by Diane Kelly
“How long ago was this?” Jackson asked.
Denise sucked her lip in thought. “Two, maybe three months ago.”
Jackson jotted down his name and contact information, too. “What about disgruntled drivers? Anybody get reprimanded or fired and not take it well?”
Denise chuckled. “Does anyone take getting fired well?”
Jackson merely raised an impatient brow in return.
Denise sat up straighter in her chair. “We had to let one of our more senior drivers go recently when we discovered he’d been carrying a handgun on the job. He drove a late shift in east Fort Worth and said he didn’t feel safe without it. I felt bad for the guy, but carrying a weapon is against policy. We also terminated another driver last month. Three women accused him of groping them as he pretended to help them onto the bus. He claimed there was no truth behind their accusations, but when we searched his bus we also found a small video camera taped to the ceiling over the doorway. He said he didn’t put it there, but who else would put a camera on a city bus? Our guess was that he was using it to get a peek down women’s shirts. He’s been a real pain since we fired him. He’s written to the mayor, the city council, even his congressman.”
Jackson held her pen at the ready over her pad. “Their names and contact information?”
Denise provided the details. The man who’d been fired over the gun was Lewis Blakemore. The alleged groper/virtual peeping Tom was Phillip Gunderbaugh.
The detective thanked the women for the information and stood. “Soon as we figure this out, we’ll be in touch.”
We exchanged parting handshakes and walked back outside to my cruiser. I loaded Brigit back into her enclosure and climbed into my seat.
Jackson slid into the passenger seat, gestured to my laptop, and held up the list of names she’d compiled inside. “Let’s do a little triage. See which of these men look the most promising.”
I set about pulling up information on the men Denise had mentioned.
The web offered little on Harry Waltham, the one with the sick wife and the pending bankruptcy. He had no Facebook page. No Twitter account.
Jackson waved a hand. “Next.”
I ran a search on our next potential subject. Ronnie Butler, the gambler, had a Facebook page replete with posts about his gambling escapades. A post from last week stated: Lost my shirt at the blackjack table! Evidently, his luck had changed. An entry from earlier today read: Won $300 on a Double Diamond machine at the Flamingo!
I pointed at the post, which showed it had been entered only four hours ago. “Looks like he’s in Vegas.” Of course the entries could be faked, posted to throw us off his trail. For all we knew, he was right here in town.
Jackson pulled out her pen and wrote “Vegas?” next to Butler’s name on her list. “That brings us to Lewis Blakemore, the guy with the gun. See if he’s got a record.”
I ran his name through the criminal database. “Nope. He’s c-clean.”
I googled his name next. Like Waltham, he’d kept a low profile online, only a few items popping up. I clicked on the first one, which led me to an amateur website someone had put together for the Blakemore family’s 2014 reunion. Lewis Blakemore appeared in a wide-angle photo with approximately three dozen extended relatives, all of whom resembled each other to some degree. Being one of the taller people, he stood at the back, visible only from the shoulders up. He wore a wide smile and a blue-and-white striped cap. He also appeared in a second photo, a close-up shot of him holding a toddler, both of them wearing the striped hats this time, as well as sunny smiles. A third photograph featured him sitting in the shade on the bank of a river flanked by two adolescent boys. While Blakemore wore no hat in this photograph, he held a fishing rod, as did the boys on either side of him. The final photograph of Blakemore showed him shooting skeet with the same two boys he’d been fishing with.
Hmm … If a picture is worth a thousand words, some of those words would be “family man” and “doting grandpa.” He appeared to be nothing more than a normal middle-age man with a possible gun fetish. Not unusual in Texas.
Jackson glanced at the page, her gaze roaming over the photos. “Not sure I’m feeling it.”
“Should I open the other links?” I asked.
“First let’s take a look at that last guy. The groper.”
When I typed Phillip Gunderbaugh’s named into my browser and hit the enter key it was a wonder my computer didn’t explode. The search returned over a thousand results.
“Whoa.”
Gunderbaugh had posted what appeared to be hourly rants on his Facebook page, complaining about his termination on the baseless accusations of a few stupid whores! to the sons of bitches who’d refused to give him a fair hearing! He encouraged the citizens of Fort Worth to boycott the Transportation Authority via a three-stanza rhyme: They all lied! Support driver pride! Don’t take a ride!
A look at the man’s Twitter account showed he’d sent over three hundred tweets, ranging from a relatively benign Fort Worth bus system unfair to drivers! to a more insidious Fired unfairly! Ft Worth Transportation Authority fucked me over! and If FWTA thinks I’ll go down without a fight they’ve got another thing coming!
Jackson pursed her lips. “He doesn’t seem to have moved on.”
“That could explain the bus-jacking,” I noted. Stealing a bus, disrupting service, and making the department look incompetent would be a fitting revenge. “But what about the bank robbery? How would that play into his scheme? And who would be willing to go along with him?” After all, the guy seemed certifiable.
Before we could speculate further my shoulder-mounted radio went off. “We’ve got a report of a fire and robbery at a convenience store. Three male suspects. Two Caucasian, one African American.”
As the dispatcher gave the address, my eyes met the detective’s. Three men, two white, one black? Another fire and robbery? It had to be the same suspects we’d been tracking.
Jackson strapped her seatbelt into place. “Let’s go!”
Woo-woo-woo! We took off, tires churning up dirt and gravel as I punched the gas and rocketed out of the Transportation Authority’s parking lot.
Two minutes later, we careened into the lot at the convenience store. Derek was at the scene, speaking with a petite blonde woman. A witness, possibly. The fire department was already on site, too, pumping water into the store as black smoke poured out the front doors.
At the back of the fire truck, Seth held an oxygen mask to the face of an elderly Asian man sitting on the bumper. The man’s shoulders racked with deep, rib-wrenching coughs. Smoke inhalation, evidently. The man must have been the clerk on duty when the fire started. Thank God he hadn’t passed out in the burning building or he would have been burned to a crisp.
Jackson and I hopped out of the car and rushed over to him.
Seth shot me a pointed look. “We really shouldn’t have complained about our boring mornings.”
“I never will again.” We seemed to have jinxed ourselves.
He leaned in and whispered. “Let’s get margaritas when your shift is over.”
He wouldn’t have to ask me twice. It had been a hell of a day.
Jackson put her hands on her knees and bent over to look at the man behind the mask. “You up to talking, sir?”
When he nodded, Seth pulled the oxygen mask from his face.
“What happened?” the detective asked.
“Three men came into the store,” the man said, emitting a couple of short coughs. “Two were white. In their twenties maybe. The other was an older black man. Forty or so.”
When the man coughed again, Seth returned the mask to his face for a few seconds to give him a hit of concentrated oxygen. He pulled it back when the man signaled with his hand.
“All of them wore sunglasses. They got beer from the cooler and the little fat one opened his and drank it in the store. I told him he wasn’t supposed to do that and he left.” Cough-cough-cough. “The other white man pai
d for the beer and got a couple of hot dogs, and then he and the black man walked out.” He coughed again and took a fresh hit of oxygen from Seth before continuing. “I heard the door open again and the little fat one was back and his bottle was on fire. He threw it onto the floor and the fire spread everywhere, and while I was trying to put it out he grabbed money from the cash register.”
Derek stepped up beside us with the blonde in tow. “The guys who started the fire and robbed the place stole this woman’s car.”
“What kind of car is it?” I asked her.
“Fiat 500,” she said. “A 2013 model.”
“Notify dispatch,” Jackson told Derek. “Tell everyone to be on the lookout. And make sure they get the chopper back in the air. There’s no telling what these fools might do next.”
It was true. The clerk could have died in the fire. The men on this crime spree were out of control. I felt tension in the center of my forehead. We needed to find these guys and put an end to their reign of terror. Now.
While Derek obtained the license plate number for the woman’s Fiat and used his radio to report the stolen car, Jackson and I stepped up to the door of the store and took a look around. There wasn’t much to see except smoldering remains and a sooty, wet floor.
Jackson glanced up at the corner over the cash register. Fortunately, while most of the store was in smoldering ruins, the security camera appeared to be intact. “I hope that camera got some good footage. Somebody knows these guys. If we run a clip on the evening news, maybe someone will give them up.”
We stepped back outside.
Jackson angled her head at the fire truck. “I’m going to speak to the clerk, figure out who I need to contact for the camera footage.”
As she stepped away, I spotted a plastic lighter on the ground near the gas pumps. Could it be the one the arsonist had used to start his fires? Had he filled the bottle right here at the pumps?
I snatched a paper towel from the dispenser mounted on the support beam, wrapped my hand in it, and retrieved the lighter from the ground, holding it up to the sun. The backlight showed that only a small amount of fluid remained in the device. Hmm … Though the guy had worn mittens today and would not have left fresh prints, it was possible when he’d used the lighter previously his hands had been bare.
I checked the pumps to see whether the arsonist might have filled the bottle with gasoline here in the parking lot. Sure enough, the pump facing the street showed the last transaction totaled a mere twenty-three cents and a tenth of a gallon. Just enough to fill a twelve-ounce beer bottle. The paper receipt still hung untouched from the dispenser, displaying the last four digits of a credit or debit card number.
I ripped the receipt from the printer, hurried back over to the doors of the store, and held it out to Jackson. “It looks like they filled the beer bottle at pump three.”
She took the paper tape from me and glanced down at it. “They used a credit card. More likely than not it’s a stolen one, but it might give us a trail to follow.”
“Check this out, too.” I held the lighter up, careful to keep the paper towel between the plastic and my fingers. “I found it by the p-pumps. It could belong to the guy in the frog hat. The fluid is nearly used up so the lighter isn’t new. Think he might have touched it without gloves when he used it before?”
“Good eye, Luz,” Jackson said. “We’ll have the techs check it for prints.” She took the lighter from me. “You get back out on the streets, see if you can find these guys before your shift is over. I’m going to hang around here until the store owner comes ’round. One of the evening officers can give me a ride back to the station when I’m done. I’ll see that they get up to speed on the case.”
“All right,” I conceded. “Thanks for t-taking me with you today.”
She offered me a nod. “Always good to have a smart cookie like you along as a sounding board.”
I returned to my cruiser and pulled out of the lot. As much as I was looking forward to the margarita and some Seth-time, I had to admit I felt disappointed. It had been a crazy, chaotic day, but I’d hoped it would go out with a bang, not a whimper. I’d hoped to catch the bad guys, not merely trail along helplessly behind them. And I knew that once the day was over the case would belong fully to Detective Jackson. She could justify having me tag along with her today, but tomorrow I’d have to be back out on my beat, writing traffic tickets and responding to noise complaints rather than playing her protégé.
I turned onto Vickery and headed west, cruising along, keeping an eye out for a green Fiat, my thoughts on the bank robbers. Who are they? What’s their common thread? Are they friends of Grant Dawson? Three hardened criminals who’d met in prison? Three out-of-work men who’d met in line at the unemployment office? A barbershop quartet whose fourth member needs money for an organ transplant?
If only I could figure out what their connection was, maybe I could figure out who they were and solve the case.
I continued on, my nose detecting the scents of meat cooking at the Railhead Smokehouse a block over. The place capitalized on its proximity to the train lines, its name a nod to the nearby rail yard. Its logo featured a cowcatcher, like the one on the front of the steam engine of the Grapevine Vintage Railroad, a tourist attraction that made runs between the Fort Worth Stockyards and the neighboring city of Grapevine. I’d ridden the train a time or two with my family. You got three younger brothers, you end up on trains.
Brigit must have smelled the meat, too. She lifted her nose in the air and sniffed.
“Sorry, girl,” I told her. “No time for barbecue right now. But I’ll give you big spoonful of peanut butter when we get home. How’s that sound?”
She wagged her tail, letting me know a spoonful of peanut butter sounded just great.
As I approached the rail yard that ran alongside and beneath parts of Vickery, I spotted a round yellow sign, the standard warning sign with the oversize X separating two R’s.
But wait …
If the sign were split horizontally down the middle, each side would contain a black capital R, one inside something that looked like a less-than symbol, the other inside a greater-than symbol.
Holy crap!
The R on the bank robbers’ demand note had been cut from a printed picture of a railroad sign! And that plastic tube we’d found on the bus—it could be the smoke pipe from a model steam engine!
Chapter Twenty
A Howling Good Time
Brigit
Her partner made a fast left turn into the Vickery rail yard, and Brigit slid across her platform. Weeeee!
“Hang on, girl!” Megan called back as she braked the cruiser to a quick stop in the gravel-strewn lot.
Brigit could tell Megan was excited. She was breathing rapidly and pecking away at her laptop like her fingers were on fire. Click-click-click-click-click.
Brigit had no idea what her partner was doing, though she’d heard her mention the word Facebook several times today, so it was possible she was looking at that site again. If there were such a social media platform for dogs, it would be called Buttbook and dogs would post pics of their hindquarters, tails raised. Gender options would include male, female, and neutered/spayed. Relationship statuses would include stray and part of a pack. Dogs, of course, would be interested in men or women. Gender was irrelevant. They’d have a relationship with any human who would give them good food and a warm bed. Canines would post about dead squirrels they’d manage to catch, a new toy they’d been given, other dogs they’d humped, holes they’d dug.
Brigit’s ears pricked as she detected the clackety-clack of a train approaching the station. The conductor laid on the horn. Toot-tooooot!
Why not join in? She raised her head, opened her mouth, and let loose with a howl. Awoooooooo!
Megan shushed her when a dispatcher came over the radio. “Stolen Fiat spotted on Henderson heading northbound from Myrtle Street.”
Her partner grabbed her mic. “Officer Luz and Brigit
responding!”
As Megan floored the gas pedal, Brigit dug her claws into the carpeted floor of her enclosure to try to maintain her balance. She looked through the windshield. Where were they going? Would there be a foot chase?
She wagged her tail hopefully.
Brigit was ready to take a bite out of crime.
Chapter Twenty-One
Round and Round
Smokestack
As he sped away from the convenience store, Smokestack shoved a hand down his pants, tugged the bank bag from his underwear, and tossed it to the Switchman in the passenger seat. “Split that up. Then we’ll bail and go our separate ways.”
The Switchman unzipped the bag, dumped the bills onto his lap, and hurriedly began to separate them into stacks, fumbling with his gloves on.
The Conductor stuck his head between the seats. “Hurry up!”
“I’m going as fast as I can!” The Switchman barked. “It’s not easy with these damn gloves.”
When the Switchman finished counting out the bills into three equal piles, Smokestack reached over, grabbed his share off the Switchman’s lap, and tucked it into the pocket of his jeans with his Zig-Zag rolling papers and the steam train engine. Or what was left of the engine, anyway. The chimney had come off at some point and fallen out of his pocket.
He scanned the street ahead, looking for a place where they could ditch the car.
WHUP-WHUP-WHUP-WHUP-WHUP.
Shit! He looked out the window. The police helicopter swooped into place to hover in the air above them.
The Switchman put his hands on either side of his head. “We’re screwed!”
Smokestack mashed the gas pedal to the floor and careened out of the lot. The helicopter had a bead on them, following as they raced north up Henderson.