WHITHER THOU GOEST 5 - DANNY'S STORY - PART 1

Well here I am at Heathrow, waiting to go through customs.  I don’t know what the delay is, there seems to be some sort of argument going on.  Can’t say as I am sorry to wait, I’m really not looking forward to seeing my wife and meeting her new family;  I don’t think the news I have will be very welcome.

 

My name is Daniel Peter Thomas, - call me Danny - and I’ve just flown in from Philadelphia to join my wife Ruth-Anne, who has just been reunited with her birth mother, Sarah.  The whole thing has been one hell of a shock for her, first losing her Dad then finding out her Momma’s not her Momma;  but she seems to be getting on real well with her family in Epsom, Surrey, and has asked me to join them for a couple of weeks before she flies home.

 

They do seem like a nice crowd, and from what I’ve seen on Skype the little neice looks so much like her new Auntie Ruthie, she could be her daughter!  But let’s not go there!  I will be sure glad to see my wife, but I don’t know she’ll be so happy to see me when I show her what I’ve got in this briefcase.

 

Ruthie’s Daddy Hank died a while back, and while we were sorting his papers, we discovered Ruthie was not in fact the child of her Momma Julia Kaufmann, but of an English girl, Sarah Strawinski.  They got in touch and Ruthie has been staying with Sarah and her mother Lena for the past week, while I got on with things at home.

 

We had found a whole heap of diaries and notebooks in Hank’s files, which we couldn’t make much sense of at first; much of them seemed to be written in some sort of code.  Then there was his accounts, written at the back of each yearbook – and showing receipts and payments of hundreds of thousands of dollars.  Hank had been a commercial traveller, never at home much, and Julia had been a bit of a strange one, not right in the head if you ask me.  Ruthie says she was always sick, and left her alone much of the time, which on top of constantly moving house, meant little Ruth-Anne’s childhood was pretty chaotic, and her Momma passed away quite young.

 

Anyhow, me and Ruth-Anne moved in with her Daddy after we were married; he was a real nice guy, still going off on his business trips even in old age, and I miss him almost as much as Ruthie does. Once I had sorted out Sarah’s part of Ruthie’s story, I wanted to get to the bottom of these diaries and sort his affairs out as soon as possible for Ruthie’s sake.

 

One day when I was meant to be working from home and Ruthie was at work in the kindergarten, I went through drawer after drawer of paperwork, none of it making much sense and all splattered with this code.  It was only after I knocked a folder down behind the big heavy old filing cabinet that I made a breakthrough.

 

I had to pull it out to reach the papers, and as it inched slowly away from the wall, I saw a small cupboard door.  It almost broke my back, but I managed to pull it away enough to open it, revealing a big old-fashioned safe.  I had a pretty good idea what the password would be – Ruthie’s Birthdate.  Not very secure, but I guess Hank never thought anyone but him would ever find it, and if they did – why, he would be gone anyway.

 

Sure enough, the door swung open.  It was a very large space, and the first thing I saw was a vast selection of guns.  I swear to God, it was like a fucking armoury in there!  There were also four box files, which I removed before locking the safe door and pushing the filing cabinet back in its place, not wanting to share this find with Ruthie until I knew more about what was going on.

 

Hell, was I in shock!  I poured myself a glass of Hank’s best Bourbon and sat at his desk.

 

The first box contained those same brown cardboard folders, pages and pages of neatly annotated names and places, some in code, and some not, so I was soon able to put names to some of the initials in the books we had found earlier.  What with the samples of fine weapons I had discovered in the safe, it did not take much working out to realise that the ‘hardware’ Hank had dealt in was in fact arms, which explained the large amounts of money in the accounts.  The second box was much the same – except there was a passbook to a Swiss bank account in my wife’s name.  It contained well over a million dollars.

 

Whoaaa! I poured myself another Bourbon.  Looked like this was going to be a long day.

 

At that point I decided to put the new information I had found to one side until I had studied it in more detail.  I turned my attention to the next two boxes.

 

If the contents of the first boxes were explosive – the last two were dynamite!

 

The third box was blue in colour.  It contained a mixture of photographs and documents, bank statements and various other bits of paper.  Rifling through it, my eye had been drawn to two envelopes, one with ‘Birth Certificate’ written on it, and one stating ‘Marriage Certificate’.  I guessed this one must contain more documents relating to Ruth-Anne’s birth and younger life.  There was also a larger envelope with ‘School Reports’ written on it in Hank’s hand.  I thought it might lighten the mood to read what teachers had had to say about my wife, and pulled out the sheaf of folded pages.

 

My smile turned to a frown as I read the name on the first report :  ‘Adrian Kaufmann, age 9’.  Who the hell was that?  I don’t remember Ruthie having any Kaufmann relatives, except her grandparents; or was this a brother who had died before Ruthie was born?  Perhaps this was what had sent Julia cuckoo.  I pulled out the Birth Certificate.

 

Name:  Adrian Charles Kaufmann

Father :  Charles Henry Kaufmann – salesman.

Mother :  Marjorie Ellerman Kaufmann - teacher

 

Date of Birth :  12th December 1966.

 

Three years before Ruthie.

 

And who was this child?  Did he die?  There was no sign of a death certificate in the box.  I looked at the Marriage Certificate:

 

Name of Groom:  Charles Henry Kaufmann

Name of Bride :  Marjorie Susan Ellerman

 

Date of Marriage :  16th June 1966.

 

Impossible!  I could remember Hank saying how he and Julia had got married in the Fall of 1961, and there was the wedding photo right there in front of me in a silver frame on top of the bureau.  Then it hit me – Hank was a bigamist.

 

My mind went nuts. Thoughts tumbled through my head – So many questions! Had Hank tired of his crazy wife, who could not even give him a child, and found his comforts elsewhere?  No wonder he had spent all that time away – obviously it wasn’t all business!  I wondered if Marjorie knew he was married?  I doubted that.  So Hank had two homes on the go – the old dog!  So why had he bothered to take Ruthie?  Maybe he just wanted to keep Julia quiet and occupied so he could carry on his double life as well as his dubious business transactions.  Maybe he had planned it all – getting Sarah pregnant then giving the child like a Christmas present to Julia?

 

Well well well who would have thought it?  I also found a wedding picture of Hank and this woman in an Elizabeth-Taylor style cream suit and little hat with a veil; all smiles and confetti, and already pregnant with Adrian.  Nice looking girl, no wonder he preferred her to Julia, who apparently spent half her life in bed crying.

 

What the heck of a find! I thought: ‘Hell- this kid must be in his forties now if he survived – and does he even know his father is dead?  Or maybe he was one of the mystery mourners at the funeral?   And is Marjorie still alive?’  I guessed this explained some of the entries in the cash books!

 

There was no escaping it now, I would have to take all this information to Ruth.  I could not possibly act alone, it would only store up trouble in the future.  Maybe I should tell her at Sarah’s, so her Mum could give her some extra support.  Oh boy, I knew this was going to be real difficult!

 

Just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse, they did.  I opened up the fourth box.  At first look it seemed to contain just a random collection of papers, including some newspaper cuttings.

 

I sorted it into two piles, one of the press cuttings and the second basically everything else.

 Grabbing myself a coffee to clear my head, I started to sort through the press cuttings, which came from various newspapers from across the US. The theme of each of them, though, was broadly the same: assaults and murders of young women.

 

 

Boston Daily Post:  15.2.1976

‘Yesterday the body of a young woman age around 25 was discovered on the bank of the boating lake in Dorchester Park.  First impressions are that she was struck from behind and then pushed into the water whilst still alive.  Further investigations are ongoing.  Anyone with any information….’

 

Ohio Times 1.8.1988

‘The body of a woman found yesterday in Cleveland Ohio was named today as Yolande Johanssen of Cleveland.  Police urge anyone with any information to….’

 

There were several other cuttings from national newspapers relating to these murders, as well as other local reports on attacks on young women, all of them whom had been attacked from behind and were unable to identify their attacker.

 

Of course by this time unspeakable suspicions were forming in my head – but I couldn’t believe what I was thinking – Hank was such a nice guy – but then, there was Hank’s weapon store, his mysterious business dealings, the large sums of money in his accounts – not to mention the business with Ruthie.

 

And so I read on.  Then I found the clincher.

 

Fort Lauderdale Daily Press 9.9.1988

 

MISSING WOMAN FOUND MURDERED

‘The body of Marjorie Kaufmann age 42 was discovered yesterday tangled in weeds in the stream that runs through Jackson Park.  She had been missing for five days.  An autopsy is taking place to establish cause of death, which is expected to relate to a wound at the back of her head.  At this point it is not possible to ascertain whether this was sustained before entry into the water.  Any information….’

 

I sat back in the chair and let out a long, low whistle, and said out loud:

 

‘I’ll be damned to hell! I’ll be fucking damned!’

 

This was definitely another bourbon moment.  I pushed aside the pot of coffee I had made a while back and reached for the bottle, poured myself a good slug and downed it in one, then poured another which I sipped as I pushed the press cuttings aside and started examining the remaining documents.  There were, as you would expect, deeds to the house, and other such  documents.

 

Amongst them was Marjorie’s Death Certificate, giving the cause of death as ‘loss of blood due to head injury’. Clipped to it was a copy of the Autopsy and Inquest reports.  The Autopsy had found that the injury was probably from a rock of uneven shape.  They were unable to determine whether this was caused by a fall or an attack by an unknown assailant, as the body had travelled down river before being caught under the bridge and the likely rock had not been found.  The Inquest had therefore returned an Open Verdict, and there were no other documents relating to her death, so I assumed no charges were ever brought.

 

However, now, on top of everything else I had read today, I knew I needed to get to the truth before facing Ruthie with what I suspected.  It was obvious I couldn’t spring it on her now, still grieving for Hank and about to meet her birth Mother in England.  So I decided to tell her I thought she should definitely go alone to meet Sarah at first, and get to know her new family, and maybe I could come out to be with her a week or two later, if all went well. I could say I had plenty to do here, sorting out Hank’s business and my own job.  And of course I would use the time alone to make further enquiries, and get my facts straight.

 

But – just how do you tell your wife her Daddy’s a murderer?

 

 

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