was careful to remain neutral. “I won’t take much of your time, but a few things have come up that I don’t understand.”

  “I don’t have to tell you anything.”

  I moved into the room without being asked and sat down in a chair across from him. “You’re right, you don’t have to tell me a thing. I’m not here to accuse you or cause problems, I’m here to fill in the blanks. I need everything I can get my hands on, and you answering my questions is helpful.”

  “I’m not guilty of anything.” His words were clipped, angry.

  I tried for calm, hoping it would de-escalate his anger. “Gary, some things aren’t adding up.” He started to protest, and I held up a hand. “You said that you hadn’t called anybody last Saturday night except for your girlfriend, Kristi Arnott. But we know that’s not true. You called John Merrick, the owner of Gold Creek Gun Range.”

  “I forgot, okay?” he blurted out. “There’s nothing wrong with me talking to somebody else that night, is there?”

  “Are you and Merrick friends?”

  He hesitated. “I know him from the gun range. Is that a crime?”

  “No, but things don’t seem to be adding up.”

  “Like what?” He crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair, defiant.

  “Merrick says that you’re just a customer, that he doesn’t know you that well. And you’re saying the same thing.”

  “I don’t have to tell you who I’m friends with.”

  “Fair enough. What do you know about the Colorado Citizens Militia?”

  He gazed at me levelly. “I’ve heard of them.”

  “From what I understand, you’ve been spending time on their Facebook page. Looks to me like you have a big interest in militia groups, that maybe you’re familiar with this one in particular.” He didn’t respond. “Are you a member of any militia group?”

  “That’s none of your business, and it doesn’t have anything to do with Logan.”

  I made a show of pondering that. “It looks to me like the group might be heading out of state. I’ve heard that maybe their headquarters are shifting to Idaho.”

  “I don’t know anything about that,” he said sullenly.

  “A lot of people that we’ve talked to think that you wanted full custody of Logan, that maybe you were upset that you have to share custody of him.”

  “Audra’s a horrible parent. That judge wasn’t seeing my side of things.”

  “We talked to a lot of people, and they say that Audra is a good mother, but you were pretty strict with Logan.”

  �
�So? A kid needs to be raised well. Audra was too soft on him. That doesn’t mean that I hurt him, no matter what anyone says.” A clear reference to what I’d heard about Logan’s arm getting broken when they were in San Diego.

  “Let me be blunt. Did you want to take Logan and leave the state?” He stared at me, and I went on. “Here’s one of the things I’m wondering. Maybe you were frustrated with Audra, with how she was a bad parent, so you thought the best thing would be to kidnap Logan and hide him with you. Things went bad, and he was accidentally killed.” I tilted my head. “You have a nice knife collection. Was Logan playing with one of them, and he cut himself?”

  “I was looking for Logan Saturday night. How could I have kidnapped him?”

  “You had help.”

  He looked me dead in the eyes. “I can assure you that that’s not the case.”

  That sounded sincere, but he was a good liar. “Gary, why don’t you level with me? It’d be a whole lot easier. Do you know more about your son’s death than you’re telling me?”

  “No,” he spat at me. “I didn’t do anything to Logan.”

  “Okay, what about Merrick? I hate to keep bringing it up, but you seem more than just a customer at his shop. I saw him meet you at that Thai restaurant last night.”

  He rocked in his chair casually. “Why did you follow us?”

  “I’m trying to find out what happened to your son. When people aren’t upfront about what’s going on, it makes my job harder.”

  “I met him for dinner, so what?”

  “What about the big guy with the handlebar mustache. Who’s he?”

  “None of your business,” he repeated. “He doesn’t have anything to do with Logan’s death.”

  “Give me the man’s name, and we’ll talk to him, clear this all up.”

  He shook his head.

  “You were at Gold Creek Gun Range Saturday night with Merrick and that other guy. We pinged your phone location.”

  He flew to his feet and pointed at the door. “You’re barking up the wrong tree. I didn’t have anything to do with my son’s death, and I ought to sue you for insinuating that. This is part of the problem with this country, our law enforcement isn’t doing what they’re supposed to be doing.” He was growing more agitated, spittle on his lip. “I served my country, and I did things overseas that I never should’ve had to do. And what do I get for it? High taxes, the government spending money everywhere they shouldn’t, telling us what to do, and all kinds of other problems. Do you understand what’s happening to this country?” He shook his head in disgust. “Instead of looking at that, people turn a blind eye to it. And now that my son is dead, you want to accuse me of kidnapping and killing him? If you think somebody is capable of doing that, look at my wife. She was the bad mother. She didn’t watch out for him. You want to ask me any more questions, we’ll do it with my lawyer present. Now get the hell out of my office.”

  I stood up slowly. “I’m sorry for your loss, and that you feel we’re not doing the best we can. I assure you we are. And I can also tell you that I will find out who kidnapped and killed your son.”

  I stepped backwards and went out the door. When I went by the front counter, the music still played softy, but it wasn’t enough to dissipate the anger that emanated from Gary’s office.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  “What took you so long?” Ernie asked when I got back to my desk.

  I took my time answering. He wasn’t going to be happy with me. “I talked to Gary Pickett.”

  Ernie took just as much time contemplating me as I did in answering. His face twisted up as he went through a range of emotion. Then he took the cigar out of his mouth and slowly put it in the ashtray, deliberately letting me know he was calming himself. “Oh? How’d it go?”

  Spats looked up from his desk, eyebrows arched, watching our exchange with amusement.

  I told them the conversation. “Gary clammed up, so we won’t get anything else out of him now.”

  Ernie folded his hands and put them on the desk. “What do your instincts tell you about Gary?”

  “I’m not sure. I get the sense that his anger comes not as much from concern about his son as it does from concern about our prying into his personal life.”

  “We can’t eliminate him as a suspect,” Spats said.

  “No.”

  Ernie seemed in a charitable mood, not picking at me for going to see Gary alone. “What did you learn from the security woman at the school?”

  “Our man, Eklund, had an interest in Logan,” I said as I sat down at my desk. I felt a pounding begin, the sure sign an exhaustion headache was coming on. “He’d been interested in Logan before he disappeared, wondering about Logan’s family. Eklund also wanted to know if Logan could model for him.”

  “Model for him?”

  “That’s right. Eklund was only interested in Logan, though. He wasn’t asking about any other kids. Not only that, he was asking about a woman in the neighborhood.”

  Ernie nodded thoughtfully. “Did he mean Audra?”

  “Yeah, sounds like it. He was digging for information. Maybe he was trying to find out how easy or hard it would be to kidnap Logan. If he thinks he’s dealing with a mom who isn’t paying enough attention to her son, then he could go after him.”

  Ernie grunted. “I don’t know. I still don’t like the fact that we can’t find any other indication that he might be into little kids. You’d think he’d have something on his laptop, or we’d find some pictures that he took of kids, something like that.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I keep coming back to that myself.” I ran a hand through my hair, frustrated. “I wish we could get a break in this. I don’t know what I’m missing.”

  “There’s always a first time for a pedophile,” Spats interjected. “But I agree with you. Long before somebody would resort to taking a kid, he’d likely have something in his history that would indicate he was on that path. That’s always what I understood.”

  I nodded. “I’d like to know how this militia group ties into all these guys. I tried to give Gary an out, asking him if he’d kidnapped Logan, to take him out of state, and then Logan was accidentally killed. It’s clear he wanted Logan away from Audra.”

  “He didn’t bite?”

  I shook my head. “No, he got angry.”

  Spats leaned to his left so he could see me sitting at my desk. “I feel like I’m getting more of an education on these militia groups than I want. I just watched a video on how a group from Colorado goes down to the Colorado-New Mexico border to help,” he used rabbit ears to make quotation marks, “with the border patrol, trying to catch people coming across the border. It’s a very interesting subculture that’s been growing in the last several years. I looked at a bunch of these sites that Gary has been on, but so far I can’t find hide nor hair of Merrick’s buddy with the handlebar mustache.”

  I leaned forward and grabbed my mouse. “How much have you looked on Gary’s Facebook page?”

  “I poked around a little bit, but I got sidetracked. I’ll get back to it.”

  “I’ll give it a go.” It took me a minute to get to Gary’s Facebook page. I began scrolling through his posts. “A lot of them have to do with right wing politics, or anti-government sentiments. He also has a lot of stuff about the Marines.”

  “He’s not too proud of that,” Spats said. “The posts are about things that he wasn’t happy about.”

  I scrolled, let the page load more posts, and looked more. Ernie typed, muttering under his breath. I heard Rizzo in another room talking to someone. I kept going through Gary’s posts, and after quite a while, I was rewarded. A picture of Gary with the man with a handlebar mustache appeared on the screen. “There he is.”

  Spats came over and poked a finger at the monitor. “You found that on his Facebook page? Where?”

  “Way back in the history.”

  “Oh yeah?” Spats studied the monitor curiously.

  Ernie rolled his chair o
ver and squinted at the screen. “Oh, he’s a handsome fella.”

  I glanced at him with a grin. “Now we need to find his name.”

  Gary had a link in the post, but when I went to it, it had been removed. Then I clicked on the photo and got lucky. He had tagged the other man. His name was Dean Casper.

  Ernie’s eyebrows went up. “Casper?”

  “Like the ghost?” This from Spats.

  “He wasn’t friendly,” I said dryly.

  Ernie studied the picture. “Let me see about a background search on him. Give me a little time.”

  I glanced at the computer clock. It was already eight o’clock. “I need to head home, talk to Harry, maybe get a little bit of sleep. You guys should do the same.”

  Spats yawned and stretched. “Yeah, I better get home. I’ll do some work from home though.”

  I stood up. “Me too.”

  Ernie rolled back to his desk and nodded at his computer. “I found Casper’s address.” He frowned at me. “Before we go talk to him, let me find out what I can on him. We’ll talk to him tomorrow, okay?”

  I was too tired to argue. “Sure. See you guys in the morning. If you find anything noteworthy, call me.”

  He held up a hand, a small wave. “You do the same.”

  Weariness dragged on me as I parked my car in the garage and went inside. Fleetwood Mac played from the speakers in the living room. That meant Harry was in a mellow mood. If it was something harder, AC/DC, or some ’80s hair bands, I knew he was in an energetic mood. An empty pizza box lay on the counter.

  “Sarah?” he called out.

  I kicked off my shoes and hauled myself into the living room. He had on shorts and a T-shirt, a glass of Scotch in his hand. “How was your day?”