Clipper thought. Ellen Davis was the on-call investigator, but she was just coming off vacation and wasn’t up to speed on the recent attacks. “Hold off on the on-call," he said. “I’ll be on the air in a couple of minutes, and I’ll head out that way.”
By the time Clipper ended the call, Janice had already signaled for the check, and three minutes later they were in Clipper’s truck, headed across town and listening to the police radio.
“764, Bangor. I’ve got the girl and her grandfather. They’re okay. We’re looking for a large adult male in a long trench coat and a dark watch cap. He apparently left the scene in an unknown vehicle.”
“Ten-four, 764. Detectives notified.”
Clipper reached for his microphone. “705, 765. Does the victim need medical attention?”
“765. No, she got away from him.”
“705. Bring her to the station, then. I’ll meet you there.”
Clipper drove back to his house to drop Janice off before turning towards the station. “Sorry, but I’ll probably be a while,” he said as he pulled into the driveway.
Janice brushed his lips with a kiss and smiled. “I should have hooked up with a plumber,” she said. “At least they have regular hours.” She slid down from the tall truck. “Oh, don’t forget Mr. Holland’s phone number.”
Clipper got to the Criminal Division to find Patrolman Caleb Cross waiting in the conference room with a scrawny old man and a pretty redheaded girl who looked to be in her late teens, holding an expensive-looking camera. He automatically noted the clean but worn clothing and overdue haircuts, as well as the tension in the room.
The girl sat quietly at the table, fiddling with the camera, but the old man stood chest to chest with Cross, shaking a gnarled finger in his face. His thin features were flushed under a cloud of long, unkempt hair that still showed traces of red.
“I want my rifle back right now,” he was saying. “You got no call to take it, ’n I got a right to defend my own.”
Cross took a step back. At six foot six and two hundred and eighty pounds, he was easily twice the size of the older man. “You’ll get your rifle back when you leave,” he said, smiling easily.
“Evening, folks,” said Clipper, smothering a grin as he stepped into the room. “My name is Tom Clipper. We’ve got a few questions and a little paperwork to do, so if you’ll take a seat, sir, I’ll get you out of here as quick as I can.”
The old man turned on Clipper. “If you’re runnin’ this show, Mister, you tell this youngster to get my rifle in here right now. You people can’t just take a man’s rifle.”
Clipper hardened his voice. “Right now, your rifle’s a piece of evidence in a criminal matter. When—or if—it gets released is completely up to me, and the only way you’re going to get it back is to shut up, sit down, and let us sort this thing out.”
The old man glanced from Cross to Clipper and then dropped into a chair, muttering under his breath.
“This is Mr. Otis Conroy,” said Cross, nodding at the man, “and his granddaughter, Madeline Mosier. She was threatened by an unknown assailant in the woods out by Six Mile Falls and called Mr. Conroy for help. When I got there, the assailant was gone, and Mr. Conroy had just arrived—with his 30-30 and a hunting knife.”
“Damn right, with my 30-30,” snarled Conroy. “Man’s got a right to defend his own, ’n if I'd a got that bastid in my sights, you wouldn’t have to hunt him down now. And I damn well better get that knife back, too.”
Clipper swallowed another smile. “Well, we don’t mind hunting down people like that; it’s what we get paid for,” he said. “Right now, I need to get a statement from Madeline. I’m sure Officer Cross here can find you a cup of coffee while you wait.”
Cross led Conroy out of the room, and Clipper shut the door and took a seat at the table across from the young woman.
“My name's Maddy,” she said, looking up from her camera. “Sorry about granddad. We’re pretty much all each other have in the world, and he tends to get a little protective.”
Clipper smiled. “Can’t say I blame him,” he said. “Sounds like you had quite a scare. Why don’t you tell me about it? Why were you out there in the first place?”
“I’m taking an AP course in photographic arts and I’m doing my final project on wild animals. Granddad told me there were deer out there, and I’ve been watching a little meadow for the past four afternoons. I was just getting the shot I needed when that creep showed up.”
As Maddy related her story, Clipper realized that she wasn’t scared at all. She was as angry as her grandfather. Her eyes blazed as she described her assailant. “The creep didn’t have any skin showing. He was a big guy, taller than you, and heavier, I think. He had a long coat, gloves and a hat, and I couldn't see his face. There was something over it, like a mask or maybe a stocking.”
“Did he say anything?
“No, but he didn’t have to. His intent was very clear.”
“Uh, today is Halloween,” Clipper ventured. “Is it possible—”
Maddy’s head shake was emphatic. “I know the difference between a trick-or-treater and a pervert,” she said.
“Tell me about his weapon.”
“It was about two feet long and round, like a piece of pipe, but not very thick. He was holding it like a club. I’ve kinda got a picture of it.” She held up her camera. As Clipper looked into the tiny view screen, she continued, “I don’t even remember taking the shot, and you can’t tell much, but that’s him just before I started to run.”
The blurry picture showed the right arm below the elbow, a black-gloved hand, and the edge of a long beige coat. The hand was gripping a round object that could well have been rebar.
Clipper picked up the phone. “I’m going to have one of my people download that photo, if you don’t mind,” he said. “The lab may be able to enhance it and get a little more detail.”
Moments later, Dave Adams ambled into the room and Maddy reluctantly turned her camera over. He grinned engagingly, recognizing her trepidation. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ve got one just like it. I’ll just download the pic and have it back in a flash. Oh,” he said over his shoulder, “the chief was looking for you earlier, LT.”
Clipper nodded, distracted. “Do you think you could identify this guy if you saw him again?” he asked Maddy.
“Oh, I’ll see him again,” she whispered. “I couldn’t see his face very well, but I’ll know him when I see him.” She looked up at Clipper. “I’m going to study every man I see until I find him,” she said flatly.
Recognizing the strength of the determination in her voice, Clipper held up a restraining hand. “You were lucky once and got away from him,” he said. “Hunting people like this is dangerous work. We’ve got the manpower—and, if necessary, the guns—and you and your grandfather need to let us do our job.”
Maddy shook her head. “Granddad was right,” she said. “We’ve got a right to defend ourselves. That animal was going to hurt me, and shooting him would be no different than shooting a rabid dog.”
Clipper sighed. “Tell me about your grandfather.”
“My mom and dad split up,” Maddy said, “and then my mother died. My father didn’t want me, so I went to live with granddad three years ago. He’s my mother’s father, and we live on his farm on outer Union Street.”
“Just the two of you?"
Maddy nodded. "My sister, Charlene is a senior at Maine. She lives in Brewer with her boyfriend."
“How old are you?”
“Seventeen. I’m graduating this year.” She stared at Clipper and shook her head. “Don’t worry,” she said, “Granddad will cool down, and I’m not stupid. But I’m still going to be looking for that creep.”
Clipper pushed back from the table. “Well, my advice is stay close to people for a while and if you do happen to spot him, for Pete’s sake, stay away from him and call me.” He took out a card and wrote on the back. “This is my cell. Call me any time, day
or night, okay?”
Maddy took the card and smiled for the first time. “Okay, I promise.”
When Clipper opened the door, Dave Adams was waiting with Maddy’s camera, and Caleb Cross and Otis Conroy were sitting with a battered Winchester ’94 rifle and a belt with a sheathed hunting knife on the table between them. The rifle's finish was mostly worn off, and condition of the stock spoke of years of long treks through heavy brush.
Clipper stepped over and picked up the rifle, expertly checking the spotless action and bore. “Nice old piece,” he said, offering it to Conroy. “You know, I don’t blame you for wanting to protect Maddy, but I’d take it as a personal favor if you’d leave this on the rack and let us do our job now.”
Conroy met Clipper’s gaze for a long moment, then gave a single grudging nod. He scooped up his belt and knife, grabbed the rifle and then held out a leathery hand, palm-up, to Cross. The large patrolman grinned, reached into his shirt pocket, and dropped five gleaming cartridges onto the outstretched palm.
As Cross escorted Conroy and Maddy out, Clipper turned to Adams, glancing at his watch. “What are you doing here this late?” he asked.
“I was just going over the Amburg and Rojas pics. Trying to spot any similarities.”
“Can you do anything with Maddy’s picture?”
The younger man shook his head. “I can sharpen it a little, maybe get some measurements. It does look like a piece of rebar but there isn’t much else there. I’ll tell you what, though—the other shots on that camera were terrific. That kid’s a great photographer.”
Chapter Nine
Janice Owens spent Thursday morning coordinating the final stage of the Historical Society's move out of its modest 1890's era house into the magnificent Gaylord Manor which had been left jointly to the Society and the City the prior year. While working out the transfer, Janice had uncovered evidence of a forty-year-old murder, which she and Clipper eventually solved, but which had caused the death of a close friend as well as the original killer, the last scion of the Gaylord Family.
Janice loved the elegant old mansion and grounds, but she still could not enter the building without a depressing sense of its tortured ghosts. The former owner's will had mandated that the mansion be maintained as a museum to showcase the city's past, and Janice and her volunteers had worked hard to ensure that it would be open to the public by early spring.
By late morning, Janice was able to relax for a moment at her desk in the elegant second floor sitting room which, along with two large former bedrooms, comprised the Society's office space. Although she had faced death in this room six months before, Janice already felt at home in her new office. She dug out the phone number Clipper had remembered to give her the night before and reached for her phone.
"Hello."
"Good morning, Mister Holland. My name is Janice Owens. I'm sure you don't remember me, but we met at your son's gun shop last summer when my boyfriend was buying a new pistol."
"Sure I remember. I just spoke to Lieutenant Clipper the other day. What can I do for you?"
Janice explained her veteran’s memorial project, summing up with, “I can get an architect to design the physical memorial, but I'm more interested in finding out what's important to the veterans themselves and finding a way to build that into it. I'm looking for a consultant, I guess. Someone who knows the military and can speak for veterans.”
“Well, I know the military and I guess I can at least speak for one veteran. Why don't you drop by the house tomorrow morning and we'll talk?”
“Great, I’ll see you about nine o’clock.”
After getting directions to Holland's house, Janice hung up and turned back to the stack of correspondence on her desk.
Clipper spent most of his morning trying to assimilate all of the follow-up information that was beginning to flow from the three assault investigations. He was reviewing the University PD's material on the Rojas attack and thinking about lunch when Chief Norris strode into his office.
"I was looking for you yesterday afternoon," Norris said.
"Sorry, I was out cruising the last murder scene. What do you need?"
"I don't like the tone of your budget memo, and I want it rewritten before the package goes to City Hall."
Clipper snorted. "That's not tone," he said, "that's facts. Put the numbers on a spreadsheet, if you want, but however you do it, the bottom line's going to be the same."
Apparently deciding the battle wasn't worth fighting, Norris grimaced and changed the subject. "The City Manager called about a burglary at Allison Drew's house. Apparently she's quite upset at our response."
Clipper sighed. Allison Drew was a feisty city councilor, often critical of the police department, who lived alone in Little City, a once exclusive neighborhood of older homes on the east side which had undergone a spate of similar burglaries in the past month. The burglar's MO was to enter at night through unlocked windows, with no apparent regard as to whether or not the house was occupied, and take nothing but cash and small electronics. Allen Oaks and Ellen Davis were working a total of seven similar cases. He had already assigned them the Drew burglary as a high priority, even though there was virtually nothing to go on.
"I assigned the case to Oaks and Davis,” he told Norris. “She should be contacted this morning."
Norris grunted. "Good, but I want you to give her a call personally." He turned to leave at Clipper's impatient nod, but then paused at the door. "I didn't see an arrest report for that lunatic with a hunting rifle last night," he said.
Clipper shook his head. "There was no arrest, because there was no crime committed," he said.
Norris slammed a pudgy fist into the door frame. "Damn it, Lieutenant, I won't have any more of these vigilantes in this city!" Bangor had faced a rough time the previous summer, with an arms dealer operating under the guise of a civilian militia, and the chief had not responded well to the violence. "You see people with guns in public, I want them arrested. No exceptions! And that's a direct order," he flung back over his shoulder as he stormed out of the room.
Given the fact that Maine was an open carry state, Clipper was still grappling with the absurdity of the order when John Peters slipped into the room. "We're going to be damn busy, ’specially when deer season starts," he observed, apparently having overheard the chief’s tirade.
Clipper shook his head tiredly. "Maybe I could get him to put in writing," he mused. "We could frame it and hang it beside the Constitution in the lobby."
With his appetite suddenly gone, Clipper headed down to the basement firing range and drew fifty rounds of .45 ammo from the stash he kept in a locker. He ran once through a modified close-combat course with his Kimber and felt marginally better at the resulting ragged cluster torn in the center of the silhouette target. He sat at a bench and meticulously cleaned the weapon, happy to be out of his office for the moment.
That afternoon, Clipper called Allison Drew and endured a lengthy tirade which touched on everything from the possibility of illegal immigrants as suspects to dire predictions of innocent people being slaughtered in their beds if the department didn't start doing its job.
The Councilwoman ended with a blatant threat: "I think it's past time your department had some professional oversight," she said. "I'm going to propose a steering committee made up of business people and attorneys, to see if we can't get a grip on the outrageous crime rates in this city."
Clipper grimaced; they’d had this discussion before. "Ma'am," he said, trying to inject a tactful tone into his voice, "the State Constitution ensures that we get our oversight from the Attorney General, the State Prosecutors, and the courts. We are certainly willing to listen to suggestions from the community, but ours is a pretty specialized business."
"Then why haven't you caught this burglar? Why did you let him get into my house?"
When Clipper finally got off the phone, he consciously unclenched his jaw as he went to find Ellen Davis. "You and Allen need to spend a litt
le extra time on the Drew burglary," he said. “She's on the warpath again."
Davis grinned. "We'll give her the full treatment." Then, sobering: "We were also thinking we should spend some time at night in Little City. These things all seem to be going down after midnight."
"Okay. Narrow down times and days of the week, and I'll see about some help from patrol."
Clipper was back at his desk, halfway through the current stack of follow-up and clearance reports piled there, when Nelson Miller tapped on the door. "Got a minute, Lieutenant?"
Clipper waved him in, and Miller entered with another man and made the introductions. "Lieutenant Thomas Clipper, this is Sonia Rojas’s father. Sergeant Ramon Rojas, of the Socorro County, New Mexico Sheriff's Office."
Like his daughter, Rojas was slender and fit. Although he appeared to be in his late forties, his longish hair still matched the jet black of his eyes, and his deeply tanned skin was taut over prominent cheek bones.
"Welcome to Maine, Sergeant," Clipper said, rising and reaching for the outstretched hand. "I'm sorry about the circumstances; have you seen your daughter yet?"
Rojas nodded. "We were just at the hospital," he said. "They think she will wake up soon." He fixed Clipper with a piercing stare. "Sergeant Miller tells me you have a suspect."
Clipper hesitated, suddenly aware of the rage barely held in check by the other man. "We are looking at a man as a possible suspect in a similar attack here in Bangor," he said slowly, "but we have no evidence to tie him to your daughter's attack."
“I understand the attacks were very similar and the weapons were identical.”
“That’s true, but we really don’t have much on him specifically at this point other than the fact that he’s a sleaze and our victim worked for him.”
Rojas smiled and seemed to gather himself. "I'm sorry," he said. "Hard to stop being a cop. I know you don't need my help, but I would appreciate it if you would keep me in the loop."
Past Master Page 6
