“Very bad detective work, Robert. They arrested the wrong man. Mike Peary had been working for me for the past seven months. He had tracked the man who killed Maryanne — my daughter; she was twelve years old — to a small town up near the Minnesota border. The man killed him before Mike could get to me. Fortunately, Mike had mailed me a long letter before being killed. I have it in the car.”
“Why not take it to the police?”
“Because they wouldn’t listen to me.” The pause again. “Do you know who Richard Tolliver is?”
“Sure. Guy who lives in Des Moines. One of the richest men in the state.”
“He’s my father.”
“I see.”
“No, you don’t. He’s not only my father, he’s my jailer. I’ve been married twice, and both times he managed to put me in mental hospitals.”
“You can’t just put people in mental hospitals. There’s a whole legal process you have to follow. It’s not all that easy.”
“It is if you’re my father and three of your best friends happen to be on the state supreme court.” She sighed. “My father has convinced most people that I’m not a very stable woman, never have been, and that, since the death of my daughter, I’m even crazier than before. If I took Mike’s material to the police, the first thing they’d do is smile patronizingly at me and then turn all the material over to my father.”
She looked at Vic. “Mike said some very flattering things about you and convinced me you could help us if anything ever happened to him. He said the two of you had helped the police on three cases involving missing children and that you found two of them. He talked about you both being in the FBI together — and said you were probably going into business together — helping small-town police departments. He said you’d both obtained private-investigator licenses.”
I grinned. “You make me sound like one hell of a guy.”
“You are one hell of a guy, Robert. That’s why I want you to pick up where Mike Peary left off. You’re not the old gumshoe sort, but you are a detective. A very modern one. Mike told us all about ‘profiling’ and how you both use it.”
“That still doesn’t make me a wizard.” Whenever anybody turns her life — and all her hopes — over to me, I get nervous. I looked at her, which wasn’t a real unpleasant task. “You really think Mike was murdered?”
She nodded. “I’m sure of it. So’s Vic. He was just about to start the second part of his investigation. Then he was killed.” She paused. “If I can be blunt, I know you need some work. I happen to know that your finances aren’t in terribly good shape,” she said. “You’re three payments behind on your mortgage, and you haven’t paid your hangar fee for your biplane in six months.”
“Vic’s been a busy boy, checking me out that way.”
She opened her small black purse and did a circus trick, took from it another manila envelope that looked far too big to be held inside.
She stood up, walked over to me and set it on the arm of my chair. She went back and sat down, smoothing her skirt primly before she did so.
“I’d cry and plead with you if I thought it would do any good, Robert, but I don’t think it will. But I would like to say that I loved my daughter just as much as you loved your wife, and I want her killer found.”
“The police don’t have any leads?”
“No leads at all.”
“And it’s been how long?”
“Eight years.”
“Where was she killed?”
“The parking lot of a shopping mall. I was living in a town in Illinois. It was Christmastime. She’d gone to the mall with one of her friends and the friend’s mother. One minute Maryanne was with them; then she was gone, just vanished. They found her much later that night, in a Dumpster. He’d cut her up with a butcher knife. I don’t want to tell you any more than that. It’s not good for me to talk about.”
I looked at the envelope she’d just given me. “Another ten thousand?”
“Fifteen.”
“Ah.”
“Making twenty-five altogether. One-half down. Even if you aren’t able to catch him, you’ll make twenty-five thousand dollars for trying. Your banker would be very happy to hear about that.”
“You have Mike’s letter?”
“Vic can get it.”
“How about if I read it tonight and call you in the morning?”
“I’d appreciate your doing that.”
“I’m not making any promises, understand.”
“Of course.” She looked to Vic. “Would you get the letter, please?”
Vic left.
“That guy could get on my nerves,” I said. “Doesn’t he ever shut up?”
“Everybody’s curious about Vic. Especially my father. Actually, it’s very simple. We had a pretty mediocre affair several years ago, but in the course of it I found out how good Vic was at managing my life. I came into some money when I was twenty-one, so I hired Vic as my personal assistant. I pay him a lot of money, and he’s well worth it.”
He sure was. He was back before she could say another word.
He walked over to me and handed me a plain white envelope. The letter seemed sizable. FBI agents are very good at writing coherent, detailed reports. That would have come in handy if we’d ever gotten around to starting that private-investigations outfit we’d talked about so many times.
Vic went over and sat back down.
“We’re staying in Cedar Rapids,” she said. “The Collins Plaza.”
“I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“I’d appreciate that.”
She stood up. So did Vic.
She came over and shook my hand and said, “Mike said you were one of the best trackers he’d ever known. He said you could find practically anybody.”
“I used to pay him to say that.”
She smiled. “You don’t take compliments very well, do you?”
“No,” I said, “I guess I don’t.”
I walked them out to the Caddy and stood in the drive as they pulled away, their headlights sweeping over me as Vic turned toward Cedar Rapids thirty-five miles away.
By now it was full night, and my friend the barn owl was calling out from his crook at the top of the hardwood down by the creek.
It was a lonely sound, a perfect complement to the look in Nora Conners’s eyes.
I went back inside, fed the cats, fed myself, opened another beer, and started in on Mike Peary’s letter.
Dear Nora,
I’m mailing this to you on the night before I go back to New Hope, Iowa, and see which of my three suspects falls into the trap I set. More about this later.
I wanted to review everything with you in case something should happen to me and you need corroboration for the county attorney when you finally turn everything over to him and he in turn brings in the police. I think you’re right. From what I know of Haldeman, he’s a good and honest public official and I think he’ll resist your father’s interference.
So, for the record, here’s my official statement:
On October 9, 1992, I, Michael John Peary, was hired by Nora Conners to find the murderer of her twelve-year-old daughter Maryanne. She had been killed eight years earlier, in Illinois. No arrests had ever been made. Local police led Nora to believe that no serious suspects had ever been turned up in their investigation. Recent murders here in Iowa suggested that Maryanne’s murderer may have left Illinois and come to Iowa.
I was hired because my last five years with the Federal Bureau of Investigation were largely spent working out of the FBI Academy. I helped local law-enforcement agencies do “profiling” of killers, which simply means looking for patterns in crimes and speculating on the nature and characteristics of the offender. This kind of profiling led to the FBi’s capture of several infamous serial killers.