Chasing The Dead (An Alex Stone Thriller)

by Joel Goldman

  “If we have to,” Rossi said. “But I like the airport because once he ditched the car he could take a shuttle to the terminal and a different one back into town.”

  “What about the Escort?” Fowler asked.

  “I ran the tag. He rented it from Enterprise. They delivered it to his apartment the morning after Robin was killed.”

  “And if he left the Camry at the airport,” Wheeler said, “there may be video of him driving into the lot and getting out of the car.”

  Fowler thought for a moment. “Okay. I’ll send some uniforms to the airport to help out. You can let him sit for two hours, but then you go at him, car or no car. If you don’t have enough to hold him, cut him loose. I don’t want any more goddamn harassment lawsuits.”

  Two hours later, Rossi and Wheeler went back to the interrogation room. Norris was standing in front of the two-way mirror, cupping his hands around his eyes, staring at the glass. He turned around when the door opened.

  “You guys get off watching me sitting in here, scratching my nuts waiting for somebody to tell me what the hell I’m doing here?”

  “Sit down, Mr. Norris,” Rossi said.

  “I’m not doing shit until you tell me what’s going on.”

  “What’s going on is that you are going to sit down and answer our questions.”

  “Maybe I should call my lawyer first.”

  “That’s your right at any time, but it would sure make me wonder why you’d think you need a lawyer before you even know what we want to talk to you about. Wouldn’t that make you wonder, Detective Wheeler?”

  “Sure would, unless Mr. Norris is hiding something.”

  Norris raised both hands above his waist, palms out. “Hey, I’m not hiding anything. You guys wake me up at the crack of dawn and drag me down here, leave me sitting here for half the morning . . . anybody would want to know what it’s all about. Doesn’t mean I’m hiding anything, ’cause I don’t have anything to hide.”

  “Good,” Rossi said. “So there’s no reason you can’t sit down and answer our questions.”

  Norris shrugged and took a seat. “Fire away.”

  Chapter Forty

  “WHERE’S YOUR CAMRY?” Rossi asked.

  Norris flinched, his eyebrows bouncing. “My Camry?”

  “Yeah. The one you were driving when you rear-ended Robin a couple of weeks ago.”

  Norris leaned back in his chair, arms folded over his chest. “That’s what this is about? Hey, I can explain. That was an accident. My fault, that’s for sure, but it was an accident. I was looking at my phone and the next thing I know, boom, she stopped in front of me and I ran into her.”

  “Answer my question. Where’s your Camry?”

  “Did my oldest, Donny, put you up to this? His mother is dead and he’s jerking me around to pay for the damage to her car from that parking lot fender bender even after her car was totaled in the accident when she was killed? Unbelievable! I told him I didn’t have insurance.”

  “Donny has nothing to do with this, Mr. Norris. I’m going to ask you one more time, and if you don’t answer me, Detective Wheeler and I will be back to wondering why you’re refusing to cooperate with us. Where’s your Camry?”

  “Refusing to cooperate? Are you kidding? I’m here, aren’t I? I didn’t call a lawyer, did I?”

  “But you’re trying awfully hard not to answer what should be a very simple question, which doesn’t put you in a good light.”

  Norris slid down in his chair, scratched his nose, thumped his fingers on the table again, and sat up. “Okay, okay. Somebody stole my car.”

  “When?”

  Norris tugged at his chin, thinking. “Last week. Must have been Wednesday night. I came out of my apartment Thursday morning and it was gone.”

  “Did you file a police report?”

  Norris shook his head. “No. No police report.”

  “Why not?”

  Norris turned away, staring at the two-way mirror, squirming in his chair. He took a deep breath. “Look, if I tell you, you gotta help me out.”

  Rossi leaned forward, hoping Norris was about to confess in record-breaking time.

  “I’ll do whatever I can to help you, but you have to help yourself by telling me what happened to the car and why you need my help.”

  Norris’s eyes darted back and forth from Rossi to Wheeler and back again until he slapped one hand on the table. “Shit! I knew it was a mistake to get involved with that guy. I knew it. I knew it. I knew it. I’m such a fucking moron!”

  “What guy?”

  “Richie Vigliaturo.”

  Rossi sat back. “Richie the Vig? The loan shark?”

  Norris scrunched his eyes and rubbed the sides of his face with both hands. “Yeah. I was broke and a friend of a friend hooked me up with Richie. He loaned me a few bucks and I gave him the title to my car as security. He said if I got behind, he’d take my car before he broke my legs.”

  “And you got behind.”

  “Yeah. I owed him every Monday, but I missed last Monday, so he took my car. That’s why you gotta help me out. I missed this Monday too, and I don’t want my legs broken.”

  “Wait here,” Rossi said, signaling to Wheeler. “We’ll be back.”

  “Hey, you think you can help me?”

  “I think that if Richie repossessed your car, you’re the luckiest guy in the world.”

  Rossi and Wheeler retreated to the break room, each pouring a cup of coffee.

  “What do you think?” Wheeler asked.

  “I think if Richie boosted the car before Robin was killed, he won’t mind telling us, and if he took it after she was killed, he’ll give it up in a heartbeat to prove he had nothing to do with her death. He’s not interested in that kind of trouble.”

  “Yeah, but if he took the car last week, what are the odds he still has it this week?”

  “Next to zero. I’ll give him a call.”

  “What, you got him on speed dial?”

  Rossi grinned. “Let’s just say he’ll take my call and leave it at that.”

  “Hang on. Let’s say Richie didn’t take the car and we find it out at the airport or wherever and we can prove that it’s the car that knocked Robin off the road.”

  “Then we charge Norris with first-degree murder.”

  “I know, but—”

  “But what?” Rossi asked.

  “How did they end up out on that stretch of road? I know that Norris lives off of Barry Road, but that raises more questions than answers. Was Robin at his apartment? What was she doing there? According to the kids, their folks went out of their way to avoid each other. And if she was there, what happened? Did they have a fight and she ran out and he chased her out to the boonies? Or did Norris just happen to see her driving around his neighborhood and decide to run her off the road?” Wheeler scratched his head. “I don’t know. It doesn’t feel right to me.”

  “All we have to do is prove it was Norris’s Camry and that he was behind the wheel. How and why they ended up out there doesn’t change the fact that they did. I’m going to call Richie.”

  Wheeler’s cell phone pinged with a text message before Rossi punched in Richie’s number. Wheeler opened the message and looked at Rossi.

  “Don’t bother. They found the car at the airport. Take a look at this.”

  He passed the phone to Rossi. Photographs of the car from all four sides were attached to the text message. The license tag matched the registration records Rossi had in his file. The front end was creased and dented, though the extent of the damage wasn’t clear from the photograph.

  “I’ve got to get out there,” Wheeler said. “I don’t want anybody touching that car until I’ve gone over every inch. Then I’ll have it towed to our garage so I can see if the damage pattern fits with the damage to Robin’s car.”

  “Will you be able to separate the damage from the parking lot accident from the Barry Road collision?”

  “Won’t know until I get a look at
it.” Wheeler’s phone pinged with another text. “Airport security says we can have a look at their video whenever we’re ready.”

  “I’m like lunch meat,” Rossi said. “I’m always ready. You take the car and I’ll check out the video.”

  “What about Norris?”

  “Have somebody bring him a newspaper.”

  Chapter Forty-One

  KANSAS CITY INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT was twenty minutes north of downtown, enough time for Rossi to think about what Wheeler had said. Figuring out how Robin and her ex ended up where they did was an important part of the case, but only if Rossi could prove that Norris had run her off the road. He’d get to the how and why later.

  The airport was laid out in three terminals, A, B, and C. Airport police headquarters was in Terminal A. Rossi’s cell phone rang as he pulled into a parking place across from the terminal. When he saw Bonnie Long’s name displayed, he broke into a grin.

  “Dr. Long, what can I do for you?”

  “We need to talk.”

  “About what?”

  “I think you know. Tell me where and when and I’ll be there.”

  “I’m a little busy at the moment.”

  “It’s important. Please.”

  “Okay, there’s a bar not far from—”

  “No. Not at a bar or at the hospital or at police headquarters. Someplace private, just you and me.”

  “Okay. You got any suggestions?”

  Bonnie was silent for a moment. “Be at my house at five o’clock.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  Rossi clicked off the call. He’d driven a wedge between Alex and Bonnie, not knowing whether it would pay off, congratulating himself now that it had. He hadn’t been able to get the truth from Alex, but hearing it from Bonnie would be the next best thing. From the start, he’d focused on proving Alex had murdered Dwayne Reed, uncertain what he’d do next. Now he knew. He’d find out whether Alex and Judge West had made some kind of deal to ensure her acquittal. If they had, he’d put her away for as long as he could for obstruction of justice.

  He was still grinning when an airport police officer escorted him into the video monitoring room and introduced him to Sergeant Libby Hellmann.

  “You’re looking pretty happy,” Hellmann said.

  “Just got some good news on another case.”

  “Well, let’s see if we can make it two in a row. Your suspect’s vehicle was found in the Economy B parking lot. Our cameras cover the entry to the lot and each aisle, looking north, south, east, and west.”

  “Can you track the car from when it entered the lot until it was parked?”

  “We pieced it together from different cameras. I did a quick-and-dirty edit, so its kind of herky-jerky. I can put together a more seamless video once I know exactly what you need.”

  “Great. Let’s have a look.”

  They sat in front of a monitor as Hellmann cued the video. The images were dark and grainy, but the lights in the parking lot provided enough illumination to make them out.

  “See there,” Hellmann said, freezing the screen. “That’s your guy getting his ticket at the entrance to the lot. The time stamp shows it was ten thirty-five and eighteen seconds when he rolled in.”

  Robin Norris had called Alex Stone at ten fifteen, the instant before her car was struck. Ted Norris could have easily made it to the airport from the scene of the wreck in twenty minutes.

  “That’s a view of the driver’s side of the car. How do you know it’s the right one?”

  “Once we confirmed the license tag, I worked backward from where he parked the car. I can show you the whole thing in reverse if you want.”

  “After I see it this way first. Can you zoom in on the driver? I can’t make out much of his face.”

  “Sure.”

  Hellmann tapped on the zoom feature, but the larger the image got, the more indistinct it became, until it was just a jumble of pixels. She played with it until she found the right balance. The driver was wearing a ball cap pulled down low on his face. He was looking straight ahead, not at the camera.

  “That your guy?”

  Rossi took his time. “Can’t tell. Run the rest of it.”

  The video tracked the car from the gate to a spot near one of the stops where shuttle buses picked up passengers and took them to the terminal. The driver parked the car between a tall SUV and a minivan but didn’t get out of the car.

  “What’s he waiting for?” Rossi asked.

  “You’ll see.”

  Two minutes passed. Then a shuttle bus appeared. The driver got out of the Camry, head down and carrying a small duffel bag. He dropped something, bending down and out of the camera’s range to pick it up, before walking to the bus and climbing on, never looking up so that a camera could capture his face. Hellmann froze the screen again.

  “Son of a bitch,” Rossi said. “It’s like he had the whole thing planned. He picked the perfect parking place. The SUV and the minivan blocked the cameras. He waited for the shuttle to keep his time outside the car to a few seconds, and he never looked up. How did he know he’d find such a perfect parking place?”

  “It’s a big lot. With all those cars and all those bus stops, his chances of finding a parking place like that were pretty good.”

  “But he wouldn’t have known that.”

  “Unless he was used to parking there. That lot is for Southwest, and they’ve got more flights out of here than any other carrier.”

  “Okay, run it in reverse.”

  Hellmann played it backward several times.

  “That help any?”

  “No. What about the bus? Can you track it?”

  “Not all the way. We have cameras at the lot and at the terminal, but not in between. But we know how long it takes the driver to reach the terminal after leaving the lot, so I was able to pick the bus up again when it got there.”

  Hellmann resumed the video, following the bus as it stopped at the terminal.

  “Usually there’s not that much shuttle traffic at that time of night,” she said, “but a couple of incoming flights had been delayed by bad weather, so there was a crowd waiting for the bus to pick them up and take them back to the economy lot.”

  Rossi watched as the bus stopped and people swarmed on and off, heads bobbing and weaving. Several people were wearing ball caps, and it was impossible to identify one from another. They played the sequence over and over so that Rossi could follow each person wearing a ball cap as he or she moved through the crowd. None of them matched the person who’d gotten out of the Camry, and none of them were carrying the same duffel.

  “How could he just disappear like that?” Rossi asked.

  “Beats me.”

  “Go back to the parking lot and zoom in on the duffel bag. Maybe we can pick something up that would identify it.”

  Hellman found the frames with the duffel bag, enlarging each one as much as possible without losing the image.

  “It looks like there’s some lettering and some kind of logo on the bag,” Rossi said. “Can you make that any bigger?”

  “Sure.”

  Hellman bracketed the side of the bag until they could make out the logo.

  “I recognize that,” she said. “I’ve got a bag just like it from Lands’ End. The word on the bag is solutioneering. I use the bag for my workout gear when I go to the gym.”

  “What’s it made out of?”

  She shrugged. “Some kind of polyester.”

  “I want to talk to the driver. Maybe he remembers something.”

  “I’ll have to find out who the driver was and when he has his next shift. We’ll have him come in early so you can have some time with him. I’ll call you when I know something.”

  “What about the shuttles that take people into town, to the hotels? Where do they pick up passengers?”

  “Two lanes of traffic run past the terminal. The lane closest to the terminal is for people dropping off or picking up passengers and for the parking lot s
huttles. There’s a median that separates that lane from the outer lane. Hotel and rental car shuttles pick people up on that curb.”

  “Do your cameras cover that area too?”

  “Right down to your shoelaces.”

  “Great. Show me the video from the outer curb at all three terminals for two hours beginning when the parking shuttle stopped at Terminal B. I want to see if whoever got out of the Camry took a shuttle home. And if you don’t see anyone carrying that duffel, check every trash can and bathroom in the terminal.”

  “That will take a while even if I fast-forward. How much time do you have?”

  Rossi looked at his watch. Ted Norris was waiting for him in the interrogation room and he had to be at Bonnie Long’s house by five.

  “Not enough to spend it here with you. Can you put together a tape that just includes anyone getting on a shuttle in that time frame?”

  “Sure. I can e-mail it to you along with the video we just looked at, and I’ll let you know if we find the duffel bag.”

  Rossi handed her a business card and stood, shaking his head as he stared at the screen. He’d expected to hit the jackpot and had shot craps instead.

  “Thanks. My e-mail address is on the card.”

  “You lost your grin.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll get it back.”

  Chapter Forty-Two

  GRACE CANFIELD WAS WAITING in Alex’s office when she arrived Tuesday morning.

  “I’d say that you looked like something the cat dragged in, but you’d probably think it was a compliment,” Grace said. “When are you going to get some sleep and comb your hair?”

  Alex ran her fingers along her scalp. “Best I can do.”

  “You could put something on nicer than that army surplus you’re wearing.”

  “These are cargo pants, not army surplus.”

  “Why can’t you be one of those lipstick lesbians that dress nice, like Bonnie does?”

  “Bonnie wears pants.”

  “Men’s pants?”

  “If you think all lesbians should look alike, why don’t you look like Oprah Winfrey?”

  “’Cause I don’t have a hundred million dollars to help me get dressed every day, that’s why.”