Chapter 4 Cold Case #2
I turned my attention to Jeff. His personal social media showed him golfing, and fishing somewhere in the mountains.
His was surface level, just like one would expect for any well-known local figure, not locked down.
A search showed that he was the president of Copperhead Valley Solvents, a chemical company perched beside the Copperhead River, that had been running for decades.
I made a mental note to see if the company had had any financial woes or sour business dealings.
But Jeff had a past. To my excitement, his fingerprints were already on file; he was questioned about the disappearance of a young woman almost twenty-five years ago, but no charges were filed. Could be nothing, but I was always suspicious when rich kids got questioned and no charges came of it.
I drummed my fingers on the desk. My boss, the chief of the Detective Bureau, had a long memory.
Maybe if I shook that particular tree, it would drop some useful fruit.
I headed over to Administration, on the second floor of the county jail.
The vending machine had just been refilled, and I snagged a pack of Chief’s favorite, animal crackers.
I checked in with the chief’s secretary. “Hey, Judy. Is Chief busy?”
She winced. “You may want to wait a few minutes.”
Shouts rattled behind the closed door. Judy beckoned to me, and I slid into the guest chair beside her desk.
I heard the sheriff’s voice, sharp in anger. I couldn’t quite make out what they were saying, but it sounded bad.
Judy rubbed her temple. “They’ve been at it all morning.”
“What about?”
Before she could answer, the door slammed open, and the sheriff stomped out.
He was a tall man in his seventies, with a barrel chest, who looked something like Johnny Cash.
He did a good job of presenting himself as a benign lawman who liked to kiss babies around election time, but he knew where all the bodies in Bayern County were buried.
He had a long list of people who owed him favors.
He didn’t glance at Judy’s desk, and I thought I’d escaped his notice. The door creaked back, almost closing.
I flicked a glance at the door and whispered, “I can come back later.”
Judy looked at the animal crackers in my hand. “You’re okay. You come bearing gifts.”
I peeked through the partially open doorway.
Chief’s office was shaped like a bowling alley, with a seating area at one far end and his imposing desk at the other.
His desk was littered with a myriad of electronics parts.
He was holding a handheld radio, twisting the channel-selection knob and smiling darkly to himself.
Maybe he was distracting himself from the conflict with the sheriff.
I knocked on the doorframe, and Chief gestured for me to come and sit down in a club chair opposite his desk.
“New radios?” I chose not to mention the sheriff or their argument.
“New radios. They even have Bluetooth and do texts,” he muttered. I could see he was trying to refocus after the fight with the sheriff. He fiddled with the controls, and my cell phone chirped.
I fished my phone out of my pocket and stared at the number that appeared on the screen. It was Chief’s. A text message announced: This is some Star Trek level stuff.
“Pretty slick,” I agreed. Clearly, he didn’t want to talk about whatever was happening with the sheriff. And it was clearly none of my business.
He punched some buttons on his radio, and my phone rang.
I answered it.
It beeped a sharp electronic tone when I picked it up, and Chief spoke into the radio. “See? We can even make phone calls.”
“Nice.” I handed Chief the animal crackers.
Chief thanked me and tore into the bag. “I heard you had a tough call last night.”
I nodded. “Yeah. I almost lost that kid. If I had been a few minutes faster…” Maybe he wouldn’t be in a coma.
“You did everything you could. It was just shitty circumstances, kiddo.”
“Except…I’m not so sure.” I told him about Mason’s lungs being full of mud, about how difficult it had been to pull him from the pond.
Chief leaned back in his chair, lacing his fingers over his chest, and listened. “And you think someone put that kid in the pond? Held him or weighted him down?”
“I think it’s possible. I’m not sure where I fall on the babysitter.
Her clothes were dry, and she didn’t seem to register that Mason was in the pond.
I got some warning bells when I looked into the father, Jeff Sumner.
He’s a big business honcho, maybe one with enemies, and he was seriously looked at when a girl went missing in the past.”
“Mm. I remember that guy.” Chief’s eyes narrowed. “Sumner and some of his buddies were suspects in the disappearance of a high school girl, Dana Carson. We suspected Dana was dead, but her body was never found.”
“Did you work that case?”
“Well, I tried. Jeff and his cohorts were classmates with Dana. They lawyered up immediately, and we got stonewalled pretty much out of the gate.”
I leaned forward. “What made you suspect them?”
“They called themselves ‘the Kings of Warsaw Creek.’ They were trouble from the start. History of petty crimes and vandalism, the kinds of things that property owners can easily be paid off to drop charges.”
“Sounds like you knew them pretty well.” Warsaw Creek was a tributary of the Copperhead River, one that wound, snakelike, through many acres of private land. “Why Warsaw Creek?”
“They set fire to the creek when they were kids. Almost caused a forest fire. They dumped a whole lot of chemicals from Jeff’s dad’s plant into the water and set it on fire for shits and giggles on Halloween.”
“That is…spectacularly dumb.”
“And typical for them. There was a three-hundred-year-old oak that stood in the park across from the courthouse. They poisoned that tree and killed it, just for kicks.”
“What the hell?” I sucked in my breath. I was pretty sure that if they’d crossed paths with my father, he would’ve destroyed them for their affronts to his forest.
“They were minors and got off with a fine.”
“What was their connection to Dana?”
“Dana was last seen at a gas station, with those guys. They were all each other’s alibi, saying they left her there and went to the bowling alley that was owned by one of their fathers.”
“Mm. Shady.”
“Definitely. But there wasn’t enough evidence to charge any of them. No body, no evidence, and we were stuck.”
“But you liked these guys for the crime.”
“Yeah. I did.” He stared up at the ceiling. I could see from the set of his jaw that he hadn’t liked leaving the case alone. Every cop had cases like that. “The girl, Dana, had no reason to take off. Popular girl. She’d never been in trouble.”
“And the boys?”
“They were such arrogant little shits, honestly. My theory was that they picked her up, maybe she saw them doing something they weren’t supposed to, and then they killed her to keep her from talking. Dana didn’t come from a rich family, and they didn’t think they would fight back.”
I frowned. “Jeff has an alibi for Mason’s drowning. He was out with his wife. And the guy may be a total shit, but it’s rare for even a total shit to drown his own kid.”
“Well, maybe someone had it in for Jeff,” Chief suggested. “Like you said, he’s a big fish in a small fishbowl. Maybe other fish don’t like him. And you might get some ideas looking at the file for Dana Carson’s disappearance.”
“Will do.”
“I mean, this drowning might just be an accident, but I’m all for giving it the scrutiny it deserves. Look into it until you’re satisfied.”
I took his advice and headed to the departmental archives. To my disappointment, I found that the archives had been moved to provide space for one of the sheriff’s remodeling projects: a new conference room.
Gritting my teeth in irritation, I found myself in a dank subbasement, with boxes stacked haphazardly. After two hours of climbing ladders and sneezing dust, I located a banker’s box with Dana Carson’s name on it.
It always broke my heart a little to see a box from an unsolved case. It felt like failure, like grief that wasn’t given closure. It was an open wound, festering in the dark. But I believed that Chief was eager to have me follow up and try to close that wound.
I put the box on a beat-up metal table and opened it.
It was like excavating the history of a life, an archaeological dig. Dana had been reported missing by her mother on the evening of the Fourth of July almost twenty-five years ago. She was seen on camera at the gas station, but then she seemed to evaporate into thin air.
I found a picture of Dana Carson, a high school yearbook photo.
She had long, dark hair and dark eyes. I learned from the yearbook, with curled Post-it notes stuck in the pages, that she was an artist and hoped to go to art school.
In her candid pictures in the yearbook, she had a goth look—she dressed in black, with silver jewelry—but her smile was brilliant.
I scanned the yearbook photos of the suspects.
A younger version of Jeff Sumner bore more hair and less weight.
His friend Quentin Sims appeared in a high school journalism photo, looking academic and pensive.
They were often shown with a third guy: Mark Lister, an athletic-looking teen who ran track.
I sat back and chewed on my lip. It was almost twenty-five years since Dana vanished.
Why would anyone hold a grudge for twenty-five years and not act on it sooner?
It seemed implausible to me…until I thought of the skull, with the number ten scrawled on it.
There were nine days until July fourth…ten days since I found the skull…
What was that? A countdown? What would happen on the Fourth of July?
I gathered my notes, then put the lid on the box. I carried the paper files out to my car, for further examination later.
I met Monica in the parking lot and filled her in.
Monica nodded and narrowed her eyes. “I took a spin past the hospital. Drema was there with Mason. I mentioned the skull to her. Turns out, she had a stalker in college, a Mike Renfelter. The cops weren’t much help, but when she met Jeff, Jeff apparently beat the shit out of the guy.”
“Yikes. I guess that explains her lack of social media.”
“Jeff’s persuasion apparently worked, because Mike backed off. Drema suspected he was back when fish were dumped in their driveway, but there wasn’t any clear evidence.”
“Did she say anything about the scratches on Mason?”
“She claims the scratches and bruises weren’t there when they left.
Initially, the intensivist at the hospital thought about snapping turtles.
Concerned about having to treat the kid for salmonella, he called a herpetologist friend at the university.
The herpetologist thinks the scratches on the kid’s body aren’t consistent with snapping turtle beaks.
There would’ve been severed fingers and blood in the water. ”
“Damn. Sounds like someone really intended that kid harm.” Statistically, when someone hurt a kid, it was most likely to be someone in the same household. Leah hadn’t mentioned that Mason had been hurt when she was sitting for him, but…
Monica continued. “The hospital intensivist raised the possibility of child abuse, and Drema’s really beside herself. I don’t think she’s faking that. Drema said she and Jeff got married because she got pregnant. She lost that baby, and she seems super protective of Mason now.”
I exhaled. “She seemed genuinely upset last night. That tracks. But I still have a feeling someone isn’t being honest with us.”
“I was headed out to interview Leah again. Wanna follow me over?”
“Yeah.” I wanted to see Leah in the clear light of day. I suspected there was more to her story than we got last night.