“How much work did you do for him?” I asked.
“Oh, not too much. He showed me around the process; you know, the clerk’s office and auditor’s office and all of that. I probably did a few checks for him each month. Just minor research.”
“Anything recently?”
“Actually, yes. About two weeks ago he sent me a list of three names and asked for a basic check through some of the computer databases and the county clerk’s office. He said he couldn’t do it because he was going out of town, and asked me to fax a report to him.”
“You know where he went?”
“Nope, but I still have the fax number.”
“Can I see it?”
“Sure.”
An obese gray cat waddled out from behind my chair and, with the great effort necessary to move such bulk, hoisted itself up on the couch beside Sortigan, meowing loudly. It wasn’t really a meow, more like an air raid siren. Sortigan cooed softly to it and scratched under its chin.
I cleared my throat to regain her attention. “Do you still have those names?”
“Sure. In fact, I have all the information I gathered on them. Kinda shady guys, to be honest with you.”
“The cops ask you about this?”
“Yes. But as I said, I have no idea what the significance of the case was. And it’s not like many of the people we check out don’t have criminal records, you know? It wasn’t unusual.”
“Sure. Could I take a look at those names and that fax number?”
“Definitely. Hang on, I’ll go grab the folder.” She dropped the fat cat to the ground. It uttered a squawk of protest and then collapsed on the floor, where it promptly decided that was as comfortable a place as any and went to sleep. Life as a cat.
A moment later Sortigan returned with a manila folder. Inside were three sets of printouts detailing the records she had found on three men. It was the type of routine background check Joe and I were doing on a regular basis now, and she seemed to have done a pretty thorough job on it. All of the gentlemen were Soviet nationals, and all of them had criminal records. Perhaps there had been some confusion over the customs and ordinances of their new country.
“Can I make copies of this?” I asked.
“You can keep the originals. It’s not like I need them anymore. Dead bosses don’t pay.”
CHAPTER 4
“VLADIMIR RAKIC, Ivan Malaknik, Alexei Krashakov,” I read. “All in their mid-thirties, all born in the Soviet Union, all with criminal records. And all investigated by the deceased Wayne Weston in the weeks before his murder.”
Joe raised an eyebrow. “Murder? We know that now?”
I shrugged. “It sounded more dramatic that way.”
“What are the criminal charges?”
“Petty stuff, mostly. Several counts of battery, two of assault, one robbery charge involving all three that was dismissed, a few public intoxication charges, one charge of battery of a police officer, and one count of intimidation.”
“Aw, shucks,” Joe said. “They sound like good boys. Just misunderstood.”
I nodded. “These barbaric Cleveland police officers clearly lack the appreciation for subtle differences in culture and values that our Soviet visitors expected to find in American authorities.”
“Clearly,” Joe agreed. “What do you plan to do with them?”
“Knock on the door and tell them I’m looking for a missing mother and daughter?”
“Perhaps that’s a little too direct.”
“Ah,” I said. “Well, in that case, I’m out of ideas.”
“No surprise there,” Joe said. “Fortunately, I’ve been a good deal more productive than you. I made a few calls to Windsor, and I must confess I had little luck. But, ever undeterred, I shifted gears and called John Weston. I told him to get his attorney on the phone with his son’s bank and bitch until they gave us some records. Which they did pretty quickly. Swanders and Kraus were right; Wayne Weston was basically cleared out. Two grand in checking and about five hundred bucks in savings. He’d cashed in bonds and mutual funds.”
“Gives some credence to the gambling problem, maybe.”
“Uh-huh. I also asked for the details about the recent checks cashed by Weston’s agency account. Five checks in the past two months, from five businesses.” He glanced at a notepad in front of him. “Two real estate agencies, two construction companies, and a law firm.”
I frowned. “The law firm makes sense, but I wonder what he did for the real estate agencies and construction companies?”
“Maybe he ran some checks for wiretaps or installed electronic surveillance equipment,” Joe offered. “There are some firms that do that type of thing.”
“Maybe, but why would the real estate agency request it and not the homeowner? It seems strange to me.”
He waved his hand indifferently. “Any individual and any business can hire a private investigator.”
“Fine. We probably ought to look into the jobs, though, and see what we can learn. On the off chance Weston stirred something up with his work, it makes sense to check the most recent jobs first.”
“I guess.” Joe didn’t sound enthused.
“You got a better idea?”
He shook his head. “Not really. Let’s check on those jobs and check on the Russians.”
“What are you thinking?”
“That this guy didn’t kill himself,” he said. “If it was just Wayne Weston, I’d say forget about it, this case isn’t worth messing with. But the family bothers me. It takes one kind of guy to run up some gambling debts and eat a bullet for the easy way out. It takes a different kind of guy entirely to murder his own family. And if he murdered them, how’d he do it? When did he do it? Where are the bodies? Most murder-suicide cases I’ve heard about, both acts are usually done in fairly close proximity, you know?”
“Yeah.”
“And,” he said, gathering steam with his argument, “if he killed them, he obviously took great pains to hide the bodies, which doesn’t fit the thinking of a guy who was planning on suicide. Why bother hiding the bodies if you’re not going to be around to worry about it?”
“So you think we should operate on the assumption he was killed.”
He gave me a tired grin. “I don’t know. But regardless, I’m not so worried about Weston. He killed himself, or someone killed him. Fine. We’ve got the body lying there, you know? But what the hell happened to that woman and her little girl?”
“That’s what we’re supposed to find out, old man.”
“I know.” He waved a handful of papers at me. “Swanders kept his word and faxed the crime scene report over.”
“And?”
“And the physical evidence makes it look like a suicide. They did a damn thorough job of checking the house, and they’ve also got no evidence of an intruder or any sort of struggle. Weston was killed with his own handgun, fired into his temple at point-blank range.”
“No chance someone else could have shot him, wiped the gun for prints, left it in his hand?”
He shrugged. “Well, there wasn’t any gunshot residue on his hand, no real convincing evidence he fired the shot himself. That doesn’t always exist in a suicide, though. So your idea is possible but unlikely. I mean, the guy was a pro, right? A Force Recon vet and a professional investigator? It’s hard to imagine a scenario where someone takes Weston’s gun away from him and shoots him at point-blank range so easily, then deals with the family, all without causing enough noise to attract attention from the neighbors. You don’t think the mother and little girl would get out even a scream?”