To Probe A Beating Heart (35 page)

             
“She might have liked that better.”

             
Right there Adam knew it was Annette. “What was her name?”

             
“I don’t remember.”

             
“Where was this almost accident?”

             
“In Cleveland Heights, on Ashton, I think.”

             
“You’re not sure? What was she wearing?” asked Adam.

             
“I remember, it was a pink shirt, blue denim shorts and white shoes. Yeah, she was a blond with blue eyes.”

             
“And where did you put her?”

             
“What about what I did to her?” Averell asked, breathing hard and looking excited.

             
“Okay, what did you do to her?”

             
Averell described the process from his perspective. As he talked, he became very agitated and seemingly confused. He clearly did do what he claimed, but the sequence could be off. As he was talking, Adam noticed Averell sweating, his muscles were tensed, the veins bulged on his neck and head. The description was more than Adam wanted to hear, but he had to get it all. Adam was a pro, he could do this sort of thing with any other psycho, but he was now talking about his own little cousin. He wanted so much to punch Averell, to grab a knife and slit his throat, but he controlled himself. Now came the last question, “Where did you put Annette?”

              “Annette, that’s her name, I remember that now.”

             
“Averell, where is she?”

             
“Oh, she’s gone, I buried her.”

             
“Where?”

             
“In the cemetery, where they found Melissa. I put someone else, in a cemetery.”

             
“The same cemetery?”

             
“No, I used a couple of different ones.”

             
“But Annette is in the same one that Melissa was found in?”

             
“Yeah, yeah, that one.”

             
“Where in that cemetery, it is a big place?”

             
“Oh, I don’t remember. One that was just dug.”

             
Adam knew that should be enough to find Annette and said, “Okay Averell, who was next?”

             
Averell wanted to talk about Annette, now that he remembered her name and was seeing her more clearly. “What about Annette, there’s more?”

             
Adam needed a break and doubted that there was any more to hear and replied, “What have I told you, Averell, I ask, you answer.” With that he turned and walked out of the cell.

             
“Hey, come back, there’s more.”

             
The team had a hard time listening to the discussion about Annette, but all sessions were taped and copies of each session were made onto DVD’s.

             
Averell was pushed for more and he opened up about Marlene and Sleepy. Adam called a time out and left the building phoning his contact. He told him that everything was going well and he would be e-mailing the electronic files of Averell’s statements. He asked for a definition of ‘Sleepy’, looks like he was probably the first victim. Marlene was probably in the same time frame, and both, he surmised were probably before Annette. He drove out of the parking area and was turning on the highway when a police cruiser pulled up next to him. He rolled down his window and said,

             
“Is there a problem, officer?”

             
“No. Are you Adam?”

             
“Yes, what’s happening?”

             
“Nothing, I was told to contact you as soon as I could and let you know that I am running security on this site. My name is Sam,” and he handed Adam a piece of paper. “This is my cell number for this project, you need, you call. If I am not on, I contact our man in place.”               “Thanks, we’re in good shape, probably finish early at this rate. I’m heading out to dinner, are you hungry?”

             
“Thanks, but this may be our only face to face. We’re family, not

friends.” Sam laughed.

              “It works for all of us, Sam. Take care, stay healthy.”

             
“Will do,” and Sam continued his patrol.

             
Adam drove down the road about a mile and pulled into a fast food restaurant. He bought four meals with drinks and headed back to the building.

             
“Hey guys, my treat, got you some fine dining here.”

             
“Adam, your timing is great, Averell is talking in his sleep.” said

Andy.

              The four of them sat around the monitor and watched, listened and              ate their gourmet grub as they listened for anything intelligible.

             
“A lot of nonsense, but you never know,” said Bart.

             
“Let’s help him out,” said Andy.

             
Adam took the microphone and spoke in a low easy voice, “Averell why did you hurt Sleepy?”

             
“Drunk, sloppy, drunk,” he muttered.

             
“Where did you put him?”

             
“Didn’t put him, left in bushes, drunk, knife,” he said.

             
“Tell Adam everything, okay?”

             
“Everything, okay.”Adam turned off the microphone and said “Keep listening, we will wake him in about an hour.”

             
The group finished eating and cleaned up. Adam again changed his

shirt and checked his laptop for messages. After an hour, Adam went into
the cell and said “Averell, time to talk. We have another question for you. Wake up.”

             
Averell moved, they had let him sleep almost three hours, now he was sitting up on the floor. He looked around the room and noted the table and chair were gone, his pail was on the floor and a bottle of water was next to it.

             
“So, Averell we want to know about the others” said Adam. “Let’s start with Sleepy, tell me about him.”

             
“Sleepy, he—.”

             
A beeping sound caught Adam’s attention and he turned and walked out of the room. “What’s the problem?”

             
“No problem, Adam, you have an e-mail,” said Andy.

             
Adam came out and opened the message.“What do we have?” said

Bart.

              “Sleepy may be a guy named George Deitz, his body was found in a rest area in Ohio in July, 1990. He was stabbed and left in the bushes.”

             
“That fits,” said Andy, “ What else?”

             
“There was a Marlene Fielding, murdered in Toledo that same year. They are both kind of on his sales route.” said Adam.

             
He read through the rest of the message and went back into the cell, saying, “We have a winner.” He entered the cell and said to Averell, “We have to talk about George, or as you called him, Sleepy.”               Averell thought for a moment, trying to remember the name in

‘Sleepy’s’ wallet. “I don’t know his name. It was an accident.”

              “No, no Averell, an accident is when you trip into him and he is cut, this was a knife being jammed into his guts and the killer tried to split him open. That was not an accident, and the second cut was from ear to ear, that was no accident either. The two together spell m-u-r-d-e-r and you did it.”

             
Averell looked defeated, beaten, wanting to go to sleep. “Yeah, he

came at me and I stuck him in the guts. Then I made sure he was dead.”

              “You mean you cut his throat?”

             
“Yeah.”

             
“You see Averell, that was easy, now tell me about Marlene.”

             
“Marlene, was. She was a bitch. She needed to die. I did a good thing with Marlene.”

             
“Tell me about it.”

             
“We picked her because she was not a nice person, she was screwing over an ex husband and did not respect anybody else, she needed to go away.”

             
“Who is ‘We’ that you refer to?” asked Adam, “You mean Stelian?”

             
“I meant me, I picked her.”

             
“Okay, so you did this by yourself, you decided, and Stelian didn’t

help.”

              “Yes, by myself.”

             
“How did you get her to come into the building with you, where you killed her?” asked Adam.

              “I hit her on the head with a sap and put her in the back of my van.”

             
“Your dark blue van?”

             
“Yeah.”

             
“It had tinted windows, right?”

             
“Yeah.”

             
Averell was starting to enjoy talking about doing Marlene. This was the first one that he had selected and planned out. He continued, “She was heavy, hard to move around, but I got her in the van and took her to the building. Then when she was starting to come around, the dizzy bitch walked from the van to the table that we used.”

             
Averell grinned, thinking about it. Over the next hour, he went into detail about how he set Marlene up to be played with and how it ended. When finished, Averell was tired and starting to slur his words. Adam figured that enough had been accomplished for this session and allowed that Averell could have a “Happy Meal” and be allowed to fall asleep.

             
The team assembled the taping of Averell’s monologue and added some notes. It was electronically stored and copied to the legal contact in Boston. He would gather all the information and be prepared to release it to the authorities when the interrogation was complete.

             
After an hour of sleep, Adam once again woke Averell and said, “Well Averell, that was good. Now we would like to hear about the next one. Who did you kill next?” He had a listing of a number of people that had disappeared and were still missing. Marlene was killed in August 1990 and none of those listed seemed to be in the right geographic area until Annette in August of 1991, but that did not mean that one of the unlikely ones had not fallen prey to Averell.

             
Averell looked confused, but did not want to ask a question. He said, “We had to plan better. Marlene was messy.”

             
“You and Stelian had to plan better?”

             
“Yeah.”

* * *

CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN

There should be two grave sites here . . .

Sean knew more than he allowed Jim to see. A word in the right ear brought a response from the same source that had contacted Jim previously with another phone call to his home.

             
Once again, Margo answered the phone and handed it to Jim with that same quizzical look, “It sounds like that Irish guy again.”

             
Jim took the phone, “Hello, this is Jim. “

             
“Jimmy boy, you’ve lost our favorite suspect, have ya’ now?”

             
“I haven’t lost anybody, but I think you may have abducted someone.”

             
“Remember the rules, Jimmy boy, ask me no questions and I’ll tell

you no lies.”

              “So you do have him.”

             
“That’s a question and no matter what the truth is, the response would be the same, I don’t want you even thinking that I might be lying, so I’ll not answer you.”

             
Jim knew that this was going nowhere and any information would have to come from a civil conversation. “Okay, I give up, I suppose that I will assume that if you do have him, he is being treated with the respect that a human being deserves, and if you learn anything, you would share that with me?”

             
“Jimmy, you’re a fine young man. I will say this, whatever we learn in our investigation, where ever it comes from, and from whomever, you will be completely informed. As far as treatment of Mr. Danker, I have never met the man, but I can assure you that we would not harm a hair on his head.”

              “So you would turn him over to us?”

             
“You’re assumin’ that we have him.”

* * *

              The team’s work was almost done. Averell was fed and allowed to sleep for a full eight hours. The team had assembled the information into two identical packages and sent them to a contact in Boston. One package was to be delivered anonymously to James O’Leary at the O’Leary Law Firm in Boston and the other was to be sent via FedEx to Jim McClarry in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. The O’Leary Law Firm was founded over a hundred years ago and had been the prime family business all that time. The Clan had used this firm over those one hundred plus years on several occasions and this was no exception. The story of Carl Mason was well known to the firms attorneys and the thought that this may happen again someday was joked about but never really seriously considered. So when the youngest Mr. O’Leary received a call from a man with a slight brogue and the name Aaron, he was stunned, and a bit apprehensive.

             
“You’ll be receivin’ a package this afternoon lad,” said Aaron, “open it and that’ll be our line for communication.”

             
Puzzled, Jimmy agreed and went immediately to the firm’s senior partner and told him about the call. Thomas O’Leary told Jimmy to sit and wait for the delivery. He called in the other partners and they discussed the situation.

             
“Not a lot of choice here, is there Tom?” said his brother Al, “If it’s the same deal, we say what we know, tell them everything, cooperate as much as we can.”

             
“It has to be about the little Shelton girl. That was a tough one on her family. Must be seven or eight years ago now. Don’t think her mom has had a peaceful day since then.”

             
“I don’t know the family, but remember the story,” said another

partner.

             
Tom’s secretary came in with an envelope and handed it to Jimmy.

“Thanks Emmy,” Said Tom.

              Jimmy opened the envelope and poured the contents on Tom’s desk. There was a prepaid cell phone and a battery. Jimmy assembled the phone, turned it on and set it back on the desk. They made small conversation as they waited and after five minutes and the phone finally rang. Jimmy picked it up, pushed the speaker button and said “Hello.” Al had a small tape recorder at the ready and turned it on.

             
“Good afternoon gentlemen, my name is Aaron, at least for today,” said the caller with a slight brogue. “I assume you have gathered the several partners for this call, Jimmy boy.”

             
“Ah, yes I did.”

             
“That’s a good lad. Now then gentlemen, this will be a very brief call and you’ll never hear from me again. The kidnapping and murder of little Melissa Winton year or so ago caught our attention and we were able to build a connection with the kidnapping and murder of our own Annette Shelton. The authorities were restricted in their investigation and one of their suspects, a Mr. Averell Danker was questioned. Now then, a lacking in the necessities allowed Mr. Danker to be walking about free as you please. No evidence, no arrest and certainly no justice. Well now, that’ll just not do. I know that what we did was not strictly within the limits of the law, but we did get results, and Mr. Danker will be dealt with, severely. The evidence, even though gained in an illegal manner will be sent to your office by courier within the next day. There is a separate duplicate package that is being sent to a Detective in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, one James McClarry. This information includes the locations of some of the people that Mr. Danker murdered and guesses as to several other locations. We could not keep this questioning up any longer as our teams have lives to live and they had to get back to home and hearth. Now then, we intended for Detective McClarry to be informin’ the authorities and we will, of course, let both you and Detective McClarry know the whereabouts of Mr. Danker all in good time. I expect someone else will be makin’ that call. Now, I have a plane to catch and a little bit of livin’ to do before my time is up. Jimmy, you can tell the authorities everything that you know, and I recommend that you try to keep the envelope and the phone out of everybody’s hands, the boys at the FBI will be wantin’ it. Well that’s about it. I hope you don’t have any questions because I’ve just told you everything I know. Good luck to you, and good day.”

             
With that, Aaron’s phone went silent. Jimmy reached over and was

about to push the disconnect button when Al said, “No don’t touch. Let’s
leave that to the police.”

             
The package addressed to Jim McClarry was placed in a FedEx box on the first floor of the law firms office building.

* * *

              The several packages were labeled and all sent to Jim McClarry at CHPD. These included the recordings of Averell discussing George Deitz and Marlene Fielding.

             
Jim received a FedEx delivery and after ripping the pull string to open the package and dumping the contents on his desk, he froze, “Nobody touch anything,” he said to Vince as he practically ran the three steps to Georges office door. “George, you gotta’ see this.”

             
The entire squad room stood surrounding Jim’s desk as he and George discussed touching the individually wrapped packages labeled “George,” “Marlene,” “Candice,” “Kathy,” “Allison,” “Rebecca,” “Barbara,” “Emily,” “Melissa” and “Annette”. Each package was a zip lock storage bag with a video cassette and folded paper.

             
Jim looked at George and said, “I don’t want to touch anything till it has been checked for prints, or whatever other trace may be present.” Jim’s phone rang and he answered, “CHPD, Detective McClarry.”

             
“Jim, this is Sean, you are going to receive a package any minute now.”

             
“I already have.”

             
“Okay, nothing to be afraid of, in fact I was just informed that the

contents are completely clean, you will not find any prints or other trace
on anything, so you can go ahead and touch whatever you want, but I know you will wait for clearance from George.”

             
“He’s right here,” and Jim handed the phone to George.

             
“George, Sean, this is awkward.”

             
“Yes it is, you best get in here, I don’t think there is any rush to open these packages.”

             
Sean arrived within twenty minutes and the packages had been relocated to the conference room. The CSI guys were present and the package labeled “George” was being inspected.

             
“Good morning all,” said Sean as he walked into the room. “I got a call this morning from a man named Aaron. Said that Jim here was going to get a package this morning and it would answer a bunch of questions that have come up over the last few years. Asked me to call Jim and let him know that it was due by 10:00 this morning and he could open it and share with everyone else. Said that there were ten small packages all together and Jim could send them to the proper folks at the other PD’s.”

             
The CSI team found nothing of any use and opened the first bag.                                              The film was the type that could be fit into a special video tape cassette

and played in a cassette player. The television was ready and the tape was
placed in the slot and turned on. The screen came to life with Averell Danker’s face. He looked exhausted, his eyes bloodshot, dark circles below his eyes and as the camera panned out, he was seen to be wearing an orange jump suit, no shoes or socks and was seated in a folding chair. The room was obviously a concrete floor and the walls were all white. There were no windows or doors visible and the camera angle was from above, perhaps at the seven foot level. No other person was in the picture, but it was obvious that Averell was not alone. As if being directed, Averell looked at the camera and began to talk.

             
“My name is Averell Danker, and I killed George Deitz on July tenth, nineteen ninety in Mentor, Ohio.”

             
There was a blip in the film, obviously, the camera was turned off for a minute or so and Averell spoke again. “George was drunk and asked me to buy him some wine, I said okay and hoped to just drive away, but  he followed me to the rest area on 90. He wouldn’t leave me alone and I stabbed him. Then I finished him.”

             
Blip

             
“Yeah, I cut his throat.”

             
The recitation of facts, complete with periodic “blips,” continued

for about fifteen minutes, giving details that were not given out to the

press and correcting the misunderstanding of the evidence found at the

scene. When the recitation was over there was another Blip and the screen
showed the time and date of the confession. The tape had no further images and no erased images.

             
The room was buzzing with low conversation. George tapped on the conference table, “Does anybody think that this would stand up in court?” The response was a room full of blank stares.

             
“Who did this, I mean, who.”

             
“It’s a long story,” said Sean.

             
“Are we ready for the next one?”

             
“If we take them in order, that would be the one labeled ‘Marlene’,” said Jim. He looked around the room and asked where Alex was.“Not in yet,” said one of the admin.

             
“Maybe we should let him review these before we see any more.” Jim suggested.

             
George agreed and the first tape was placed back in the bag. Jim picked up Annette’s bag and said, “I want to read the piece of paper in this one,” as he looked at George.

             
“Okay, kinda’ curious myself.”

He opened the bag, removed the paper and unfolded it. “This is where

she is buried. It’s a cemetery. George?”

             
George immediately told Jim, “Check ‘em all, see if they are the same. Then we go back to work, Jim you handle notifying the other PDs then get hold of that Cemetery and the local law and set up a visit to check it out.” George turned and looked at Sean, “We have to talk, in my office.”

             
Jim started opening the other bags and reading the notes. Each one described where the remains of the victim were to be found and he dug into the file to get the contact information for each PD. They would all go through the same process of contacting the cemetery and arranging to investigate the burial sites.

             
George closed the door to his office and stared at Sean, “Okay, what’s the short version.”

             
Sean began with the story of Liam and quickly jumped to today. “Look George, I have no idea what they are or have been doing, they act on their own without me. I have no control and not even a way to                                   offer input, I have no idea who is running this operation.”