by Jeff Buick
After a couple of hours in the Incident Room, Stacey leaned over and said to Bobby. “Did you open the file on Van Warner?”
“Not yet, I’ll do it now. Be back in an hour or so.”
“We’ll survive.” She looked back at the monitor, engrossed in the CCTV footage from the cameras near Jocelyn’s Starbucks.
Bobby started off down the hall, thinking that even though Hanna Van Warner had likely murdered Chelsea Tanner, she’d done it in Arizona. That meant the crime was out of his jurisdiction. What Orlando Homicide could pursue her for was kidnapping and transporting a minor across State lines. The feds would get involved at some point, but right now it was his case.
It took the better part of an hour to open an active file and populate it with all the relevant information. Bobby made it a standard practice to pull the land title history on all properties belonging to primary suspects, and signed onto the system. When he entered Van Warner’s address the response from land titles was fast.
“Ahh, shit.” Bobby slammed his fist on his desk and jumped up. “Damn it all to hell.” He printed the page and went looking for Stacey.
“LT,” he said. “Van Warner sold her house. The possession is today.”
She looked at the sheet of paper from land titles, her face creased with worry. “This was planned.”
“Yeah, it was.”
Things had just gotten a whole lot more dangerous for Molly Van Warner. “She’s checking out.”
“I think so,” Bobby said.
“You were going to search and see if she had a boat or plane. Anything come from that?”
“Nothing on the registration lists, but she could have bought a boat under a different name.”
“Get over there and see if she’s still around, handing over keys or something. If not, talk to the neighbors and see if they have any idea of where she is.”
Bobby jogged out to his car, but he already knew how this was going to play out. Van Warner would be nowhere in sight, and the neighbors clueless that she’d sold the house, let alone where she was off to. Still, it needed to be done. The drive took fifteen minutes, and when he approached there were three vehicles in the driveway. One was a top-end Lexus, and Bobby figured it to be the realtor’s car. She was sharply dressed and ushering a young couple onto the doorstep. They all turned to look when he pulled up at the curb, blocking the driveway.
“Orlando Homicide,” he said, holding up his badge. If he was going to have a crappy day, why make it any easier for anyone else. “Who are you people?”
The couple looked gobsmacked to see a murder cop standing on the driveway of their new house. Oh, my God, what have we done was written all over their faces. The realtor strode toward him and held out a business card.
“Nina Toulouse, ReMax. These are the new owners. What’s going on?”
“Well, I hate to ruin your walk-through, but this may be a crime scene. Have you been inside the house this morning?”
“No, we just arrived.”
“I do not want anyone going in the house at this point.”
She took an aggressive stance. “This is their residence. They are the owners and have every right to enter the house.”
Bobby couldn’t help grinning. There was something about dealing with people who felt they could tell him what to do that appealed to him. It appeared Nina Toulouse was going to make his day a bit brighter.
“All right,” he said. “You go ahead with your walk-through, then I arrest all three of you for entering a crime scene and have a judge slap a do-not-enter order on the address.” He waved at the house. “We’ll wrap the place in yellow tape and take our time processing it.”
Her stance changed. “And if we don’t do the walk-through?”
“I’ll get a forensics team down here and we’ll have a look at things. We should be done later today.”
“We’ll wait,” the man said.
“Was there a violent crime here?” his wife asked, upset at the possibility.
Bobby didn’t want to completely kill their new-home thrill. “I doubt anything bad happened in the house, but we need to check. It will go a lot faster if you give me a set of keys and text me your approval to enter.” He handed the realtor his business card.
The buyers nodded and the realtor handed over the keys. She checked his card and started texting.
“Who was the listing realtor?” Bobby asked.
“Allen Farraday.”
“Message him, say there’s a problem and he needs to get here immediately. He’s likely to call you—let it go to voice mail. Don’t send any more texts. I don’t want him to know what’s going on until he arrives. If he does, it will not go well for you.”
“I understand,” Nina said, already back on her phone.
“Call me later today and I’ll let you know when you can go in.”
Bobby opened the front door and stepped into the empty house. It was meticulously clean, but darker than he’d expected, the midday sun shielded by a thick band of trees. He walked into the kitchen, pulled out his phone and called the station to order a forensics team. Once the request was made he had a look around, then wandered out to the back yard and stood looking at the swimming pool and bathhouse. He made okay money as a cop, but this sort of place was forever out of his reach.
By the time the doorbell rang he’d been through the entire house a second time and found nothing of interest. A man in a golf shirt and shorts was standing on the stoop and not looking happy.
“Where’s Nina?” he asked.
“Are you Allen Farraday?” Bobby asked.
“Who the hell are you? Where’s Nina. What’s going on?”
Bobby slipped out his badge and held it up a few inches from Farraday’s face. “Detective Greco, Orlando Homicide.”
Farraday’s face went white. He didn’t say a word.
“Were you the listing agent on this house?”
“I was.”
“You met with Alyssa Vaughn over the course of the sale.” Bobby stated it as a fact that required confirmation.
Farraday was looking more scared now than confused. “Of course. She was my client. Listen, I need to know what’s going on.”
Bobby shook his head. “No, you don’t. You need to answer my questions. We can do that here, or at the station.”
“Here is fine.”
“Where was Vaughn moving to?”
Farraday shrugged. “No idea. I asked her on numerous occasions if I could refer her to a realtor where she was moving to, but she never bit on it. I even came right out and asked her one time where she was going, and she told me it was none of my business. Quote. Unquote.”
Bobby figured Farraday was telling the truth, as that was exactly what he would expect Hanna Van Warner to say. “When did you list the house?”
“Ten days ago.”
“What? The new owners are taking possession ten days after it went on the market?”
“Ms. Vaughn listed it $200,000 below market value to get the short possession. She had three higher offers, but took this one because they were willing to close so fast.”
“A realtor’s dream,” Bobby said.
“I’d like more of her.”
No, you wouldn’t.
“When was the last time you saw her?” Bobby asked.
“Yesterday, when I got the keys from her.”
“Was her daughter with her?”
“Yes.”
“Did Molly appear to be okay?”
Farraday went completely white. “Oh, my God. Did someone hurt her?”
“Was she okay?” Bobby repeated.
“Yes, she was fine.”
“What were they wearing? Shorts and shirts? Jeans and windbreakers?”
“Jeans and light coats. They were dressed for colder weather. I noticed that.” He seemed pleased with his input.
Bobby stepped outside as a forensics unit pulled into the driveway. “I need you to think really hard, Mr. Farraday. Was there ever anything
Vaughn said that could give us a clue to where she might be headed?”
Farraday watched wide-eyed as the CSI team came up the driveway with their gear.
“Concentrate,” Bobby said.
The realtor looked back at Bobby. “I overheard her on the phone once when I was in a different room taking measurements. She said something about Paris being expensive. I have no idea what she meant by that.”
Bobby handed him a card and the man reciprocated. “If you think of anything, and I mean anything, call me.”
Farraday nodded vigorously and legged it down the driveway, happy to get away. Bobby felt his phone vibrate as he turned to go into the house and he checked the caller ID. It was Marlene at the lab.
“Hi, Marlene,” he said. “What have you got?”
“Every marker I run is a match. I’m at 99% probability Molly Vaughn is Olivia Tanner.”
“That’s close enough for me,” Bobby said, the hair on his neck standing up at the news. “Thanks, Marlene, I owe you a huge favor.”
“And I’ll be collecting, Bobby.” She hung up.
“Hi guys,” he said to the CSI team filing past. “Place is spotless, doubt you’ll find anything but give it your best shot.”
Two of the techs were heading inside, but the third hung back and asked, “What are we looking for?”
“We have a missing kid, think the mom might have taken her.”
“Anything happen in the house? Are we looking for blood spatters?”
Bobby thought about that. “I doubt it. She probably just took the girl and left. See if there’s anything that might give us a clue where.”
“Got it.” She shouldered her bag and stepped into the house.
Bobby dialed Stacey Daniels’ number, and when she answered, he said, “Marlene has a 99% positive ID. It’s definitely the Tanner girl.”
“Okay, I’ll put out an APB on Van Warner. Unless, of course, she’s still at home waiting for us.”
“No one here.”
“Didn’t think so.”
“Forensics just showed up. I’ll hang around for a while and see if they find anything.”
“Okay.”
“One thing. The realtor who sold Van Warner’s house heard her say something about Paris and that they were dressed for cold weather. It might be nothing.”
“Or she might be moving to France. We’ll put a special watch on international flights to Europe.”
“Yeah, maybe,” he said. “My daughter told me Molly was learning to speak French.”
“Could be a possibility. We’re on it.”
The connection died and Bobby slipped his phone back in his pocket. Every cop in Florida would be looking for Van Warner once the All Points Bulletin hit the radio. That was the upside. The downside was that the woman had a shitload of money and likely knew they were onto her. A chameleon on the run was not going to be easy to find.
chapter ten
Bobby was itching to get back on the Buchanan file, but the Incident Room was fully staffed and they didn’t need him. Finding Hanna Van Warner was the new, hot priority and it had fallen squarely on his shoulders. Still, he couldn’t get his mind off how Cedric White was managing to fool them.
Both cases were getting personal. Van Warner because the murdering bitch had come so close to Sarah and Lizzie—Cedric White because Bobby refused to be beaten by a piece of shit like him. Things may have gotten a bit chaotic around the station, but Bobby and the rest of the team were still in control. The bad guys were not going to win. As reassuring as that was, something was eating at him.
Most times, homicide investigations were a complex collection of details that came together slowly to form a picture of what had happened. Hundreds of little things flew by so fast that even the best detective could miss one or two of them. The clues were there, buried under an avalanche of data, ready to be pulled out and filed with the other important details. And right now, Bobby had a churning feeling in his gut that he’d missed something on the Buchanan file.
He needed a change of focus, something to clear his mind, and put a call through to Annette Carter in Phoenix.
“Detective Greco,” she said instead of hello. “Got any news for me?”
“I do,” he said. “Our lab has definitive results on the DNA comparison.”
“And?”
“It’s the missing girl. It’s Olivia Tanner.”
There was a long silence, then Carter said, “At least she’s alive.” There was another pause, then she asked, “Do you have her?”
Bobby had a pretty good idea what was going through Carter’s head. Who took her? Where is she? What’s the girl like? And a hundred more questions.
“Not yet, but we’re working on finding her.” Bobby said. “She’s a really nice kid. My daughter knows her.”
There was some dead air, then, “Hard when it’s a kid.”
“The worst,” Bobby said. He was trying to picture Annette Carter and having trouble. She was all business, but soft on kids. Probably second guessing herself right now and wondering how this one had got away on them.
“The woman who took her, what’s her name?” Carter asked.
“Hanna Van Warner. Looks like she wanted a family and took a shortcut.”
“Hanna Van Warner.” Carter didn’t need to check her file. “She was never on our radar.”
“Probably no reason to be. We think she picked Chelsea Tanner simply because she was white and had an infant daughter. I’ll forward you all the details on her.”
The line was silent for a long while. “The family has been through hell. Keep me in the loop, I’d like nothing more than to bring her back here for murder.”
“Sure will.”
Bobby killed the call. Forensics was wrapping up and he waited by the door for the team lead. She shook her head as she approached.
“Tons of prints, but not much else. The place was professionally cleaned, they used bleach on almost everything. I wish my cleaners were this good.”
“No traces of blood?”
“None. We sprayed with Luminol once we were sure there was no other evidence to protect. Nothing.”
“Okay, thanks. Appreciate you guys getting out so quick.”
“Your lieutenant lit a match under our dispatch. Said there was a kid involved.”
“There is.” Bobby managed a smile. “Really hoping we’ll find her.”
She walked down the driveway and Bobby went back through the house. He let himself out the rear door and leaned against a planter by the pool. He needed to start thinking like Van Warner. The woman had an escape plan, there was no doubt about that. She was ego driven and not the kind of person to leave things to chance or rely on others. Her plan would be unilateral and slick, and that meant owning a plane or a boat. The plane was a long shot, she would need a pilot’s license and it would have to be in a different name which would be almost impossible. That left a boat.
Bobby opened the browser on his phone and signed onto the state website for registered vehicle searches. Chapter 328 of the Florida Statutes requires every owner to register their boat with a tax collector or a license plate agent, so if Van Warner purchased a boat, she would be in the system. The problem was, it could be registered under almost any name, and Bobby had already tried every conceivable form of Van Warner with no results.
Unless he searched by the name of the boat. Van Warner was one big, frothing can of ego, which meant she would pick a name that had relevance to her. What better than something from her high frequency trading days? Nothing, Bobby figured, and Googled high frequency trading on his phone. A ton of articles popped up and he started going through them. A lot of the same words kept coming up and he perched on a stone wall at the edge of the patio so he could jot them down.
Options, bots, algorithms, liquidity, sell order, profits, securities, front running, dark pool, ghost, milliseconds, data feed, quote stuffing.
The list was nearing a hundred when he decided to try them in the registry
. The first run through was unsuccessful, so he kept at it, entering all sorts of variations on the word and phrases. The battery on his phone was almost dead when he got a match. He jumped off the wall, staring at the name.
Frontrunner.
“Yes, yes, yes.” He pumped his arm and did a happy dance. “Got you, bitch.”
Bobby dug into the details on the registry. Someone named Aida Talbot had registered the luxury yacht, a Carver C52 Coupe, fourteen months ago after purchasing it in Georgia from the previous owner. All out of state title transfers had been properly filed and the yacht was registered in Tampa Bay. The previous owner’s name was on the transfer document and Bobby used the last of his battery to call the office and have them run a trace on Kenneth Ambrose, last known residence Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
Bobby’s phone died an inglorious death near the end of the call, and he tucked it into his pocket. He stared at the glasslike water in the pool as it reflected the bright white tufts of clouds drifting silently by. He sat still, imagining that he was rich and this was his life. Five minutes of insidious quiet was enough for him to start missing the rattle and hum of the station. He made his way back through the house and closed the door behind him, firmly convinced that he had no desire for that kind of existence. It was too sterile, too…nothing.
By the time he arrived at the station there was a contact number for Kenneth Ambrose waiting on his desk. He still lived in Myrtle Beach, at an address near the ocean. Bobby plugged in his cell and made the call from his landline. A man answered on the third ring.
“Kenneth Ambrose?” Bobby asked.
“Yes, who’s calling?” The man’s voice sounded old and tired.
“Detective Robert Greco, Orlando Homicide.”
There was the usual pause, then Ambrose asked, “What can I help you with?”
