Judged

by E. H. Reinhard

  “She is. I can take you up to her office to speak with her.”

  “I’d appreciate that. After I speak with her, I’d also like to maybe take a look at whatever video you have from Scobee’s last night here. Maybe from a camera that covers the employee parking area, if you have one.”

  “Well, we don’t really have any kind of specific parking area for staff, but Mister Scobee generally parked on the far edge of the lot—away from possible door dings would be my guess. When you’re through with Alice, I can give you a hand with looking into that.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  Prassey stood from his desk. I followed him down the hall outside his office and through a doorway that led to a stairway up. Upstairs, Prassey stopped at an empty office with the name Alice Schipper and Human Resources on the door.

  “Hmm,” Prassey said. “Why don’t you have a seat inside her office here? I’ll find her. Maybe she’s in with the rest of the administrative staff. I’ll be right back.” He opened the door for me, motioned me toward the chairs inside, and then left down the hall.

  I took a seat in one of the guest chairs and stared at the shelved wall filled with photos behind the woman’s desk. All the photos had one woman that was similar, I assumed Alice Schipper. She appeared to be in her early thirties, with short blond hair. From the couple pictures of her rock climbing, I figured that was her hobby of choice. The only photo that included a man was one of her being presented a plaque by Scobee. On the floor to the right of her desk were a couple of filled boxes with the tops open. I craned my neck to get a better view of the contents. Miscellaneous awards, certifications, and some photos filled the boxes. I leaned forward and moved a plaque to one side with my fingertip to get a better look at a photo—it was of Glen Scobee. I leaned back in my chair.

  A minute or two later, the office door opened at my back. I turned, saw the woman from the photos, and stood to greet her.

  “Ms. Schipper?” I asked.

  “Yes. Kevin said that you were with the FBI and had some questions regarding Glen.”

  “Correct,” I said.

  She rounded her desk, and I retook my seat.

  “What can I help you with?” she asked.

  I took the woman in. While she was dressed for business, something about her struck me as disheveled, but I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what it was.

  “What was your relationship with Mr. Scobee?” I asked.

  “Professional,” she said quickly.

  The answer immediately struck me as off.

  “Um, okay,” I said. “Mr. Prassey had said that you were a family friend earlier?”

  “Oh, I was close with Rachael. His wife.”

  “And how long have you known her?”

  “Six or seven years.”

  “Sure, and you knew Glen Scobee for the same amount of time?”

  “Roughly,” she said.

  “Okay. I guess what I’m looking for is someone who was close enough to know his routines. What he did and where he went. The night of Mr. Scobee’s murder, he didn’t return home until the early morning hours. Have any idea where he went?”

  She didn’t immediately respond. A moment later, she shook her head.

  I scratched my cheek and looked at the woman, who looked away. Something was up. She wasn’t behaving normally.

  “Did you know any of the Scobees’ other friends or family?” I asked.

  “A couple of friends that would show for a dinner party here or there. I never met any of their family, though. Both he and Rachael were only children.”

  “Right,” I said. “So who were you going to give Scobee’s personal items to?”

  “What?” she asked.

  I pointed to the open boxes. “The boxes of his personal items.”

  “Oh, they were going to throw them away, so I, um, brought them up here.”

  “To give them to someone?” I asked.

  She rubbed her nose. “Yeah, I’ll have to get in touch with his family somehow to collect the stuff.”

  “Okay. So you don’t know what he was out doing the night he was killed? Can you think of anyone who would?”

  “No,” she said.

  “Do you know any places that he might frequent late at night?”

  “I wouldn’t know that,” she said.

  “You guys never talked about anything non-work-related when you went to lunch? It seems to me that a pair of friends who went to lunch together a few times weekly would know something about the others interests, places they go, things like that.”

  She didn’t respond.

  “You were close with his wife? Did she ever mention anything?”

  Ms. Schipper looked away and didn’t answer my question. When she looked back, tears were welling in her eyes.

  “He was at my house the night he was killed, okay?” She wiped her eyes with her fingers and sniffed. “Glen and I had been having a relationship for a few years. He was planning on leaving Rachael.”

  I nodded. That revelation was the conclusion I’d been building toward. I pulled out my notepad to take notes. I had a feeling the woman would give me a decent amount of information. “What time did he leave your house?”

  “Two thirty in the morning or so.”

  I wrote that down. “Okay. Did he ever mention that maybe someone had been following him?”

  “Following him? No.”

  “Nothing about the same vehicle popping up at different locations?” I asked.

  “Not really that I can remember.”

  “Maybe a lighter-colored van, tinted windows, low on the sides, numbers on the rear windows.”

  She pulled her head back, a look of surprise on her face. “I’ve seen a van like that parked across the street from my house. Come to think of it, it was usually the nights that I saw Glen off when he left. Light-colored handicap van.”

  “Handicap van? Do you mean something outfitted with a wheelchair ramp? That kind of handicap?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Make or model? Tag number?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. Aside from working at a car dealership, I know pretty much zero about cars.”

  “This was a Tuesday that he was at your house. Did you see the van that night?”

  “I don’t remember,” she said.

  “Do you think you could pick the van out from a group of photos?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Okay, we’ll get back to that,” I said. “What other nights did he come over?”

  “Mostly just Tuesdays. It was our night together. He would tell Rachael he was playing cards.”

  “Did he go straight to your house after work? Go straight home after?”

  “Um, not really. After everyone left, he’d get picked up from the dealership here by a taxi and then dropped off at my house. He’d usually be over around eleven. The taxi would pick him back up around two thirty or so and bring him back here to get his car.”

  “Why the taxi?” I asked.

  “In case Rachael ever checked up on him, his vehicle would be here. He told her they played cards in the dealership’s lunchroom.”

  “I see,” I said. “Okay, Ms. Schipper. I’m actually going to need to get a time set up where you can come to the FBI’s Miramar office, give us a recap of what you told me, and have a look at some photos of different vans. The sooner we can get this done, the better.”

  “I’m off at five tonight. I guess I could come after work.”

  “I’d appreciate that.”

  I left her with my card and the instructions to call me when she was en route to the FBI office. Then I headed back downstairs in search of Mr. Prassey so I could get a look at the dealership’s video.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Tim parked along the curb, staring up at Dr. Douglas Jensen’s Miami Beach office. The building that housed the doctor’s practice might have been the strangest in the area. Tim had done some research into the building when he originally thought it might make a suitable locat
ion to rid the world of the doctor. The building was seven stories, recently built by someone with a vision of the future of the modern city building—or so the news articles had said when it was constructed. The loftlike, rectangular building blended a parking structure with surrounding high-priced offices and studios. The ground level was a fine dining restaurant. The doctor’s office took up a glass-walled corner on the top floor and had an outdoor patio area that Jensen would sometimes conduct his sessions on.

  Tim flipped through the file his sister had put together, rehashing the doctor’s past crimes once again. His elderly patients, mainly female with no immediate family present, apparently liked to include the doctor in their will—the doctor, in return, gave them a deadly cocktail of psychiatric drugs. In the past six years, four patients had died from some complication or side effect of the drugs, netting Jensen millions in inheritance.

  Tim’s eyes went to the clock on the van’s dash and then to the main vehicle exit of the building. The doctor always took his lunch at the same time and normally would return to his 1920s estate, a twelve-minute drive away. Tim waited, planning to follow the psychiatrist and kill him during his lunch break. The hour he took for lunch was the only part of his routine that was somewhat predictable—nights had passed without the doctor returning home, and when he did, he would often have a different woman with him. His playboy lifestyle and odd hours left a middle-of-the-night encounter at the doctor’s residence a bit of a gamble.

  The nose of the doctor’s shiny new white Aston Martin broke from the darkness of the building’s exit. Dr. Jensen pulled past the sidewalk, flicked on his turn signal, opposite the way of his home, and pulled out.

  “Where the hell is he going?” Tim muttered.

  Jensen pulled past Tim’s van parked on the street and headed in the opposite direction. A dark-haired woman with big sunglasses covering her eyes was riding in the passenger seat of the doctor’s car.

  “Damn,” Tim said.

  He debated following the doctor but couldn’t make a decision before Jensen’s vehicle was out of view.

  Tim brought his fist down on the steering wheel, sounding the horn. He let out a hard breath and thought back over the last few weeks of his surveillance. The doctor had been a little more regular at his home overnight, often accompanied by a young brunette woman, which may have been the woman in the car.

  “Well, Doc, looks like I’ll be at your place tonight. We’ll see if you are, I guess.”

  Tim started the van and pulled away from the curb.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  I fired off a text message to Beth, stating that we had another mention of a similar van. I included the new details that it might have been equipped for wheelchairs and that someone was stopping into the field office later to go through some photos. I told her I’d fill her in on the rest when I returned. Beth responded that she’d pass the information along. I put my phone back in my pocket and waited at the front desk for Prassey, who hadn’t been in his office when I walked back downstairs. Then I saw him approaching from down the hall, and he waved me over.

  “Our security office is back here,” he said. “I was just letting our guy know what you were looking for, and he’s working on getting that footage pulled up.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “This way.” Prassey turned back toward the hallway.

  I followed him toward where the hall dead-ended near the dealership’s parts counter. Prassey pointed me inside a small room, not much bigger than a walk-in closet. Two computer towers were stacked in the right corner, next to a small desk with a twenty-some-inch monitor sitting on the desk’s surface. The walls were covered in cork boards with miscellaneous papers thumbtacked to them. A man was seated in an office chair with his back toward us.

  “Chuck, this is the FBI agent who needs to see that footage,” Prassey said.

  The man, Chuck, turned on his chair to face us. He looked to be in his thirties and was dressed in street clothes. “Sure, come on over. I’m just getting set up to have a look at what’s been recorded.”

  I walked toward the man, who motioned to the empty chair beside him, and took a seat. The cramped space allowed us about two inches between our shoulders.

  “Get him whatever he needs,” Prassey said.

  Chuck nodded. “Sure,” he said.

  Prassey left the doorway.

  “He said you wanted some footage in regards to our old general manager?” Chuck asked.

  “Correct. Ideally, I’d like to see whatever footage you have from last Tuesday around eleven o’clock at night. Maybe we could start around ten thirty and work from there.”

  “Sure. Let me get that pulled up.” Chuck clicked away at the keyboard sitting in front of the monitor and tapped the mouse buttons. “Okay. This is going to be Tuesday night. We have a bunch of cameras. Any idea what camera you were looking for, specifically? We have a couple covering the lot and another couple that cover the entrances to the building as well as interior cameras.”

  “Um.” I rubbed at the back of my neck with my left hand—if I’d tried it with my right, I would have elbowed the guy in the face. “I’m trying to think what would be easiest. I guess pull up the main camera that covers the entrance to the dealership here. Let’s look for a taxi from in between, say, ten thirty and a little after eleven.”

  “Taxi?”

  “Scobee was picked up.”

  “Oh, okay.” Chuck pointed at the monitor in front of us. “This should be the main entrance starting at ten thirty, Tuesday.”

  The screen started blue, but then the footage began to roll, with a time-stamp in the lower-right corner and a camera number in the top left. He fast forwarded the footage until a taxi made an appearance, pulling into the lot at 10:52 p.m. We followed the cab on screen until it left the camera’s view, pulling up toward the service entry of the dealership.

  “One second,” Chuck said.

  He switched camera views, and we watched as the cab waited and Scobee emerged from the service door, got in the cab, and pulled away. We switched camera views back to the original one where we’d spotted the cab entering the dealership, and we watched as the cab left the parking lot.

  “Let it play for a bit,” I said.

  “What are we looking for here?” Chuck asked.

  “I want to see if anyone follows him.”

  “Sure.”

  He let the footage play for another minute, but we didn’t see any other vehicle, more specifically, a van.

  “It doesn’t look like anyone went out after him,” Chuck said.

  “Can we try the previous Tuesday? Does your system go back that far?”

  “This is all on storage online through our security company. I’m not sure how far back it goes, but I’ve never tried to look something up and not found it. Hold on,” Chuck said.

  He pulled up the prior week, and we watched the footage—a taxi pulled up and waited, Scobee entered, and they pulled from the lot. No vehicles followed.

  “Looks damn near identical,” he said.

  “Spin that footage until about two thirty in the morning.”

  He pulled up the time, and a couple minutes after two thirty, a taxi pulled back into the dealership and dropped Scobee off. We followed him on camera as he walked around the side of the building to the back corner of the parking lot, got in his vehicle, and pulled away. I saw no suspicious vehicles or people follow. Nothing looked off—other than a guy returning home after cheating on his wife.

  “Do you know what time Scobee normally left during the week?” I asked.

  “He only worked late one or two nights a week, Tuesdays obviously being one of them. I think normally he probably worked close to banker hours—nine to five.”

  “Let’s try another day. Maybe a Monday or something. Maybe with it still being light out, we’ll have a little better of a view.”

  “Okay,” Chuck said.

  We sat through another twenty minutes of video, only to get nowhere. I
had a feeling in my gut that somewhere on their footage, I would see a wheelchair van with numbers on the windows, but I had no intention of watching weeks’ worth of footage in a cramped security room of a car dealership.

  “Is there a way my tech guys could access this to go through different dates and things like that? We’re looking for a specific vehicle on one of the videos. I have a pretty good hunch it will show up somewhere.”

  “I’m sure our security company could give you guys access though I don’t know if they’ll require some kind of official paperwork. I can give you all the contact information we have for them and let you take it from there, I guess.”

  “I’d appreciate that,” I said.

  He gave me the name of the company, a phone number, and a contact. I thanked him, popped in by Prassey to thank him for his help as well, and left the dealership for the Miramar office. My mind bubbled with thoughts of the investigation, only to be broken up by my phone ringing in my pocket—Beth.

  “I’m heading back now,” I answered.

  “Oh, okay. I’m just leaving. I have a patrol car meeting me to do some of these interviews. I’m starting a little bit north of Miami. It looks like we have a few people to stop in by over there. What did you get out at the dealership?”

  “Well, I found out that the late Glen Scobee was sleeping around on his wife.”

  “Really? He kills his first wife and sleeps around on the second. Great guy.”

  “Yeah. The woman he had been having an affair with worked at the dealership. She didn’t come out and say they were involved at first but gave me enough hints that it was pretty much all but a foregone conclusion. I think her guilty conscience ended up getting the better of her, and she started singing.”

  “Anything important?” Beth asked.

  “She mentioned seeing a van similar to the one in my anonymous phone call. She’s going to come in this evening and take a look at some van photos.”

  “So she’s where you got the additional info on the van you texted over?”

  “Correct.”

  “And she said it was a wheelchair van?”

  “Yeah, it kind of goes with what my other caller said as well and would make sense for there to be numbers on the glass if it was a vehicle that was for hire.”