Hunt for a Phantom

by Stephen L Brooks

  “Again, I have to thank you, Mrs. Cole. You may have had the clue to this case right here all along.”

  “Really? You really think so?”

  “Yes. Thank you for your time.” Banning shook her hand and Betsy gave her a quick hug.

  As they headed back to his car he said, “Did you see who I saw?”

  “Yes I did. IronGuy and Stones: both in the flesh.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Rick and Gail were told to wait in Banning’s office until he and Betsy returned. As Banning turned the knob he coughed and cleared his throat rather theatrically, just in case. He winked at Betsy, who giggled, and opened the door.

  They were behaving themselves; each sitting in one of the waiting room chairs. Gail was running a comb through her hair and Rick was making a show of keeping his hands to himself by gripping his knees so tightly his knuckles were white. But they hadn’t caught them having sex on the inner office couch, so everything was all right.

  “We just found a link between IronGuy and Stones,” Banning said, beckoning them to follow into his office. He pulled his iPad from a drawer. “I’m going to transfer these pictures onto here.” He sent them, opened his email on the iPad, and opened and saved the four images to a new folder, labeling each image. He opened the folder, arranged the images in the order he wanted, and said “Gather ‘round, ladies and gentleman; for I am about to solve this case.”

  He brought up the first photo. “Gail, who is this?”

  All three looked at the picture, and Gail glanced at Rick before answering. “That’s IronGuy. That’s just the picture I gave you.”

  “Correct.” He opened the next one. “And who is this?”

  “Stones. Still, that’s one of the pictures I gave you.”

  “Correct again. Now; look at this photo and tell me who you see.” He moved on to the lodge group shot. “Feel free to enlarge or maneuver the photo any way you want.” He slid the iPad toward her.

  Gail enlarged the photo and almost immediately gasped, “Stones!” She began to search the group, examining each face carefully, until she cried, “And there’s IronGuy! They’re both younger, but they were probably old photos that were...” Dawn broke again. “Wait a second...”

  She went back to her two original photos and discovered something. Both had clearly been cropped from some group shot. The same group shot; the one Banning had just shown her.

  “They took their screen photos from this lodge picture!”

  “Let me see!” Rick took the iPad to get a closer look and observed the same thing. “But we still don’t know who they are. Mr. Banning, you said the man who attacked Ms Russell wouldn’t give his name and called for a lawyer first thing.”

  Banning smiled. “First of all, just call me Mark and I think Ms Russell prefers Betsy.”

  “By all means,” Betsy acknowledged, “you make me feel ancient.”

  “All right --- Mark --- so where do we go next?”

  “Well, let’s start by calling IronGuy by his real name, 1-----, and Stones by his real name: 2-----.”

  “Where did you get their names?” Gail asked.

  “Check the last image in the file, the one I haven’t shown you yet.”

  Rick was too slow so Gail grabbed the iPad away from him. She slid through the photos until she saw a faded index card taped to the brown paper backing of the photo. She enlarged it; the handwriting was old fashioned, near perfect, though the ink had faded a bit. The names, however, were still legible, and the rows in which each lodge member stood. She went back to the group photo and counted faces until she saw IronGuy, slid over to read his name, and did the same for Stones, reading his name.

  “Like I said, boy and girls,” Banning said, “thanks to you I’ve solved the case.

  “Now, I got a call on the way here. They’re questioning IronGuy, or 1-----, in about an hour. That gives us time to go to headquarters and show this to Detective Taylor.

  “Us?” Gail asked.

  “Yes, us: that includes you and Rick. Gail, by providing those photos you’ve given us the key to identifying our phantoms; both the dead one and the one now in the county jail, the one we’ve been hunting all this time. I think that gives the two of you every right in the world to present this evidence to my friend Detective Taylor; who, by the way, would not prefer that you call him Ed.”

  The two teens grinned.

  * * *

  Rick and Gail used Banning’s presentation to them as a model for their own; Rick even got cocky enough toward the end to throw in a “Hey Presto!” when they displayed the list of names.

  Taylor and Peggy were impressed.

  “If there was such a thing as junior detectives, I’d pin the badges on you myself,” he said, “right now!”

  Betsy nudged Banning. “By the way, boss, when do I get that Assistant Detective badge you’ve been promising?”

  “Not now,” Banning said.

  “So now I can not only confront IronGuy with his real name, but connect him with Stones: our phantom of the morgue.”

  “Ooh,” Gail whispered to Rick, “sounds like the title of a horror movie.” She shivered in mock fright and Rick put his arm around her; Gail’s smile revealed her charade, but his arm stayed put.

  Taylor cleared his throat and checked his watch. “All right. Samuelson is expecting us in about five minutes. Gail, Rick, thanks for all you’ve done; this definitely opens up the case for us. But you know that, as minors, we can’t permit you to witness the interrogation.”

  “I know, Detective Taylor,” Rick said. “But can we stay until this is over?”

  “You’ll have to call your parents,” Taylor said. He called over a uniform cop and instructed him to make sure they both called home; and that he listen in to be sure. “And if either of the parents objects, see that they both get home.” He noticed the teens were upset at that; he was upset at 16 when he had to call his parents, too. Taylor came around the desk and shook hands with both of them.

  “I really mean it when I said you’ve really helped crack this case. If either of you ever decide you wanna be a cop, look me up.” He handed both of them his card.

  * * *

  Taylor and Samuelson did the questioning, while Banning, Grayson, Corelli, Peggy and Betsy watched through the glass on the other side. Taylor had his iPad with him, the four photos locked and loaded.

  IronGuy was accompanied by a small, disheveled man whose ill-fitting suit had been a Goodwill reject. Neither he nor the suit had been cleaned for a significant amount of time, and he had a certain air about him. He was also either ignorant of the use of a razor or used it so badly his five o’clock shadow was more 24/7. This was his lawyer.

  Taylor was not surprised someone like IronGuy had a sleaze for legal support. They’d probably have to call in a bug guy to fumigate the place once the interview was over.

  Taylor had brief Samuelson on the new evidence Rick and Gail had brought to him, so the other detective was prepared for Taylor to start off. He even insisted that Taylor lead, since his office had the evidence that identified both the man before them and the corpse.

  Taylor decided to start right off with an ambush.

  “Good morning, Mr. Collins.”

  The detectives received exactly the reaction they’d hoped. Both Collins and his Sleaze-at-Law were startled and unsuccessful at hiding it. They exchanged glances.

  “Can I confer with my client a moment?” the lawyer asked.

  “Of course.” Taylor and Samuelson went out the door, closed it behind them, and Taylor snapped off a switch. “That cuts off the microphones on the other side, and an indicator light on their side is our sign of good faith.”

  “He seemed startled when you called him by name,” Banning said.

  “I didn’t expect anything else.” Taylor watched through the glass. “He was so smug; his prints and DNA aren’t on file, he refused to give his name. He figured he’d covered his trail too well to be found and identified. Probably figur
es we don’t have any evidence on him, either.”

  “He’s probably hoping you don’t,” Betsy said, “beyond his last name.” She grinned. “He’s in for another shock; maybe several.”

  Taylor grinned. The lawyer motioned they could return. Taylor turned the mikes back on and he and Samuelson re-entered the room.

  “So, Mr. Collins; may we resume our little chat now?”

  “Where did you get that name?” Collins demanded.

  “That’s something we can discuss later, Mr. Collins. Or can I call you Geoff?”

  Another flash of panic on Collins’ part and he forced himself to be calm. “So you have my name; or think you do. Score one for your side. Yay, team!”

  Taylor and Samuelson merely smiled benignly.

  “Is Geoffrey Collins your true birth name?”

  Collins glanced at his lawyer who nodded.

  “Yes; guess everyone has to have a birth name. And since you’ve got it figured out anyway, there’s no harm in telling you. I never served in the military, or public service, or anything else that would require a fingerprint record.”

  “We already deduced that,” Taylor said. He liked the word “deduced” rather than “figured that out,” or “knew,” and certainly a heluva lot better than “guessed.” “Deduced” had that old-time, Holmesian or Poirotesque sound to it.

  “And I guess you think you got me for attacking that little chit of a girl.”

  Taylor held his anger at the word, but he bet Banning and Betsy both were ready to come right through the one-way glass. “Ms Russell is preferring charges, yes.”

  “Did she tell you what she did to me? Did she tell you she threatened to use a kitchen knife on me?”

  “Really? And what did you do to provoke such a response?”

  “Nothing. We’d had dinner and I followed her back to her place. She was expecting it, I could tell. She even said something at the restaurant about coffee at her place. Sure. It was a rib joint; good barbeque, good beer. Who expects good coffee at a rib joint? She said hers was definitely better than what they probably served there. That’s an invitation if I ever heard one.”

  The lawyer whispered something to him; probably a warning not to talk too much. Taylor made a mental note to probe that weakness.

  “Ms Russell doesn’t deny she invited you to her place for coffee after dinner. It’s what happened after you got there.”

  “Like I said, I saw her go for the knife.”

  “Why did she go for a knife?”

  “I dunno; why do broads do stuff? Listen, I know what ‘come to my place for coffee’ means; and it’s got nothing to do with Maxwell House, you know what I mean?”

  Taylor nodded as he listened; Collins was already forgetting his lawyer’s advice.

  “Where did she cut you?”

  “She didn’t cut me; but she hit me and clawed me, and kicked me where it hurts.” He winced and held himself. “Damn, it still hurts down there.”

  “Did you try to have intercourse with her?”

  “Sure; told you it had nothing to do with coffee.”

  “Was it maybe an attempt at ‘rough sex,’ would you say?”

  “Yeah; I’d call it that. But she seemed up for it. Hey, she tried to beat up on me, didn’t she?”

  Taylor didn’t respond, but tapped on his iPad a moment.

  “We have a corpse in the morgue from a recent case. It took us a while to identify him; guess he never served in the military or had to be fingerprinted either.” Taylor smiled. “Hey, sounds like you two have a lot in common. We just recently obtained his name. And in connection with him we’ve heard another name.

  “Ever hear of IronGuy?”

  “The comic book superhero? Yeah, sure; but I’m a DC fan, not Marvel.” It was bravado; Taylor noted he was getting fidgety.

  “Ms Russell says she met you online and your screen name is IronGuy. Is that correct?”

  “Somebody with a screen name like that must have a lot of chutzpa about a certain part of the anatomy, don’t you think?” Again he comforted his crotch. “You sure can’t call me that; definitely not right now.”

  The lawyer cautioned him again, but Taylor knew it was about time to spring the trap.

  “Have you ever been called IronGuy?” Taylor asked.

  “I’ve been called a lot of things; some girl might have called me that, you know.”

  The lawyer’s eyes were widening in alarm; he was trying to shoot a warning glance to his client but the latter was not in receiving mode. He tried taking Collins’ arm but his client shook it off.

  “Have you ever called yourself IronGuy?”

  Collins grinned. “Now what kind of egomaniac would call himself something like that?”

  Taylor couldn’t resist. “Oh, I don’t know. What kind of egomaniac are you?”

  “Detective Taylor, I object,” the lawyer said.

  And I find you objectionable, Taylor thought, struggling to prevent the thought from becoming speech.

  “I withdraw the question. Just an attempt at humor to lighten the mood,” he lied. Taylor studied the image on the iPad a moment; he had it angled so neither Collins nor his attorney could see it. As if a new idea had come to him, he offered in a casual tone: “Would you like to see a picture of someone who calls himself IronGuy?”

  Without waiting for a reply he turned the iPad around and slid it toward them. On the screen was the photo of one Nicholas Hayden, AKA Stones; the long unidentified corpse from the hotel room.

  Collins blanched. He gripped the iPad so hard Taylor was afraid he’d break it.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Taylor said, reaching for it. Collins vice grip vanished as he surrendered it. “I showed you the wrong picture. This is the fellow in the morgue that I told you about. He called himself Stones.” He switched to another picture. “Here’s a picture of IronGuy.”

  Taylor slid the tablet toward Collins but he shoved it back. “I don’t need to see pictures of any IronGuy.”

  “Is that because you see him every morning in the mirror when you shave?” He offered the tablet to the lawyer this time; when Collins tried to stop him he pulled it back and placed it out of Collins’ reach but where the lawyer could get it.

  The lawyer studied the picture a minute before he asked, “Is that you? I mean, it looks like you; is it you?”

  Collins didn’t answer, and the smile frozen on his lips barely shielded his tension.

  Taylor was almost ecstatic; even the lawyer was losing it. You don’t ask a client something like that; not out loud and with two detectives in the room. “Go ahead,” he said to the lawyer, “go back to the other picture a moment; the one of Stones.”

  The lawyer glanced up at him then at his client, and studied the picture of Stones.

  “You’ll see they both appear cropped from some group photo. You see the edge of somebody’s shoulder, or the top of someone’s head below them.”

  The lawyer nodded. “Yes, I see that.”

  “Both the photo of the man who called himself Stones and the picture of your client were cropped from the same photo. Go to your client’s photo again then to the one next in the queue.”

  He did, bringing up the group shot.

  “You should be able to locate both Nicholas Hayden, AKA Stones, and your client, in that lodge photo.”

  “Yes, I can.”

  “And if you go on to the next image, you’ll see a legend for the photo, naming each person, based on where they are standing. It’s fun matching up the names to the faces, isn’t it?”

  The lawyer slid back and forth between the two images and picked out each name, including Hayden and his client. He slid the tablet back to Taylor and threw up his arms in one rather dramatic gesture.

  Taylor grinned inside. “So I can prove a connection between you and Hayden, AKA Stones, I have you for assault and attempted rape of Ms Russell, and assault and maybe attempted murder on Ms -----. Oh, and we have a condom with some DNA. And you know what? I’ll be
t that DNA matches yours.”

  “How do you know it’s not this Hayden character,” Collins tried to bluff, “or any number of guys?”

  “We know it’s not Hayden’s; we checked that out long ago, didn’t we Detective Samuelson?”

  “Yes, we did; there was no match.”

  “So I’ll bet after they check it against the samples we got from your meals last night and today we’ll know who had sex with Grace Fleming; and whether you tell us it was consensual or not, it’s still statutory rape since she was a minor. And give us a little more time and we’ll have you for murder.”

  “Murder?”

  “Well, officially that’s Detective Samuelson’s case; but since you were arrested here in the county, we have first dibs. Unless we decided to just hand you over to Samuelson; ‘cause when you get convicted of murdering Grace, Fleming, and Hayden there’s no point in us spending the money on you for our charges.”

  “What the hell? Wait a stinking minute, I didn’t kill anybody! What’s this bull crap?”

  “Oh, we’re still trying to piece together the events of that evening; and maybe you can help us that way. I guess I can see you killing Fleming and the girl; but why did you kill your own partner?”

  “I never killed anybody!”

  Taylor turned off his iPad and stood up. “Suit yourself.” He signaled to Samuelson and tapped on the door. A uniformed cop opened. “Please allow Mr. Collins here some time with his attorney, and when they’re through escort the prisoner back to his cell.” Taylor snapped his fingers as though an afterthought just came to him. “Oh, you might want to just throw him in a holding pen for a couple of hours first. And be sure to tell his roommates what he’s in for.”

  The cop’s grin wasn’t pleasant.

  Once outside the interrogation room Taylor switched off the mike. “Something else occurred to me while I was in there, and you two ladies are just perfect for this little detail. I think this is one job you two are much better equipped to handle than Banning, Samuelson or me.”

  Peggy and Betsy exchanged glances and shrugs. “OK, partner,” Peggy said, “what do you want us to do?”