PlanetStupido.com attracted national and international notoriety last year when Reif publicly accused the proprietors of several international carbon-offset brokers of fraud and corporate malfeasance. Police sources refuse to speculate whether the alleged murder was connected with the website or Reif’s high-profile activities.
Weller stated in a hastily called press conference at police headquarters that Reif’s body was discovered at 9:47 P.M. by a pizza de liveryman who arrived at the apartment to deliver a pizza that Reif allegedly ordered, leading the police to believe that Reif was killed between 9:20 P.M. when the order was received and the time of delivery. The Madison Police Department urges citizens who may have been in the vicinity of 2701 University Avenue between 9:15 and 10:00 P.M. to report any suspicious persons, vehicles, or activities…
“Interesting,” Joe said. “I’ve never heard of this website, have you?”
“No, but when we get done here, I’m going to spend some time on it,” she said. “But first I’ve got to show you something else.”
She found no major crimes in Cheyenne or at Mount Rushmore, she said. But when she looked at the road atlas for South Dakota, she noted how many small communities there were around the monument. Hill City, Custer, Keystone, and Rapid City, the only city of any size.
“Keystone,” Joe said, sitting up. “Wasn’t that where-”
“Yes,” she said, leaping in. “That’s where that old couple from Iowa were found murdered a week ago in that RV park. Remember that they thought those poor old people had died because their motor home caught fire while they were sleeping, but they later found they’d been shot first?”
“With a small-caliber weapon,” Joe finished for her.
He sat back, his head swimming.
“This proves nothing, I know,” Marybeth said, spinning in her chair to face Joe, whipping her glasses off. “But you’re right-we need to ask April more questions.”
As they looked at each other they both came up with the same thought.
Marybeth returned to the keyboard and the Google home page, typed ASPEN + MURDER, and directed the search within the last twenty-four hours.
Joe observed her as she read the screen. Suddenly, she gasped, sat back in her chair, and covered her mouth with her hand.
He stood up and leaned across the desk. There were only four hits.
The first one, from the Aspen Times said:
MURDER IN ASPEN: COUPLE SLAIN ON EVE
OF WEDDING WEEKEND
9
Chicago, Two Weeks Before
STENKO HAD SAVED HER. SHE OWED HIM; SHE WAS LOYAL. Her journey from that frozen campground on fire in Wyoming to Chicago had been cruel and difficult, consisting of movement with no destination in mind. Until Stenko.
As Stenko and Robert argued back and forth in the front seat of the SUV as they drove north toward Wyoming again, she reviewed how she got to this place at this time and let their voices become nothing more than a discordant background soundtrack.
After the fire, after the raggedy soldiers of the Sovereigns had thrown her across the back of a snowmobile and raced away from that campsite under cover of smoke, confusion, and automatic weapons fire, she’d been bounced around the Midwest to family after family. Indiana, Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, finally Illinois. All were Sovereign sympathizers, but that didn’t mean they were necessarily sympathetic to her. She’d learned to expect nothing from anyone and to have no aspirations. She became what each family expected of her, which was a nonentity attached to a monthly check issued by the social services people. She’d had twenty or more “brothers” and “sisters” along the way. She matured early and was taller, softer featured, and more voluptuous than her mother had been, although when she looked into the mirror and squinted or made an angry face she saw the hard, flinty, cold-eyed face of her mother looking back, as if Mama were inside her trying to break out.
She’d smoked her first joint at age eleven and had sex for the first time at age twelve with foster brother Blake in Minnesota, who’d also taught her how to shoplift from Wal-Mart. The act took place in her basement bedroom while Blake’s friends watched through the window well and hooted. It hurt, she hated it, and afterward she found out quick that most boys despised what they said they wanted most, and that was an important thing to learn. When her foster parents found out what happened they blamed her, called her names, shipped her out of there to the next family.
That’s how she wound up with the Voricek family on the South Side of Chicago. The Voriceks supplemented their income by taking in foster children. She was one of ten. Ed Voricek, her foster father, was a pig-like man with a slight mustache and a comb-over, and he smelled of cigarettes, motor oil, and bacon. He held a series of jobs in the short time she was there, which turned out to be his pattern. He had so many jobs that if anyone at school asked her what her father did, she had to stop and think for a moment what uniform shirt he’d been wearing last. Midas? Grease Monkey? Jiffy Lube? He was chronically in and out of work. His wife Mary Ann was as stout as Ed but meaner, and the children lived in absolute fear of her. Any transgression-not making their beds, not eating every bit of food on their plates, talking back to her, sulking-was greeted with a threat to send them back to the agency. So she learned to do what she had to do, not talk, and live in her own head. Her only companion was a foster sister the same age who had come from the same place, and they used to sneak into each other’s rooms and whisper about running away together. Her foster sister had stuck by her when she screwed up and protected her when a drunk Ed Voricek hovered outside their bedroom door one night when there was no good reason for him to be there. Not that Ed suggested anything or made any moves, but the fact that he was there, leaning against the wall next to their door, said enough in itself. She could still recall the stand her sister took when she opened the door, stared the man down, said, “Why don’t you get the hell to bed?” Ed slunk away.
Ed Voricek was a gambler. She didn’t understand very much about it at the time, but she and all the other children heard the furious arguments between Ed and Mary Ann about his losses. Mary Ann would scream at Ed, beat him with her fists, threaten to leave him if he ruined them, if the social workers found out that he’d lied about his employment status and took the children away.