Fatally Bound

by Roger Stelljes

  “I don’t know that there are, but I’ll try to find out.”

  The tech grimaced, “There are lots of ways out of this area. If he was smart, he’d avoid the monitored areas.”

  Mac nodded, “He is smart.”

  “So what is our time window here?” Wire asked. “He takes the key from the car at 2:56 P.M.”

  “To know our window, we need to know if our guy comes back. Run the tape.”

  The tech fast forwarded through the tape. “Stop it there,” Wire ordered. It had been fifty minutes.

  A man, not in a hooded sweatshirt, approached the Audi. He walked around the car, but then a woman appeared with him and it appeared they were simply looking at and discussing the car.

  “It is a car that will draw some attention,” Wire remarked.

  “More importantly, the color also makes it very easy to tail from a long way back,” Mac observed.

  The tech started the video again. There was little activity for another forty-five minutes until the hooded sweatshirt man returned, this time coming from the right. He quickly ducked down behind the driver’s side of the car. A few seconds later, he popped up and walked back to the right. The time in the upper right corner of the surveillance video said 5:03 P.M. The tech checked the next camera to the right. Again, they were able to track the man back to the white sedan, again parked far away from the mall, towards the far outer reaches of the parking lot. Other than a white sedan that looked like it may have been a Toyota, Honda or Hyundai, they could get no more.

  “He takes the key at 2:56 and he’s back at 5:03. So he left, got a key made, and was back basically within two hours,” Mac noted as he took out his phone.

  “What are you doing?” Wire asked.

  “Web search for hardware stores in the area. I doubt he had the tools to make a key in that car. If he did, he would have been back sooner.”

  “He went and got a key made.”

  “Yes, and where else do you get keys made quickly but hardware stores? My search comes up with seven possible, with three very nearby.” To Wente, Mac said, “We need pictures made of this guy. You can’t tell much about him but it might be enough to spark a memory, and we need some men to help us go around to these stores.”

  “I’m on it,” Wente said, cell phone out.

  In the late afternoon, Mac and Wire started their canvas of the three hardware stores closest to the mall. They struck out at the first two. Detective Wente corralled another detective to take the other four stores and they struck out at the first two as well. The third was J.J. Atlantic Hardware out on Forest Avenue. Mac and Wire walked up to the front desk to a woman holding a clipboard, “Can you point me to the store manager?” Mac asked.

  “That’s me, honey, Ginny White, what can I do for you?”

  Mac and Wire identified themselves.

  “Feds, huh? You sure don’t look like Feds.”

  “What do Feds look like usually?” Dara asked.

  “You know, dark suits, ties, sunglasses, self-important yet boring. You two have the sunglasses, sure, but you’re wearing jeans and dressed all casual. It’s like you’re too cool for school.”

  “Well, that’s because we are, plus, we’re special and helping on a specific investigation,” Mac answered, smiling. “So we don’t have to wear the federal uniform.”

  “Is it about that Donahue girl and that Reaper killer?”

  Mac nodded and then got down to business. “Ginny, tell me, do you know if you cut any keys between 3:00 P.M. and 5:00 P.M. a week ago Sunday?”

  “Well let’s go take a look,” the manager answered, waving them back to her cramped office in the back. She sat down at her computer and maneuvered her mouse around. “Take a seat,” she offered, which they both did. “You said between 3:00 and 5:00 P.M.?”

  “That’s right,” Mac answered.

  “As I look through our sales, we cut nine keys that day and … we cut two between 3:00 and 5:00 P.M.”

  “What were the times?” Mac asked.

  “One was rung up at 3:42 P.M. and the other was at 4:48 P.M.”

  Mac looked to Wire, “Has to be the 3:42 one, right?”

  Dara nodded, looking to the security monitor in the back corner that was split with four cameras. “Two questions, Ginny. Do any of the cameras focus on the area where keys are cut?”

  Ginny pointed to the upper right corner of the screen, “That one is focused on the back hallway for the store where we have the counter where people get keys cut. What’s the second?”

  “How far back do you keep your surveillance footage?”

  Ginny smiled, “One month,” she answered as she made some more mouse clicks on her computer. She pulled up the surveillance footage of the back hallway of the store for eight days ago. She forwarded to 3:10 P.M. and let it run. Mac and Wire walked around behind her desk and looked over White’s shoulder. At 3:18, a man with a hooded sweatshirt approached the back counter.

  “There he is,” Mac exclaimed. “That’s our guy.”

  “He’s a big guy,” Ginny noted. “Given the height of that counter, I’d say he’s 6’3”, at least.”

  “And big, thick and muscular,” Wire noted, looking at the man in a light-color hooded sweatshirt, baseball cap and wearing sunglasses with a beard. He was well disguised.

  “You can see it in his shoulders, he’s wired,” Mac observed, which drew a look from Dara. “No pun intended, partner. He’s just kind of twitchy and fidgety.”

  “Because he’s on a clock,” Dara remarked. “He has to get back in time. He probably doesn’t know which movie she went to.”

  “God damnit though, he’s keeping his head down or looking straight ahead or turning his back to the camera,” Mac complained. “He knows the camera is there and he’s being careful.”

  “It’s no secret it’s there,” Ginny pointed out. “The black ball is hanging from the ceiling and is easy to see and intentionally so. We want people to think twice.”

  It took ten minutes to cut the key. The hooded man paid with cash. He turned toward the camera but with his head tilted down so that you could only make out the bottom of his bearded face beneath his baseball cap and sunglasses. He walked out of view.

  “Just past the camera, there’s a back door,” Ginny reported. She pulled up the other store cameras for that same time period but they were unable to get another look at the man. They had Ginny save the video footage and e-mail it to Detective Wente. Wire was on the phone with him, saying they’d meet him back at the police station. Ginny also took a screen shot of their best look at the man. She e-mailed it to Mac’s and Wire’s phones. As they walked out of the store, they were both looking at their phones.

  “It isn’t much,” Wire noted.

  “No, but it’s a start,” Mac answered enthusiastically, now with some momentum for the first time on the case. “Now we got an idea of this guy. Somebody has seen this guy,” Mac said optimistically as he started typing on his phone, sending the screen shot to Gesch and Delmonico via an e-mail. Then he dialed Special Agent Gesch, who picked up right away. “Gesch. I’m sending you and Delmonico a picture.”

  “Of what?”

  “The Reaper.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “It’s just a piece but all the pieces matter.”

  The first stop after identifying the Reaper was William Donahue’s office in Wilmington. While he could generally care less about politics, Mac did care about Sally and making her life easier. A placated, even if only temporarily, William Donahue was one less thing she, and the White House, would have to worry about. Donahue expressed appreciation for the personal update.

  “Find him, find that man,” he said to them.

  “We’re working on it, sir,” Wire answered.

  “We’ll find him,” Mac added, sounding confident, not sure if it was the adrenaline from their discovery or actual confidence talking.

  Now they were on a The Fast and the Furious like beeline on Interstate 95 back to Washington,
DC, and the FBI Washington Field Office, getting constant phone and text updates from Delmonico while they made the frantic drive back. Delaware and Maryland State Police were in the loop that a black BMW X5 would be flying south on the interstate sporting a flashing gumball on its dashboard and to let it go. That allowed a typical two-hour drive to be reduced to seventy-five minutes.

  While Wente and the rest of the Dover police were out in the field with the Reaper photograph, Gesch distributed the picture to the other two cities and their Reaper Task Force leaders. As Mac and Wire entered a conference room, Gesch and Delmonico were preparing a conference call with FBI Director Mitchell.

  “Mac and Wire, great work,” Gesch said, greeting them with handshakes.

  “We haven’t found him yet,” Mac cautioned.

  “I know, I know,” Gesch answered excitedly. “But damn if our first break on this thing doesn’t have me at least just a little hopeful.”

  The call started, “Director Mitchell, we have these photos out in the field already to the three jurisdictions in our task force. I am recommending we get this photo to the media, along with a press conference, either tonight or first thing in the morning.”

  “Mac,” Director Mitchell asked, “Agent Gesch has given me some background on how you found this man, but can you recap how exactly you found this man and this picture of him?”

  McRyan and Wire took five minutes and walked the director through their identification.

  “Mac, are you confident that this man is the killer we are looking for?”

  “Yes sir,” Mac answered. “We have him taking the key from Donahue’s car and returning it and we have him making the copy. He’s our killer.”

  “The problem is,” Wire added, “that we don’t have the greatest look at him.”

  “But it’s a start,” Mac rejoined. “It’s enough that someone could possibly recognize him. At least that’s the hope. We need to get this picture everywhere we can and see if anything pops.”

  “When?” the director asked the group. “Do we do it now or first thing in the morning?”

  “Sir, if I might,” Mac answered. “As anxious as I am to act right now, right this very minute, I think the morning would be better.”

  “Why?”

  “This part of the country is going to sleep or is asleep right now. We won’t get the maximum exposure and viewing of the photo for at least another ten to twelve hours, once everyone is up. In those hours, if our killer is watching …”

  “He’ll get a head start on going into hiding.”

  “That’s what I’m thinking.”

  Director Mitchell made the call. “Gesch and I will run the press conference in the morning. Let’s go at 9:00 A.M.”

  The conference call ended.

  It had been a long day and Mac yawned, as did Wire. “Dara, you have a bag of extra clothes with you, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why don’t you sleep at my place tonight,” Mac suggested. Gesch and Delmonico’s eyebrows rose in unison at the suggestion, which Mac quickly squashed. “Relax. Sally is there. Dara can have the guest room.”

  • • • •

  Mac called ahead and when he and Dara burst through the back door of the townhouse, Sally had a large oven-baked pepperoni and sausage pizza and two ice cold beers waiting for them. The three of them sat around the island, Mac and Dara devouring the pizza and giving Sally a rundown on the case.

  “And Donahue was good?” Sally asked, always looking for or trying to prevent the next political fire.

  “Well, as good as he could be having lost his daughter,” Mac answered, devouring a slice of the pizza. “The great man is pretty wrecked.”

  “I think he appreciated the personal touch though. Mac was good when he sat down with him, just the right tone,” Wire added, wiping away some pizza sauce from her cheek with a napkin. “That was good work, partner.”

  “Yes it was, honey,” Sally added with a smile, giving him a little kiss. “I’m going to bed. Dara, the guest room is all ready for you. There are towels and toiletries in the bathroom down the hall. Use whatever you need.”

  Wire and Mac had another beer, talked and unwound for another half hour and then, finally and fully exhausted, went to bed around 12:30.

  As always, Sally was up and out of the house early, aiming to be at the White House by 7:00 A.M. every day.

  Mac was someone who generally operated fine on four to five hours of sleep, some sort of genetic quirk. That made him both a night owl and a morning person. Sally worked long hours, so he liked being up when she left in the morning and often made her breakfast. As a result, he was up, drinking coffee and reading the Washington Post when Sally left at 6:30 A.M. After that he took a quick four-mile run to get his blood pumping, some sweat on his body and some quiet contemplative time to think. Once back he took a shower and engaged in the normal morning mechanics. By the time he exited the master bedroom fresh and dressed, Wire was opening the guest room door. Dara was going to need some work.

  “Hey, sleepy head, are you hungry?” he asked cheerily.

  “What do you think?” Dara replied crabbily, her hair askew, shuffling her feet towards the guest bathroom.

  “Morning person, are we?”

  “Not until I have my coffee. Speaking of which, where the hell is it?”

  Mac laughed and saluted, “Yes, ma’am, I’ll get right on it.”

  He quickly descended the stairs and fetched a cup of coffee, dropping in some hazelnut creamer, which Wire liked. He cracked the bathroom door and slid the cup onto the counter. “Coffee is served, my lady. You can stop your royal bitching now.”

  “Thank you … and uh, sorry,” he heard from the shower as he pulled the door closed.

  Breakfast was his favorite meal to eat and cook. Back down in the kitchen, he whipped up a quick feast of eggs, bacon, toast and strawberries, watching SportsCenter while he did so.

  “I see your Twins lost again to my Red Sox last night.”

  “Rub it in, why don’t you,” Mac answered as he poured her another cup of coffee. “Press conference is in fifteen.”

  They sat on stools around the center island watching the large flat screen Mac had mounted along the far wall. All of the cable news channels carried the press conference live and the Reaper’s picture was repeatedly put on the screen.

  “Do you think we’ll get anything out of this?” Wire asked Mac as she sipped coffee.

  “Oh, we’ll get plenty of information and tips,” Mac answered, loading dishes in the dishwasher. “Whether any of it proves useful?” Mac shrugged. “Well, that’s another story.”

  • • • •

  It was a stunning thing to see your image appear on television.

  The Reaper pulled at his beard just under his chin as CNN displayed his image on the right-hand side of the screen while FBI Director Thomas Mitchell and Special Agent Aubry Gesch conducted their press conference. He flipped around to the other news channels, FOX and MSNBC; they were all carrying the press conference, all carrying the same images and video clips of him.

  The images were from the surveillance camera at the hardware store. He saw the camera globe the minute he walked in nine days ago, the little black ball hanging from the ceiling. Preparation was everything. He had on the hooded sweatshirt, a baseball cap and his sunglasses. The sweatshirt was generic, dark blue with no specific markings on it. The baseball cap was a University of Delaware hat, the Blue Hens, hardly uncommon in Dover. The beard helped as well, a good month’s growth to its full thick status, although he’d started with just a small thin beard around his mouth. The sunglasses fully covered his eyes and really the upper third of his face. The additional details being reported about him, while not evident on the images and video, were nonetheless fairly accurate. He was in fact a Caucasian male, approximately 6’3” and was muscular, and while taller and bigger than the average white male, he was hardly out of the ordinary.

  It was him, but there was no way a
nyone could really identify him from those images.

  Nevertheless, his heart was racing just a little from this first bit of discovery of him. Enough so that he pushed himself out of his desk chair and as a precaution went to the windows. For ten minutes, he fingered open the curtains just enough so that he could scan the surrounding area. There was nothing of concern, no vans, no unmarked cars, no police patrol cars, no sirens, nothing unusual.

  Would they be coming?

  He seriously doubted it.

  Not off of that image.

  A loner would not be caught off that image.

  He had no family, at least not anymore. Friends? Coworkers? Not for at least the last two years, and intentionally so. Before that people could have some recognition. Out of sight, out of mind, he figured. As a result, there were few people in the world that really knew him or were likely to recognize him. He was a physically large non-entity to people.

  • • • •

  Wire and Mac arrived at the FBI Washington Field Office just after 10:00 A.M. Along with Gesch and Delmonico, the four of them spent the day reviewing the case, hoping for a break, having gone public with what images they had of the Reaper. There was a noon conference call with all of the jurisdictions in the Reaper Task Force. Everyone was out in the field, talking to families, friends and coworkers of all of the victims, going back near the murder scenes to see if the picture rang any bells.

  In the late afternoon, while there were some calls and a few people quickly checked, there had been no truly promising leads reported. Gesch and Delmonico were discouraged, having to update Director Mitchell several times. Wire shared their discouragement. Mac was more even keeled about it.

  “I thought we’d get something,” Gesch said with an exhale as he plopped down in his leather desk chair and kicked his feet up onto his desk.

  “I’m not surprised,” Mac said flatly, leaning against the wall, opening a piece of Dentyne. “There isn’t much on that image, Aubry. You can’t tell much about the guy. We have the bottom of his face and it’s a beard and his nose looks pretty normal, the top of his face is covered in sunglasses along with a baseball cap and a hooded sweatshirt. There is nothing distinguishing. Nothing to latch onto that is unique, at least that I see. It’s the definition of a good disguise. The evening news, local news and cable shows will cover it tonight. Maybe we’ll get a little lucky. Maybe our guy will get spooked, make a mistake and somebody will notice. People are calling in, so that’s a good sign.”