“Hey, Chief, what’s up?”
I tell him about the day laborer and the missing cash. “I want you to recanvass the farms around the Slabaugh place. Find out if anyone remembers seeing someone. See if you can come up with a name.”
“Will do.”
“One of the men who worked for Slabaugh supposedly had a white dog with him. Ask about that, too. Can you give Skid a call and get him out to the Slabaugh place? I want him to look around for any kind of records Solly Slabaugh might have kept. If we can get the names of the men he hired, we might catch a break.”
“Sure thing.” T.J. pauses. “Where are you?”
“I’m on my way to the station.” I ring off and dial the switchboard.
My daytime dispatcher, Lois, answers with a high-speed utterance: “Painters Mill PD!”
“You sound busy,” I say.
“That’s kind of an understatement, Chief. Phones are ringing off the dang hook. Folks asking about the Slabaughs.”
I know from experience that the volume of calls will double once word gets out that we may be dealing with a triple murder. “Media catch wind of it yet?”
“Steve Ressler has called a couple of times, looking for you. Columbus Dispatch is sending a reporter. Ohio Farm Journal is going to do a piece on the dangers of methane gas. And a couple of radio stations have called.”
Ressler is the publisher of Painters Mill’s weekly newspaper, the Advocate. He’s a pushy, type-A bully who has a difficult time accepting the words no comment. “Tell them I’ll have a press release this afternoon.”
“Sure thing.”
“Patch me through to Pickles, will you?”
“Yup. Hang on.”
A click sounds and then Pickles growls his name. That’s when I remember he covered for Skid last night and probably hasn’t slept for twenty-four hours. “You feel up to a little overtime?” I ask.
“I don’t think it will kill me,” he replies.
I’m glad to hear the humor in his voice. We’re going to need all the humor we can muster in the coming days. “I need you to run Adam Slabaugh’s name through LEADS for me.” LEADS is the acronym for the law enforcement automated data system police departments used to check for outstanding warrants.
“That’s a mighty interesting request, since this was an accident.”
“Doc Coblentz is pretty sure it wasn’t.”
“I’ll be damned.” I hear computer keys clicking. “You on your way in?”
“I’m almost there.”
A few minutes later, I pull into my reserved spot next to Lois’s Cadillac. I push through the front door and see her at her workstation, the phone pasted to her ear. She pirouettes in her chair and shoves a handful of message slips at me. “You’ve got two messages from Sheriff Rasmussen. John Tomasetti called twice. And Pickles wants to talk to you.”
A small thrill runs the length of me at the mention of Tomasetti, but I quickly tamp it down. I’m not accustomed to the feeling, and it unsettles me. It’s been a couple of months since I last saw him. I’ve been thinking about calling him, but I always find a reason not to. I’m sure some shrink would tell me I have commitment issues. He would probably be right. I warned Tomasetti that a relationship with me wasn’t going to be a walk in the park. He doesn’t seem to mind, so things have worked out just fine so far.
I take the messages from Lois, shuffle through them, decide to call Rasmussen first. He’s the interim sheriff for Holmes County, appointed last year after former sheriff Nathan Detrick tried to kill me during the Slaughterhouse Killer investigation. He’s serving a life sentence in the Mansfield Correctional Institution, about eighty miles southwest of Cleveland. A good place for a man who tortured and killed over twenty women.
I’ve met Sheriff Rasmussen several times since he was appointed. A former sheriff’s deputy from Canton, he’s low-key and no-nonsense, two personality traits I greatly admire, especially when it comes to small-town politics. City and county law-enforcement agencies work together closely here in Painters Mill. The sheriff’s office has a small budget and pretty much runs on a skeleton crew. We pick up the slack, taking county as well as city calls. I’m wondering what prompted two phone calls in one day as I shrug out of my coat and head toward my office.
I get Rasmussen’s voice mail and leave my cell number. Without hanging up, I dial Tomasetti. I get voice mail there, too, so I leave a message. Sighing, I vaguely wonder if they’re talking to each other. After checking e-mail, I snag my coat and head toward Pickles’ cubicle. I catch him coming out, a cup of coffee in hand. “Anything on Slabaugh?” I can tell by his expression that he found something.
“Two years ago, Adam Slabaugh was arrested on a domestic.”
“Well, that’s interesting. Conviction?”
“Charges were dropped.”
“Who was the complainant?”
Pickles offers a “cat that swallowed the canary” grin. “Solomon Slabaugh.”