Watching The Detectives Ch. 05

--- CHAPTER FIVE - LIGHTS OUT ---

September 1969

Kat had a dilemma. She was certain Art Casey and Billy Barnes knew Detective Ronald McDonald. She couldn't allow her ex-cop tails to know she was visiting another cop; the detective who investigated the Dwyer case. Doing her work on Saturday would be best, but Kat had promised Raymond she'd attend a luncheon at the country club. She hated these affairs. The old men stared at her tits when she talked and the old wives weren't kind. She was not part of Ray's country club clique, but not for lack of effort. She tried, but as a second wife and a younger model... it was difficult to fit in.

One more Friday playing body double would've worked, but Glo emphatically rejected that idea. Kat came up with plan C. She'd muscle herself away from the detective's tail.

On Monday, she led Art over the Monongahela River on the Glenwood Bridge. From there, she continued south on Route 885. Less than a mile from the river, she took the Baldwin Road exit. When Scott Panzek gave her McDonald's location, he asked Kat if she knew where Baldwin Road was. She knew it too well. It was the road her father was killed on while racing his 1937 Ford Coupe.

Not long after Kat got her driver's license, Dad took her away from the city to let her drive his hot rod. Her first cruise on Baldwin Road was tame; a new, young driver in an unfamiliar car on a strange rural road, she drove cautiously. Dad sat in the passenger seat teaching her how to use a clutch and five-speed manual transmission. She already knew from previous lessons, but Dad never stopped reminding and explaining. Cars lined up behind her, there were honks.

They drove back, retracing their path, Kat pushing the coupe over the speed limit on the straights and lazy turns. Dad alerted her to the handful of blind curves and the one dangerous corner that required extra caution. Back at Route 885, Dad told Kat to flip a bitch and do it again. Kat learned how to drive fast on Baldwin Road.

Dad let her open it up. By the third run, Kat had the feel for the car and had learned each lazy turn on the road as well the blind curves. She experienced the thrill of speed for the first time. The only thing Dad didn't allow his daughter to do was overtake slower vehicles. That was a lesson for another day. But he did let her honk at the slow pokes, which she loved. He scolded her for tailgating.

"Mom's always smacking you for tailgating," Kat shouted. "This is how you drive!"

"Yeah, well, I've been driving since I was thirteen. This is your first day."

"Mom took me driving three times last week."

Dad smiled. "Like I said. This is your first day driving.

More than two decades later, Kat could still hear Dad's laugh. "Don't tell Mom I took you out here. I just got out of her dog house."

Art Casey was two cars back taking the exit off state route 885. As soon as she reached the bottom of the ramp, Kat punched the accelerator. 'Let's see what this baby can do?' She already knew what her baby could do.

The road was two lanes with a double yellow stripe, no passing, and a narrow shoulder with a speed limit of thirty-five miles per hour. There were no cars in front of Kat. The sedan directly behind her, and Art's Plymouth, disappeared from view as she reached fifty-five and then sixty MPH, rounding bends in the road. She came up on a slow pickup truck, moved slightly to her left, tires on the double yellow, saw no oncoming cars, and flew past him doing seventy. The driver honked his horn angrily.

As her 455 Rocket V8 roared past seventy-five Kat was reliving the mix of exhilaration and fear she experienced twenty years ago. She thought about her dad. Kat loved him dearly, but even after all these years, she was still upset with her father for dying needlessly young, leaving her and Mom to pick up the pieces.

At eighty MPH, approaching the village of Willock, Kat eased off the gas and tapped the brakes, gradually slowing to the speed limit. She laughed as she approached a police cruiser parked in a convenience store lot, his radar aimed at oncoming cars, then turned right on Prospect Road. One mile and two turns later, she rolled slowly on Wanley Road, which was hardly a road. It was a narrow, rutted, path with large potholes, and just enough asphalt remaining to inform a driver it was once a paved road. There was no shoulder. Trees encroached on both sides.

When she came upon a marker, a large painted rock, Kat turned onto a narrower dirt path, two tire tracks with green growth between them. A hundred yards in, she came upon a sun-drenched meadow nestled in the woods. Three mobile homes occupied the plot with two pickup trucks and a collection of rusted vehicles that hadn't run in years.

Old men exited the two nearest trailers, one held a shotgun. He aimed at her car. Kat shut off the engine and waited several seconds before opening her door. When the old man saw a curvy blonde in a tight pink sweater and blue jeans emerge, he lowered the barrel but said nothing. The codgers stared at her from thirty-five feet, one at two o'clock, the shotgun at ten o'clock.

Kat closed the car door, took two steps, and raised her sunglasses. "I'm looking for Detective Ron McDonald," she half shouted.

"The clown? He's over there," the shotgun man pointed with the barrel of the gun, "in the blue trailer."

The unarmed man, older than the shotgun man, cupped his hands over his mouth. "Hey, Ronnie, your girlfriend is here. You better hurry, before I steal her."

The shotgun man waved her on and rested his weapon against his trailer. "Go ahead, Miss. Ron's sick. He won't come out. Knock first. He has a gun."

Kat was wise to not wear heels. Navigating the rutted, rocky path to the back trailer would have been an ankle-breaker. She walked gingerly in blue and white tennis shoes to the blue and white mobile home, up three steps to a makeshift wooden porch. She knocked on the aluminum door.

"Hello, Detective McDonald, my name is Katherine Price."

"C'mon in, it's open!"

When Kat opened the door, a wave of stench flowed out, as if the trailer had farted. She coughed and then gagged. Holding the door open, she stepped to the side, to air out the hot metal box before entering. Kat wished it were February and not eighty-eight degrees with humidity on the first day of September. Kat pulled a handkerchief from her purse and held it over her nose and mouth. She stepped inside, removed her sunglasses, and allowed her eyes to adjust to the semi-darkness. The window blinds were drawn. Only slits of light came through.

"Who are you?" A voice from the dark inquired.

"I'm Katherine Price, a former criminal defense attorney. I'd like to speak to you about a kidnapping case, Carol Anne Dwyer, 1955."

There was no reply except for the wheezing of failing lungs at the far end of the trailer. The home was a mess, smelly squalor. She was afraid to touch anything. Food-caked dishes piled up in a small sink, cereal boxes, empty milk cartons, and assorted food containers cluttered the countertop. A wastebasket was overflowing with empty Iron City beer cans. Two handles of whiskey sat on the counter, one empty, one nearly. Flies buzzed around the filth. Dirty clothes were piled on every surface, including the floor. Newspapers and magazines were strewn about.

"What the hell do you want to know about that nightmare?" The weak, gravelly voice of a lifelong cigarette smoker asked.

Kat walked deeper into the metal cave. "I just have a few questions about William Barnes." She stepped into a narrow hallway.

"Ah, the rookie hero. Pittsburgh loves Billy boy."

As Kat passed the bathroom, she struggled to breathe and didn't dare to look inside, holding her handkerchief tightly against her face. When she entered the back room, she made out a shadowy figure seated to her left. McDonald pulled on a window shade causing it to retract with a loud snap, startling Kat. She jumped. Flies and dust scattered as a particle-filled ray of sunlight invaded the darkness. Kat's eyes adjusted again. McDonald appeared, sitting on a sofa covered with newspapers and beer cans.

"Sorry about the mess. My maid took the day off. If you want, dump the junk off that chair. It's vinyl, you won't get dirty."

Kat tilted the chair allowing a stack of papers to slide off, then pulled the chair to the center of the room, equidistant from the grimy surroundings, and sat down. She got a good look at retired Detective Ronald McDonald. He was a large man, well over six feet, obese, with long unkempt white hair and a scraggly gray beard. A glint of light to Ron's left revealed a handgun at his side.

"Wow, you're a looker." Ron coughed into a rag, then wheezed. "We haven't had a sweet thing like you around here since, I don't know, April?" He laughed and wheezed again.

"I'm very sorry to intrude, but I need to know, do you really believe William Barnes was an accomplice in the kidnapping of Carol Anne Dwyer?"

"What, no small talk?" He laughed. "How ya doin' Ron?" He coughed. "Is retirement treating you right?"

"I'm sorry," said Kat.

"Aw, I'm just messing with ya, honey." Ron paused. "Yeah, I do believe it, but I can't prove it. The police department made sure of that."

"Excuse me? The cops knew, but squashed it?"

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves. There were enough questions to suggest he didn't just happen upon that scene; that Billy boy may have known what he was walking into. When we asked those questions..." he coughed and wheezed, "the chief cut us off. We were denied access to Barnes. He was a hero and they didn't want to ruin the good headlines your old friend Jack Mitchell was writing."

"How do you know....?"

"Sweetheart, how could I forget you? You were a big deal a few years ago, in the papers all the time. What happened?"

"I got married," Kat said lowly.

"Jack Mitchell is your friend, right?"

"Yes, in a way, but he wasn't back in 1955. Are you saying there was a cover-up?"

"Hang on, missy. I told you, I can't prove it, because I never got answers to the questions."

Kat swiped a fly away from her face. "What are the questions?"

Ron coughed again. "I assume you've heard his story."

"I have," Kat said, finding it difficult to breathe in the hot stench. "It doesn't seem implausible."

"Precisely. It was a neat little bundle no one cared to pull the strings on because the department didn't want it to unravel. That was a good day for the police and the city. The last thing they wanted to do was change the narrative to a cop and his scumbag friends gang-raping a teenage girl."

"So, you really believe they let him walk, get away with rape, and murder?"

"How many times do I have to tell you? I can't prove it. The word at the station was that Charlie Murphy leaned on Chief Hogan to end the investigation and focus on Victor Fonseca. He was their man to hang for the crime. I was pulled off the case."

"Why would the mayor get involved with a police investigation?"

Ron shrugged. "That's part of the mystery."

The detective wheezed and went into a prolonged coughing fit. Kat could see the mist in the ray of light. She covered her mouth and nose with her handkerchief. It took a while for him to recover. He strained his neck to look back, through his filthy window.

"That's an impressive set of wheels you got out there, is that a Toronado? I saw one in a magazine."

"Yes, it's a '68."

"I love that red." He turned back to his guest. "I don't know what's sexier, you or the car." He laughed and wheezed at the same time.

"I need to know, what were the questions you couldn't get answered?"

"Well, first of all, there's Barnes' association with the men involved. Are you familiar with his cousin?"

"Leo Spahn. Yes I am."

"Good girl. He's the missing link in all this, literally missing. He connects Barnes to the dirtbags in that duplex. Without Spahn, no one was talking. But we know Barnes hung out at a strip club with them."

"The Red Robin."

"Yup." He took a deep gurgling breath. "Secondly, Barnes stated Mathis was watching him on the stoop and later out his front window. That made him suspicious. Old lady Wojcik contradicted that. She said Mathis was in the backyard when the cop arrived."

"Then how did they meet in the kitchen where he killed the man?"

"The woman said Barnes walked in without knocking, then she heard a gunshot."

"Why would they leave a front door unlocked when they had a girl captive?"

McDonald held a finger up, coughed, and hacked into his rag. When he looked at it, Kat saw his blood.

"Oh my god, are you okay? Should we call a doctor?"

"It's too late for that. I'm not long for this world." Ron wheezed. "We found a key on the floor just inside the entry, to the right, against the baseboard under a side table."

"You think Barnes had a key?"

"I don't know. That's one of the questions he never answered. We confronted him with Mrs. Wojcik's testimony, but they shut us down. That's the whole story. Oh, and that key disappeared from evidence lock up after I was removed from the case."

Kat sat there thinking. The mayor's office and police department had at least obstructed the investigation, or worse, they covered up the horrible crimes of a rookie cop. She waved off more flies.

"So, tell me why a pretty thing like you is suddenly interested in a fourteen-year-old crime, that according to prosecutors, was an open and shut case?"

Kat figured Ron was no threat to gossip about her connection to Billy Barnes and Art Casey, and he had just shared his telling of the Dwyer case, so she gave him the rundown of what she was dealing with, minus the games she was playing with the detectives.

"Be careful, hon. Barnes has a short fuse, and he can handle himself."

"I've heard he's a hot head."

"Hot head doesn't cover it. He's a lunatic."

"Why would Casey take him on as a partner?"

"Art never believed Barnes was involved in the kidnapping. He felt we railroaded a good cop."

"So he felt bad for Billy." Kat swatted at a fly buzzing near her head.

"Art Casey is a stand-up guy. He was a friend of mine. We worked on a hundred cases together. I know he got himself into trouble, but he's a good man. Police work is not a black-and-white world. A lot of things happen behind the scenes to get the job done that you might not approve of, being a defense attorney and all. Art did a few things, and so did I."

Kat squirmed in her seat. Ron seemed okay, but his trailer gave her the creeps. "Yeah, I know what goes on behind that badge, but in this case, it's way beyond corruption."

"I agree, and so did a lot of cops who knew what went down. We ruined Barnes' career. He was never going to get off the beat."

"Victor Fonseca. Who paid for his defense?"

Ron coughed, took a deep gurgling breath, and coughed again. "Wow lady, you have all the questions now." He paused. "I heard a name, Penn Consultants LLC. I have no idea if that's good info, but it was given to me by two people."

"Were there any other questions left unanswered?"

"That's about it. I'm sure if I was allowed to question Barnes further, more would have come to mind."

Kat needed to breathe, but she wasn't done. "Your suspicion is over unanswered questions and the fact the investigation was shut down. Aside from associations, you have no evidence tying Barnes to the abduction."

"That's the defense attorney talking," Ron laughed. "I knew she'd make an appearance. If you're really interested in this case there's a fireman you should speak to."

"Why a fireman?"

"I was on the scene, as was every cop worth a damn, and this guy Gene Svoboda witnessed something that troubled him. He told me about it a minute before Fonseca showed up and Barnes tackled him."

"What was that?"

Ron paused, "Ya know, I'd rather have Gene tell you. Last I heard, he transferred over to Station Ten. You should look him up." Ron began coughing again, leaning forward. It took a while to compose himself.

"Oh fuck! I almost forgot." He hacked again, grabbing a newspaper and holding it against his face. He took a deep wheezing breath. "Weeks after the rescue, the Dwyers complained that Barnes was stalking them."

"Stalking? Why would he..."

Kat was interrupted by another coughing fit. Ron leaned forward, his eyes down, looking at the filthy floor. It was the worst of his respiratory attacks. Kat held her breath not wanting to breathe in what he was hacking out. He used his newspaper to cover his mouth.

"I'm sorry," he said between hacks. "I can't."

"That's okay."

"I haven't talked this much in..." he coughed and wheezed. "In the fridge," he pointed. "Orange juice."

Kat went to the fridge. "Oh, my God!" The inside of Ron's fridge was worse than the trailer. Rotted food in containers, mold, nothing edible, and a carton of orange juice. She returned with the OJ and handed it to him.

Ron took a long swig and then leaned back on his sofa. "I'm sorry. I can't talk anymore."

"I understand," Kat said, concerned he would drop dead before her eyes. "You said Barnes harassed the Dwyers?"

"I did." Ron took a deep breath and closed his eyes.

After a moment of quiet, Kat stood up. She didn't want to cause Ron more discomfort, but she wanted to press him on the last point. She had enough of the putrefaction of Ron and his surroundings. Kat was feeling ill. It was time to go.

"Detective McDonald, I am grateful that you gave me this time. You've been a big help. I don't know what I can do, but I can't sit on this... gross injustice."

Ron pointed. "Look in the top drawer of that cabinet behind you. There's a green file folder in there. You should take that."

Kat opened the file cabinet. "Oh my god!" She jumped as crawly creatures scurried from the drawer.

Ron laughed. "Sorry, they get into everything." He coughed.

She pulled the green file. It was fat, filled with other folders and loose pages hanging out. It was dusty, the outer folder deteriorating. She picked up a shirt off the floor and used it to wipe off the folder.

"That's everything I managed to keep on the Dwyer case, including statements and documents the police department would not be happy I have. You should take it. I won't be needing it. Maybe It'll be helpful."

"Thank you, Ron. I'll definitely look through this, and thanks again for giving me your time."

Ron's voice was far weaker than it was when she arrived. "You don't have to thank me, sweetly. This was the nicest visit I've had in years, and I feel good knowing someone is still interested in that case." He wheezed. "That girl never got justice."

"Whatever happened to Carol Anne?"

"Oh, her parents took her as far away from this city as they could afford, but I don't know where." He coughed again. "Do me a favor, honey. If this case ever gets reopened and those sick bastards are taken down, come sit by my graveside and tell me all about it. I have a plot over at St. Mary's cemetery waiting for me. Don't mind my wife, she can keep a secret."

"St. Mary's. That's where my dad is buried."

"Where are you from?"

"I grew up in Middle Hill, but I live in Shadyside now."

"Shadyside? That's a nice area."

"I promise you, Ron. If there's any kind of justice, I'll bring a few beers to St. Mary's."

"If we're celebrating, the wife and I like Yuengling, in a can."

"You got it. Thank you, Ron."

Ten feet outside the trailer, Kat stopped and took a deep breath to clear her lungs of whatever she was breathing inside Ron's coffin. When she sat behind the wheel of her car, she scribbled in her notepad, adding to her lines of inquiry.

William Barnes / hero / or criminal accomplice?

Walter Mathis / shot dead / Maybe to keep him silent?

Leo Spahn / missing / Dead or alive?

Victor Fonseca / convicted / Why didn't he talk?

Did Barnes know the girl was there?