The Scientology Murders Page 9

  “Good enough for me,” Max said. “Let’s go upstairs and start breaking some balls.”

  * * *

  Max had already commandeered an empty office and had begun calling in members of the church discipline staff when the door to Ken Oppenheimer’s private office opened and he and Regis Walsh strode into the outer office.

  “May I ask what is going on?” Walsh demanded. His eyes settled on Harry.

  “We’re questioning your staff to see if they know the present location of Tony Rolf,” Harry said. “Unless I’m mistaken, you gave us the okay to do that.”

  “No, you’re not mistaken. But circumstances have changed.”

  “How so?”

  “Since we last spoke I’ve had occasion to speak with our attorney. It’s her view that no questioning of staff should take place unless she, too, is present.” Walsh gazed at the staff now assembled for questioning. “I’m advising each of you to ask that an attorney be present when you’re questioned by the police. The church will provide one at no cost to you.”

  Harry stared at the floor. He had no doubt that every member of Walsh’s staff would do exactly what he had suggested. He looked up at Walsh. “Did your attorney say when she’d be available to join us?”

  Walsh offered up a small smile. “At ten o’clock tomorrow morning. She told me to inform you that she would seek a restraining order if you tried to move ahead before then.”

  Harry glanced at Max who was standing near the door of the small office they had confiscated. Max gave an abrupt nod and turned into the doorway. “Have every member of your staff at police headquarters at ten a.m., and that includes you and Mr. Oppenheimer as well,” he said.

  “I thought you would do the questioning here,” Walsh said.

  “That’s when we were all being nice. You just changed the rules and nice went out the window.” Max gave Walsh a good imitation of his small smile, then continued on out the door with Harry on his heels.

  “You’re a very mean man,” Harry said, as they headed for the elevator.

  “So I’ve been told. But somebody likes me.” Max handed Harry a folded piece of paper. “One of the secretaries slipped me this.”

  Harry unfolded the paper. It read: I overheard two executives talking. They said Tony Rolf was hiding in Safety Harbor.

  “Did you ask her which executives?”

  “She won’t say,” Max answered. “I don’t want to push her . . . yet. I want her to think the policeman is her friend. Later, if she still won’t say . . . then we’ll see.”

  * * *

  They spent the afternoon canvassing Safety Harbor’s restaurants and bars, hitting the day staff first, then waiting for the night staff to come in at five and starting all over again. They hit pay dirt at the third restaurant, a small, pricey French place just off the main drag.

  The night bartender was a well-built kid with a deep tan, somebody who evidently never missed a day at the gym or the beach. He studied the picture for over a minute, then hemmed and hawed at first, before finally saying he was sure it was a guy who had been at the bar the night before.

  “It’s a lousy drawing, that’s all. The guy’s face was thinner, his nose sharper, and his hair darker—but I’m pretty sure it’s him.” He hesitated. “Yeah, it’s definitely him. No doubt about it.”

  “Was he alone?” Max asked.

  “At first, yeah, but he put a move on one of our regulars, a lady who lives here in town. Her name is Janice Rand.”

  “You have an address for her?” Harry asked.

  “No, but her husband’s name is Pete. He’s a big-shot engineer who works on international stuff. I’m sure you guys can find him.”

  * * *

  The bartender was right, and within half an hour Harry and Max were standing outside a stately white house overlooking upper Tampa Bay. Harry pressed the ornate brass doorbell and the door swung back so quickly it made him wonder if the woman who opened it had been standing in the foyer waiting for the bell to ring. She began talking before Harry or Max could even show her a badge.

  “I’m Janice Rand. Are you the two police officers who were asking questions about me at the restaurant?”

  “We are,” Harry said. “But you’re not the subject of our investigation. We’re interested in the man you had a drink with.”

  “Does my husband have to know I was having a drink with him? He gets home from South America next week.”

  “Does he know the man?” Harry asked.

  “No, definitely not.”

  “Then he won’t hear it from us.” Harry said. “We can’t guarantee the bartender won’t tell him. He called you to tell you we were coming?”

  “He’s an old friend. He won’t say anything.”

  “Then you have nothing to worry about.”

  “Good.” She gave an exaggerated shiver. “The man you’re asking about”—she shivered again—“he was strange. Not at first. But as time went by he just got weirder and weirder.”

  “How so?” Max asked.

  “First off, his hair was dyed.”

  “Are you certain?”

  Janice raised a hand and touched her own blond tresses. “I pay a fortune to have this done professionally. Believe me, I know the difference. This guy’s hair was strictly a bottle job and not a good one at that.”

  “Did he ever give you a name?” Max asked.

  “He said his name was Tony Robertson. But I was sure it was as phony as his hair. He kind of stumbled over the last name like it was unfamiliar to him.”

  “If he’s the man we think he is, he’s very dangerous,” Harry said. “He’s already killed two people. Does he know where you live?”

  “I never gave him my address. He kept suggesting we come here and when I turned him down he got very upset. He called me a tease.”

  “Did he offer to take you to the place where he was staying?” Max asked.

  “He said he couldn’t, that it wasn’t his place; that he was just visiting.” Janice clasped her hands and began twisting them together. “I mean, I wasn’t planning on going with him anyway. It was his way of pushing to come here. But after that first drink I knew I was dealing with a creep.”

  “Did he say where his place was?” Harry asked.

  “No, but he didn’t have a car, so I assume he walked to the restaurant.”

  Damn, Harry thought. So close but still no cigar.

  They thanked her and Max gave her a card with a number to call if she saw him again.

  Janice reached out and touched Harry’s arm. “And, like you said, my husband doesn’t have to find out about this.”

  “We have no need to talk to him.”

  Janice let out a sigh of relief.

  “Lady wouldn’t have to worry if she just stopped stepping out when her husband’s out of town,” Max growled as they climbed back into their car.

  “Maybe he should take her with him,” Harry said.

  “And who are all those lovely señoritas going to play with if he does that?”

  * * *

  Less than a mile away Tony Rolf stood before the floor-to-ceiling window that dominated the living room of his hideaway. He had slept poorly, all his senses awaiting a knock on the door that would bring his world crashing down. He had defied Oppenheimer and refused to keep himself hidden away. The woman had been a mistake. Women were always a mistake for him. He was a freak of nature, an albino, and all the things he had done to hide it—the hair dye, the tanning solution, the tinted contact lenses—were for naught. It hadn’t fooled the women he had encountered. Somehow they had sensed the falseness of it all, the falseness of him, and they had been repulsed rather than attracted.

  His own father had told him he repulsed people. He wasn’t sure how old he was when his father first said that, but he knew it was before he had started school. He knew because he remembered his mother taking him to school on his first day and recalling his father’s words and how he had expected the other students and his teacher to hate
him. And, of course, they had, just as his father had said they would. His father had never said that he, too, was repulsed by him, or hated him, but he didn’t have to. Some things, he had learned, were simply true whether spoken or not. He remembered how his father had told him that one day he would end up in the hands of the police. It was his birthday and he had just turned nine when his father spoke those words. If his father could see him now, hidden away in this small, isolated house, cowering whenever a car drove by—ah yes, seeing all that, his father’s face would be creased with a broad smile. But, of course, that was impossible. His father’s face no longer existed; nor his smile, nor anything else about him. All that remained of the man was a rotting skeleton buried in a Los Angeles cemetery. He had survived his son’s first attempt to kill him. As a nine-year-old he had set a fire outside his father’s bedroom door, on the night of that birthday twenty years ago to the day.

  His mother had escaped the fire. She had slept in a separate bedroom at the end of a long hallway. When she had awakened the entire opposite end of the hall was engulfed in flames and she had run to her son’s empty bedroom, then outdoors where she found him standing in the backyard watching the house burn. His father had stumbled out a few minutes later.

  Police and fire investigators quickly determined that the fire had been set by someone and just as quickly fixed their sights on his mother, after learning that she slept apart from her husband. But his mother was having none of it. She told them to talk to her son, and when they did, one investigator smelled the faint odor of charcoal lighter fluid on his pajamas. But he had not been a fool, even at the tender age of nine. He had feigned shock and stood mute before the investigators. It had caused a split among them, with two believing he had set the fire, and three clinging to the belief that his mother had, then had splashed her son with lighter fluid to throw suspicion on him; they believed the shock of it had left the boy mute.

  How clever you were, even then, he thought now. And you will need all that cleverness to rid yourself of the one person who can identify you. But you’ll take care of that problem soon . . . very, very soon.

  * * *

  Harry and Max spent the rest of the afternoon searching the neighborhood of Safety Harbor. They started at the obvious central point, the restaurant where Tony Rolf had last been seen, then began their canvass east and west of that central point, then north and south, going a half-mile in all directions. It was exhausting and it accomplished nothing.

  They were both tired and frustrated when they packed it in at seven that evening. Max headed home to his wife and a late dinner and Harry made a stop at the hospital to see his father.

  * * *

  Jocko Doyle was sitting up in his bed watching the Tampa Bay Rays in a close game with the Yankees.

  “How are the Rays doing?” Harry asked as he entered the hospital room.

  Jocko held his nose with two fingers. “The owner just won’t cough up the bucks he needs to spend to compete. I mean Hal Steinbrenner’s a cheapskate compared to his father, but Stuart Steinberg just won’t spend period.”

  “He says the Trop is usually half empty; that he can’t spend what he doesn’t bring in,” Harry said.

  “And why is that?” Jocko challenged. “If your mama and I wanted to go to a game, it’ll be a hundred bucks for two decent seats; then I got to pay thirty bucks to park my car and another thirty for a couple of sausage sandwiches and a beer and soft drink. That’s a hundred and sixty bucks. What working stiff can afford that more than once a month? And Steinberg bitches that the seats are empty. I say make going to a game affordable and they won’t be.”

  “So I guess you’re feeling better,” Harry said.

  “Why, because I’m bitching about stuff?” Jocko smiled, acknowledging the truth of it. “Yeah, they say I’ll be headed home this week. And how’s the hunt for that albino son of a bitch going?”

  “We had him pinned down in Safety Harbor, then he vanished. He’s getting help. We’re pretty sure it’s coming from one or more people in Scientology, but proving it is something else.”

  “I’m the only one who can identify this clown as the shooter, right?”

  “That’s right. And the answer to your next question is no, you are not going to be used as bait.”

  “Why the hell not?” Jocko demanded. “We can set a trap for him and nail his sorry ass.”

  “No.” Harry tried to stare his father down but got nowhere. “Let us do our job. We’ll get him.”

  “And what if he shows up here?”

  “We have the guard outside your door and extra security at all entrances. Nobody’s going to get in here.”

  “I wish that albino bastard would make it in here. I might have a little surprise for him.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like maybe he’d run into one pissed-off ex-cop who’s not as helpless as he expects him to be.”

  “You know, you should have been born Latino.” Harry shook his head.

  “Oh yeah, and why is that?”

  “Because you’ve got enough machismo for two Irishmen.”

  * * *

  Meg Adams was seated in a lawn chair set up next to her boat. Harry noticed that she was reading on her Kindle when he made his way down the dock at nine that night.

  “Hi sailor,” he said, “what are you reading?”

  Meg looked up and smiled. “A detective novel. The hero is tall and handsome and he beats up bad guys. Is that what you do, Harry?”

  “That’s about right. You want to see my rubber hose?”

  Meg raised her eyebrows and put on a look of feigned innocence. “I think I already have,” she said.

  “Ouch. I walked right into that one.”

  “Yes, you did. And did you have a good day, Detective Deputy Sheriff Doyle?”

  “Let me put it this way: it was one of those days . . . the kind that makes me wonder why I ever became a cop.”

  “Anything Mama can do to make it all better?”

  “I am going to jump into the shower. There is a bottle of Jack Daniel’s in the galley. You could pour me a stiff one over ice and hand it to me.”

  “Aye, aye, captain.”

  * * *

  Harry stood under the shower letting the water beat down on his neck and shoulders, trying to let the day’s tensions drain away. The shower door opened and a hand holding a glass of amber liquid appeared before his eyes, followed by a naked red-haired woman with an impish grin on her face.

  “Anything else, captain?”

  Harry took a long sip of his drink, then another. “I can think of one or two things,” he said as he set the empty glass on the soap tray and slipped his arms around Meg’s waist.

  “Only one or two?” she said, rising up on her toes and biting his lower lip.

  * * *

  Tony Rolf slipped into a rear door of the hospital laundry. Inside the noise was deafening as a dozen massive washing machines and dryers churned away. He had done this before when fallen-away Scientologists were hospitalized but still needed tending.

  He had always enjoyed the frightened looks on their faces when he entered their rooms wearing hospital scrubs and let them know who he was. They were all SPs, of course, those who had been deemed suppressive persons who were trying to disrupt the order within the church, trying to raise doubts among weaker members, turning each of them into a potential trouble source, or PTS.

  He looked around the laundry. Back in the day there was always a church member who worked in the hospital who would be there waiting to help. But those visits had been authorized by the people he worked for; not like now. Now he was going after the old cop alone, solely to protect himself. Sure, Oppenheimer had hinted at it, but there had never been a direct order to go after him, or any offer of help.

  Rolf remained in the shadows. He was dressed in a black T-shirt and black jeans and it made him nearly invisible when he remained out of brightly lit areas. He quickly observed that recently laundered items were placed in roll
ing carts ready for delivery to their appropriate locations and he could see where the fresh scrubs were stacked. He moved boldly to the cart that held them. He had learned long ago that when dealing with low-level employees, the trick was to act assertively. They were disinclined to challenge anyone who they assumed held a higher rank. And in the case of laundry workers, that was just about everyone.

  He grabbed a full set of scrubs—pants, shirt, shoe coverings, mask, and head cover. Then he made his way out of the laundry and entered the rear of the main hospital building. It felt like old times as Rolf headed to the physicians’ locker room and slipped inside. The room was empty, and he quickly checked for unlocked lockers. On the fourth try he found one. The doctor had even left his name tag and stethoscope hanging inside. He snatched them up and quickly changed into the fresh green scrubs he had taken. He went to a telephone in the locker room and dialed the operator. Using the doctor’s name whose name tag he now wore, he asked for the room number of John Doyle, stating he had been asked to evaluate his condition. With the information in hand he checked his watch—nine thirty. He would wait until ten when the rooms would be dark and the halls largely deserted.

  At 10:05 Tony Rolf approached the police officer seated outside Jocko Doyle’s room. He was dressed in the green scrubs, including face mask and head covering, and he put a note of urgency in his voice.

  “Officer, there’s a man in the staircase who has a knife. He looks like he plans to use it.”

  “Which staircase?” the cop asked.

  Rolf indicated with his head that it was behind him. “Come, I’ll show you.”