DEAD AIM - Angie Bartoni Case File #3 (Angie Bartoni Case Files Book 1)

by Marshall Huffman

  “How do you know he was, as you say, sent?”

  “He was a pro. And when a professional is involved it is for a very good reason. That means someone paid him to get the information. Professor, we can dance all day and you can try and skirt the issue but believe me, you will tell me what I want to know.”

  “Look detective. It was over gambling debts. I’m pretty far behind and this was a message to pay up or else,” he said.

  I waited. Just looking at him. He squirmed and fidgeted and I just stood there watching.

  “I’m telling you the truth. Honestly.”

  “Professor Hilton, you probably hear excuses and lies all the time from your students. I couldn’t do my homework because of this. I couldn’t get my paper done on time because of that. Like you, I hear bullshit all the time too and right now, that is exactly what I am hearing. I know you think because you teach at the University that you are a lot smarter than us but guess what? I have already talked to your bookie and he said you were hardly anything behind. At least what he considers big money. How about you quit prevaricating and tell us what went down.”

  Prevaricating. Big word huh? See, I have an education too and this jerk wasn’t going to intimidate me. Not too much anyway.

  “Alright. This guy shows up at my office. I had never seen him before. He started asking me questions about what I had seen out of my window the Friday night before last. I happened to be in my office rather late and he wanted to know what I had seen if anything. I told him I had no idea what he was talking about. Without another word he shot me in the leg. I went down and he came over and asked me again. I told him I hadn’t seen a damn thing but the asshole shot me a second time. Then he stooped down and put the gun on my knee and told me if he found out I was lying he would be back and wouldn’t be so nice next time. That’s it. He was just there one minute and gone the next,” Hilton managed to get out.

  “What did you see?”

  “Nothing. I was working and I didn’t even look outside that I remember. I was pretty cold that night but not snowing. Low forties I believe.”

  “You know, that makes a great story but professionals don’t just let a person live after they have seen their face. Something is missing from your story Professor and while you may think you have me convinced I can assure you I will keep digging. When I find you have been lying to me, I will bust your chops. Got it?” I said.

  He didn’t bother to reply; he just picked up his book and put his glasses back on. Yeah, some of that was a little dramatic but I do hate being lied to and I knew this sucker was not telling me the entire story.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  I was trying to not be grumpy on the way back to the station but nothing was working out right and I hate not being able to put the pieces together.

  “You okay?” Dan asked.

  “Oh sure. Just peachy keen. Hell no I’m not alright,” I snapped at him.

  “Something will break. I have a feeling,” he informed me.

  Now isn’t that special? Something will break because my all-knowing rookie partner has a feeling. I swear; if he wasn’t driving I would have smacked him upside the head.

  “Where are we going?” he finally asked.

  “You’re the one driving,” I shot back, and then added, “To Hilton's office on campus. I want to go through the place again.”

  “Crime scene has already been through it,” Dan informed me like I may have been on sabbatical or something.

  “I do know that Dan but I want to take a second look, maybe a third look. Maybe even a twenty-fifth look. Okay?”

  “Yeah sure. No problem,” he said and started concentrating real hard on driving.

  That was probably a good idea. The snow was still coming down in near whiteout conditions. It was falling so fast the windshield wipers were getting a buildup on them. For a second I didn’t even know where we were. I do have to give it to Dan, the next thing I knew he was pulling into a parking place in front of the Professor's building.

  “Man, that was tense,” he said as he turned the engine off.

  “Nice job. I’m glad you were driving, I couldn’t see squat,” I said, trying to be nice again.

  We bundled up and made a dash to the door. Dash isn’t really the right word. We sort of lunged and slid to the door. I slipped on the water that had accumulated on the floor from people tracking in. Thank goodness I didn’t fall on my rear.

  When we got to Hilton's office I saw that someone had cut the tape and water was on the floor in front of his door. I held my finger up to my lips to indicate to Dan that we needed to be very quiet. I pulled my Sig out and checked to make sure one was in the chamber.

  “I’ll go first. You go left and keep low,” I whispered.

  Dan nodded his head and took out his weapon. I looked over to make sure the safety was off. He wouldn’t be much help if we needed to start shooting.

  I reached out and carefully turned the door knob. I did it very slowly. Once it was unlatched I nodded to Dan and shoved the door open, I went right looking in all directions at once it seemed. Dan followed on my heels and was doing the same thing. Nothing. No one was in the room but they damn sure had been and not that long ago judging from the amount of water on the floor.

  Books were all over the floor and the file cabinets had been emptied onto a pile. The place was a disaster. I know the crime scene guys can be a little rough at times but this was done by someone else.

  “What the heck happened?” Dan said surveying the room.

  I assumed it was a rhetorical question so I didn’t bother to answer. Term papers were thrown all over the room and everything in his desk had been dumped out.

  “Man, someone was really looking for something.”

  I held my tongue. I didn’t say anything nasty.

  “I wonder what they were looking for?” Dan said, shoving some of the stuff aside with his foot.

  “I’m sure the good Professor knows. What I can’t figure out is why he is still alive if he didn’t give whomever it was what they were after.”

  “Yeah, that is kind of strange. You would think he would have been shot in the knee or elbow. Or worse,” Dan replied.

  “Ouch. Anyway, he must have given them something and they let him live. Why I don’t know. I’m guessing he gave them a decoy to get them to let him live. When they realized they had been duped, the came back looking for whatever it was,” I speculated.

  “Unless they found it, they are going to be pretty upset.”

  “Agreed. We need to get security on that jerk. You take care of that while I rummage around,” I said.

  Dan started the ball rolling and I picked through the piles on the floor. I found a camera that was busted open. The lens had been knocked off and the view screen smashed. I opened the side door. No SD card but the battery was still there for all that was worth.

  I carefully placed the camera in an evidence bag that I had in my coat pocket. I knew these things have some kind of an internal memory system. Maybe the lab would get lucky and we could find something. I wasn’t putting much faith in that but at this point I could live with trying to fool myself.

  “It’s done. The hospital security will have someone watching until our guys get there. They were sending someone just as soon as they could.”

  “Did they say how long?” I asked.

  “No more than ten to fifteen minutes. They are at shift change,” Dan replied.

  “Well, I have news for Professor Hilton. We are going right back to the hospital and shake his butt up. That dude has some explaining to do and I am in no mood to be trifled with. He doesn’t answer my questions I’ll stick my fingers in his bullet holes and wiggle them around.”

  “Yikes. I don’t think that is exactly police procedure.”

  “You’re right, it's Bartoni procedure. It supersedes policy at this point,” I said heading out again.

  “You want to drive?” he asked but I just kept walking, not acknowledging his question.
<
br />   “Really, it’s okay with me,” he said.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  When we got to the hospital almost forty-five minutes later I had cooled down some. This guy was jerking me around because he thought he was so much smarter. He probably was but I still didn’t have to like it.

  A hospital security guy was sitting by the door when we came up the hall. We flipped our badges and shoved open the door to his room. It took all of ten seconds to realize we were a day late and a dollar short.

  Professor Hilton was deader than a door nail. He must have been coming out of the bathroom when someone garroted him. He lay in a pool of blood with his head at an impossible angle. Whoever had done it was very powerful. His head had almost been severed.

  “Don’t touch anything I said to Dan,” as I opened the door. The security guy was reading a Reader’s Digest.

  “How long have you been here?”

  “Maybe fifteen minutes. Why?”

  “Did you check on the guy in this room when you came on duty?”

  “Uh, no. I was just told to keep anyone from entering the room until the police got here. Why?”

  “Well, I guess it’s because you are guarding a dead man. Someone garroted him.”

  “What? Hey, no one went in that room since I’ve been here,” he said jumping up.

  “Easy. No one said you didn’t do your job. But the fact is that he has been murdered. Are there security cameras?” I asked looking for any sign of them.

  “Yeah, at the end of each hall. They aren’t very good but we do have them.”

  “I need to make a call then I’ll need you to show me where the recordings are kept.”

  I called the captain to give him the news. He was not amused to say the least. After he finished ranting and raving I went and found the security man. Obviously he had told others because suddenly there was a lot more traffic in the hall. Everyone was trying to sneak-a-peek. They don’t get many murders in the hospital I would imagine.

  “Here you go,” he said queuing the CD and pressing the play button.

  The time stamp said 11:02 a.m. when a man dressed in a white coat and dark pants went into Hilton’s room. He was in there seven minutes and twenty-two seconds before he reemerged. He obviously knew the cameras were there, he kept his face down the entire time.

  “Well, that didn’t help much,” I muttered.

  “I told you we had crappy cameras,” the security man replied.

  “Yeah, we get a lot of that,” I said.

  When I got back to the room, Doctor Sorenson, our esteemed ME, was checking the body temperature.

  “What’s up doc?” I asked.

  “Bartoni, do you know what driving is like right now?” he said without looking up.

  “Nah, that’s what I have Dan for.”

  “Well it’s treacherous.”

  “Geez, maybe we could have all the victims found during good weather. Any particular time good for you doc?”

  “I’m just saying...”

  “Yeah, I get it. We have a pretty good time of death for you from the camera time stamps.”

  “Approximately 11:05 a.m.” he said wiping his thermometer off with an alcohol swab.

  “I can’t pull any wool over your eyes doc. I would say you are exactly right.”

  “You expected something less?”

  “Oh heavens no, ye masterful one.”

  “Guy must have been strong. Tall too. As you can see, the angle of the cut is up from the front to the back. He almost took the victim’s head off. Cut right down to the spinal cord.”

  “We have him on video but between the poor quality and him knowing he was on camera there is no way we can ID him,” I told him.

  “We’ll go ahead and do the autopsy but I expect there will be no surprises.”

  “You can go ahead and take him.”

  “We’re just going to stick him in the morgue downstairs for now. I don’t see a need to hurry and with the weather like it is, he can wait a little longer,” Doc Sorenson said.

  I was looking out the window at the snow falling when my cell phone went off. I dug it out of my jacket pocket and checked the ID. Crap. It was the captain. This could not be good.

  It wasn’t.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  “Where in the hell have you been Bartoni?” the captain demanded when we got back.

  “Just out having fun. Building a snowman, that kind of thing. I just love winter,” I replied shaking the snow out of my hair.

  “Where is Detective Roberts?”

  “Building a snow fort.”

  The captain gave me one of those looks. I decided maybe I should give it a rest.

  “He is parking the car. It’s not easy with the snow piled up,” I informed him.

  “When he gets here, I want you both in my office.”

  “Got it boss.”

  “Get your damned Diet Coke now so I won’t have to wait for you to quit stalling.”

  “Should we be stalling?” I asked.

  “Just get to my office,” he said and sort of stomped off.

  Time to clean up my act. I went and got a Diet Coke and a Snickers bar while waiting for Roberts to show up. I was half finished with the candy bar by the time he appeared.

  “You can’t even get into the garage. The snow plows have pushed about a ton of snow across the entrance.”

  “I hope you parked where we can get out if we need to,” I said.

  “I can’t guarantee anything right now. I’ve never seen it like this in all the time I have lived in the Midwest.”

  “It’ll probably be seventy degrees tomorrow. Stupid weather,” I muttered, “Captain wants to see us.”

  “Let me grab a cup of coffee,” Dan said rushing off to the break room.

  Good luck with that. No one ever puts a fresh pot on when the other one is killed off. Somehow men think coffee just magically appears in the pot. Schmucks.

  Dan came back and we made the dead man walking trek to the captain’s office. I knocked on the door.

  “Come.”

  Why did I feel like a kid reporting to the Principal's Office?

  “We have a missing person’s report,” he said.

  Dan and I looked at each other. We were both thinking ‘so what?’.

  “A twenty year old female didn’t make it home last night. Her parents called. Normally that doesn’t involve us but she happens to be a part time student at IUPUI.”

  I rubbed my forehead with both hands. What in the hell was going on? Why was this suddenly happening? IUPUI is one of the safest places to go to school and suddenly its murder central. It made no sense whatsoever.

  “When did this happen?”

  “Missing persons called me a couple of hours ago. They don’t usually do that but since it was an IUPUI student they gave me a heads up.”

  “Her parents reported her missing?” Dan asked.

  “Yeah. Evidently she had an 8:00 p.m. class. When she wasn’t home by 11:00 o’clock they started getting worried. They thought maybe she got stuck or was in a wreck with the weather being so bad. Evidently she doesn’t see too well at night and has to take it real easy. By 12:00 they were more than a little concerned. They had called her cell phone over and over but it went directly to voice mail. The mother tried to text her several times but never received an answer.”

  “So they called 911 and reported her missing.”

  “Actually they called all the hospitals in the area first to see if anyone by the name of Leigh Leonard had been admitted or was in the emergency room.”

  “So then they called 911?” Dan asked.

  “No they called the non-emergency line and made the report. They were sure it was somehow weather related. Eventually they were passed to missing persons. You know how that works. Wait 48 hours blah, blah, blah. Fortunately Jameson was the one who got the call and he let me know about it and went ahead and put out a BOLO for her.”

  “That was smart,” I replied. Jameson w
as one of the best cops in the division in my book.

  “Yes it was. So, now your caseload just got a lot heaver. Two female IUPUI students murdered, a Professor shot and then murdered, and now a missing IUPUI student. The question is; what do you need?”

  I was shocked. He was actually asking us what we needed? A hundred things came flooding to mind. A new car, bigger house, new furniture but I was smart enough not to say any of that.

  “A couple of grunts to help us track down students of Professor Hilton and possible acquaintances of Leigh Leonard. She had to have had classmates that knew her. Also we need to talk to the class instructor. On top of that we are still checking on vehicles as well,” I told him.

  “Alright. You can use Detective Lane and LeRoy. I know you don’t want Farmington even coming close to this case.”

  “Lane is great. LeRoy will probably be okay one he gets away from the influence of Farmington,” I said.

  “Good. I’ll let them know. What do you plan to do next?”

  “The four of us will get together and I’ll bring them up to speed. We can give them copies of our notes so far and then divide the work load.”

  “Just don’t take too long. If the same guy has her then she doesn’t have long.”

  “We will go copy our files while you tell Lane and LeRoy. If you would, have them meet us in the conference room and we can get started immediately.”

  “Go. I’ll take care of the rest,” the captain said as we headed out the door.

  “I don’t see how this is going to really help,” Dan said after we were back at our desk.

  “I’m not sure either but it will save us a lot of grunt work. We are going to have four cops spinning their wheels instead of two. We need a solid lead. Some sort of break. Right now we have diddly,” I replied.

  “I can copy our notes, I see you have a stack of phone calls to make,” he said nodding at the list of pink notes on my desk.”