by A. E. Howe
“Alive, no thanks to you,” Pete told him.
“I didn’t know what to do. When I came up behind them, I seen the man go to swing this stubby bat, and I yelled as best I could. But I was too late. He hit her and turned on me. I thought he would kill me, but he just looked startled. He ran off.”
“Which way did he run?”
“Away from the bar through the vacant lot. I tried to help her. She could stand. Sort of. I told her she could come to my place and sit down. I don’t think she knew where she was. I took her and led her over to my house.”
I thought about how close Julio had been to stepping in when he saw Tonya in the yard. Ray must have been on the other side of her.
“When we got to my place, she sat down on the couch and then just fell over. There weren’t a lot of blood so I thought after she rested she’d be fine. But she never woke up. Still lying on my couch in the morning. I tried to clean her up, but her clothes were a mess.”
“You took her clothes off?” Pete asked.
“Yeah, but I didn’t touch nothin’. It wouldn’t have been right, with her sick like that.”
I believed him. “So why didn’t you call 911?”
“You all would have come in and beat me. I was more sober in the morning. Scared. I figured if she woke up on her own, I could explain things. She’d see that I’d helped her.”
Unlikely, I thought. “So what did you do?”
“I made up a bed in my back room. I was as careful as I could be getting her back there. I slid her on a blanket. Once I got her there, I did everything I could to make her comfortable. I tried to get her to drink some water, but she was gone. I started getting even more scared, thinking about someone coming to look for her. Then I remembered her car, so I went back up there and moved it.”
“Where is the car?”
“A metal shed near my house. I got the key. The guy who owns it lives up north, so I watch it for him,” Ray said. Who lets a drunk watch anything for him? I wondered. Of course, that wasn’t much of a riddle as the answer came to me almost instantly: Another drunk.
Ray went into another coughing fit. I held my breath. I wanted just a little more time with him. What could he tell us about the man who’d hit Tonya?
After he’d been given a little more water, Ray looked at Pete and me with eyes that wanted… what? Absolution? His breathing had become very labored.
“I can’t let you stay much longer,” the nurse said.
“Just a couple more questions,” I told him. Turning to Ray, I said, “You can still do something for Tonya. Help us find the man that did this.”
“She was so pretty,” he said, his eyes taking on a glassy look.
“Please, Ray, what kind of clothes was he wearing?”
“The son of a bitch was pretty tall,” Ray said. “Wearing? I don’t know. A coat. Dark.”
“Was the coat dark or are you talking about the light?”
“The coat was dark.”
“His face. You said he turned around. What did his face look like?”
“Funny,” Ray said dreamily.
“Funny how?”
“White, it was very white, and his eyes were sunken in like… Odd. I don’t know. Gloves, he had gloves on.”
“What kind?”
“Just gloves. Maybe work gloves.”
Ray’s wheezing turned to full-blown gasps. His arms started jerking around and the nurse ordered us out as he drew a syringe of something and administered it to Ray’s IV.
Pete and I left the ICU. “You believe him?” Pete asked.
“I do. He may be a drunk, but I think he was being honest. Oddly, he did save Tonya’s life.”
“Of course, he almost killed her by not calling 911.”
“I think his impending death is going to resolve that moral dilemma for us,” I said.
“What about this mystery man?”
“I think we need to put everything we’ve got into finding him.” I had a sinking feeling about that mystery man and there was only one person I could talk to about it. “I’m going to go find Shantel and tell her what Ray told us. I’ll meet you out front.”
I found Shantel sitting with Tonya. She came out when she saw me. “Tonya’s doing better, but the doctors think it might be a couple more days before she wakes up,” Shantel told me, anxiety on her face and hope in her eyes.
“We talked with Ray Emery. He’s dying.” I told her everything he’d told us.
“But…” She was speechless.
“We’re in a bind here. You found out something that you shouldn’t have. And because of that knowledge, we might have a very important lead on a serial killer.”
“I’ll go to the Leon County Sheriff’s Office and tell them. I’ve got to make sure that my friend is protected.”
“Actually, there’s a way that we can get around this without anyone falling on their swords. You’ll have to admit to your friend that you were snooping, but when you give him this lead and connect up his case with a potential witness, I think he’ll forgive you. Besides, anyone who knows you would expect you to snoop if you’re left unattended around a pile of case files.” I smiled at her.
“Thank you. That makes me feel better. I’ll call him now. I don’t want to be accused of sitting on this information,” Shantel said as she pulled her phone out of her jacket pocket.
“What I need from them is permission to tell Pete and my dad,” I said soberly.
“I understand.” She dialed and waited for an answer. “Hey, what’s up? I’ve got a confession to make.” She explained what she’d done and what had happened to Tonya, but then she got a funny expression on her face as she listened to the voice on the other line.
At the same time, my phone rang. When I answered, Pete told me a body had just been discovered in the woods by the county line. Shantel was still talking to her friend, but I could tell that they were having the same conversation.
“I’m going there now,” I told her, running out the door.
Chapter Twelve
By the time I got to the scene, half a dozen deputies from Leon County and Adams County were talking and shaking their heads on the outside of a streamer of crime scene tape stretching across the dirt road. As I got out of my car, I could see Pete’s large frame about fifty yards on the other side of the tape. He was talking to another suit, presumably the detective from the Leon County Sheriff’s Office who was leading their investigation.
The dirt road was raised and ran through a thousand acres of swamp that straddled the two counties. Here and there were areas high enough to hunt or grow pine trees, but most of it was swamp made up of cypress, sweetgum, magnolia and red maple.
I heard a vehicle coming down the road behind me and turned to see Dad’s truck, a plume of dust being thrown up behind it. He was out of the truck before the dust settled.
“Have you seen the body?” was his greeting to me.
“No, I just got here.”
“At least they’re keeping everyone back,” he said, though I knew he wanted nothing more than to walk down that road to take a look at the crime scene.
Dad looked around. “How close are we to the county line? Can’t be far.”
“Out here it’s hard to tell exactly where it is,” answered one of the Leon County deputies.
“Do you think it’s him?” I asked Dad, sure he’d know exactly who I meant.
“I hate to admit it, but I hope so. I want another chance to catch the bastard. I just found out that Leon County found a body a few weeks ago that might be related,” he told me.
My heart pounded in my chest. I wanted to tell him that I already knew, just to have my deception out on the table, but sometimes discretion is the better part of valor. “I’ll be interested to see the file,” was all I said.
Pete was heading our way. He walked very carefully along a designated track so that he didn’t disturb any evidence.
“The crime scene techs are going to film everything and cast the footpri
nts and tire tracks, then they’ll let everyone come in. Tolland said you can come take a look now if you want.” Pete directed this last comment to Dad.
“No, I’ll wait.” Dad hated to look like he had special privileges. He’d spent many years as a deputy and never considered himself better than anyone else.
Leon County’s crime scene techs had shown up first since their investigators had arrived before ours, and no one was exactly sure whose jurisdiction it was. But Dad had still called one of our teams out. Marcus pulled up in the crime scene van as we waited and watched the Leon County techs log and film everything.
“What do you want me to do?” Marcus asked.
“Right now, just watch,” Dad said.
Investigator Cedrick Tolland walked over to us. Tolland had been with the Leon County Sheriff’s Office for almost as long as Dad had been with Adams County. Tolland was tall and grizzled-looking. If you squinted you could see a slight resemblance to Clint Eastwood, which had earned him the nickname Dirty Harry. This was particularly funny since Tolland was known as one of the most easygoing guys in the department, always helping out stray dogs and the homeless. Some said he was a bit too easygoing with girlfriends and ex-wives that took unfair advantage of him. But he was also respected as one of the smartest and most successful investigators in Florida.
“Ted.” Tolland nodded to my father. “Rick.” Dad nodded back. They were the picture of two Old West lawmen with their laconic greetings and stoic expressions.
“How’s your boy doing?” Tolland asked Dad as though I wasn’t standing five feet away.
“You know kids,” was Dad’s answer.
“Trouble.”
“You got it.” They both glanced over at me with slight smiles on their faces, but their gazes quickly returned to the men and women working on the other side of the crime scene tape.
“Is it him?” Dad asked.
“I’d bet money on it,” Tolland responded.
“Who’s got jurisdiction on this one?” Dad asked.
“We’d have to get a surveyor in to know for sure. I say you take it. We got the first one.”
“We should form a joint task force and include the cold cases,” Dad said.
“We’re going to catch him this time.”
“Damn straight.”
I waved Pete over to a spot far enough away from everyone else that we wouldn’t be overheard.
“I think there is a chance that Tonya’s assault is connected,” I told him.
Pete thought about this. “It’s possible. But we shouldn’t jump to conclusions.”
“You’re right, we have to keep an open mind. But I’m pretty confident that Ray was telling the truth.”
“I agree about Ray. Now as to whether Tonya’s case is related to the Hacker… I see some of the similarities. Tonya was clubbed on the back of the head. All of the Hacker victims were taken, as far as we know, from Adams County. Most were in lower income neighborhoods or seedy parts of town. Have I missed anything else?”
“So far that’s all. But I’m thinking that if this victim was taken the same night, or even the next night after Tonya’s assault, that would be quite a coincidence.”
Pete nodded. “Tonya was his first choice, but Ray spooked him so he abandoned Tonya and found whoever this poor girl is. I can see that.”
“I think we need to tell Dad and Tolland about our suspicions.”
“Makes sense,” Pete agreed and we walked back over to the two crusty old lawmen.
When we finished telling them about Tonya, they both looked thoughtful. After a minute, Dad turned to Pete. “I want you to arrange a protection detail for Tonya.”
“We can help with that. After all, she’s in a Tallahassee hospital. If we have a live witness, we’ve got to keep her alive,” Tolland said.
“I think the old man saw more than she did, but the doctors don’t give him long,” I said.
“See if you can get the hospital to put them in the same ICU ward so we can protect both of them. And have someone notify us immediately if he regains consciousness. Maybe we’ll get lucky,” Dad said.
“Pete and I are going to scour the neighborhood behind the parking lot. He went in that direction. Probably doesn’t live there, so maybe someone saw him or his vehicle,” I told them.
“Last time around we assumed he drove a pickup. We got a couple casts from tires, but could never be sure if they were from his vehicle. Like this.” Tolland waved at the sandy road that had just enough clay in it to turn it orange. We hadn’t had rain in several days, and every time the wind blew, dust rose up off the road. “The roads were sandy and too many other vehicles had passed over them. Same here. There are a couple of houses out in the woods at the end of the road, so there’s been a fair amount of traffic.”
As if on cue, one of Leon County’s crime scene techs came over to Tolland and told him that they’d gotten everything they could off of the road.
Ten minutes later, a group of us was standing on the raised road, looking down at the body of a young white woman, partly hidden on a small elevated piece of ground surrounded by swampy water. She was lying face down, and I could see a series of hacks in her back.
There was a cruelty to these murders that made them especially hard to stomach. Serial killers murder for pleasure or out of some deep-seated violent impulse. What was the motive for the Zodiac murders? People always speculated, but no one knew. The Boston Strangler killed because of the neighbor’s dog? Who really knew? Serial killers are simply broken. Defective. What’s most frightening about them is that they can blend in and fool us into believing that they’re just like us.
Two forensic techs were with the body, taking pictures, body temperature, and going over the clothes with sticky tape to collect any evidence on her backside before they turned her over. No one had even seen her face yet. The killer didn’t remove any of the victims’ clothes, and he’d always left wallets and identification. Sex and profit didn’t seem to interest him.
I saw one of the techs reach into the victim’s coat pocket and remove a small coin purse. He opened it and took out a driver’s license.
“Dawn Hall,” he read. “She was twenty-two years old.” I thought that was all he was going to say, but then he added in a sad tone, “Her birthday is in two weeks.” The young tech put the license in an evidence bag before walking carefully through the mud and over to the road. Tolland reached down and took the bagged card.
“Like the rest of the victims, she’s from Adams County.” He handed the bag to Dad.
He looked at it and then turned to Pete and me. “You all may be onto something. Her address is near the Sweet Spot. It’s going to be interesting to see what kind of time frame Dr. Darzi gives us.”
“Why did you think he used a pickup truck for the earlier murders?” Pete asked. If we had a lead on the type of vehicle he used, it might be useful when we canvassed the area around the Sweet Spot and the victim’s home.
“We never found any fibers like the type you’d expect from the carpet and upholstery in a car.”
“Could have been a utility van,” Pete said.
“We thought about that, but the fact that he chose dirt roads in the back country to access his dump sites made a pickup truck more likely. Probably he just put the body in the bed of the truck and covered it up with a tarp or something,” Dad said.
“The sad thing is, we would have gotten further if he’d left DNA, but all he does is club them and then hack at them with a cleaver. Most likely he wears gloves. Maybe that’s why he’s only killed during the cooler months. So he can wear more clothes without being too suspicious,” Tolland added.
“Or sweating on the victims,” Pete said.
“Can we get a look at the old files?” I asked.
Dad gave me a look and I knew he wanted to make a snarky comment about me being a part-timer. Somehow he restrained himself, turning to Tolland and saying, “Pete’s going to be my lead investigator on this and Larry will assist him
.”
“Sounds good. I’m going to take the lead for our department. We’re making it a priority, so resources won’t be a problem, at least for a while. I’ll have copies of what we have available for you anytime,” he said to all of us.
“And I’ve got our original files on the cold cases,” Dad added. He turned to us. “When you’re done here, go check on her next of kin.” He gave me the bagged license and I used my phone to take a picture of it.
Pete and I walked up and down the dirt road, looking for any clues before giving the location of the body one more look. “We can let the techs finish up here. We should see if we can find her family,” I finally said.
“Guess we can’t put it off any longer,” Pete said reluctantly. We all hated to do next of kin notifications. “We’ll drop my car off at the office and go in yours.”
Pete liked me to drive so that he could text back and forth with his wife and daughters. I didn’t mind. It was better than having him fidgeting in the driver’s seat wanting to check the texts every time his phone buzzed, or worse, asking me to check them for him.
Chapter Thirteen
It was late afternoon by the time we got to Dawn’s house. I’d asked dispatch for a records check which showed that the house was owned by a Bruce Littleton. I had no idea if he was a relation of Dawn’s or if she rented the house. We knocked politely on the door, but there was no response. We knocked a little harder. Finally there were sounds of movement from inside.
When the door opened, a short man with spiked blond hair and an over-abundance of discount tattoos stood in the doorway looking annoyed. I immediately wished he could be our killer, but just by looking at him I could tell that he didn’t have the brains or the motivation. Plus, he would have been about eight years old when the first murders took place.
“Jesus, aren’t you two a little old to be Mormon missionaries?”
“Bruce?” Pete asked, moving his coat aside so the man could see his badge.
“He’s our landlord.”
“What’s your name?”
“Andy.”
We stared at him, waiting.
