Ronald James Doddridge
A powerful note. Unfortunately we could not run it word for word, not while the case was still open. And even though the coroner had rendered his expert judgment, the police would take their good time-six months or more- before officially proclaiming that Doddridge took his life without undue or illegal interference of another person or party. So for her Thursday story Aubrey had to paraphrase:
Doddridge out for smoke night Rev. Wing poisoned
HANNAWA -Before putting a pistol to his head last Thursday, Heaven Bound Cathedral security guard Ronald “Ronny” Doddridge wrote a note apologizing for taking an unauthorized cigarette break the night the Rev. Buddy Wing was fatally poisoned.
According to sources close to the police investigation, the note was addressed directly to Wing and began with the salutation, “Dear pastor.”
SEE NOTE PAGE A9
It was another good story. Having encountered Ronny Doddridge herself, on those two occasions, she was able to describe his appearance and mannerisms to a tee. She talked to his neighbors again about his daily habits, getting a measure of his friendliness. “He was something of a loner,” said the woman who lived across the street, “but when you waved at him he’d always wave back.”
Aubrey also talked to the eyebrow woman, who confirmed, off the record of course, that Doddridge, like herself, was indeed a secret smoker.
Aubrey also talked to Guthrie Gates.
Well, Gates had to talk to her, didn’t he? The security guard at his church had not only killed himself, he’d also pried open two old cans of worms: Buddy Wing’s murder and the rift between Buddy and Tim Bandicoot.
Aubrey interviewed Gates on the phone, long after I’d gone home for the day, so I have no way of knowing exactly what she asked him. But given his answers, she had clearly asked him what he thought Ronny Doddridge meant by “when the devils came back to get you.”
“We preach belief in a literal devil,” she quoted Gates as saying, “though I can’t say by the note whether Ronny was speaking literally or metaphorically. But there’s no doubt Pastor Wing’s murderer was possessed by the devil in some way. I only wish I’d known brother Ronny was hurting so.”
Before work on Thursday morning, I met Aubrey at Ike’s. We got our coffee and tea to go and walked up to the reading garden at the main library. We sat across from the pink metal monstrosity by the famed Cincinnati sculptor Donald Raintree Tubb, a blindfolded pig gleefully riding a bicycle made entirely of sausage links. “So, are we still buying the suicide note?” I asked.
“I think we are,” she said. “The handwriting comparisons and the motive all seem to add up.”
I sucked a tiny of taste of tea through the slit in the plastic lid on my paper cup. “Then assuming the note is legit-what exactly does it tell us?”
Aubrey had been staring at the pig on the bicycle. Now she turned her face toward me, the breeze off empty Central Avenue plastering her loose red hair across her eyes. “You read my story, right? When I asked Gates what he thought when the devils came back to get you meant, he immediately reduced it to one devil. But Ronny had said devils.”
“You think Ronny meant real devils?”
“Real human devils. Devils that came back-meaning they’d been there before.”
“Let me guess-the devils who’d been there before are Tim Bandicoot and his followers, the ones who pooh- poohed Buddy’s talking in tongues.”
“That would be my guess.”
“And you think Doddridge knew that for sure?”
“No way of knowing. But Ronny Doddridge wasn’t as dumb as he looked.”
No he wasn’t. Aubrey’s story on him had surprised me totally. Ronny Doddridge wasn’t just some poor sap in the church who needed a job. For fourteen years, he’d been a deputy sheriff in Mineral County, West Virginia. Six months after he was forced to resign for repeatedly drinking beer in his patrol car, Buddy Wing brought him to Hannawa as the Heaven Bound Cathedral’s first security guard. Ronny was the nephew of Buddy’s dead wife. But there was apparently more to it than family obligation. Buddy hired him just five months before the very public flap that sent Tim Bandicoot and two hundred members of his flock off to that abandoned Woolworth’s store on Lutheran Hill. Buddy Wing knew there was going to be trouble and wanted someone loyal, and maybe experienced with a gun, to watch his back.
Aubrey showed me her watch. It was almost ten. We left the bicycling pig and headed up the hill toward the Herald-Union. “It just doesn’t make any sense,” I said. “Why would Doddridge kill himself if he was onto something? Wouldn’t he take what he knew to the police? Or Guthrie Gates? Or you? Why would he just scribble that cryptic little hint about devils coming back and then shoot himself in the head?”
“Overwrought with guilt?” she ventured.
“Not so overwrought to leave a big hint,” I said.
Aubrey put her arm around me, like I was a silly child. “You really don’t think he killed himself, do you?”
“I don’t know what I think,” I said. Then I promptly told her exactly what I thought: “The real killer has already framed Sissy James. But now you’re about to prove her innocent. That will mean an all-out investigation by a police department with egg on its face. So the killer kills again, preemptively pointing the police in the wrong direction, toward someone in Tim Bandicoot’s church. The killer has already scattered some new evidence around probably, just like he did with Sissy-probably.”
Aubrey laughed. “My oh my. Aren’t you the super sleuth.”
“You don’t think it’s possible?”
“I think it’s possible.”
We stopped at Central and North Smiley and waited for the WALK sign. I used the opportunity to slide out from under Aubrey’s arm. We were only a block from the paper and the last thing I wanted was for one of my many enemies in the newsroom to catch me being palsy-walsy with a reporter. To protect one’s image, one must be always vigilant.
We reached the paper and used the street entrance, something employees rarely do. We greeted Al Tosi, the day security man at the desk, and rode the elevator to the newsroom. “So what’s on your agenda?” I asked Aubrey before we went our separate ways.
Alec Tinker’s voice ambushed us. “Ladies!”
“Ladies?” Aubrey shrieked playfully. “Someone’s not reading their sexual harassment handbook.”
He pressed his palms together prayerfully and bowed apologetically.
“Or the religious practices handbook,” I added.
He told us that Tim Bandicoot and Guthrie Gates were coming in at one, together, to discuss Aubrey’s investigation. “And you’re invited, too, Maddy.”
“Good gravy,” I said, “why am I invited?”
The meeting was held in Bob Averill’s office on the fifth floor. It’s a long, sterile office, huge round window at one end, display case filled with old Underwood typewriters at the other. The gray walls in between are lined with a century’s worth of important front pages: the Japanese surrender, men walking on the moon, the Kennedy assassination, the violent UAW strike of 1958 (which my Lawrence covered), the 1908 school fire that killed forty- two children, a couple dozen pages in all. Bob doesn’t have a desk, just a glass-top coffee table circled by comfortable leather chairs. The coffee table that afternoon held what it always holds: the most recent edition of the paper, neatly folded, and an aloe plant in a green ceramic bowl.
Tim Bandicoot and Guthrie Gates were already sitting when Aubrey and I arrived. So was Tinker. So was Bob. We sat down quickly and nodded pleasantly to everyone.
I never felt so out of place in my life. Bob was wearing an expensive suit about the same shade as his walls. Tinker had worn one of his better suits for the occasion, dark blue with red pinstripes, meaning he knew that Gates and Bandicoot were coming in at least a day in advance, while only giving us three hours’ warning. The two evangelists, usually resplendent in white double-breasted suits with wide zig-zaggy neckties, were both dressed in charcoal. Aubrey, for her part, was wearing a snug pair of faded jeans and a sleeveless red blouse. I was wearing
