Brodricksburg Pt. 02

The fear of being caught was being replaced by the fear that I wouldn't be able to get back to my car. I turned my fanny pack around so that I could open it. I got a bottle of water out and then looked to see if the small first aid kit that I usually carried was still in the bag. It was there. I don't know what I thought I would find in the kit that would help but I looked anyway. I found band-aids, a needle and thread, and two packets of ibuprofen. I took all four tablets and finished the bottle of water. I put the empty bottle back in the pack. I didn't want to leave anything behind. I untied my right shoe and pulled the laces as tight as I could and retied it. Finally I gave myself a little pep talk and prepared myself for the pain as I stood up.

The pain wasn't nearly as bad as I expected until I tried to put weight on it. Once again I almost screamed. I managed to start walking in spite of the pain. I was moving very slowly and I was worried that I might pass out but I kept going. After about ten minutes it wasn't as bad. I don't know if my body had just become numb to it or if the ibuprofen had helped. Maybe it was a bit of both. It still hurt like hell but I was able to walk. I wanted to sit down and rest about every five minutes but I knew if I did I would have a hard time getting started again. I had to just keep moving. The weeds and small trees that had not been a problem while walking toward Munt Street were a big problem on the way back. I could only use my flashlight where it wouldn't be seen from the houses I was walking behind so I frequently stepped on the side of a tree trunk with my right foot causing pain to shoot through my body like an electrical shock.

It took me almost three hours to walk back to my car. When I climbed in and closed the door I began to cry. I had never endured that much pain for that long a period of time before. The last three hours were like the worst nightmare of my life, but now I had another challenge. Trying to drive the car. I discovered a way to do it without using my right foot. I used cruise control to accelerate and maintain my speed and used my left foot for braking. I had to go slow and avoid the main roads where I might encounter a patrol car but I made it home.

The next obstacle was to climb two long flights of stairs to get up to my apartment. I wished that I could just sleep in the car but I knew I had to get up those stairs. I left the fanny pack in the car and hobbled over to the stairs. The hot poker was back with each step. I kept looking around hoping no one would see me and when I got to the stairs I sat down on the second step. Then using my left leg and my hands I was able to move backward up the stairs one step at a time.

I was drenched with sweat by the time I reached the top step. From there I literally crawled to my apartment door. Just being inside my apartment with the door closed made me feel better. I got back up on my feet or rather my left foot and I hopped into the kitchen. I got a plastic dishpan out from under the sink and emptied the contents of the icemaker in my freezer into the pan saving five ice cubes and putting them in a glass. I spent the next hour with my right foot on ice while I sipped Scotch.

*****

Morning With Pain

*****

I crawled into bed just after 2:30 AM. I don't know how I managed to sleep at all with the pain in my ankle because it was that pain that finally woke me up at 6:30 AM. I got up and hopped out to the kitchen and put the coffee on and I even manage to take a shower.

I was on my second cup of coffee when I picked up the phone and called Hanratty.

"Hello?" It was a woman who answered the phone. The voice was vaguely familiar but I couldn't place it.

"I am trying to get a hold of Richard Hanratty," I said.

"Rich is in the shower, Brian."

"Linda?"

Apparently Linda had spent the night with Hanratty. I didn't realize that they had moved that far in their relationship.

"Yep."

"Huh. Tell him to call me when he gets out of the shower please," I said.

"Okay, I'll tell him."

"Thanks."

Fifteen minutes later Hanratty called me. "What's up?"

"You're asking me what's up?" I said. "You've been holding out on me. Since when does Linda spend the night?"

"It's been about a month."

"Why didn't you say anything?"

"I felt guilty. I didn't want to brag about my love life when you were having problems with Carrie."

"I appreciate that but you don't have to pussy foot around me. I am happy for you."

"Thanks. So what can I do for you?"

"I need you to pick me up at my apartment as soon as you can." I said.

"Okay, I can be there in fifteen minutes. What's up?"

"I'll tell you when you get here. Just come up to the apartment, the door will be unlocked."

He was there in ten minutes.

"Jesus, what did you do to yourself?"

"I twisted my ankle yesterday."

"How?"

"I must have done it playing volleyball," I said. I hated lying to Hanratty but I couldn't tell anyone what really happened.

"Why didn't you call yesterday?"

"It wasn't this bad yesterday but it seems to have gotten a lot worse overnight. I need you to help me get downstairs and then drive me to the emergency room so I can have this checked out."

"Does Carrie know about this?"

"No, and I would rather she didn't."

"She won't hear it from me," Hanratty said.

*****

Overnight Activity Report

*****

I was lucky. The emergency room was just about empty when we got there. They took me right away. The ex-ray was negative. No broken bones, just a very bad sprain. The doctor told me to go back home and keep ice on it for the rest of the day and then I could use heat after that. He gave me a prescription for an anti-inflammatory and told me to get a pair of crutches.

Hanratty took me to the drug store to fill the prescription and pick up the crutches I needed. Afterward, Hanratty wanted to take me back to my apartment but I made him take me to the station.

The first thing I did was go over to Sergeant McKinstry. He looked me up and down and smiled at me.

"Christ, you'll do anything to get out of playing basketball against us," he said.

"Don't worry, Mike, I'll be ready before basketball season starts. You got last night's sheet?"

"Right here."

I took the overnight activity report back to my desk and sat down. I had already told Hanratty to hit the streets and make the run past the schools. I told him I was just going to finish up some paper work and go back home.

I took a quick look toward Captain Ross' office but he was not in. "Asshole," I said to myself.

It was on the second page of the activity report.

8:57 PM -- Report of a prowler outside 207 Munt Street.

Report called in by a passing motorist.

Two cars dispatched and arrived on scene at 9:07 PM. Prowler not found at scene. Occupants of the house were unaware of any problem.

Incident closed at 9:20 PM

Apparently I was in the clear. I found it strange that the report said that the call came from a passing motorist. I saw no cars other than Carrie's for more than thirty minutes before the two black and whites showed up. Was that a mistake? Unfortunately I couldn't go asking any questions about the call. There was only one thing I could do about it.

*****

A History Lesson

*****

I told McKinstry that I was going home and asked him to mark me out as ill. Then I went down to the garage and pick up my unmarked car. Using the same technique I did the night before with my own car, I managed to drive myself out to 207 Munt Street.

The Ford Ranger was parked in the same place at had been Sunday afternoon. I found that it was almost as difficult to get the crutches out of the car, as it was to get myself out of the car. After wrestling with the damned things for a few minutes I did manage to free them from the back seat. On my way to the door I noticed the "For Sale by Owner" sign was gone.

I only had to wait a short time for someone to answer my knock on the door. The man that opened the door was about five foot seven and maybe 155 pounds. He had silver hair that was cut short and was wearing Levis and a tee shirt.

"Can I help you?" he asked.

"I am Lt. Hobbs of the Brodricksburg Police Department and you are?"

"Nice to meet you, Lieutenant. I'm Frank Izzo."

We shook hands. "Mr. Izzo, I am here to follow up on the report of a prowler on your property we got last night. This is your property, isn't it?"

"Yes, this is mine but I really don't know what to tell you. I never saw the prowler and the officers that came last night didn't find one either."

"So you don't know who placed the call?"

"No."

"I thought possibly one of your neighbors may have called it in and may have mentioned it to you today. I would really like to get a description of the prowler if I could."

"If it was one of my neighbors, they haven't said anything to me about it. If anyone mentions it I can tell them to call you."

"That would be very helpful," I said and pulled a business card from my wallet and handed it to him.

"The officers that responded last night said that there was someone else in the house with you. Was that person also a resident of this house?"

"Oh, no. It was actually two other people," he said. "The woman - I think her first name was Carrie but I don't remember her last name - she was here when the police arrived and then Mr. Farlow arrived a few minutes later while the police were still here."

"Stephen Farlow, the real estate agent?" I asked.

"Yes."

"Did you sell this house?"

"Sort of. That's what they were here for last night."

"Why was the woman here?"

"She was a legal aid from the law firm handling this deal."

I wanted to keep this guy talking in hopes of picking up some more good information. Knowing that Carrie was there for work made me feel a lot better while at the same time making me feel pretty stupid for putting myself through all that pain for no good reason.

"You know, I passed here a few days ago and saw the for sale sign out front. I was thinking of stopping by for a look. I'm in a small apartment right now and this would have worked nicely for me. Can I ask what you got for the place?"

"It's not actually sold yet. Mr. Farlow put an option to buy on the house for a client of his."

"Option to buy?"

"Yeah. I never heard of that before either. I was trying to sell the place for $320,000. Mr. Farlow offered to give me $5,000 to take the house off the market for three months and then his client would either buy the place for an addition $315,000 or I could keep the $5,000 and put the house back on the market. I wasn't in that big a hurry to sell anyway so I took the offer. Last night I signed the papers and they gave me a check for the $5,000. I am actually not supposed to discuss this with anyone or I could nix the deal. I figured that since you're a cop it would be okay to tell you."

"I won't mention our conversation. Sounds like a good deal for you though. How much land is involved?" I asked.

"It's thirty acres. I own from the corner of Munt Street and River Road to about 150 feet the other side of the house and the rear of the property goes back almost 1,000 feet."

"You own the abandoned house up there?" I said as I pointed toward the house on the southwest corner of Munt and River Road.

"Yeah, that was my dad's house. I inherited it when he passed away about ten years ago. The house wasn't worth fixing up so I let it go."

"I suppose the client that's interested in this property wants to develop it."

"Well, good luck with that. This isn't much good for development."

"What do you mean?"

"Don't you know the story about that developer? What was his name? Ah... George Kasperek, that's it. I still have a pretty good memory."

"I never heard of George Kasperek," I said.

'He's the guy that bought all that land across the street. There's about 250 acres in there. He planned to build about two hundred high-end houses. All brick or stone, 4,000 square feet or more and each on at least half an acre wooded lot. He had all the permits and was ready to start building. He's the guy that paved that piece of the old J&J Railroad bed. That was going to be the main entrance to his subdivision. He was going to put up a big stonewall along Munt Street and at the entrance, in gold letters it would say, 'The Woods, a George Kasperek Development.' That was in 1999."

"That was before I moved back here. What happened?"

"The J&J Rail Road. Do you know the history behind the J&J?"

"No. I remember the rails being there when I was a kid but I really never knew much about it other that it was a passenger service from Brodricksburg to Philadelphia."

"The train ran through our property so I remember it quite well. It started back in the late thirties. I wasn't born yet but my father lived in that house up there back then. I was born in that house. We owned this property back then, before the J&J ran through it. When Franklin Roosevelt started the National Recovery Administration, or NRA, one of their projects was to improve rail connections between large cities and the smaller communities around them.

"To interest the railroads in participating, the federal government said that they would purchase a 250 foot wide right of way for the rail beds and lease the land for one dollar a year to anyone that would build and run the railway. Once the rail line was built, the company operating the line could use the approximately 100 feet of land on each side of the railroad for whatever they wanted to do.

"None of the big railroads were interested in building a line from Brodricksburg to Philly so J&J stepped in. Their railroad experience prior to that was building rails for coal mines. With WPA workers and government assistance, J&J was able to get the J&J Railroad built and running in two years.

"They did all right for a while but in the fifties, Pennsylvania Railroad saw an opportunity to make money on the passenger traffic between Brodricksburg and Philly.

The Pennsylvania Railroad already had tracks that came into Brodricksburg from back when the steel mill was still in operation. All they had to do was build a station and start running trains. Pennsylvania Railroad had the added advantage that they ran their passengers all the way into the city. J&J passengers had to change trains when they got to the main line so it wasn't long before J&J was in financial trouble. In the end they just walked away from the business in 1956.

"That brings us up to George Kasperek's problem. Like I said he was all ready to start building and had already started putting the road in so he could get the heavy equipment in there. That's when one of his lawyers found the problem with the title to the land Kasperek was about to build on. Everyone kind of assumed that the 250 foot railroad right of way reverted back to the original owners when J&J went belly up. What the lawyer found out was that in the lease agreement J&J signed with the NRA, there was a clause that stated that if the operator were to suspend operation of the railroad or go out of business the 250 foot right of way became the property of the NRA.

"Since making that discovery Kasperek and his lawyers have been trying to find out what department of the federal government now owns the land since NRA no longer exists. I read somewhere that the property owned by the NRA was now under the Department of the Interior and controlled by the people who run our national parks. If that's the case they will never get that land because you cannot buy park land from the Department of the Interior. Kasperek's lawyer seems to think it would be easy to get the government to move the land into a different department and then they could sell it. Kasperek's lawyer has been trying to find someone in the government that can help him ever since. I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for those bureaucrats in Washington to do anything.

"So the Woods is still the woods, only there ain't no houses over there," Mr. Izzo concluded.

"Does kind of make you wonder why anyone would want this land when there is a big hole in the middle of it," I said.

"That's what I was thinking too. They didn't tell me who their client was or why he is interested in this land so I didn't mention the J&J factor," Mr. Izzo said.

*****

Dinner Date

*****

On the drive home I was thinking about a lot of little pieces of information that were starting to form patterns but the patterns weren't clear enough to make any sense yet and I wasn't sure that they were of any importance. What did all this have to do with someone trying to destroy my marriage or how I was going to prove that Commissioner Buske was taking bribes or kickbacks from CSC?

By the time I got back into the apartment, my ankle was throbbing. I took one of the pills the doctor prescribed and put some ice in a plastic bag and strapped it to my ankle with an elastic bandage. Then I called the law offices of Mitchell and Horne and spoke to the receptionist and told her to ask Carrie to call me. I could have called her direct line but because of the restraining order I was playing it very carefully.

It was less that five minutes later that Carrie called me back.

"You wanted to talk to me?"

"Yeah. I need to cancel our dinner tonight."

"Really, why."

"Something came up and I have to take care of it tonight."

"You're not doing this to get even with me for the restraining order, are you?"

"No. I really wanted to have dinner with you tonight but like I said something came up."

"When can we get together?"

"I don't know."

"Can I call you tonight?" Carrie asked.

"Not too late, I have to get my beauty sleep."

"Sleeping won't help. I'll call around eight?"

"Okay."

I followed the doctor's instructions for the rest of the day, taking my medication and keeping ice on my foot. At 5:30 that afternoon, Hanratty called me.

"How's the ankle?" Hanratty asked.

"Still hurts like a son-of-a-bitch."

"What did you plan to do about your dinner?"

"I got a pizza in the freezer; I'll just heat that up," I said.

"You want me to pick you up in the morning?"

"No. I drove myself home today so I think I can get myself to the station in the morning."

At seven o'clock I was trying to get the plastic wrap off my frozen pizza when someone knocked on my door.

"I'll be right there," I called as I picked up one of my crutches and painfully made my way to the door.

When I opened the door, I was shocked to find Carrie standing there, holding a couple of grocery bags.

"Carrie?"

"Why didn't you tell me about your ankle?" she asked.

Before I could respond to her question, Carrie moved past me and walked over to my dining table and began to empty the grocery bags onto the table.

"What are you doing here?"

Carrie looked at me for a moment and then said. "Well, you couldn't come out for dinner so I brought dinner to you. I would have cooked the dinner myself but I didn't find out about your injury until six o'clock. I have a roasted chicken, mashed potatoes, green beans and a nice bottle of wine. Now, where can I find dinner plates and wine glasses?"

"In the cupboard next to the refrigerator."

I stood and watched as Carrie started putting the food on plates she found in one of the cupboard.

"You still didn't answer me. Why didn't you tell me about your ankle?"

"Because I knew what you would do."

"Oh? And just what did you think I would do?"

"Exactly what you are doing right now."

"What do you mean?"

"I knew that you would feel sorry for me and want to come over and take care of me," I said. "Who told you?"

"Is that important?"

"Hanratty is the only one who knew about my ankle and I told him not to tell you."

"Rich didn't tell me. Linda did."