“Ha!” Glenn said, the sound somewhere between a cough and a laugh. The exertion of it bent her forward at the waist just slightly, her hands hanging down in front of her.
A moment passed as the two watched Billie finish and continue moving about the front yard before Reed turned and rested his backside against the hood of his car. “So, what did you make of all that?”
Raising her arms before her, Glenn folded them across her waist, holding the lapels of her jacket closed. “Where to even start?” she muttered, shaking her head twice. “I’m assuming we can bypass the way those buffoons in there have handled her thus far?”
“We can,” Reed agreed. There was no way they ever should have brought her back to the house already, both given her condition and the fact that the crime scene was still considered active.
It was also apparent from their postures standing in the kitchen and Weston’s eagerness to get away from them that their bedside manner left something to be desired.
“Okay, first thing,” Glenn said, “the guy gave Weston a choice. Actually told him he had to kill himself or they both died.”
“Yeah,” Reed said. “You ever see something like that before?”
“You mean outside of the Saw movies?”
The right corner of Reed’s mouth ticked upward slightly. He could tell she was being facetious, but just slightly.
“I’ve heard of making someone choose,” Reed said, “but never something where they actually had to do themselves.”
“Not just that,” Glenn said, “but do it by strangulation, while his wife watched, no less.”
The same exact thoughts had appeared in Reed’s head as he listened to Weston recount her tale, had played on loop ever since. “No way this isn’t personal.”
Glenn nodded twice, her jaw set. “You heard the officers on the way out. Nothing appears to be missing in the house, no signs of him searching for anything.”
“Right,” Reed said, shifting slightly over his shoulder to look at the front of the enormous brick home rising behind him. “And if he wanted to, he could have made out with quite a stash. It was all right there for the taking.”
“Instead he touches nothing, calls 911 on the way out.”
A gust of cool air passed through, pushing handfuls of leaves from the trees overhead. Already most of the orange and gold had floated to the ground, collecting in bunches along the curbs, leaving only the darkest red and brown behind.
Reed watched a trio float down toward the asphalt, his vision blurring as he thought things over. “So either he wanted to make sure she didn’t die too or he wanted us to find Dennis Weston.”
“Or somebody to, anyway.”
Blinking his eyes back into focus, Reed flicked his gaze to Glenn. “Either way – personal.”
“Personal,” Glenn agreed.
For a moment neither said anything, each processing the information, fitting things into their minds, putting it up against what they were searching for.
“Okay,” Reed said, “so where does this leave us? Do we continue to assume this is connected and dig a little further, or go our separate ways and keep the other apprised of whatever we find?”
The question came out a bit harsher than intended, but that didn’t lessen the veracity of it. Despite the scene he was still standing less than 100 yards from, he had one of his own pressing him even more. He felt for Glenn, and for Mrs. Weston, but his responsibility was with finding whoever had shot Iaconelli and Bishop.
Across from him Glenn nodded, no sign of any anger or offense crossing her features, thinking it through.
“Give me your honest opinion on if these are connected,” she said.
Bunching his cheeks up tight for a moment, Reed considered the question. He shifted his head a fraction of an inch to either side and said, “60-40 in favor, maybe as much 70-30. The MO’s are drastically different, we have no physical evidence linking the two, but similarities are present.”
“Most notably?”
“The personal nature of it,” Reed said. “So far both scenes have involved people in the criminal justice system and both have employed words such as payback, consequences, choices.”
He paused there, waiting as Glenn considered the notion.
It took less than a minute, giving the impression she had already reached the same conclusion before asking the question.
“Okay, so we keep working together?”
The candor of the statement surprised Reed a bit. He paused, for the first time noticing she was working without a partner, remembering that she had only just been assigned that morning.
At some point he would need to ask about it, but now wasn’t that time.
“Alright,” Reed said, “though right now I wonder if dividing-and-conquering wouldn’t be a better approach. I’m outside of jurisdiction, so you can start a search for Weston’s car, coordinate anything you need from here.”
Glenn nodded. “And you?”
“I need to check the reports from my guys, start pulling case files. My top priority is going to be figuring out how my victims and yours overlap. We do that, we might have a shot at determining who’s behind this.”
Once more Glenn nodded before raising her left arm and checking her watch. “Right now it is 1:30. Agree to speak again at, say, 7:00?”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Three files were sitting on Reed’s desk by the time he made it to the precinct. The start of afternoon traffic had made the going a bit slower heading back, the trip from New Albany taking nearly a full hour. That pushed the clock to half past 2:00, Reed becoming more aware of the time with each passing moment.
Even more so of the occasional glances every person in the precinct seemed to be throwing his way.
The top in the stack was from Earl, the full official workup of the shooting scene the night before last. Holding it open on his lap Reed scanned through it once, looking for any new pieces of information to jump out at him. He knew that if anything major had been discovered Earl would have called him personally to relay it, but couldn’t help himself from looking just the same, a conditioned habit from years as a detective.
When nothing rose to the surface, he slowed down and read through everything a second time, making a point to go over relevant details a couple of times, committing them to memory so as to be ready for quick recall moving forward.
Just as had been discussed, preliminary shooting patterns indicated a single shooter sitting in the driver’s seat. Recovered shell casings showed the weapon to be a .9mm Beretta, a common law enforcement issue, easily obtained in hundreds of different places. The shells themselves were for standard rounds, a fact that probably saved Iaconelli’s life.
Parabellums were designed to mushroom on contact, to expand and create mass chaos upon exiting a target. Had the shooter been using them, there was no way the detective could have survived multiple hits to the torso.
Aside from that, there was nothing much of use. No DNA, no organic forensics of any kind.
All blood, fibers, and tissue that were found belonged to one of the detectives.
Closing the file, Reed set it aside and took up the second in the stack. Also from Earl, it was much thinner than the first, nothing more than a couple of sheets affixed at the top by a metal clip.
The car that was found along the Big Darby Creek had been burned to the point that most useful evidence was long gone. As with the first site, there was no organic matter, the interior seats reduced to ash, a process aided by a considerable amount of accelerant.
In the back of the vehicle was found the source of it, a metal can of generic lighter fluid.
Beneath the passenger seat they’d located a pair of shell casings, the make and model matching those found at the first scene, though the indentation from the firing pin was different.
Two guns in a matching set employed by a single shooter.
The vin number had survived the inferno, confirming that the vehicle did belong to Jonas Hendrix. No
attempt had been made to swap the plates.
Sighing, Reed closed the file and placed it atop the first, a new stack forming alongside the original. Beside him Billie sat on her back haunches, her ears pointed straight up, alert and awaiting any word.
The final folder in the stack was a bit different from the first, coming over from the crime scene crew in Grove City. While not as thorough or as legible as Earl’s, it gave the high points in bulleted fashion, outlining that the intruder had gained entry through the rear garage door. Marks on the wood casing were indicative of a crowbar being used, though one had not been found on the scene.
The shards found in the garage were not glass as Greene and Gilchrist had previously thought, instead being heavy plastic consistent with a taillight.
Pausing for a moment, Reed raised his attention to the window before him. He aimed his gaze on nothing in particular, the cars parked out in the lot swirling into an amoeba of random colors as his focus glazed over. He tried to imagine someone entering through the garage, to determine how a taillight could have been destroyed in the process, though nothing came to him.
Shifting back to the file, he read through the last page of the report quickly, noting that it appeared nobody had entered the actual house.
Reed felt a flag go off in the back of his mind, noting that if connected, it was the second time in as many days the perpetrator had been inside a house with unfettered access and had not taken a thing.
Whatever was motivating these actions, it was certainly not wanton greed.
Placing the file back with the other two, Reed shoved the stack aside and moved to the computer. A simple shift of the mouse brought the monitor to life, a series of icons arranged vertically along the left side of the screen.
Moving straight for the CPD database, Reed entered his name and badge number, going into the file depository and opening the search function. He entered Iaconelli and Bishop as the investigating officers and set the engine to running, less than 10 seconds passing before a result was spit back at him.
Well over 1,000 cases featuring one or both of them.
Feeling his stomach clench, Reed glanced down to Billie, her dark eyes staring back up at him. He held the gaze a moment, working down the growing distaste in his mouth, before going back to the screen and clearing both names.
Moving the cursor on the search form from investigating officers to a general search, Reed typed in Dennis Weston.
A few moments later, more than three times the previous result sprang up before him.
“Dammit,” Reed said, leaning back once more. Warmth crept across his features as he stared at the screen. He ran a hand over his face and wiped the ensuing residue across the leg of his jeans before going back and typing all three names into their corresponding fields.
The number shrunk, but not near as much as Reed would have liked, still totaling more than 200 in total.
There was no way they could possibly hope to go through so many cases by hand. Even grabbing every available person in the precinct, it would take an inordinate amount of time. Already the clock in the wake of the first shooting was close to 36 hours and counting.
More time was something he simply didn’t have.
“Okay, now what?” he whispered, Billie blinking her lidless eyes at him, remaining silent.
The two were still locked in the pose, Reed thinking, Billie awaiting direction, when Reed’s cell phone sounded on the desk beside him. Loud and sharp, it snapped both their attention toward it, Reed letting it ring twice before glancing at the number on it, a local call that was not saved into his contacts.
“Reed Mattox.”
“Detective, this is Cassidy Glenn.”
A crease formed between Reed’s eyebrows as he glanced over to his computer screen, noting the time in the corner. It was too soon for her to already be checking in, meaning something new must have arisen.
“What’s happened?” Reed asked.
“There was a hit on Diedra Weston’s Audi,” Glenn said. “Get this, it was parked outside the dry cleaners shop that she went to yesterday afternoon.”
Reed’s eyes opened wide at the statement, a puff of air passing over his lips. “The killer climbed into her car in a busy parking lot, rode with her to her house, then drove it back to the same spot?”
“Yes,” Glenn said, “which also means he probably left his parked there the entire time.”
Again a look of surprise came over Reed’s features. “Wow. Any surveillance cameras?”
“I don’t know yet,” Glenn said. “I’m on my way now. You want in?”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The drive back across town, Reed’s second in less than six hours, took twice as long as the original trip. Hoping to avoid the mess of the downtown workday letting out, he stuck to the northern half of the outer belt, instead running into the afternoon rush from Ohio State and the omnipresent orange construction barrels that seemed to always dot the central Ohio landscape.
By the time he arrived his mood had dipped from urgent to sour, his facial expression relaying as much. The corners of his mouth were turned down in a slight frown, his brow pinched as he pulled up to the New Albany Town Plaza.
How or why the small assemblage of businesses had awarded themselves the moniker plaza Reed wasn’t sure, the entire expanse covering seven storefronts. Arranged in a horseshoe formation, two businesses comprised either end, a trio forming the back portion. In the center of the arrangement were a dozen rows of parking spots, spotlights positioned every 20 yards or so throughout.
The entire left end of the parking lot, a full four of the twelve rows, was cordoned off by local law enforcement, a handful of cars and enough police tape to mummify a body stretched out around the scene.
Per usual in such matters, especially during daylight hours, even more so in locations such as New Albany, a healthy swath of onlookers was pressed tight on all sides, looking to see what the commotion was about.
Seeing them standing there, Reed could only imagine as to the speculation that was running rampant, an adult version of the childhood game Telephone. Within the hour the entire town would be convinced that a police shootout had taken place in the streets, the entirety of the Plaza painted red with blood.
The thought drew a sharp shake of the head from Reed as he parked as close as he could and killed the engine, not bothering to negotiate the thick tangle of people any further. Instead he clipped Billie to the short lead and let her clear a path, knowing she would do a far better job than his unmarked sedan could ever hope to.
She did not disappoint.
At full height she rose right to his waist, her inky black form a rarity for a Belgian Malinois. Combined, the effect was to incite a reaction in whoever saw her at a glance, people stepping back, recoiling in fear, before realizing she was there to help and switching over to abject curiosity.
Fortunately for Reed, by the time that realization occurred he was already well past them.
Reed found Glenn standing in the center of the portion of the lot that had been cleared, only a single car parked inside the area demarcated by bright yellow plastic tape fluttering in the breeze. Her arms were folded across her chest as she stood in conversation with one of the men Reed had seen inside the Weston living room, a white paper suit unzipped, the top half hanging free around his waist.
Approaching from the side, Reed made sure he and Billie were both visible as they approached, waiting a few feet back for Glenn to motion them in. Once she did they stepped forward, the group forming a loose triangle, their backs to the crowd, voices low.
“Wade, this is Detective Mattox, he was at the Weston house with me this morning,” Glenn said, careful not to gesture or make any movements that could be interpreted, or more aptly misinterpreted, by the gawkers nearby. “Reed, Wade Porter, head of the crime scene unit here in New Albany.”
Taking a cue from Glenn, Reed nodded slightly. “Porter.”
“Mattox,” Porter replied.
> Turning to the side, Glenn motioned to the car nearby. “We received a call from a local patrol an hour ago that spotted the car parked here.”
Following her movement, Reed looked over at the Audi S3, a four door model with windows tinted well beyond what he thought admissible by the law, the exterior waxed to a mirrored shine.
It wasn’t hard to figure out how the patrol had noticed it, the car an obvious sore thumb, even in a town such as New Albany.
“Cameras?” Reed asked, shifting his focus up to the light poles overhead.
“The Plaza has a small security office,” Glenn said, “but they only monitor things during working hours. I had the guard go back and run things, he said the car was present when the cameras went live this morning.”
“Shit,” Reed muttered, looking past the lights to the lot around them. “So he gained access to her car, rode to her house with her, then returned it overnight before the cameras came back on.”
“Looks that way,” Glenn said, nodding.
Beside her Porter stood with his hands hooked into the belt of his suit, saying nothing. Three days of heavy growth covered the bottom half of his face, making it impossible to read any expression as he listened, nothing but his eyes moving.
“What about yesterday?” Reed asked. “Were they able to get a look at him as he climbed into her car?”
“I asked them to go back and look,” Glen said. “They’ll let us know as soon as they do.”
“Assuming they were even parked out here,” Porter added, his first words of the conversation. The sound of his voice drew the attention of both Reed and Glenn toward him, surprise on their faces.
“Meaning?” Glenn asked.
“Meaning you guys aren’t from here,” Porter said, “but believe me when I tell you, this place gets busy on the weekends. This little lot were standing in here doesn’t begin to cover it.”
The familiar clench appeared in Reed’s stomach, his solar plexus drawing tight. Beside him he could sense a similar reaction in Glenn, her visage pinching inward.
The Kid: A Suspense Thriller (Reed & Billie Book 3) Page 13
