08-A Thousand Bones, page 15
Joe turned and looked across the street to the high school.
“That the school you traced the charm to?” Rafsky asked.
She nodded. “Yes, but I didn’t get anything really solid.”
“Maybe we can try later. But first let’s go pay a visit to Mr. Snider.”
They got out of the Chrysler, and Joe followed Rafsky up to the porch, waiting while he rang the bell. The porch’s dark green boards were peeling and slightly warped. The windows were dirty, and the glazier’s putty around the panes was cracked and falling out. A pair of muddy work boots sat next to a frayed welcome mat.
Rafsky was on his third ring when the door finally jerked open. The man standing behind the screen door was tall, wearing jeans and a Lions sweatshirt and holding a can of Pabst.
“Yeah?”
“Kenneth Snider?”
“Yeah, that’s me.” The man’s eyes had found Joe, and he was staring at her uniform.
Rafsky showed his state ID badge and made sure Snider got a look at the shield before he put it away. “I’m State Investigator Rafsky. This is Deputy Frye, Leelanau sheriff’s office. May we ask you a few questions?”
Snider was staring at Joe. “Leelanau?”
“Yes.”
It took effort for him to pull his eyes back to Rafsky. “What about?”
“About some hunting equipment.”
“Hunting equipment?”
Rafsky held up the invoice from Hunter’s Haven. “This piece of equipment.”
Snider pushed open the screen door, and Rafsky gave him the invoice. Snider squinted at it and blew out a strange sigh that sounded to Joe like relief.
“I remember this hoist,” Snider said.
“Yes, we need to talk to you about when you bought it.”
“I didn’t buy it. That’s my father’s name on that invoice. I’m Ken Junior.”
“Can we speak to your father?”
“He’s dead,” Snider said.
Joe took a step forward. “Could we come in, Mr. Snider?”
Snider gave a small shrug and opened the door wider. “Sure, sure. No point in heating the outdoors.”
They entered the gloomy living room. The Price Is Right was blaring on the TV, and Snider went to the old Zenith and switched it off. With the TV off, the room felt as dark as a cave. Joe quickly took in the details: a plaid sofa covered with a blue sheet, end tables coated with dust and water glass stains, the dull glint of bowling trophies on the mantel of a red-brick fireplace. There was a closed-up, fusty smell to the house, like mildewed laundry or a wet dog.
She took a moment to assess Kenneth Snider. He looked to be in his late twenties, a big guy, dark-haired, well over six feet, and broad-chested as if he had once played football. His long face was off just enough to be short of handsome, with brown sloping eyes beneath heavy black brows. She was close enough to get a look at his hand grasping the Pabst can. His fingers were chapped, chewed-up-looking, as if he worked with his hands.
Rafsky was asking Snider about his father. “He died eleven years ago?”
“That’s what I said,” Snider said.
“Did you ever use the hoist?”
Snider shook his head and then took a drink of beer.
“You don’t hunt?” Rafsky asked.
“Used to. Gave it up a long time ago.” Snider’s eyes were going from Rafsky to Joe and back to Rafsky. “Look, maybe if you told me why you’re here, I could be more help.”
“The hoist was found recently up in Leelanau County near a crime scene,” Rafsky said.
Joe was watching Snider carefully, but the only thing that registered in the man’s face was confusion.
“You must got something wrong, then,” Snider said, “because my dad’s hoist is down in the basement.”
“Could you show it to us, please?” Rafsky asked.
Snider shrugged again and waved a hand. “This way.”
He tossed the beer can into a huge trash can as they passed through the small kitchen. A row of cereal boxes lined the old Formica counter, and the avocado-colored appliances were rust-pocked and missing knobs. But at least someone had tried to clean; there were no crusted dishes in the sink or stains on the stove. Still, Joe had the impression that Snider lived here alone. Whatever the hell that smell was, no woman would stand for it.
The wood stairs creaked as they headed down into the basement. The air grew cold, the musty smell stronger. Snider hit a switch as they neared the bottom.
Concrete water-stained walls. A furnace crouching like a hulking beast off in the shadows. Lines of thin rope strung across the room. Joe was wondering what they were for when she saw an old wringer-style washing machine. Snider apparently hung his laundry down here to dry. She was breathing in the moldy wet-dog smell, imagining it clinging to Snider’s shirts.
“Over here,” Snider said, heading under the stairs.
There was a large workbench fronting heavy shelves holding an assortment of power tools. A pegboard behind the bench was filled with carefully arranged jars of bolts and nails and gleaming hand tools. A carpenter’s belt was folded on the bench, its leather soft and well maintained. As old and dingy as everything in the rest of the house was, everything on this workbench was clean, and precisely arranged.
“What do you do for a living, Mr. Snider?” she asked.
He was pulling cardboard boxes out from the space under the stairs and glanced back at her. “Construction,” he said flatly.
“Is that a scraping plane?” Joe asked, pointing to an elegant-looking tool.
“Yeah.” He hesitated. “I use to do cabinetry work.” He pulled out a large, battered footlocker. Kneeling, he opened it and began rummaging through it. Joe saw two shotguns resting in the corner. The barrels were spotted with rust.
Joe and Rafsky waited as Snider brought out what looked like two bedrolls and a rusted deer-gutting knife. Some tin camping pans clanked on the floor as Snider tossed them aside.
Snider stopped and looked up at them. “It’s not here,” he said.
“You’re sure?” Rafsky said, stepping forward to peer in the empty locker.
“Yeah, I’m fucking sure.”
Snider’s eyes darted into the shadows beneath the stairs, and he rose slowly, wiping his hands on his jeans.
“Did you loan it out?” Rafsky asked.
Snider shook his head. “I haven’t touched this stuff in ten years.”
Rafsky stepped closer to the locker. “Did all this belong to your father?”
Snider nodded, his eyes moving slowly across the heap of camping gear.
“Maybe we could look around for the hoist,” Rafsky said. “Maybe it’s upstairs or in a garage.”
Joe saw something flit across Snider’s face. Confusion for sure, but there was a hardening, as if the man were slowly figuring something out. Or trying to.
“You got a warrant?” Snider said.
Rafsky paused just a beat. “No.”
“Then I don’t have to let you look at anything, do I?” Snider asked.
Rafsky glanced at Joe. Then he looked back at Kenneth Snider and gave a curt nod. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Snider. We’ll find our way out.”
They were sitting in the Chrysler still parked in front of the stone house. Snider had not reappeared after they left him in the basement, hadn’t even come to the window to watch them.
“I don’t think he knew the hoist was missing,” Rafsky said.
“But it bothered him.”
Rafsky nodded, his eyes drifting to the school across the street. It was only four, but the low-hanging gray sky made it feel like dusk. Rafsky saw Joe turn up the collar of her jacket. He turned on the ignition and hit the heater.
“How come you asked him about that carpentry tool?” he asked.
“He said he worked construction. But those weren’t your basic tools on his workbench. He had a lot of stuff furniture makers use. My dad did cabinetry as a hobby, and he had a plane just like the one Snider has.”
Rafsky waited while she gathered her thoughts.
“Snider says he works construction, but his house is falling apart.” She looked at Rafsky. “You notice the window panes? They all need recaulking.”
“My mom cleaned hotel rooms for a living. But our house was always a mess,” Rafsky said. “Maybe it’s the same thing.”
Joe was looking at the stone house. “I just get the feeling something’s off about the guy.”
Rafsky didn’t answer her. He was staring at the school. The front doors burst open, and a trio of girls emerged. They looked like the girls on The Brady Bunch—straight blond hair, too-pink cheeks, and pastel parkas above low-riding jeans. The girls crossed the street, too absorbed in their chatting even to look for traffic, and disappeared around the corner.
Joe glanced back at the house, expecting to see Snider at his window. He wasn’t.
“What was the name of the girl who might have had the charm bracelet?” Rafsky asked.
“No name,” Joe said. “The teacher could only remember that it was a boy’s nickname. Could be Sam for Samantha, or Georgie for Georgia, or—”
“Let’s see if the school will let us look at some yearbooks,” Rafsky said. “Maybe we’ll get a hit.”
The principal, Mr. Garrett, led them to an empty room behind the office. He brought the yearbooks himself, 1962 through 1974. Then he hung for a while near the door, hands clasped behind his back, trying not to look interested. Rafsky glanced back at him.
“Thank you, Mr. Garrett,” he said. “I’m sure we’ll be fine.”
Garrett left, closing the door behind him. Rafsky handed Joe three books and settled uncomfortably into one of the small plastic chairs.
Joe opened the first book, from 1962, thinking the year the hoist was bought was the logical place to start. Rafsky took the book for 1963. It was tedious going, because they couldn’t assume the girl they were looking for was a senior and therefore merited an individual portrait. They had to scrutinize the group photographs for each class, running their fingers along the lines of small type under each. They also checked the pictures of each student activity or event.
Joe turned the pages slowly, staring at all the girls’ faces, even the ones without captions. The faces that stared back looked like a collection of sixties dolls, the girls wearing everything from stiff flips to the long straight hair of the British models. Most of the names were traditional.
Linda. Debra. Carol. Gail. Christine. Marsha.
She heard a sharp thud and looked up. Rafsky had tossed the 1963 yearbook down and had picked up 1964. “You know our chances of finding her aren’t good,” he murmured, not looking up. “Even if she’s in one of these somewhere, it is probably under her real name, not some nickname.”
“I remember the teacher I talked to told me she was a wild type, one of the fringe students,” Joe said. “Something tells me we aren’t going to find her in the usual club activities or National Honor Society pictures.”
Rafsky nodded, and Joe went back to work. From the corner of her eye, she spotted Mr. Garrett watching them, and she realized the outer office was dark. Everyone had gone home. It was nearly five p.m.
Finally, she closed the 1962 yearbook and picked up the 1965 volume. She flipped to the back, starting with the senior pictures. Betty. Anne. Joan. Ruth. Her eyes stopped on a picture in the upper righthand corner. Dark bouffant hair. Bright doe eyes heavily outlined in black. A big Hollywood smile.
“I found something,” Joe said softly.
Rafsky looked up.
“I have a girl named Ronnie,” Joe said. “Her name is Veronica Langford, but it says here she went by Ronnie.”
Joe slid the book to Rafsky. The caption under the picture said: “Veronica ‘Ronnie’ Langford. She’s Ready for Her Close-up!”
“How old do you think Ken Snider is?” Joe asked.
Rafsky shrugged. “Twenty-nine or thirty.”
“So he could have been in school with her.”
He quickly flipped to the S section of the senior pictures. She was right. Kenneth Snider’s picture showed a good-looking boy with a tentative smile. The caption read: “Kenneth Snider. Kissed the Girls and Made Them Cry!” The activities listed for him were Varsity Football, Ski Club, and Drama Club.
“Would you go ask Mr. Garrett if he can pull up the family’s address?” Rafsky asked.
“We’re going to see the Langfords now?” Joe asked. “We have nine other books to go through.”
“We’ll take them with us,” Rafsky said. “But I’d like to move on this one. I don’t like the fact that a girl with a boy’s name and maybe a charm bracelet attended this school with Ken Snider, who just happened to have access to a deer hoist found in Echo Bay.”
Rafsky handed the yearbook back to Joe. She stared at the picture of the young Ken Snider. But in her head, she was seeing him as he was now. Seeing him in that stone house across the street, hiding behind those ugly drapes, peering out at the young girls walking by his front door every day.
22
The Langford home was a small yellow brick ranch house. In the front yard, a plaster Virgin Mary statue with a broken right hand stood in a bed of un-raked leaves. The house was only three streets away from Ken Snider’s home.
Joe and Rafsky were halfway up the walk when a woman in a sweater came out to the porch, holding open the screen door.
“Can I help you?” she asked.
Rafsky showed her his ID, introduced Joe, and waited at the bottom step of the porch while Marie Langford studied them. There was no hint in her face that she suspected cops were here to talk about a missing daughter.
“Do you have a daughter named Ronnie?”
Marie Langford came down the steps slowly, holding her sweater closed across her thin housedress. “I do,” she said. “But I haven’t seen or talked to Ronnie in years.”
“When was the last time you spoke to her?” Rafsky asked.
Marie Langford thought for a moment. “It was just before Valentine’s Day, 1965,” she said.
“How do you remember the date so well, Mrs. Langford?” Joe asked.
“I remember because Ronnie told me she had quit her job and she was going to quit school. Four months away from graduation, you know? We had this big argument right out here on the lawn.”
“Why did she want to quit school?” Joe asked.
“Why do they all want to quit?” Marie Langford said. “She found herself some man who promised to take her away.”
“Do you recall his name?”
She didn’t have to think too long this time. “Mitch Haskell. A trucker who did long hauls. Older than her, too. Probably had a wife and kids stashed somewhere, if you ask me.”
“Do you know if Ronnie knew a man named Ken Snider?” Joe asked.
Marie Langford shook her head. “Not that I ever heard. She had a lot of boyfriends. But Mitch Haskell…she told me he was the one and that she was hitting the road with him.”
“And you didn’t hear from her again?” Rafsky asked.
“Nope. I figured someday Ronnie would grow up and at least give me a call or come home pregnant or something. But she never did. I guess maybe her and that Haskell guy made it after all.”
Marie Langford fell quiet, and Joe looked up at her, expecting to see some sort of sadness in her eyes. But there was just a tired resignation, as if what Ronnie had done was how Marie Langford expected all daughters to act.
“Did Ronnie have a charm bracelet?” Joe asked.
Marie cocked her head. “Huh. Haven’t thought about that in years. She sure did, never took it off.”
Joe caught Rafsky’s eye. “What kind of charms were on it?” she asked Marie Langford.
“Souvenir stuff. Like from places we took her as a kid, before her father died. He was a big one for going up north, but I couldn’t afford to take the girls anywhere after he passed.” She paused. “Ronnie, she sure loved going to those places. It was hard on her after her dad passed. She was only thirteen. Started acting up after he…”
Marie Langford shook her head, her eyes drifting.
Joe reached into her jacket for the photographs of the charms and held them out. “Do you recognize any of these?” she asked.
Marie sifted through the photos slowly. “The dunes, Frankenmuth, the Cross in the Woods. Yeah, we went to all these places.” Her eyes came up slowly. “Where did you find her bracelet?”
Rafsky gave Joe a second to answer, and when she didn’t, he spoke. “Up near Echo Bay, in Leelanau County.”
Marie Langford held his eye, her face hardening as she realized why two cops were standing on her sidewalk. “Is Ronnie dead?”
“We don’t know,” Rafsky said gently. “We have bones and some other pieces of evidence. This bracelet was close by.”
“So she was murdered?” Marie Langford asked.
Joe thought it strange that Marie Langford had made that assumption so quickly. Before she could say anything, Rafsky went on. “We just don’t know enough yet, Mrs. Langford.”
He pulled out a business card and handed it to her. “Feel free to call anytime,” he said. “And we’ll let you know when we find out more.”
He arched a brow at Joe. It was a look she was getting to know, his way of asking her if she had anything else to ask. It seemed cruel to prolong the interview now that Rafsky had told the woman her daughter might be dead. But all of this was just too big a coincidence—the school, the bracelet, Snider’s house, and Ronnie’s disappearance in February of 1965.
“Mrs. Langford,” Joe said, “I’m sorry, but I have a few more questions. Are you sure Ronnie never mentioned a Ken or a Kenneth or a boy who lived across from the high school?”
“I’m sure.”
“You mentioned earlier you never took the girls on vacation after their father passed? So Ronnie has a sister?”
“Yes, Valerie, two years older,” Marie said. “She’s out in California. Do you want her phone number?”
Joe nodded, and Marie Langford reeled it off. Joe wrote it down, hoping maybe Ronnie had shared something with her sister that she had not shared with her mother.
