“Yeah, I know, who does that?” I said. I figured I’d say it before he did. “Anyway. That’s your spot and time. Try to find her on video inside. Watch for Kleeman in the store. Look for any cars pulling in after her or pulling out after her.”
“This is the Dodge truck that we have the BOLO on that I’m looking for?” Jones asked.
“Any vehicle,” I said.
“Okay. I’ll keep you guys updated.”
“Thanks, Jones,” I said.
I clicked End on my phone, and before I got it back into my pocket, it rang. The screen said it was the station.
“Lieutenant Kane,” I said.
“It’s Bostok. How’s it coming out there?” he asked.
“We got something that Jones is looking into.”
“Fill me in,” he said.
I did.
“So what are we thinking that we’ll get?” Bostok asked.
“Maybe Kleeman on video following her. It’s something,” I said.
“Anything else at the scene there?” he asked.
“Rick is just getting going on everything. Rob took some prints from our DB back to the station. Ed has the information for the brother from Bradenton to call to come and identify the body.”
“All right. Well, other than to check in, I wanted to let you know that our records are starting to trickle in.”
“Anything on Kleeman, or just the girls, Billie Webber and Erica Osweiler?” I asked.
“Phone and banking on the girls. As far as Kleeman, just banking so far.”
“All right. I think we’ll probably take one more lap through this place and then head out. Rick said that he’s going to be here for a bit.”
“Okay,” Bostok said. “I have everything in my office when you get here.”
“Yup. See you in a bit.” I clicked off from the call and looked at Hank. “It looks like some of our records are starting to come in. There’s more work for us at the station. Let’s have another look around and head back.”
Hank and I got fresh gloves from Rick, pulled them on, and started having another look around. We went through the kitchen, drawer by drawer and cabinet by cabinet. Nothing caught either Hank’s or my attention. We passed the blood on the floor, and the broken and spilled-out cooler. I got low at the cooler and looked to see if perhaps there was a person’s name written on it anywhere. What it would do for our case if there was, I didn’t know, but I checked, anyway. There was nothing.
I looked up for Hank, who’d moved on to the living room. He seemed to be going over things on the surface of the coffee table. He turned and looked at me while he clutched a book in his hand.
“Hey,” he said.
I stood and started over toward him. He held the book in his hands and seemed focused on something on the first page.
I noticed as I approached that it was a romance novel. “One of your personal favorites?” I asked.
“Better,” he said.
I stepped to his side and had a look at what he was staring down at. Paper clipped to the first page was a photo. Eve Kleeman stood on the left, dressed in uniform. She appeared to be taking a photo of herself and the man in a light blue inmate uniform standing next to her. His face, or the tattoos on his face, were undeniable. It was Koskinen. The pair smiled in the photo. Koskinen had his arm around Eve. I focused on his face, which was a little rounder and roughly ten years older than the last time I’d seen it. His nose was still a bit crooked from where he’d broken it on our cruiser’s gate. He had a long scar underneath his eye, crossing the nine on the right side of his face. His hair was grayer than the brown it used to be. He had a full beard, something I’d never seen him with. The tattoos covering his arms were faded. The photo had to have been fairly recent.
“That’s him, huh?” Hank asked.
“Yes, it is.”
“Well, I guess that solidifies them having direct contact with each other. They look pretty chummy,” Hank said.
“Agreed.” I took the book and walked it to Rick. I showed him the photo, and he bagged the book as evidence. Hank and I spent another forty-five minutes searching through drawers, inside of closets, and in whatever corner we thought something might have been stashed in. We went through every wastebasket, including the ones in the garage. We found nothing further. We left the condo for the station. Hank got a call on our way back. It seemed the Fitchburg PD, which served the search warrant on her home, reported that her truck, the one we had the BOLO out on, was at her property. They reported that nothing else seemed off on the first pass through, but they were still at the scene and searching. We now had no leads on what she was driving. Hank and I got to the station a couple of minutes after one o’clock. He walked into the captain’s office to get the records that had come in. I unlocked my office door, went to my desk, and called Jones.
“Jones,” he answered.
“Hey, it’s Kane. What’s going on there?”
“I’m watching footage of Erica Osweiler as we speak,” he said.
“See anything?”
“I see her grocery shopping. About it. She’s been in the store twenty minutes or so. Walking the aisles, filling a cart. Haven’t got to any parking lot video yet.”
“Okay. That’s the reason for my call. Forget about the Dodge truck. They found it in Wisconsin. She’d be driving something else.”
“Any clue as to what?” Jones asked.
“None,” I said. “But you might be in the best position to change that. Watch for anything coming or going around the time that she does.”
“Got it. I’ll call you if I get something,” he said. “Are you guys back at the station?”
“Just got in the building now. Some of our phone and bank records came in, so we’re going to get started with that.”
“All right. I’ll talk to you in a bit.”
“Yup.” I hung up.
Hank walked into my office, holding a two-inch stack of individual folders. He took a seat across from me and slapped the folders down. “Are you ready to dig in?” he asked.
“Let’s go,” I said and motioned for him to give me some of the folders.
Hank split the folders up—a stack for Erica Osweiler, a stack for Billie Webber, and the banking records we had on Kleeman.
“Kleeman’s first,” I said. I reached for the stack, noticing there were two folders, one of banking records and another of credit card activity. “We got her credit card records?”
“Yeah, Bostok said that they just came.”
I took the banking records and let Hank tackle the credit cards. I started at the end and worked my way back. She’d had two ATM withdrawals in Tampa—both locations were near the condo that we’d just come from. The next latest was the check written to the condo she was leasing. The next came from a truck stop in Gainesville. The one prior to that, the same day in Macon, Georgia. I had a pretty good idea of what I was looking at but pulled up a map of the drive from Tampa to the Madison, Wisconsin, area. I cross-referenced the trip and activity from her bank card. She’d used it to purchase fuel. I had corresponding banking activity with fuel stops for the entire drive. It looked as though she drove straight through. The day before the first fuel receipt, I had a cash withdrawal from a bank in Fitchburg, Wisconsin, for five thousand dollars. Before that were standard withdrawals—mortgage payment, auto loan payment, insurance, phone bill. All of those charges seemed to be around the first of the month. I looked to see who the phone company was that the payment had been sent to and wrote that down. We’d put in for the phone records of the number that Kleeman’s father had given me but had yet to hear anything. I wanted to make sure that they came back to the same carrier.
“I got her trip here,” I said. I turned my computer monitor toward Hank so he could see it and then showed him the fuel purchases and points on the map.
“You have anything there?” I asked.
“Not in the last ten days or so. Only a couple in the last month. Looks like clothing, mostly, and a
charge from a place called Biomed Containment Supplies.”
“What the hell is that?” I asked.
My phone rang, and I scooped it up before Hank could answer. “Lieutenant Kane,” I said.
“Hey, it’s Rob downstairs.”
“Yeah, what’s up?”
“The prints that I put in matched ones from Billie Webber’s apartment.”
“Okay,” I said. “Ed has the brother’s contact information to make a positive, but it’s another thing to check off the list. Appreciate it.”
“Sure, Lieutenant.”
“Thanks, Rob,” I said. I hung the phone up.
Hank looked at me, clearly waiting for me to tell him what the call was about.
“The prints from the body at Kleeman’s condo match up to ones taken from the apartment. Further proof that it’s Billie Webber. Not that her looking the same and her car in Eve Kleeman’s garage weren’t telling enough,” I said. “So what were you saying? Biomed something?”
“Just a purchase from that place,” Hank said. “Looks like it was for just over a hundred bucks.”
“Make a note to look into it,” I said.
He did. Hank scratched at the side of his dark hair and went back to the records. I did the same. My cell phone rang a moment later. I looked at the screen—Jones. I hit Talk.
“Yeah, Jones,” I said.
“It’s a Dodge Challenger. Black. I have a Wisconsin tag. I just ran it. It belongs to her father, Colin Kleeman,” Jones said.
“You have it on video?” I asked.
“The car pulled in a little behind Erica Osweiler, left after her. It drove right past one of the outdoor cameras and gave me a good enough look at the tag number to run it.”
“Okay. What’s the tag number?” I asked.
Jones gave it to me, and I wrote it down.
“Get us a copy of that video and head back to the station,” I said.
“Got it,” he said.
I clicked End on my phone and set it on my desk. I looked across at Hank, and again he looked at me, as if waiting for whatever news I’d just gotten on the phone. “She’s driving her father’s car,” I said. “Which is interesting that he never mentioned that when I spoke to him.”
“Think he was covering for her?” Hank asked.
“I have to check out a few things,” I said. I handed Hank the piece of paper on which I’d written Kleeman’s license plate number. “Go have Timmons put a BOLO out on this car.”
“Sure,” Hank said. “But what are you looking into?”
“Mr. Kleeman, and the rest of her family.”
Hank nodded and left my office.
I thought about the conversation that I’d had with Kleeman’s father. I pulled him up in our system, and his address showed as Madison. Another thought bubbled up in my head. I dug back through my notes and found the guy’s name and number that had the stolen license plate. I pulled him up in the system.
“Son of a bitch,” I said. The guy lived on the same street as Kleeman’s father. Their addresses were just two off from each other.
I ran the DMV records for past residents at the senior Kleeman’s address. I found five different listings. A Susan Kleeman, Eve’s mother, was the first that came up. Then I saw Eve herself, followed by a Sandra, Michelle, and Janis. I ran each name. Each woman was roughly two or three years apart—sisters, I imagined, by how they looked in their DL photos. I pulled up Eve’s mother, who’d renewed her driver’s license just two months prior, which was an odd thing to do for someone with Alzheimer’s.
Chapter 28
Eve stood in front of the sink in the small service bay bathroom of the storage facility. The front door of the building was locked, Dana’s body relocated, the visible blood covered up with a couple of boxes, and the garage bay doors closed. Eve filled two handfuls of water and splashed them in her eyes for the umpteenth time. Even after an hour, the pain was still there and still burning.
She rubbed her eyes and stared at herself in the mirror. The skin around her eyes and nose was pink—around her eyes, a bit swollen. Her nose ran. Her entire face, from forehead to chin, burned. Eve pumped hand soap into her hand, ran some water over it, and began washing her face for what had to have been the tenth time. Eve had remembered that the soap was supposed to break down the oils of the pepper spray.
Eve heard the sound of someone banging on the front door.
“That’s perfect,” she said.
She ignored whoever was at the door and rinsed the soap from her face. Eve heard another couple of bangs as she filled her hands with water again. She grabbed the towel from the towel bar near the sink and dried herself. She tossed the towel in the sink, stepped over Dana’s body, and walked from the bathroom. Eve passed through the service bay and into the hall that led to the front office. Eve squinted hard and craned her neck to get a look at who was outside. She saw no one but did see the nose of a big delivery truck parked at the edge of the office. A moment later, she saw the driver getting back into the truck and carrying a box. The truck’s motor fired. Eve stepped out into the office just as the truck was pulling away. She looked over at the front counter, and the carpet before it, where she’d killed Dana. Eve had done her best to clean up and didn’t notice anything that could have been seen from outside that would have raised any suspicion.
Eve returned to the rear of the service bay. She searched the tool shelves and then the racks. Eve’s eyes came to rest on Dana’s cell phone. She’d snatched it from the shelf and sent off a text.
She received a response a minute later. The text read: Be ready for Kane around 4. I’ll message you a bit later. Remove the battery from that phone until 2.
Chapter 29
Hank walked back into my office. “Timmons put it across the wire,” he said.
I looked up from my desk. “This guy was full of shit,” I said.
“What guy?” Hank asked.
“Kleeman’s father.”
“What did you get?”
I waved him to my desk and turned the computer monitor toward him. Up on my computer screen was a video that I found on one of the social media accounts of Susan Kleeman, Eve’s mother. “I’ll tell you what’s wrong with this picture as soon as the video gets done playing. Just watch,” I said. I clicked Play.
The video started. A single man, who looked in his later sixties, stood next to four women, Eve and her three sisters. The group sang happy birthday to a seated older woman, Susan Kleeman. Susan bopped her head back and forth as they sang, blew out her candles, and cut the cake as soon as they were through with the song. The video played for another three minutes. The older man, who I figured to be Colin Kleeman, kissed his wife’s cheek and disappeared off camera. All the women remained, and they talked and joked. The title of the video was My sixty-fifth with all of my beautiful daughters and loving husband. Susan Kleeman had uploaded the video herself.
“Okay. So Kleeman at a birthday party,” Hank said. “What’s so off with that?”
“Well, the mother supposedly has early onset Alzheimer’s and Eve was supposedly an only child.”
“You’re sure that this is her family?” Hank asked.
“Uploaded by Susan Kleeman herself. I pulled up the DLs for photos. The people in the video are the sisters, mother, and father.”
“How old is that video?”
“About four months old. Going off of the DOB on Susan Kleeman’s driver’s license.”
“So, now what?” Hank asked.
I picked up my desk phone and dialed Terry down in the tech department, who picked up immediately. “Terry, its Kane. I have a phone number that I want looked into.”
“Sure. Whose is it?”
“Eve Kleeman’s father’s. I want to know where it is.”
“Okay. What’s the number?”
I gave it to him.
“Did you want to wait or just have me run it and call you back?”
“I’ll wait,” I said.
“Sure. Let
me just go get to the computer. Give me a second.”
I said nothing but held on the line.
“All right. Let me wake this thing up here,” Terry said. “We never did get a hit on the number for Eve Kleeman that we tried tracking. She must be using a different phone, that is, if she’s using one. Okay. Let me punch the number in and see what we get. Should only be a minute or two, provided the phone is on.”
“Yeah, no problem,” I said.
“So why are we trying to locate him now?” Terry asked.
“Because the guy is full of it. He gave me a string of lies about Kleeman on the phone. You never know, he may be with her.”
“Well, the phone is on. We got a signal confirmation right away. Hold on. This should only take a second. Okay, it’s in Wisconsin. Looks like the south central part of the state. Um, Madison area. A couple more seconds and I should have an exact location.”
I cupped the receiver on the phone. “The phone is in Wisconsin. Madison area,” I said to Hank.
Terry came back on with a location a moment later. We cross-referenced the coordinates given, and I pulled it up on my computer.
“Son of a bitch,” I said.
“What?” I heard from Hank seated across from me at my desk and Terry in my ear at the same time.
“The damn phone is at the state mental hospital. I’ll call you back, Terry.” I hung up and dialed the direct number for the assistant director at the Madison Mental Health Institute. He answered immediately.
“Assistant Director Charles Gill,” he said.
“It’s Lieutenant Carl Kane, Tampa PD. You need to search Koskinen’s room. I have a trace on a cell phone that comes back to your location.”
“We’ve searched his room twice.”
“Well, check a third time. I talked to someone, claiming to be Kleeman’s father, yesterday on a phone number that tracks back to your facility. Pretty damn certain that it wasn’t Kleeman’s father that I was talking to.”
“I’ll get on it and get right back to you,” he said.
“Yup.” I hung my phone back on its base.
“You think that may have been Koskinen that you were talking to,” Hank said.
The Ninth Life Page 16
