by Blair Howard
“Yeah, I bought a pair.”
“What time was that? How did you pay for them? Do you still have the receipt?”
“I dunno what time it was. Around seven-thirty, seven-forty-five, I guess. I paid cash and yes, I have the receipt, somewhere. Why are you questioning me like this?”
I ignored that. “Joe, Becky’s closes at eight. I know, because I shop there myself. So you must have been out of there by eight.”
“Yeah, okay, I was out by eight. So what? I didn’t see Jasmine after she left the house, which was… I dunno, around six-thirty, seven.”
“Okay, you went to Becky’s,” I said. “And you would have been out of there by eight. Where did you go then?”
“Hell, I don’t know… Yeah, I do. I went to get somethin’ to eat, in Northgate Mall. I had Chinese in the food court.”
“So what time exactly did you get home that evening?”
“Screw you, Detective. I don’t keep a friggin’ time sheet. I just told you, I don’t know. Could have been nine-thirtyish, ten. I can’t remember. Maybe it was earlier, or later. What the hell does it matter? I didn’t kill her, for Christ’s sake. Why the hell are you screwin’ with me? We all know who done it. That piece o’ crap Hawkins at the top o’ the lane is who. It’s him you should be talking to, not me.”
I changed the subject. “When I talked to you yesterday, you were reluctant to provide fingerprint samples. Why was that, Mr. Thomas?”
“I dunno. Just didn’t seem right, somehow. I gave 'em though.”
“Yes, you did, under pressure. You also said you didn’t go into her room, but we found your prints in there. How do you explain that?”
He was getting angrier by the minute, “Listen to me,” he growled. “You said you took prints from her bathroom. I told you I didn’t go into her bathroom. Her bedroom, yes. We all have. You can check my room, you’ll find her prints in there. We were friends, dammit. We talked, sometimes in her room, not often, but sometimes, and in mine. Happy now?”
“Excuse me for a minute,” I said. “I need to use the bathroom.”
Tracy looked up at me in surprise. He didn’t say, but I knew what he was thinking: You just went!
I went because I needed to call Margo. She confirmed that Joe’s prints were present only in the bedroom, not the bathroom.
Damn it!
I went back to the room. “Okay, Mr. Thomas. That’s all for now. I will, however, need to talk to you again. Please close the door behind you.”
“Wait,” Tracy said. “I have a question. What exactly was your relationship with your niece?”
He cocked his head to one side, squinted at Tracy. “What… what? What relationship? I was her uncle, for Christ’s sake.”
Tracy nodded, narrowed his eyes, “You liked her, right?”
“Yeah, I liked her. She was family. Of course I liked her.”
“No, I mean you… liked her.”
He rose to his feet shaking his head, his face white. He started around the desk toward Tracy, then changed his mind and went the other way.
“You sick son of a bitch,” he said, quietly. “Know what? Ask that stupid friggin’ question in front ‘o Cletus or Arlis, and I’ll make you wish you hadn’t, you piece o’ shit!”
I watched the door close behind him, then turned to face Tracy.
“What was that about?” I asked.
“Ah, just jerkin’ his chain to see if I could get a reaction. I think he’s telling the truth.”
“He is telling the truth. His prints were not found in the bathroom, but—”
“Okay,” he said, “then I’m not sure I understand where you’re going with this. He told you the truth about his prints. True, he has no real alibi—Becky’s can only confirm the time he bought the boots. But ask me what I was doing two weeks ago and I couldn’t tell you either. I believe him. You don’t really think he’s a suspect, do you?”
I shrugged. “Maybe.”
The truth was, I really didn’t. He was the kid’s uncle and it was easy to see that he was genuinely upset, especially at what Tracy had implied.
“No, I don’t,” I said, leaning back in my chair and closing my eyes. “I don’t have any suspects, not yet. It’s too soon; way too soon.”
He nodded. I rose from my seat and together we went out into the living room where they were all assembled, waiting.
“Thank you for your time,” I said. “I’ll be in touch.” And I turned to walk out the front door.
“Hey, just you wait a damn minute,” Cletus said, rising to his feet. “You gonna tell us what’s goin’ on, or what?”
“Right now, Mr. Thomas, I have nothing to tell you, nor do I expect to have anything for quite a while. The investigation is just beginning. When I have something, you’ll be the first to know.”
“What about him up the lane?” He jerked his thumb in the direction of the Hawkins home.
I shook my head, exasperated, then turned and walked out the door. Tracy followed me out.
Chapter 9
When we left the Thomas residence, I was of two minds as to what to do next: go interview Hawkins, or go back to the station and talk to Detective Foote. I decided on the latter, mostly because I knew Cletus Thomas was watching from his front window and I didn’t want for him to decide to join me.
So instead of turning right out of the driveway, I turned left and headed for Bonny Oaks and then Amnicola. I could interview Russell Hawkins… well, whenever. That turned out to be later the same afternoon.
In the meantime, I called Sarah as I was driving along Bonny Oaks. She was still out working the door-to-door with a half-dozen uniforms, but they were getting toward the end of it.
“Did you find anything?” I asked.
“Not much more than when I talked to you this morning. I did find another one of the kids, so now we have three.”
“Well, that’s something. Look, leave your guys to finish up and come on back to the station. We’ll go through what you have.”
She agreed, so I disconnected and turned my attention to Tracy.
“Any thoughts, John?”
“About the family? Same as before. Look, even I know that the first place you go when looking for suspects is the family. This family? I don’t see it. They’re all hurting. The only solid lead we have so far is this Hawkins character, and I think we should talk to him, soonest.”
I didn’t answer. I just stared straight ahead through the windshield. I swung the cruiser right onto Wilder and headed west to Amnicola, lost in thought.
The incident room was quiet, as it usually was at that time of day, just after noon. My story board was more fairy tale than novel. Four images of Jasmine Thomas adorned the top of the board: one a recent head shot of the girl, one taken at the forensic center showing the bruising to her neck, and two more taken inside the pipe at the crime scene. Which it wasn’t. It was just the dump site. The girl died somewhere else and was then transported to the quarry.
Trace evidence? Physical evidence? I had none of that either. Not yet; I thought that that might change when CSI got through with her clothing.
I added another image of Jasmine to the board. It was one supplied by her mother, a summertime shot of the girl seated beside her sister on a low wall. Where, I had no idea, and it didn’t matter. It was a nice image.
I sighed and turned my attention to Tracy, who was standing beside me. He was right about the family. There was no way I could look at any of them as suspects.
“John, why don’t you run this Russell Hawkins through the computer, see if he has a record?”
He nodded and left me to it.
Hah, that’s a joke. Where the hell is Detective Foote?
I went to my computer, pulled up Google Maps, and printed a map of the Battery Heights area on the large format machine, taking in about a square half-mile of real estate from south of Bonny Oaks to the north of Harrison Pike. I then converted the street map to the Google Earth view and printed that too. I re
turned to the big board and pinned up the map and the aerial view, then I took a black marker and drew a circle on each one, representing an area some two thousand feet in diameter, a little more than a half-mile.
I stepped back and looked at the map, then turned to look out of the window.
Where the hell is she?
“Hey. Sorry,” Foote said. “There’s a wreck on Wilder and I got hung up in it.”
I nodded, “Go get some coffee. You look like you need it.”
“I do. You want one too?”
I thought for a minute, “No. I’m wired enough, and the stuff they make here will kill.”
She grinned and hustled off to return a few minutes later with a Styrofoam cup of something steaming, black, and unmentionable.
“Okay, Sarah. Talk to me.”
She nodded, opened her iPad on the table, grabbed a piece of paper, and began to write.
“These are the names and addresses of the three youngsters I told you about,” she said without looking up from her writing. “According to the two people I talked to, they regularly ride their bikes in the quarry.”
She stood up and handed me the paper. I glanced at it, nodded, and handed it to Tracy.
“We’ll need to talk to them, John. How about Hawkins? Did you find anything?”
“Nope. Nothing. He’s clean.”
“Okay,” I said, turning to the board. “The quarry is surrounded by a band of dense woodland that varies in depth from a few yards to more than fifty. It can’t be seen from anywhere outside of its perimeter, except from the yards of the houses that back up to it. Even then, most of the occupants wouldn’t be able to see it without going through thick undergrowth. So, I’m thinking that not many people outside of this circle,” I pointed to the map, “would even know it was there.”
I paused, stared at the map, then said, “Even the gated entrance is well hidden; it’s here, on Bonny Oaks, but you’d never know it.”
I flipped the lock screen on my phone and brought up a photo of the site entrance gate and the trail beyond. I printed it, then pinned the eight by ten on the board beside the maps.
“See? You’d never know. That trail hasn’t been tended in more than a year; it’s almost overgrown. As you can see, it curves away to the right for at least four hundred feet before it reaches the quarry.”
“Okay,” Tracy said. “So what? It’s a great place to dump a body—”
“And whoever dumped her had to know the area, most likely someone who lived in the vicinity, here.” Again, I scrawled a circle over the top of the one I’d already drawn.
“Most of what is inside that circle is Battery Heights, a tight little community, mostly blue collar, that almost surrounds the quarry. And get this,” I drew an X on each map. “This is Wickman Lane. This is the Thomas residence and this… is the Hawkins residence.”
I took a step away from the board, “Any comments?” I asked.
“Yeah,” The both spoke at once, and stopped.
“John?” I asked.
“Hawkins’ property backs onto the quarry.”
“It does, doesn’t it?” I said, thoughtfully. “I want to get a looksee at his property; maybe he has access to the quarry. Okay, what about the kids, Sarah? How do they gain access? You said you had found three places.”
“I did. There may be more, but the three I found are here, here, and here. As you can see, two are between homes. They get in through a break in the fence. The other is just a narrow footpath from the road. If you didn’t know it was there, you’d never find it.” She paused. “None of them are wide enough for anything bigger than a bicycle, Kate.”
“Which means the perp carried her in,” I said.
Sarah nodded. “He might have brought her to Battery Heights in a car, and then walked her in… but like you said, this is a tight-knit neighborhood. Someone would have noticed a stranger—certainly one carrying a body.”
“So,” I said. The perp is probably somewhere inside this circle. We know Jasmine was kept alive for at least five days, but we don’t know where. Again, I think it has to be somewhere here.” I scrawled another circle over the two I’d already drawn. The maps were beginning to look like spider webs.
“I need to talk to Mike Willis,” I said, to no one in particular. “Maybe he’s found something we can use.”
Mike Willis was our head of CSI operations, had been since long before I had joined the force more than six years earlier. He reminded me so much of Harry Morgan. You know, the guy who played Colonel Potter in M.A.S.H.? A weird little man with a brain like a computer, and eccentric? You wouldn’t believe. He always seems to be in a hurry. He’s short, overweight, and untidy but obsessively clean. Gray hair cut bristly short, bushy eyebrows, and an incongruously large pair of hands. If there was evidence to be found, Mike would dig it out.
He answered on the second ring, but what he had to say wasn’t encouraging. In fact, what he had to say provided little more than a forlorn hope. Other than the samples of the fine dry dirt from Doc Sheddon, and more of the same he found on her shorts and top, nothing. He did, however, agree that it probably came from a dry dirt floor. His best guess? An old barn or shed.
“So,” I said. “No fibers, hairs, trace of any kind?”
“The dust had traces of some sort of dried organic material, feces, probably animal droppings, and there are traces of urine, very old.”
“Human urine?”
“Eh… I don’t think so.”
“Hmmm. Okay, Mike. If that’s all you have…”
“Sorry, Kate. I wish I had better news.”
Me too, I thought as he disconnected.
I sat for minute, thinking, then said to Sarah, “Three vacant properties? You checked them out, right?”
“Yes, two are for sale,” she said. “The other is a rental property. It’s been vacant for a couple of weeks. There were painters in there when I visited, so I was able to take a look around. There was nothing out of the ordinary. The other two were locked up tight. I’m pretty sure they’re clean; you want me to call the realtors and take a look at them?”
“Might as well. It couldn’t hurt. Why don’t you do that this afternoon? This evening, you can go talk to the kids.”
She nodded, rose from her seat, and headed for the door.
I took a few moments to Google Russell Hawkins. I wasn’t hoping for much so I was quite surprised when I found more than fifty listings for him.
Must be some other Russell Hawkins.
But it wasn’t. The man was thirty-four years old and a writer, a science fiction novelist, quite well-known for his military space operas.
Well, what d’ya know?
I logged out, stood, and said, “Tracy, you’re with me.”
“Cool,” he said. “Where are we going?”
“We’re going to talk to our prime suspect… according to Cletus Thomas, that is.”
Chapter 10
We didn’t call ahead. I wanted to surprise him. I was a little worried about that; it would be a waste of time if he wasn’t home. But that wasn’t the case. He was home.
Russell Hawkins wasn’t what I expected based on Thomas’ assessment. He was an ordinary man, obviously quite wealthy, but ordinary in every other way possible. And deadly boring to boot. He wasn’t bad looking, nor was he handsome. At five-ten he was of average height, average build, straight brown hair cut short, with a face you’d be likely to forget the minute you walked away. Dressed in white chinos, a pink short-sleeve shirt, and boat shoes, he opened the door with a smile.
“Can I help you?”
“I hope so,” I said. “My name is Sergeant Catherine Gazzara and this is Detective Tracy. We’d like to talk to you about Jasmine Thomas.”
“Ah… that. Yes. I heard about that. She was murdered; found in the quarry, so I heard.” He glanced over my shoulder in the direction of said quarry. “It’s terrible, awful. She was a lovely girl. But, please, do come in. Let’s go through to my office. We’ll be
comfortable there.”
His voice was pleasant enough, but he spoke in monotones; I was more than glad I wouldn’t have to listen to it for very long.
We followed him into what I learned a few minutes later was his office; it didn’t look like one, it was far too comfortable. Aside from the desk and leather chair, the room was set up for comfort. Expensive furniture faced a large picture window displaying extensively landscaped gardens behind the home. These eventually gave way to the woodlands beyond.
Oh yes, I definitely need to take a look at those.
“There now,” he said. “Please, sit down. Can I get you a drink? Something cold, perhaps?”
“No. No thank you,” I said, falling back and then sinking deep into a large easy chair. Comfortable? Oh, yes. The best place from which to conduct an interview? No. Still, other than the sofa and two more chairs just like it, there wasn’t anything else. The damn thing almost swallowed me. I looked at Tracy just in time to see him wipe the grin from his face.
“You live alone here, Mr. Hawkins?” I asked.
“I do. My father passed away more than ten years ago—cancer. He was a smoker, bless him. Mom remarried and moved to Florida, the Keys actually, Islamorada. It’s beautiful down there. Have you ever been, Sergeant?”
“No—”
“Well, you should go,” he interrupted. “Time stands still there. I try to go at least a couple of times each year, if only for a few days. The sea, the white sand, oh, and the fishing. Do you fish, Detective Tracy?” he asked, but went on without waiting for a reply. “The sport fishing is amazing. And, if you stay at the right hotel—which I can recommend, by the way—they’ll clean your catch and cook it for you that very same day. You can drive it from here, you know, but it’s much better to fly into Fort Lauderdale and drive down from there—”
“I bet it is.” Now I was interrupting him, but I needed to get this done, and the drone of his voice was tiring, not to mention annoying. “I’m sorry, Mr. Hawkins, but I’m on a tight schedule. So, if you don’t mind, I’ll ask my questions and then leave you to whatever it was you were doing.”
I heard Tracy snort, then turn it into a cough, but I didn’t look at him.
