When the Tiger Kills: A Cimarron/Melbourne Thriller: Book One

by Vanessa Prelatte

  “I've been thinking about that. She did not inherit what I considered at the time to be a substantial amount after my brother's death. But I was looking at it from my own perspective, which I realize now was a mistake. I received a considerable amount in a divorce settlement when my husband and I decided to part ways. Millions, in fact. What Monieque received seemed paltry in comparison to what I walked away with. I realize now that my vision was clouded by such comparisons. So in answer to your question, yes, Monieque did benefit from my brother's death. First, she was the beneficiary of a one hundred fifty thousand dollar life insurance policy. There was also a nice amount set aside in savings, and she was able to cash out my brother's retirement account as well. I don't know the figures for those, but I'm sure you can find out. As for the house, since they had quite a bit of equity in it and she was later able to sell it at a profit, she made out there as well. And as a widow with a dependent child, she got social security benefits on top of all that. In fact, once you put it all together, which I never stopped to do until just now, I wouldn't be surprised to find that Monieque profited by almost a million dollars as a result of my brother's death.”

  “Okay, Ms. Torrense. Now, I know that this might be difficult for you, but can you tell me about their relationship? Any indication that there was trouble between Monieque and your brother?”

  “Well, she and my brother were having a rough time about a year prior to his death, and for a while, he talked about divorcing her. They seemed to have patched things up, however, and appeared to be quite happy again at the time of his death.”

  Rafe glanced over at Dawn, who shook her head almost imperceptibly. “Thank you, Ms. Torrense.” Turning to Gwen, he said, “Ms. Mallinder, we haven't forgotten about your father. We've made arrangements to speak to the officer who investigated his accident, and we are going to take another look at the accident report. We'll keep digging into all three deaths, and we'll get back to you as soon as possible. Please be patient.”

  After rising and shaking hands all around, they left the hotel and got back into the car. On the way to Will Preisinger's apartment, Dawn commented, “Sounds like Monieque did better as a widow than she would have as a divorcee.”

  “I was just thinking the same thing. A lot of food for thought, but nothing solid yet. All that could change in an instant, though, once we get Jago Bolt back in town and into interview. Now, if we can just get as much information out of Will's family and friends, we should know Lee's identity shortly.”

  Standing in Will's apartment about an hour later, however, Rafe had to admit that he had been a little too sanguine in his expectations. Will Preisinger apparently preferred to keep his personal life private. A call to his widowed mother had netted them no leads. Will didn't like to talk about his romantic relationships, she'd stated. She knew nothing about whom he had been seeing lately.

  Mrs. Preisinger hadn't been inclined to talk much, and was off the phone in a hurry, stating that she was going to jump into her car immediately and drive as fast as she could to Mountpelier to get to her injured son's side. Since she lived in the city of Grand Junction in western Colorado, it would take her several hours to get to Mountpelier. In the meantime, they had been let inside Will's apartment by his roommate, Carl Brassner, a good-looking boy who reminded Rafe of a poster his father had once owned of a young Lou Gehrig.

  “Will isn't much of a talker, you know? We get along and everything, but we hang out with different groups of friends,” Carl stated. “Will runs track and spends a lot of time with his teammates. He's also way serious about his studies. Got some brains, Will does. He's pre-med, taking all those hard math and science courses and shit. Has a sweet schedule, though. Classes only Monday through Thursday. He's usually finished by noon on Thursday. No Friday classes. He spends a lot of time studying on campus in the library, though. Needs to keep his grades up. It's not easy to get into medical school, you know.”

  “What about weekends?” Dawn asked.

  Carl paused to take a sip from the bottle of soda he was holding before replying. “Like I said, Will usually spends a lot of time studying, even on weekends. But sometimes he takes a break, throws his camping stuff into his car, and disappears for a while. He just takes off, you know? He doesn't go into the details. Just, ‘See you Sunday night,’ and he's gone. Hey, what hospital is he in? I should probably get down there, be there when his mother gets in. She's okay, you know? Sends us care packages regularly. Always asks to talk to me when she calls to check in on Will.”

  “Who are Will's closest friends on the track team?” Dawn inquired.

  “Uh, that'd be Jupe Dunsinger and Hunt Farolle. But they're not here this weekend. Will mentioned that they were going fishing someplace up in Idaho.”

  “Do you know where they'll be staying?”

  “No, but you can reach them on their cells.”

  “Can you give us their numbers?”

  “No, but Will should have them saved on his phone.”

  “Unfortunately, Will's phone wasn't found on him or among his belongings.”

  “No shit? That's weird. Will always has his phone with him. What about his iPad? You could probably find some email addresses.”

  Dawn glanced at Rafe. There had been no sign of an iPad, either in the tent or in the car. Meanwhile, Carl was getting impatient.

  “Look, I've got to get going. I don't want Mrs. Preisinger to get there and find out that Will's all alone. Even if he isn't conscious, somebody ought to be with him.”

  “Mind if we stick around and look through Will's things? We might find something that will tell us more about the girl who was with him – Lee.”

  “No problem. Look around all you want.”

  A thorough search of the apartment, however, turned up nothing useful. In Will's room they found numerous textbooks and notebooks, sports equipment and clothing, but nothing much of a personal nature. The walls were decorated with posters of sports figures and cars, but there were no photographs, no letters. Everything of that nature, Dawn and Rafe concluded, must be on the missing cell phone and iPad.

  “When Mrs. Preisinger gets here, we can find out if she knows how to reach Jupe Dunsinger and Hunt Farolle. The University might be able to help us there too,” Dawn commented.

  “Getting around privacy laws will be a bitch, but we'll get a warrant if we have to. But it's not going to be easy, with all the offices closed for the weekend. What about high school buddies? Maybe Will's more forthcoming with them about his relationships than he is with his roommate. Mrs. Preisinger could help us there, maybe give us some names of his old friends from high school.”

  “I've been thinking, Rafe... the perp would have had to stalk them, follow them around, to know where they'd be this weekend. This was not a crime of opportunity. How did he target them? Where did he see them?”

  “Good point.” Rafe looked around the apartment one last time. “You know, if Will hadn't fought back, if he hadn't survived and let Dale Thrushton know he was pushed, if he hadn’t told him about Lee, what would have happened? Everyone would have assumed it was an accident. Nothing to suggest that anyone else was with him. No indications of a missing girl, so everything would have been less urgent. Looking for the car wouldn't have been as much of a priority. Weeks or months might have gone by before it was found. And what would the accident investigators have thought when they found the car, found Lee's things? Maybe that the two of them had had a fight, and she grabbed her things and took off in the car. That Will got drunk, maybe, went for a walk, got too close to the drop-off, and stumbled over the edge. Meanwhile, the girl's so upset from the fight that she isn't driving carefully and crashes the car. Afterward, she can't just call 911. There's a huge hole in the cell phone coverage for that area, remember. Park rangers have to use their radios to stay in touch. You had to use the Satphone to get in touch with Pete and Mattie. So what does the girl do? Gets out of the wrecked car and starts to walk. Might be dazed, hurt in the accident. Gets lost in th
e woods. That's what we were all supposed to think. It'd spin out in the media as a tragic, unfortunate accident. Dead boy, lost girl. That's how it would have been. No reason to call in Homicide.”

  They'd been on the way out to the car as Rafe speculated. Suddenly, Dawn stopped, stock still.

  “What?” Rafe said.

  “Something just occurred to me. Last year, at about this same time of year, I went up to visit my friend Desiree, remember?”

  “The one who lives up in Michigan? I remember. What about it?”

  “Well, there was a big story all over the news while I was there - about a couple of teenagers who went missing while they were hiking in the Porcupine Mountains. A few days later, they found the boy, dead, at the foot of a cliff. Accident, they figured. But Rafe? They never found the girl. They kept looking for her, showed her picture over and over again on the news. And here's the thing: from what I remember, she was a dead ringer for the girl in the photograph. Lee.”

  *****

  “You think we could have a serial killer on the loose.” Lieutenant Westbrooke's voice stayed cool and even, but Rafe could hear the disquiet underneath. The lieutenant had been on the point of leaving for a briefing with the Chief when they'd walked into her office, so she hadn't asked them to sit down. Standing six feet tall in her stocking feet, Lieutenant Westbrooke was the offspring of a Polynesian mother and African American father. Her first name was Moetua, but she was known to her friends and colleagues as “Moe.” When they were alone, Rafe, who had partnered with her on more than one occasion when they were both still in uniform, still addressed her by her nickname. Not when there were others present, though. Then it was “Lieutenant” or “LT.”

  Rafe met her eyes steadily as he responded to her statement. “It's beginning to look that way, LT. The cops who investigated the incident in Michigan were skeptical too, but they sent us a copy of the case file, and we're convinced that there are too many similarities between the two cases for it to be a coincidence.” He placed a photograph on her desk. “That's Tamara Norti, the missing girl from Michigan. And here's the photograph of our missing girl – Lee.”

  After scanning the photographs for a minute or two, the lieutenant looked up at Rafe and said, “I see what you mean. The two of them could be sisters, the resemblance is so strong,”

  Rafe nodded. “We began a search for like crimes. Turned up this one.” A third photograph was placed next to the other two. “Crystal Rogar, a student at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. She and her boyfriend went missing in the Chena River Recreational Area in early October of 2011. Neither of them has ever been seen again. Not quite as strong a resemblance as the other two, but still, same body type, same long, white-blonde hair.”

  “Have you contacted the local police?”

  Rafe nodded. “Again, the cops from the Missing Persons Unit who handled the case were skeptical about what we had to say. We haven't received the case file yet, but they've promised to send it.”

  “What's your next step?”

  This time it was Dawn who replied. “We'll keep searching for like crimes, try to see if there's any sort of pattern. Meanwhile, we've been talking about how the perp stalks and selects his victims. So far, besides the resemblance between the girls, an interest in the outdoors seems to be a prominent connection. So we talked to Will’s roommate again, asked him some questions, and he remembered that Will had mentioned that he was low on fuel for his camping stove, and he needed to stop and buy some more before he left town. We thought we'd canvass the local stores that sell camping supplies. Show the photos of Will and Lee around, see if they visited any of the stores recently. Find out if anyone noticed a man nearby taking too much of an interest in them. Also, we'd like to have a guard posted outside the entrance to Intensive Care at the hospital. Will can identify the perp. He may want to try to finish what he started.”

  Lieutenant Westbrooke nodded. “I'll see to it. In the meantime, if you're right, you're going to need some help. I'll free up Prentiss and Noritaki. They can help you run down some of the leads. But I want to emphasize something. She paused for a moment. “Right now, all we have is an attempted homicide and a possible kidnapping. The idea of a serial killer is pure supposition at this point. Keep a lid on it. The last thing we need is for the media to get a whiff of this. They'll go after it like a pack of jackals. I've scheduled a press conference for this afternoon. At that time, I'll be releasing Will's name. They already know that a young man was found unconscious at the foot of a cliff yesterday. I don't plan on announcing that he regained consciousness briefly or make any mention of the fact that there was someone called 'Lee' with him. Nor do I intend to announce the fact that we've found the car, or what we found inside.”

  “Lieutenant?”

  “You have a problem, Cimarron?”

  “Maybe we should mention that there is a missing girl, release the photo of Will and Lee. Somebody out there might recognize her. We could identify her that much more quickly.”

  “After reading your initial report, I considered that angle, Detective. Yes, it would probably help us to identify the girl sooner. However, it would also alert the perp to the fact that we know about her, that we're looking for her. If he thinks that we've bought the fact that what happened to Will was an accident, and we emphasize that Will is in a coma, with a poor chance of recovery, it might buy the girl a little more time, if she's still alive. He might cut his losses, kill her, and disappear if he suspects we're looking for her... and him.” She paused for another minute, but there was no argument from either Dawn or Rafe. “That's it, then. Let's get to it. Keep me posted.”

  Since it was on the way, they decided to swing by the hospital first. They found Carl Brassner in the Intensive Care waiting area. Mrs. Preisinger was in with Will when they arrived, but joined them in the waiting area when she learned that the detectives who were investigating the attack on Will wanted to speak to her.

  As soon as she saw them, she came rushing up to Dawn and Rafe. “Do you have any news? Any information about who did this to my boy?”

  “We're following all available leads, ma'am,” Rafe responded. “How's Will doing, Mrs. Preisinger?”

  “He's still in a coma. The doctors don't know when he'll come out of it. They say it's a miracle that he survived at all, considering the distance he fell. The rescue squad that brought him up told me they found indications that he was able to grab on to something about half way down – a little shelf that was projecting out the side of the cliff – and hold on with one hand for a few seconds. It was enough to break the fall, slow down the speed of his descent. They think that's how he dislocated his shoulder... I've been sitting with him as often as they'll let me.” Her voice broke and she blinked back tears, cleared her throat. “He's so still. I've never seen him this still, even in his sleep. I used to call him my little perpetual motion machine...”

  “Mrs. Preisinger...”

  “Call me Naomi. We're going to see a lot of each other, until the monster who attacked my son is caught and punished.” She paused for a moment, and seemed to recollect herself. “You told me on the phone that Will wasn't alone, that there was a girl with him, and that she is missing. Have you found her?”

  Dawn replied, “Not yet. We can't tell you much while the investigation is ongoing, Naomi. But anything you can think of that might assist us in identifying the girl would be a big help. So far, all we have is her first name – Lee.”

  Naomi shook her head. “Like I told you on the phone, Will doesn't talk much about his romantic relationships.” She smiled. “The first I knew about his high school girlfriend, Jackie, was when he asked her to the Junior Prom. Turned out they'd been seeing each other for over a year by that time. Will is a very... private person. I try to respect his privacy.”

  “Would Jackie have any idea about who Will is seeing now?”

  The smile faded from Naomi's face. She shook her head. “No. She broke up with Will in the middle of their senior year. Wil
l didn't say much about it, but I know he was hurt. He doesn't keep in touch with Jackie.”

  “What about his other friends from high school? Does he keep in touch with any of them?”

  Naomi considered. “He still keeps up with most of them. The only one I think he'd confide in, however, is Sam Lathmore. They've been friends since kindergarten. Sam might know.”

  “Do you know how to get in touch with Sam?”

  “Yes. I called him as soon as I heard about Will. He's away at school right now – Towson University, in Baltimore. He wanted to jump on a plane right away and come out here, but I persuaded him to wait until I have more news.”

  “Can you give us Sam's phone number?”

  “I can do better than that. I can get him on the phone for you right now. He's expecting a call from me, anyway.”

  *****

  If he'd been the type to tear his hair with frustration, Rafe reflected, he'd have pulled every last hair out of his head by now. The phone call to Sam Lathmore had been fruitless. Yes, he'd known that Will had been seeing a girl called Lee, but that's all he knew. Will had never mentioned her last name. Or anything else about her.

  “Time's running out for her. And we don't even have her full name. She might as well be a ghost.”

  Privately, Dawn couldn't help agreeing. Nevertheless, she kept her tone neutral as she said, “We're doing everything we can. Sooner or later, we're bound to turn up something. The lieutenant promised that she'd try to push through a warrant for the names of all female students with a first name that resembles 'Lee' who are currently attending Mountpelier U. Once we get the names, we'll run them down. Find out if any of them are missing.”