“We’re seeking the identity of a body we found,” Dillard said. “We think he tried to get at Carolina Dare’s mail.” He opened the envelope he’d brought, pulled out two pictures, and set them in front of the postmaster.
“Not him,” the postmaster said, of Eddie Kovacs. “Not him, either,” he said of the brother, Lance. He handed the pictures back across the desk.
Dillard pulled out another picture. The postmaster took it, held it up with its white back facing me, and stared at it for a long minute, frowning. At last he nodded. “That’s your man,” he said.
“He didn’t give you a name?” Dillard asked.
The postmaster shook his head.
“It would have been an alias,” Dillard said, taking the picture and sliding it back into his envelope. “No matter. We’ve identified him from dental records.”
“Dead, you say?” the postmaster asked.
“Shot and burned,” Dillard said.
I started to reach for the envelope in Dillard’s hand. He shifted in his chair, moving it away from my reach.
Dillard tapped the envelope. “This man was in here in January, trying to get Carolina Dare’s mail?”
The postmaster wiped a weary hand across his brow. “He was so insistent. I kept telling him he had to produce authorization. He kept saying, over and over, he was authorized, like that was enough.” A small smile played at the edges of the postmaster’s lips. Justice had been served. The man who’d tried to subvert the U.S. Postal Service was dead. Shot and burned.
We all stood up. Dillard and the postmaster shook hands again, and we left. In the car, Dillard put the envelope between us on the front seat and started the engine. As he pulled onto the street, I picked up the envelope and slid out the pictures. The familiar face was on top.
“Just like you figured,” he said.
“John Reynolds,” I said, but he knew that I knew better.
“Officer Randall Severs,” Dillard said, “late of the Cedar Ridge, Iowa, police department.”
Thirty-three
“Your dental records confirmed it: Our burned body is your Officer Severs,” Dillard said to the speakerphone on his desk. He spoke conversationally, with no hint of accusation in his voice.
“No doubt?” Patterson asked.
“The Woodton postmaster also verified it was Severs who was trying to get at Carolina Dare’s mail. Of course, our friend Elstrom here, identified Severs as well.”
“I appreciate your getting on it so quickly.” Patterson’s voice came through the phone flat, as if he were grateful that he had the Mississippi River to hide behind.
“Did you suspect right away, Patterson?” I said.
“I was troubled when we found the body in the police car. Severs was a careful man. But no, I didn’t begin to suspect anything until you brought me those letters. They linked Severs to the robbery, gave him reason to fake his own death and disappear, to hunt down the money.”
“How do we find out if it was one of the Kovacs brothers burned in that police car?” I asked the phone.
Dillard cut in before Patterson could fumble up an excuse. “It was that badly burned?” Cop to cop, Dillard was tossing Patterson a lifeline, an out for why the Cedar Ridge medical examiner blew the identification.
“Crispy critter,” Patterson said.
“You won’t exhume for identification?” I asked.
“Not possible, Mr. Elstrom,” Patterson said. “Severs’s closest kin, a cousin, authorized his cremation.”
“So we will never know who was burned in that police car,” I said to Dillard and the phone.
“Until we find the surviving brother,” Dillard said.
“Lieutenant, did you recover any bullets from Severs’s body?” Patterson asked.
“None yet, but we’re still sifting dirt. The coroner thinks they came from a twenty-two.”
“Not a thirty-eight?”
“Could be. With our coroner, often it’s guesswork,” Dillard said.
“There’s going to be all kinds of hell to pay for this one,” Patterson said. “I’ll be in touch.”
“Wait,” I said, but Patterson clicked off.
Dillard replaced the handset on the phone. “How about some blueberry tea?” he asked.
I stared at him. “I can’t stand the smell of it, can’t stand the thought of it, can’t understand why the hell anyone would drink it.”
“It helps you think.”
He swiveled around and filled his own cup, and another that had daisies on it, from the teapot behind him. Immediately, the stink of blueberries in the room intensified tenfold. He smiled as he reached across the desk to set down the daisy cup in front of me. “I always keep it warm.”
“You hope that the tea will keep everybody here too stupored to rush out and catch criminals?”
The smile stayed on his face. “Nobody can stand the tea except me. But there’s no doubting: It helps you think.” He raised his cup and made a show of enjoying the aroma. “Take a taste, and tell me.”
“Tell you what?”
“Take a taste, and tell me about the tea and where this case is.”
The tea tasted like a funeral home smelled.
“It tastes like a funeral home smells,” I said.
“All right, then just tell me about the case.”
“The Kovacs brothers were the guys who entered the bank. Severs was either in on it from the beginning, or he found out that the Kovacs brothers were involved afterward, during the investigation. Either way, Severs was a partner, and the one who held the money. No one would think to suspect him.”
Dillard nodded approvingly, as though it were the one sip of tea I’d taken that was firing my brain accurately.
“Then everybody sat back, to let the case cool,” he said.
“Except Severs’s stepdaughter discovered the money, sent it to Honestly Dearest. That got young Lucia killed.”
“By Severs?”
“Him, or one of the Kovacs brothers,” I said. “Lucia was a threat to them all.”
“But now someone else knew: your girlfriend.”
I looked at the teapot, let it go by.
Dillard set down his cup. “She got the money, Elstrom. She was involved.”
When I still didn’t respond, he went on. “Severs killed a Kovacs brother, faking his own death, and took off to find her.”
“As the surviving Kovacs brother took off to find Severs,” I said.
“But only Severs found his way to Rambling.” He leaned back in his chair, as affable as a cracker rocking on a country store porch.
I knew where he was going. “No,” I said anyway. “The Kovacs brother also found his way here. He’s the only one left. He killed Severs.”
“Maris Mays,” he said, “your girlfriend.”
“She’d left Rambling by the time he got here.”
“Likely enough,” he agreed. “Who’s that leave, Elstrom?”
“I told you. The surviving Kovacs brother.”
“I had a couple of men show Patterson’s pictures around. Lots of people remember Severs, but nobody at a store, at a gas station, recollects seeing one of the Kovacs brothers.”
He turned around then and busied himself with pouring more tea.
I waited him out.
He swiveled back and for a minute made a savoring face as he sipped his tea. “So who’s left, Elstrom?”
I shook my head.
“Maris Mays had been running from cops her whole adult life,” he went on. “Suddenly, a ton of money gets dropped in her lap, only now she’s being hunted for that as well. By another cop, of all people. Now, I’m not saying she wasn’t justified in wanting him dead. Hell, he’d killed his wife and his stepdaughter, then tracked your Maris down to Florida, and up here to Rambling. No doubt, he would kill her for that money.”
“You think she faked her own disappearance, dribbled a little blood around the cottage, hid out for a few weeks, then came back to kill Severs? Have more tea, Dillard, or give it up altogether.”
He smiled. “No, that’s not what I think.”