by A. E. Howe
“Ted Macklin, what are you doing here?” she asked while petting Mauser, who assumed that everyone who came to the table wanted to rub his ears and make cooing sounds to him.
“We had some business at the hospital. This is Deputy Pete Henley.” He introduced Pete, who awkwardly got out of the small metal chair and put his hand out.
“Just Pete,” he said, acting very chivalrous as he gently shook her hand.
“And you remember Larry,” Dad said as I stood up.
Genie turned and squinted her eyes at me. “Little Larry. Wow. You have grown. You were knee-high to a grasshopper last time I saw you. You work with your dad now?” she asked, making me feel like I was eight years old again.
“I’m a reserve deputy right now,” I said simply.
“Oh, I heard… Well, never mind.” She let it hang, making me wonder how much Dad had told her. And when?
She continued to pet Mauser and make over him. I looked at Dad and his face was all wrong. Sort of mushy and his mouth was doing something funny. Then I realized that he was smiling, really smiling. I mean, he smiles regularly enough, but it’s usually just with a little lift to the corners of his mouth. But now, watching Genie, he was smiling like a deranged circus clown.
I looked over at Pete to see if he had noticed what was going on, but he had his head down, staring at his phone and swiftly texting.
Finally Genie smiled at all of us and left, saying that she needed to go back inside and keep an eye on things. But for one second, maybe two, I saw her and Dad meet each other’s eyes. Just before it actually made me throw up, they broke it off. I spent the rest of the evening wondering about what I’d just seen. Dad flirting? I’d never seen him like that. When he was out meeting and greeting folks as their sheriff, he was always polite and a little country, but never flirtatious with the women. Never. As far as I knew, he’d never even gone on a date with anyone local.
The winter sun had gone below the horizon by the time our meal arrived. The food was excellent and warmed me as the temperature dropped. Mauser wolfed down the rice and chicken that Dad had talked the cook into preparing for him.
Genie brought Dad’s receipt and credit card back to the table for the waitress. Clearly, she wanted to say goodbye to Dad. I was cornered into getting a hug from her.
“I’m so glad I got to see you again,” she told me.
“Same here,” I said. She seemed nice enough, but the effect she had on my dad weirded me out. I suspected that he’d had a fling now and then when he was at a seminar or law enforcement conference, but he’d always been discreet, for which I was very grateful.
It was completely dark by the time we all climbed back into the van. After a call to Cara and agreeing to meet her for dinner at her place tomorrow night, I settled back to digest my meal. Dad turned on the dispatch radio that was on the console as we got closer to the Adams County line.
Mauser and I were nodding off in the back of the van as Pete texted and Dad concentrated on driving. We had just crossed into the county when the radio started squawking out calls to patrol cars and, at almost the same instant, Dad’s phone rang.
I opened my eyes and saw Dad hesitate to answer the phone. He wanted to concentrate on the calls on the radio, but the phone eventually won out. I couldn’t make out what he was saying, but I saw Pete’s head swivel to look at him. The van began to accelerate as Dad dropped the phone on the console and picked up the radio. Something was up and I was frustratingly out of earshot. Dad was shouting something into the radio. “Now… Where… I’m ten minutes away… On…”
The van continued to accelerate. We were on a divided highway and we began to overtake other cars. Dad didn’t have any emergency lights or a siren in the old van, so the other drivers must have thought that a maniac was plowing down the roads that night.
I had to find out what was going on, so I got on my hands and knees and crawled up to the divide between the front bucket seats. “What’s up?”
“A guy going home from work reported seeing a van down a dirt road. The van drove off, but the man was suspicious so he went and looked around where the van was parked. There was a body. He called it in maybe fifteen minutes ago. Just on our side of the line,” Dad said, keeping his eyes straight ahead as he tried to focus on the dark road and the taillights and headlights of other cars.
“If we take County Road 280, we’ll be heading toward the location,” Pete said, looking at the map on his phone.
“Get on the radio and have dispatch vector some deputies in from different directions. Make sure that they are all aware that any van or suspicious vehicle should be stopped,” Dad told Pete. To me he said, “Get on the phone to Tolland and have Leon County come in from their side. And see if they can get their helicopter over here.” Dad was hunched over the wheel now, peering into the darkness.
I had to sit back on my haunches to use the phone as the van rocked a bit as it sped down the road. Mauser had picked up on the excitement and was bumping into me as I tried to dial Tolland’s number. At one point I lost my balance and thudded against the door.
I managed to get the word out to Tolland. He sounded giddy with excitement, which was as out of character as my father smiling. He assured me that help was on the way. I hung up, wedged myself between the front seats again and told Dad and Pete that Tolland was sending reinforcements.
“Turn coming up! You take a left,” Pete told Dad. “Three hundred yards… two…”
“Hold on to Mauser!” Dad shouted at me.
I looked at Mauser, who looked at me. His legs were spread wide and the whites of his eyes were showing. He was still wearing his harness and I reached out and took it in both hands, wondering who was going to steady who.
“Here!” Pete shouted over the radio that was crackling with deputies reporting in and dispatch moving them into place.
The van veered onto a narrow country road. Mauser and I managed to keep from rolling over, but it was a near thing.
“We’re five miles out,” Pete said.
I was back between the seats and peering out at the darkness that was suddenly pierced by the oncoming lights of another vehicle. Various dirt roads and private driveways whizzed by outside. I glanced at the glowing orange speedometer. We were barreling down the road at seventy miles an hour. This road was safe at fifty—in the daylight.
The lights coming toward us approached rapidly before turning right less than a hundred yards in front of us. In a flash we all saw that it was a light-colored panel van, but we couldn’t make out any details.
Dad’s reaction time was worthy of a much younger man. I swear I could smell the burning rubber as he slammed on the brakes. I just had time to grab Mauser and keep him from crashing into the door, but by doing so I sacrificed my own balance and hit the back of Pete’s seat, hard.
Mauser smartly lowered himself to the floor of the van. I got up on my hands and knees again as we slowed down. Dad hadn’t been able to make the turn, so he had to make a U-turn on the narrow road, which had almost no shoulder. With a lot of cursing, he managed to get turned around faster than I think I could have done with that clunky minivan. Back we went and then made a quick right-hand turn onto the dirt road where the van had disappeared.
As soon as we had straightened out, Dad dropped his foot down on the accelerator and the engine churned and grumbled as we sped up. The dirt road hadn’t been graded in a while and the van bounced and thumped as we sped through the night in search of the van.
Pete used the radio to notify dispatch that we had sighted the van. Our dispatcher had handed us over to the Leon County/Tallahassee joint dispatch so that they could coordinate all of us, including their air unit, in the search.
Poor Mauser whined and looked puzzled, wondering how our nice evening out at a restaurant had turned in to a nightmarish mad-cap dash over the backroads.
“Damn it,” Dad said. “This road has a dozen different outlets.”
“Plus the powerlines. Even a van could use the
powerline access,” Pete said. He was following the calls from the radio. “We don’t have all the outlets covered yet.”
Leon County’s helicopter was still ten minutes away. Dad slowed down as we passed various crossroads and driveways. The recent rain meant that we couldn’t rely on seeing a dust cloud from the other van as a clue to where it had turned.
“Damn it,” Dad muttered again. We all looked at the darkness, knowing we’d lost the van but still hoping to see it. Now that he could stand up, Mauser joined me at the center console, trying to see what we were all looking at. It felt like a very dark episode of Scooby-Doo.
Fifteen minutes later everyone was in place. Dad and Tolland had established a five-mile perimeter around the spot where we’d seen the van. We had our deputies, Leon County’s deputies, their helicopter and two state troopers who had been in the area.
Finally Dad suspended his own search for the van and took Pete and me to where the body was found. Marcus and Charlie Walton, another of our crime scene techs, and Deputy Julio Ortiz had already secured the scene and had it staked out with crime scene tape.
“I’m going to search every driveway, yard, garage and access road in the search area,” Dad said after he’d dropped us off. “We’re going to be at this all night and into the morning.” He sounded grim and determined.
“Is there a chance?” I asked, standing next to the driver’s side window.
“Honestly? I think he got away. If he was still in the search area, the helicopter probably would have picked up the van. But I’m not giving up. I’m going to take Mauser home and come back,” he told me. Nodding toward the crime scene where Marcus had set up a generator and work lights, he said, “Maybe we’ll get lucky. If he was interrupted, he might have made a mistake.”
“If there’s something here, we’ll find it,” I assured him.
He gave me a long stare. “I know you will. Get your head in.” This last was directed at Mauser, who had his head sticking out the window of the sliding doors. The window started up and Mauser slowly withdrew back into the van. Dad put the van in gear and headed down the road.
Reluctantly, I walked over to the ditch that was illuminated by the work lights. Pete was standing on the edge of the road, looking down at a body that was clad in black slacks and a dress shirt. The victim was lying on her stomach and appeared to have been unceremoniously tossed from the road. Her back was a terrifying canvas of deep wounds. You couldn’t even tell what color her shirt had been originally. Now all the shredded pieces were stained a dark brown.
I realized I had walked over to where the van had been parked and had a momentary panic attack. Were we walking on evidence?
“Has someone photographed the area up here?” I asked Marcus and Charlie.
“We did,” Marcus said without looking up. “We had plenty of time while you all were driving up and down every dirt road in this part of the county.”
“Did you get anything?” I asked, ignoring his jab.
“We got photos of tire tracks. Several different sets. Casts. Also, there were a couple of footprints, but they were scuffed out, so they won’t be much good.”
Pete looked up from his phone. “Dr. Darzi himself is on the way. He just texted me. His ETA is about ten minutes.”
“Then I’m not going to touch the body,” Marcus said. Normally they would look for ID, but if Darzi was almost there, the less hands on the body, the better.
“She looks like she’s dressed for work,” Pete said, peering down at the dark-skinned woman.
Looking down at her, I wondered if we had missed something in the earlier cases that could have helped us find the killer before her life was taken. I was gaining a new understanding of Dad’s regrets over the Hacker case. Every victim was a milestone on our road to failure.
I watched Marcus as he used a flashlight to look in the shadows cast by the work lights. I knew that he’d be happier when Tonya was out of the hospital and Shantel stopped eating up her personal leave taking care of her. Shantel and Marcus were a team, and he seemed a bit lost having to work without her. Charlie was young and just out of college. We’d be lucky if he stayed with us more than a couple of years. He was always quick to suggest new techniques or technology that we could use, but he never seemed interested in mastering the fundamentals. He was only ten years younger than I was, but I found it hard to remember being that caught up in myself. Of course, that might just have been my own memory being kind to me.
“Found something!” Charlie yelled. He was five feet from the body and shining a flashlight down between some deadfall. I could see his breath in the glow of his light. “I’m going to need something to get it out.”
“There’s a pair of tongs in the van,” Marcus said, looking at me.
Charlie’s find turned out to be a bottle cap. By the time we’d recovered it, Dr. Darzi had shown up with two assistants. On my way to the van with the evidence bag containing the bottle cap, I greeted him.
“Another body. This is not good.” Darzi had a way with understatements.
“She’s down there. Marcus waited for you. If you can find an ID, we can get to work notifying her family.”
“If they’ve already taken pictures, I’ll just need to check the temperature and take some measurements before we search the body.”
I nodded and deposited the bottle cap in a large bin after I sealed the bag and labeled it. You could collect pounds and pounds of evidence, most of it unrelated and unimportant, but you had to treat all it like it could be a smoking gun until it was proven otherwise.
I walked up the road to where Julio was leaning on his car, staring at his phone and texting, or playing games, or browsing the Web or who knew what. When it came to social media, I was a bit of a Luddite.
“It’s a sad, sad business,” Julio said when I got within ten feet of the car. He put the phone down and stood up. “They haven’t found the van.” He nodded toward the radio on his shoulder that was crackling with calls as the coordinated search continued.
“Pete and I are going to need a ride,” I said.
“No problem. Your dad’s authorized overtime tonight so I can stay here as long as you need. A bunch of the guys came on duty to help with the search or to answer calls to cover for the deputies that are searching. You thirsty? Hungry?” he asked, walking to the back of his car. He opened the trunk where he had a small cooler. “My wife always packs me a cooler with drinks and snacks. Keeps me from spending money. We’re saving for a house.” He held out a bottle of water.
“Sure.” I took it. “We’ll probably be here for a couple more hours.”
“No problem.” He got himself a water and an apple.
I made my way back to the glaring lights.
“Nothing,” Pete said as I came up. “Hey, where’s mine?” he asked good-naturedly, pointing at the bottle in my hand. I held the half-empty bottle out to him. He hesitated for a second before taking it and swigging most of it down. “Damn, I was hoping it was vodka,” he joked, offering it back to me. I waved it off.
“Sorry, I can’t find any ID. We might find something when we turn the body over, but I want to examine the back wounds before we do that. She does have a necklace and a ring that might help with identification,” Darzi called up to us.
They removed the necklace and placed it in an evidence bag, handing it up to us. Pete showed it to me. It was gold, with the FAMU seal and the image of a rattlesnake. Florida A&M University was Tallahassee’s second major state university, historically black with a solid reputation and a world-famous marching band.
“Worse, much worse,” Darzi said. “More, deeper, from several angles.” He was getting detailed pictures of the hack marks on her back. One of the assistants held the camera and the other a set of lights as Darzi probed the wounds. Finally he waved them away. The bigger of the two men carried the lights and camera up the bank and set them down before going back to the body. Gently, the three men turned the body over and placed it on a plastic sheet.
>
She must have been very pretty. Even in death you could see her striking bone structure and build. The death of beauty. Where had I heard that? Sadly, it seemed to fit this case.
We still couldn’t find an ID. “She’s what? Twenty-five? Twenty-eight?” I asked Darzi.
“Yes, about that,” he said as he opened her mouth and reached in with his gloved hand, feeling around for anything that might be loose in her mouth. Much of this would be done again at the morgue, but things can happen in transport, and I’ve heard Darzi berate one of his assistants for not doing a thorough enough examination onsite.
“I really want to catch this son of a bitch,” Pete said, surprising me with the anger in his words. Pete seldom used profanity and let his temper show even less. “I just think about my daughters in a couple of years. Going to school, finding jobs, looking toward the future and then some animal comes along and does this.” Pete seemed older in that moment, and I was reminded of what it must be like to carry the responsibility of being a parent.
“What eats at my heart is that this guy is out walking around every day. We might pass him on the street or stand behind him in line at the grocery store,” Pete said.
“Don’t get philosophical after midnight. That only leads to drinking and depression,” Darzi said without looking at us. “I think we can move the body now,” he said to his assistants. The victim was carefully hauled out of the ditch and placed in the coroner’s van for the trip to the hospital.
“Catch this guy,” Darzi said as we shook hands. “My wife doesn’t like me coming out in the cold in the middle of the night. I don’t like it either.”
“We appreciate—” Pete started to say, but Darzi waved it off.