by Tim Kizer
“I love you, too.”
He went to the billiards room and called Annie’s doctor, John Crenshaw, who worked at Children’s Medical Center Plano. He asked if Crenshaw could email him a copy of Annie’s medical records, and the doctor informed him that he had to sign a request for release of medical records first.
“I’ll be there in half an hour,” David said.
After he collected a CD with Annie’s medical records, he went to the office of Daley Investigative Services and gave the disk to Vincent Daley.
Chapter 6
1
On Sunday evening, at eight o’clock, Vincent Daley called David to give him an update on the case.
“I found out who Annie’s biological parents are,” Vincent said. “Her biological mother is Valerie Hewlett. She’s twenty-five years old, she currently lives in Mesquite. The biological father’s name is Roger Kemper. He’s thirty and lives in Fort Worth. As you must have guessed, they’re not married.”
“Did you talk to them?”
“No. I followed Valerie yesterday and today and didn’t see any signs that she has Annie. I’m planning to follow Roger tomorrow.”
“Did you check her apartment?”
“Valerie lives in a house with a roommate. I tried to trick her into letting me in, but it didn’t work.”
“What did you tell her?”
“I posed as a TXU Energy employee. It usually works.”
David suddenly became sure that Annie was held in Valerie Hewlett’s house.
What other reason could there be for Valerie’s refusal to let a power company worker in her house?
“Can you try it on her roommate?” David asked. “Maybe her roommate will let you in?”
“I did, and her roommate didn’t let me in.”
“Do you know who her roommate is?”
“She’s Valerie’s cousin. Her name’s Erika Hewlett.”
They were relatives. Relatives usually helped and protected each other.
“Could you… Could you enter her house when no one’s home?”
“It would be illegal, wouldn’t it? I’m willing to break the rules every now and then, but this is a bit too much.”
“What if I paid you ten thousand dollars?”
“Sorry, I can’t do that.”
He should ask Detective Barton to search Valerie Hewlett’s house.
It sounded like a good idea, but David was afraid the detective would simply ignore his request. Besides, he would rather do it himself than depend on Barton’s whim.
After a hesitation, David asked, “Can you teach me how to pick locks?”
“Do you want to break into Valerie’s house?”
“Yes.”
“What’s your plan?”
“I’ll go there when both Valerie and her cousin are at work, I’ll unlock the door and search the house. How big is the house?”
“Not very big. Two bedrooms, one thousand square feet.”
“I’ll be in and out in five minutes. Do they have an alarm system?”
“No. When do you want to do that?”
“Tomorrow morning.”
After consideration, Vincent agreed to pick the lock on Valerie’s front door. He also volunteered to keep a lookout.
“But I’m not going inside,” he said. “If you get caught, you’re on your own.”
David had no problem with this arrangement.
At ten o’clock that night, Vincent went to Valerie’s house and planted GPS trackers on Valerie’s and Erika’s cars.
2
By nine in the morning, both Valerie and Erika were out of the house. When Vincent picked the lock on the front door, Valerie’s car was parked in Dallas eight miles away and Erika’s in Garland nine miles away. David estimated he had at least ten minutes at his disposal.
“Good luck,” Vincent said as David got out of the investigator’s Toyota.
David ambled up to the porch of Valerie’s house, climbed the steps, and opened the front door.
It’s my first breaking and entering, he thought, crossing the threshold.
He was wearing latex gloves so he wouldn’t have to worry about fingerprints. He shut the door and immediately started scanning the living room. Sweet smells of coffee and cinnamon hung in the air. The room was empty; he could see no kids’ clothes or toys. Then he went into the dining area which was combined with the kitchen. From there he headed for the hallway. When David turned the knob on what he supposed was a bedroom door, he discovered that the door was locked. It was a simple key-in-knob lock, similar to the one he had had on his bedroom door when he was in college, and fortunately, he knew how to open this type of lock with a credit card. David extracted his Visa card from his wallet and slipped it between the door and the lock’s strike plate. When the card reached the bolt, he wiggled it a little and then pushed it deeper, forcing the bolt back into the door. A few seconds later the bolt went all the way back into its recess, and David opened the door.
There was no one in the room.
“Annie! Annie, where are you?”
No answer. David looked in the closet, then walked around the bed. No children’s clothes, no toys in sight. David glanced at his watch. It had been three and a half minutes since he had entered the house. Before leaving the room, he checked under the bed and found nothing of interest. His stomach was churning with nervousness.
Suddenly, a terrifying thought flashed through this mind: he might have been followed to Valerie’s house by the police. It was quite possible that Detective Barton had put him under surveillance. After all, he was a suspected child-killer.
The door to the second bedroom wasn’t locked. To David’s disappointment, Annie wasn’t in this room either, and he saw no evidence that she had ever been held there. By the time David stepped out into the hallway, he had realized that the chances of Annie being in Valerie’s house were vanishingly small.
The house didn’t have a basement—very few homes in North Texas did—so after he checked the bathroom and the garage, which was filled with exercise equipment, David ran out of places to search.
He looked at his watch. He’d been in the house for six minutes, but it felt like an hour.
“Annie!” he shouted. “Can you hear me? Annie! It’s me, your dad!”
There was no response.
As David stood in the hallway, he noticed the attic hatch. He rushed to the kitchen, grabbed a chair, and put it under the trapdoor. Then he climbed onto the chair, opened the hatch, and pulled himself up high enough to see inside the attic. The attic was completely empty. David called Annie’s name, listened to the silence for a few seconds, and stepped down from the chair.
Maybe Valerie had asked someone else to look after Annie until she was eliminated as a suspect? It had to be someone willing to break the law for Valerie, someone she could trust completely.
If he were in Valerie’s shoes, he would have turned to his parents.
David returned the chair to the kitchen and then left the house.
“Did you find anything?” Vincent asked when David got into the car.
David shook his head. “No. We need to check her parents’ place. Do you know where they live?”
“Give me an hour.”
3
Valerie Hewlett’s parents lived in an apartment complex in Irving. The father, John Hewlett, was fifty-four, and the mother, Elizabeth Hewlett, was a year older. Vincent hadn’t bothered to find out what they did for a living. Judging by the fact that both of their cars were over ten years old, they were not prospering financially.
David insisted on going to the Hewletts with Vincent, and the investigator agreed to take David with him.
“But you’ll have to wait in the car,” Vincent said.
The investigator entered the Hewletts’ apartment complex at a quarter past six. He wore khaki pants and shirt and carried a small black briefcase. Sewn on the breast pocket of his shirt were the TXU Energy logo and the words “TXU Energy.” His name tag ide
ntified him as Ross. The briefcase contained a voltage tester, a manual ranging multimeter, and a receptacle tester.
Vincent found the Hewletts’ apartment and rang the bell.
“Who is it?” a woman’s voice asked.
“Power company. I’m checking electrical wiring.”
The door opened, and Vincent saw an auburn-haired woman with a freckled face. It was Elizabeth Hewlett. “What happened?”
“A power surge’s been detected in this building. We’re looking for its cause.”
“Oh, I see. Please come in.”
Vincent went in, and Elizabeth closed the door. He got the receptacle tester (this device was used to determine if an electric outlet was properly wired) out of the briefcase and asked, “Where’s the living room?”
“Let me show you.”
When they walked into the living room, Elizabeth said, “Should I unplug the TV and the fridge?”
“Yes. Unplug all electrical appliances, just to be on the safe side.”
Annie was not in the living room. He saw no toys or children’s clothes.
“It must be the air-conditioners,” Elizabeth said. “Our neighbors leave their air-conditioners on all day. They’re so loud.”
“You may be right.”
Vincent plugged the receptacle tester into a wall outlet, stared at it for a few seconds, pretending to study the indicators, then unplugged it and asked Elizabeth to take him to the bedroom. There was no one in the master bedroom. The guest bedroom was empty, too.
“Everything looks good so far. Now let’s check the kitchen,” Vincent said, leaving the guest bedroom.
David’s daughter was not in the kitchen. From the kitchen they went to the bathroom.
“Are there any other rooms in this apartment?” Vincent asked after he unplugged the tester from the bathroom outlet.
“No,” Elizabeth said.
“Then I guess I’m done here. I found nothing wrong with your wiring. You can plug all the appliances back in.”
“Thank you.”
Vincent put the receptacle tester in the briefcase, and Elizabeth escorted him to the entry door.
“Is she there?” David asked when the investigator slid behind the wheel.
“No.” Vincent started the engine.
“Let’s pay a visit to Roger Kemper.”
“Okay.”
Chapter 7
1
Roger Kemper lived in a gated apartment community in the northern part of Fort Worth about twenty-five miles from the Hewletts. When Vincent came back to the car, he said that no one had answered the door when he rang the bell.
“Can you pick the lock for me?” David asked.
“If Roger has Annie, I doubt he’s holding her in his apartment. It’s too risky. Let me follow him for a couple of days first.”
“Please try again tomorrow morning, just to make sure she’s not there.”
“Okay, I’ll do that.”
When they were ten miles from Plano, Carol called David and asked where he was.
“I’m on my way home,” David said.
“Detective Barton is here.”
“Tell him I’ll be home in twenty minutes.”
What did Barton want from him? Had the detective come to tell him what they had found in his car?
David hung up and said, “It’s my wife.” He shoved the phone in his pocket. “Are you married?”
“I used to be.”
“Do you have kids?”
“I have a son. He’s twelve. He lives with his mother in Austin.”
Barton came to arrest you, a voice in David’s head said. They found Annie’s blood in the trunk of your car.
“What’s his name?”
“Sean.”
It wouldn’t take a lot of blood to strengthen the case against him. One stain would suffice. One stain would enable the cops to claim that he had transported Annie’s body in his car.
2
Barton was waiting for David in the great room with a cup of coffee in his hand. They shook hands, and David said, “Did you want to see me?”
“Yes.” Barton reached into his jacket pocket and produced a folded sheet of paper. “I have a warrant for your arrest, sir. David Miller, you’re under arrest for the murder of Ann Miller.”
Then the detective read David his rights.
“Do you understand your rights as I’ve explained them to you?” Barton withdrew a pair of handcuffs.
“Yes,” David said. “Can I call my lawyer?”
“Sure.”
“Where are you taking me?”
“Collin County Jail.”
“He didn’t kill Annie, Detective,” Carol said. “He was set up.”
Barton made no reply.
Aaron Brady answered on the third ring.
“This is David Miller,” David said. “I’ve just been arrested. They’re taking me to the Collin County Jail.”
“Don’t talk to anyone,” Brady instructed. “I’ll be there in an hour.”
As the detective handcuffed him, David said to Carol, “Everything will be all right.”
Both he and Barton were silent on the way to the county jail. An hour after booking David met with Aaron Brady, who told him that his first court appearance was scheduled for tomorrow morning and he would have to spend the night in jail. The lawyer predicted that he would get bail and that it would be in the three-million-dollar range.
David was not distressed by the fact that he now faced trial for the murder of his daughter. He couldn’t worry about himself when Annie was in the hands of kidnappers.
The next morning, at the magistrate hearing, the judge informed David that he was accused of murdering his daughter, Ann Miller, and set his bail at three million dollars. Carol was in the courtroom, sitting in the second row, her face pale and blank. David put up his Plano house as collateral for the bail bond. When he was released, Brady told him that the State’s case was very weak.
“They can’t use the results of a polygraph test,” the lawyer said. “The statements made under hypnosis are inadmissible, too. They don’t have a body. If all they have is that knife, they’re not going to get a conviction.”
After talking to Brady, David called Vincent and asked how his visit to Roger Kemper had gone.
“No one answered the door,” Vincent said. “Maybe he’s out of town.”
When he came home, David sent Eddie Hicks an email asking Eddie to meet him as soon as possible. Eddie replied two and a half hours later. He suggested that they meet at the Starbucks on Forest Lane and Greenville Avenue in Dallas tonight at seven.
Eddie showed up at the coffee shop at five minutes to seven. David asked if he would agree to testify in court about what he had seen in Ardmore Park, and Eddie said that he would do it.
“But you’ll have to compensate me for my time,” he said.
“How about five hundred dollars?” David asked.
“Sounds good, boss.”
“Did you buy a cellphone yet?”
“Yeah.”
Eddie gave David his cellphone number, and then they parted ways.
3
It was 6:14 in the morning when Vincent rang the doorbell of Roger Kemper’s apartment. Since Roger had a regular nine-to-five job (he worked in the accounting department of a truck sales company called Texas Fleet Sales) and his commute was less than twenty minutes, it was reasonable to expect him to be home at this hour. There were a dozen possible reasons why Roger hadn’t answered the door: he might be out of town, he might be recovering from a hangover, he might be in jail, he might be dead, or he might be in the hospital. Vincent thought that most likely Roger was out of town.
According to the records of the Department of Motor Vehicles, Roger Kemper owned a gray Scion tC. Vincent searched the parking area for Roger’s car for twenty minutes but was unsuccessful. He went back to the front door of Roger’s apartment and placed a thin inch-long piece of transparent Scotch tape across the gap between the door and the
frame two feet below the knob. That was a simple yet effective way to find out if anyone had entered the apartment after he left.
Three hours later Vincent called Roger’s cellphone from a payphone. His call went straight to voice mail. He hung up the receiver, got into his Chevrolet Suburban, and dialed the number of Texas Fleet Sales.
“Texas Fleet Sales. How may I direct your call?” the operator asked.
“Can I talk to Roger Kemper in accounting?”
“Just a moment.”
After about five seconds a brisk female voice said, “This is Christine.”
“Good morning. Can I talk to Roger Kemper?”
“He’s not here. He’ll be back in two weeks.”
“Do you know where he is?”
“No. He’s on vacation, that’s all I know.”
“When did he go on vacation?”
“Last Thursday.”
“Thank you.” Vincent terminated the call.
That night at nine o’clock, Vincent returned to Roger Kemper’s apartment and checked the tape on the door. The tape was intact. He rang the bell. Silence. He rang it again. Still no answer.
Vincent knocked on the door of the apartment next to Roger’s, and a young woman opened it.
“Excuse me, ma’am,” Vincent said. “I’m trying to find Mister Kemper from Apartment 62. Have you seen him today?”
“No. I haven’t seen him since last Thursday.”
“Thank you.”
On the way home, Vincent received a call from Tom Lunsford, his contact at Fort Worth Memorial Hospital. By the time the conversation ended, he was all but convinced it was Roger Kemper who had kidnapped Annie Miller.
Chapter 8
1
David was in the study watching a video of Annie’s fifth birthday party on his laptop when Vincent called him.
“I believe Roger has your daughter,” the investigator said. “I’ve just found out that four years ago Roger was diagnosed with cirrhosis. And apparently he’s not doing too well: last year he was placed on the liver transplant waiting list.”
“Cirrhosis? Is he an alcoholic?”
“His cirrhosis was caused by hepatitis C.”