“No.”
“How about the press?”
“I did a briefing this morning. No one showed. Here’s the release I put out,” he passed her a single piece of paper.
“So Moarse died under suspicious circumstances, and his name is being withheld pending notification of kin. How are you doing on that?”
“Everything I’ve done is in the file,” Ray tapped the aluminum cover of his laptop. “I have yet to find any relatives. Moarse has no outstanding warrants. We’ve talked about his priors—nothing recent. He’s got a number of civil actions pending against him. Property tax is a year in arrears. We need to do a lot more digging.”
“Maybe you just need to get the name out there. Make an appeal to the community for help. We might get lucky.”
“Yes,” agreed Ray. “Will you have the scene processed by tomorrow? The two of us need to…”
“No way, it will take a month of Sundays to sort through that mess. But your first charge to me was to definitely connect Moarse to Vincent Fox’s death. I’ve got that. The tires on the Jeep match the casts I made at Fox’s house. More importantly,” she said, pushing a photo across to Ray, “look what I found in the back of the Jeep under the passenger seat.”
“The boot, the missing right boot. Did it look like it had been hidden?”
“No, it was just lying there. My guess is Fox’s body was thrown in and his boot caught and was left behind when the body was tossed in the ditch. Moarse didn’t seem to be too good with the details, even something that could send him to prison for the rest of his life.”
“How about the burned skin on the sauna stove?”
“I’m still trying to figure out how to do that. The guys at the State Police lab are helping me.”
“What did you find in the house?” asked Ray.
“A couple of things. First, I found a copy of Fox’s book.”
“Where?”
“It was in the bathroom under a copy of the Northern Express. You’re smiling.”
“Yes, but I won’t comment. Prints?”
“Not yet, Ray. I haven’t processed them. Tomorrow.”
“What else?”
“This is even more interesting than the phantom cell.” She set a plastic bag containing a worn leather wallet in front of Ray, then two additional plastic bags, one containing a few small denomination bills, the other containing several $100 bills.
“How many?” asked Ray, looking at the $100s.
“Five, they were folded and concealed in a separate compartment.”
They sat in silence for a moment. “And?” said Ray.
“Same series as Ma French found. Crumpled, but they appear to be uncirculated 100s. So new question, how did that Iraq money end up in Moarse’s wallet? Did you find any service record for him?” asked Sue.
“No, none.”
“There have got to be a ton of Iraq war veterans living in this area. How do we get a list?”
“And even if we could, how do we get enough legs to run this one down?” said Ray.
45
Mackenzie sat at her desk, staring at the screen. With her index and middle finger moving slowly across the surface of the Trackpad, she scrolled up the page. Then she dropped her hands in her lap, folded them left over right, and gently swiveled in her chair from side to side, her eyes still fixed on the screen.
She thought about the mystery she had been reading the evening before, how the gutsy P.I. took on the bad guys with her fists, her gun, and her guile. Mackenzie liked that image, but she had to admit that she wasn’t that character. I’ve never been in a real fight, she thought. Yes, she had taken martial arts classes and proven herself in countless competitions, but everything had taken place in a controlled environment. They weren’t real world battles. She reached up to feel the budge of the gun holstered under her left breast. Again, she had proven to be an apt student and an expert shot, but how would she react in a firefight. Could I really pull the trigger?
Her mind wondered back to the tough Chicago P.I. If she emulated that character, what would she do? Directly confront Sabotny with gun in hand? No, that’s fiction, she thought. If there was only some way she could force a confession from him. But what was the likelihood that he would tell the truth?
Mackenzie opened the first page on the original planning document. At the top in bold letters was the overarching goaclass="underline"
Conviction and imprisonment of everyone involved with Terry’s death.
She copied the goal statement and pasted it into a graphic outlining program. Then, she laid out her options with direct confrontation on the far left and going to the police at the far right. Mackenzie tried to make other possibilities fit between the two polar positions, but nothing seemed to work. She was just spinning her wheels. At this point those other possibilities were just modest variations on the extremes.
Ken Lee’s nagging thought that it was time to go put this investigation in other peoples’ hands continued to push into her consciousness. Maybe he was right. Maybe it was time to bring in the cavalry. That’s what she would have done in the corporate world. As a manager faced with overwhelming problems, she’d contract with the best people in the business to generate and implement solutions.
Mackenzie keyed Vision of the Future at the top of a new document. As she wrote, she could see how elements could be put into place to keep a close watch on Sabotny and further explore his background. Maybe they could find incriminating evidence to tie him to other crimes. Even if she couldn’t get him for Terry’s death, she hoped that she could bring havoc to Sabotny’s life, strip him of his fortune, and send him to prison.
Rereading her words, the dreariness that had enshrouded her for weeks started to lift. She could get away from the cold, damp Michigan spring and go back to California. From a safe distance, both physically and psychologically, she could monitor the progress of a group working on this project.
Mackenzie picked up her phone. She texted Ken Lee a four-word message. Put a team together.
Four minutes later he was on screen, “Why the sudden change?” he asked.
“Okay, so it took me awhile to figure out I wasn’t Wonder Woman. I apologize again for being less than nice to you. I just thought I could do this, find these people, and I don’t know….”
“You had to do what you had to do. And all the information we’ve gathered thus far will be a good starting point for the team. I’ve already started putting together a list of people, specialists, to pull together for this.”
“Am I going to end up broke?”
“I don’t think so. No. We should be able to move fairly quickly. If nothing else we can tip the IRS to the stolen cash. There’s enough there to put him in the slammer for decades. And his sweetie, Elena Rustova, may be implicated too. Once we feed them the info, I’m sure the I.N.S. will be happy to ship her back to Moldova.”
“But Sabotny, I don’t want that SOB to go to one of those federal country clubs for tax dodgers. I want him rotting in a dingy state prison for life.”
“I hear you. Maybe we can find a way for him to go down for Moarse. Your brother, that’s almost an impossible case. But I’ll do my best to get him one way or another.”
Mackenzie was playing with airline schedules as she listened. “I’m coming back to California.”