It was almost eleven and I wanted to grab an early lunch but I decided to stop at the library first.
While I have been known to read on occasion, these days I mostly stick with Architectural Digest and New Orleans Living. This trip wasn’t to catch up on the latest trends in home remodeling or historic homes in New Orleans, however. Today I was going to do some hi-tech investigative work.
During my career of private investigating, and at times while I was still with the police department, I’ve discovered that the internet was a great investigative tool. I had accounts on MySpace and Facebook that allowed me to search for people by name on those two sites and more than once I had been able to locate someone by simply logging onto the nearest computer and checking to see if they showed up in a Google search. Often, if the person I was looking for had any prior arrests, I could find a short news blurb about them that would help me find out where in the world they were. Oddly enough, reporters were usually better than police officers at compiling all of the facts about a person and putting them in one place. And because many reporters simply used police reports as a way to add some substance to stories, I could often save myself a call to Anna by just reading online news articles or contacting the reporters directly through their email.
I stopped in at the main branch on Loyola, waved a hello to the librarians at the front desk and made my way to the computer room and found an unused terminal. The librarians knew me and what I was looking for so they didn’t bother to offer me help or point me in the right direction. I had been here so many times over the years that I knew where to find what I needed almost as well as they did.
I had decided to do a search of the names that Anna came up with and see what I could find out about them before I resigned myself to knocking on doors. I started off with Hasslin but, like Anna, was unable to come up with anything. I struck out with D’Ercole also but when I got to Fasol I hit pay dirt, so to speak. Turns out, Richard Fasol was dead.
It didn’t take me long to find a headline from the August 19th, 2009 edition of the Houston Chronicle which read New Orleans Executive Kills Man, Then Self. I pulled out Fasol’s picture and turned it over. I still had no idea what DOT stood for but I now knew I wouldn’t be able to ask him.
According to the article, Richard Fasol had traveled to Houston on August 18th and had, for no apparent reason, murdered Kenneth Stevens. Stevens, as it turns out, was a co-owner of The Siebenkäs Group the exact same business that D’Ercole had been caught outside of. Here was that coincidence thing again. I was wondering why Hasslin hadn’t come up in a search if he was also an owner of Siebenkäs but I found out why as I read through the story.
Instead of actually visiting New Orleans to speak with the people at Siebenkäs, the reporter, James Galloway, just called the company for some quotes to add filler to his article. He had spoken to “a source inside the company,” probably the PR department, and had been given the basic spiel of “The Siebenkäs Group has, unfortunately, lost one of its shining stars in Mr. Stevens. We at the company know that there is no way to replace him but we vow to keep his memory strong….blah, blah, blah.” There was absolutely no mention of Hasslin, or any other owners. From what was in the article there was no way to tell if the company even had another owner.
I briefly considered emailing Galloway to see if he could shed any more light on the murder-suicide but figured why bother. There were no follow up articles listed during the search and I knew from experience that looking at any of the other listed results would just get me copies of Galloway’s story that had gone out over the AP wire.
I printed a copy of the article and then did a quick search on Masterson. After having no luck with any of the other names I wasn’t hopeful about finding much about him and I was expecting to be disappointed.
I got a couple of results from society pages but nothing of substance. Reading the short page descriptions that came up on the search engine I found that Masterson was apparently a popular guy and had been invited to several fundraisers over the years. On a whim, I clicked on a page where Masterson’s name appeared as a guest at a Mardi Gras party last year and I damn near fell out of my chair when the page loaded.
What came up on the screen was a photograph. It was the standard Mardi Gras party shot: Streamers hanging from the ceiling, balloons on the floor, drunken party goers in the background engaged in conversation. That wasn’t what shocked me. What, or more precisely who, did was the man in the foreground of the picture. It was the mystery man from Masterson’s house, Mr. Trench, the asshole who had hit me in the stomach. He was standing with a Hurricane cocktail in one hand and the waist of a pretty brunette in the other, ridiculous hats on both of their heads and Mardi Gras beads around their necks.
I quickly moved my eyes to the caption and felt like I was losing my mind. The caption unbelievably read: Clayton Masterson and his date, enjoying the revelry of the Rex krewe Mardi Gras ball.
“What the hell?,” was all I could get out through the confusion in my mind. I sat and stared at the picture for a full minute before I clicked the “back” button on the browser window. I just wanted to make sure that I had looked at the website that I thought I had. I clicked on the link again and was taken back to the same site and found myself staring at the same picture with the same caption.
I’m sure that if a librarian had been in the room with me she would have shushed me when she heard the sound my jaw made when it hit the floor. If the man in the photo was Clayton Masterson and Mr. Trench was Clayton Masterson then why in the hell was I looking for Clayton Masterson? He obviously wasn’t missing and by the way he ambushed me it seemed as if he could take care of himself. And more importantly, if he had a contingency plan in place with his sister why had he not called her in order to stop that plan from activating. Thinking of Sheila gave me an idea and I quickly took out my cell phone.
I had programmed her number into my phone after I had spoken to her for just this type of situation and I used it now. She picked up after two rings and I could hear the sounds of domesticity going on in the background.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Sheila? This is Eddie Fisk, down in New Orleans…”
“Oh, hi. Did you find Clay?” A possible reason for my call must have occurred to her and her voice changed. “Is something wrong?”
“No, nothing’s wrong. Something just came up and I was wondering if you had sent those pictures of Clayton yet?”
“I’m actually just getting home from doing that. I overnighted them so you should have them by tomorrow, hopefully.”
That wasn’t soon enough for my peace of mind. I wanted those pictures now.
“You said you just got home? By any chance do you have any pictures of Clayton there, maybe a family portrait?”
“Actually I do…”
“Does your cell phone have a camera? Can you take a close up of Clayton and text me the image?”
“I wouldn’t know how but my daughter could probably do it. What’s this about?”
“I really don’t have time to explain right now. Could you tell your daughter I need close-up pictures of her uncle as clear as she can make them. Tell her to send me a few just to be sure. Grab a pen and I’ll give you my cell number.”
I gave Sheila my number and hung up. I was hoping that she would sense I needed the pictures quickly but I didn’t want to get involved in a discussion with her about what was wrong. At least not until I figured it out myself.
There were people in the world who would hire a private investigator and then play a complex game of hide-and-seek, just to see if they could win. I had dealt with a few myself and always tried to err on the side of caution but if they didn’t seem dangerous I had no qualms about taking their money. Sheila’s concern for her brother seemed genuine but having never met her there was no way for me to be sure. In fact, I couldn’t even know for sure that her name was Sheila Dobbs. For all I knew she could be right here in the city making calls on a cell phone with a Chagrin Falls area code. I did know a private investigator that worked in the greater Cleveland area; an ex-Cleveland cop whom I had met at an investigators conference. If I gave him a call I’m sure he would check out Sheila Dobbs for me but after thinking about it I decided against involving someone else. We PI’s tended to work alone and I really wasn’t in the mood to owe someone – especially someone who was barely an acquaintance – a favor.
My thoughts were interrupted as my phone chirped, alerting me to a new message. It wasn’t the pictures from Sheila’s daughter though. It was a new email message. I opened it and was again struck speechless. The email was from Masterson, or someone pretending to be him:
Edward,
Dig deeper, Siebenkäs is there.
Clayton
This was getting weirder every minute. I was trying to decide whether or not to believe the message was real when my phone chirped again. This time it was the pictures from Sheila’s daughter. I opened them and was greeted by a text telling me that if I needed more or better pictures I could ask for them. A cursory glance at what I had received told me that these pictures would work and I quickly texted back that the pictures were perfect. To keep Sheila from calling me I also added that I would give her a call tonight after I figured some things out.
I opened the pictures again and enlarged them on the phone’s screen. I was greeted by what I had told myself to expect, but that didn’t make it any less crazy. The pictures all showed the same man as the focus: dark-haired, medium build, laugh lines around his eyes, sometimes with a smile and sometimes without and wearing different shirts as the occasion warranted. Clayton Masterson, aka Mr Trench.
I was stumped and on the verge of calling Sheila and telling her I could no longer work on her brother’s case. Like I said, I don’t mind chasing people down while they fulfill their fantasies but a line had been crossed when I was assaulted. If these two were playing a game they could find a rube somewhere else.
I had the phone out and was searching for her number when what she had told me about myself came back to me. More precisely, it was what she said her brother had said: That I cared and would find out what happened.
I put my chin in my hand and stared blankly at the picture of Masterson on the computer screen. This was tough. On one hand, the potential of a dangerous, potentially lethal, game had me pissed. On the other I honestly didn’t want to just give up. I never had and I was hoping that I never would.
Coming to a decision, I printed out the Mardi Gras picture of Masterson and gathered up all of my stuff. I was going to have to start over from scratch. I didn’t know what Masterson and Sheila were playing at but I was going to find out. And if Masterson was playing around, wasting my time and beating me up, I was going to kick his ass when I found him.
I made my way toward the exit and the door had whooshed open when I heard one of the librarians calling my name. I turned as she walked up to me.
“Did I do something wrong?”
“Not at all.” She held up a plain white envelope. “A gentleman left this at the front desk and told us to give it to you. He said he knew you were here but he didn’t want to bother you.”
“Um, okay. Did he leave his name?”
“No, he didn’t and I didn’t ask for one. Sorry.”
“No problem. Do you remember what he looked like?”
“Oh, sure. He was an older white guy.” She took a step backward and sized me up and I knew what was coming next. “About your height, maybe a little taller, short black hair, wearing a trench coat. He said you would know who it was from.”
My mind was reeling and I tried to hide my emotions. “Of course. He’s an old college friend. Big James Bond fan. He gets it into his head to be mysterious and well, you know,” I said, raising my hands and shrugging. “Knowing him this is probably just an invitation to dinner.”
I thanked her and turned back toward the door. I tried to be nonchalant about the envelope but once outside I practically ran around the corner and ripped it open. Of course there was no dinner invitation. The envelope held a single photograph. The man in this one had white hair but didn’t look quite old enough to have it. He was dressed in a Hawaiian shirt and khaki pants and was standing last in a line of people that were getting onto a streetcar. He was looking down into his open hand, possibly counting out change. I flipped the picture over and was greeted by a hand written message:
Alexander D’Ercole, DOT 06-11-09
He’s Next
I raised my head and looked around but didn’t see Masterson anywhere. I was even more confused now. Here were the same three letters, “DOT,” followed by the same sequence of numbers, presumably a date, that was on the back of Fasol’s picture. For some reason I felt that the numbers on each picture were the most important part of the equation. If I could figure out what DOT stood for, and why it occurred when it did, I could take the next step.
I rushed back inside the library, ignoring the curious glances from the librarians and sat back down at the terminal I had used. Bringing up the internet search engine again I typed in DOT and pressed enter.
In less than I second I was greeted with two million results, give or take a few hundred thousand. Scrolling down and through the first few pages, I saw that most dealt with entries from different Departments Of Transportation. Department Of Transportation combined with the numbers seemed to make even less sense than this case did so I kept looking, and eventually found a result from freedictionary.com for acronyms. I clicked on it and my eye was almost immediately drawn to an entry sandwiched between Delivered On Time and Designated Order Turnaround: Date Of Termination.
I again left the library and got on a bus that was headed to the French Quarter. My mind was working overtime. It was a leap but if DOT really stood for Date Of Termination then both Fasol and D’Ercole had died or been killed on the same day. But the article from the Chronicle said that Fasol had killed himself in Texas on August 18th, 2009. In addition, if it was indeed Masterson who dropped the picture off at the circulation desk, he was telling me that D’Ercole was next even though he too was dead.
“If D’Ercole’s dead then next what?” I mumbled to myself. “Next victim, next killer?”
The elderly woman sitting beside me on the bus clutched her purse a little tighter and I reminded myself to stop thinking out loud.
I was beginning to think I should email Galloway at the Chronicle, just to make sure he was writing about the same Richard Fasol, when the bus pulled up to my stop. I squeezed past the nervous lady, giving her my best “trust me I’m a professional” smile and stepped off.
At the other end of the block I could see a half dozen NOPD zone cars parked in the middle of the street and I got a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. Sometimes you just know things, you know?
When I got a couple doors away from my house I saw Anna and her partner, Mike Richards, step out of Ms Alston’s front door and I headed that way. I waited until Anna finished speaking with Richards and after he went inside I called her name and she walked over.
“Hi, I know you live across the street but did you know the lady who lived here?”
I didn’t even bother asking how she knew where I lived, after all she was a detective. And I had noticed how she referred to Ms. Alston in the past tense; there was no need to ask why.
“Her name is Rachel Alston. She was my dinner date for tonight.”
“Jesus, Hi, I’m sorry. Can you…”
Just then Richards came outside and called for Anna. He looked toward the street, saw us together and went back in the house.
“Can you stick around? I mean, don’t leave home or anything.”
“I’ve got no place to go, Anna. I’ll be at home.”
As quickly as that this case had gone from bizarre to personal. There was no way that Ms Alston just happened to see Masterson snooping around and had then become the victim of a random murder. I didn’t know if Masterson personally did this or not but I vowed then and there to find out.
