by A. E. Howe
I moved between them just in time to be knocked to the ground. Tony came with me, but his focus was on his wife to the point that he treated me like a piece of furniture that had gotten in his way, trying to propel himself up and over me and within reach of her. I tried to grab onto him, but caught only the edge of his shirt.
Tony was back up and moving toward Tracy when I saw Pete come thundering at him. Tony never saw Pete coming and Pete just crashed into him, taking Tony to the ground. Tony was completely out of control now and swung a fist at Pete, while Pete grabbled for him and tried to get the upper hand. Tony, we learned later, had some boxing experience, and when he landed a blow it had some power behind it. As I got to my knees, Tony managed to land a stiff uppercut to Pete’s jaw. The blow would have felled a weaker man, but Pete was tough.
Just as I was finally making some progress toward the pair, Pete threw up on Tony. And not just a little bit. A lot.
“Ahhhhhhh!” Tony screamed like a girl.
I instinctively stumbled backward. Pete looked awful and was still dry-heaving as he pulled his handcuffs from their holster at his side and managed to get them on Tony. Tony, for his part, was squealing and trying to get away. Pete cuffed Tony’s hands in front, which is strictly a no-no, but I figured we could take care of that before we put Tony in the car. I didn’t really think I should criticize Pete on his arrest technique at this point.
“I think I’m coming down with the flu,” Pete said, somewhat anticlimactically to the room. Tracy was laughing so hard I thought she might hurt herself. Tony, on the other hand, was cursing and sputtering on the floor.
“Get up,” I told Tony.
“What the hell? I’m going to sue you bastards. I’ve got to get this crap off me!” he screamed at me.
“Don’t worry. I’m going to clean you off before I put you in my car,” I told him. I ran through his Miranda rights while Tracy showed Pete to a bathroom where he could clean up.
Half an hour later we’d managed to wipe Tony off enough to put him in my car. He still hadn’t stopped cursing. It turned out that he and Tracy had spent the previous evening fighting so violently that the police were called twice. Tony and Tracy had mistakenly thought that we were doing a follow-up on the domestic dispute calls, assuming we were City of Calhoun police officers.
“The good news, Tony, is that this clears you in the Swamp Hacker murders.” He sputtered more foul language. I looked over at Pete, who was lying against the door. “I’m taking you home,” I told him.
“The girls had it last week,” Pete’s wife, Sarah, confirmed when I walked him to the door. “I told him he didn’t look good.” Sarah was one of the nicest people I’d ever met. I’ve never heard her say a bad thing about anyone, and she treated Pete like the world’s biggest teddy bear.
“Come on, you big lunk,” she told him. Pete just groaned. “Would you like to come in? I can fix you a sandwich,” she said, trying to lure me inside so she could be nice to me.
“No, thanks. I have cookies in the car. And I’ve got the guy we arrested. I probably shouldn’t leave him in there too long.”
“It’s not hot. He’ll be fine,” she said, completely straight-faced. Sarah had a very dry sense of humor.
It was a bit of a struggle to get away, but eventually Sarah let me leave after I promised to come by for dinner sometime soon.
I dropped Tony off at the jail and headed home. I spent the rest of the evening alternately writing up the report on Tony’s arrest, scratching an insistent Ivy and eating cookies. Not surprisingly, I had sugar-induced nightmares where Pete taught a class at the academy that involved fighting off attackers by throwing up on them.
The next morning, I headed for the office to look over Pete’s notes and come up with a game plan for the day. I wanted to re-interview Tom West and then tackle some of the names on Pete’s list.
My phone started playing “Cheeseburger in Paradise” when I was halfway to the office. “Pete, how are you feeling?” I asked.
“Did I really throw up on a suspect?” he moaned.
“Yes, you did. It was a beautiful role reversal. You stood up for law enforcement officers across our great nation when you barfed on him. You have become legend.”
“Yeah, thanks,” he said, laughing in spite of how bad he still felt. “Are you going to interview more Hacker suspects today?”
“I’m planning on it.”
“By yourself?”
“I thought I might ask Julio to go with me.”
“Why don’t you call Tolland?” Pete suggested.
I thought about it for a moment. “Not a bad idea. I’ll give him a call.”
“I’ve got a file of written notes on my desk, and I just emailed you my interview reports. I’ll try and make it in tomorrow.”
“Don’t worry, we’ll cover for you. Just rest.”
When I hung up with Pete, I called Tolland and he seemed eager to come over. He had two other investigators working on the leads in Leon County. He said he’d meet me at our office in an hour, giving me plenty of time to go over Pete’s files.
Tolland looked uncomfortable in the passenger seat. It had taken him a minute to accept that it made sense for me to drive since I knew the area better. To help him relax, I decided to pick his brain about the previous murders.
“Did you and Dad actually work together much on the original cases, or was it all just a matter of sharing information?”
“Mostly sharing information, just ’cause we both were busy. But I knew your dad before we were on the case together.”
“Really?”
“We went through the law enforcement academy together, and I worked my first two years as a policeman in Calhoun. Of course, your dad got on with the sheriff’s office, so we saw each other a bit during that time.”
I looked over at Tolland and tried to imagine him and my dad as rookies. It was hard to picture them as cadets fresh from the academy. I could only imagine how much they both had changed. It wasn’t just the nature of the work that beat you down, but also the constant politics of the job. Law enforcement officers are battered on all sides, which is why we tend to defend each other so fiercely. Who else is there to count on?
“I guess you could tell me some wild stories about Dad?” I prompted, hoping to get some good blackmail material to use against the old man the next time he got all high and mighty with me.
“Your dad? Ha! Honestly, most of the guys didn’t like him. Well, that’s a little rough. He was just a little too… righteous for most of the other guys. Which got him in trouble sometimes. He’d do what was right instead of following the letter of the law, or what was accepted as standard procedure by everyone else.”
“Both literally and figuratively, he sits on a high horse sometimes,” I grumbled.
“That sense of right and wrong is important in an officer. You know, you have a lot of discretionary power when you’re on the street. Knowing when to enforce the law and when to bend it is important. I had to learn it. Your dad had the concept down from day one. A couple of months after we both started, we rolled up separately to a fight at the Fast Mart. It pretty much broke up as soon as they saw us drive into the parking lot. We got the two guys who were fighting into my car, no problem. One of the bystanders was also a regular offender, always looking for anything he could smoke or snort. Gutter was his street name. Anyway, he didn’t have the sense that God gave a rock, and because he didn’t like the two guys who were fighting, he’d decided to hang around and make fun of them being arrested.
“Long story short, he was laughing and calling them names and at the same time pulling up his pants. Well, a small gem bag of drugs fell onto the ground right in front of your dad and me. Gutter looked at us like he’d just messed his pants, which he had, so to speak. I was waiting for your dad to grab him. Drug collars were looked on very favorably. But instead, Ted looked Gutter square in the eye, reached down, picked up the little bag and said, ‘You need to learn about a thing called Ka
rma. Laughing at other peoples’ misfortunes isn’t a nice thing to do. Now get out of here.’”
“Keep that to yourself. That story wouldn’t help Dad get reelected,” I said.
“Yeah, I was pretty disgusted at the time too. But not a month later, I learned it was Gutter who warned Ted about a little ambush some guys had set up for your father. So I don’t know if Gutter studied up on Karma or not, but after that Gutter became one of your dad’s go-to informants. Not that Gutter still didn’t get arrested from time to time, and not that your father wouldn’t do the arresting if he needed to, but there wasn’t a need to on that day at that time. That’s what took me years to learn. You have to learn when you need to arrest someone and when you don’t.”
We were getting close to our destination. “That’s the Southside Car Recycling Center. Also known as the Junkyard,” I said, pointing ahead. We were hoping to catch Tom West at work. “His alibi for the last killing was a prostitute by the name of Trixie. She verified that he visited her, but her drug habit is so bad that I doubt she can tell night from day, let alone what day of the week it was.”
It turned out that Tom was the manager. He came out of the back and pulled us outside.
“So now you come to my work! Can’t you bastards ever leave a guy alone?”
“Where were you Tuesday night?”
“I haven’t killed anyone. I’m not a murderer,” he growled, which was not an answer to my question.
“Just tell us where you were. And don’t say Trixie. I checked her out. You have great taste in women, but she’s lucky if she remembers what year it is,” I told him.
“I’m screwed. I was playing a game last night, online, but I’m guessing you all ain’t gonna take my login and game time information as proof of anything,” he said sullenly.
“You got that right,” Tolland said. He was standing back, letting me do most of the questioning, but, like my dad, his presence was hard to ignore. I noticed that West’s eyes kept drifting to the most authoritative figure among us, and that wasn’t me. I shifted closer and got between them, forcing West to focus on me.
“Do you have access to a van?” I put my hand up before he could answer. “This is very important. If you lie to us about this, we’re going to take that as evidence of your guilt.” He was rolling his eyes and shifting from foot to foot.
“And if I say I do? I know how this goes. You’re setting a damn trap. I go left, you go left. I go right, you go right. Whatever I do, I lose.” West was getting himself worked up, his breathing shallow. I swear I could see his heart pounding in his chest.
“Just calm down. We want to catch a killer. We aren’t here to screw with you. Take a minute. You got family?” I asked him.
This question caught him off guard, causing him to look at me and wonder if he’d heard right. “Family?”
“Do you have parents who are alive? Wife? Ex-wife?”
“I have my mom. Dad’s dead. Two ex-wives.”
“Hell, you’re a novice. I got four exes,” Tolland joked.
“Any kids?” I asked West.
“One. He’s all grown up. Let me guess, you want to see the van too.” He had calmed down a bit and was apparently not interested in engaging in small talk, which suited me.
“Where is it?”
“Out back. We use it for small deliveries.” He turned and headed around the side of the building.
The three of us trooped out back to a small gravel parking area. The van was white, older and pretty battered up. I walked around, trying to see it from different angles. We all curse eyewitnesses, and wonder why they can’t be more observant, but as soon as you’re walking in their shoes the anger turns to frustration with your own powers of observation and the fallibility of memory. It’s possible that this was the van we saw, but it seemed equally possible it wasn’t.
I took out my phone and took several pictures so that we could show them to any witnesses.
“Can we look inside?” I asked.
There was a pregnant pause that stretched out for a while, but then he nodded. “Go ahead.”
I opened up the double doors in back while Tolland went to the driver’s side door. The rear of the van was a large open space with metal shelves along both sides. I couldn’t have touched anything inside without getting my hand stained with grease. There were old motor parts, pieces of wire and tools lying all over the bed and stacked on the shelves. Along with all the other junk, there were fast food bags, plastic Coke bottles and beer cans scattered around.
I almost deleted the photos then and there. This couldn’t have been the van that the body was in. If someone had put a body in this van, it would have had grease and who knew what other stuff on it. Also, I don’t think it would be possible to take a body out of this van without leaving a small pile of junk behind.
“Do you have access to any other van?” I asked West. He seemed surprised that I wasn’t more interested in this one.
“No. Nope.” He shook his head.
“You don’t go to a church with a van you could use, or have a neighbor, friend or relative that has a van?”
“Damn it. I’m sure I know someone who has a van. Who doesn’t?” He was getting worked up again.
“Okay, fair point. Have you ever borrowed anyone else’s van?”
He actually paused to think about it. “No. Maybe years ago to move or something.”
“But not in the last couple of years? And remember what I said about lying.”
“I swear I haven’t borrowed any van in years.” He shook his head emphatically. Reluctantly, I believed him.
Chapter Twenty-Four
We left the Junkyard and headed to the first of Pete’s suspects.
“This next one is a guy who’s been in and out of jail. He’s on the sexual predator list, but he’s off of parole right now. Being out of jail and off parole is unusual for him. I figured it up, and he’s spent eighty percent of his adult life under correctional supervision.”
“Charmer.”
“Yep, Craig Leigh is the kind of guy who gives criminals a bad name.”
“I’m assuming he was out of jail when both sets of murders took place?” Tolland asked rhetorically.
“I think the only reason I don’t like him for these is that they aren’t cruel enough, and there doesn’t seem to be a sexual component. Both of which are hallmarks of his MO. He was caught committing a robbery ten years ago because he couldn’t resist fondling a customer in the store he was robbing.”
“Dirt bag,” Tolland spit out.
“Exactly. Not surprisingly, he can’t find a job so we should be able to find him at the halfway house he’s living in.”
“Aren’t they for people on parole?”
“He couldn’t find anywhere else to stay, so they’re letting him do work around the place for board. Honestly, if we can’t get him to move out of the county, it’s the second best option. He’s required to sign in and out, there are random drug tests and his room is subject to unannounced searches. Pete said the supervisor reported that Craig has followed all the rules, but does stay out pretty late sometimes. Since he doesn’t have a curfew, that’s not seen as a problem.”
“Does he have a car?”
“Not under his name. But he has access to a number of cars owned by family. He has two brothers and a sister and, according to the interview that Pete did with him, he’s borrowed cars and trucks from all of them.”
“You’d think they’d cut the scumbag off.”
“You would, but the rest of the family aren’t model citizens themselves. One of the brothers and the sister have had drug problems, and the other brother works as a rental property manager for the Thompsons.”
“’Nough said.”
“Four ex-wives? Or were you just saying that to make West feel better?” I asked Tolland, giving him a bit of whiplash with the subject change.
“I’ve the scars to prove it. Literal scars in the case of two of them.”
“That
must have made your life interesting.”
“Interesting like the Chinese curse. What can I say? I wasn’t lucky like your dad.”
“You knew Mom?”
“I did. I even saw you once or twice when you were small enough to still be carried around.”
“That was a few years ago.”
“Honestly, I say lucky, but your dad was smart. He met your mom and he never looked for anyone else.”
“I appreciate hearing that.” Especially after the way he was making eyes at my old babysitter, I thought.
“Being a cop or a deputy puts temptation in your face all the time. Not many take money or drugs, stuff like that, but more than a few take a little fun when it’s offered.”
“You ever take advantage?” I asked, not sure I wanted to hear the answer.
“Never when I was on duty. Though I won’t deny that I met a few women on duty who were willing to meet me off duty for a little fun. Trust me, I earned my four ex-wives.”
We pulled into a parking lot that served four duplexes. I’d called ahead and a man in a Jeep Cherokee stepped out when we pulled up.
“Manuel Marco,” he said, walking up to Tolland, who shook his hand.
“I’m Cedrick Tolland with the Leon County Sheriff’s Office. I’m just sitting in on the interview. Deputy Macklin is the lead on this case,” Tolland said, turning to me.
“Sorry,” Marco said. We shook hands, and he turned toward the duplexes. “If you’ll follow me. We have eight apartments with two to four residents in each. We’re lucky we have this. It’s not easy to find a place that is far enough away from schools and playgrounds that we can house someone on the sex offender list,” he said.
I cringed. I knew that released sex offenders had met their legal obligations and that some of them were convicted of offenses that should not have landed them on the list in the first place—like a teenager who took a picture of himself naked and was convicted of being in possession of child pornography. But some of those people were terrifying and were out of prison only because they were able to avoid the worse charges. Sometimes the laws protect the guilty.
