by EH Reinhard
“So it could be the only weapon used.”
“Could be. Or just a coincidence,” Rick said.
“Fingerprints on the weapon?” I asked.
“One set. Michael Woodward. Rob was going to lift prints from the individual shell casings, both in and out of the magazine.”
“Any new theories on how this could have gone down?”
“Still kind of at a loss.”
“Okay. Call me when you know more.”
“Will do,” Rick said.
“If you don’t get me at my desk, call my cell.”
“Yup,” Rick said.
I reached over my desk and hung the phone back on its base.
“Rick?” Hank asked.
“Yeah. Confirmed IDs on the three males, which we already knew, and got one on the Caucasian woman.” I glanced down at my notes. “Gretchen Ramey. A missing persons report was just put out by the Plant City PD yesterday.”
“That’s where she was from?” Hank asked.
“Let’s see.” I used my computer’s keyboard and plugged the woman’s name into our system. Her address came back as Plant City—a city roughly a half hour east of Tampa. I saw her prior for assault. “Address is Plant City, yeah.”
“So how did she end up over here in an alley, dead with a bunch of criminals?” Hank asked.
“That’s what we have to find out. I was just about to make the call and let Plant City know that we had her body. Maybe they can fill us in a bit on how she went missing. See if we can connect any dots there.”
Hank nodded.
“So what’s up?” I asked. “Got something for me?”
“Yeah, Timmons just called my desk. I guess someone from patrol scooped up an Antonio House, who was one of Charles Treadwell’s associates.”
“When is he going to be in?” I asked.
“They’re driving him in now. Fifteen minutes or so. Probably right at one o’clock.”
“He’s the only one patrol picked up?” I asked.
“So far. I dropped the list John gave you over to Timmons. He put his guys in patrol into going and trying to scoop the couple of guys up. That’s where we’re at right now.”
“All right. Let me make this call to the PD over there. If patrol comes in with this guy before I’m off with the call, go sit him in one of the boxes.”
“Sounds good,” Hank said. He left my office.
I scooped up my phone and dialed the Plant City Police Department. A recording played in my ear, telling me to hang up and call 9-1-1 if I had an emergency. I waited and pressed one to be put through to the station.
“Plant City Police Department. How can I direct your call?” a woman asked.
“This is Lieutenant Carl Kane with Tampa Homicide. We have a body that is confirmed to be a female that you currently have a missing persons alert on.”
“Um,” she said. “Give me one second. I’m going to put you through to our captain.”
“Appreciate it,” I said.
I waited as hold music played in my ear. A moment later, after a click, a man came on. “Captain Stephenson. Who am I speaking with?” he asked.
“Lieutenant Carl Kane. Tampa PD Homicide.”
“Regarding a missing female? Gretchen Ramey?” he asked.
“Correct. You’re familiar with her?” I asked.
He let out a breath. “I’ve known Gretchen for years. Her son had a bit of a troubled youth. We don’t do too many missing person reports around here, and when I heard her name, I took a bit of interest. She’s deceased?” he asked.
“That is correct.”
“Damn, I kind of had a feeling that was going to be the word that came back when it did,” Captain Stephenson said. “I guess I just didn’t expect it this soon. What was the cause of death?”
“GSW to the head. Another to the back. It looks like an execution. She was bound, blindfolded, and gagged.”
Silence came from his end of the phone.
“How did she come about being missing?” I asked.
I heard the captain clear his throat. “Home invasion Sunday evening. Just after dark. What we have is the husband came home from golfing and some beers Sunday night, found his front door kicked in, found the home in disarray, and found what looked like a struggle had taken place in the master bedroom. He said his wife was gone. Her purse, phone, and vehicle were there, but no Gretchen. We arrived on scene and went over everything. Checked with a couple of neighbors, but nobody saw anything. The home is on a couple of acres, so that is believable.”
“You said you were familiar with the woman. What can you tell me about the husband?” I asked.
“Um, I think they were only married for a couple of years. Five, maybe. His name is Randy. Last name Ramey. I don’t know much of him, really.”
“Did the husband check out?” I asked.
“He was golfing as stated. Then sat at the clubhouse bar, drinking, until around eleven at night. His whereabouts were confirmed. Whether he hired somebody to do whatever took place is still up for discussion, though. What did your scene look like out there?” he asked. “Body dump kind of a thing, or…” The captain’s question trailed off.
“No,” I said. I leaned back in my chair. “We’re still trying to work through what the hell we were looking at. We had three deceased males inside of an old abandoned factory. These would be of the drug-dealing, criminal variety. All GSWs. Then we had two women, bound and gagged, found deceased in the alley outside of said building. One of them being our Gretchen Ramey, the other we don’t have an ID on. I don’t suppose you’ve had an African-American woman in her sixties reported missing, have you?”
“We haven’t. Do you have IDs on the male vics?”
I rattled off the list of names.
“Hmm,” the captain said. “Well, now it’s really interesting.”
“How’s that?” I asked.
“Michael Woodward is Gretchen Ramey’s son.”
“Really?” I asked.
“Yup.”
“Do you think there’s a chance that he abducted his own mother?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I haven’t seen him or heard of him since he’s been of age. I thought maybe he straightened out. I suppose I should call the husband and inform him. Where is her body?”
“Hillsborough County Medical Examiner’s Office,” I said.
“Okay. Let me give you the husband’s information, just so you have it,” the captain said.
“I’d appreciate that.”
I pulled out my notepad from my suit jacket’s inner pocket and wrote down the husband’s phone number as the captain gave it to me.
“Do you think you could email me over what you guys have as far as the report from the house and the husband’s statement?” I asked.
“Yeah, I can get that over to you. What’s the email?”
I gave it to him and requested the captain give Mr. Ramey my information and contact me as soon as he could. I hung the phone back on its base as Hank walked into my office.
“Our guy is here,” Hank said. “I sat him in box one.”
“Did you run him to see if he has a sheet?” I asked.
“Yeah. I have it in the observation room.”
“Priors?” I asked.
“A slew. On parole right now.”
“Can you handle it solo? I have a couple of things that I’d like to get on.”
“Sure. I’ll let you know what I get.”
“Yup. Pop in when you finish up.”
Hank walked from my office.
CHAPTER SIX
I walked next door to Bostok’s office and gave his door sill a knock.
Bostok took his eyes from the computer monitor in front of him and looked up at me. “News?” he asked.
“Yeah, it seems that one of our deceased males is the son of one of the women in the alley. We have an ID on her now as well. Gretchen Ramey. She was reported missing a couple days ago from Plant City.”
“So mother and
son both shot dead in the same place. Mother being an apparent abductee. What do you make of that?”
I rocked my head from side to side. “Hank had a theory on the scene that looks like it could still hold up. But it was a theory. We don’t have any real evidence to support it.”
“What was the theory?”
“Abduction and ransom payoff that went south. It would account for whatever was missing from the table where the blood voids were. The size of the one was about that of a standard briefcase. That and the bound and gagged women.”
“Plausible. But unless we know for certain that a briefcase was actually an item taken from the scene and that caused the void, and that the briefcase did contain money for a ransom, a theory is all it is. What is actionable that we have right now?”
“I’m still waiting to hear from Rick on the gun found on scene. The serial numbers were there. It might give us something to run with.”
“Okay. What can we do about finding out who this other woman is?”
“I talked with Steinberg and ran her approximate age, height, weight, all that by him. He didn’t have anyone on the books that hit the marks.”
“Maybe one of the other men’s mothers? Does the age work?” Bostok asked.
“Um, I guess it could on either man. Let me see what I can get as far as finding the mothers of Treadwell and Taylor.”
“Yeah, have a look at that,” Bostok said. “Where’s Rawlings?”
“Patrol brought in an associate of Treadwell. Hank is interviewing the guy now. We’ll see what, if anything, he knows about the latest dealings of the late Mr. Treadwell.”
“Sure,” Bostok said. He scratched at his ear under his white hair. “Keep me updated.”
“Sounds good, Cap.”
“How late are you staying tonight?” he asked.
“I haven’t thought about it.”
“I’ll be here until right around five,” Bostok said. “But I wanted to talk to you about something before I took off.”
“Sure,” I said.
I left Bostok’s doorway and made for the elevators that would take me downstairs. I hit the down arrow, waited for the doors to open, and rode down to the first floor. I walked the hall to our forensics unit. Ladders and men working filled the hall near the entrance. Our forensics center was at the tail end of a massive remodel and modernization. Construction crews had been working on it for weeks. I stepped inside and looked left to right, noticing that the three rows of individual workstations looked completed. Off to the left, a couple of men were working on what would be the offices of the department leads. The ballistics center, blood analysis center, and garage took up the rear of the unit. I headed to the right for the individual labs—each was completely glass walled allowing whoever was in the main room a view of whatever was being handled inside of the enclosed lab. Through the front glass of the last room, I saw Rick and Rob seated and staring at a television on a rolling cart. I gave the door a tap, and Rick waved me inside.
I pulled open the door and entered. “TV break?” I asked.
“I was just about to call you,” Rick said. He pointed at the television.
I stepped to his side and watched what played on the screen. Men in masks looked to be robbing a gun store at night. “What’s this?” I asked.
“One of the weapons taken was our gun that we found this morning,” Rick said.
“I ran it, and it came back as a stolen firearm from this burglary,” Rob said. He adjusted the glasses on his round face. “I called over to records and got the file. This is the security footage from it.”
“Any arrests made?” I asked.
“None,” Rick said. “At least we know where one of the weapons ended up.”
“Yeah, in the hands of someone who took the lives of five people,” I said. “What about prints on the shell casings?”
“Just Michael Woodward’s. Unfortunately it’s looking like the firearm is going to be a dead end.”
“At least it’s off the streets, though,” Rob said.
“Any hits from the prints in the building?”
“The prints on the chairs came back to both LaMarcus Taylor and Charles Treadwell. Also had a Charles Treadwell print on the side of the table that he was sitting on,” Rick said.
“So no evidence of any kind that points to anyone else other than who was dead in the building?” I asked.
“Sorry, Kane. There’s just not much to work with. I have the photos from the scene entered into our computers here. We can start getting you a file together with everything we collected. I should be able to have it to you late tonight or tomorrow morning.”
“Appreciate that, Rick.”
“Let me go get started on that,” Rob said. He pushed himself to his feet using the armrests on his rolling chair.
I stepped to the side, and Rob slid his big body past me and out the door.
“Any other leads?” Rick asked.
“Hank is upstairs interviewing an associate of Treadwell’s. Not sure what, if anything that we’re going to get there. I’m waiting to speak with the husband of Gretchen Ramey, who I’ll probably be calling shortly. Also going to try to find the mothers of both Charles Treadwell and LaMarcus Taylor.”
“Mothers?” Rick asked. “For identification of the remains? I figured Ed or someone else over at the medical examiner’s office would handle that.”
“We want to see if our deceased African-American female may be one of their mothers. Gretchen Ramey was the mother of the deceased Michael Woodward.”
“No shit?” Rick asked.
“Yeah, I talked with the Plant City PD, where she’d been reported missing. The captain there filled me in on that little tidbit.”
“What do you make of it?” Rick asked.
“No telling right now. Sure as hell would be nice to know what exactly transpired there and what was on the table that was removed.”
“Did you talk to anyone in tech about traffic cams? Or maybe casting a wider net for businesses with video security along the main streets around there? I know we canvassed the neighborhood for security cameras and came up empty, but maybe we could get lucky within a mile or two radius. I’d think Ed could give us a pretty close TOD. That would give us a time frame, at least.”
“It would depend on our TOD.” I thought about what Rick had said. The location, and everything associated with it, played through my head. The factory was just a few blocks removed from Ybor City’s Seventh Avenue, a popular nightlife district littered with bars and clubs and crawling with people, no matter which night of the week. “I don’t know if that would be worth our time and resources,” I said. “Think about where the factory is—just a few blocks from Seventh Avenue. The freeway entrance is just up the street too. Plus, there’s just countless ways in and out.”
Rick slowly bobbed his head. “Yeah, you may be right there.”
“You got anything else?” I asked.
“Nothing really to take action on at the moment,” Rick said. “We still have to do the ballistics reports and get with Ed on some things. I’ll let you know if anything of interest develops.”
“Sounds good. I’m going to go call Ed and then check on Hank and see if he got anywhere.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Chris
“What are you seeing?” Chris called over the radio. He sat in the driver’s seat of his twenty-year-old blue pickup truck, parked down the block from the house of a man named Solomon. Solomon was a local strip club owner and drug dealer—ripe for the picking. Chris waited for Brad’s response. Nothing came through his radio. The gated community Chris parked in featured homes that started in the millions and only went up from there. Since there was no guard shack at the front, they merely followed another car through the metal gates. Chris looked out the windshield up at the corner of the block. He couldn’t see Solomon’s house behind the gates and concrete fence concealing the home from the street. Chris glanced to his left, looking up the driveway at the couple-of-mill
ion-dollars home across the street.
“Damn,” Chris said.
His mind wandered off, and he stared at the brick driveway leading to the gigantic home he’d never in his life be able to afford. No matter how many drug dealers or gangbangers they knocked off and robbed, no matter how many jobs and scores, short of winning the lottery, he’d never live in such a neighborhood.
A hand and knuckles banged on the window Chris stared out of, jarring him from his thoughts. A dark-haired middle-aged man in a polo shirt squared himself to the driver’s side glass.
“What the hell,” Chris mumbled. He lowered the window.
“Waiting on someone?” the man asked. He didn’t show a smile, his face stone.
“Um,” Chris said. He held up his palms. “I’m with Bay Breeze Garage Doors. I was just giving a quote to a house up the block. I have a few minutes before I need to leave for my next quote. I was just parked and messaging the office.”
“Ted Waltherman. I live in the house right here that you’re parked in front of. No worries. I just see an older truck with a guy just sitting in it, parked around my house, and I’m going to question it.”
“Yeah, okay, I’ll be on my way in just a minute here,” Chris said.
The guy pursed his lips, nodded, and walked from the window.
“Rich prick,” Chris muttered as he raised his window.
Chris hit the mic attached to his shirt. “We need to get a move on. Get back to the truck.”
A burst of static and then Brad’s voice came through Chris’s ear. “What’s going on?”
Chris hit the mic. “Neighborhood watch just came to my window.”
“Okay. I’ll be there in a minute,” Brad said.
“Received,” Chris said.
He let out a breath and waited. A moment later, in the passenger side mirror, he saw Brad walking up from behind the truck.
Brad jumped into the passenger seat and swung his door closed. He pulled the radio from his ear and unclipped the microphone from his shirt. He yanked the cord out of the radio attached to his hip and began winding up the earbud and microphone.