by David Grace
Since he didn’t know when this mythical woman had been arrested, and he had to allow for the fact that her child could have been born up to a couple of years before or after Nicole’s date of birth, and allowing for the possibility that the child had been conceived before the mother was locked up, the best he could do was go back twelve years before Helen left. In the entire United States how many Caucasian woman had been incarcerated in that twelve year period who were still in jail today?
Once he asked that question Virgil started to comprehend the magnitude of the task he had set for himself. State-by-state, checking both local and federal courts, he slowly compiled a list of women in long-term incarceration. But that was only the beginning. Next he had to track down every name through the birth records of every state’s bureau of vital statistics to discover which of those convicts had had a daughter of about the right age. It took him two more years to create that list and then narrow it down to one-hundred and nine women.
Eleven months ago he had started going through it. Apparently, selling your identity was a popular sideline for female convicts. Sixty-two of the one-hundred-nine social security numbers showed some kind of activity during the period of incarceration, either new bank accounts, full or part-time employment, disability claims, or various other issues and inquiries that made it into the Social Security Administration’s files.
One-by-one Virgil had worked his way down the list. Occasionally, he was able to sweet-talk a local cop into staking-out the subject’s listed place of employment, taking her picture with a camera with a telephoto lens and emailing him the photos. Often they were grainy or badly lighted. Even the clear shots were sometimes hard to rule out.
How much had Helen’s and Nicole’s appearances changed over the years, either by simple aging or through cosmetic means? Would he even recognize a nineteen-year-old young woman as the child who had been ten years old the last time he had seen her? He knew that a parent was supposed to be able to always recognize their child but Virgil feared that he could not, especially since he had no pictures of either of them except for Helen’s old DMV photo.
Then there were the names that turned into dead ends – credit applications long defunct; schools no longer attended; jobs once held years before but no longer valid; often the employer itself was closed and gone. If that wasn’t enough there were the legal barriers.
A bank might know the current address of the person who had opened an account under a particular social security number but it wasn’t going to tell the government where she lived without a court order. Getting one court order half the country away was tough enough. Thirty or forty of them were close to impossible. Still, name-by-name, Virgil slogged through the list. Nineteen down. Forty-three to go. The latest suspect was Kimberly Heister whose last known address was Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Pennsylvania? Would Helen have gone that far? Virgil bounced the question around for a few seconds then moved Kimberly Heister to the bottom of the list. Next was Shirley Rensalier of Bozeman, Montana. Five years ago a potential employer had made a citizenship inquiry. Jesus, Virgil muttered, then started typing.
Chapter Sixteen
Half an hour after Janet had dropped him off at City Services to pick up a two-year old, black, Dodge Charger Virgil entered the squad room and pulled up a chair next to Carl Montgomery’s desk.
“The Randazzos weren’t rich enough to be a target,” Virgil told Montgomery, tapping the file, “not unless the husband was doing something he wasn’t supposed to, like dealing drugs, laundering money or fencing stolen property.”
“We put him under a microscope and he came up clean.”
“Then why would a gang of high-end thieves go after him? Did he inherit any money? Win the lottery? Find a bag of diamonds on the street?”
Montgomery shook his head. “We went through the family’s financials with a fine-tooth comb. He was netting about eighty thousand a year from his business before taxes. His wife earned about forty. Their mortgage payments and property taxes were around twenty-five hundred a month. We ran their credit cards and what they spent matched what they earned plus what they saved. They were squeaky clean.”
“Then he either made a very bad enemy or he knew something he shouldn’t.” Virgil gave Montgomery a questioning look.
“No enemies that we could find. We checked his employees, neighbors, relatives. No law suits. No disputes. He didn’t gamble. His tox screen didn’t turn up any drug use. We went through his computers both at home and at work – nothing. No porn, no Internet gambling. No secret girl friends. The guy was Mr. Clean,” Montgomery said, holding up his palms in defeat.
“Maybe he knew something he shouldn’t and someone wanted him kept quiet,” Virgil suggested.
Again, Montgomery shrugged. “He sold discount tires. It’s not like he was supplying the mob with getaway cars.”
Virgil tapped his fingers on Montgomery’s desk and tried to think it through.
“People leave their cars there. Maybe somebody left something in the trunk and when they picked up their car it was gone.”
“You mean like drugs?”
“Drugs, stolen property, cash. The guys who work in those places don’t make much above minimum wage. What if one of the employees found a brick of cocaine hidden under a spare tire and took it? The owner would have wanted it back.”
“But why go after Randazzo? Why not take out the employee?”
“They would have started with the owner, asked him who worked on their car, where he lived. Did anything bad happen to any of the employees?”
Montgomery thought about it for a moment then shrugged. “Not as far as we know, but we didn’t specifically check.”
“Do we have a list of their names?”
“Sure, it’s in the file.”
“Let’s run them through the system, see if any of them ended up in the hospital or the morgue after the Randazzos were killed.”
Virgil went back to his own desk and started making notes, recording the random thoughts and questions that popped up as he rummaged through the files. Five minutes later Carl Montgomery appeared.
“Nada,” he said. “Nothing happened to any of Randazzo’s employees after he was killed.”
“And nothing came up in their interviews? Nothing unusual happened just before the Randazzos were killed?”
“Everybody had the same story: nice guy, good boss, everybody liked him, no problems, no drama.”
“Any of them have a record?”
“A couple of DUIs, one failure to support, nothing major.”
Virgil thought about that for a moment then shook his head. “There has to be a reason,” he said. “You don’t break into a house and murder an entire family for some costume jewelry and a few hundred dollars in cash. Either there was something very valuable in that house that we don’t know about or someone wanted the Randazzos dead.” Again, Montgomery shrugged. “I want to interview the employees again. Maybe they’ll remember something they didn’t tell us before. Can you get me the list of their names and contact information?”
“Sure,” Montgomery agreed, then asked, “Since we’re talking about motives, how’s that profiler thing going?”
“Janet contacted the FBI. Now we just wait.”
Carl looked uneasy and made a little humming sound. “There may be another way,” he said a moment later.
“Such as?”
“There’s a shrink Major Crimes used about a year ago on a missing child case. You know how those are,” he said and Virgil felt his heart go cold. “Anyway, it took a lot of convincing, but the psychiatrist finally agreed to interview the parents. We had half an idea that maybe the kid was dead and they were covering up with the story that she’d gone missing. Anyway, she, ahhh, Dr. Lyla Ostran. . . Olsen, Dr. Lyla Olsen, talked to the parents and then had us bring in the neighbors and she talked to them for like five minutes each. I’m not kidding, five minutes, and then she told us, ‘The parents didn’t do it. The person you’re
looking for is Zane Vogel. Her body is probably someplace in his backyard.’
“We went, ‘Who’s Zane Vogel?’ then we realized that he was the fourteen-year-old son of the neighbors two houses down. Once we went at him he gave it up in half an hour. He said he’d had ‘thoughts’ about her, she was eight, and he lured her into his room by telling her that he had a parrot. I won’t tell you what he did to her but when he was done he strangled her, wrapped her up in plastic and stuffed her body in a sleeping bag. It was still in his closet. When we asked him why he did it, he just shrugged and said he didn’t know. That it just ‘happened.’ Crazy as a barrel of squirrels.”
Montgomery looked away for a second then back at Virgil. “Anyway, the shrink, Dr. Olsen, she picked up on him like he was on fire, so maybe she could come up with something on our guys.”
She was eight, Virgil thought, only two years younger than Nicole. “Hell, it couldn’t hurt to ask,” Carl said when the silence dragged out.
“Sure, it couldn’t hurt to ask,” Virgil agreed. “Do you have her number?”
“Give me a sec.” Carl swiveled to his computer and punched in a few keys. Half a minute later he handed Virgil a piece of paper. Quinn pulled out his phone.
“Dr. Olsen, this is Lieutenant Virgil Quinn, Detroit Police Department,” Virgil said, obviously talking to a machine. “I’m working on what the media is calling the Mad Dog Killings and we’d very much like to consult with you. It would be a great help if you could give us some insight into the personalities or habits, motivations, whatever of these criminals. I would appreciate it if you would give me a call.” Virgil read her his number then hung up. “I guess we’ll see what we see,” he said, putting away his cell.
“I think the captain wants you,” Montgomery said, looking over Virgil’s shoulder and pointing.
Virgil turned and saw Janet motion him toward her office.
“You settling in OK?” she asked a moment later.
“Sure, no problem. I want to re-interview Randazzo’s employees, see if they can remember anything that might give us a clue why he was targeted. . . . What?” Virgil asked in response to Janet’s frown.
“The family’s got the business up for sale and some of the old employees have probably moved on. You could spend half the day just tracking them down.”
“It’s got to be done.”
“I agree, but not by you.”
“You think I can’t handle a simple interview?” Virgil asked with an edge to his voice.
“It’s grunt work and you’re my star.”
“Your star? Really? I don’t feel very star-like these days.”
Janet leaned forward, her lips compressed into a thin line.
“Look, Virgil,” she said in a soft voice as if afraid she might be overheard, “I made promises to get this case, but we’re almost three months in and I’ve got nothing. I need you to come up with some new direction that will get us off dead center.”
“Maybe one of Randazzo’s employees will come up with something we can use.”
“Maybe one of them will, but any detective in this squad can do those interviews. Right now I need you going through the files to see if you can think of anything we might have missed. Today I want you reading reports, looking at crime-scene pictures, talking to the other guys in the squad, doing whatever it takes to get up to speed so that you can come up with some fresh ideas. OK?”
“How’s that going to fly with Montgomery, that I’m too good to do the grunt work?”
“They all know I brought you in to take us in a new direction, not pound the pavement on low-probability interviews. And I’ve got other plans for Carl today too. I’ll have Stan Kudlacik handle Randazzo’s employees. He has a better rapport with blue-collar guys.”
Virgil glanced into the squad room. Today Kudlacik was wearing the same sort-of-green, sort-of-brown sport coat, too short in the sleeves and too small in the front for the button to close over his chocolate-colored pants that had not the slightest hint of a crease. Across the aisle Carl Montgomery paused to adjust the cuff on his crisp, blue-striped dress shirt then resumed flipping pages in the Randazzo file.
“I see your point,” Virgil said.
“Tell him what you want done and why. Stan will take it from there.”
“I’m not his boss. I can’t give him orders.”
“Then ask him if he’d be willing to help you out.”
Janet glanced at the door and Virgil knew the meeting was over. The junior partner had become the boss. Well, he thought, it’s less than two months until the election. After that who knows where either of us will be.
Virgil had just returned to his desk when his phone rang. The screen said, “Private Caller.”
“Virgil Quinn.”
“Hello, yes, this is Lyla Olsen.”
“Dr. Olsen, thanks for calling me back so quickly. Do you think you might be able to consult with us on this case?”
“You said that you were Lieutenant Quinn of the Detroit police. When I looked Virgil Quinn up on the Internet I found a U.S. Marshal by that name. Is that you?”
“I’m on leave from the Marshals’ Service for a while. Right now I’m sort of on loan to the Detroit PD.”
“Given the publicity from your YouTube video I’m not surprised. Unpaid leave?”
“Something like that,” Virgil said after a long pause. “If that’s a problem for you, one of the other–”
“No, that’s not a problem at all. I have some time right now. Will that work for you? I’ll make us some lunch.”
“What’s your address,” Virgil asked, picking up his pen.
She gave it to him then ordered, “Bring your files,” and hung up.
“All right then,” Virgil muttered then slipped out of the squad room before Janet could tell him that his time was too valuable to waste talking to shrinks.
* * *
Stan Kudlacik drove to Randazzo’s Tire Mart (the sign promised “Uptown Tires At Downtown Prices”) and found that only four of the original seven employees still worked there. The new manager that Robert Randazzo’s CPA-brother had hired seemed to consider Kudlacik’s appearance to be part of a scheme designed to waste his time.
“I don’t know anything about what happened to Mr. Randazzo,” Franklin Sherzer told the detective, all the time looking around the shop as if expecting to catch his employees stuffing office supplies down their pants. “I never even met the man.”
“I know that, Mr. Sherzer. I’m here to talk to the employees from around the time Mr. Randazzo was murdered.”
“You think they had something to do with it?” Sherzer said in the same tone he might have used to ask if Kudlacik believed that the earth was flat.
“I just need to follow up on their statements.”
Sherzer made a face as if he had been assaulted by a bad smell.
“They don’t go on break for another twenty minutes.”
Kudlacik looked Sherzer up and down – starched khaki shirt buttoned at the collar, starched and pressed khaki pants, gold-colored hair parted in furrows as neat and even as half an acre of corn, and with a back apparently maintained in an upright position by the considerable stick shoved up his ass.
No wonder half the old employees quit, Kudlacik thought.
“I’ll talk to them now,” Stan said, giving Sherzer a hard stare then walking over to the first bay. “What’s your name?” he asked the guy pulling the right rear wheel off a Honda Civic.
“Tyler Jamison. Why?”
“Thanks.” Kudlacik made a note of the new employee’s name and repeated the process the next bay over.
“Emilio Villarosa,” the thirty-something man answered, briefly looking up from the machine that was removing a worn tire from a steel rim. “Who’re you?”
“Detective Stanley Kudlacik.” Stan flashed his tin. Emilio stared at it for half a second then turned back to the tire, now partially freed from the wheel. “I need to ask you some questions about the days before R
obert Randazzo’s family was murdered.”
“That was some really bad stuff. Robert was a good guy. He always treated everybody fair.” Villarosa paused to shoot a glare in Sherzer’s direction.
“Do you remember if anybody had a problem with Mr. Randazzo? Any customers or suppliers who were upset with him?”
“No, like I said, Robert was a good guy.”
“Did he have any arguments with anybody, maybe an ex-employee or one of the other businesses in the neighborhood?”
“No, everything was cool.” Villarosa turned back to the machine and hooked the bar underneath the tire’s bottom rim.
Kudlacik made another checkmark in his notebook and moved on to the next question on his list, sure now that this was going to turn out to be as much of a waste of time as he had expected.
“Did anything unusual happen at any time during the week before Mr. Randazzo was killed?”
Villarosa shook his head without looking away from the machine.
“No, not that I remember.”
“What about the customers? Any strange customers? Oddballs? Guys who looked like drug dealers or gang bangers?”
“Hey man, what’s a drug dealer look like? Pimps? We get some pimps now and then. I know what they look like,” Emilio said, laughing.
In frustration Kudlacik flipped to a new page in his pad.
“Anything at all?” Villarosa shook his head and pulled the tire free from the wheel. “Any unusual vehicles? Anything odd in any of the vehicles?”
“One of them had a box of women’s underwear,” Emilio said, smiling. “I mean a big box – panties, bras. There must have been a hundred of ‘em. The guy said he was selling them but we all figured he was some kind of a pervert.”
“Underwear,” Stan mumbled and jotted “panties” on his pad. “Anything else? Drugs, explosives, guns?”
“Drugs and guns? Hell, man, we find that stuff all the time, but we don’t touch it. You don’t mess with those people. They think you did something to their stash, they’ll kill you dead.”