Exposed

by C. M. Sutter

  After he returned to his new home in the woods, Max spent the afternoon cleaning the cabin. If he was going to stay for an extended period of time, it had to be decent enough to sleep in.

  Chapter 14

  Jack and I were expected. I saw a man who I assumed was Mr. French watching out the front window when we pulled into the driveway. This was the part of my job I liked least. We had no proof that Deborah was dead, but knowing the Sims family history made that possibility much more likely. Maybe the apple didn’t fall far from the tree after all.

  I tipped my head toward the house when Jack parked. “Mr. French is waiting for us.”

  Jack glanced at the man staring out the window. “Yeah, and he looks like he’s expecting the worst.”

  We exited the cruiser and took the sidewalk to the front door. The door opened before we had a chance to knock. The man on the other side extended his hand and welcomed us in. Lynn French stood behind him.

  “Officers, we haven’t officially met yet. I’m Bob French.”

  “Mr. French,” I said as I gave him a firm handshake, “I’m Sergeant Jade Monroe, and this is my partner, Detective Jack Steele.” Jack extended his hand too.

  “Please, come into the living room,” Lynn said as she led the way. “Coffee?”

  I looked at Jack and nodded. “That would be nice—black for both of us.” I didn’t want to start a discussion until Lynn returned, so I made small talk with Bob for the time being. “So, Bob, what do you do for work?”

  “I’m in machinery sales and travel quite a bit.”

  I smiled.

  Lynn returned to the living room with a tray, four cups, and a coffee carafe. “We take ours black too. Please, help yourself.”

  We did, and then Jack took the lead. “We have an update to share with you.”

  Mr. and Mrs. French grasped each other’s hand. Lynn looked as if she was holding her breath.

  “Unfortunately the home Deborah went to for her interview is owned by a reclusive, somewhat strange man. We don’t have any information about his personality or what his intentions were, but we do know that twenty years ago, his father murdered his mother and grandmother.”

  Lynn burst into tears. Bob cradled her in his arms.

  “Ma’am, as of right now, we have forensic evidence that Deborah was indeed in the house. Her fingerprints showed up on an empty glass, and the soda can next to it contained traces of Rohypnol.”

  “That son of a bitch.” Bob spat the words and held his head in his hands.

  “Why are Deborah’s prints in the system?” Jack asked.

  Lynn wiped her eyes and coughed into her fist. “She wanted to be a massage therapist and went to school for a year. To get a county license, she had to be fingerprinted. That was in Alabama. The rules are different up here, so she never pursued it.”

  “Understood.” I wrote that down. “We searched the property, and there’s no sign of this man or Deborah, but her car was found in the barn. There’s a statewide BOLO out for this man’s vehicle, but at the moment, that’s all we have. Do you own a second home or vacation property? Is there any place that he would insist she take him to hide out?”

  “No, nothing like that—this house is all we have. We’ve only lived in the area for a year, and that’s because of Bob’s job promotion. We had to move to Wisconsin. We should have stayed in Alabama, where Deborah was safe. It was our home and where all her closest friends lived.”

  Lynn began sobbing again, and I turned toward Jack. There was nothing more for us to tell them.

  “Ma’am, we’re going to do everything in our power to find this man and bring Deborah home to you safely. We’re so sorry this has happened to your family.” We stood and thanked her for the coffee. Jack and I shook their hands, said we’d be in touch, and left.

  “Damn, that never gets easier,” I said as we took the sidewalk back to the cruiser.

  We pulled into a drive-through restaurant on our way back to the station. We each ordered the same thing: a double cheeseburger, fries, and a chocolate shake. I jammed the straw into the hole in the lid of my decadent drink and sucked in a mouthful, then chomped on a handful of fries.

  “So, what are we supposed to do—sit around and wait?” I asked as I unwrapped Jack’s burger for him.

  “Thanks,” he said as he gripped the wrapper in his hand and took a bite. “What if we went to Boscobel?”

  “Why?” I bit into my burger and waited as Jack swallowed the handful of fries he’d just popped into his mouth.

  “To talk to the old man.”

  I smirked. “Do you really think that rat-bastard is going to tell us anything? Why would he squeal any information to us about Max and his possible whereabouts when he’s a lifer? There isn’t a deal on the table for Darryl.”

  “Don’t know. Maybe he’ll reveal something without even realizing it.”

  “Maybe. Let’s see what the boss thinks.”

  We jammed our fast-food wrappers in the bag, and I balled it up. At twenty feet, I launched the bag at the garbage receptacle outside the building’s entrance and scored. I held out my hand, and Jack punched knuckles with me.

  “You still have it going on, Monroe.”

  I grinned. “Ya think?”

  Inside, we exchanged our usual pleasantries with Jan and Peggy, then crossed into the bull pen. Clark was in his office and on the phone.

  We took our seats and checked phone calls and emails and filed paperwork while we waited. Clark finally pushed back the chair and exited his office. He ground his fists into his watering eyes and grumbled something about his springtime allergies.

  “What’s up, boss?”

  “Just got grilled by the mayor, but I guess I can feel his pain. He’s under the gun with the developer and the Swedish company to get the ball rolling on this multimillion-dollar project.”

  “What did he think about starting in the field away from the house?”

  “He said he’d get back to me. If the developer is okay with it, they’ll start breaking ground first thing in the morning.”

  I poured a round of coffee for all of us. “That’s good news. At least it will get everyone off your back. I think we need to find some recent pictures of Max and get his face on the news. That should help track him down.”

  “Not a bad idea, Monroe, but recent pictures? Who would have taken them?”

  “You’re probably right, boss, but I bet Marie can age enhance some older ones. Jack, you want to head out to the farm to see if we can find some old photo albums?”

  “Sure, we’ve got nothing else to go on.”

  “Hey, boss?”

  Clark turned my way. “Yeah?”

  “What do you think about interviewing Darryl Sims?”

  “Maybe at some point, but not yet. He has no incentive to tell us anything. Right now we need to focus on finding Deborah French.” Clark entered his office and took a seat. “Clayton and Billings are still at the farm. Have them give you a hand.”

  Jack nodded, and we left.

  We pulled into the Sims driveway fifteen minutes later and saw the flatbed loading Deborah’s car. Kyle and Dan approached us before they left.

  “Whatcha got?” I asked.

  “Same as before. Deborah’s prints inside the house. It’s obvious she wasn’t the one that put her car in the barn.”

  Jack smirked. “More like someone who’s six foot four?”

  “Exactly,” Kyle said. “The driver’s seat was pushed back as far as it goes.”

  “Okay, we’re going in the house to look for pictures of Max. We need to get his photo on the news.”

  “Good luck. The deputies are searching the house from top to bottom. You might want to ask them first if they saw any pictures. It might make things go a lot faster.”

  “Roger that,” Jack said. “We’ll catch up with you guys later.”

  Dan and Kyle climbed into the forensics van and left behind the flatbed truck.

  We walked inside and found a
handful of deputies still searching the house with Clayton and Billings.

  “Hey, guys, have any of you found pictures of Max anywhere?”

  “We haven’t,” Clayton said as he turned toward the others. “Anyone else?”

  The deputies responded that they hadn’t either.

  “So, what’s been searched so far?”

  Adam spoke up. “We’ve done a quick sweep of the entire house just looking for anything obvious lying around. Nobody has conducted a thorough search yet.”

  “Got it. Let’s focus on the living room and dining room. Everyone look for photos with people in the pictures, nothing else.”

  “Yes, Sergeant.”

  For the next hour, eight of us pulled out drawers, opened cabinets, looked under couch cushions, and rifled through every book on the shelves.

  “Who saves National Geographic magazines that date back years?” Billings asked.

  I chuckled. “Surprisingly a lot of people do. My question is, who in this house would have read that magazine?”

  “Um… these magazines go back to the early nineties, so maybe the mom and grandma.”

  “No kidding? Let me take a look.” I walked over to where Adam stood and stared at a wall of National Geographic magazines. “That’s really weird.” I sat on the floor and grabbed a random magazine. The cover showed the indigenous aborigines of Australia and was dated September 1994. The cover was interesting enough, but I didn’t want to get sidetracked from the task at hand. I fanned the pages, and something fell to the floor. I looked down and saw the back side of a Polaroid photograph. “What’s this?” I picked up the photograph and flipped it over. “What the hell? Take a look at this, guys.”

  Jack, Clayton, and Billings surrounded me. We stared at a picture of a young woman, likely in her twenties, lying nude in a wooded area. She appeared to be asleep.

  “Why would this picture be in a magazine? Is this Darryl’s wife?” Jack asked.

  “The age doesn’t fit. Everyone, over here—start going through these magazines,” I said. “Why didn’t we think of this before?”

  “What’s that?” Billings asked.

  “Look up Darryl’s case online. Clark said that trial was a media sensation back in the nineties. There have to be some pictures of Darryl, the murdered wife, and the grandma. Maybe there’s even a picture of Max somewhere.”

  “I’m on it, Jade.” Billings pulled out his cell phone, sat on a kitchen chair, and started his Internet search.

  “Sergeant, you’ll want to see this.”

  “What have you got, Lawrence?”

  “Another Polaroid of a sleeping nude woman.”

  “Shit. Billings, have you found anything yet?”

  “Working on it, boss.”

  Lawrence handed me the photograph. I compared it to the first Polaroid—they didn’t match. I wrung my hands, and the gerbil wheel in my head began spinning a million miles an hour. “Go through every single magazine and don’t miss anything. I have a feeling this is going to get a lot worse.”

  “Got it!” Billings pushed back the kitchen chair and stood. “Boss, bring those photos here under the light.”

  Jack, Clayton, and I stood at the table with Billings. We compared the photos to each other and to the picture of Mrs. Sims he found on the Internet in a newspaper article about the murders. The pictures didn’t match each other, and neither of them matched the newspaper photo of Mrs. Sims.

  “Was that guy some kind of pedophile too?” Clayton asked.

  “These women don’t look like they’re under eighteen, but there’s definitely something going on. They look staged.” I placed the photos side by side. “The poses are identical, and the women look to be lying in the same location.”

  “Boss,” Silver called out, “we found more pictures.”

  Jack thumbed his temples. “How do you want to do this, Jade?”

  “Let’s go through the magazines first and see how many photos we end up with. We’ll compare them as far as poses and location. I have no idea where to go from there. Were these women drunk or drugged and how do we identify them? We don’t even know where these pictures were taken or by whom.” The only thing I was sure of is we were going to find out.

  Chapter 15

  By the time we left the farm, we had twenty-three pictures of different women. We went through every magazine twice to make sure we found them all. Clayton and Billings loaded the magazines into the trunk of their cruiser and took them back to the station. We had no idea whether they held a particular significance and why the photos were placed inside them. We’d have to go through every one to make sure there weren’t messages or clues hidden within the pages.

  Billings found a picture of Max online in a different article about the murders. The image was grainy, considering it was from the nineties, plus it was in black and white. Billy said they might be able to sharpen it up with their software program. He’d let us know soon. We were in for a long night, so Clayton ordered three extra-large pizzas. I called Amber and told her I wouldn’t be home for dinner. She didn’t mind. She said she’d invite Kate over to share a rib eye steak with her. So those of us at the station would break at six o’clock, eat, and then dig back in.

  We congregated in the conference room with the Polaroids spread across the table. Clark pulled out the white board and stood it at the end of the room.

  “Okay, people, put your thinking caps on. What are these pictures about, are they important or significant to anything, why were they in the magazines, who are they, and where were they taken?”

  I started the brainstorming session. “Considering these are all Polaroid pictures, wouldn’t it be correct to say they were taken anywhere between 1990 and 2005? I don’t think anyone used Polaroid cameras at all after 2005. These days they’re almost considered collectibles. And now, everyone takes pictures with their cell phones, digital cameras, or professional film cameras. Obviously, we can’t pinpoint the era by clothing since all the women are nude.”

  “Maybe somebody was just into nude photography. They aren’t posed erotically, but they are all posed in a similar fashion,” Clayton said.

  Jack groaned. We all turned toward him.

  “Use your words, Steele,” Clark said.

  “What if each photo was placed in the magazine that corresponded with the month and year the picture was taken? We just pulled all of the pictures out.”

  I buried my face in my hands. “You’re probably right, Jack, but what does that mean?”

  “Who knows? We still have no idea who these women are, so I guess it’s a moot point.”

  “Wait a minute,” Adam said. “All of the pictures look like they were taken in the same location in the woods. The seasons change, and so do the trees. We can at least group the pictures according to the season. And notice,” he said, as he jabbed the photos with his index finger, “there aren’t any taken during the winter months.”

  “True. So, if those women were coherent and just posing as if they were sleeping, they certainly wouldn’t agree to lie in the snow naked. But some of these photos are when the trees are bare. That has to be early spring or late fall. It’s still awfully cold at that time. That means—”

  Clark interrupted. “They were either drugged or dead.”

  Billy knocked on the half-open door. Clark waved him in.

  “Show us something good, son,” Clark said.

  “I did the best I could, Lieutenant. Here’s what we’ve got.” Billy placed on the table the sharpened photograph they’d printed out from the newspaper article. He showed us what working a little magic could do. Even though Max was nineteen at the time, his facial features looked the same. His black hair twenty years ago was long and in a ponytail. Now being older, his hair was shorter and graying.

  “Is there any way you can change the length of his hair and give it a salt-and-pepper color?” I asked, hoping he could do it with the department’s software program.

  “Yeah, sure. I’ll be back in a
few.”

  The phone in the conference room rang. Jan said the lieutenant had a call from the mayor.

  “Go ahead and transfer it through, Jan,” Clark said. He put his hand over the receiver for a second. “Here we go.” Clark paced as the mayor spoke on the other end. “Uh-huh, yes, Mayor Gleason.” He paused as the mayor spoke. “Of course, absolutely, and I don’t think the house will be an issue anymore starting next week. Yes, that’s good news. I’ll keep you updated on our progress. Goodbye, sir.” Clark hung up and rolled his neck. “They’re breaking ground tomorrow morning, but the developer wants the house by next week. We have to make sure anything and everything that could lead us to Deborah French is out of there.”

  “What about these creepy photos, boss?” I asked.

  “We need to find out about them too. Tomorrow, we’re going to check the woods at the Sims property and see if there’s an area that looks like this place on the photos.”

  Jack shrugged. “Those photos go back at least ten years. There aren’t any trees that will still look the same.”

  “What about this white oak?” Clark tapped the tree on one of the Polaroids. “It’s in every photo, and oaks are slow-growing trees.”

  “That could work,” I said. “For now, let’s separate the photos into seasonal stacks and see what we get.”

  Billy returned with the newly enhanced picture of Max. Other than his face appearing younger, everything else was right on target.

  Clark handed the photo to me. “What do you think, Jade? You and Jack saw him last.”

  “I think it will work. Don’t you, Jack?”

  Jack studied the photo closely and nodded. “If we state his current age, height, and approximate weight, he’d be hard to miss if someone saw him out in public. I think we should get it on the news along with Deborah French’s information and photo.”

  Clark slapped his hands together. “All right, get every news station in southeast Wisconsin on the horn. These pictures and descriptions need to be on the ten o’clock news.”