Murder at Willow Slough Read online

  MURDER AT WILLOW SLOUGH

  Josh Thomas

  Writers Club

  Press New York Lincoln Shanghai

  Murder at Willow Slough

  All Rights Reserved © 2001, 2003 by Josh Thomas

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher.

  Writers Club Press an imprint of iUniverse, Inc.

  For information address: iUniverse 2021 Pine Lake Road, Suite 100 Lincoln, NE 68512 www.iuniverse.com

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN: 0-595-15686-X

  ISBN: 978-1-4620-4134-3 (ebook)

  Printed in the United States of America

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

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  To my late mother Betty Rees Moore, B.S. Pharm., Purdue University, 1961

  Hail, Hail

  slough ‘slü n (1): a large wet or marshy place; SWAMP (2): a small marshy place lying in a local depression (as on a prairie) (3): a state of moral degradation or spiritual dejection into which one sinks or from which one cannot free oneself

  Webster’s Third New International Dictionary

  Acknowledgments

  Writing is a solitary crime, but its perpetrators must have accomplices or we’ll be locked up. Jack Dawson was a great partner who helped create my venue. The maddeningly wonderful Bruce Tone made many helpful suggestions. Dick, Steve and Evie Moore believed in their kid Bro. Cincinnati’s remarkable Weyands—Bob, Peggy, Michael and Martha, the Condom Queen—took me into their family, which I’ll always cherish. Dave Kessler gave me a tip, from which I built a career. Dr. Steve and Kim Egger shared their expertise in the study of multiple murder. Homicide investigators in many departments and disciplines opened their cases to me and won my deepest respect. May they all find loving traces of themselves in this book.

  There are three kinds of writers. Reporters are legal, as long as they stick to the facts. But a certain percentage, thankfully small, go bad and start committing columns, inflicting their opinions on people. The most dangerous of all become novelists. They’re power-mad, they want to control everything that happens in their depraved little worlds. Not only that, they make you pay for it.

  Welcome, suckah, to my criminal world…

  1

  News

  “Schmidgall’s dead.” Jamie leaned into his editor’s cubicle. “Press conference tomorrow in Chicago. Lawyer’s releasing the victim list. Can I go?”

  “Sure. Clear the budget with Louie. AIDS?”

  “He’s been bad, I knew it was coming.”

  “How’d you hear?”

  “Her paralegal just called me.”

  “How do you feel?”

  It took Jamie awhile to tune into his body. “Bad for Anna, that she has to go through it. Bad for Cznynowski’s sister, she always cries. The Gregorys will be overjoyed. Bad for the Weinsteins, but that’s just because they’re Jewish and middle class. I should feel the same way for everyone else, and I don’t, there are too many of them. So guilty, too, somewhere. Glad this phase is over.

  “As for him, I know it’s wrong, but I almost liked him. What’s her phrase, ‘superficially charming’? So slightly sad. You don’t want anyone to die that way.” He snorted. “Unless it’s him. Especially him. Maybe the Red-Haired Boy will finally get his name back.”

  “What’s the hook?”

  “For the dailies, the list, ‘Schmidgall Speaks from the Grave.’ For us, for her, the message to the horse doctor.”

  “Those phone lines’ll be burning up between Eastwood and Indianapolis.”

  “Hope so. More phone records.”

  “You want me to monitor TV, the Chicago station?”

  “Tape it. They won’t have anything I don’t, but I’d like to see how they play it, after I write it up and get back home. I bet they give the victims five seconds total. We’ve got to do better than that, Case.”

  “We will.” Casey double-clicked his Schmidgall folder to see what file photos he had.

  “Would you call Rick while I’m gone? Just see how he’s doing.”

  “Sure. Don’t worry.” Jamie left to inform the publisher. Casey already had a victims’ photo stack, laid out and ready to drop in on a page. But what he thought about was how scared Jamie was to leave his lover for 24 hours, even to chase the story of his career.

  ***

  The news spread quickly, and people’s reactions, just like the victims, were all over the map. Sgt. Barry Hickman heard about it from his partner Bulldog Sauer in an empty school gym.

  “Schmidgall’s dead,” Bulldog panted, dribbling, trying to drive past him.

  Hickman threw his hip. “Good. Couldn’ta happened to a more deserving fella.”

  “Anna’s gonna announce 21 names, have a big news conference tomorrow. You think we oughta go up there?” Bulldog darted past, if it could be called that, slow as he was. But compared to Hickman, he darted. Went in for a layup. Missed.

  Hickman rebounded, headed back to the foul line. “For what? It’s a long drive. We know the names. That son of a bitch, what would we get out of it?”

  Bulldog rubbed his shoulder. It had ached since he tackled that prisoner trying to escape at the courthouse. Maybe he was getting too old for this stuff. Hickman started down the lane, so Bulldog put his arms up. “See if she’s come up with any more evidence on Dr. Crum.”

  Hickman pulled up, a six-foot jumper, good. “There’s gonna be a mob at that press conference. She ain’t gonna want to talk to nobody. You think Jamie’s going?”

  Bulldog chuckled, clutched the ball to his chest. “Maybe he’ll drive over from Columbus and we can all ride up together.”

  “Just what I need, that fag in the car for five hours. You gonna play or stand there?”

  Bulldog spun, twisted, got past. “I’ll tell him you said that.” Swish!

  “Okay, I’ll go. As long as it’s just you and me. You keep your trap shut with him.” Hickman took the ball out, tried a three-point airball.

  Bulldog retrieved it. “I might give him a call, just to let him know. If he doesn’t already. Nice shot, keep it up.”

  Hickman heaved for breath, got back on defense. “He knows, Bulldog, don’t waste your dime. Call the lawyer instead. She’ll need somebody to take her to lunch afterw
ards. Maybe we can talk to her then.”

  Bulldog headed for the baseline, Hickman followed. A bank shot rattled off the rim.“I’m gonna call Jamie anyway.You never know when we might need him. It won’t hurt to stay on his good side.”

  Hickman tipped the ball off the glass and in. “I didn’t mean what I said. I just don’t wanna listen to him talk all that time. Yap yap yap, he never shuts up on that Gay rights crap.”

  It wasn’t true, Hickman knew it wasn’t; but before Jamie, he’d never heard anybody yap for any length on that Gay rights crap—and four cold, Gay murder cases made him listen.

  They weren’t Schmidgall victims; they were strangled, not stabbed, and they turned up after he was already in jail. But they were just as Gay and just as dead, and they didn’t deserve to wind up in Quincy County, Ohio.

  Schmidgall had a partner; maybe more than one. But Bulldog and Hickman, try as they might, couldn’t prove it. No one could. Those four cold queers ate Hickman alive. He tried another three-pointer and cried, “Downtown!” He didn’t need a hot queer like Jamie feeding on him too. ***

  “Schmidgall’s dead,”Richard Gregory said,cradling the phone. “That was Anna. She wants to know if we’ll go up there. She’s having a news conference tomorrow, would we like to represent the families?”

  “He’s dead?” Betty Gregory put down her watering can, made the sign of the cross. “He’s really dead?”

  Her surviving son came, put his arm around her. “Late last night.”

  She stared at her shelf of African violets, fluffed one to encourage it. Billy always liked my violets. He loved purple.

  “What should I tell her? You want to go? Are you up to it?”

  “I wouldn’t miss this for the world. Those poor other boys. Their poor families. Finally. I can’t believe it.” She resumed pouring. “Did he suffer, did she say?”

  “He had AIDS, Mom. That’s what got him.”

  “Did he have a fever? Was he out of his mind? Was he in terrible pain?”

  “She didn’t say any of that, now.”

  “I hope he was so sick he begged God to let him die.”

  “Mom, take it easy. Please?”

  “Six months ago. I hope he begged God six months ago.”

  ***

  “From Chicago, word that mass murderer Roger Schmidgall is dead at 41. That story, after this.” Sergeant Kent Kessler, Indiana State Police, turned up the radio in his cruiser.

  ***

  “Roger’s dead.” She reached for the handkerchief she always kept in her pocket.

  Her husband put down his newspaper, frowned. “I’m sorry. That’s too bad.”

  He stood, came to her next to the dining room table. She leaned on it for support. He took her in his arms. “I just hope he didn’t suffer, that’s all. My poor son.”

  “Well, it’s over now. It’s all over. There, there, let it out, dear.” She did, but only for a few seconds. “He had good in him, I know he did!” Then it was time to get lunch on the table. She went off to the kitchen, dispassionate again, dead still. ***

  “Roger’s dead,” Randy said over the pay phone.

  “Shit.”

  “I’m sorry, Tom.”

  “Well, that ought to make things easier on you, huh?” Asshole.

  He thought about it. “Maybe. Still, it’s sad.”

  “Tell me. You weren’t his lover for five years. His best friend for twenty.”

  “You going to his funeral?”

  “Are you out of your mind? It’ll be crawling with cops. Who else’d go? Cops and reporters, just what I need. Jamie Foster’ll lead the fucking delegation.”

  “Roger’s mom and step-dad will be there, I guess. His sister.”

  “No way I’m going.” “Me neither. Well, I thought you’d want to know. I’m sorry, Tommy.” “Yeah, I’ll call you later, Doc.” “Don’t call from home, though.” He hung up, glanced around him,

  got back in his sports car. Decided to head for the ice cream store, buy the biggest sundae they had.

  Schmidgall’s dead. Heh heh heh.

  2

  Mail

  The next afternoon near quitting time, Casey Jordan hit Save on his front-page design and checked his e-mail. It was probably too early to expect anything, but he knew his chief correspondent would be pumped, exhilarated. That boy was addicted to his own adrenaline.

  He keyed in his password, hit Enter; a sound effect in his computer said, “You’ve got mail!” like it was all happy. He double-clicked, his screen blinked, and Casey read the first draft of his cover story.

  [P.

  1] “I Know Who You Are”

  [P.

  3] Schmidgall Dead, Lawyer Says He Killed 21 Records Sought from Alleged Accomplice

  By James R. Foster The Ohio Gay Times

  CHICAGO, March 8—It was, his lawyer said, the only decent thing the man ever did. Even that was only because he no longer had anything to lose.

  Roger Schmidgall, Death Row murderer, openly Gay, died of AIDS in prison Sunday night, knowing that terrible things would be said about him today, sorry that he wouldn’t be around for his last 15 seconds of fame.

  His attorney Anna Moulter obliged him this morning, releasing the names of 21 teenaged boys and young men Schmidgall told her he murdered during a four-year rampage through the Midwest. See Sidebar [next file], “Victims: Not Statistics, but Men.”

  Schmidgall’s targets were students, hustlers, petty thieves, normal guys—young men he could sweet-talk into his pickup, dangling booze, drugs, money, sex, whatever pushed their buttons.

  Of those who got in, only one ever got out alive. And even he dropped charges in exchange for a measly $700 in hush money.

  But the most shocking death of all is the one Schmidgall denied to the end, the murder that landed him on Death Row. He claimed someone else killed Chuckie Pont, a 15-year-old Chicago hustler and police informant. He claimed someone stabbed him in Schmidgall’s apartment while he was gone.

  When he returned to find a dead body and blood everywhere, he had to get rid of the corpse. So he hacked Chuckie to bits, stuffing body parts in garbage bags, leaving them to rot in the dumpster outside his apart-ment—where a maintenance man saw something, smelled something.

  Anna Moulter reluctantly believed her client. It’s why she stayed with him when she knew he was scum: there was someone else in that apartment the day the Pont boy was murdered.

  Nagging Questions

  Moulter, court-appointed—Schmidgall’s third attorney—looked at the evidence and decided it didn’t add up. She listened to the client she terms “disgusting” and “manipulative,” and tried to figure out what part of his story wasn’t contaminated by lies and deceit. Almost none of what he said was the whole truth.

  But she became convinced someone even more dangerous and deceitful stabbed the Pont boy over and over for the fun of it, then left Schmidgall to dispose of the evidence or take the rap.

  Schmidgall died before his lawyer could win a new trial. So Anna Moulter came to the Cook County Hall of Justice today to do the only thing she could, to close the book for the survivors and reclaim her own humanity: admit publicly what those families, friends and police officers had always known, without fully knowing; that Roger Schmidgall killed their loved ones. He didn’t admit it out of the goodness of his heart; she talked him into it—as revenge for being set up.

  But she had her own purpose today, the same one that kept her going through three years of fruitless appeals in the Pont case. She wanted to send a message to the man she suspects is the real killer: “I know who you are.”

  Suddenly

  Other people think they know who he is, too: police, prosecutors, journalists who have followed Schmidgall’s bloody trail through Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin for fifteen years.

  If Schmidgall told the truth, her suspect is allegedly Dr. Randolph Scott Crum, 59, a veterinarian in Eastwood, Indiana—Schmidgall’s former sugar daddy.

  Schmidgall and
his then-lover Tommy lived in Crum’s farmhouse, drove his car, ate his food. Schmidgall claimed he used his once-youthful attractions to pick up victims for the older man.

  The plot seems straight out of Tennessee Williams’s Suddenly, Last Summer. But Schmidgall was no Liz Taylor and Crum is no Montgomery Clift. The horror remains; the crime wasn’t sodomy, it was murder.

  Schmidgall never said publicly that Crum killed the Pont boy; the lawyer didn’t mention Crum’s name today. But he paid for Schmidgall’s apartment where Chuckie was killed; he was present in the apartment that day; and he paid Schmidgall’s original lawyer, facts hidden or glossed over during the trial.

  Years earlier, Crum even paid off the first, surviving victim, whom Schmidgall drugged, stabbed and let go when the victim begged for mercy.

  If you were a sugar daddy and your boy tried to kill someone, would you pay hush money, rent apartments, buy lawyers? What power could he wield over you to make you pay?

  Blackmail might work.

  Acquitted

  The one time Crum was put on trial—in the murder of Sammy Barlow of Crab Orchard, Indiana, which Schmidgall belatedly confessed to participating in years ago, claiming Crum “directed the scene” like a filmmaker—the veterinarian’s powerhouse defense team won an acquittal.

  “Who do you believe?” Crum’s lawyers asked the jury. “A man like Roger Schmidgall, a known liar, a notorious person? Or a respected professional in the community, a doctor who takes care of sick animals?” The panel took less than an hour.

  Billy Gregory’s mother, brother and sister-in-law were here to witness Moulter’s announcement. They know who Crum is, too. They looked him in the eye every day during the Barlow trial.

  He never looked back.

  Knowing, Not Knowing

  Betty Gregory gasped when Moulter read her son’s name this morning. No part of her was surprised, but she was still shocked to have Schmidgall take responsibility for her son’s death, even in such a roundabout, selfish way.

  “It will always eat at me,” she told reporters. “I’ll always have that pain. But now we can go on.

  “Do you understand what it’s like to lose a child?” she cried, supported by her only surviving son. “To have your baby ripped from your arms, and not know for sure what happened?”