Chapter 28
Doreen woke up in the middle of the night and jerked upright and swore. She slapped her hand over her mouth and stared around the room in shock. She was alone, except for Mugs, who was stretched out beside her. She saw no sign of Goliath, and Thaddeus was up on his roost, sound asleep. She sat here on her bed, with her covers pulled up tight, shivering in the chill and wondering what on earth was going through her mind that she woke herself up, swearing like a sailor.
Even as she sat here, considering the language she had used, it came back to her what her brain had been going on about. It had to do with those bodies, and she knew it. Now the question was, who was where and why, and what did any of this have to do with that poor woman, Lynda Mahoney, who was shot in a friend’s driveway as she sought answers on her father’s disappearance? Doreen had so many pieces, and yet none of it was coming together. However, she knew the final conclusion was right there, lingering at the edge of her brain. If only she could pull it out.
She sank back on her bed, struggling to figure out how this all worked together. She remained here for a good hour, before just giving up. She got up, had a hot shower, and then went downstairs and put on coffee. She soon got a large piece of brown butcher paper, stretched it out onto the kitchen table and started to map out what was bothering her.
This would take a little bit, even though not a whole lot was going on. Her problem was just that everything was disjointed and yet crisscrossed each other somehow. She knew that the answers at the end of the day would be very simple, but, as far as she was concerned, the key to all of it was Rose. If Doreen could map out Rose’s life, then Doreen could get to the rest of this puzzle without any trouble. At least she hoped so.
She didn’t want to tell Mack what she was up to though. Yet, as soon as he walked in the door—and she always expected him to walk in her door—he would have some idea. Still, he wasn’t here now, and she had to get it sorted out before she asked Mack to start exhuming bodies. She was sure that would have to be done next.
Grabbing another cup of coffee, she picked up her pen and sat down. She had Jack Mahoney, still missing and maybe connected to Milford’s bloody garden patch, or maybe not. She had no idea. She had a dead woman, Lynda Mahoney, who had been shot on a friend’s driveway, after asking questions about her missing father, Jack Mahoney. Doreen added Jack’s timeline and Lynda’s two visits here to find her father to Doreen’s map. She mapped out the location of Milford’s farm up in the Joe Rich area, noting the bloody garden patch.
Too bad forensics had been a bust. She only had Milford’s word on the blood’s existance. Still… why would he lie?
Supposedly Milford had called in law enforcement all those years ago, yet the cops didn’t do anything but then again, that was before DNA so…. That was an interesting conundrum though. As she sat here working on it, she mapped out known events in Rose’s life too. As far as Doreen was concerned, she had to focus on Rose, no matter how sketchy Doreen’s info was. The third supposedly missing person was Bartlet Jones, gone some fifty years ago but recently found and connected to Rose in that he was one of the men she had had an affair with. So, that prompted Doreen to do what she really needed to do next, as she reached for her phone.
It rang just as she went to pick it up. She looked down at it and then grinned. “You must have read my mind,” she said cheerfully.
“Why?” Mack asked.
“Because I was just going to call you.”
“That’s good, or maybe it’s good,” he clarified, a note of humor evident in his tone.
“I would like to think it’s good,” she replied.
“Did you solve something?” he asked.
“No, but I need the DNAs on those John Doe and Jane Doe bodies.” There was silence on the other end for a moment.
“I don’t know if we have samples set aside or if they would have to be exhumed,” he replied. “They were buried in unmarked graves, which was a common thing back then.”
“Of course,” she noted, “but we do need the DNA in order to find out who they are. It’s too bad they don’t just keep them in a morgue drawer.”
“Yeah, that’s not exactly something most families would agree with either,” he noted in a dry tone.
“I realize that,” she admitted. “Some of these have been there for a while.”
“They were all down to bones, I believe, if I have the reports in my head correct.”
“I’m not surprised,” she said. “They were probably lost for a long time.”
“So, who is it that you expect them to be?” When she went quiet, he asked, “You’re not planning on telling me yet?”
“There’s a good chance that I’m wrong.”
“Sure, that’s always the case,” Mack replied, “and obviously we are missing some people, down to two now that Bartlet Jones has been found. Yet you do realize that none of the years given for when the other two who went missing match up, right? You’ve got Jack Mahoney missing twenty-something years ago, which was confirmed by witnesses who spoke with his daughter, Lynda.
“I know,” she agreed, “but the two dates are iffy, not definitive.”
“Right. I’ve already talked to the captain about getting DNA, even exhuming the bodies,” he shared. “I had that discussion with him this morning.”
“Oh? And what did he say?”
“He cautiously agreed. But only if you come up with more evidence to justify it.”
There was silence at first, then she cried out, “Really?”
“Yes, but it’s mostly because you have such a good track record.”
“Oh, great .” She winced. “That’ll just put added pressure on me.”
“Yeah,” Mack said, “but these are very old cases, and I wasn’t even looking at them necessarily because we have nothing on them to proceed with. We just have bodies, and they’re skeletal remains at that.”
“If you have any information on them, I would like to see if I can fit any of it into the lovely little hypothesis I’m working on.”
“Yeah, but will you let me know what your hypothesis is?” he asked, with a note of humor.
“If and when I can figure it out in my head, yes, of course. But the problem I still have, as you know, is no proof of any wrongdoing.”
“The one body had a lot of animal activity on it, so it was thought to be a hunter, or somebody who had just gone out for a hike and either had a heart attack, or was dropped by animals, but we have no way to know.”
“Of course,” she noted. “And it could also just have been somebody who had died and had been left there. Even with bones left behind, you could still have missing body parts.”
He sighed. “That’s another good point. On the one body, I’m not sure we have all of it.”
“And, with a death like that,” she added, “you might not easily find cause of death. Once the animals get going on a dead body, it’s all the more difficult.”
“And,” Mack clarified, “if it was a natural death, or somebody killed by strangulation yet with no broken hyoid even left to examine, you and I both know that it would be hard to prove murder now.”
“Exactly. Yet I’m pretty sure they were both killed,” she shared. “I’ve been sitting here contemplating the butcher paper I’ve laid out on my kitchen table and all that I have mapped out.”
“I’ll come over this evening,” he said, “but I’m organizing the exhuming process now. DNA will take a while. I know you don’t want to hear that, but DNA does take a while.”
“And yet these bodies have been here for a long time,” she noted, “so I guess another day or two won’t matter.”
“I’m surprised to hear you say that,” he joked. “You’re usually the one jumping all over me to make it go faster.”
“And I usually would be, but I suspect that their murderers may not be alive now to be charged for their crimes.”
A moment of silence came before he spoke again. “You really think you know what’s going on?”
“Unfortunately, yes. The thing is, I’ll need another body exhumed as well.” She heard him groan on the other end of the phone.
“And who is that?” he asked.
“I’ll need Rose’s body exhumed,” she replied.
“I doubt that the captain will want to hear this,” he muttered. “And Milford will be upset for sure.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Hang on, let me call the captain at least.”
She heard voices in the background. Almost immediately she felt her doubts assail her. As soon as Mack came back on, she repeated, “I could be wrong, though.”
Mack laughed. “Look. We know that, and none of us will be at all upset if you are wrong. The fact is, we don’t have anything in the way of promising leads right now.”
“Right,” she said, with a nod.
Then the captain’s voice boomed through Mack’s phone. “Why don’t you just come down and talk to us? Let’s see what you’ve got.”
“Sure. … Like, now?”
“Yes, now,” he declared in that tone that wouldn’t give anybody any option to do otherwise.
As soon as she disconnected, she looked down at the animals and asked, “Are you guys ready for this?” Mugs woofed several times, and started turning around, chasing his tail. Goliath smacked Mugs twice on the head, then flopped back down, as if to say, Whatever . Thaddeus faced her from his living room roost and declared, “Thaddeus is here. Thaddeus is here.”
“Thanks, buddy. Let’s all get going.” So she grabbed up all the related paperwork she had gathered, along with her multiple timelines map, and loaded up the animals into her car, already parked on the driveway. With a heavy dose of sarcasm, she said, “Okay, this will be fun.” As she looked up and walked to her driver’s side door, she saw Richard, sitting there on his front porch, staring at her. She shrugged and smiled.
“Did you solve it?” he asked.
“I don’t think so, not yet,” she muttered, “but I’m close.”
In a rare vote of confidence, he just waved his hand and said, “You’ve got it. If you’re that close, you’re bound to get it in no time.” And, with that, he walked back inside his home.
She stared in his direction for a moment, then frowned at her animals. “I didn’t expect that.”
As soon as she drove down to the police station and got out, Nan called Doreen on the phone.
“Where are you?” she asked, in that tone requiring an answer right away.
“I just parked at the police station. Why?”
“Ooh, do you have it figured out?” she called out in excitement.
“No, I don’t have it figured out. I just have more questions.”
“Oh.”
The disappointment in Nan’s tone was so deep that Doreen felt the need to temper her response. “However, I think I’m very close to figuring it out,” she muttered, then rolled her eyes, knowing that was the last thing she should tell Nan.
“Then I’m coming down there.”
“No, you’re not,” Doreen said in alarm. “I’m having a meeting with everyone at the captain’s request, so this isn’t the time for you and the gang to show up.”
“It should be because, if you’re almost there, you’ll need us to go ferret out the rest of the details,” she explained, “and we’re ready.” With that, she disconnected.
Doreen groaned and walked into the police station. Darren stood there, talking with Mack, and they looked up as she walked in. Mack smiled, and she looked over at Darren and muttered, “I’m so sorry.”
He closed his eyes and whispered, “Please, no. Don’t tell me that Rosemoor residents will soon descend on all of us.”
“I won’t be shocked if they turn up here,” she replied apologetically. “I didn’t mean for it to happen and told Nan no, but, well, you know how that goes.” When Darren just stared at her, she nodded. “Honestly, they are a force unto themselves.”
“You’re not kidding,” Darren muttered. “It’s definitely lunchtime for me. I’m leaving.”
“Oh no you don’t,” the captain roared. “If Richie is coming here, you’re staying.”
Darren’s shoulders sagged as he looked at Doreen, hoping she might take mercy on him.
She laughed. “I can handle most of them, including your grandfather, but you know what happens when they go off on their own.”
He nodded. “I do know, and that’s why I want to go for lunch.” Then he turned and glanced back at the captain. “Please.”
“No. You stay here. You’ll need to wrangle your grandfather, as they’ll cause complete chaos.”
She laughed. “That they definitely will.”
“Did you tell them that you solved it?” the captain asked her.
“No, I told Nan that I came down here to ask more questions. Then I also said I was close to solving it, and, of course, she jumped on that, saying they needed to be here at the ready to go ferret out the rest of the information.”
He just stared at her, shook his head, and muttered to himself.
“I know,” Doreen added. “I’m sorry.”
“Wherever you go, it seems chaos follows,” The captain turned to look down at Mugs, who was straining at his leash. “At least give us some puppy love today.”
She dropped the leash, and Mugs raced to him.
The captain dropped to his knees and hugged Mugs. “Honest to goodness, this is the best thing about having you around.”
Doreen chuckled. “I’m glad somebody appreciates me.”
“We do and we don’t.” Then the captain chuckled. “I have to admit it’s a challenge having you around sometimes.”
She nodded. “And I am sorry for that. I don’t try to be difficult.”
He shrugged. “You may not try to be difficult, but, I swear, you are.”
“Yet I don’t mean to be,” she muttered.
“I get it. I really do, but unfortunately you come with some big handicaps. Come on. Let’s get the bulk of this over with, before the Rosemoor people arrive and find out.”
With that, she headed into one of the boardrooms, where she walked over to the whiteboard and started putting up the timeline map she’d drawn on brown butcher paper. The captain came to stand behind her, and Mack was right beside her.
“You know that’s as clear as mud,” Mack pointed out in a low tone.
She looked back at him and explained, “It’s not as if I was planning on presenting it to anybody. It was intended just for me.”
Yet Darren looked at it and nodded. “It makes sense.”
She snorted. “I’m glad to hear that because I’m hoping it won’t be such a big deal. Now look,” Doreen began, “we started off with three missing people, two named, one not.” Then she took a red pen and drew a circle around them. “I could be way off here, but I’ll just say it.” Then she stopped to face them. “I’m thinking the vague twenty-odd-years-ago date when Jack Mahoney went missing and the generic twenty-five-years-ago date when Milford first saw his bloody garden bed are actually the same date. My theory says they are the exact same date. And Mack and I both heard Milford himself say that he doesn’t remember the date when he married his wife. So any date he gives us in this investigation must be suspect. Plus, I understand the local old-timers and even forensics can’t give us a definite timeframe on these two events. With Lynda dead, we can’t ask her to refine her date for her father going missing. So that’s why I need the DNA.”
“Hang on a minute. Hang on. Let’s start at the beginning,” the captain stated.
She frowned at him and asked, “You mean, it’s not self-evident?”
“No, it’s not,” he barked.
Just then her phone rang. She glanced down and moaned. “Oh, it’s Milford, Rose’s husband. And I need to ask him about exhuming her body.”
“Unless he has a hairbrush,” the captain suggested, “or something like that, where we could get the DNA from that instead.”
She looked at the captain in delight and answered her phone. “Hey, Milford. Are you okay?”
“Not really,” he muttered, his tone dark. “I’m parked outside in the police parking lot.” She looked at the captain, her eyebrows shooting up, and whispered, “He’s here.”
He frowned back at her in surprise.
Doreen asked Milford, “Do you want to come in and talk to us?”
“Are you here?” he asked.
“Yes, I sure am.”
“Okay, that’ll be perfect,” he muttered. “Besides, it’s time.”
“You’re right,” she agreed. “It is time.” Then she ended the call.
At that, the captain looked at her. “Do you think he murdered his wife?”
“No, I don’t think he murdered anybody. However, I don’t think his wife was Rose.”