Murder, Werewolves, and Ghosts Read online

  1The Immigrants

  Detective Jim Regan and Sergeant Maryann Marks arrived on the scene at 10:30 PM to find Alfred Green, investment counselor, age 55, dead—his throat torn open—slumped behind the wheel of his car. He was discovered by a Mr. Wallace while walking his dog. Wallace told Regan he saw the car parked at the curb, passenger door swung open, headlights on, engine idling. As he approached it his dog began to whine. Wallace, curious, bent over and looked in to see someone in the driver seat with their head thrust backward. He suspected the driver to be drunk and had pulled over. But because his dog was in a frenzy, straining to get away, thought something might be seriously wrong and went around to the driver’s side to get a better look. The person behind the wheel was a man. The front of his shirt was soaked with blood. His throat had been ripped open. Wallace ran up the walk and rang the doorbell of the facing house. The woman who answered telephoned the police.

  The coroner, on arrival, agreed with Regan the wound must have been made by some kind of animal, probably a dog.

  The following morning Regan brought fellow detective Mike Skolski up to date.

  Skolski concluded, “He must have opened the door and the dog jumped into the car, attacked him, then ran off.”

  “He’d of had to be crazy or dead drunk to do something like that,” Regan said.

  “Not if he knew the dog, and wasn’t frightened of it,” Skolski said. “Or maybe the dog was already in the car with him and as he was attacked he reached over and opened the door for it to jump out.”

  “He would have been in no shape to reach across the passenger seat, open that door, then sit up in the position we found him in. Besides, when Maryann informed Mrs. Green of her husband’s death last night, she was told they have no dog, and that Green didn’t care much for dogs or pets of any kind.”

  “Okay,” Skolski continued, “Maybe someone pulled open the door and sicced the dog on Green.”

  “Green would have to stop first. It’d have to be someone he knew. Find out if the lab has turned up anything in the way of dog hairs or saliva. It could have been a rabid dog. I’ll have another go at Mrs. Green.”

  On questioning the demure, green-eyed, quiet spoken Mrs. Green, Regan learned she had married Green two years ago; six years after her previous husband had died. She said that after dinner Green went without her to a basketball game, at which their daughter, Green’s step-daughter, Monica, was a cheerleader. She said her husband and her usually went to the games together, but because she had a touch of flu she hadn’t gone this time. Regan also questioned Monica, who told him she had seen her stepfather talking to Mr. Wybol, the school principal, in the highschool parking lot after the game as she headed for her car to do a little shopping before going home.

  On his way to the highschool to question Wybol, Regan noted that Green had been attacked within two blocks of the high school. Wybol told Regan the reason he had spoken to Green in the parking lot for less than ten minutes was his dissatisfaction with the poor rate of return on some of his investments and wanted Green to look into making some changes. They agreed to meet the next day to give Green time to put together a new portfolio. When Wybol drove away he saw Green walking to his own car. There were a few other cars still in the parking lot.

  When Reagan came back to headquarters, Skolski told him the lab hadn’t found dog hairs or saliva at the scene. He also said that on questioning the households in the surrounding neighborhood he did not find, as he put it, any ‘killer dogs;’ nor anyone having seen someone walking a dog right after the basketball game had ended. He added that everyone he had spoken to thought the world of Green; that he was a great guy, and worshiped his wife. Regan related to Skolski what he had learned from Wybol, and they agreed on the need to look into Green’s other clients to find out if any could have been motivated to murder Green.

  “His office is in his house,” Regan said. “Let’s go and look through his records and files. See what we might turn up.”

  “Let me do it,” Skolski said, “you haven’t slept all night. Go home and take an hour nap and then come to Green’s house. Chances are, I may still be there.”

  “No. Tempting, but I wouldn’t be able to sleep. I’d keep seeing Green with his bloody windpipe jutting out of his throat.”

  Mrs. Green met them at the door, and although terribly distressed, offered to help them in any way she could, saying she had occasionally performed secretarial duties for her husband. She showed them his appointment book and account folders, and gave them the computer password needed to access his computer based files. They thanked her, but didn’t press her further in that she was obviously distraught.

  On taking a quick look at his computer files, they found them as expected, to contain client accounts and profiles, and decided to take the computer back to headquarters where they could go over the data in detail. They also decided to take Green’s appointment book. In a drawer of Green’s desk Skolski found three usb flash drives. On plugging them into the computer the flash drives contained a journal Green had been keeping, with daily entries dating back eight years.

  “This may be just what we’re looking for, “Regan said, “It’ll be like he was keeping a diary.”

  “Yeh,” Skolski said, “but if he was logging in an average of a page a day for the past eight years. . . . Let’s see, . . .” as he began calculating on a blank sheet of paper. “A page a day for eight years comes to two thousand nine hundred twenty pages. That’s an awful lot to wade through.”

  “We’ll split the three drives up between you, Maryann, and me. The journal should get us right into Green’s head.”

  Regan prepared a list of what he was taking back to headquarters. On asking Mrs. Green to sign it, she became upset on seeing the usb flash drives on the list, saying they contained her husband’s journal and were private and personal, and she preferred they did not take them. Regan said he was sorry, but it was a murder investigation and nothing was personal, but promised her whatever they found would be kept confidential; unless, of course it led them to her husband’s murderer.

  Back at headquarters, Skorski and Regan spent the rest of the day looking through Green’s client accounts on the lookout for a client who might be unhappy about the way their investments were being managed. But they could not find any evidence of Green manipulating anyone’s investments to his own advantage or client accounts being cancelled after doing poorly. They also checked out Green’s bank account and his own investments, but found nothing out of the ordinary that could infer he was blackmailing someone.

  When they were about to call it a day, with Regan practically asleep on his feet, he told Maryann and Skolski they would spend the next morning scanning Green’s journal. Maryann would do the earliest flash drive, Skolski the next, and he would do the most recent. He said they should bookmark where entries might shed some light on why Green was murdered, or even lead them to his killer. They would convene in the afternoon and go over their findings.

  The following afternoon they assembled in Regan’s office. Wanting to proceed in chronological order, Regan asked Maryann to start first.

  Maryann began: “Green’s first entry was eight years ago when he became an investment counselor. He had no family, or at least never mentions any, or anything about his earlier life, except references to having been a used car salesman. His first year’s entries are about setting up his investment business, his clients, and successes and failures, with nothing catastrophic in regards to the latter. His clients seemed, at least based on what he says, satisfied with his management of their portfolios. Just about a year later he mentions becoming an investment councillor to the Stephans.”

  “Stephans?” Skorski interrupted.

  “Yes, when I saw the names Walter, Anna, and Morgana Stephan I realized Walter Stephan must have been Anna Green’s first husband.”

  Regan said, “Dammit. I should have gotten her first husband’s name from her and ran a check on whether he was dead, and not.”


  Maryann said, “A pretty face, I presume?”

  Regan shuffled in his seat, not saying anything.

  Skolski said, “And how he died. That’d be worth knowing.”

  Regan said, “We’ll get a full report. Go on please Maryann.”

  “Maybe we won’t need one. But a double check wouldn’t hurt,” Maryann said. “Green has a graphic entry of Walter Stephan’s death. I’ll get to it in a bit. It’s the last entry in my part of the journal. It occurred two years after the Greens came to the U.S.”

  “Graphic?” Skolski said.

  “Yes. Judge for yourself when I get to it,” she said, and went on. “Green initially tells of meeting Walter Stephan when Stephan came to him wanting to establish an investment account. Stephan, age thirty-three at the time, had recently immigrated to the U.S. from England with his wife Anna, twenty-seven, and daughter Morgana, ten. On leaving England his father had given him a sizable amount of money. He used some of it to purchase a house. The remainder, he wanted to invest.”

  “How much was that?” Skolski cut in.

  “Would you believe half a mil?” she said.

  “Yeow,” Skolski said, as Regan told Maryann to hold up while he keyed into Green’s computer to look up the account. After a few minutes he found it and said, “Yes, The account was originally under the