Judged

by E. H. Reinhard

  “Sure. You kick back and relax. Let me handle the drive this time.”

  “Isn’t the office like two blocks away?”

  I opened the rear door of the car, grinned, and set my bag with the files in the back. “Yeah.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Tim sat in the office of his sister’s home. Piles of folders littered the desk and every flat space around. File boxes were stacked in the corners.

  Tim’s journey had started with a fifth of whiskey, a simple opening of a box, and a flip of a folder’s cover sheet—three years prior. Since that night, he’d sobered up, investigated, and compiled his list of those he deemed guilty, who would pay at his hand—a tribute of sorts. The list, almost entirely checked off, had just a few names left. He had saved the most difficult murders, or at least the ones most likely to get him caught somehow, for last. By the time the cops caught up with him, which he was sure would happen, it would be too late, and the names would be crossed off. Tim’s eyes ran down the page to the final two names—the names of the guilty men who’d set everything in motion.

  He took his gaze from the names and flipped through the notes he’d gathered, along with the police file, on his next target. The man’s name was Quincy Hightower, a local drug dealer with gang affiliations—or as Tim liked to think of him, a waste of air. The man was a career criminal and would regularly get himself locked up but always managed to rat on someone to find his way back out onto the streets to peddle more of his poison. Quincy’s habit of ratting people out led to some of his so-called friends being awfully talkative. A man by the name of Adrian Watson, recently deceased, had given Tim a wealth of information on Quincy.

  Quincy was in fact responsible for countless overdoses, for he laced his heroin he sold with fentanyl. The overdose that had made the news was a seventeen-year-old girl from an upscale part of town. Her name was Amy Cowan. Her friends claimed she’d gotten the drugs from the block that Quincy normally held down. The drugs that remained were in a bag marked by a sticker that Quincy was known for, yet the local authorities could never link him via the drugs directly to her death. Tim heard different from Adrian Watson. Watson claimed that Quincy was proud of taking the life of a ‘rich white bitch.’ While the authorities didn’t know enough to remove Quincy from the streets, Tim did. He flipped the file closed and glanced at the clock—almost two in the afternoon. His plan was set for the night—or the early-morning hours, more accurately. Tim turned his chair away from his desk and stood. He needed to get to Mrs. Davis’s house to take her to the grocery store.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I pulled into the driveway of the Miramar field office and took in the complex from a distance. The gray glass-and-steel buildings didn’t appear to have a straight edge on them. I imagined they formed some kind of an H from the air, with the center structure running horizontally and adjoining two larger buildings. We drove alongside an untouched nature area with a large pond filled with cattails and pulled up to the guard shack. I removed my credentials from my inner suit pocket and took Beth’s from her hand before lowering my window.

  A man in tactical gear, looking better suited to be conducting a SWAT raid, exited the shack and walked to my window. Dark sunglasses wrapped his eyes.

  “Agents Rawlings and Harper to see an Agent Couch in serial crimes,” I said.

  He nodded his head and disappeared back into the small building. He returned a moment later and handed our two sets of credentials back.

  “North lot,” he said. “All the way around the building and use the main entrance. Serial crimes is up on two, but you’ll have to check in.”

  “Appreciate it,” I said.

  I raised my window and passed through when the gate lifted.

  I stared right through Beth’s passenger side window as we rounded the building, which appeared to twist as we did. I found a spot, put the rental in park, and killed the motor.

  “This place is insane,” Beth said.

  I dipped my head and looked up through the windshield in awe. I’d never seen a building even remotely similar to the field office in front of us. While there wasn’t one symmetrical thing about the structure, which had curved edges mixed with almost triangular protruding walls, it was a sight to be seen. Beth and I stepped from the car. I scooped my bag from the backseat, and we made our way toward the north entrance. We passed another security check, which paged Agent Couch for us, and entered the lobby. Blue tinted glass made up half of the walls as well as the staircase leading up. The ceiling of the lobby was white abstract shapes with large voids of more blue glass and steel. The place smelled of new construction—an odor of paint, drywall, and wood. Agents and federal employees hustled about.

  “Rawlings,” I heard.

  I glanced up at the staircase to see a six-foot, two-hundred-plus-pound agent with short gray hair and black-rimmed glasses—Supervisory Agent Henry Couch.

  He made his way down to our level, walked up, and stretched out his hand. “Hank,” he said.

  I shook his hand and introduced him to Beth. “This is Agent Beth Harper. Beth, Supervisory Agent Henry Couch.”

  Beth shook his hand. “Supervisory Agent,” she said.

  “How about ‘Couch’?” he asked. “The ‘Supervisory Agent’ thing is going to get a little long in the tooth after a few days. Plus, I don’t think anyone other than my eighty-year-old mother or wife calls me Henry.”

  “Fair enough,” Beth said.

  “You guys want to follow me up to my office? We have a little bit of news.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  Beth and I followed him up the flight of stairs and down a long gloss-white-floored hallway and approached a large blue-glass-walled office. I could see inside before Couch pulled open the door, which read Serial Crimes in dark-gray lettering. I spotted roughly thirty agents, countless desks, and more glass offices inside. A handful of the rooms off to the right appeared to have been designated for meetings, judging by their size. Couch led us off to the far back corner of the room and entered an office with his name, in black letters, written across the door.

  “Grab a seat,” he said.

  Beth and I did.

  “The new digs are pretty nice,” I said.

  “Hell yes, they are. Between however many years I spent crammed in my tiny office during my time in the armed forces, and my old office in Miami Beach, you’ll never hear me complain about this,” Couch said. “Plus, it’s about time the bureau gets modern down here.” Couch rounded his big cherry-wood desk and took a seat in a large pleated-leather office chair—both of which looked new. Miscellaneous plaques and awards filled the shelves of the wall behind his desk. He pulled a file from a stack, flipped open the cover, and slid it toward Beth and me. “Handwriting analysis came back, cross-referenced from things written around the house and signatures verified against bank checks. Our victims wrote the confessions,” he said.

  I took the file in hand and gave it a quick read. Copies of the confession letters, images of previous handwriting from the victims, and an analysis breakdown from whoever had conducted the report filled the folder. I handed it off to Beth. “Okay, so we know they wrote them. Truthful or not, I guess we can’t say,” I said.

  “It looks like we can probably say that as well.” He grabbed another folder from his desk and handed it over. “Ballistics report. The weapon that killed the three matches up with the bullets removed from Leila Scobee.”

  “Who was the firearm registered to?” Beth asked.

  “Don’t know who it was once registered to—the serial number was filed off. It looks like it was a throwaway that made a reappearance. I’m not sure if our vigilante killer knew this information and left the gun at the home of Greg Scobee for that reason or not, though. But it is one hundred percent the original murder weapon. Caliber, striations, everything matches.”

  “Interesting,” I said. “That information, that Scobee had a hand in the killing of his first wife, is that going to be made public?”


  “Not at the moment. The higher-ups are a little concerned with what impact the information could have with the public’s perception of our suspect. We’ll be contacting the family with it, though.”

  “Okay.” I let out a breath. “Apparently our vigilante is one hell of a sleuth.”

  “Which furthers what we were kicking around about him being law enforcement,” Couch said.

  “It does,” I said.

  “I had some of my guys start compiling a list of could-bes a few weeks back.”

  “Based on?” Beth asked.

  “The profile that Hank here sent over. Our list keeps growing, unfortunately. The last one of my agents told me, we were up in the hundreds of people.”

  “Our profiler in our office back in Manassas created a new profile yesterday after we got the information regarding the confessions and latest murders. I glanced over it a bit, but this latest news about the gun being the original murder weapon may in fact solidify this new profile a bit more.” I lifted the flap on my bag at my ankle, reached inside, and pulled out the investigation file that contained a couple of copies of the newest profile. I handed Couch one and put out another in front of me. “Our profiler seems to agree with us that this guy is or was in some form of law enforcement. He seemed to want to rule out an everyday citizen or anyone from the court system.”

  Agent Couch adjusted his glasses, looked down briefly to brush his hand over his striped blue tie resting on his white dress shirt, and read over the sheet. I looked it over again while Couch read in silence. The profile pegged our guy as thirty to fifty and of average build—I assumed that part was from his being able to physically do what he was doing, but Bulger had never said that for certain. The suspect was assumed to be single and living alone, due to the acts committed being in the late night and early morning hours—frequent absences would have raised a red flag with a significant other or family members present in the household. The amount of research and planning suggested someone familiar with the field of investigative work. The profile went on to suggest someone with a bone to pick in any branch of law enforcement, including private investigators. Bulger advised us to look into those who were demoted, forced out of their positions, or had filed grievances. Bulger also added a notation at the bottom that able family members of such people—or family members of someone killed in the line of duty—still shouldn’t be overlooked.

  “I sat in with him while he was drawing this up,” I said. “The only real changes are that he seems to think we should focus our attention on law enforcement, like we’d already discussed.”

  Couch set the sheet down on his desk. “Yeah, I can’t say I’ve ever put a ton of stock into these things. It’s usually just common sense or basic investigative work that could tell you what most of these contain. To me, they’re kind of like getting a psychic reading. If you hit on one thing during a bunch of vague theories, you’re a genius. Apparently, someone thinks that they are needed, though.”

  “Wow, you’re reading my mind,” I said.

  Couch chuckled. “So we’ll get my guys focusing on this a bit more. Maybe we can weed that list down a touch and start shaking some trees. You’d said you wanted to go and have a look at the scenes.”

  “Correct,” I said.

  “Have you visited either?” Beth asked.

  “My agents have. Me personally, no,” Couch said. “But I’m going to join you in the field while you’re here. It will do me some good to stretch my legs a bit. Let me make a call to the local PDs and see if we can have the first responding officers meet us at these locations.”

  “How far are they from here?” Beth asked.

  “The late Rachael and Glen Scobee’s house is in Homestead, about an hour drive south. The brother, Greg Scobee—his place is a couple miles northeast from there in Cutler Bay.”

  “Sure,” I said. “I actually wanted to make a call to the lieutenant at Miami Dade that I’ve been in contact with and see if he has anything new.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Couch drove us toward Homestead in his black Chevy Tahoe. Our plan was to visit the couple’s house first and then stop by the brother’s as we made the loop back. I’d seen a sign pass us a minute or two prior, telling us we were just a few miles out from our exit off of the Ronald Reagan Turnpike. My talk with Lieutenant Harrington had been brief—he said he would be in court most of the day but would call and get something set up as soon as he was back at his station.

  Couch clicked on his turn signal and veered to the right lane to exit. We took a few surface streets and found ourselves in the Scobees’ neighborhood. All the homes were fairly large, but all looked the better part of thirty years old. Each home appeared to be sitting on at least an acre or more of land.

  “This is us up here.” Couch pointed out the windshield at a patrol car along the side of the road, parked in front of a driveway that disappeared into some trees.

  We pulled up at the rear of the cruiser, parked with two tires in the grass, and stepped out. The patrol car’s driver and passenger doors opened, and two officers in brown-and-taupe uniforms stepped out. The three of us ran through a quick round of introductions with the two officers, named Stark—bald, round and short—and Mayweather—thin, dark haired, and taller than his partner. The two would be easy to differentiate. We headed up the driveway and soon approached a big white two story with a huge red brick chimney running up its leftmost edge at the front. A seafoam-colored overhang covered part of the driveway, which turned right and ran along the front of the home toward the garages on the far side. We walked beneath the overhang and up a single step to the rounded-top alcove the front door was set into. Officer Mayweather pulled the police tape sealing the door, opened the small lockbox hanging from the knob, and allowed us entry.

  Our group entered the foyer. A living room and stairway leading up stood to our immediate left, and a hallway stretched before us, leading back to a dining room. At my right, in the hallway’s wall stood a door, which I assumed led out to the garage.

  “A forensics team has gone through the place—nothing found anywhere other than upstairs, where the killing occurred,” Stark said.

  “If memory serves, the file said that an adult son is who reported it?” I asked.

  “Rachael Scobee’s son from a previous marriage. Tom Boyle, twenty-three, no priors. His alibi checked out—third-shift worker. He was coming to see his mother. I guess he was pretty regular around here. He had a key, saw his mother’s and stepfather’s vehicles were present, and started looking around. He found the scene in the master bedroom and called 9-1-1. We responded within about ten minutes of the call,” Stark said.

  I nodded and pointed up the staircase.

  Stark and Mayweather led us up the flight of stairs to a landing and then down the hall to the doorway of the master bedroom.

  “There’s a blood pool right as you enter. Glen Scobee’s body was there,” Mayweather said.

  I looked at the couple-foot-wide bloodstained area of carpet just inside the room and then brought my line of sight up to the unmade bed, covered with red colored sheets and blankets. There was enough room to walk around the bloodied carpet, so our group entered.

  “Were either of you two here when forensics went through the place?” Couch asked.

  “We both were,” Stark said.

  “How did they think it played out?” Couch asked.

  Stark cleared his throat, holding his fist over his mouth. “They put the woman as the first to be shot. Her state of dress said that she was sleeping prior to the killer entering the home—the husband was found in a suit and tie and shot near the doorway, so they don’t believe he ever ventured too far into the room. The gunshots were also in opposite directions. Basically, he killed the woman and then sat in wait until the man arrived and then killed him.”

  “After he made him write a confession,” Couch said.

  “Correct,” Stark said. “Two notepads, one found on the bed in the female’s handwriting, and anoth
er on the dresser here near the door in the man’s.” Stark jerked his chin at the dresser sitting to our right with a television on it.

  I glanced over at the dresser and then down to where the blood pool from Glen Scobee had stained the carpet.

  “Nobody heard the shots?” Beth asked.

  Stark shook his head. “These are pretty big lots, tree lines between the properties, large houses, early morning hours.”

  “And nothing taken from the property?” I asked.

  “We went over the place, as well as forensics,” Mayweather said. “They printed the house from top to bottom. Nothing appeared disturbed, no prints on anything, and the son said it looked like everything was accounted for.”

  “Yeah, the only thing this guy left behind was a pair of bodies and a pair of tire tracks in the grass from where he parked along the side of the house,” Mayweather said.

  “Forensics wasn’t able to get anything from the tracks?” Beth asked.

  “Not that I know of. They took some measurements but weren’t able to get any kind of tread patterns or anything,” Mayweather said.

  I looked at Agent Couch. “Did you guys try getting any kind of traffic-cam footage from around these scenes?”

  “We came up empty,” he said. “We went with the estimated TODs and pulled whatever we could from the area, which wasn’t much. No luck.”

  I nodded and rounded the bed toward the far wall, which had a brown blood smear down it and some holes in the drywall that appeared to have been dug out—probably from forensics retrieving the bullets. In the carpet, in the area separating the bed and the wall, was another bloodstain a couple feet wide.

  “The wife was there,” Stark said. “The blood on the wall, as well as bullet holes from the through-and-throughs, says she had her back to the wall when she was shot and then fell to the floor. She was facing the bed when we arrived.”

  “What was the estimated TOD, again?” I asked.