Down to the Needle

Chapter 5

Chapter 5After making a detour to a nearby coffee house for a latte, Abi was on her way again. At a stoplight, she instinctively looked in the rear-view mirror. Joe's Range Rover sped up and sat high behind her BMW coupe. When the light turned green, she drove through the intersection, then pulled to the shoulder and motioned him to pass. He always drove a little too fast and a little too close for comfort.

As she approached her shop, the inside lights flicked on. A whimsical sign marked 0 to 5 - Kid's Stuff and drawings of colorful big-eyed animals and toys framed the title and windows. Joe was already inside. She edged into the left turn pocket, and then parked behind the building.

Entering the rear doorway to her office, she hung her heavy jacket on a rack. The confined atmosphere of the shop smelled of new clothing. She went directly to the thermostat to start the air circulating and then went to find Joe.

“So when did you begin selling used clothes?” He gestured to a small rack that looked out of place near the counter.

“Not selling, Joe. I'm offering ten percent off one piece of new clothing in exchange for each usable outfit people donate to homeless kids.” Abi had created the program she titled KIN.

“Oh, yes. Kids In Need.” He nodded approval. “What happens when you find your daughter? Will you increase the sizes beyond five years of age?”

Saddened again, Abi looked away. The idea of increasing the sizes as the years progressed had not occurred to her. This store represented her daughter's life during the years before she was taken, though the styles were updated through the seasons.

Joe stood behind the sales counter and lifted a tattered black art portfolio held together by old dried layers of masking tape. He laid it gently onto the counter. “I've had visions of you adding young women's things.”

She shook her head sharply. “Stop, please.”

He came to her and wrapped an arm around her shoulder. “I understand, Abi,” They shared a moment of silence looking into each other's eyes. Finally, he turned his attention back to the portfolio. “I went back and picked up the art Winnaker produced at my studio. With the interest you're starting to have with this case, I thought you might want to see it.” He glanced at his watch.

“Her art? This is surreal. My head is spinning. If this Megan Winnaker turns out to be my daughter who's facing lethal….” She choked and could say no more.

“Look at it when you're in a better frame of mind.” He headed toward the back doorway. “Right now, I'm on my way out of town for a photo shoot. Have to hit the road real quick.”

Abi's curiosity about the inmate and her art had sparked. “I need to examine every clue.” She sounded more like daring herself to find something familiar in Winnaker's art.

“Abi,” he said, turning back and beginning slowly. “This girl is certain to be put to death if her final—”

“Joe, please!”

“All right, all right. I'll try to fill you in.”

The urgent sound of fire truck blast horns approaching from blocks away drew nearer. Abi covered her ears. Blast horns were something she would never get used to. Their sudden dull throbbing sent shock waves through her nervous system. Commute traffic jostled to the curbs to make way as the red trucks careened past, blaring and screeching.

Joe, too, had covered his ears. “Yet another fire.”

Just when the noise quieted, the ladder truck sped past urgently sounding a blast horn over its own siren.

“Why can't they catch those people?” She still held her ears and spoke loudly.

“Strange we don't hear of any fires for a while and then they start up again.” Joe shook his head sharply.

“You were saying?”

He shrugged, seeming not knowing where to begin. “There was this guy—a real i***t named Yates, Stan Yates—proclaiming to the world how he thought g**g members should all be exterminated like the Jews in the prison camps.”

“Yates? Was he an Aryan?” Yates was known as a blowhard drunk. Some of the g**g members must have gotten tired of him drawing attention to them and torched his house. She remembered reading that Yates was found inside his house during the fire. “Didn't he go blind?” Abi knew she should have learned more, as she had with other missing person cases. But then her doctor had issued a stern warning that she was to avoid all stress and she needed to limit her involvement in future cases. “I didn't follow the Winnaker case and some others when I was sure they weren't my Becky. I buried my head in my business down in Lawton.”

“Yates survived. His wife and two boys….” Joe shook his head.

According to Yates's testimony, he woke smelling smoke. The light switches didn't work so he grabbed a flashlight and went to the living room window to look out. Just as he was about to rush back to wake his family, a rough-looking girl appeared outside the window and threw a brick through the glass that hit him on the head, knocking him backwards. He later said the girl wore a Nazi infantry tunic and an SS ring on the hand she placed on the windowsill before stepping back to throw the brick. The news reports said that Yates lay unconscious while flames engulfed his home.

“And he being totally out of it—”

“There was no way the rescue unit could know about his family.” By the time they were found, the kids were charred.

“I vaguely remember.” Abi shook her head thoughtfully. Yates's wife died the next morning from smoke inhalation and carbon monoxide poisoning. “Hey wait. What about fingerprints on the window sill?”

“That filthy place? There was moss-like growth on the damp window sills that burned like fuel for the fire. They could see where a hand had dragged some of the stuff off, but the hand never touched the wood. But you, Abi, you never followed through when Winnaker made the statement she was looking for family?”

“I hadn't heard that part, Joe, never followed the case.” She could not imagine her daughter involved in anything like a gangland crime. “My daughter was so sweet and gifted,” Her voice cracked. “She would never be rebellious.” Her throat was suddenly parched. Her hands trembled fiercely. “When I was living down in Lawton, most people were thankful the crazies settled up in Creighton.”

Abi had investigated most cases similar to her daughter's age and from the little she knew about this one, the few details in the beginning had not attracted her interest. Now Winnaker's case would be drawing to a close with the sentence of lethal injection possibly carried out in a few short months. Again, the nudging came from the pit of her stomach. She had to follow the meager Winnaker clues back to their origins. The idea that Winnaker might be her daughter seemed ludicrous. The clues were too vague, didn't connect with her life, and seemed more like crumbs being tossed by a desperate girl seeking any kind of help. But that was what Abi had done all through the years with cases that seemed had possibilities, followed even the skimpiest of intelligible information to the end of the labyrinth, until the missing person was reunited with someone else. Was she still strong enough to work Winnaker's frayed threads of information into a new pattern? The idea bounced back and forth in her mind until she thought she might scream. She sighed heavily as she remembered her vow to search till her dying day. She couldn't quit. Break a promise to herself, and to her daughter? Never.

Joe lightly massaged the back of her neck. “What were we talking about earlier, about people—?”

“I know, I know, about people changing. I wasn't thinking that way back then.” Other than hoping for the best, it was nearly impossible to imagine what one's child might become. For all Abi knew, her daughter was just another statistic; certainly abducted, maybe dead. She winced.

Rain began pouring. Wind slammed the rear door that Abi, in haste, had forgotten to close.

“You keep looking for a daughter who no longer exists.” Abi's emotions plummeted. When he realized what he had said, he corrected himself. “That is, Abi, you're looking for the daughter you remember, but she's become someone all together different by now. She hasn't had the benefit of your upbringing.”

“I'm sure you're right, especially since Preston dropped out of sight only months before Becky disappeared.” He never turned up either. “He took her, Joe, and… and turned her into someone else.” Emotion overwhelmed her. “Please, tell me more about Megan Winnaker. How was she identified?”

Wind gusted and shook the windows again. “Sounds just like your patio door. I'll finish that repair when I get back.” Changing the subject momentarily was his way of gathering his thoughts. She took advantage to go to the back of the store and get two paper cups of water. So what if he had to go out of town. She needed to know more about Megan Winnaker and she needed to know now.

He accepted the water. “That Yates guy identified her from a photo.”

“Wait a minute. Wasn't he blinded? Didn't that brick fracture his skull?”

Something did c***k his head. He sustained two blows. Supposedly, the brick that was hurled through the window stunned him. The medics guessed he fell and banged his head a second time on a piece of furniture. The doctor said that's the blow that affected his sight. “He had partial sight right afterwards, enough to identify the face from a picture before going blind within the following week.”

How could they allow that as a positive ID, considering his limited capabilities? “That was all?” Having so little sight left meant that anything Yates might look at surely had to be placed against the tip of his nose.

“They couldn't do a line up. To this day, he claims he's sure. He was such a braggart, had 'em all believing he knew what he saw.”

That was a lot of information she had never heard. “He could have been making himself out a hero to avenge his family.”

Joe explained that at one time, Yates also mentioned he might have seen a small shiny earring on the person outside the window, but the police didn't do anything with that. They wrote it off—night lights, stars in the distance, whatever—because Yates had been drinking heavily before going to bed.

Abi realized the police might brush aside an inconsequential clue. She had been meticulous about information in all cases. She gestured toward the portfolio. “Did Megan Winnaker wear earrings?”

Joe took another slow sip and his pensive gaze through the air said he was remembering the details. “Not that I ever saw.”

“And Yates identified her right away?”

“As soon as he regained consciousness in the hospital, he told police he had seen that SS ring someplace else, maybe in a picture somewhere.”

“Was that all? A bragging blind man identifies someone from a photo he can barely see, and she gets the death penalty?” Abi swallowed hard. She felt pangs of guilt. Getting on with her life and enjoying it seemed like cheating when she did not know the price that fate had exacted upon her daughter.

“Investigators had found a gas can and incendiary materials in her mini-storage. Her prints were on everything. They tested her hands, her clothes. She had the stuff all over her.” He began to pace again. “When the police arrived with a search warrant, they found her sorting through her belongings. She told them she was cleaning up because someone ransacked her cubicle and left the gas can and other materials strewn about. It all smelled of gasoline.” Joe's expression said the situation must have seemed hopeless.

Abi stared out the windows, speckled with droplets of rain and twinkling like glitter in the early morning sunlight. When the case began, she thought she had heard all she needed to know. Megan Winnaker seemed to be just another firebug, but Joe's version of the facts caused her to have uneasy feelings. “Even though she may have told the truth, there was no way to verify her story.”

“That's right. She had no witness, no alibi.”

“Where did she claim to be when the fire started?”

Joe sat his water cup down and glanced at her sideways. “Out painting.”

The idea of Winnaker being an artist of any kind, again, rattled her nervous system. “Painting… painting?”

“She had one fresh oil canvas and several unfinished pastel drawings in her storage. All of night scenes.”

The idea of someone oil painting en plein air in the dark didn't sound right. “She painted outdoors during nighttime?”

“At dusk. She's always painted a lot of dawn and dusk pictures, liked the play of light and shadows.”

“So she had no one to vouch for her whereabouts while she painted alone?” Anxiety raced through Abi's nervous system. Old scenes of her five-year-old daughter's artwork floated through her mind; pictures painted long ago which had become as precious as any of those of the Old Masters.

“She told the officers she found her lock broken several days before the fire. She didn't own anything important except the boxes of her dad's memorabilia and those didn't look disturbed so she never took inventory.”

“Why would anyone do that?”

“The only thing missing was her dad's Nazi infantry tunic. She used to sleep in it to stay warm. When she returned to her storage late the night of the fire, she found the new lock clipped and her unit ransacked and—”

“Wait.” Abi turned to face him more fully. She tapped the back of his hand at the edge of the counter. “Ransacked? How bad?”

“Up-side-down.”

“And the fresh oil painting?”

“What are you getting at?”

“If she was out painting during the time of the fire and when her unit was ransacked, then the wet oil painting would not have been damaged, right?”

He looked surprised. His eyes sparkled. “Yeah, you're right. Belongings were strewn about the floor. The wet oil painting hung on nails at the back of the cubicle.”

“Who's got it now?”

“The police, if they hold onto anything like that.” Details in the artwork could show where she was when she painted it. Something as simple as the position of the moon could tell when and where the painting was made. “It was all scrutinized. It proved nothing.” He walked to the back, got another cupful of water and returned. “Don't pick this apart, Abi. It was all addressed during the trial.”

Abi stared at the water she hadn't drunk and ignored his warning. “What about that infantry tunic?”

“Found in her cubicle along with other rags spattered with gasoline and ash and smelling of the burn. Winnaker felt she might have scared off someone who planned to burn her out. She slept among her strewn belongings, including the tunic, and handled the gas can and other stuff when she began cleaning up that morning.”

“Who would do that to her?” Abi felt herself being drawn into something best left alone. But, then, with her curiosity, next she needed to know why.

“That's what the police asked. Winnaker said she hadn't been in town long enough to make enemies.”

The excuse did sound flimsy. “She couldn't name anyone?”

“Not a soul. Only knew a few of those skinheads from selling her Nazi stuff. She spent a lot of time at my shop doing her art.”

“You ever meet any of her buyers?” If Joe would keep talking, she would keep asking. In the past, while helping in other searches, Abi discovered remote possibilities and questioned anyone. Now here was Joe, a person close to the inmate, and she might get more out of him than the police received from anyone else.

“Never brought 'em around, thank goodness. Never talked about them.”

“What about fingerprints?”

“Only hers, on a gas can she claimed had been left by someone else. And….” He pointed a finger in the air. “Forensics found a lot of stray human and animal hairs on that jacket, but lots of people had tried it on to possibly buy it.”

In her mind, Abi had already begun the process of sorting through clues, the process of elimination that, hopefully, would lead to answers. “The ring, what about the ring?”

“Sold it, days before the fire, to an eerie-looking weirdo named Dara Hines.”

“Then Dara might be the one.”

“She had an air-tight alibi, according to half a dozen others. Her father's a highly regarded businessman in Creighton, has an impeccable reputation.”

“So it was Dara's word against Winnaker's testimony?” Despite questionable evidence, the jury possibly leaned in favor of Dara's testimony even though there was no proof.

“Maybe.”

Abi knew from the Chamber of Commerce records about a widower named Hines in Creighton who owned four service station-mini marts and several small restaurants. He had donated more than an acre for a park when one of his businesses, a dilapidated warehouse, burned down. He didn't want the expense of rebuilding that huge shed so he deeded the lot to the city for a park. He did a lot of charity work.

Joe dashed his empty paper cup into the waste basket, evidently still feeling hurried. “Dara has a reputation of involvement with the Dregs, but when they're linked to anything dirty, she's never found to be a part of it.”

“Dara might have had the ring at the time of—”

“She said Winnaker gave it to her early the morning after the fire.” He shrugged doubtfully.

“Gave it to her?” Winnaker was selling her father's belongings in order to live, but she just gave away that valuable piece?

“Dara said she and her boyfriend passed by before dawn, evidently before the police arrived. They found Winnaker tidying up. She claims that's when Winnaker gave her the ring. Winnaker insists she sold it to Dara days earlier.”

Dara's story would prove Winnaker would want to get rid of it. “The police bought that idea?”

“The jury did too.”

“Was the ring tested for evidence of incendiary matter, whatever they look for?” Abi assumed the police did their jobs, but it didn't hurt to ask.

“Probably not.” He shook his head in dismay. “By the time police got around to locating Dara and this guy Sling, they found them rebuilding Dara's motorcycle engine at one of her father's empty lots.” Joe gestured to the underside of his ring finger. “By then the wad of dirty tape around the shank that Winnaker added to make it fit her finger had been removed. Sling was wearing the ring. They were burning trash, too, cardboard boxes, rags and stuff to keep warm. They both had gas and oil all over their hands and clothing—biker clothing that probably hadn't seen the inside of a washing machine in months.”

Abi sensed the pieces not quite fitting. “How unfortunate.” If innocent of the crime, Megan Winnaker didn't have a chance. “What if she's not the one?”

“She went before a jury. Yates described the swastika ring.”

Yates must have clearly seen the ring if his flashlight beam had shone directly on it. How else could he have known? “A ring and a photo. How did they come up with her picture?”

Joe hesitated again and swallowed hard. “You remember my photographic exposé?”

“Yes, but only from what you told me. What's that got to do with—”

“The photograph… was mine.”