Scent of Murder

by James O. Born

  It was just chance that the first girl he picked was eighteen. She looked younger. But once he identified her, he stalked her quietly, using both the computer and his ability to blend in. He was all stealth and had learned a few tricks along the way. He realized no one had ever noticed him in his whole life, and now he was using that to his advantage. His father’s voice nagging him to do something with his life would fade. Maybe for only a few minutes, but it got out of his head.

  It had taken more than a month of constant surveillance for Junior to build up the courage to act. He had taken her as she walked home from a bus stop. It was so much easier than he thought it would be. He just waited in the right spot and stayed behind her. He kept her looking forward and used the simplest of blindfolds: a Carnival Cruise Lines sleep mask with a strip of duct tape to hold it in place. He had learned to make more effective blindfolds, but that one worked for his first try.

  He had never thought about hurting the girl physically. He had the Beretta with him and let her know, but it was purely to intimidate. He took her to a nearby wooded area he had scoped out, kept her there for more than an hour and a half, then left the girl, naked, not three miles from her house. He left her without clothes because he thought it would keep her from just running away as soon as he left. From reading the news accounts he wasn’t sure how long she had stayed, but it was clear the local cops had no idea who had done it.

  After that, his fantasy life improved so dramatically he didn’t think he’d ever have to risk grabbing another girl. But after many months the urge started to come over him again, and he realized it was pushing him to kidnap another girl. The risk never entered his mind.

  Along the way he discovered his own pattern, his cover, so to speak, by accident. But it was working. Now he had taken it all the way and felt the ultimate thrill. He had felt the power of life and death and had seen the look in Tina Tictin’s eyes as his hands slowly cut off any chance she would have of growing old. And he had found in in one day. Astounding.

  He wanted to capitalize on his good luck. He could still act, there was time. And if he did it right, he wouldn’t draw any attention to himself once again. But this time it was different. He had satisfied his needs with Tina and didn’t need to be rushed. He wanted to enjoy the chase as much its results.

  He’d been sitting in front of his computer and considering the incredible number of possibilities. It took some time to do the background and figure out ages and relationships, but computers were a wonderful thing and made his job that much easier.

  He found a candidate. An excellent candidate. He opened a browser and navigated to Facebook. The name wouldn’t have many matches. He typed in slowly “Swirsky Florida.” With the touch of a button he had a perfect photo of Michelle Swirsky posing with three friends at one of the local beaches. He smiled when he looked at her pretty face and saw that she was a cute, athletic-looking nineteen-year-old.

  This was going to be sweet. He felt a chill and a tweak to his vision that always meant something wild was going to happen.

  17

  Tim Hallett liked Sergeant Greene, but she’d made it perfectly clear that the detectives were driving the investigation and CAT was in support, no matter what someone’s prior experience may have been. Hallett couldn’t blame her. She had to show confidence in her own people. Sergeant Greene had an excellent reputation, and she was known for being tough. She had no problem explaining expectations clearly to other cops. It was one of the things about the profession that Hallett appreciated. Like anywhere else, there could be politics in a police agency, but on a one-to-one basis, most supervisors were pretty straight shooters.

  That didn’t make his current circumstances any less frustrating. It had been ten days, he wanted to get out there and stop this kidnapper. The sergeant didn’t want him interfering with an ongoing investigation. He had practiced developing patience over the last two years while he worked training Rocky as well as raising Josh. He wasn’t sure which was a more daunting challenge, but both jobs had taught Hallett that patience was truly a virtue.

  Hallett was hoping to demonstrate his newfound patience by not pestering John Fusco or Sergeant Greene about following up on Arnold Ludner. It had been more than a week since Fusco had told him he’d get his chance. Hallett could taste it. He’d made a couple of surreptitious passes by the former financial manager’s house, but had yet to see the man himself. Hallett had managed to see the wife twice and even one of the adult sons, but never Arnold Ludner.

  Hallett realized the delay probably had something to do with Fusco hoping to build a case. He understood that. The time he’d spent in the detective bureau had taught him the importance of exhausting every piece of evidence before confronting a suspect. He noticed patrol deputies didn’t usually have that patience. They liked to start things and wrap them up all in one shift if possible. The idea of leaving something hanging was unthinkable to a road patrol deputy. Hallett realized his time would come.

  As he and Rocky waited in the detective bureau for a new stack of leads, a shadow crossed over him and he looked up to see Sergeant Helen Greene.

  The sergeant took a moment to gather her thoughts. “I know what you must be going through with this whole Ludner situation. In reality, you shouldn’t be involved in the case in any way. But people tend to cut heroes slack.”

  Hallett just stared at her. No one in any position of power had ever referred to him as a hero, at least in respect to his dealings with Arnold Ludner.

  The sergeant continued. “That’s right, a lot of people admire what you did. But that doesn’t change the fact that you have to stick to the script. Fusco is the lead. He gets the chance to review all information. If you have any questions, you go to him.”

  “He’s a pompous ass.”

  “An ass that gets results. If you took a few minutes to sit back you’d see he’s a good teacher, too. He could impart a lot of good habits to your two young partners.”

  “So I’m just along for the ride?”

  “No, you’re here to do a job.” Sergeant Greene gave him an intense stare. She spoke a little louder. “A job I know you can do. You may have gone off on some crazy tangents once in a while when you were in the D-bureau and tried to make some wild-assed theories work, but you were a good detective. Rocky could come up with less emotional insights into the kidnapper. If it weren’t for your crazy theories, you might be considered one of the legends to come through the D-bureau.”

  “What crazy theories are you talking about?”

  She smiled. “The county commissioner who was supposedly running a loan shark operation.”

  Hallett tried to keep from smiling himself. “He was.”

  “It’s called a bank.”

  “He’s still a crook. Taking advantage of the poor people in the Glades.”

  She laughed. “Sometimes I think you’d make a better superhero than cop. You want to help the oppressed when our job is to serve and protect. Everyone.”

  “That’s—” He caught himself before he said any more. “I think I get it, Sarge.”

  “Oh, I doubt that. But you will. You will present information and theories to Fusco. You and Rocky will do the jobs assigned you. And you will not give me a reason to jerk your ass off this case or to doubt your judgment. We’re friends, but I have responsibilities. I can’t cut you any more slack.” She leveled a good scary glare at him and said, “Now, do you got it?”

  He gave her a weak smile as he nodded and raised his hands in surrender. “I got it. I’ll follow the rules this time.”

  * * *

  Claire liked how John Fusco tried to teach her some investigative tricks while they worked. He’d point out things written in reports and how they might relate to a prosecution later. She also realized that Fusco had gone to Sergeant Greene directly and asked for Claire to help. She was still assigned as a K-9, and that took precedence over anything else, but when she was not out on a lead with Smarty, she’d work in the office for Fusco, and he alway
s had something for her to do. A lot passed between them during the hours on the job.

  She could tell Fusco was frustrated because the case had stalled. Everyone in the detective bureau knew it, and now, apparently, the command staff knew it as well, because he had been assigned an unrelated aggravated assault. Fusco didn’t want the case to be put on a back burner until the kidnapper struck again and ruined some other girl’s life. Claire was getting insight into the detective and realized how much of his life revolved around his two young daughters. She was waiting for the right time to explain to Tim Hallett that he might’ve been wrong about John Fusco.

  Sure, Fusco was a little odd and definitely flashy, but when you got down to it, he was a decent guy.

  Claire was amazed at everything that went on in the D-bureau. The missing persons detectives were working on a dozen missing teenagers. Fusco was constantly checking with them to make sure none of the missing girls could be a victim of the kidnapper. He was already looking at every chunky, middle-aged man suspiciously. Hell, that description matched half the men employed by the sheriff’s office.

  Fusco said, “The real challenge of this job is to stop guys like this. Most mopes that commit aggravated assaults and robberies are crack heads or morons too lazy to work.” He paused and then added, “Sometimes I feel sorry for the downtrodden men and women we arrest because they just got nothing going for them. It’s the rare case like this that makes me feel like I’m earning my salary and the hefty pension all the politicians are bitching about now.”

  Claire didn’t mind his grandstanding. He somehow was able to make it very personal as he leaned in and said, “Like most cops, I feel a certain responsibility to the victims of violent crime. Not only do we owe it to Katie Ziegler to find this creep, but we definitely owe it to the next girl that might not be as lucky as her.”

  Sergeant Greene had done a great job of organizing the effort to question the registered sexual offenders in the area. There were still a few to talk to, and that asshole Arnold Ludner had yet to turn up. The son knew all the angles and had forced the sheriff’s office administrators to back off the efforts to interview him. Something his son had spouted had convinced them he wasn’t a viable suspect right now.

  Fusco had told her the worst thing that could happen to a cop was to let the frustration of the everyday job get to him or her. It manifested itself in a dozen ways, from indigestion to a constant state of irritability. Claire had already seen it destroy careers as well as family lives.

  Fusco had told her one way he avoided the frustration was to recall some of his good cases over the years. Like the two different times he had found missing kids while on patrol. His first year in the D-bureau he arrested a group of robbers who’d shot a gay bar patron in Lake Worth, then bragged about it. That led to one of the early uses of hate crime charges in addition to the assault charge. He even locked up a builder who’d bilked a million bucks from low-income families. But it was the open cases that absolutely haunted him. Like the asshole who assaulted a navy recruit at home on leave; the kid was paralyzed. Or the shithead who left a young mother in a coma after pouring poison into a tub of mayonnaise at a local sub shop. There was never any reason or suspect identified. He visited the woman at the long-term care facility once a year.

  As Claire and Fusco studied more reports, one of the younger property crimes detectives walked up to him and cleared his throat.

  Fusco looked up at him and said, “Whatchu got?”

  The young man held out a traffic ticket with a photograph of a pickup truck. “You might be interested in this.”

  Fusco looked closer and said, “Why would I be interested in a red-light camera ticket?”

  “This came to me in a roundabout way. The guy who owns the truck works in the garden department at Home Depot. He was at work the day this photograph was taken. I even saw his timesheet that showed him on the job from one P.M. to nine thirty P.M. and says he remembers finding some wires hanging loose under his steering wheel and thinks someone might have hotwired his truck that day.”

  “That seems like a lot of work to get out of a traffic ticket.” Fusco took a moment to check out the earnest young man’s face and said, “I don’t see what it has to do with me.”

  The young detective said, “I saw a flyer for a missing teenager. One of the information lines said the girl might have been seen getting into a brown Ford F-150. If you look at the camera date and time stamp, it’s the same day the girl disappeared. I heard you were working on the kidnapping case and thought this might be related.” The young man started to step away. “I didn’t mean to bother you.”

  Fusco reached up and snatched the photograph of the pickup truck.

  Claire immediately realized the implications of the photograph. The intersection at Lake Worth Road and U.S. 441 was not too far from where the girl was last seen. Then it clicked in her head how each girl that had been taken by the kidnapper had ridden in a different car. Maybe this wasn’t such a long shot after all.

  Fusco looked at the handsome young detective and said, “You did good. I’ll talk to the sergeant about having you assigned to the case.” Then he looked at Claire with a grin on his face. Not like he was happy, but the sort of expression a predator might have once he picked up the scent of prey. The look almost reminded her of Smarty before he was about to pounce on someone.

  Fusco said, “Maybe we can keep this young detective from the type of frustration we’ve been talking about?”

  18

  It was a short training session, late in the afternoon, when it felt like the temperature and humidity had sucked the life out of Tim Hallett as he tried to grip his pistol, which was loaded with simunition. The training bullet was simply a piece of colored soap, which fired through his actual duty weapon with a special barrel at a low velocity. It might sting a little bit, but it wouldn’t injure anyone participating in the training. Other people in the training scenario were using blanks, which didn’t fire a projectile but were very loud, like real bullets. The idea was to get the dogs used to noise and distractions.

  Tim Hallett dreaded a lot of the training all cops are forced to go through to keep their certification. Profiling, crimes against the elderly, and human diversity could be used as sleep-inducing agents if packaged right. Frankly, Hallett thought he should get a pass on the human diversity topic simply for the fact that he had lived with a black woman and had a biracial son. But that wasn’t how training worked. Not that he didn’t think crimes against the elderly were important, just like avoiding profiling, but he hoped most cops had enough common sense to not need the classes, which were usually nothing but jargon he would never have to use.

  Training with Rocky was another story. Anything to do with K-9 training was interesting to Hallett.

  Both Claire and Darren had been called off on other duties, but Hallett had used the training session as a chance to take a break and get perspective.

  Ruben Vasquez had walked him through two or three different scenarios where the dogs would find fugitives who turned out to be armed. So far, Hallett and a couple of dog handlers from the main K-9 unit had been effective drawing a weapon and firing into the heavily padded suits worn by the training aides. The suits weren’t designed to lessen the impact of the simunition—that wasn’t even necessary; the pad was to take a bite from the dogs.

  In this scenario, Hallett and Rocky were supposed to be tracking a fleeing armed robber. They moved quickly through a series of obstacles into the wide, wooded area behind the training field. Ruben hustled along right behind them, watching everything they did.

  Rocky was on the track, and after about two minutes they surprised the training suspect, who was hiding between two buildings in his thickly padded suit with a steel mesh mask over his face. Hallett saw he had a blue plastic gun in his right hand just as Rocky sprang onto the man’s chest, gripping the pad on his upper arm.

  Rocky seemed to know this was a game, too, but held on tight as Hallett drew his pistol and
said, “Police, don’t move,” as he had been trained to say every time he drew his pistol from its holster. Then he shouted, “Drop the gun.” He watched, but the training suspect still held the pistol in his hand. Hallett realized he was supposed to shoot in this scenario, but he didn’t want to risk hitting Rocky, even with the soap bullet.

  Behind him Ruben shouted, “Shoot. Shoot now.”

  Hallett still hesitated. Then Rocky lost his grip and slipped off the man’s chest and Hallett fired twice, striking the man dead center of his chest. The double tap was so clean that both pieces of simulation touched each other in a pink splotch on the padded suit.

  Ruben shouted, “Break. Clear.” He stepped forward and got right next to Hallett, leaning his face into Hallett’s like a drill sergeant in the army. “What the hell was that?”

  Hallett took a step back to regain his personal space as he holstered his pistol. “What was what?”

  “That suspect had a pistol. Why didn’t you shoot immediately?”

  Hallett hesitated, then said, “I was worried about hitting Rocky.”

  Ruben sighed in frustration. “Look, I know you love your dog. I love him, too. But don’t lose sight of the fact that he is a tool to protect you and the citizens of Florida. You don’t risk getting shot just to avoid shooting Rocky. Is that understood?”

  Hallett just stared at the dog trainer.

  This time Ruben raised his voice and said, “Is that understood?”

  Hallett nodded his head.

  “What exactly do you understand?”

  Hallett mumbled, “A police service dog is a tool for the officer.” It was a line from one of their training manuals. “Is that good enough for you?”

  “It is if you really believe it.”

  * * *

  Junior ate a sandwich while he waited outside the Palm Beach Community College, or whatever it was called now. Most of the community colleges had been converted to state colleges and offered bachelor’s degrees. He couldn’t figure out bureaucracy. The campus was too big to watch every building, but he knew her last class and had made an educated guess. It made him feel like God knowing what this girl would do before she did it.