Open Season (Alex Delaware #40)

Chapter 41

Chapter

41

Milo’s initial plan had been for three 8-hour surveillance shifts, two detectives per shift in separate cars with radio contact. All of the D’s preferred twelve hours and he said, “Fine.”

Moe and Alicia took the night shift because neither minded being up late. Petra and Raul began with days, Milo and Sean were on schedule for the following night.

I left them to their preparation and went home.

—

That didn’t mean I put the case aside.

Cameron Flick listed himself as a doctoral candidate in math at the U. I pulled up the department’s website, which obligingly included a list of graduate students.

Surprisingly long list: a hundred sixty-two names, some for terminal master’s degrees, some for doctorates. None of them Flick’s.

Had his enrollment been a total lie from the beginning or had he been asked to leave? I had no contacts at Math but I did know someone married to a possible source: a geology prof named Llewelyn Greenberg who taught at the old school crosstown where I had a faculty appointment.

I generally avoid faculty functions but Llewelyn and I had sat together at a Kappa Alpha Phi dinner where a student I’d mentored had merited membership in that graduate honor society. Sitting next to Llewelyn was a pleasant, quiet woman he’d introduced as “my considerably better half, Karen’s an expert in topology over in the New World.”

She’d blushed and spent the evening silently doodling formulas on her napkin, then running over to Llewelyn’s, and finally to mine. Thanking me with a sweet smile.

Llewelyn was a bit more outgoing but not by much and by the end of the evening, they both looked exhausted.

More introverts. They don’t make a lot of noise but they often create wonders.

I looked up Llewelyn’s wife. Karen Salzman-Greenberg, Cratchett-Fillmore Professor of Mathematics.

I reached Llewelyn in his office and made my request. No need to explain because, as I’d expected, no curiosity on his part. That likely made asking for confidentiality unnecessary. But you have to be careful.

Llewelyn said, “Of course,” as if I’d stated the obvious, hung up and called me back two hours later.

“That person was there but no longer as of two years and slightly over five months ago.”

He recited the date.

I said, “Any idea why?”

“The usual,” he said. “Floundering. Couldn’t come up with anything original.”

I thanked him and thought about a grad student, taken with his own brilliance, tossed from academia like a piece of detritus.

Shattered. Then angry. A few months later, he deals with it in a tried-and-true manner.

Go get the rifle.

—

I moved on to an image search on Cameron Flick and pulled up five photos of a smiling tutor next to even more broadly beaming high school seniors, each holding up a college acceptance letter.

Plugging in Flick’s address on South Ogden Drive revealed a nondescript, off-white one-story bungalow, tagged by a real estate site at twelve hundred thirty-three square feet on an eighth-acre lot. Four years ago, the property had sold for just over a million and a half dollars. L.A. real estate psychosis.

Four years ago, Flick had still been a grad student and even with a host of clients paying a hundred eighty bucks an hour, that price was a stretch.

A second site included what the first hadn’t: the presence of a three-hundred-square-foot guesthouse. Milo probably knew that already but I included it in my notes and switched to a ten-year-old shooting in Shelter Lake, Ohio.

—

Rainer Steckel’s funeral had been memorialized in the same local paper that had listed his death one month prior. The ceremony had been “well-attended by family, friends, and Oberlin faculty members and students who remembered Rainer with great fondness.”

The dead man’s willingness to help others was emphasized, as were his “love of the outdoors and excellence in building birdhouses that he gave free of charge to neighbors and friends.”

No spouse or children listed. I looked for Steckels in Ohio, found a heating, air-conditioning, and plumbing company in Dayton owned and run by William and Della Steckel.

Nearly five p.m. there but worth a try.

A man answered, “Steckel AC, this is Will, how can I help you?”

“My name’s Alex Delaware and I’m calling from Los Angeles where I work with the police department.”

“Work with? How?”

“Criminal analysis, I’ll give you a phone number and if you’d like you can verify—”

“No, that’s fine. What’s this about?”

“We’re looking into a ten-year-old murder that took place—”

“Rainer,” said Will Steckel, his voice dropping. “I was hoping you’d say that. But why the devil would Los Angeles be interested?”

“It’s possible that whoever shot Rainer committed a crime here.”

“Huh. Crazy.”

“He was your brother.”

“Older brother,” said Will Steckel. “Well, at least you’re trying to do something. The yokels over in Shelter Lake. Do you know the details?”

“Your brother was shot while hunting deer.”

“That was the claim but it was bullshit. I told the idiots, they ignored me.”

“What did you tell them?”

“That it had to be one of those spoiled brats from the college—Oberlin, that’s where Rain worked.”

“Which brat in particular?”

“That’s the problem,” said Will Steckel. “I had no name, no description, nothing. Just what my brother told me like a month before it happened. So who’s the bastard you’re looking at over there?”

“Sorry, can’t say at this point.”

“You’re claiming there’ll be a point where you can say?”

I said, “The more we know, the better the odds of that. What did Rain tell you?”

“That he had a giant kerfuffle with one of the college brats. Sick kerfuffle, Rain was working at night cleaning the gym, went into a bathroom, put the lights on and caught some weirdo whipping his wienie. In full view, sitting in one of the stalls with the door wide open. Pervert shouldn’ta been there for any reason, the building was supposed to be closed up for the evening, but Rain said he was always finding doors unlocked when they weren’t supposed to be. Windows, too. Coupla times he found raccoons wandering around eating garbage and once in a while there’d be a couple doing their thing. But never that. I mean, why? Use a dorm bathroom. Or just wait until dark and fool around in your bunk bed. So we’re obviously talking sick puppy.”

He laughed. “I’m not saying what happened was funny but picturing it is kinda funny, no? Rain walks in ready to mop and sees that ? He said he told the kid, ‘What the hell are you doing, boy? Stick it back in your pants and scram.’ So what would you expect someone caught in the act to do?”

“Be embarrassed and leave.”

“Exactly. You tuck your tail between your legs and get the hell out of there. Not this brat, he gets an attitude, starts yelling at Rain. Tells him he’s intruding. That’s the word he used. Intruding. Rain can’t believe what he’s hearing, says, ‘Are you nuts, boy?’ Then Rain cracks up and says, ‘Speaking of nuts, yours are shrinkin’,’ and that really pisses the brat off. He pulls up his pants and comes at Rain like he’s itchin’ for a fight. Rain holds out his mop and says, ‘Don’t even think about it, boy.’ The brat stops, tries to stare Rain down, then finally he leaves. But on the way out, he bumps into Rain’s shoulder. Hard, on purpose. Rain shoulda reported it but that wasn’t him, he was softhearted, give you the shirt off his back. So he let it ride and then a couple weeks later, he sees the same brat on campus giving him the stink-eye. That’s when he told me about it, said the kid gave him the creeps. A couple weeks after that, Rain’s dead. That sound like a hunting accident to you? Yokel fools.”

“Did Rain give you any details about the creep?”

“No,” said Will Steckel. “Just what I told you and that was supposedly the problem for the yokels. Insufficient details. But I think it was more than that. They’d never do anything to embarrass the college, place does a lot of hiring. So is your guy some sort of sex deviate?”

“Again, sorry, can’t—”

“I’ll take that as a yes,” said Will Steckel, chuckling. “Didn’t know beating your meat in public was even a problem in L.A.”

—

Milo said, “Filling out subpoena forms and enjoying it. What’s up?”

“Two things,” I said. “Flick’s no longer enrolled at the U. Dismissed due to lack of performance a little under two and a half years ago. That’s not long before the shootings began. So it’s likely career frustration played a role.”

“Cammy-poo all upset? Don’t tell Flick’s defense attorney that, Alex. No, I get what you’re saying. It could fill out the motive. Thanks. What’s the second thing?”

“I may have found out why Rainer Steckel was shot.”

He said, “I leave you alone for a few hours and you invent another wheel? Okay, go.”

I recounted what Will Steckel had told me.

He said, “Brother’s right, it is a weird story. You’re saying Flick’s got that short of a fuse?”

“Far from it,” I said. “The picture I’m getting of Flick is he expends a lot of mental energy maintaining his self-image as smart. Which would be consistent with child abuse. He has no tolerance for being challenged and certainly not for being humiliated and registers rage immediately. But he controls it and doesn’t act out impulsively. Instead, he takes a reasoned, step-wise, problem-solving approach to revenge.”

“Mathematical approach.”

“Exactly. And now that I think about it, just like the Unabomber. He murdered because he enjoyed it but he got as much gratification from stewing, mapping out a plan, choosing his time and place, then basking in self-congratulation and writing a manifesto.”

“Jesus,” he said. “Hope none of Flick’s students have pissed him off.”

“Now that you mention it,” I said, “tutoring college applicants would be perfect for someone craving admiration. He enters the situation as an expert, his students are anxious and needy and grateful for every bit of edge he gives them and so are their parents. That’s in sharp contrast with his experience as a grad student where he ultimately ended up failing.”

“Haven’t heard of any math profs at the U. reaching an untimely demise.”

“So far, so good,” I said. “But let Flick mull on it too long and who knows?”

“Don’t even say that, Alex. Yeah, yeah, I need to catch him. So let me go back to his damn phone records and his moolah records and start to invent my own wheel.”