Sandusky reckoning, p.1
Sandusky Reckoning, page 1
SANDUSKY RECKONING
by
BRYAN W. CONWAY
Sandusky Reckoning
Copyright © 2023 Bryan W. Conway.
All Rights Reserved.
ISBN: 979-8-9852648-2-1
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
To Braham and Brayden Conway
Contents
Chapter 1
Data 1
Travis 1
Brady 1
Jenna 1
Sandusky Register – Online Edition 1
Brady 2
Tony 1
Sandusky Register – Online Edition 2
Russ 1
Candy 1
Vaughn 1
Tony 2
Todd 1
Tony 3
Brady 3
Sandusky Register – Online Edition 3
Brady 4
Tony 4
Sandusky Register – Online Edition 4
Sandusky Register – Online Edition 5
Chapter 2
Todd 2
Russ 2
Sandusky Register – Online Edition 6
Brady 5
Mitch 1
Candy 2
Brady 6
Sandusky Register – Online Edition 7
Alexander 1
Daniela 1
Data 2
Sandusky Register – Online Edition 8
Brady 7
Sandusky Register – Online Edition 9
Jenna 2
Alexander 2
Tony 5
Daniela 2
Alexander 3
Gary 1
Candy 3
Brady 8
Jenna 3
Brady 9
Vaughn 2
Sandusky Register – Online Edition 10
Brady 10
Chapter 3
Tony 6
Vaughn 3
Data 3
Patrick 1
Vaughn 4
Brady 11
Data 4
Russ 3
Jenna 4
Brady 12
Tony 7
Grigore 1
Brady 13
Jenna 5
Vaughn 5
Brady 14
Tony 8
Daniela 3
Data 5
Brady 15
Jenna 6
Candy 4
Chapter 4
Patrick 2
Brady 16
Data 6
Travis 2
Tony 9
Sandusky Register – Online Edition 11
Candy 5
Vaughn 6
Brady 17
Data 7
Russ 4
Alexander 4
Tony 10
Alexander 5
Brady 18
Russ 5
Chapter 5
Daniela 4
Tony 11
Alexander 6
Brady 19
Vaughn 7
Data 8
Russ 6
Daniela 5
Brady 20
Alexander 7
Vaughn 8
Daniela 6
Tony 12
Jenna 7
Sandusky Register – Online Edition 12
Mitch 2
Brady 21
Data 9
Tony 13
Candy 6
Mitch 3
Brady 22
Sandusky Register – Online Edition 13
Vaughn 9
Data 10
Epilogue
Vaughn 10
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Tuesday, June 23
Data 1
3:45 a.m.
Where the heck was Mike?
I glanced down at my Timex and confirmed he should have been here by now. How long was I supposed to give him?
My heart was still hammering from all the craziness that happened earlier. To think that Mike hitched the Taj RV to a train and likely killed four people. Then he burned down a trailer. After he killed Chuck. He was a psychopath, a serial killer at this point.
Trailer Alpha was toast; the fire trucks began arriving twenty minutes ago. Siren after siren blasted from down the street. Mike was supposed to torch it and meet me in my driveway so we could go to Gorey’s bowling alley and purge any remaining blackmail material.
The surveillance cameras were dead at the bowling alley. I knew that because I killed them myself. The after-hours cleaning crew would be finished, and we would have a decent window of time to do a different sort of cleanup.
I didn’t know who was scheduled to open the bowling alley that morning. The staff should begin to arrive around 9 a.m. to get ready for the 10 a.m. opening. Randy and Sam wouldn’t be among them, because they were currently dead in a camper at the bottom of the lake. No one would miss Randy or Sam until opening.
I wondered how long to give Mike. If he didn’t show up, I had to do the cleanup myself. Randy had a backup server somewhere in his office area. There was also sensitive material in lockers, some in envelopes I had dropped off yesterday myself. I didn’t know if they had been cleared, so I would need to check the lockers. If they were cleared, the materials were in Randy’s office.
I would also need to look in Sam’s room at the alley, the storage closets that had been converted to his pathetic little apartment. But since I was a grown man living in my grandma’s double-wide, who was I to call him pathetic?
I had a sinking feeling that something went wrong with the torching of Trailer Alpha. Otherwise, Mike would be here. He was a brainwashed military fanatic, so I couldn’t imagine him being late for anything, especially something critical.
I glanced at my watch again and decided to do it without him if he didn’t show up in the next twenty minutes. The bowling alley was only a mile away; Mike could make his way there on foot if he needed to. If we were delayed until after sunrise, it would increase our chances of getting busted. How would we explain getting caught ransacking Randy’s office, especially after they discovered he was dead?
Travis 1
3:50 a.m.
The fucking guy was sitting in my chair with his fucking feet kicked up on my desk. Not that it was a particularly expensive desk, but it was my desk. In my office.
The office was dark, bare, and dusty, decorated with a few camping posters. Largely just a desk and a few filing cabinets.
The guy was Sheriff Tony Minelli. If he had been doing his job over the past few years, then this disaster at the campground would never have happened. Randy should have been taken out of the game a long time ago, but Minelli had turned a blind eye. There were most certainly pictures and videos that were in Randy’s possession of the good sheriff banging hookers and taking bribes, and the good people of Sandusky most certainly wouldn’t appreciate their sheriff’s side hobby.
“Comfortable?” I asked. Minelli looked over at me and smiled. Smoker’s yellow teeth surrounded by a five o’clock shadow.
“Mind if I smoke?” he asked. He pulled out a pack and a lighter from his shirt pocket. I shrugged.
“Fine. Secondhand smoke is the least of my worries at the moment,” I said as I sat down in the cheap folding chair on the other side of the desk. It creaked under my weight.
“Any theories?” he asked.
“I have a few. One is that Randy staged the RV theft, and the burning trailer is some sort of insurance scam or cover-up. But that wouldn’t explain the trailer fire and the odd way the RV disappeared. I mean, if they are related.”
Minelli seemed to be processing this, staring off at the wall.
“My second theory is that Randy finally fucked up and tried to blackmail the wrong people,” I said, leaning back. Minelli nodded.
“Any disgruntled customers you’ve heard about through the campground grapevine?”
I shrugged and shook my head. Randy had some damning pictures of me and blackmailed me into utilizing my cabin rentals to blackmail prostitution solicitors. He had his hooks in a few of my employees; they were especially deep into Chuck. Beyond that, I didn’t want to know what he and his thugs were up to.
“Did Randy have beef with anyone at the campground?” he asked, lighting a cigarette and taking a long drag.
“I heard there was a minor disagreement involving one of Randy’s guys the other day. Sam and a guy over at site 64 named Mike Clemmons. A black guy. My clerk said they jawed a little in the office, nothing major.”
“Interesting. It so happens the unconscious guy in front of the burnt trailer was black. Is Clemmons here with his family?” he asked.
“Nah, he was by himself,” I said.
“That is a little creepy. Has Clemmons been accounted for?”
“Actually, his RV caught on fire yesterday. A total loss. So, he isn’t residing here anymore.”
Minelli sat up. “How many RV fires have you had since you’ve been running this place?” he asked.
“A bunch of minor ones. Only one resulted in a lost RV a few years ago. A drunk woman tried to deep fry a turkey, and shit went wrong,” I r eplied.
“So, this Mike guy has words with Sam, and then his RV gets torched the next day. That seems a little suspicious,” he said.
“It looked like an accident. He left his campfire unattended.”
“On a rainy day,” he said.
“Yeah, but he still had a fire going. Got pictures of it,” I said.
“Who took the picture?” Minelli asked.
“Chuck Taylor.”
Minelli smiled. “Any reason why Chuck would take such a picture?”
“To show that Clemmons had left a fire unattended, I guess.”
“So, why not put out the fire instead of taking a picture?”
Minelli’s smile widened. I had no answer for that. In retrospect, it did seem odd. “Was the black guy the only one who left unattended fires?” he asked.
“Nah, happens all the time. Peopled regularly go to bed with smoldering fires,” I said, shrugging.
He took a drag from his cigarette. “Does Chuck take pictures of all of those fires?”
I shook my head. Minelli took another drag and coughed. The horn from the train sounded outside as it approached.
“Any theory on where Chuck and ...” he said, checking a notebook on the desktop. “Henry are?”
“No. Both were on the clock last night. Chuck and his golf cart are both gone,” I said.
“I sent a patrol car to Henry’s trailer. No one answered the door. Any chance those guys were in Randy’s trailer?” I asked.
“There is a fair chance of it.”
There was a knock at the door. I got up and opened it. A cop stood there, a young Hispanic guy.
“Sir, we need to speak,” he said nervously.
“So, speak,” he grumbled. The cop looked at me. “Go ahead and just say it.”
“Two bits of information. We found a busted burner phone within the vicinity of the unconscious vic,” he said.
“Good news! Is it operable?”
“Don’t know. It’s being taken back to the station to see.”
“All right. What else?”
“FD found a dead body at the trailer fire.”
Brady 1
5:15 a.m.
I hadn’t slept in nearly twenty-four hours, but I didn’t feel tired. I had a crazy energy that made me feel as though I could stay awake indefinitely.
Originally it had been the elation that Mike’s plan actually worked. It had seemed bizarre and improbable when he laid it out to me at the King’s Inn Motel twelve hours earlier. But I went along with it. My anxiety and horror from having my daughter attacked had perhaps clouded my judgment.
How else could I explain going along with that insanity? Five people dead. Dead. But these were bad people who surely had caused a lot of misery and death to others. A few days earlier, I had been tricked by these people into transporting a box containing a dead prostitute from an island to the mainland. I don’t know how she died, but she was very young and likely didn’t die of natural causes.
I sat at the kitchen table in my RV, looking down at my burner cell. Mike should have texted by now, but it was possible that he and Data were still resolving issues at the bowling alley. I put the phone down and took another sip of coffee. Work started at 7 a.m. It would be a long day.
I fought back the urge to call Marcy and get an update on my daughter, Katie. I was fairly sure she was out of danger. Hopefully, she would be leaving the hospital in Toledo and going back to Cleveland soon. Given the circumstances of her condition, it was unclear when I would be able to see her again.
I was tempted to travel to Toledo to attempt a visit. But there was a chance that Marcy would hit the roof and cause a scene. Plus, I had to see what the day ahead would bring as far as blowback from the mission. I thought we had done a reasonable job of covering our tracks. Data was a loose end, but he had a vested interest in ensuring the circumstances surrounding Randy’s demise remained unresolved.
Chris was another loose end. We had a brief chat out on the street when we all gathered to watch Trailer Alpha burn. Some of the materials used for the mission were appropriated from his worksite. At some point, they would notice the theft and would possibly suspect Chris.
Jenna 1
6:10 a.m.
The ER automatic doors slid open, and in walked a big guy dressed in black with long, black hair. Black T-shirt, black shorts, black shoes, black socks, and a black baseball hat. He looked dead tired, with big black bags under his droopy eyes.
I had been at the hospital for over ten hours. My shift was supposed to end at 6:00 a.m., but then the John Doe burn victim came into the unit.
It was hard work to get him stabilized; he coded multiple times. He arrived in a coma with second- and third-degree burns throughout his body. Multiple broken bones and a collapsed lung were discovered during the initial triage.
There were qualified burn specialists at Firelands Regional Medical Center to treat him, so he wouldn’t need to be transferred. He had no identification on him. He was a middle-aged African American male we needed to identify so his family could make critical medical decisions for him.
“May I help you, sir?” I asked.
The man walked over and leaned on the counter, clasping his large hands.
“Yes, ma’am, I’m Travis Barrett. Sheriff Minelli asked me to come down here and identify a body from a fire,” he said.
“The man is still alive,” I said with irritation. Identify a body, really?
“Sorry.”
I was dressed in scrubs, my hair pulled back in a ponytail. I was tired, but that was nothing new. Because of the John Doe, I would likely have to stick around for at least another hour.
“Please sign in,” I said, sliding a clipboard over to him.
“What time is it?” he asked.
“It’s 6:15 a.m. Step over to the door,” I said.
I pushed a button and buzzed him in.
“My name is Jenna Marquez, ER nurse. I’m gonna need you to put on some scrubs and a mask,” I said as we walked down the hall to the elevator. Barrett sighed.
We stepped into an empty elevator. I pushed the button for the second floor.
“Ma’am, Sheriff Minelli pushed me to come down here, but ...”
“I know, and we appreciate it. We need to ID him so we can notify his family and pull his medical history,” I said.
“If he is the guy I think he is, you won’t find a family. He was alone at the campground and just passing through. Listen, if he is burned badly ... I have a weak stomach,” he said nervously.
“He has some burns, but nothing particularly disturbing.”
The doors opened, and we stepped out. The halls of the critical-care floor were fairly busy, with doctors and nurses moving purposefully about while family members milled around. We stopped in front of room 217.
“Wait here.”
I went to the supply closet and located scrubs, a hat, and a surgical mask. I brought them to Barrett, and he awkwardly put them on. Luckily, we had size 3XL scrubs.
I opened the door, and we walked in. We walked past an empty bed by the door and approached the patient in the bed by the window. He was hooked to an IV and a ventilator, the whooshing noise recurring as it pumped air into his lungs. Multiple leads attached him to a monitor, which displayed his heart rate and other vitals.
Barrett stepped closer, looking over at me. I nodded at him and then toward the patient.
He took a few more steps and stood bedside. He studied the patient’s partially exposed upper body, from just above his waist up. He was covered with bruises, scars, and burns. His face had multiple burns as well, glowing pink against his dark skin.
Barrett leaned over, looking down at him like he was some sort of science experiment. He stared a long moment then turned around and nodded at me.
We walked out, and I closed the door. I pulled my mask down, and he did the same.
“Yeah, that’s him. That’s Mike Clemmons,” he said.
“Thanks. He is no longer John Doe. Obviously, he didn’t have any ID on him. They took fingerprints, but it takes some time to get a match on those, and only if they are in a law-enforcement database.”
Barrett smiled a humorless smile as he stripped out of his scrubs.
“The guy was out creeping around at a trailer that had been arsoned in the middle of the night, suffered a number of serious injuries, and was found a few yards away from a dead body. You find it odd he wasn’t carrying ID?”
