The Occupied Read online

  He pulled a string from a hanging bulb and the room lit up. There were boxes stacked in the corner, a rack with a few hangers full of clothes that looked like they were from a Goodwill store, and on the other side of the room there was a dusty desk.

  Augie pointed to a bulletin board that hung over the desk. It was stuffed with papers and news clippings that were pinned to the corkboard. He wagged a finger for me to come closer and read them, so I did.

  There was a news article about an Ohio mother who had decapitated her infant and claimed it was because of demons. And a piece about a demonic man in Gambia in West Africa who underwent an exorcism. Another one about a fire set by a man in Oklahoma, also because of demons, and a similar one about an arsonist who set fire to his cabin in Maine under the direction of supernatural forces. There were others. But buried in the middle was a newspaper article from a New York City paper with the headline, “Disbarred Attorney Is Demon Hunter for NYPD.”

  Augie smiled again. “You made the papers, bro.”

  I shrugged, then asked, “What is all this?”

  “I told you,” Augie said, “Wendell was bat crazy. You know, he used to work at the incinerator. That’s how he got in. Anyway,” Augie said, pointing to the newspaper clippings, “like I said, he was into this stuff. Very scary. For me especially, working with him.”

  Then he added, “And scary for you, too, Trevor.”

  “Why me?”

  Then he pointed to the article about me on the bulletin board. “Because it was put up, right here on the board, like I said. The stuff about you and all that junk about demons. I told you, this is very scary. Look what happened to Bobby. And Wendell. I’ve got the shivers just talking about it.”

  Augie rubbed his hand over one of his arms, as if he had been locked up in a walk-in deep freezer. “Listen, man,” he said. “I could be next.”

  He pointed toward the shop area, and we both walked out together. I caught a closer look at the logo on his shirt: Opperdill Real Estate Development Co.

  “So,” I asked, “you own this place?”

  “Not really. Just work here.”

  “Oh?” Then I pointed to the logo on his shirt. “You work with Opperdill, the real estate mogul?”

  Augie scrunched up his lips. “Sort of. Kind of set me up. He, like, owns half of the city.” Then he laughed again and quickly said, “The Opperdill Foundry. That’s where your dad died, right?”

  I nodded. Yet thought that the site of my father’s death was a strange thing for Augie to remember. On the other hand, it was clear that over the years Augie Bedders’s life had been fractured. Perhaps things for him were being viewed through shattered glass.

  “Also, Augie, I am so sorry about your losing Susan the way that you did. And sorry about how long it has taken me to acknowledge your loss, or even to look you up.”

  “Everything’s changed to the bad since then. Everything’s, like, in darkness around here. You know?”

  My reply was simple. “Then it’s time to turn on the light.”

  44

  While I was standing with Augie, my cell rang. I was going to let it go to voice mail, but just then a young customer and his girlfriend sauntered into Exotica and started looking around. I decided to leave Augie to his business. “I’ll take this call,” I told Augie, “and be back with you later. Great to see you.”

  I stepped outside. The man on the other end of the call was Dr. Kirby Twilliger, a pathologist in New York City. He had testified in a few homicide cases handled by Detective Dick Valentine and was calling me as a favor to Dick about my medical question.

  Twilliger said he was not a religious person and didn’t know much about what the Bible said about the crucifixion of Jesus. I told him that was fine and just wanted to get his medical opinion.

  He started out, “In terms of the separation of blood and water through a chest wound, if that’s what you want to know?”

  “That, and also your opinion about which side of the body it would be easier to pierce with a sharp object like a spear or a knife in order to produce that effect.”

  “The right side, I would think,” he said. “Opposite the side where the heart is located. A thrusting incision into the right upper quadrant chest area can produce a blood flow much easier than the left, where the heart is located, because the distended thin-walled right atrium or the ventricle could much more easily be ruptured by a sharp piercing object than the left side, which is thick-walled.”

  “Okay. Got it. Maybe the Roman executioners had learned that by experience,” I speculated out loud. “And maybe that was SOP for them when it was time to make sure the crucified person was dead.”

  “Well, I hope I’ve been helpful.”

  I cut in. “Before you go, about the separation of blood and water . . .”

  “Oh. Well, when they used the term water, they probably meant serous pleural and pericardial fluids. We call those effusions. A spear into the right side would drain the pleural effusions from the lungs first, with the blood flowing after, from the heart and then out through the wound.”

  I had one last question. “And the reason for blood to have flowed out of the wound?”

  “Maybe there was a cardiac rupture of the heart. Torture and crucifixion would be traumatic to the extreme. I suppose that could have triggered something like an acute transmural myocardial infarction.”

  I thanked Dr. Twilliger for his time and clicked off. It seemed clear, at least circumstantially, that Jesus was probably impaled with a spear after his death on his right side. On the other hand, Bobby had his heart removed from the left side, through a wound directly under the heart. And the same was true of Heather, the victim of Dunning Kamera. And also the victims of NYPD undercover officer gone haywire, Sid Castor. And the same was true about the location of that wound I had incurred in the New York museum when Hanz Delpha attacked me.

  Based on that, the attacks didn’t look like a bizarre copycat of the spearing of Christ on the cross. Still, the mutilations had popped up around me in New York and then landed in my hometown of Manitou, involving my high school friend, and it made for a deeply disturbing pattern. They seemed to be following me. But then I knew Elijah had been right about that back in New York—that I would be a target. Well, I may have been a defense attorney in my former life, but now God had me playing offense instead, going after destroyers. I liked the feeling.

  At the same time, the words of Rev. Cannon were echoing in my head. What he had said about certain rituals, where the heart is cut from the victim, and how he thought that those mutilations were the devil’s private joke. An obscene mocking of the crucifixion of Christ and of the piercing wound to his body.

  I was back in my car, and I caught sight of my hair in the rearview mirror, untrimmed and curling over my collar. I remembered an old-school barbershop on the opposite side of the downtown area, complete with a striped barber’s pole outside. I would get my hair cut there. But not just because I needed to clean up my act. There was another reason.

  I parked on the street and walked up the concrete steps that were cracked and tilted. The three barbers wore the old-fashioned uniform—slick green tops, like pharmacists’ smocks. They were all white-haired, and the customers were lined up in aluminum-armed chairs reading Field & Stream or true crime magazines. I wondered if any of them carried my articles. After almost an hour, I had my turn.

  And then the real reason for my being there. During my criminal defense practice I had learned that there were certain kinds of places where you could get the real scoop on the locals. Places that gushed with a font of information. Old school–type barbershops were one such place.

  After shooting the breeze with my barber about sports and television programs and some politics, I came out with the opening volley. It had been triggered by my meeting with Augie. And the logo on his shirt. And his interesting and somewhat obscure relationship with Jeffery Opperdill.

  “So,” I asked, “I’m a visitor, and I noticed this
Jeffery Opperdill seems to be a big real estate guy.”

  “Yup.”

  “Daddy owned the foundry down at the river?”

  “Yup. Hoskins, the father, he was a good man.”

  “Son took it over?”

  One of the other barbers guffawed loudly. My barber said, “Took it over? I guess you could call it that.”

  “Not good?” I remarked.

  “The kid ran the foundry into the ground. Layoffs. Lawsuits. EPA came in and poked their nose around. Some talk about income tax problems. But somehow young Jeffery, he comes out of it, all of it, smelling like a rose and richer than ever.”

  “Jeffery sounds like an interesting man.”

  One of the other barbers laughed.

  My barber said, more or less directed to his hair-cuttery partners, “Remember the funeral of old Hoskins Opperdill?” At that point all three of them were laughing loudly.

  I didn’t want to miss the inside joke. “Okay, this you have to share with me.”

  My barber obliged. “When Hoskins was alive he used to fill his pockets with big rolls of hundred-dollar bills. Whenever he came on a person who was down on his luck, he’d yank a bunch of hundreds out and give them to the person. No questions asked. He was like that.”

  Suddenly I was back at my dad’s funeral. At the grave side. Hoskins Opperdill sticking a wad of hundred-dollar bills in my hand to help my family. I nodded to the barber.

  “So,” he continued, “then Old Man Hoskins dies, and in his will, supposedly, he says that he wants to be buried like he lived—with big rolls of money in his pockets.”

  “Pretty much in character,” I replied.

  “But there was something else,” my barber said. I waited. One of his colleagues started to chuckle again. My guy continued. “Old Hoskins also said in his will that an armed guard had to be placed at his grave for a full six months after his burial.”

  I waited for the punch line, apparently missing the elephant that had just entered the room. I twisted my head to look at my barber, to see if he was going to finish the story.

  He must have seen that I wasn’t getting it, so he connected the dots. “Old Man Hoskins knew his son, knew what kind of man he was, and knew that his kid, Jeffery, would dig up the old man’s grave to get the money that was buried in his pockets.”

  The barber went back to cutting my hair, and I meditated on that for a while.

  Nice fellow, that Jeffery Opperdill.

  45

  I assumed I’d have to do a bit of sleuthing to locate Jeffery Opperdill, but surprisingly, when I flipped through the phone book in my hotel room I found him. He had a house on Country Club Road. Funny how many things connected to my life had happened right out there, near the edge of town.

  My interest in Jeffery Opperdill had been piqued by the comments of the trio at the barbershop and also by the fact that Augie had some vague business association with him. Which seemed odd. But more important, Opperdill sounded like a guy with the knack of escaping from one gallows after another, just to end up not only surviving, but flourishing to the point of becoming a local legend. Where did that kind of magic come from?

  When the GPS announced I had arrived at Opperdill’s address, his house was invisible from the road. There was a big wrought-iron gate across the driveway with stone pillars on each side and an intercom. I pressed the button. After a woman with a Hispanic accent answered, I told her my name, and that I was a private investigator dealing with the Bobby Budleigh murder and needed to talk to Mr. Opperdill. I expected a roadblock. Imagine my surprise when the gates opened.

  At the end of the long driveway, at least an eighth of a mile, there was a circle approach in front. His house was huge and white, and boasted a Southern mansion look to it, with four towering pillars, a big veranda wrapping around the first floor, and a second-story porch too. The housekeeper greeted me at the door and led me to a massive library paneled in mahogany. If Opperdill’s goal was to impress visitors, he’d succeeded.

  I was offered a drink but declined. Ten or fifteen minutes later, Jeffery Opperdill strode in with bleached-blond hair and matching mustache, but looking taller than I expected, and he was wearing a short-sleeved golf shirt that flaunted his powerful build. Looked like gym sculpting, though, not the kind of muscle that comes from hard labor. I noticed his expensive slip-on footwear. Didn’t they outlaw real alligator shoes?

  After going through the drill about my status as a private investigator, my personal connection with Bobby, and my interest in his murder, he asked how he could help me.

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “I just know that you are a very prominent member of the community. And was hoping you could give me some information.”

  Opperdill let out a belly laugh. And he kept on laughing for a few seconds. “Prominent? Is that how you’d describe me?”

  I didn’t get the joke.

  He explained. “I am a controversial fellow in this city. I rub people the wrong way. But I get things done. ‘Prominent’? That’s what some of the businessmen in the Rotary Club are. That’s not me. Better that you call me successful.”

  Trying to be amiable, I apologized for the mischaracterization. Then I asked how he got to know my high school friend Augie Bedders.

  He sat and thought on it for a while, then brightened with a smile and shook his head. “Augie. Yeah. He worked doing odd jobs in my real estate development company for a while. I told him he needed to go to rehab and shake off the drugs before he got arrested. He didn’t listen to me and ended up in jail. When he got out I leased him that little shop downtown, the Exotica. You ever go in that place? Weird. But Augie likes it. Squeezes out a living, who knows how. He’s a nice guy, though. The kind that just needs a break or two. My dad, Hoskins Opperdill, used to help people out. Took me a while to realize that there was something nice in doing that. So I try to carry on that tradition myself.”

  “What do you know about the death of Bobby Budleigh?”

  “Honestly, nothing. Except for one thing. Mr. Budleigh happened to show up along Pebble Creek one day. The reason I know that is because he was doing something close to the property line of some of my real estate acreage, not far from here. You may have passed it on the way. It’s an area I want to develop commercially. Henry, my expediter at the time, spotted him and approached him. Just to make sure he wasn’t trespassing.”

  “What did Bobby tell him?”

  “That he was a nature lover. Grew up here as a boy. Was back in the area studying the land or something. I’m really not sure what else. He could have been counting salamanders for all I know.”

  “Did you tell the police what you just told me?”

  “Sure did. In fact, when I found out what happened, I called the sheriff myself and told him about it, and that I thought he ought to know. In case it helped him catch the killer.”

  Jeffery shot up from his chair just then and bellowed, “I think I’ll grab a bourbon. Care to join me?” I declined. He fixed his drink, asking me if I had anything else, and I said no. Then he escorted me to the front door, with the ice cubes tinkling in the glass as he walked.

  “Thank you for your time, Mr. Opperdill. I’m just trying to be thorough—contact everyone who might have information about Bobby.”

  “As I said, always happy to help the community. Take care, Mr. Black.” With that, the door shut.

  As I drove back to the hotel, the sun was setting and I was ruminating on the empty feeling you get when you have just hit a dead end. Opperdill only corroborated what Ashley had already told me. That Bobby was doing some kind of environmental study, and that was why he was back in Manitou.

  When I was in my room, I pondered my next step. Dinner, most likely, as night was falling. Then my cell rang, but from a number I didn’t recognize. I picked up, and it was Ashley.

  I was feeling down, so it was good to hear her voice. I started on an upbeat note. “You couldn’t have called at a better time. I know we’re not supposed to consort
together, not officially, but how about some unofficial dinner plans?”

  But she cut me off. “Where are you?”

  “At the hotel.”

  “Get out of there.”

  “Why?”

  “Butch is coming after you. Just heard it.”

  “Who?”

  “Sheriff Butch Jardinsky.”

  “What for?”

  “Did you pay a visit to Jeffery Opperdill?”

  “I just left his house.”

  “Apparently Opperdill was on the horn seconds after you left, calling Butch.”

  “I didn’t know that conversation was illegal in this city.”

  “It sounds like Opperdill is accusing you of harassing him.”

  I was about to make another jaded remark until the lightbulb went on. Sure, conversations were protected by the First Amendment. But from what Jeffery Opperdill told me, he had a paper-thin slice of information about Bobby showing up along Pebble Creek before his murder, which was enough to make him a potential prosecution witness. Which meant that if Opperdill postured my visit as an attempt to pressure him, I could be looking at a charge of interfering with a witness in a criminal case. A felony. Sheriff Butch Jardinsky had a hook to hang me on after all.

  I saw the light. “Okay, I get it. Though I don’t know why Sheriff Jardinsky is so hot on this.”

  “Jeffery Opperdill helped get Butch elected. He was a major contributor to his campaign. You’ve got to check out of that hotel right now. He’ll have deputies in marked cruisers coming after you.”

  “I’m out of here in five minutes. How do we stay in contact?”

  “You can call me back on this number.”

  “I didn’t recognize it.”

  “This is my special cell. For super-secret conversations.”

  I couldn’t resist. “Does that mean I’m super-special?”

  “Knock it off, Trevor. Get moving.”

  She was right. But more than that, she was a friend. “You’re risking a lot by telling me this. You’d better watch your step.”