Mory pointed to a picture of a woman holding a Pekingese, wearing a jeweled collar, ribbons on its ears. When he picked up the photograph for a better look, he saw that the dog’s nails were painted. “What was your pet’s name, Mr. Binder?”
“Fluffy,” Wayne called out. “Wife wanted to give the dog a pansy name. It matched the damn beast, though.”
“Fluffy is a strange choice for a pit bull,” Mory remarked as he walked to where Wayne was sitting. “It’s more fitting for a dog like this.” He passed the frame to the nervous man. “Is that your wife?”
“Yes, it is,” Wayne said, then fell silent and sullen.
Mory noted how Wayne’s hands started shaking as he held his wife’s image. “You have a photo of the pit bull and papers on him? I’d like to see them.”
“Uh—” Wayne started, but was interrupted by Dan’s shout from the garage area.
Mory went to see what his partner wanted, leaving Wayne in his chair and staring at the object in his hands. As he exited, Mory heard him muttering, but couldn’t make out the words. In the garage, he found Dan standing over a jar of mercuric acid. Ropes were laying beside it, along with a brown bottle marked chloroform. “Well, well, what do we have here?” Mory murmured as he nodded to Dan.
“I’d say Binder has a lot of explaining to do. Henri said chloroform isn’t easy to come by. There’s matches and candles over there,” Dan said and pointed to a small table. “And a lot of suspicious items sitting right in front of us. I’ll stay with Binder, while you go downtown and get us a search warrant. I don’t want him to deny later that he gave us access to look around, or skip on us while we’re gone. Did you find anything inside?”
“I found a picture of their pet. It turns out the Binders have or had a Pekingese named Fluffy, so I bet he wasn’t burying a vicious pit bull.”
“Let’s get moving on what we’ve found here. Then, we’ll see what kind of dog he buried. With luck, it’ll be Manuel Greene’s, not his wife’s. I’ll call for back up to watch him while we’re busy. Where’s Binder now?”
“Inside.”
They looked at each other than hurried into the house. They saw Wayne still sitting in the chair, holding the photo of his wife and dog.
“It’s past time you told us the truth, Binder. We have a dog missing from a big crime scene. You sure you killed and buried your wife’s dog, and not our victim’s black mutt? No use to lie. We’ll find the truth as soon as we recover the body.”
“Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit,” was all Wayne muttered.
Dan handed Mory the keys to his car and stood in the doorframe, so he could keep an eye on the man while he phoned for back up.
Within minutes, he heard cars in front of the house. Wayne hadn’t moved or spoken again. After greeting the officers at the door, Dan continued his search of the house. He was elated when he found auburn wigs in the master bedroom. He would have Harold bag them for evidence, to be compared to the hair fibers found at the past crime scene, after the CSI arrived. Dan placed a call to Mory to include the wigs in the search warrant, and then called Wayne’s employer before he walked downstairs, where Tom Jeffords was talking with the suspect.
“He says his wife is at work,” Tom disclosed. “She’s employed by Macy’s in the mall and doesn’t get off until it closes at nine tonight.”
“Where did you lose your contact lens, Mr. Binder? When? How?” Dan asked and saw the man look totally confused.
“How did you know about that? What’s it matter to you?”
“Whose wigs are those in the bedroom?” Dan asked the suspect, who was getting edgier by the minute.
“What the hell does a wig have to do with a dead fucking dog? What do you think I did? Disguised myself as a woman before I went to bury him? It’s not a fucking crime to shoot and bury a mad dog!”
“Pekingese aren’t considered a ‘huge and strong beast’, Mr. Binder, and I didn’t see any signs in the back yard of recent ownership of a pit bull. I think it’s time you started talking straight with us. Why do you have mercuric acid in your garage?”
“It’s for my work. I’m a mechanic and we use it to clean engine parts. What does that have to do with the dog?”
“What about the chloroform?” Dan asked.
“You found that? Oh, shit.”
“What do you need chloroform for, Mr. Binder? Where did you get it?”
“I ain’t telling where I got it. I swore to my friend I wouldn’t tell nobody and I ain’t gonna. He’d be in big trouble for getting that stuff for me.”
“You’re the one who’s in big trouble, Binder. Where were you on April twentieth, June fifteenth, June twenty-second, and July sixth? What about July fourteenth, July thirtieth or August ninth?”
“Don’t recall.”
“According to your boss and time card, you were off on Friday and Saturday, August ninth and tenth. Where were you on Thursday night?”
“Don’t recall.”
“That was only eight days ago. You were off work and you want me to believe you don’t know what you were doing? Come on, Binder, start talking.”
“I was probably helping out a customer with road trouble.”
“Who?”
“Don’t recall. Most pay in cash and I don’t take note of their names.”
“According to shop records, Binder, you couldn’t have taken a road call that day because you were off. Why don’t we call your wife and see if she can remember where you were on those dates? Maybe she has a marked calendar.”
“Don’t do that, officer. Shit, I was with my girlfriend. My wife will hang me by the balls if she finds out.”
“What’s the woman’s name and address? We’ll need to check with her and see if she can verify she saw you that night.”
“You can’t. She’s married, too. She’ll be up shit creek, like me. Why all these questions about me and my stuff? Why did you want to search my property and send for a warrant? Killing a dog ain’t this bad.”
“You might want to call a lawyer, Mr. Binder. If you do, have him meet you at the station, because we’re taking you in for interrogation. Tom, read him his rights.”
“Tom Jeffords just left for Harold’s lab with the rope and wig samples. And with a message he’s to call me immediately if he gets a match. We can hold Wayne only so long without charging him with these murders. What do you think, Mory?”
“I think we’ve got a major break going on here. What else would he be doing with all that stuff, and he’s definitely strong enough and angry enough to carry out the crimes. I just wonder what his motive would be,” Mory answered. “What do you think?”
“I agree that something is definitely strange about this. It’s like he’s been handed to us on a silver platter, with all the evidence we need for an arrest. I’m not sure he’s the Avenger. He doesn’t seem to be sharp enough to have carried out all of the planning necessary to cover his ass this good so far. If he was so smart, he wouldn’t have left it all in plain view, especially after he knew he was spotted burying that dog, just in case someone came to ask him some questions.”
“Even if he’s not the Avenger, it’d be nice to know where he got that chloroform. It might help us figure out where our killer is getting his and put us one step closer to finding him.”
Mory answered the phone on the first ring. “Brenda Johnson is here, Wayne’s girlfriend. Let’s go see what she has to say about all of this.”
“You go ahead. I’ll be there in a little bit. I want to give Andi a call and let her know I’ll be here late.” Dan watched Mory nod as he dialed the phone. “Hey, Andi. I’m going to be at the station most of the night. I won’t be able to make dinner.”
“I hope you’re not upset, Dan, but Cindi and I are going shopping in Atlanta this weekend. She has a class reunion coming up and hasn’t found anything here in Augusta that she wants to wear to see her old classmates. I offered to go with her. We’ll be back Sunday afternoon. I left a message on your answering machine, but I g
uess you haven’t checked it yet. What’s going on that’s keeping you there so late?”
“We found a match to the list that Dr. Wellesley, the optometrist, gave me. Seems this same man was seen burying a dog last Friday. Harold is checking to see if it’s Greene’s missing dog. Our suspect also has several interesting items in his garage.”
“Really? Like what?”
“Mercuric acid. Chloroform. Ropes and candles. Auburn wigs. It’s all a little too coincidental to me. He’s six foot, and rather large, so I don’t think he’d have a problem overpowering any of the men. He’s pretty angry and upset about something, and I don’t think him and his wife get along very well. His girlfriend just arrived to alibi for his activities on August ninth.”
“What do you think, Dan? Could he be the Avenger?”
“I’m not sure. We haven’t found a connection to the women or to anyone in his past, yet, but we’re looking.”
“Well, good luck, Dan. We’ll be staying at the Marriott on Peachtree. The reservations are in Cindi’s name. Call and let me know if he turns out to be your man. I’ll come back and celebrate with you if you solve the case.”
“Hell, I’ll drive to Atlanta and we can celebrate there! Tell Cindi I hope she finds the perfect outfit to make all her old boyfriends wish they’d never let her go. You have a good time and I’ll see you when you get back.”
“Dan?”
“Yes?”
“I’ll miss you. Don’t work too hard and stay out of dark alleys. I’ll bring you a surprise to cheer you up.”
“Hopefully, I won’t need cheering. Hopefully, I’ve finally got the Avenger.”
“You don’t sound too sure of that,” Andrea responded.
“You know what they say, if it sounds too good to be true...”
“It probably is,” Andrea finished for him.
“It’s just too neat after all that’s gone on. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but there’s something missing here.”
“Well, I hope you find it. Oops, there’s the doorbell, Cindi’s here. I’ll call you when I get back, or you can call me if you need to talk. See ya!” Andrea exclaimed before hanging up her extension.
Dan put the receiver down and closed his eyes. What was wrong? What wasn’t matching up? Why are my instincts telling me this isn’t the Avenger? He looked up as Mory entered the office.
“Mrs. Johnson alibied for Binder on the ninth. Says he was with her all afternoon and evening while his wife was working late at the mall and her husband was out of town. They’ve been having an affair for some time now, after he helped her one afternoon after she locked her keys in her car. He didn’t charge her that day, so she didn’t have to tell her husband and listen to him rage at her. She says she can’t imagine Binder killing anybody. Hinks is at the sight now, digging up the dog’s body. We’ll know shortly if it’s Greene’s dog.” As he spoke, Dan’s phone rang, so he remained silent for a while.
“Mallory... Hinks, yes, what did you find?... Really, a small dog, like a Pekingese or a Pomeranian or something like that? All right, thanks, Hinks.” Dan hung up the phone and glanced at Mory. “I supposed you caught that. It must have been his wife’s dog that he buried that day. Let’s go see what Binder has to say about it.”
Hours later, Dan walked out of the interrogation room. Wayne Binder had calmed down considerably as he realized the charges before him weren’t about the dead dog at all. His tone had altered and he’d finally told them the truth. His wife’s dog, “the little yap-yap kind” he’d said, bothered him all the time while he was trying to sleep. He claimed the dog hated him and urinated constantly in his work shoes. Binder was tired of the incessant yipping and used the chloroform he’d gotten from a friend to quieten the dog when his wife wasn’t around. On Friday, Fluffy had bitten him on the ear while he was sleeping on the sofa and he had backhanded the dog across the room. When he awoke hours later, he found that the dog had broken its neck in the fall. He buried it and claimed to his wife that the dog had run off when he let it out to do his business. He’d lost his contact lens while wiping sweat off his brow while digging the hole. He had gone to Wellesley’s office to get a replacement so he wouldn’t be “half-blind all weekend.”
Binder had said he used mercuric acid for his job, and several of the men at the garage where he worked said they had seen him clean engines with it. The ropes were used for lifting and suspending heavy parts of the cars while they were being fixed. Grease on all of them implied the suspect had told the truth. Dan knew that none of the crime ropes had grease, oil, or grime on them. The auburn wigs belonged to his wife; she used them when she wasn’t able to get by the hairdresser to fix her hair. It was easily verified when she arrived at the police station wearing one, a human hair wig whose shade of red did not match the crime scene samples.
Dan smiled as he sat down at his desk. The sight of Wayne’s wife bearing down on him when she had learned he had killed her dog was comical even in recall. It had taken several officers to hold her back from Wayne, who had cowered in the face of her anger. When she had learned he had needed an alibi for Thursday, and received one by way of his girlfriend, she had become hysterical. Dan had advised Binder he might want to find somewhere else to spend the night, as the officer didn’t want to find another body buried in the park. Wayne had blanched at the suggestion and agreed.
Dan had allowed Wayne to leave after he supplied them with hair, skin, blood and sperm samples, with a warning not to leave the area until after the tests were completed. He looked at the lens patient list that Doctor Wellesley had given him. The contact lens must have come from an out of town doctor. It could be from anywhere or anybody. The Avenger had probably left it on purpose to send them on this wild goose chase, wasting their time and money and energy.
James Starr was sure to get wind of this fiasco and print it in tomorrow’s paper. Yet, if the vexing reporter had gotten more insider info in the past two weeks, Starr hadn’t used more data than was revealed in Bolton’s or Raymond’s press releases or conferences. Of course, Starr could have backed off temporarily from his scoops because he realized he was a serious suspect and he didn’t want to be a headline or in the limelight on television. Or Starr was as skilled as he boasted, and Dan just didn’t want to admit it. For certain, Binder had been eliminated as a suspect, so it was back to Square One. Damn! Who is the Avenger? Why is he doing this? How the hell am I going to catch him? All of our evidence is worthless.
The Avenger sat on an uncomfortable, hard metal chair in a small room and gazed with tear filled eyes at the disfigured, comatose figure on the bed. A beloved young woman whose beauty, sanity and life had been stolen by an act of brutal violence five years ago and who was now confined to this private institution, probably for life.
“The bastard went unexposed and unpunished, the crime unsolved for too many years, Tippi. But when he duplicated his heinous deed a year later in another town, he unknowingly revealed himself to me. I bided my time while he was away for a few years, but I planned and prepared for his release and punishment. Nobody in Augusta knows about your case, Tippi, and won’t connect his death to you or to me. They’ll search among the other victim’s loved ones for me, but I have no ties to any of them. I’ll vanish as a ghost and the Avenger’s crimes will be as unsolved as yours was.”
“The years of working in that medical lab paid off. I obtained the knowledge I needed to make this plan work. I knew where the supplies were located. It was so easy to disguise myself and pick the locks. I was familiar with the computer systems, so it was only a matter of a few minutes to make the necessary changes to the files. No one ever questioned my appearance near the storage rooms, so I was able to take the trial folders home to study the details to ensure my accuracy when I copied their malicious crimes. The green contact lens and the auburn hairs I left behind at Manuel’s won’t help Lieutenant Mallory find me, just send him down the wrong trail again, as I intended. I’ve been successfully leading him in the direction I w
anted so far, which is very far away from me. Mallory has no idea of the Avenger’s identity and would never be able to prove it was me. His fellow officers would laugh at him if he even suggested a person like me. But I doubt that will ever happen, because I’ll make sure he never looks my way.”
The Avenger sighed and grasped the thin fingers to a saddened heart before replying, “I came to say goodbye for a while. I can’t risk another visit any time soon. Only one more necessary evil to do, Tippi, and it’s just for you, my beloved sister. I’ll get him for you, I promise. And he will suffer just as you have before I send him to Hell’s fiery grave. I have to leave now; somebody is waiting for me and I don’t want to make anyone suspicious right now. I’ll come and see you again when it’s safe. We are all that is left of our family; you are all that is left to me. Soon, it’ll all be over and justice will be served; I promise. I love you, Tippi, with all my heart.”
Sunday night, August 19th
Andrea smiled when she saw Dan sitting in his Explorer as Cindi pulled into a parking place in front of her condo.
“Looks like someone’s been missed this weekend,” Cindi said and grinned. “By the look on your face, I’d say the feeling is mutual. And since I know what’s in one of those bags, he’s gonna be a happy man tonight.”
“He’s pretty special, Cindi. I never thought I’d even think about getting married again, but—”
“Whoa, girl! Slow that pony down! You haven’t known him long enough to be talking marriage yet. Don’t rush it. Remember, good things come to those who wait.”
Andrea unbuckled her seatbelt and grabbed her purse. “I’ll be careful, Cindi. You can trust me on that. I’ve got things I want to do before I settle down again.”
“You don’t have to wait until you get your law degree. I wasn’t talking about moving that slow.”
Andrea smiled at her friend as she opened the door and stepped into Dan’s arms.
“I hope you don’t mind me waiting here for you, but I really needed to see you.”
Necessary Evil Page 31
