Judged

by E. H. Reinhard

“We might have to have someone look at that, so I figure it’s probably best to not disturb the area there.” Harrington waved us over to the table. “This is Tony Sirtis, the homeowner.” He looked at Sirtis. “These are Agents Rawlings, Harper, and Couch. Why don’t you run through your story again?”

  The man, looking around thirty years old and wearing a black heavy metal T-shirt, put his hand through his long, dusty-looking hair. Some of the dust dropped to the shoulders of his shirt. “The guy came up into my backyard while I was out on the patio area, having a smoke. I was looking at my phone and playing some music, so I never saw or heard him until he was right at the screen door with a gun pointed at me. Anyway, the guy made me come into the house and followed me in. That’s when I saw that he was all wet and covered in pond scum.”

  “I’m thinking he probably swam across that channel,” Harrington said.

  I nodded but said nothing, wondering how close I’d actually been to him at any given point.

  The man continued, “So the guy orders me around a bit: do this or I’ll kill you, do that or I’ll kill you, things like that. That’s really about it. He took my car and left a couple of hours ago. As soon as I got free, I called 9-1-1.”

  The man’s story didn’t account for the hole in the wall or the dust on him or the hours Wendell had spent in his home. I pointed at the area near the front door. “What happened there?”

  “Oh, he wanted some clothes, so I went for the revolver in my dresser. He caught me going for it, tied my hands, and locked me in my bedroom closet, I broke through the wall in an attempt to get out, but he caught me. That’s how I got this.” He pointed at his swollen lip and nose. “The guy kicked me in the face while I was hanging out of the wall.”

  “Okay, back up a bit,” I said. “You gave him clothes?”

  “Yeah, he was all wet and asked for a change of clothes, which I gave him.”

  “What did you give him?”

  “A plain gray hooded sweatshirt, a pair of jeans, some socks, and shoes.”

  “He was still wearing this when he left?” I asked.

  “Yeah.”

  I took my notepad from my inner pocket and wrote down what the man was wearing. Couch took his phone from his pocket to make a call, probably to get the clothing added to the description for the media.

  “And you confirmed the photo was in fact the man that was here?” Beth asked.

  “Yeah, that was him. Who is he?”

  “Have you been watching the news at all?” Beth asked.

  “Yeah, every day. I’m on home confinement. Not much else to do other than stare at the television. Wait, this wasn’t the vigilante guy, was it?”

  “We believe it was, yes,” Beth said.

  “Hmm,” the guy named Tony said thoughtfully.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Well, I guess that kind of explains the guy’s little interrogation deal that he did with me.”

  “You’ll have to expand on that,” Beth said.

  “Well, so after he drags me out of the wall and ties me up again, he sits me down and asks why I’m on house arrest. He seemed real interested in my offense or whatever you want to call it.”

  Couch clicked off from his phone call and rejoined the conversation. “What did you do?” he asked.

  “Felony assault,” Harrington said.

  “It sounds worse than it was,” Tony said. “I shouldn’t have gotten anything for what I did.”

  “Let’s hear your version quickly,” Couch said.

  “I beat the shit out of my sister’s boyfriend for knocking her around. You want to beat on a woman, especially my little sister, and well, you get what’s coming to you. The guy deserved everything he got. Anyway, I got a year inside and six months of home confinement. If I would have known that I was going to get that, I would have put a better beating on his punk ass.”

  The nature of his crime, in my head, somehow didn’t qualify him to receive death at Wendell’s hand, which was probably why the guy was sitting before us and still breathing. The next thing that registered with me was the realization that his crime had been a felony, along with the fact that he’d admitted to owning a firearm, and surely everyone else in the room realized that also. I was fine with leaving that to the locals to deal with, for we had more pressing matters on our plate at the moment.

  “So he took your car,” I said. “Did he mention anything about where he was going, what he was doing?”

  “No. He said, ‘I’m taking your car. Where are the keys?’ After that, he left.”

  “This was last night that this all happened, and you said he didn’t leave until this morning. Did he sleep here? How did that go?” Beth asked.

  “I think he was trying to when I was in the closet. But that all occurred in the early hours of the morning. After that, we sat in the kitchen when he questioned me about my offenses. That took an hour or so. After that, we sat in the living room, and he watched television all night. I actually fell asleep for a little while. I’m not sure if he did, though. We didn’t talk much after.”

  “So you guys just snuggled up in front of the TV all night?” I asked.

  “My hands were zip-tied together. So were my ankles. He made me sit just off to the side of the television so he could watch me and the TV at the same time. I guess after I tried for the gun once and tried to escape through the wall, I didn’t want to press my luck with the guy by trying to do something again. There was something with his whole questioning thing that he did—it kind of spooked me. His whole demeanor changed, like someone flipping a switch. It sounds weird, but I could see something in his eyes. He looked like he was contemplating killing me.”

  “Yeah, he probably was,” Couch said.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Tim dumped Tony’s car and tossed the man’s gun. He took a cab to Ridley’s neighborhood—he knew Ridley wouldn’t be home. While Kenny Ridley was a drunk, he appeared to be a functioning one. He never missed work, was never late, and even seemed to work overtime occasionally. Tim, with his hood over his head, walked up Ridley’s driveway and started down the side of his two-story home. A faded wooden fence blocked his entry into the backyard. Tim flipped the clasp holding the door closed and entered the area along the side of Ridley’s home. Then he swung the fence door closed and relatched it.

  Tim rounded the corner of the home to the backyard and covered patio area—he entered the patio and looked through the glass doors into the kitchen. From his research on Ridley, he knew that he and his wife had separated. Ridley had a pair of children, a boy of seven and a girl that was eleven. Both children lived with their mother on the other side of town. There would be no one in Ridley’s home to hear Tim’s entrance. Tim reached out and tried sliding the door, which didn’t budge.

  “Shit,” Tim said. “This door is never locked.”

  He had no tools to allow him entry—the only thing in his favor was the fenced-in backyard, which would hide his actions. Tim walked to each window facing the backyard to see if any of them were open. The first window, that of the dining room, was closed and latched. Tim walked to the next pair of windows facing the back—the living room. The latches on the window tops weren’t secured. Tim ripped out the screen and put his fingertips against the bottom lip of the pane of glass, and it slid up, as expected. Tim pushed the blinds to one side and pulled himself up and through the window onto the couch sitting on the other side of the wall. He walked straight to the door leading into the garage. After a quick check to make sure that what he’d dropped off on a prior visit was still there, he returned to the rear patio door, unlocked it, and went outside to replace the screen. Tim glanced at his watch. “A couple more hours,” he said.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  We wrapped up with Tony Sirtis, left him in the care of a couple local officers and Lieutenant Harrington, and drove the three quarters of a mile back to Wendell’s home. Harrington had told us before we left that Miami Dade PD had placed an officer in a civilian car down
the block to watch the home in case Wendell tried returning—a smart idea.

  Couch parked at the curb in front of the house. Beth and I pulled in behind him and got out. Couch, sitting half out of the driver’s door of his truck, waved us over. Beth and I walked up.

  “I have some gloves here,” he said. “One second.” Couch pulled a pair of latex gloves over his hands and then out held the box of gloves toward Beth and me.

  I took a pair and passed the box to Beth.

  A black sedan pulled up and stopped along the side of Couch’s truck, a few feet from where we stood.

  The driver, dressed in street clothes, lowered his window. “I’m Officer Rogers, Miami Dade PD. I’m assuming you’re with the FBI?”

  “Yeah, Agents Rawlings, Harper and Couch,” I said. “You’re the officer Miami Dade parked on the house?”

  He nodded. “It’s been quiet. A couple of cars have passed and slowed. I ran the plates of each that did. They were all local to the neighborhood. My guess is they were just trying to get a peek at the police-taped house.”

  “Nothing of any interest though, huh?” Beth asked.

  “Nah. I’ve been here since about eight this morning, when I tagged in for the officer who had been watching the place overnight. I can’t say that there has been any action. We actually have another car a block over as well. We wanted to make sure that he didn’t sneak through a backyard and make entry into the property. He and I have been back and forth on the radio. He hasn’t seen anything either.”

  “Okay,” I said. “We’re going to go in for another look around. I’m guessing it will be about an hour or so. If you need to go grab something to eat, it’s probably a good time.”

  “Nah, I’ll be fine. The wife packed me up a lunch. If you need anything, I’ll be at the end of the block there.” He jerked his head back in the direction he’d come from.

  “Okay.”

  He raised his window and continued down the street.

  The three of us, gloved up, left Couch’s truck and approached the police-sealed front door of Wendell’s home. Beth slit the tape with a nail file from her purse, and we entered. The home, at first glance, looked undisturbed, at least until we reached the home office. The file boxes were gone. Everything that had covered the desk, taken. The wall of photos and papers had been removed. A bare desk and desk lamp stood before us—behind the desk, a few half-empty shelves of books and framed photos. I walked over and looked at what remained. The photos all appeared to be of the same woman—a blond, thin thirtysomething. In a few of the photos, she wore a police uniform. One showed her accepting some kind of an award. I assumed the photos were of Carrie Baker. My eyes went from the pictures to the books occupying the second shelf. I examined the titles.

  “Some interesting reading material,” I said.

  “What do you mean?” Couch asked. He was standing in the back of the room, staring at a couple of plaques mounted to the wall.

  Beth walked toward me to look at the book selections over my shoulder.

  “Well, it seems he’s a fan of non-fiction,” I said. “We have a couple of locksmithing books, some forensic science books, an investigative procedures manual, which looks like it might be police issued…”

  “Here’s a good one,” Beth said. She removed it from the shelf and held it up so Couch could get a look at it. “The psychology of the criminal mind.”

  “They could have belonged to the sister,” Couch said. “It looks like she was a pretty good cop. Multiple awards for service over here.”

  “Which again brings into question how she found herself down in records,” I said.

  “I was thinking about that,” Beth said. “I’m betting that’s where all the police files came from. She took them.”

  “Yeah, I kicked that around too,” I said. “But why? And how wouldn’t anyone notice that many files being missing?”

  “All good points,” she said.

  “Did we contact where she worked in records yet?” I asked.

  “I don’t believe so,” Couch said. “It wouldn’t hurt though.”

  “She could have taken all of this stuff as leads for her PI venture,” Beth said. “Look through cases that were unresolved and call families to solicit work.”

  “Seems like kind of a strong-arm tactic to drum up business,” I said.

  Beth shrugged.

  “No word on anything from the guys going through the files or what was collected from here?” I asked.

  “My phone hasn’t rung.” Couch pointed toward the doorway. “I’m going to go get another look at the van in the garage and pick through a few things out there.”

  “Sure.” I turned to the desk, had a seat, and started pulling open the drawers. One after the other, they were empty.

  Beth, behind me, was taking each book from the shelves and giving it a shake to see if any papers, or anything else, were hiding between the pages.

  The sound of talking caught my ear outside the office—one of the voices was Couch, and the other sounded like Harrington. I figured Harrington had finished over at Tony Sirtis’s house and come to lend a hand. I looked up from the desk to see Couch and Harrington enter the room.

  “We might have something here,” Couch said.

  “I just got a call from a Lieutenant Peterson with the Fort Lauderdale PD,” Harrington said.

  “Okay,” I said. “Who is Lieutenant Peterson?”

  “He saw the name Wendell on the news, is familiar with him, and has some information for us. He wants us to come over for a talk.”

  “How is this lieutenant connected?” Beth asked. “You said he’s in Fort Lauderdale?”

  “He used to be at Miami Dade—different precinct as me. I guess he had some contact with Wendell after the accident that killed the sister.”

  “The nature of the information that he has?” I asked.

  “We only spoke for a few minutes, but he said that he’s heard about this black SUV before, even searched for it. He made it sound like he had multiple interactions with Wendell. I guess he said that he had some old notes that he was in the process of trying to dig up. Hell, at this point, any kind of real insight into this guy could help,” Harrington said.

  “Okay. When is this supposed to happen?” I asked.

  “He just asked us to come over as soon as we could. He said he’d be in until around six or so today,” Harrington said.

  I glanced at my watch, and the time was inching up on three o’clock. “What is that, about an hour drive to get over there?”

  “Right around there, yeah,” Harrington said.

  “Did you get anything back on meeting with the officers that were on the scene of the accident or the ex-partner of Carrie Baker?”

  “Oh, yeah, I forgot to tell you. Sellers, the ex-partner, I spoke with. He says he can come in anytime, and to just let him know what works. As far as the officers that were on the scene, there were quite a few. I left a message with the station that we wanted to speak with anyone that was on scene. I figure some calls will come in throughout the day.”

  “Okay,” I said. I looked at Couch. “Did you want to finish up here and then head out to talk with this lieutenant?”

  “Um, why don’t you two go and check that out,” Couch said. “I can kick around here for a little bit and then meet you guys back at the office after a while.”

  “That’s fine with me if you’re okay with being here solo,” I said.

  “Yeah, I’m good,” Couch said. “If for some reason I need anyone, I have the local guys sitting on the neighborhood. And for some reason if Wendell shows up, I always have Lucille.”

  “Lucille?” I asked.

  Couch tapped at the shoulder holster under his suit jacket.

  “Where did you get ‘Lucille’?”

  “She saved my life,” Couch said. “Two or three times.”

  I took only a second to catch his reference. “Ah, you’re a blues fan,” I said.

  Couch nodded and smiled. “Good
job, Agent.”

  I smiled back, caught a confused look from Beth, and turned to Harrington. “Are you going to head over there as well?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you’re ready now? Nothing left over at Tony, the witness, hostage, felon-with-a-firearm guy’s place?”

  “We’re done over there. We’ll let the guy’s parole officer know about the weapon.”

  “Was the gun still at the house?” I asked.

  Harrington shook his head. “He said that Wendell must have taken it. He looked for it after Wendell left but never found it.”

  “Great,” I said sarcastically. “All right, if we’re ready to go, let’s head out.”

  “Sure. You guys can just follow me, I guess. I know where the station is.”

  “Yup.”

  We followed Harrington from the house, hopped into our car, and left the neighborhood. A few miles from Wendell’s, we merged onto the interstate to head north.

  Beth looked over at me. “I have a feeling that all of this has something to do with that sister,” she said.

  “I’m getting more of that feeling too. Let’s try to meet with this old partner as soon as we can and get something set to talk with some people in the records department she worked in. If we can’t get anything on Wendell directly, maybe we can get something on his sister that will lead us to him.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  We pulled into the parking lot of the Fort Lauderdale police department and found an open parking spot a few away from Lieutenant Harrington. We got out and followed Harrington toward the front entrance of the police station. The police station itself was a long, rectangular two-story off-white building with a pair of blue stripes running horizontally. I imagined it’d been built sometime in the eighties, based on the architecture. The center of the building was two stories of glass windows. Harrington headed to the right of the atrium area and walked under a large covered entrance. I looked up at the overhang as we walked beneath it to see the words City of Fort Lauderdale Police Department next to a six-foot-tall golden badge. We entered the building’s lobby, and Harrington led us down a white-floored hallway toward the front desk. He checked in with the woman behind the glass at the front desk and let her know we were there to see a Lieutenant Peterson. The female officer pointed toward a couple of wood benches off to the side and advised us to have a seat.