“Excuse me. I’m Detective Bartoni and this is my partner, Detective Roberts. I don’t see a guard down either hallway. Can you tell me what’s going on?”
“I need a name,” she said briskly.
I wondered how many patients they had with guards posted outside the room but decided to let it go.
“Leigh Leonard.”
She did the computer dance and finally told us that she had been moved to the fourth floor. She was in ICU. That did not sound good at all.
When we got to the elevator about three thousand people seemed to be waiting on the damn thing. I decided to take the stairs but Dan though I was nuts. No one took the stairs anymore. It wasn’t that I wanted to walk up them for the exercise but I was concerned about Leigh.
I saw a deputy sitting outside a door about halfway down the hall. My jaw just about dropped when we walked up to him. He was gorgeous with sandy hair, bright blue eyes, and the cutest dimples. I tried not to drool.
“Hi, I’m Detective Bartoni,” I sort of gushed.
I forgot all about Dan. He stood up and was even more impressive. He was a tall cool drink of water for thirsty eyes.
“They said you would be coming by. I’m Deputy Stone.”
Of course he was. Deputy Stone. How perfect. This was like one of those Hollywood scripts.
“I’m sorry but I can’t let anyone in unless the doctor clears it. I’m really sorry about that.”
“Hey, no problem. I totally understand,” I replied.
I could see Dan watching me out of the corner of my eye. He looked amused. Get a grip girl.
“Oh, Uh this is...”
“Dan Roberts,” Dan said interrupting and offering his hand, “Do you know how we can track down the doctor?”
“The head nurse. She pretty much keeps track of the comings and goings around here,” he told Dan.
This was ridiculous. I was acting like a school girl. Next thing you know I would be passing him a note. I like you do you like me? Circle one. And don’t act like you have never done that before.
Dan more or less steered me down to the nurses’ station and after a little haggling she called the doctor. He agreed to meet us just as soon as he got through with his current patient.
“Want to go talk to the Deputy?” he said smiling way too much.
“Very cute,” I shot back.
“The remark or him?”
I decided not to answer. A few minutes later the doctor came down the hall and filled us in on her condition. She was developing symptoms of pneumonia and they were going to have to operate on her feet within the next twenty-four hours. She was likely to lose at least two fingers as well. He told us we could try to talk to her but he wasn’t sure she would be all that coherent.
When we went in she looked even worse than the doctor had described. Her face was bandaged and only her eye and mouth were visible.
“Leigh, can you hear me?” I asked.
Her eyes fluttered and finally opened.
“Leigh. We’re Detectives Bartoni and Roberts. Do you think you could answer a couple of questions for us?” I asked.
She closed her eyes for a few moments and then opened them. She said something but I couldn’t make it out. I leaned in and she repeated the words.
“You get this bastard,” she said just barely above a whisper.
“We will. That’s why it is so important to talk to you. Do you think you could look at a picture and see if this is the guy?”
She shook her head slightly.
“Good. I’m going to hold it up and all you have to do is tell me if this is the guy. Can you do that?” I asked.
She nodded ‘yes’.
I held up the picture of Terrence Ashton. I could see her studying the picture intently. Then to my disappointment she shook her head ‘no’.
“Leigh are you sure?”
“I’ve never seen him before. This isn’t the guy,” she managed to whisper.
“Alright Leigh. In a day or so, I will have a sketch artist come by if you feel up to it and work up a composite drawing. Just keep his picture mentally in your mind. I want to nail this bastard.”
She shook her head ‘yes’ and closed her eyes. Asking her more questions wouldn’t do much good right now. She needed to rest and collect her thoughts before we questioned her again.
“Well that was a bummer,” Dan said as we left the hospital.
“Tell me about it. We need to let the captain know and see how he wants us to proceed.”
Damn, I thought we had him.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
“So we don’t really have much of anything,” the captain said.
Dan, LeRoy, Marcus, and I were all crowded in the captain's office giving him the bad news.
“Pretty much. They did get the name of the girl in the photo. Barbara Watson. She is a freshman and lives on campus.”
“But no one can find her,” Marcus added.
“Meaning?”
“She hasn’t been to class. Her roommate, if you can call her that, hasn’t seen her. Of course she didn’t seem to care one way or the other either.”
“Nice,” the captain said sarcastically.
“Captain we need some direction. Do you want us to talk to Ashton?”
“Not until you can find the girl. Right now all you have is some porno pictures. He could say it was just role playing. Rough sex, that kind of thing. You have nothing that will hold up in court.”
“So he just gets a free pass,” LeRoy said.
“No. I didn’t say that. But I’ll tell you what you should do, find the girl, confirm what happened or find her body. Then we will tackle Terrence Ashton. You know he isn’t our guy for the other murders so my directions are as follows. Get your butts out on the streets and solve this damn thing. Is that clear enough?” he said.
We all looked at each other but no one spoke up. What was there to say really?
~~
The weather had cleared up some. At least the sun was out and it was a balmy twenty-two degrees. I arranged for an ID artist to go see Leigh hoping she could remember enough to be helpful. She was our best chance at this point.
Dan and I reviewed everything we had and while it seemed like a lot from a volume standpoint, it was pretty much worthless.
Now it was back to routine leg work. We were able to talk to Leigh for a few more minutes later in the day and she gave us the general area she thought she had fled from. We crossed that with the Sheriff’s department and mapped out a search pattern.
Too bad this couldn’t have been like on television where someone finds a snowflake and through some kind of magic is able to tell you exactly where it landed and whose DNA was on it. You have to love the absurdity of it.
I will give credit where it is due. The Sheriff was more than generous in supplying us with manpower to search out possible locations.
We found three possible locations from the description that Leigh had given us. The closest one to the road they had found her on seemed like the best bet. The problem was we didn’t have a warrant and had no cause to ask for one. I felt like we were closer but still couldn’t find enough evidence to do us much good.
“We need to see inside all three of these buildings,” I said to Dan.
“We could do the ‘I thought I heard someone yelling for help’ routine.”
“I don’t think so. I want this to hold up in court. I don’t want to even think of trying to pull something over the eyes of the DA. We need something more. Something legal.”
“Excuse me, Detective Bartoni,” a voice said behind me.
I turned around and looked into those lovely blue eyes. It was Deputy Stone. Damn it, I didn’t want to start drooling again.
“Deputy. What can we do for you?”
“Well, I may be able to do something for you.”
No kidding, I thought. Being the total professional that I am I just said, “And what would that be?”
“Doctor Oliver owns that garage
. He said that the guy that has been renting it. . . Hang on a second,” he said flipping through a spiral notepad, “Earl Canon hasn’t paid rent on the place in three months. When he came out, the lock had been changed. He wants the guy out.”
“Well we would still need an eviction notice. That takes a lot of time.”
“One that looks like this?” he said waving a paper.
“How...”
“This isn’t the big city. We don’t have as much red tape. Since the owner wants his own lock on the door, he gave us permission to cut the old one off and replace it. I got a new one right here,” he said pulling it out of his coat pocket.
This was terrific and all but I wasn’t so sure it would hold up in court. When I hand a case over to the DA I don’t want anything to blow up in my face.
“I’m not so sure we can do that. I mean, even if we change the lock that doesn’t give us permission to enter the building. Anything we find could very well get tossed out,” I told him.
“Just trying to help.”
“I appreciate it but it’s got to be done the right way.”
I swear, he tipped his hat and turned and walked away.
“There is the side door. This certainly could be the place. He would have come in this way and the lights would have flashed across the windows right there,” Dan said pointing, “She would have run out the side door. Maybe we should go that way and see if we find the stream and fence she said she ran into.”
“Man, I should have worn warmer boots,” I muttered as we started out across the field.
It was close to fifty yards when we found the stream. I sure didn’t want to step in it but then I thought about poor Leigh, naked having to tromp through this field. Freezing my butt off, I crossed and up ahead I could see a dark patch. As we got closer we could see that it was a blanket. It was lying over a barbed wire fence. It was exactly as Leigh had described.
“I want the lab out here. I want pictures of the garage, the door, stream, fence and anything else they can think of. She ran this way. There is a road over there across the field. We’ll check to see if that’s where she was picked up,” I told Dan.
“I think our luck is about to change,” Dan replied as we started back towards the car.
~~
“The guy’s name is Earl Canon,” I told the captain. “It is exactly as Leigh described. The stream, the fence with the blanket over the top and the road where she was picked up. It has to be the garage. I need a warrant. I want as much as possible before I talk to the DA.”
“Let me see what I can do but I’m not sure it’s going to get you a warrant. There are lots of garages, streams and fences out in that area. I’ll try but I make no promises,” the captain said.
“That’s all I could ask.”
While he was off pulling strings we ran a background check on Earl Canon. His sheet came back and was fairly extensive. Mostly little stuff but it had been escalating the past few years. It included assault, stalking, battery and forced entry. It seems that our boy was trying to make into the big league.
It was still a leap to two murders and abduction. I looked at his mug shot. His sheet said he was five-eight, one hundred and seventy pounds with brown eyes and brown hair. He had a tattoo of a woman on his left arm. From his picture he didn’t look any too bright.
“Well, he is a student at the college,” I said putting down his file.
“Maybe we should just pull him in now,” Dan suggested.
“Let’s see if we can get the warrant. If we can, we will toss the place and run prints. If we can’t get it, then we will pull him in. While we are waiting, we need to get this out to Leigh and see if she can ID him. If she can do that, we will get one to include his house and car,” I replied.
“It’s coming together,” Dan said.
“Never count your chickens before they hatch. If she doesn’t ID him we will have a hell of a time connecting him to the murders. I’ve seen it happen before,” I warned him.
CHAPTER FORTY- FOUR
“Sorry,” was all the captain said when he came back.
“Get your coat; we’re going to go talk to Leigh. I want to be there when she sees Canon’s picture.”
“You said we had to be by the book. Are you sure you should be there? It could look like you coerced her into remembering.”
I looked at him for a few seconds. He was right. Here I just gave the big lecture about being by the book and suddenly I have a brain fart.
“You’re right,” I finally said.
“They will get the picture to her and then we can pick back up. One way or the other, this guy is definitely high on our hit parade.”
Waiting is not what I do best. I played at doing some of my paper work, drank two Diet Cokes and went to the restroom twice. All I was doing was killing time. What could be taking them so long? Dan had been tapping his pencil on his desk for the past five minutes and I was about ready to ring his neck when the phone rang.
“Bartoni,” I answered.
“Deputy Stone. We got a positive ID on Canon. She is one hundred percent sure.”
“Alright,” I practically shouted, “That’s great. Thanks Deputy. I owe you one.”
“I’ll hold you to that," he said as he hung up.
Oooh. I didn’t know what that meant but maybe he would explain over dinner. Oops, getting carried away. Back to the case. I hustled in to see the captain and told him the news. He went to work on the warrant.
While he was doing that, I rounded up LeRoy and Marcus. I wanted backup with me. I didn’t want to have to wait around. Thirty minutes later the captain handed me the warrant for the garage, his house, the car and the property. We pretty much had free reign.
Dan drove and we went over how we were going to handle the bust. LeRoy wanted to call in the SWAT team but I nixed the idea. I did however alert the crime techs that we would need them as soon as they could get there.
I was pretty well amped up by the time we got to his house. A brown SUV was parked in the driveway with snow up to the windows. He hadn’t been anyplace in the last several hours; that was for sure. Hopefully that means he hasn’t snatched another victim.
I sent LeRoy and Marcus around the back. Dan was with me. The sidewalk hadn’t been shoveled in a long while. Some of the drifts were three or four feet deep. We managed to get up to the front porch. Dan went first and I just walked in his footsteps.
“Stand to one side, never in front of the door,” I told Dan.
He shook his head and moved out of the way. I lost a partner that way my second year on the job. A guy with a twelve-gauge shot through the front door and just blew him away.
I knocked on the door and stood to the other side. Nothing. I banged harder but still no answer.
“Earl Canon, this is the police. Open the door,” I yelled but nothing happened.
“Do we kick it in?” Dan asked.
“Not we, you. Do I look like I could kick a door down? It’s all yours.
Dan lashed out with his foot and the door literally busted off the hinges. Now that was some kick. If I had to do it, I would still be there kicking away for an hour.
“Police,” I yelled and Dan and I rushed in, guns drawn.
We split up and went from room to room making sure each was clear. I called in LeRoy and Marcus and we began a sweep of the place. It was basically a dump. Food was dried up on plates in the sink, there were glasses of fermented something and trash falling out of the trashcan. Nice digs.
“You know, his car is here. Some of this food isn’t molded. I didn’t see any tracks when we came up to the door. Did you guys find any out back?”
“Nope. Didn’t see a thing except for a few critter footprints,” Marcus replied.
“Attic,” Marcus, LeRoy, and I said in unison.
“Gotta be,” Marcus replied.
We found the pulldown stairs in a closet. I could see bits of plaster on the floor. Someone had scrambled up there recently.
“I’l
l go,” Marcus said reaching for the pull cord.
“No. I’m lead on this. I should go. You just be ready in case he gets by me,” I said in my big girl voice.
I didn’t want them to know I was about ready to pee my pants. All that tough girl cop stuff on television is pure crap. I pulled down the stairs, took a deep breath and started up. I was kind of hoping Marcus would offer again. He didn’t.
I stuck my head over the top of the floor and looked around. It was darker than midnight. I played my flashlight around and saw junk piled everyplace. If he was here, he was hiding; that was for sure. He only had about a thousand places he could have been.
I climbed up inside but had to stay hunched over. The rafters didn’t allow much in the way of headroom. I slowly inched around, tugging at junk and moving stuff.
“Don’t shoot,” a meek voice said behind me.
I whirled around aiming my gun at his chest.
“Please, don’t shoot.”
“Damn. What the hell are you trying to do? You want to get blown away? Are you stupid or what?” I stammered.
It had been close. I almost pulled the trigger but something kept me from doing it. I was thankful for that. We got him down the ladder and Marcus put cuffs on him.
“Get the crime boys in here and have a wrecker come get his car,” I said, still shaken.
I sent Marcus and LeRoy back to the station with our suspect. Dan and I still had other business to take care of.
CHAPTER FORTY- FIVE
The garage wasn’t much really. The windows had been covered with plywood. We found pretty much what I thought we would from talking to Leigh. There was a table with restraining straps in the center of the garage. Along the side were a hand sink, some kind of chain hoist, and a bunch of bottles and other junk. I had no idea what most of it was for. We found a small freezer in the corner and it contained quart jars of what looked like blood. This is where he had been doing whatever it was he had been doing.
We would have to talk to him to find out what he was really trying to do. One thing I knew for sure, Earl was one sick puppy. The tech boys arrived just as we were about to finish up. They would have a lot of evidence by the time they were finished processing.
FROSTBITE -Angie Bartoni Case File #2 (Detective Angie Bartoni Case Files Book 1) Page 14