by Rick Reed
“What are the odds? I live in the asshole of nowhere. It’s a quarter mile walk off a main road to get back to my place. What’s up with this crap written on my shirt? How would anyone even guess to write that? I’ll talk to Pen some more. I think she talked to this Tony longer than she’s admitting. I just hope to hell she didn’t let him in the house, but I can’t imagine she did.”
Liddell said, “How about this? Brandon might have run into an angry father. This is a small community, right? I’m sure everyone knows about Chief Jerrell’s son. Voila, Troy’s killer strikes again. Whoever it was knows you and your daughter and Patty.”
“Could be,” Jerrell admitted. “Troy’s vehicle was missing from the scene and that was in the newspapers. This would have to be one crazy son of a bitch though to come back and attack you Shaunda.”
No one said anything until Jerrell added, “At least he didn’t kill you.”
Jack wondered why Shaunda wasn’t killed? Why the warning? Why advertise what was next? Why not just kill Shaunda or Penelope or Patty? Why risk confronting an armed policewoman?
Shaunda put a hand on Jerrell’s arm. “Thanks for sending someone to my house. Even if it was Ditty.”
“You should have told us that you caught this kid coming from mine property. I mean that’s almost where you found his body. Never mind. Why don’t you go home and rest up? Be with your daughter. Ditty can stay as long as you need him. We got this.”
“That’s the second time you told me you’ve got this. While I appreciate Ditty staying with the girls, I’m good to go. Just tell him to stay out of my panty drawer.”
“You don’t need a hospital,” Jerrell said. “What you need is a good man to straighten you out. Don’t look at me like that. I’m not available.”
“In your wet dreams bozo.”
Jerrell’s cell phone rang. He spoke for a moment, hung up and said, “That was Crime Scene. They searched the lake area again and came up with nothing. I still think you should get a CT scan, Shauny. A concussion can be a serious thing.”
“When I get my hands on this guy, I’ll give him a CT scan. If I wanted a man to beat me unconscious I’d get married.” She looked at Jack and said, “I can see you’re shocked by our lack of political correctness, Agent Murphy. Maybe you Feds don’t approve.”
Jack said, “I can neither confirm nor deny that. What I can tell you Chief is—bite me.”
Shaunda tried not to smile. “You’ll never do, you know that? You don’t even look like a Fed, and your partner looks like an NFL linebacker.”
“I played some in college,” Liddell said. “Too violent for me.”
Jack said, “We need your uniform for evidence. We need a full workup on you by Crime Scene for comparison. If you don’t have a change of clothes with you maybe Chief Jerrell can round up something.”
Jerrell said, “I think we still have a kids Halloween uniform. Unless you have a spare uniform with you?”
“No, Shauny doesn’t have a spare uniform with her,” she said testily. “There’s some civvies in my Tahoe.”
“Sergeant, would you mind getting her clothes?” Jerrell asked. Crocker turned to go.
“It’s in the back. In a canvas bag.”
“Yes ma’am,” Crocker said.
“There’s a box of Powerbars on the seat. Can you bring those and quit calling me ma’am?”
“Yes ma’am…yes, Chief,” Crocker said and hurried away.
Jerrell said, “You’re the most hardheaded woman I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with.”
“You’ve been saying that for years.”
“You look like twice baked shit.”
“You’ve also been saying that for years,” she gave him a tight smile. “Such a romantic.”
Jerrell shrugged and said, “It’s your body.”
“Damn right. Got a bumper sticker.”
“True love,” Liddell whispered to Jack.
“I’d hate to see what they’d be like if they were married,” Jack said.
Chapter 12
Sergeant Crocker brought in Shaunda’s bag and the Powerbars from her Tahoe. She changed in the ladies room in the station house while Crocker made another pot of coffee. Shaunda had taken paper grocery bags into the restroom with her for the uniform she had been wearing. When she came out she handed the bags to Officer Barr. He had already taken photos of her in her uniform and of her injuries.
Shaunda had washed up, brushed her hair, and put on blue jeans and a Black Watch patterned flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Her Sam Browne gun belt was worn loosely around her hips like a gunfighter. Holstered was a Colt Python stainless steel revolver, a big .357 magnum with a six inch vented rib barrel and rosewood grips. Two speed loaders on her gun belt held another twelve rounds of ammunition. Six in the gun, twelve on the belt. It wasn’t a lot of ammo for a cop to rely on, but it just takes one well placed shot to put a bad guy down.
With civvies on she was a different woman. When she went into the ladies’ room her brown hair had been pulled up into messy bun, but now it was a shiny auburn, worn down around her shoulders, framing a very pretty face. Jerrell watched her every move intently and Jack wondered if Bigfoot was right. Maybe there was something between them in spite of the catty remarks.
“Where’s the rest of the Scooby-Doo Team?” she asked. “I thought you had a task force?”
Jerrell sidestepped the question and asked one of his own. “Why don’t you carry a spare uniform?”
“Haven’t gotten my ass kicked before. That sucker even stole my badge. The city will never spring for another. I’ll have to get it back or start a “GoFundMe” page on Facebook.”
Jack admired her spunk despite almost being killed. He again wondered why the killer hadn’t left her floating face down in Dugger Lake. That would have sent a stronger message to law enforcement. If this wasn’t a copycat he had a sick feeling in his stomach that the killer was just getting started.
“Maybe he took the badge as a memento,” Liddell suggested. “The reports don’t say anything about the other victims missing anything, but the killer might have taken something personal to the victims. We’ll need to interview the victim’s families. If he’s saved something from all of his victims that will be damning evidence.”
That is if Jerrell or Shaunda didn’t blow him away first, Jack thought.
“Let’s move this to the roll call room,” Jerrell said. They went down the hall to the break/roll call room and took seats around the table. They took turns giving Shaunda the story they had pieced together before she arrived. When they finished Jerrell pushed a copy of the file across the table to Shaunda.
She began leafing through it and said, “After Troy Junior’s death I did some digging around. I wasn’t aware of the guy in Illinois. Do you really think they’re all connected?”.
Jerrell said, “They were all killed in the same manner and the bodies were found in stripper pit lakes.”
“Two in Sullivan, two in Dugger if you count Brandon, one in Greene County, one in Hutsonville, Illinois,” Shaunda said. “Do you think that’s all of them?”
“That’s all we know for now,” Jack said. “Winters and Washington happened a week apart five years ago. They appeared to be accidental drownings initially. They both had narcotics in their system. Their vehicles were found at the scene. There was nothing to indicate murder. I can see why the responding detectives assumed these victims got drunk or high or both, had gone swimming, hit their head and drowned.”
Shaunda said, “Maybe that’s all it is. Why are we wasting time on those cases? They were drug addicts. Alcoholics. The only cases I’m interested in are Troy Junior and Brandon.”
“I never said they were addicts. Just that drugs were found in their systems.”
“I went to high school with Winters and Washington.” Shaunda said to
Jack. “Don’t look so surprised. I went to high school.” She looked at the victim’s pictures closely. “These guys were jocks. Spell that P-R-I-C-K. Brandon was at Union High. He wasn’t involved in sports. Unless you consider groping young girls and smoking pot a sport.”
Crocker said, “Tina told us she knew them from high school, but she didn’t tell us she knew you.”
“She didn’t mention me?” Shaunda said. “How about that? I guess I’m not surprised. These guys were jocks. Tina was Miss Popular. No one ever gave me the time of day. I barely knew who these guys were. I heard about the parties they had. Come to think of it, you should ask Tina about the parties. I’m not saying she was involved with these guys. Just that I knew she was popular and why wouldn’t she be. Smart. Beautiful. She was a couple of years ahead of me.”
“Do you still have your yearbooks?” Jack asked.
“Now why would I keep anything like that. I didn’t even get one but I guess you’re going to need them. I can get the ones from Union.”
“Crocker’s already got that in hand,” Jerrell said. “You knew these guys by reputation, right?”
“I knew they were disgusting, self-centered, arrogant, jocks,” she said. “They were God’s gift to women. Washington was selling pot to half of the students and most of the teachers. Winters was his wingman.”
Jack said, “I thought you barely knew who they were?”
Shaunda touched her split lip and flinched. “You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know when someone’s selling drugs. Washington would hang around smoker’s corner and students would come to him like he was Jesus giving a blessing. I guess to them, he was. Winters,” she said, “could have been king and queen of the prom.”
“What do you mean?” Jerrell asked.
“You know,” Shaunda said. “He batted for both teams. He liked them young. A freshman girl in my class was spending a lot of time with him until he met her younger brother, if you know what I mean.”
“Did they have any enemies?” Jack asked.
“They were disgusting. I can’t think of anyone that wouldn’t want to kill them,” she said.
“But are you sure they didn’t just overdose and drown? Maybe when Washington died Winters couldn’t live without him. Who knows what was going on with those two. They were carved out of the same turd.”
“Are you suggesting Washington was an accidental drowning and Winters was a suicide?” Jack asked.
“It’s possible,” she said.
Jerrell stood over Shaunda like a drill sergeant over a recruit. “Shauny, I know you got hit in the head, but sweet Jesus girl. You can’t believe that crap.”
It was hard to tell what she was thinking.
Jack said, “Chief Lynch, these cases have a strong resemblance to Troy Junior’s murder.”
Shaunda answered defensively. “I didn’t say they weren’t connected. I’m just saying I can’t work more cases than I have right now. Two murders in as many weeks and it’s just me and Joey. I got a third constable but he doesn’t count. I don’t think he even feeds himself or takes a bath on his own. He belongs in an assisted living home, with heavy emphasis on the ‘assisted.’ I have a town board that wants to cut my budget, never listens to me, and believes their kids are immune to traffic laws.”
Jack said, “I realize you have a lot on your plate but you are the investigator on two of the cases. Troy Junior and Brandon. None of us have worked any of these cases. We don’t have the insight you do.”
Shaunda squinted one eye at Jack. “Are you blowing federal smoke up my ass?”
“Did it work?” Jack asked.
“Oh crap,” Shaunda said. “I haven’t told Claire yet. If she finds out from someone else I’ll be lined up at the soup kitchen. I can just imagine what I’ll say. “Claire there’s been another murder, and “Oh, by the way, it was your son. But I can’t worry about Brandon right now. I have to investigate some old, old murders and one in Illinois.”
Shaunda got up. She was steadier on her feet this time. “I gotta go.”
“Do you want one of us to go with you?” Liddell asked.
“I think I’d better do this alone,” Shaunda said. She picked up her bag and left.
“Should she be driving in her condition?” Jack asked Jerrell.
“You going to try and stop her?”
He had a point. “Will she come back?” Jack asked.
“Yeah. She’ll be an hour if all goes well. Two if it doesn’t.”
“I’ll go get the yearbooks, Chief,” Crocker said. “Be right back.”
Jack said, “We need a list of contacts for each victim. Family, friends, detectives working the cases, neighbors, employers, that kind of stuff.”
“Can your girl get all that for us?” Jerrell asked.
“Probably, but we’re going to have to eventually call the other agencies ourselves. We need to interview the responding officers, dispatchers, detectives, and anyone that had a hand in the investigation,” Jack said.
“We need the dispatch tapes of the calls and radio traffic with the cars,” Jerrell added. “We need to know who called dispatch, where they called from, if they were interviewed, what connection do they have to the victim or to any of the victims.”
“All the calls were made anonymously,” Liddell said. “Angelina got the locations where the calls were made from if they had any. Of course, maybe someone came forward since this happened and said they were a witness.”
They all sat around the table poring over the cases, making notes, bouncing ideas off each other for the next hour until Jack said, “We’re going to need the autopsy reports. We’ll interview the pathologists. I wish Chief Lynch could have hung around. We’re going to need her help with some of this.”
“Did you miss me?” Shaunda said, coming back into the roll call room.
“I thought you be gone longer,” Jerrell said.
“I saw Joey’s truck when I got to Claire’s house,” she said. “I didn’t go in. I called him and he said Sergeant Ditterline told him that I got banged up. He thought he should talk to Claire before she found out through the grapevine. He’s a smart kid. He said he had just told her when she got a call from the Greene County Coroner’s Office to inform her. He’s still at Claire’s giving her time to settle down and he’ll take her to identify the body. It’s probably a good thing I didn’t go in. Claire and I had a little row on the phone about Brandon earlier this morning. Joey’s better at compassion than I am.”
“Does Joey know to ask her some questions about Brandon while he’s got her?” Jack asked.
“I told him to ask about enemies, friends, that kind of stuff. He gets it. He knows his job pretty well. He had a list of questions that he read off to me. What are we doing now?”
“Crocker has gone to get the yearbooks from Linton-Stockton,” Jerrell said. “Can you call someone with Union and get their yearbooks?”
“Sure,” Shaunda said, and took her cell phone out, scanning down a list of names. “I assume you want all four years these guys were in school.”
Jack said, “Ask them if Clint Baker ever worked for the school.”
“I forgot to tell Crocker to do that.” Jerrell called Crocker and passed that along.
“Come to think of it, we forgot to ask you if you recognized Clint Baker,” Jack said.
Shaunda looked at his picture. “He’s older than the others, isn’t he?”
“He would be forty now. Everyone else would be thirty-one. Tina thought he might have worked at the high school,” Jack suggested.
“Nope. Not familiar at all,” Shaunda said.
Jerrell finished his call and said to Shaunda, “We were just coming up with a ‘to do’ list.” He checked his notes and read off the list.
To Shaunda he said, “Why don’t you use my office and call the Chief in Hutsonville.
While you’re at it, can you call the other department heads? Get them started collecting dispatch tapes and logs.”
While he read the list to her, she interrupted him. “Seriously? You want me to get all that? I mean, why would they give it to me?”
Jack handed her a business card. He’d written Toomey’s telephone number on the back. “Ask nicely. If they give you any shit tell them to call FBI Director Toomey and explain why they’re interfering in a federal investigation. You’re working under the directions of the Federal Bureau of Investigation now.”
“Oh, whoopee. I always wanted to lie to people,” she said, took the card and put it in her pocket.
Jack said, “We need to know these victims inside and out before we can hope to find their killer. Angelina came up with the file you have and I can…”
Shaunda interrupted again. “Who’s this Angelina anyway?”
“She works for the FBI and she’s really good at this stuff,” Jerrell said.
“Can she tell us who murdered Brandon?”
“Can you?” Jack responded.
Chapter 13
“Take me back over all this,” Shaunda said. “If Winters and Washington were accidental drownings why are we looking into them? In the meantime, Brandon’s recent murder is going to the bottom of the pile with the clock ticking on that one. Not to mention I got my skull busted and my family threatened today. So, explain again why we’re not focusing on Brandon’s murder?”
“Shauny, you’ve got to see the bigger picture,” Jerrell said.
“If you have a better idea of how to go about this let’s hear it,” Jack said.
“I just told you,” Shaunda said and huffed out a breath. “Let’s go after the guy from today. It’s obvious he’s the one that did them all. We don’t need to be strung out over seven years of cases, talking to a hundred people, doing God knows what, when we have something right here, right now.”
