by Luke Murphy
Larry shifted his eyes, as if in thought. “I know that one of those girls is the roommate. Who’s the other?”
“Not sure yet.”
“What’s there about Stanley?”
“Nothing we don’t already know. Let me check my voice mail.”
She sat at her desk and picked up the phone. She went through the process of retrieving her messages and listened as a woman’s business-like voice cleared her throat and said, “Good morning, Detective Taylor. This is Danielle Patterson from Human Resources at USC. Dean Brown forwarded your message to me and I’ve looked up your request. There is no student in our records by the name of Sarah Crawford. I’ve gone back as far as five years and there is no indication that a student by that name has ever been a student at USC. If you have any further requests, please don’t hesitate to call.”
Charlene wrote down the contact number left by the HR representative and deleted the message. This case—and this woman—was getting stranger by the minute.
“What did the message say?” Larry asked.
Charlene shook her head, as if to shush him. She logged onto the internet and went to the USC website to check some stats.
She looked at Larry. “What are the odds that professors at USC would remember one young woman out of forty thousand students?”
Larry laughed out loud. “Depends on the girl.”
“That’s what I thought,” Charlene said. “And I doubt Sarah Crawford wanted to be noticed.” She slumped in her seat.
“Are you going to tell me who Sarah Crawford is?” Larry asked again.
Charlene forgot she’d never mentioned that aspect of her interview at the Connors’ house. She removed the picture from her desk and handed it to him. “I saw this picture at Margaret Connors’ place. The woman’s name is Sarah Crawford.”
Charlene told Larry about the rape connection with Anderson. Once he processed this new information, he checked the picture.
“Is that Stanley?”
Charlene smiled. “That’s what I think. But I can’t seem to verify it.”
She picked up the phone and dialed Eric Connors’ phone number. It was answered after six rings.
Charlene first identified herself. “Is this a bad time?”
“Not at all, Detective.”
“Is there any chance I could speak with Margaret? It’s about her former roommate.”
Charlene could hear Eric Connors voice talking to Margaret in the background, and there was a thump as he set down the phone. She closed her eyes and said a silent prayer that Margaret might have some tiny piece of information that would help them track down Sarah Crawford.
Margaret came on the line. “Hello.”
“Hello, Margaret. How are you?”
“Fine.” The voice hadn’t changed. Margaret Connors was still unsure of herself.
“Margaret, I was wondering if you would know where I could find Sarah Crawford.”
Margaret hesitated. “Is Sarah in trouble?”
“Not at all. We would just like to speak with her.”
“I don’t really know, Detective. Sarah never talked about herself or her family. We were only roommates for a few months.”
Charlene gritted her teeth. “Do you remember anything about her? Anything she said or owned that might tell us something?”
“Actually, she did give me a sweatshirt. Well, I don’t know if she gave it to me, but she disappeared so quickly I didn’t have time to give it back.”
Charlene rolled her eyes and blew air from her cheeks. Great, a sweatshirt.
“It was the one I had on the day you visited.”
Charlene closed her eyes and pictured the interview. Seeing Margaret on the couch huddled closely to her father, the gold and purple sweatshirt dangling down to her knees. There was something written on the front. What was it?
Charlene’s head snapped up in recognition.
She sat up. “The Pig Game?” Charlene asked.
“Yes, that’s right, but…”
“Gotta go, Margaret. Thank you.”
“But…”
Charlene hung up and said, “Pig Game”
“What’s that?” Larry asked.
Charlene looked at him, unaware that she has spoken out loud. “The Pig Game”
“You’re losing it.”
She typed into the google search bar. “The Pig Game is the oldest high school rivalry west of the Mississippi.”
The very first link to come up was ‘Fresno High School.’
“I think I know where Crawford went to high school.”
She clicked on the link and found the high school phone number. She placed the call, made her request, and was transferred to Human Resources.
The man who answered in the main office sounded like one of the high school students. Charlene told him what she was looking for and could hear his fingers rapidly tapping keys.
“Do you have a SSN, Detective?” he asked.
“No.”
“It would be quicker and easier if you…”
“I don’t have one.”
He didn’t reply, but she could hear his fingers moving even more quickly over the keyboard, until he finally let out a soft sigh.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“No one by that name has ever been enrolled in this school. Like I said, if you have a Social Security Number…”
“I don’t.”
Charlene slammed her open hand down hard on the desk. “Let me speak to your oldest teacher.”
“Pardon?”
“The teacher on the top of the seniority list, the one who’s been there the longest, let me speak to him or her.”
“I’m sorry, but Mrs. Danton is in class.”
“Great, here’s my number. Have her call me on her break.”
~ * ~
Less than thirty minutes later, her desk phone rang.
“Detective Taylor.”
“This is Agatha Danton, head of the English department at Fresno High School. I was told to give you a call.”
“Yes, Mrs. Danton, thanks for returning my call.”
“Certainly.”
Although Charlene had never met or seen the English teacher, from her voice, Charlene pictured a tall, thin, wrinkled woman, with her grey hair in a bun and her nose in the air.
“I’d like to ask you about a former student. Sarah Crawford.”
Danton was quiet and Charlene could perceive uncertainty. The teacher didn’t speak for a long while. Did Danton even remember Crawford? What were the odds that she would remember Crawford from years ago in a school enrollment of twenty-four-hundred students?
“What would you like to know?”
“So you remember Sarah?”
“Yes.”
“We’re trying to track her down.”
“Has she down something wrong?”
“We would just like to ask her some questions.”
“Well, she sure wouldn’t return to these parts.”
The phrase was said with such cold callousness that Charlene felt a chill prickle her skin.
“Why is that?”
“That girl has been through too much, especially losing her family the way she did.”
Charlene’s eyebrows arched. “Go on.”
“Sarah had been very close with her father, and after his death I never thought she’d recover. But shortly after, her mother remarried a very nice local businessman and I thought she’d turn it around. But then, the worst happened. Her mother and stepfather were killed in a fire. Sarah was lucky to get out alive, but she was the only one to survive, so some say she was unlucky.”
“What happened to Sarah?”
“I don’t know. She just left town after that. Too many bad memories I’m sure.”
“I’m sure,” Charlene repeated, but wasn’t convinced. “What kind of student was Sarah?”
“Quiet, reserved, but brilliant when she needed to be. She could be manipulative to get what she wanted, and she had th
e looks and brains to pull it off. I always thought there was something off about her, but she achieved above average grades and there were no in-school issues.”
Charlene wondered about out-of-school issues. “Would you have any idea where she would have gone?”
“Like I said, Detective, she wouldn’t have returned. I have no idea about any other family members or where she would have gone.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Danton.”
“Certainly.”
Charlene hung up and logged onto the Internet. “What’s the name of the local newspaper in Fresno?” she asked Larry.
“The Fresno Bee.”
Charlene found the main page of the website. She clicked on the ‘Archives’ icon and scrolled as far back as five years. Then she found it.
The tragic story behind the death of Laura and Luther Vincent, Sarah Crawford’s mother and stepfather, had made front page news. The computer screen showed a picture of the Vincent house ablaze, with a young woman standing in front. Sarah’s name had been withheld from the papers to protect her, so that’s why the story never came up in a google search.
Charlene scrolled down and read out loud.
“Local resident watches her home burn to the ground while countless firefighters attempt to rescue her parents trapped in the burning building.”
Charlene punched a button, zooming in and focusing on the woman in the photograph. She wasn’t identical to the other. The eyes, hair color and style were different, but those were easy to change. But there was no mistake. The girl in the photograph was definitely Ashley Stanley.
“What do you think?” Larry asked, he had moved behind Charlene and was looking over her shoulder.
“I think it’s her.”
“Me too.”
Charlene read the article in whole. Sarah was the sole survivor, the inferno starting from electrical malfunctions in the basement. The young woman stated she smelled smoke while sleeping and panicked. She yelled for her parents then, assuming they were out of the house, escaped the flames. The girl was in shock when officials found her.
The bodies were pulled from the debris the next morning. Dental records were used to make a positive identification. The fire was determined accidental, faulty wiring in the basement.
The article took up two full pages. Laura Vincent was a nurse’s aide and Luther Vincent, a well-known businessman. But because Laura had inherited from her first husband’s death, both of them had been worth a lot of money.
Charlene had a gut feeling.
She googled the Fresno Police Department and found the phone number. She called and made her request, leaving her pager number for a return call.
She wasn’t sure what they’d dig up. If they reported back with what Charlene suspected, then she would have a solid lead to follow.
“So you think Crawford is in Anderson’s book?” Larry asked.
“You read my mind.”
They both sprinted across the room and found Darren reading People magazine. “I need that black book,” Charlene said.
“Sorry, Chip, it’s in the car. I’ll go get it.”
The captain had set up a work table in the Detective Bureau for the team, so they could be readily available when Larry and Charlene needed them, and that’s where Darren was set up. It showed how important this case was.
Charlene sat and waited. Papers, files, and folders were piled neatly on his table. Darren’s attention to detail and his fine-honed sense of organization was impressive. There were mounds of text books, reference books, and magazines on police procedures and crime scene steps. It looked as if Darren was studying to be a detective.
A copy of Entertainment Weekly and a James Patterson paperback novel topped the pile.
“Think he’s gay?” Larry asked.
“Larry!” Charlene said, giving him her best scolding look.
“Look at how organized, clean, and thin he is.”
“Got it, Chip,” Darren said, holding the book in the air while running in.
“Great. Is there a Sarah Crawford in there?”
Charlene waited as Darren looked up the name. “Let’s see, Crawford, C… Yep! Got it, Sarah Crawford, right here under ‘C’.” He looked up at Charlene, regret in his eyes. “Sorry, Chip. That was one I couldn’t track down. Damn it!”
“It’s okay, Darren.” Charlene didn’t chastise him. It looked as if he was hard enough on himself. Instead, she grabbed the book. There was nothing written beside the name, no number or address. If Sarah Crawford was indeed Ashley Stanley, then she had been another notch on Anderson’s bedpost. In her interview, Stanley had denied knowing Anderson outside of UCLA.
“What’s this about?”
“Not sure yet.”
She looked at Larry while they returned to their desks. “You were right.”
“This guy really got around.”
Charlene’s pager went off. She glanced at the number and saw a Fresno area code. She picked up her desk phone and dialed.
“Fresno Police Department.” She recognized the voice of the man she’d spoken to earlier.
“This is Detective Taylor returning your page.”
“Yes, Detective, I found what you requested. If you give me a fax number, I’ll send it to you immediately.” The man sounded cheery, pleased he could assist. “And if you give me an email address, I can also send you the taped news footage. We have it saved in the archives.”
She gave him the fax number and email address, and thanked him. She sat back down at her computer and read from the website, refining her search on Sarah Crawford.
It was almost an hour before Charlene heard the beep of the department fax machine.
“Fax for you, Taylor,” someone hollered from across the room.
“I’ll grab it,” said Larry.
He crossed the room and corralled the pages one by one as they slid out. She watched him as he read the papers on his way back to the desk.
“Anything?” she asked.
“Laura Vincent had pressed sexual assault charges against her second husband three times. Each time the cops arrived, she changed her mind, dropping the charges after she and her husband sobered up.”
“The third time the nine-one-one call was made by the daughter. When police arrived, she was in hysterics.”
“I’d love to find out if Sarah herself had been abused,” said Charlene.
This proved that Sarah Crawford, AKA Ashley Stanley, would have witnessed abuse three times—her own or her mother’s, her USC roommate, and her UCLA roommate. Her childhood trauma, and the added insult of her friends having undergone the same treatment, by the same man that she had once dated, or at least slept with, had to add fuel to the growing fire inside her.
Charlene examined the dates of the charges. The third incident occurred only three days before the fire broke out.
When her email in-box beeped, indicating a new message, she scrolled down, finding a subject line, Fresno Fire. She clicked on it and opened the message. She opened the attachment, hit the playback button, and waited for the screen to run its course.
A dark haired man, well dressed, with parted hair and too much makeup, stood looking into a camera. A microphone was clipped to the collar of his vest. The caption read, Tom Steele, Fresno Local News. Charlene turned up the volume so Larry could hear.
“Late last night, just after midnight, a raging fire started at 264 Sycamore Street, home of Luther and Laura Vincent.”
The frame changed, going back one hour earlier, showing the fire. The camera turned to a young woman, standing on the side of the screen, a thin blanket thrown over her shoulders. The anchor man continued.
“This seventeen-year-old, the lone survivor, silently watched as brave firefighters from the Fresno Fire Department attempted to stop the inferno. She stood back and watched as the house she grew up in burned to the ground in a flood of ash.
Forty-four-year-old Laura Vincent and forty-nine-year-old Luther Vincent were trapped inside on the second
level, unable to hear their daughter’s screams.”
The camera zoomed in on Crawford.
“Can you tell us what happened here tonight?”
Sarah Crawford turned to face the camera. She started crying and grew hysterical.
Charlene thought that Crawford turned it on with the nonchalance of an accomplished actress. Of course, it was just Charlene’s opinion and there was no way to prove any of it.
Even with the close-up, the screen was still too fuzzy, so making a one hundred percent identification, comparing Sarah Crawford and Ashley Stanley, was impossible. On the screen, Crawford had long dark hair, brown eyes. Stanley has short blonde hair, which could be dyed, and green eyes, which could be contacts. The women were the same age, same height and body type, but so were three-quarters of the women in California.
The coverage changed its focus, and two headshots of the victims came on the screen. The anchorman continued.
“Laura Vincent less than two years ago suffered the death of her first husband. Lawrence Crawford died suspiciously one night outside a local bar. People in Fresno knew him well, the son of millionaire developer Michael Crawford. Laura was remarried less than one year ago to Luther Vincent. Vincent is a well-respected businessman in Fresno and the deaths of these two upstanding citizens will greatly impact the community. This woman,” the camera focused on Sarah Crawford, “is now the last in line to inherit the estate of Michael Crawford.”
The screen blinked back to the original picture of the anchorman standing in front of the remains of the burnt house.
“As you can see behind me, the arson investigator, along with Fresno CSI, continue to sift through ash and debris, but this case has already been deemed unsuspicious. The fire started from faulty wiring in the basement of the house. What lies ahead for this family, only time will tell. This is Tom Steele for Channel Six news.”
Charlene closed the icon. Things were starting to heat up. But it still didn’t connect the dots for the Anderson murder.
Chapter 24
She had spent all of Wednesday in the office, going through the paperwork that came with an investigation. She didn’t want to do that again today.
After a long, sleepless night, Charlene sat down at her desk on Thursday morning and took her first sip of coffee when Larry came rushing over holding a folder.