The Forgotten Holocaust

Chapter Fourteen

Before nine a.m., and already the sun was burning the concrete outside. Even in the relative coolness of the lock-up garage, the air was stifling.

Erin carefully shut the trunk of the old car, locked it and pulled the tarpaulin back down over the smooth, waxed bodywork. Always have a backup, her daddy’s voice echoed once more in her head.

She stepped away from the covered car, moving quietly in the shadows as if her every move was being watched and listened to by unseen eyes and ears. After two days of hiding, she was jumpy as hell. But now, at least, she’d made a decision. It was the right thing to do. The only thing.

A strip of sunlight shone from the gap beneath the garage’s steel rolldown shutter door. Erin dropped to her knees and slid out under it, blinking in the strong light. She peered left and right with her hand shielding her eyes, to make sure nobody was following her. The weed-strewn, graffiti-walled yard between the rows of lock-ups was deserted.

So far, so good. Her spirits brightened at the thought that the killers might not even have the slightest idea that there was a witness to their actions on Friday night. If that was the case, then they were about to find out. The hard way.

She hurried away from the lock-ups and towards the street, where the taxicab was waiting for her with the meter running. ‘Where to now, missy?’ the driver wanted to know.

‘Downtown,’ she said. ‘Police Department Headquarters.’

‘It’s a done thing,’ the driver said, and took off as she shut herself in the back. Erin leaned against the seat and closed her eyes, thinking about what she was going to say, about the DVD and phone in her backpack. And about Angela’s husband.

At the downtown police building, she walked up to the main desk and cleared her throat to get the attention of the grizzled duty sergeant. He looked up at her, unsmiling. He was in a dark blue shirt with short sleeves and the shield that bore the cityscape logo with the legend ‘TULSA POLICE’.

‘My name is Erin Hayes,’ she said. ‘I want to speak to a detective. The most senior one you’ve got. And right away.’

Whether it was the look in her eye or the tone of her voice, something appeared to make the cops take her seriously. Within five minutes she was met in the reception lobby by a tired-eyed though pleasant-looking plainclothes officer about the same age as her, who introduced himself as Detective Topher Morrell and led her to a small office away from the hubbub. He waved her to a chair, where she sat clutching her backpack on her lap, and perched himself on the corner of a desk with one leg dangling casually, as if he didn’t expect this interruption to last more than a minute or two before he could return to the many more pressing matters littering his desk. ‘Now, uh, Miss—’

‘Hayes. Erin Hayes.’

‘Right. You told the duty officer this was serious.’

‘I doubt you’ll get anything more serious come in this week,’ she said.

‘Then talk to me.’

‘I’ll need to start from the beginning, okay?’ she said, and Morrell frowned as if stabbed by an internal pain. ‘I work for the Desert Rose Trust,’ she went on determinedly. ‘We’re a charitable organisation that provides resources to help the underprivileged young Catholics of Oklahoma to get an education.’

‘Yeah, I know what the Desert Rose Trust is,’ Morrell said, bored already, and flicked a downward glance at his watch.

‘Then you’ll know who its director is,’ Erin said.

‘Uh-huh. Sure. Everyone in Tulsa knows that.’

‘I’m her personal assistant. I answer directly to her. It’s a rewarding job, but I have a lot of responsibility and it gets stressful sometimes.’

Get in line, Morrell’s expression was saying.

‘My boss and her husband own a cabin out on the east shore of Oologah Lake,’ Erin went on. ‘Three days ago …’

He listened as she went on with her story. It wasn’t long before his look of boredom vanished completely. He wasn’t looking at his watch any more. The leg stopped swinging. He shifted into a more alert posture, watching her intently and the crease in his brow deepening. He looked as if he was having trouble keeping his jaw from gaping open. By the time she’d told the whole story, he was off the desk and pacing the room in agitation. ‘You’re sure?’ he kept asking her.

‘If you don’t believe me, watch the video,’ she said, placing a hand on the backpack. ‘It’s all here. Everything I just told you.’

Morrell stared at her for several intense seconds, then held up a hand. ‘Wait here and don’t move. I’ll be right back.’ He strode hurriedly out of the room, shutting the door hard behind him.

Erin waited in the empty room for a couple of minutes before the door burst open again. She looked up to see a large, square-shouldered man enter the room, with Morrell in his wake. He was several inches taller than the detective, and twenty years older, with thinning silver hair and a severe, granite face. His cheeks were flushed red with broken veins and his nose looked as if it had been broken at least twice in his life. He wore no jacket. A large black revolver hung heavily from the tan leather shoulder holster strapped over his shirt. Old-time cop, old-time six-gun. His sleeves were rolled up to expose the thick, gnarled forearms of a lumberjack. He planted himself in front of Erin and scrutinised her coldly.

‘I’m Chief O’Rourke,’ he said in a gravelly voice. ‘I want you to repeat to me what you just told Detective Morrell here.’

Feeling small in her chair, Erin peered up at his intimidating bulk. ‘You want me to start over from the beginning?’

‘Just from where your employer said you could use the cabin on Oologah Lake. Why was that?’

‘Why did she let me use it?’ Erin shrugged. ‘Because she’s a nice person and we get along, I guess.’

‘Heart-warming. Keep going.’

‘I’d been complaining about feeling tired, and she said I could use it to get away for a weekend, unwind. She said the place would be empty, her husband was away in Boston on business, their son Sean was canoeing in Canada with friends and their daughter Amy was in Paris studying at this fancy cookery school. When I said my car was having problems, she offered for the family driver, Joe, to take me there in the Cadillac. So off I went, all happy with myself, looking forward to doing some running. I already told all this to Detective Morrell.’

‘Running?’ O’Rourke asked, as if this gave him grounds for deep suspicion.

‘Came fourth in the Tulsa city marathon last year, and I’m meaning to better that this November, to help raise funds for the Desert Rose Trust. But that’s not what you want to hear, is it?’

‘No, I want to hear what happened next, every detail.’

‘What happened next was I hung around there all evening, didn’t do a lot, went to bed. I woke up hearing voices. I snuck out of bed, thinking it was intruders. I had my handgun with me and—’

‘You have a carry permit for that?’ Chief O’Rourke interrupted.

Erin frowned. ‘Is this about them or about me?’ she wanted to snap at him. She kept her voice level and asked instead, ‘You want to see it?’

‘Later. Go on.’

‘But it wasn’t intruders. They’d let themselves in the door with a key, and a few moments later I realised why. Angela’s husband wasn’t in Boston, he was there using the place to entertain a bunch of business associates. Or so I thought. One of them was a man with a beard. Caucasian, dark hair, forties.’

‘The victim,’ Morrell explained.

‘You didn’t get a name?’ O’Rourke asked Erin without glancing back at his colleague.

‘I never heard it mentioned. There wasn’t exactly a lot of conversation going on from the point I joined the party, you know? Then soon afterwards, an argument broke out. They grabbed hold of this bearded man and threw him on the floor and—’

‘Hold on,’ O’Rourke cut in. ‘They?’

‘The two goons. I don’t know what you’d call them. Heavies. Henchmen. They started beating the crap out of the guy with batons, like the ones that cops and security guards use. Then he ordered them to take him outside.’

‘He?’ O’Rourke cut in again.

Erin nodded. ‘Yes, he. Angela’s husband. He said, “Not here”, like he didn’t want blood on the rug or something. So these two thugs, they got hold of the bearded man and kind of dragged him out the door to the veranda. That’s where they shot him.’

‘How many shots were fired?’ O’Rourke asked.

‘I can’t say for sure. Three, four. They didn’t kill him at first. It was like they were playing with him. Torturing him, just for the fun of it. He was watching the whole time. Then he took out a gun. It was a big old revolver, like that one.’ Erin pointed at the weapon in O’Rourke’s shoulder holster. ‘Maybe a forty-four. Except it was bright, not blued. Stainless steel or nickel, I can’t say for sure.’

‘Know your hardware, Miss Hayes,’ O’Rourke said, looking at her penetratingly, and so intently that his pale grey eyes never seemed to blink.

‘My daddy taught me to shoot,’ she replied.

‘You like your weaponry, huh?’

Erin looked at him. What was O’Rourke doing, trying to paint her up as a gun nut? ‘I’m a woman in the modern world,’ she said. ‘One who’d rather not wind up a victim.’

‘All right, all right,’ O’Rourke said, waving his hand impatiently. ‘Save it. What happened next?’

‘Next? He aimed it at the guy and fired.’

O’Rourke gravely pursed his lips. ‘You’re saying he personally shot the guy. Pulled the trigger himself. Deliberately.’

‘It couldn’t have been more deliberate,’ Erin said. ‘He shot the guy right in the back of the head from just a couple of feet away. Then he ordered the other two guys to take the body away, cut it up and get rid of it.’

‘Cut it up? He said that?’

She thought for a moment. ‘You know what, he might have said “chop his ass up”. If you want an exact quote.’

O’Rourke caught the pointed tone of her words and gave a snort. ‘Okay. And how did he sound when he was instructing them to do that?’

‘He sounded just like himself.’

‘Sober?’

‘Stone cold.’

‘Calm and rational?’

‘Like he did it every day,’ Erin said. ‘The way you’d ask the help to carry out the trash.’

‘So you’re saying he was in charge of this whole deal.’

Erin understood that O’Rourke was being extremely careful to confirm every detail of her story. Under the circumstances, she’d have done the same. But did he believe her? She tried to read his expression and could see only a severe glower. She nodded vehemently. ‘Absolutely. The whole time. Everything that happened, happened because he ordered it. No question.’

‘And you’d testify to that?’

‘So would the video,’ she replied. ‘It’ll prove everything I just told you.’

O’Rourke exhaled noisily through his nose. Stepped away from Erin and exchanged a quick glance with Morrell. ‘And you haven’t told anyone else about this?’ he asked her after a moment’s heavy silence.

‘Nobody, not even my boss. I just spent the last two days hiding in a goddamn motel room wondering whether to call her. I decided against it. Now I’m here.’

‘You understand the seriousness of this allegation, Miss Hayes?’ O’Rourke said.

‘Look, I’m not an idiot,’ Erin replied, fighting to contain her frustration. ‘I know what it means. I know how bad it sounds and what the implications are for this whole city. But I also know what I saw. The man I witnessed ordering the beating and shooting of this other man, and then blowing the guy’s brains out himself, personally, of his own volition and free will or whatever the hell the law calls it, is the husband of my boss, Angela McCrory.’

The cops were silent, staring.

Erin said, ‘He’s Finn McCrory, the mayor of Tulsa.’