Page 125 of Power of the Mind

No matter what the autopsies showed, the people who had died had to have been mixing some unknown, untestedsubstance with their usual prescriptions. The combination had an adverse effect on their systems, killing them outright or altering their personalities so they appeared off-balance, edgy, and not themselves. They all had preexisting conditions that supported this theory.

What that substance might have been, I had no idea.

I couldn’t discount the random suicides, either. They might not have died of unexpected heart conditions, but they had been acting strangely in the days leading up to their deaths, another indicator of drugs. One had been medicated for depression. Was it important?

Not for the first time, I wished I had a doctor in my pocket to bounce some ideas around, but my charming personality had burned those bridges years ago, and I’d never built new ones.

Drawing my iPad forward, I continued searching into Sandra Morgenstern and Milton Newall, the names that had appeared on Brodie Newall’s birth certificate.

Milton was a dead end. He had died in a traffic accident in 2008. I found a brief write-up detailing the incident and an obituary that mentioned neither a wife nor a son.

Sandra interested me most since there seemed to be a loose connection between her, Rowena, and Hilty via the fair. For the second time, I typed her name into a search engine. Sandra Morgenstern had no social media platforms. Apart from a dated, unclear picture of her from back in high school—a newspaper notation mentioning a tree-planting event, where she posed with at least twenty other students with shovels around a sapling—I couldn’t find a recent photograph. The woman didn’t have a driver’s license or health card in the system either. No passport on file. That in itself raised red flags.

It was like she no longer existed. Yet, she did or had when Brodie Newall was born.

An underhanded credit search showed an abysmal score. The woman was in debt to her eyeballs. Bank-canceled credit cards dating back to 2017. Foreclosure on her house in 2018. She filed for bankruptcy in late 2018 as well, a month after she lost the house.

Then nothing. Poof. Gone.

Frustrated, I entered Rowena Fitspatrick’s name instead, knowing already I would be faced with all kinds of trash from her past. I focused on the arrest from eighty-six, seeking articles about the fair where she and Hilty had performed.

Eventually, I found the connection I was looking for. A throwaway piece, written after the judge had dismissed the charges against Rowena and Hilty. The local newspaper interviewed a woman named Sandy M, seeking an opinion about the couple who had roomed with her during the show, asking whether she believed they had been wrongfully accused.

“Roommates. Now we’re getting somewhere.”

But how did it fit?

Roommates. Sandra had a baby with Milton. Milton died. Sandra ends up with severe money problems. She contacts an old friend? A skilled con artist. A son dealing drugs.

I reached for my phone to call Tallus, but it was still on the floor. Too lazy to get up and grab it, I drummed my fingers on the desk as I twisted new theories. I needed a smoke, but I pushed the craving aside, ignoring it, still pissed I’d fucked up and broken my clean streak.

What I really needed was a recent picture of Sandra Morgenstern. Why was that proving difficult to find? Unless she’d gone out of her way to stay off the radar.

But why?

Hiding from an abusive husband didn’t fit. Milton was dead.

I sat bolt upright. Unless, with the help of someone knowledgeable, she’d changed her identity to hide from creditors.

Someone knowledgeable, like an old roommate who had done it before.

“Goddammit. Who are you, Sandra?”

Reluctantly, I retrieved my phone, but I didn’t call Tallus. I called the one person who might be willing to help me identify Sandra Morgenstern. Someone I hadn’t spoken to in many years. Perhaps the only person in law enforcement who didn’t hold a grudge against me. A man who had spent long hours in a car beside me every day, trying to figure out what made me tick.

He answered on the third ring with a gruff, no-nonsense, “Wagner. What do you want?”

“I need a favor.”

A long pause followed my statement. When my old partner, Constable Vernon Wagner from 32 District, spoke again, he lowered his voice conspiratorially. “Krause? Is that you?”

“Yeah.”

“Jesus fucking Christ.” Vern laughed, and it was the enormous belly laugh I remembered from our days on street patrol. “How the hell are you?”

“Getting by.” I didn’t have time to chat, but I knew it was one of those times when pushing for answers wouldn’t get me anywhere.

“I heard you’re running your own show. Got a PI gig or something. Is that right?”

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