Talking to the Neighbors
Lister McKinney’s house was something like his garage, organized chaos. It was easy to see that nothing had been disturbed or taken. Nothing had probably been moved in months.
The door from the garage led into the kitchen and Vince was greeted with a familiar sight: a pile of miscellaneous detritus on the kitchen table. His own looked quite a bit like this, only not piled so high. Where he might have a few months, this looked like years. Vince opted to do a walk-through of the house looking for any important papers that might lead him to a next-of-kin, knowing that he was probably going to end up sifting through that kitchen table in the end.
There was a lot of stuff everywhere, no rhyme or reason or filing system, but it seemed like anything Lister McKinney considered important was probably on the kitchen table. He couldn’t find it anywhere else.
Vince carefully sorted through the contents of the table, noting the bills, a few old past-due notices, and the junk mail that never made it to the garbage can. Under one messy pile, he found Mr. McKinney’s checkbook. A quick glance as his finances painted an interesting picture. First of all, the handwriting was incredibly neat, small, block-print, something Vince wasn’t expecting. Secondly, he lived mostly off of social security, the deposit noted consistently during the first week of every month. However, at some point during the middle of the month, there might be one or two other deposits, nothing overly large, never more than a few hundred dollars, and each deposit was noted with either “Otis” or “Virgil”. He set the checkbook aside.
A little more sifting and he dug up an old picture of three boys about ten years old. On the back was the year and the names of the boys. They were identified as the Wyliss boys, but none of them bore that name. Instead, the names Lister McKinney, Otis Gorski, and Virgil Clapp were listed in the pristine handwriting common to women back in the day when penmanship was a valued thing. In parenthesis under the names was the word “cousins”.
Putting together the pieces, it seemed likely to Vince that the Otis and Virgil in the checkbook were the same Otis and Virgil in the picture.
And once again he found himself in bit of a dilemma.
Because the name Otis Gorski was familiar to him.
With a sigh, Vince left the kitchen and went back into the garage. He’d ask Officer Jensen if he could borrow her squad’s computer.
He might know the name, but he didn’t know the address.
#
The neighborhood was pretty lively for a Sunday afternoon in late spring. People were probably out doing yard work, running errands, oblivious to the crime committed on their block. Or so they thought. Detective DeAndre DeMarte was confident that he was going to find a witness or two from the clump standing on the lawn opposite Lister McKinney’s house. No doubt one of them saw something; they just didn’t realize they saw it yet.
“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen,” he said as he approached the group, which fell silent as he spoke. He had that way with people. “I’m Detective DeAndre DeMarte. I was hoping to ask you folks a few questions about what’s going on across the street.”
***
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