Judged

by E. H. Reinhard

  A single light lit the window nearest the door. I put eyes on the window, looking for any movement inside—nothing.

  Couch led us to the door and stepped to one side in the covered entryway. “Ready?”

  Rivera and Pottsulo confirmed.

  I looked back at Beth, who nodded.

  Harrington confirmed at Beth’s back.

  “I got the door,” Beth said. “Someone call out the warrant.”

  Beth pressed her hand against my shoulder to get me out of her way. She took one step back and let out a quick breath.

  “FBI! Search warrant!” I shouted.

  Beth took lunging steps past me and slammed a front kick into the door, beside the handle. The door flew open, and splinters of the doorjamb scattered across the tile floor inside. Our group funneled in, weapons ready. The house was an open concept. I had a full visual of the living room, dining-room area, and kitchen—all empty. Beth went toward a pair of dual glass doors that led outside off the back of the kitchen.

  Harrington and the officer with him went to the right down a hallway, followed by Rivera and Pottsulo. I passed through the living room and went through the French doors on the far left side, leading into an office. My eyes immediately went to a wall filled with photographs and pinned papers. File boxes filled each corner of the room. I checked the closet—more file boxes. I left that room and moved toward the kitchen area, where Beth reentered from the glass doors. Harrington, his other officer, and our backup agents appeared from the hallway they’d gone down.

  “We’re clear,” Harrington said.

  “The pool area in the back is clear,” Beth said.

  “I found our van,” Couch said from somewhere in the house.

  I turned to see an open doorway, which I assumed went to the garage because of the layout of the home. I walked through with Beth following.

  In the garage, Couch holstered his weapon. “The van is clear.”

  Rivera and Pottsulo entered.

  “This was the one on the video?” Rivera asked.

  “Without a doubt,” I said.

  I looked through the windows of the silver Ford van and then pulled open the driver’s door. Seeing nothing that looked off, I put my gun back into my shoulder holster. “So where is our guy?” I asked. “I don’t remember seeing any other vehicles registered for him.”

  “Good question,” Couch said. “Rivera, Pottsulo, go visit some neighbors and see if they have any idea where this guy is.”

  “Sure,” Pottsulo said.

  The pair of agents left the garage.

  Couch pulled his phone from his pocket and dialed. From the bit of the conversation I overheard, he was requesting anything that whoever was on the other end of the phone could get regarding a cell phone or GPS coordinates on Wendell. Couch put his phone back in his pocket. “Okay, let’s glove up and have a look around,” he said.

  Harrington poked his head into the open doorway of the garage. “What’s our move here, guys?” he asked.

  “We’re going to take a look around. That office in the back looks like it could be rather interesting,” I said.

  “I was meaning more of what do you want me to do with all of the local guys?”

  “Have them patrol the neighborhood for a little bit, pop into local businesses that are open, and make sure our guy isn’t nearby on foot,” Couch said.

  “Got it. I’ll stick around here for a bit and lend a hand. Let me go tell the patrol sergeant what we need the guys on. I’ll be back.”

  “Thanks, Harrington,” I said.

  We walked back into the house, gloved up, and began searching for anything incriminating or anything that could tell us where Timothy Wendell was. I started in the office, where I figured we’d have the best luck—Couch followed, and Beth started on the rest of the house. I stood in front of the wall with photos and papers hanging from it. What was in front of me looked remarkably similar to the police file I’d put together of victims I believed the vigilante killed. Wendell was our guy.

  Couch stood off to my left, rummaging around the desk. “Well, this is interesting,” he said.

  I stepped over to see what he was looking at.

  Couch held an olive-green folder and was paging through the papers inside.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “A police file on Quincy Hightower. It’s from Miami Dade.”

  He held it out toward me, and I took it. The file contained handwritten documents—nothing was a copy.

  “Where or how was this Timothy Wendell getting original Miami Dade police files?” I asked.

  “Maybe a question for Harrington,” Couch said.

  “I think I found something out here!” Beth shouted.

  “Keep rummaging,” I said. “Let me go see what she found.”

  Couch went to a file box in the corner of the room and popped off the top.

  I found Beth in the kitchen, staring down at something on the long gray granite breakfast bar.

  “What did you find?” I asked.

  She waved me over and pointed at the calendar in front of her. “This was clipped to the side of the refrigerator. Today’s date says ‘psychiatrist.’ Yesterday’s says ‘drug dealer.’ Last week, it says ‘husband and wife.’”

  “Hmm.” I reached down and flipped it to the prior month. A handful of dates were filled though I couldn’t remember offhand if they were also dates of murders. I flipped back another month to see more of the same. I needed to know right then but didn’t have my investigation file with me. “Give me a second,” I said.

  I headed back to the office to find Couch.

  He looked up at me from a file box. “These are all police files. It looks like our guy may have been cherry picking through these to select his victims. What was going on out there?” Couch asked.

  “We have a calendar that may possibly have his murder victims on it—not written by name, but the last week includes ‘husband and wife’ and ‘drug dealer’—our victims. We need two things: one, we need to match up the rest of the dates on the calendar with the victims, and I didn’t bring the investigation file with.”

  “I have a copy in my truck,” Couch said. “Let me go and grab it quick.” Couch headed for the door but stopped and turned back. “What’s the second thing?”

  “Today’s date says ‘psychiatrist,’ and I have a feeling that it’s not an appointment for himself.”

  “Okay. I’ll get the file. We’ll double check and then start digging into these boxes to see if we can find a shrink.”

  I stared at the file boxes, stacked in just about every free area of the room. “Grab us some help while you’re out there.”

  He nodded.

  I went to the wall and searched every pinned-up paper, photo, and sheet. I saw nothing of anyone related to the psychiatry field.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Couch walked back into Wendell’s home office with Lieutenant Harrington and two of his patrol officers in tow. I caught the officers’ name badges as they passed—Nelson and Rey.

  “File boxes everywhere,” Couch said. He pointed at the stacks and their various locations. “We’re looking for a psychiatrist.”

  Harrington stood in place for a moment, scratching at the dark stubble on his chin, and then he and his officers split up around the room and started popping the tops off boxes.

  Couch tossed the file on the office desk, and Beth brought in the calendar. We went date to date, back to the beginning of the year, matching up murders and their respective entries in the calendar—Wendell had apparently been keeping a log of those he killed, yet we saw nothing later than the current date. Among what Wendell had written down, we also found five references to people, apparently murdered, of whom we didn’t have prior knowledge.

  “Do you think he’s entering the names after he kills?” Beth asked.

  “There isn’t a single thing going forward.” I flipped through the calendar’s pages until the end of the year to double check. “Which m
eans, if that is the case, he’s already killed this psychiatrist.”

  Beth put her hands on her hips and stretched her back. “Or is in the process of doing it right now.”

  I stared at the calendar, thinking she might have been right.

  “We need to find out where the hell this Wendell is,” Couch said. “We’re positive he doesn’t have another vehicle? Maybe something registered to a business? Maybe he has someone living here with him that he’s out with?”

  We needed answers to those questions. I pulled out my phone and dialed Ball. The phone rang in my ear repeatedly.

  As I was about to hang up, Ball answered. “Yeah, Hank. What’s up?” His voice sounded as if I’d woken him.

  “I left you a message earlier,” I said. “We’re out at our suspect’s house.”

  His voice perked up. “Damn. Hold on.”

  I heard rummaging around on his end of the phone.

  “Sorry,” Ball said. “Yeah, I see your message now. I fell asleep in front of the television. What have we got? What do you need?”

  “The guy’s name is Timothy Wendell.” I gave him the spelling of the last name. “I need whatever we can get on him. I want friends, family, marital status, any businesses registered or vehicles registered to that if he does have one. I need whatever you can tell me about this address we’re at. Who the home belongs to, owner or renter. Who else resides here. Basically every last damn thing we can find out about this guy. We’re here, his only registered vehicle is here, but he’s not. Get me banking, cell records if you find them, the works.”

  “Okay. I’m going to have to call the twins. Probably Scott and Bill as well. What’s the scene?”

  “I’m standing in a home office that has a wall-sized bulletin board of victims. We have a calendar containing his kills. I’m staring at who-knows-how-many police file boxes from Miami Dade stacked everywhere.”

  “How would this guy have that?” Ball asked. “Was he law enforcement?”

  “No. Not that we know of.”

  “Okay. I’m going to head to the office and get everyone in. If you need anything else, call. Otherwise, you’ll get whatever we have as we find it.”

  “Sure.” I looked over at Harrington and the other two officers turning cover sheets of case files. They flipped through each one and then stacked them as checked off. “Look to see if he makes any kind of payments to a psychiatrist as well. The word was written on the calendar we found for today.”

  “Got it. We’ll talk soon,” Ball said.

  “Thanks.” I clicked off and looked at Beth. “Ball is getting the team in to start getting us everything.”

  Couch was staring at the wall covered in victims. “I’m going to call in some forensics guys. At the very least, we’re going to need to get all of this photographed. We’ll go through all the information on each person here and see exactly what we have.” He pulled his phone from his pocket and called back to the office.

  Beth and I gave Harrington and his pair of officers a hand with the files. After fifteen minutes of the five of us searching, we had nothing that looked like a clue of who our mystery doctor could be. According to my browsing of the case files, they all appeared to be a number of years old. I checked the names of the officers that were the leads of the cases—they were all different and looked as if they’d come from different precincts within Miami Dade’s jurisdiction.

  Agent Pottsulo walked into the office.

  “Anything from the neighbors?” Couch asked.

  Rivera, with a man following him, appeared in the office doorway before Pottsulo could respond.

  “This is Mr. McAulay. He lives next door,” Rivera said. He turned to the man. “These are Agents Couch, Harper, and Rawlings. Why don’t you tell him what you told us.”

  The man appeared to be in his midforties, with a pair of wire-rimmed eyeglasses, a thin face, and a receding hairline. “I just said I saw him walk past the front of my house carrying a duffel bag earlier today.”

  “What time?” Couch asked.

  “Right after I got home from work, so probably around four thirty or so.”

  “Did you speak with him?” I asked.

  McAulay shook his head. “I tossed him a wave, which he did back. That’s about the extent of it. I talk to him every now and then. We mostly just chat about neighbor stuff—small talk, basically. I can’t say that I really know him.”

  “Which way was he headed? And you said he had a duffel bag?” Beth asked.

  “Yeah. He walked past my house, so that would be north. But you have to do a couple turns to get out of the subdivision.”

  “The duffel bag?” Beth asked.

  “He had a big black bag for sports or something. About the size of a bag for baseball, meaning that you could probably hold something the size of a bat inside of it. He had it draped over his shoulder. There’s a park with a couple batting cages about a mile away. That’s probably the closest place where he could hit some balls. The park is southwest of here.”

  “The park name?” Harrington asked.

  “Kings Grant.”

  Harrington nodded to one of his officers, who called it over the radio.

  The park needed to be checked out, but after glancing at my watch, I highly doubted he had been there in a batting cage for the last five hours or so. I also had a sneaking suspicion that whatever was inside of the bag had nothing to do with sports.

  “Was this a common occurrence?” I asked. “Him walking with a large duffel bag?”

  McAuley shook his head. “I can’t say that I’ve seen him doing it before. He never really struck me as the sports type. I’ve tried chatting him up about scores and plays and things like that. It seemed like he never really knew what I was talking about.”

  “What else can you tell us about this guy? Friends? Family? Occupation? He owns a wheelchair transport van. What do you know about that?” Beth asked. She stared at him, waiting on answers for her barrage of questions.

  “Um, what question do you want answered first?”

  “Employment and the van,” Beth said.

  “Yeah, he transported those in wheelchairs—mostly elderly I think. As far as I know, the business was his. Pretty sure it was the on-call type of thing. Like, he didn’t leave at nine and come home at five or anything. I guess when someone needed a ride, he would go and transport them.”

  “Did he own any other vehicles here aside from the van?” I asked.

  “I don’t think so,” McAuley said. “There was never really another car here.”

  “He lived here alone?” I asked.

  “He did.”

  “Do you know anything about this guy’s friends and family?” Beth asked.

  “Friends, no. He never had anyone over. His father was never mentioned. I’m guessing he was never in the picture. Tim’s mother passed away when he was young. My wife and I knew his sister prior to her death.”

  Beth and Couch perked up. The deaths of those close to our suspect would line up with our profile, depending on the circumstances.

  “What do you know about these deceased family members?” I asked. “You said you knew the sister?”

  “Yeah, Carrie was Tim’s sister. Carrie Baker. She died a few years back. This was her house prior to her death. I guess I can’t say for certain, but I assume it was left to Tim. Carrie didn’t have any children—deceased mother. Tim was her only sibling.”

  “The mother’s death?” I asked. “When was that and how?”

  “I couldn’t say. Years ago. Carrie had mentioned losing her as a child.”

  “Any idea what the mother’s last name was?” I asked.

  “No,” he said.

  I pulled my notepad out and wrote down the sister’s name. “The sister’s last name was Baker?” I asked.

  “Baker, yes,” McAuley answered.

  “Was she married?” Beth asked. “Accounting for the different last name?”

  “At one point. I didn’t know her then, though. She
was already divorced when she moved here. I didn’t know that the two had different last names. I just knew Tim as Tim.”

  “Yeah, they’re different,” Beth said.

  “Maybe Ms. Baker never dropped her ex-husband’s last name,” I said.

  No one responded.

  “What did she do for a living?” Beth asked.

  “Carrie was a detective, and then maybe a year or so before her death, she quit the department and started some kind of private investigative deal.”

  “Detective where?” Harrington asked. He stood from the file box he was digging through.

  “Miami, here,” McAuley said.

  I looked at Harrington. “You’re not familiar with the name?”

  “She wasn’t from my department. Let me find out who she was. Carrie Baker, you said?”

  McAuley nodded.

  Harrington removed his phone from his inner suit-jacket pocket and left the room.

  “How did Ms. Baker die?” I asked.

  “It was a car accident. A pretty bad one, too. I guess she just veered off of the freeway and hit a big freeway sign. Too bad. It seemed like she was pretty happy the last few times we’d spoken. She had talked about business picking up and things like that.”

  “Do you know any other details of this accident?” Couch asked.

  He shook his head.

  “If there was a police file, we should be able to get everything on it,” Beth said.

  We went through a few more questions with McAuley before Agent Rivera walked him from the house. I sent Ball a message asking for everything he could get on Carrie Baker as well.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Tim paid the driver, closed the door of the taxi, and walked toward the entrance of the gas station located a few blocks from his house. Tim bought a hot dog and a soda from inside. He ate one and drank the other as he walked into his neighborhood. Tim tossed the empty can of soda into someone’s yard and heaved the duffel bag—filled with his supplies, cash, and watches—over his shoulder. He considered how he wanted to handle distributing the money. Tim went back and forth on his decision, torn between trying to find family members of the people that had left Jensen the inheritances or just donating the funds to some kind of charity for the elderly.