Moment of Doubt

by Sara Gauldin

  “What are you saying?” Sunny’s voice cracked.

  “I’m saying that your grandson, Ian, didn’t make it. They called it on the way to the hospital. And your son, well, he was shot, too. I don’t know what his status is. But I know they won’t save you, and you can’t help them anymore, so you better try to help yourself.”

  Sunny let out a wailing sound that hurt my ears despite the thick soundproofing acoustical panel on every wall. I let her go on for a while. As she slowed her cries, I knew it was time to try my luck.

  I handed Sunny a fist full of tissues. “Now Sunny, I know this is difficult. Can you tell me why your son and your grandson would take it upon themselves to shoot at a police car?”

  “They didn’t have a choice. It was a debt.”

  “They owed somebody something?” I asked.

  “No, I did. They were coming for me, not my boys.”

  “Is this about the… products you were selling at the salon?” Genevieve asked. Her tone was calm again, more herself.

  Sunny nodded. “Gerald New. That’s the man who I owed money. I guess he’ll be coming for me now anyway since I lost him his money. I owned him money from the last batch. Money with interest. I would have had it for him. But I came up short. I don’t know what happened.”

  “Sounds like you have a dishonest employee,” I commented. As we spoke, I knew all the women who worked for Sunny had warrants issued against them, and one by one, they would all end up behind bars, just like Sunny.

  Tears streamed down her face, pooling in the wrinkles around her eyes. “I’ll kill them. Just let me find out who. None of this had to happen.”

  I wanted to remind her that none of this would have happened if she was cutting hair instead of peddling drugs. But I had bigger fish to fry. I had a murder to solve, and I had a price on my head. Only this time I wasn’t sure who wanted me dead.

  I slid a notebook over to Sunny. “Write it down. Every bit. And maybe we can work something out with the DA.”

  She nodded in agreement.

  ***

  My phone buzzed in my pocket, distracting me from the case. I glanced at the display. It was my dad, back on the grid. “Excuse me. I need to take this call.”

  I stepped out into the hallway. “Hello.”

  “Hello, Avery. How are you?” He sounded superficially chipper.

  “Well, I’m just fine, Dad, how are you?”

  “Well, I’m doing all right. Don’t worry about a thing. I feel just awful, leaving you in California when you came just to visit.”

  “Don’t worry, Dad, I’m—”

  “Well, I feel like I owe you an explanation. There was a situation back home. I had to follow up with an old client.”

  “Back home? Do you mean Sandusky, Ohio?” I asked, leaning against the wall. This had to be a dream. Why would my dad show up in Sandusky at the same time I was here?

  “That was home for a long time.”

  “I remember. I thought you said you’d never come back after Mom died.”

  “Time changes things, sweetheart. Don’t worry, I’m sure this matter can be settled, and I’ll be home before you know it.”

  “Dad, I should tell you I’m not in California anymore.”

  “Well, I already knew that.” Dad’s voice was serious. Did he know I was in Sandusky?

  “You do?”

  “Well, of course. I saw you leave with your suitcase on my video doorbell app.”

  “Oh, of course.”

  “You could have stayed.”

  “I took a job.”

  “Oh, did you decide to stay in Colorado after all?” Either he didn’t know I was in Ohio, or he was fishing to see if I would come out and tell him.

  “No, this is only temporary. I’m doing some consulting on a case for the FBI.”

  “That sounds impressive. You make this old man proud.”

  “Thanks, Dad.” I wanted to tell him I was in town, but it seemed wrong.

  “Well, I better go. I want this all put to bed as quickly as possible.”

  “Good luck,” I said.

  We ended the call, and I felt a surge of guilt for not telling my father we were in the same town. But to be fair, I was here on FBI business that I was not at liberty to disclose, and he couldn’t tell me about his client. There wasn’t much to move forward with except the creepy coincidence that we both ended up in Sandusky at the same time.

  Chapter 11

  Genevieve slid a styrofoam cup of coffee across the conference room table to me.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  She smiled. “Well, after the confession in there, I thought I could at least fix you a cup of coffee.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “And to think I figured you’d send me packing after I shot a suspect.”

  “Well, I already knew your style…”

  “What style is that?” It was hard not to smirk.

  “It could best be described as in it up to your neck.”

  I nodded once and then flipped open another case file. “Unfortunately. Now, I have to dig myself out of it.”

  “You always do.” Genevieve pulled out a chair to sit in before taking a long swallow of her cup of coffee.

  “I always try, but there have been a few times where I needed backup.”

  “And here I am. So, let’s figure out where we are on these murder cases,” she said.

  “I was just looking over the evidence listed. It says that Jeffery Ellis’s car was found in a parking garage downtown.”

  “It was. And it was clean as a whistle. Only his prints and his wife’s.”

  “I don’t see his wife’s statement in the file?” I shuffled through the papers thinking I may have missed it.

  “She hasn’t given one.” Genevieve scowled.

  “That’s odd. I wonder why not? The family members are always the most obvious suspects. For all we know, these victims are connected somehow.” I hit the intercom button.

  “Yes,” a male voice answered the intercom page.

  Genevieve leaned in the phone to speak into the intercom. “We seem to be missing a statement. There is nothing from the wife of Jeffery Ellis. It says her name is Cynthia, but other than that, there is nothing except a note that her attorney called.”

  “I’ll check on that,” the officer replied.

  The line went quiet.

  I took a breath. “Look, we know a few things already. We know that according to the M.E., they cut apart the bodies with the same saw blade. And we know both were frozen for a time.”

  Genevieve looked at me from over the top of her reading glasses, as she glanced up from the file she was studying. “So, we’re looking for someone with a big freezer and a sharp saw.”

  “Well, after cutting up two people, we can’t assume the saw is still very sharp.”

  “Sure,” Genevieve said.

  “But we know that the killer didn’t use or take either victims’ cars. Whoever did this to them was after the people. They could have taken the vehicles but they didn’t.”

  Genevieve didn’t answer. Instead, she unfolded an enormous map of the city and pinned it to a bulletin board on the wall. She held up a report, scanning for something.

  “What are you looking for?” I asked.

  “Well, they found Ellis's here.” She made a mark on the map. “He lives here.” She added another mark. “And he works here.”

  “Ah, I see what you're doing.” I headed toward Genevieve with Dana’s case file. “Dana’s car was here, parked about a block from her job.” I pointed to the spot.

  “I need a different color ink.” Genevieve pointed at the cup full of pens on the conference table.

  I rummaged through the pens and found a red one, a nice contrast to the blue Genevieve started with. “Here.” She marked the place I pointed out.

  “And here is her mother’s house and her apartment.” I pointed out the locations.

  “What else do we know about these people?” Genevieve asked.
<
br />   “We know where the bodies were found,” I told her. “Both of them were out of town, almost ten miles to the west. We found the places, near one another on the map.”

  I traced the areas with my finger. “Well, we can say for sure that the killer is familiar with the downtown area and with this section of the lake.”

  “True, familiar enough to get in and out without being noticed,” Genevieve said.

  I stepped back and took a long look at the map. “It’s weird. I haven’t thought about how strange the city layout looks from this vantage point in a long time.”

  “Oh yeah?” Genevieve glanced back at the map from the file she was reading.

  “I remember learning something about it in school, the man who designed the original layout made this pattern of overlapping triangles in the design as a symbol.”

  Genevieve looked up, her interest piqued. “A symbol of what?” She approached the map to study it with me.

  “Somebody… Kilbourne designed it, and I think it had something to do with the Freemasons.” My stomach gave an unexpected flip when I said the words. Ryan Kain would have realized this, and he would have run with it. Not me. There was no reason to go down that rabbit hole again.

  “Wow, that’s an unusual design.” Genevieve traced it with her finger. “And look, Dana’s car was right at this point of the triangle.”

  “It was,” I admitted. Why did it have to be? This needed to be irrelevant.

  Before I had time to dwell on it, the door opened and Commander Jennings stepped into the room.

  Genevieve touched the point on the map. “It’s too bad we can’t narrow the time frame down anymore. We could go after the traffic cameras again.”

  “We have some footage of Dana before she disappeared.” Jennings sat down at a computer station and typed in several commands.

  It surprised me. “When did you get all these tech skills?”

  Jennings smiled and blushed a shade more ruddy than his usual complexion. “Well, we have to keep up with the times.” He turned the monitor, so we could see the footage. “Here she is, driving through the intersection near her workplace in the morning.” He clicked on a few more files, grumbling. He was no Kirk Nelson. “Oh, here we go. Here she is going the opposite direction around noon.”

  “And after that?” I asked.

  “After that, there’s nothing. She went out to get lunch and never came back. Her car was only a block away.”

  “She didn’t get far,” Genevieve said. “Did the cameras pick up anything closer to where her car was found?”

  “No, unfortunately not.” Jennings found the closest camera. “It looks like the city needs to trim the trees.” Foliage blocked most of the image.

  Genevieve scowled at the blocked footage. “Well, we know she was alone when she left the office. So, maybe she saw someone or something that made her stop.”

  “We also have to consider the possibility that somebody inside the P.D. knew that this camera was blocked, and that’s why they chose this location,” I added.

  Commander Jennings looked at me with his eyes wide. “Avery, that doesn’t sound like you. You were always a team player.”

  “Look, I don’t want to think any of your people are involved in any of this.” That was the truth. I was hoping to never encounter the police corruption I had experienced. “I’m sure there are other ways to know what the system is monitoring.”

  “All right, so we have the idea that Dana went into a trap. And there was no sign of a struggle there?”

  “No, in fact, it was parked in a two-hour parking zone. The attendant started keeping time on it the same day as the video, and it was towed the next day.”

  “Was Dana reported missing at that point?” Genevieve shuffled the papers, trying to find an answer. “Here it is. Her mother reported her missing on November tenth. That was two days after this video.

  “So the search for Dana began in November, but nobody found her body until February?” I asked. It was a rhetorical question. I already knew the answer. But an uncomfortable idea was forming.

  Commander Jennings’s brow creased. “Yes, somebody had her for a while. We’re still trying to get a handle on the timeline.”

  “What was the weather like from November to February?” I asked.

  “Well, it was a typical winter.”

  “Were there many days above freezing?” Genevieve was picking up on my train of thought.

  “You know what? We had an unusually cold winter. I don’t think there were many days that the temperature got out of the thirties for two months.”

  I sighed. “Then we can’t narrow our search to places with access to a large freezer. If the temperature was that low, they could have stored the bodies in an outdoor space.”

  Jennings shook his head. “They may have stayed cold enough, but animals would have had at the bodies if they were out in the open.”

  “True,” Genevieve said. “But not if they were sheltered somewhere, like an outbuilding or a barn.

  “All right. We can come back to that angle. The M.E. didn’t mention any signs that the bodies were thawed and refrozen. And she never mentioned an animal or insect infestation.” The thought of maggots gave me the crawls, and I tried not to react to the mental image.

  Genevieve tapped her pencil on the table. “Maybe we should focus on any common threads between our two victims’ lives. The profile changes when you factor in a crime of opportunity versus targeting these specific people.”

  “Well, we know they both worked in the same part of town.” I pointed at the map.

  “True, this may be somebody who is targeting the area.” Jennings stood up to study the map.

  I looked at the computer. “Let’s have a look at our victims’ social media accounts. Even if they didn’t know each other, maybe they had people in common.”

  “Be my guest.” Jennings gestured to the computer.

  I took a seat and went to Facebook and Twitter on two tabs.

  “Don’t forget Instagram,” Genevieve said.

  “Let’s just see what they have.” I opened Google instead and searched for Dana’s name. “Well, she has an Instagram.” I clicked Dana’s profile.

  “See if Jeffery is on her friends list.”

  I searched her friends list. “No such luck.”

  “All right, go back to the original search.” Genevieve bent down to see the screen better. “What else can we find on Dana?”

  I ran the search again. “Here’s something interesting. Didn’t Dana’s mother say she loved her job at Haven Outreach?”

  “Yes, why?” Genevieve asked.

  “Well, she has a profile on jobfinder.com. She posted a resume.”

  “Interesting,” Jennings said. “So, we know she was looking for a job. What about Jeffery? Does he have a profile there?”

  I did a quick search. “Jackpot. Here’s his resume.”

  Chapter 12

  Genevieve held a copy of the resumes I printed out. “All right, we know both of our victims were shopping the job market. Did they have any of the same skills?”

  “Ah, yes, they both were involved with nonprofits and with some form of marketing.”

  “That’s not all. Look, they went to the same college.”

  “Yeah, but Bowling Green is local. Almost everyone goes there or to State unless they go away to school.”

  “Yes, but it is still a common thread. They may not have known one another, but it’s that they may have crossed paths with the same people.” Jennings looked back over his copy of the resumes.

  “It’s also possible that this is how the killer found both of them. They were looking for a job, but someone found them.” I shivered. The idea was disturbing.

  “You may be on to something,” Genevieve said.

  “So if that’s our theory, anyone who had posted a resume is a potential target.”

  A knock on the door interrupted us. Jennings answered it. An officer nodded to us. “Sorry to interru
pt. We have a situation.”

  “A situation?” Jennings asked.

  The officer nodded. “There’s a man here causing a disruption.”

  “This is the police department. Arrest him.”

  “But sir, I think something is going on with him.”

  “All right. I’ll go talk to him.” Jennings turned to us. “If you will excuse me.”

  “No problem,” Genevieve said.

  I nodded in agreement.

  Genevieve and I turned back to the case files. There was nothing either of us could do to help the commander besides focusing on solving the case at hand.

  Genevieve rearranged the papers in the folder she was reading so they were neat. “We need to go interview more of the family and contacts of these victims. If the job applications are the common thread, then maybe they told somebody something about a contact or an interview.”

  “I agree. The job applications and the location of the bodies are the two common threads.”

  The chief barged back in before I could complete my thought. “Ladies, I hate to interrupt, but I think we may have a third victim.”

  I swallowed back the bile in my throat as I envisioned yet another butchered body. Who was it this time? “What happened?”

  Commander Jennings pointed over his shoulder. “There’s a man here who says his wife is missing. He’s drunk as a skunk, so we will have to wait for him to sober up to know for sure what’s going on. With any luck, maybe she just wised up and left him.”

  “What’s the wife’s name?” I headed back to the computer.

  “Hold on, I wrote it down.” Commander Jennings patted his shirt pocket. Not finding his notepad, he produced it from the back pocket of his pants. “Here we go. Her name is Holly Mangrum.”

  “Holly Mangrum.” I spelled the name back to Jennings for confirmation.

  “That’s it,” Jennings said.

  I keyed in the name on the job search site. The results were instantaneous. “Here she is. She has a resume on the jobfinder.com site just like the others.”

  “What kind of job was she looking for?” Genevieve asked.