"I think we can see to it your requirements are accomplished Jeanne. Thanks for all your hard work. Keep at it. We will get this asshole. It's just a matter of time."
"I am going to take Jim Wilson to the Scalian campus with me. I have an idea I want to try out with regard to warning the women there about the existence of this worm. And I want Jim there so he can do what he does with his newspaper if the Campus Police and whatever new administration they have at the moment is not willing to cooperate. Okay by you boss?"
"Yes. George and Jenny and I decided after you left yesterday it was probably time to do some publicity on the guy, bring his existence out, let him know we are closing the circle on him every day. So yes, go right ahead. We will be issuing a statement to the news bureaus in town within 48 hours. Your having Jim along will give him a little march in time on the rest of them. With what has happened at his home I think it is deserved."
Soon after concluding her conversation with Tom Leivas, Jeanne and Jim Wilson, who was only too happy to go with her, arrived at the Scalian campus. She went directly to the Campus Police office location and parked in a no-parking zone in front of the office. A new officer came out of the building and began to chide her for parking in a no parking zone. As the chiding was taking place Captain Horning came out the door, and said to the young officer, "That will be all officer," and greeted Jeanne warmly. He asked her right away, "Did Mr. Preston come into your offices Ms. de Leon?"
"Yes, he did Captain." The look of relief on Horning's face when she called him Captain was almost palpable. Then she said, "I am still not convinced we have all the information there is to amass concerning your part in the harboring of Mr. Preston as a fugitive. Is there anything you would like to tell me about it?"
"I see you have made Sergeant with your department. Congratulations on your promotion. I have all my telephone records I could get up to today in my office if you would like to see them. They will show you I never called the number from which I received the call from Mr. Preston. I never had any other contact with the man, Sergeant, I promise you. I want to be of help to the young women on this campus, not part of the problem. From what I have seen of the very few records, and there are maybe two, about all the rapes that have taken place here, the previous chief was deeply involved in covering them up. I do not want to continue his policy. I want the rapes to come out in the open and the rapist be caught. If I can help you in any way to achieve that goal, I will do so. Please believe me."
She thought to herself, wow, if you do those things it will be a far better place to go to school. "Did you conduct the canvass of the campus I asked you to undertake yesterday Mr. Horning?"
"Yes. I personally interviewed a large number of people. We only found one witness who might have any information. He will be here in a few minutes in order to talk directly with you."
"Who is he please?"
"His name is Joe Saldino. He works as a horticulture specialist, a gardener but more, on the campus and he helps with the gathering of trash on the campus when necessary. In fact, here he comes now."
Jeanne turned and saw a man approaching them. He was perhaps five and a half feet tall but nearly as broad in the shoulders, or so it seemed, as he was tall. He moved with a kind of grace that Jeanne had seen in few men. He seemed to glide across the ground rather than impact it with his feet. As he approached the three of them he stuck out his hand, a very large hand by comparison to his height, and said to her, "Are you from Phoenix P.D.?" He shook her hand vigorously as she answered that she was and said, "I am so glad to see you. The people that have been running this place are gross incompetents. We needed someone from the outside to come in here and shake things up." Horning flushed as Saldino said those words, but made no comment.
Jeanne asked Saldino, "Sir is there anything you can tell us about whether a man has been lurking around on the campus in these past several weeks?"
"Well I have been wondering about it myself young lady. I cannot tell you much I am afraid but I can show you a couple of places where I think he concealed himself. And by the way the name is Joe. My father was Giuseppe and insisted on his full name being used. But he was my father. I am just Joe." Jeanne thanked Joe and the four of them, Joe, Jim, Jesse Horning and Jeanne walked across the campus to an area nearby to where the body of Billie had been discovered.
Joe, as they neared the area said, "Now if you will come over here, carefully please, some of my plants are very tender now, I will show you something." What he showed them was a footprint. "I found this today when I began to work in this area."
Jeanne backed them all away and called for a forensics team to come and photograph as well as cast the footprint. It was not large. It was stationary, solitary, as though the man stood in one position for a time. It was not deep but the impression was clear. It was of a right foot. Joe showed Jeanne while the other two stood away there was another print in the dirt of the flowers, a left footprint, clearly. She took him back away from the plants and said to him, "Please wait right here. A team of several officers/technicians from Phoenix P.D. will arrive soon. Show them what you have shown me if you will."
Saldino agreed to stay and then surprised them all by saying, "I saw the guy I think."
"Shit," Jeanne almost yelled. "What the hell?"
"It was not good. I could not identify him. I could not see his face. I could not see his skin at all in fact. It was really dark, I was on my way home and he was a passing figure, just a glimpse of a smallish man, maybe five foot six or so, not very big, not wide like I am, wearing dark clothing, walking slowly, carefully."
"Where was he Joe, where did you see him?"
"Over by the administration building."
"Did you do any checking around there for tracks like these that you found Joe?" She had a hunch that Joe knew more about all the goings on at Scalian than he wanted her to know.
"Yes, yes, I did, but I didn't find anything at all I am sorry to say."
"Joe what do you know about the rapes and such which have been taking place here at the university?"
"Just it is happening and it has been going on for quite a while. Oh yes it has been happening without anyone doing anything about it. But you know, mostly what I have heard is snatches of conversations young girls are having. If they see me they stop talking about it right away. It is all just kind of like rumors. I have begun, when I am here in the night, to watch out for the girls from places like the library. I don't follow them or anything like that because I don't want to scare them, but I will shine a flashlight in their direction and see to it they get home safely if I can. It has been going on too damned long Detective. I am not here all the time though. The other night, when the little girl Billie everyone is talking about was killed, is when I saw the guy. Then I read the next morning a police officer was killed as well. I want this all to stop. If there is anything I can do to stop it, I will try to help."
Jeanne made a decision. She said, "Joe this man here is my friend Jim Wilson. He is a reporter with the Arizona Republic. I want you to tell him everything that you have heard, everything you know about these rapes and killings. He is going to do a story on this situation. His story is going to blow the roof off this campus. Right, Jim?" She grinned at Jim and motioned to Horning to follow her.
"Captain this place is going to change starting tonight. It is now mid afternoon. I want you to make sure every woman living in every dormitory housing a woman on this campus are in their dorms by no later than seven p.m. tonight. You and I are going to make clear to all the women of this university what is going on here. And you, sir will cooperate. If you do not wish to do so say it now and I will find someone to fire you and get another policeman who will cooperate. Once again, am I being clear enough for you?"
"Certainly I will help you all I can Ms. de Leon. And I will see to it announcements go out to all classes to all activity centers on the campus within the half hour which will bring as many of our women students to the dorms as we can possibly get
there. I'm sure we will miss a few. But they will get the word one way or another. We will see to it. I will meet you in front of Marilyn Cummings' dorm, and it was also where Billie lived, and we can start there. What else can I do?"
"By tomorrow morning I want posters made with large, lurid letters proclaiming there is a rapist and serial killer who has been active on this campus. They are to be placed on the exterior and interior doors of every building on the campus and in all classrooms. I want them to be prominently displayed. Can you get it done by tomorrow as well Mr. Horning?"
"I don't know for sure. It will be in progress at the very least. Anything else?"
"Not for the moment. You can expect the television crews will descend on you tomorrow. I think the front page of the Republic will be given over to this story tomorrow morning. It being very likely to occur I want truthful statements made to the press. If you must admit wrongdoing by your police department and administration in the past eight months, then you must be willing to speak those words. You can alibi yourself as being new to the situation. Do not attempt to alibi anyone else. Am I painfully clear now Mr. Horning?"
"Crystal."
"All right then Mr. Horning I will see you later this evening."
he was wary now, a little afraid...
he saw the man on campus...
he feared that the man saw him...
there was nothing to do...
anyway he was the Ghost...
even if he was seen he wasn't...
he wanted the reporter's wife...
could he go back to the house...
would he find her elsewhere...?
he would research, find her...
then he would kill her...Yeah!
When Jeanne arrived back at the campus in the evening she had a speech prepared she would give to each of the groups with which she met. She would say, "I have met some of you already. Thank you so much for speaking with me. It was very brave of you to do so. More is the truth of your bravery because the administration and the campus police tried to cover up what was happening here. By now you all know a rapist has been working on the campus. He has been doing his sick deeds for over eight months now. He began to make his attacks even more foul a while back when he caused the death of Marilyn Cummings. Now he has killed at least another three women." She stopped and let the women in each of the dorms twitter and gasp and give some recognition to some of those who had been raped.
"This son-of-a-bitch has not only killed two students but another woman who lives nearby your school, and last night he killed one of our police officers. Do we know it is the same man every time? Not exactly. Not well enough so that we could put him in jail easily if we catch him. But we do have some evidence which would be devastating to him should we be lucky enough to come onto him. Now I want your help. Each of you may or may not know someone who has been raped on this campus in recent months. I need all your names, your contact information and I need to be able to speak to you about your experience. It is hard for you to have to talk to me. I know that. But the more information that is available to me the more likely we are going to be able to catch him. So let's start with the information. We have passed out cards. Please fill them out now." She gave them five minutes to finish with this rather simple task. She noticed some who were not writing down anything. A few of those were usual in all the several meetings she had that night.
"Now the easy part, at least for you. From now on, and do this faithfully please, in both daylight and especially during the evening hours, never travel in a group of less than two. I would prefer four if you can arrange it with your friends. There is safety in numbers. There is also the ability to observe in numbers which does not exist when you are alone. Please. Listen to me, listen to the women of your university who have had experience with this ghost and you will know the importance of traveling on campus or off campus in groups of at least two of you."
After each meeting was adjourned there was a lot of milling around and conversations struck up between Jeanne and students and teachers. It seemed everyone was taking these talks seriously. The success of the meetings would be measured by whether the number of rapes and murders diminished.
After one of the meetings Melanie Campbell, the first rape victim as far as Jeanne could tell, said to Jeanne, "I'm sorry but we have not been able to come up with anything else amongst us. We have gone dorm to dorm, door to door and found there were quite a number of rapes we didn't know about. We also found they have been going on for more than a year now." Jeanne thanked Melanie and took Captain Horning aside.
"I want some information from you Captain. You can fax it to my office, email it directly to me, send it to me in the form of a letter by courier, whatever you want. But I need it as soon as possible. The first piece of information that I want from you is the first date of a reported rape in the last year and a half. Then I want you to go to the administrative offices and get me a complete list of all new hires in the last year and a half. With that list of new hires should be a complete listing of all their family members. If the information I want is not available to you, go and get it from each prof. Can you do that sir?"
"No problem. I will have it for your use tomorrow afternoon. I will call your office and if you are there I will come directly with the information myself. If you are not available, I will have it sent by courier. Okay?"
"I do not know, Mr. Horning, whether I will be in my office tomorrow. It depends on whether DPS labs are able to develop any information from a set of surveillance cameras in a convenience store near where my friend Rebecca Daniels was killed last night. My office can call me if they need. You understand what I am looking for here Mr. Horning?"
"Yes. I think you feel his identity might be in these documents."
"It may be true sir. But you and I will be the only ones to know whether it is true until an arrest is made. You do understand your silence about this is necessary I presume."
He knew it was clear she was telling him he could talk to no one else. "I wish you trusted me a little more Ms. de Leon."
"Then earn that trust Mister and get me what the hell I need from your records." Now, she thought, now we are getting somewhere. With any luck we might even get a name from the records he can provide. More might be available on the discs we recovered at the convenience store too. Okay. I have done as much here today as I can do.
Chapter 8-
Who Are You?
As Jeanne drove back into town from Scalian she thought maybe it would be a good idea to stop by the labs. The labs were not too far from the office in west Phoenix and right on the way. She did not know if the discs had been assigned to anyone yet. When she got to the lab office she told them who she was, what she had brought in recently and asked if the discs had been assigned yet. They had been assigned for viewing to a young lab tech named Remedios Jamison. She asked if she could see him. Soon the tech came out and took her back into the lab itself.
He said to her, while they were walking back to his area, “The discs were of pretty poor quality.” He also said that he had not finished with the second one of them yet. He asked, "Can you stay and look through with me for a little while?" She was a bit surprised as it was the first time a technician had ever invited her to take part in the examination of an evidentiary item.
"I would like to," she said."
"Good," he said as they sat down at his desk. Hmm, she thought, not one of the most communicative people I have met recently. The most prominent feature of his desk was a large computer screen looking like a television. He explained to her how he played the disc, asked if she had any questions, and when she didn't he started the disc playing. He was able to enhance the level of lighting on the disc to a small degree. It was a necessity in regard to the disc he was examining.
On the screen a smallish group of people, in ones and twos, passed through the area of the payment counter in the store. The payment counter was the only area which was being filmed inside the store. Then, as the disc
continued to run, there appeared a single man, white, in dark clothing, with a kind of pullover hat on who bought a couple of items. He looked right at the camera as he paid. Jeanne thought he probably did not realize that he was being filmed. She wondered. Was this the guy?
She asked Remedios, "Does the other disc have the outer area of the store covered?"
"Yes. I have looked at it and until just now I saw no one who was of any interest in that regard."
"What do you mean?"
"The man we have just seen buy a few items came into the parking lot, parked his car, sat in it for a few minutes and then got out. I did not see him in the store after he went inside. The interior of the store cannot be seen from the outside cameras. He came out of the store and pulled out of the parking spot he had occupied, then pulled to the side of the building and stopped there. He got out of the car there and again I did not see him in the store until the frames we have just reviewed."
"Are there time references on the discs from the outside of the store?"
"Sure, just like you see on these."
"Can you compare the time we are looking at when the guy was in the store with the series of things you have just told me about?"
"I think so. Let me try something here." He put the other disc into a second player and arranged the two playbacks side by side. He left the picture of the guy dressed in dark clothing in place with its time hack showing and played the second disc until it showed the man getting out of his car and coming into the store. The times were virtually the same. Remedios said to her, "Then here is the scene where he parked on the side of the store in a darker area." There was only a matter of a few seconds between the event of him leaving the store, leaving his initial parking place and moving to the new parking place.
The Ghost Page 12
