edge of exhaustion. The painkillers and marijuana magnified his fatigue.
There was still no Nora. He had been counting the steps until he could fall into bed, but Nora’s absence sent his adrenaline surging as for the first time he seriously considered the possibility that something had happened to her. Was it this sudden sense that she might be in danger—or worse—that caused him to now notice the note on the table in the foyer, or had it not previously been there? It was written in block letters:
MR. FRINGS—THIS IS TO INFORM YOU THAT WE HAVE NORA ASPEN. CEASE YOUR INVESTIGATIONS OR YOU WILL GET HER BACK IN PIECES. WE WILL KNOW IF YOU DISREGARD THIS INSTRUCTION.
Frings rubbed his eyes. She’d been abducted, no conditions for her release. Meeting the demands simply kept her alive. And the demands were vague. “Cease your investigations.” This could refer to any of a number of investigations that he was either actively pursuing or that were still open. But he knew that the message came, at least indirectly, from Red Henry.
He sat at the kitchen table with the note and thought about his options. The absence of a mechanism for getting her released troubled him. Was she going to be held indefinitely? She was a celebrity and would be missed not just by a small circle of friends and family, but by the public at large. What would be necessary to satisfy her captors that he had given up on his investigations? He sat with his elbows on the table and his hands supporting his head. He was exhausted and his lip burned, but his mind was clearing for the first time in a while. There was, he decided, no way of guaranteeing that following the demands in the note would lead to Nora’s safe return. Quite the reverse was true, he thought. They could not afford to let her go for fear that he would begin his inquiries again once she was safe. The only way to guarantee her safety was to acquire a bargaining tool himself, and the only way to do that was to continue to pursue Bernal’s leads.
This decision brought renewed urgency, and he put off sleep to examine the papers that Bernal had passed to him.
On the first sheet someone, probably Bernal, had written directions to Otto Samuelson’s place. He lived in a town called Freeman’s Gap, which Frings had heard of, somewhere in the hills outside the City.
The rest of the papers—twelve sheets in all—were ledgers with handwritten names and figures. This was what Bernal said he’d copied from the originals. It took a couple of minutes for Frings to figure out the layout, but then it was easy to follow. It was an accounting of money paid bimonthly by a group of individuals to four different accounts. Each sheet was titled “Navajo Project,” followed by the month. The pages covered the months from November of 1932 to October of 1933. The names of the individuals paying in were familiar from Puskis’s list: Samuelson, DeGraffenreid, Smithson, Acton, McAdam, and others. The money was paid to four accounts, labeled “St. Mark’s,” “All Souls’,” “St. Agnes’,” and “General Fund.” The amounts that each of the men was paying every month were staggering, often between eight hundred and fifteen hundred dollars. Incredible amounts. How could they be generating that much? The bulk of the money went to the General Fund, with a smaller portion designated for All Souls’, a still smaller portion for St. Mark’s, and a pittance to St. Agnes’. The dispersal seemed to be based on a percentage of the total amount paid each month.
Some hints were here. He knew of St. Mark’s and All Souls’—an orphanage and an asylum, respectively. The orphanage, in particular, was rumored to be squalid and neglected. These convicted killers seemed to be contributing money to these two institutions and another, St. Agnes’. But why? To what end? It was hard to imagine a label more vague than General Fund, and that most of the money was going into it made it particularly frustrating. But the amount of money was what was truly curious. How were these convicted murderers coming up with this kind of money? It was hard to figure, especially if they were out in the sticks like Freeman’s Gap.
Bernal had said that these papers and a meeting with Samuelson would give him the full picture. From what he had here, it did seem that an explanation from an insider would be revealing.