by Dan Arnold
I really didn’t care about any of those things.
“Again, Mr. Tucker, I apologize. You are quite correct. It’s not my place to criticize your efforts. The work you have done so far has been quite thorough. Please excuse my error.”
Wow, I hadn’t expected this response. He had to swallow a big chunk of his personal pride, to say all that.
I took a deep breath.
“OK, we did get off on the wrong foot. That’s partly my fault. I didn’t ask Mr. Simpson for any direction. Is there something specific you want me to look for?”
“No, no. I appreciate that you must employ your own methods. I wouldn’t be able to direct the efforts of the opposition, either. Please proceed as you think best.”
As he stood up, he put the envelope back on my desk.
“I trust I can tell Mr. Simpson you are continuing with your investigations?”
“Sure. I’m on the case.” I smiled.
He didn’t return the smile. He moved very stiffly to the door. I could tell I had offended him.
I almost felt bad about that.
After he left, I wondered why he hadn’t just gone to another agency. Other agencies had more man-power and could gather information more quickly.
It was odd. I had offended Walter, yet he still wanted me to investigate.
Why?
Evidently, Walter was a small part of a bigger picture, but I had no idea what it was. At this point, his involvement was like a single piece to a jigsaw puzzle. Other pieces were missing, and there was no image on the box lid.
Five
“… No, I think your deposition and the video you provided will be all that’s required. It went very well and covered all the bases. I doubt we’ll even have to put you on the stand. I think it’s a slam dunk, John. He’ll do time, for sure. Thanks for all your hard work. Send us your invoice.”
This was apparently the satisfactory end of an insurance fraud case I had worked.
“You bet. Thank you, Gwen. Call if you need me.”
In this case, the guy had almost managed to swindle a personal fortune out of the insurance company, which you and I would have had to pay for in higher premiums. Instead, he would soon be on his way to prison.
I drove back to the scene where Victoria Winslow had been taken. On a previous visit, I’d started by observing the supermarket from a distance, at the same time of day Victoria had disappeared, watching the traffic patterns and the ebb and flow of customers. Standing where Sandy Winslow had parked her car, I headed off on foot in the same direction Victoria and the perp had gone, as they disappeared from the store’s video image. I hadn’t learned anything very useful on that first visit except investigating the location convinced me the kidnapper must have had a car somewhere nearby.
Today, I was trying to figure where the kidnapper had parked his car. It had to be somewhere fairly close, but not so exposed someone would have noticed him taking the girl. If he had put the girl into his car in the parking lot, someone would have seen it, and it would have appeared in the surveillance video.
The supermarket was located on south Broadway, the busiest street in Tyler, at one of the busiest intersections. It was a commercial hub, with big box stores and restaurants all around, only half a block from the Broadway Square shopping mall to the north and a strip mall to the south.
All that traffic, but no one had reported seeing anything. The media had let Sandy plead for information. The police, and the news anchors continued to request that anyone who saw anything remotely suspicious on the day of the abduction, call in. There had not been one useful report.
I was now persuaded whoever had done this was a local person. Someone randomly passing through the area could not have planned this so well.
That was the key.
I started thinking about how I would have done it.
Evidently the perp had used the old trick of pretending to look for a lost pet. Kids always wanted to help look for the lost kitty or puppy. It had worked on Victoria. He must have done this before.
I found myself standing in the parking lot of the strip mall, only a half block south of the supermarket. There was a spot here where a car could have been parked and no one driving by would have noticed it. There were no video cameras here. This was where I would have parked. I would have backed into the space, putting the back of my vehicle within two or three feet of a high wall that wrapped around an apartment complex. The car could not been seen from the apartments.
As I considered these things, I felt I was being watched. There was a very tall and thin, black man, standing in the narrow space between the wall of the apartment complex and the wall of the strip mall, about 50 feet away.
He had a shopping cart with him. I remembered there was a homeless man who routinely travelled around this area. I’d seen him frequently over the last few months. This might be the same man.
Could he have taken the girl?
It was highly unlikely, for a number of reasons, not the least of which was he was not the man in the images on the video tape. I knew nothing at all about him. I decided to try to approach him.
He was waiting for me, with a big smile!
“You that angel, Good Angel,” he said.
“My name is John Wesley Tucker. What’s your name?”
“You not the bad angel,” he replied, with a frown.
“I’m John. What’s your name?”
“They say I’m Dustin. My cart is rustin’, when I dance I’m bustin’!” He did kind of a rolling wave movement starting with his right hand, up the arm, over his shoulders and down the other arm. He ended by pushing his face to one side, with his left hand. He rolled his eyes and laughed.
I laughed too.
“Hello, Dustin, where do you live?”
“I live here, I live there, I be livin’ everywhere!”
It was apparent he had all his worldly possessions in the shopping cart. There was even a bible on the little shelf by the push handle.
He saw me looking at the bible.
“He told me you was comin’. He say you help. He say you a good angel.”
“Who told you that, Dustin?”
He looked up at the sky and closed his eyes.
“Our Father. He say you come to help her.”
“Dustin, look at me.”
He looked me in the eye.
“Who am I supposed to help?”
“It was the bad angel done it, he that took her.”
“Dustin, did you talk to the police?”
“Uh huh. When it gets cold, they come get me,” he replied.
I thought for a moment. This could be just the confused ramblings of a troubled mind. Maybe he had seen something happen here, or maybe he had just been told about it.
“Did something happen to a little girl?”
He looked away and choked a little. “The bad angel hit her and put her in his car.”
He had my full attention now. This was going to require careful questioning.
“What car, Dustin?”
“It was like the sky, and it had a reindeer.”
What did that mean? Like the sky…?
“Was it a blue car?
I regretted the question immediately. I was suggesting things to him, not asking questions of him.
“You stupid for an angel,” he snorted.
I decided to try a different line of questions.
“Tell me about the bad angel.”
He shook his head.
“It’s not my war, you the one that gots to deal with him.”
I thought some more.
“Tell me about the reindeer.”
“It was flying, over a silver football.”
What did that mean? Was the silver football some kind of Dallas Cowboys emblem? Their colors were blue and silver. On the other hand, everyone knows the Cowboy’s logo is a star, not a football or a reindeer.
“Where was the car?”
He pointed to where I had been standing a few m
oments ago.
“I got to go on now, I got me my rounds”
He started to push his cart up the narrow little alley.
“When did you see the bad angel?” I called.
“Last time he was here. When he took the girl,” he said, walking away.
Six
“Come on, J.W.,” Tony reasoned. ”He’s been questioned by at least three different patrol officers and one detective. The day Victoria Winslow was taken; he was interviewed as a possible suspect. He just babbled nonsense and clammed up. You know how it is with some of these homeless vagrants. They get off their meds and get all confused. It’s been nearly a week since the girl disappeared. He probably wants to help, but he doesn’t know anything.”
“He saw something, Tony. I’m sure of it. He put the car exactly where I would have expected it to be. How could he know that? How could he even know we’re looking for a car? We didn’t know ourselves, until a couple of days ago when the photo turned up. No one could have told him.”
Tony sat thoughtfully for a moment.
“You may be right, but flying reindeer and footballs aren’t much help. Are we supposed to put out a BOLO for an unknown make and model of car, a car that might be blue, with some sort of football symbol on it? This is Texas. How many vehicles with football emblems do you think we could find, in about ten minutes?”
“I understand. I’m just letting you know what I’ve learned so far.”
He nodded.
“Appreciate that. I’ll do the same for you.”
“You have something?”
He sighed, “It’s about the little boy in the photo. His name is probably Aaron Horowitz. A little boy by that name appears to have been abducted from his back yard, near Marshall, Texas, four days ago. His parents thought he was playing in their fenced back yard, but when they called him in for dinner, he was gone. They figured he’d left the yard to go play in the woods. They live in a neighborhood that backs up to some deep woods. When they couldn’t find him, they called the Harrison County Sheriff’s department. A search was organized, but they found nothing. There has never been a clue.” Tony continued, “Here’s the thing, J.W. The little boy in the Polaroid matches the description they gave us. I sent a scanned image to the Harrison County Sheriff’s department this morning. Mr. and Mrs. Horowitz were shown the photo. They say it is Aaron, their son.”
“Awwwwhh!” I groaned.
“Yeah, I know. I’m right there with you,” Tony said.
“Marshall is a long way from here. I wonder what the connection is.”
“All we have so far is the boy was abducted from near Marshall, and the girl was abducted from Tyler. Both were seen together in a photo, lying in a car trunk. The photo was found in the same parking lot where the girl was last seen. That’s it, and that’s all. We really don’t have any leads.”
My investigation into Ted Simpson’s life had revealed he had attended a public high school, not a fancy, private prep school. It was a bit unusual for the uber-wealthy, not what I would’ve expected.
At fifteen, he had gotten a “hardship” driving permit, even though his family’s mansion was only about ten blocks from the public high school he attended. It was odd, of course, but it was merely amusing, not scandalous.
When I interviewed some of the locals who had known him in high school, they all said he was just a normal teenager. While he was involved in some of the social activities that were, more or less the exclusive realm of the wealthy he had never seemed to be arrogant or boastful. He always drove a pickup truck. A fancy, lifted and tricked out 4X4 pickup, but a pickup all the same. He enjoyed hunting and fishing, water skiing, and ATV riding. These were all pretty typical interests for teenage boys in Tyler, Texas.
After high school he attended Texas A&M University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in petroleum engineering. I had more research to do on his college years.
I was stopped at a red light, talking to Walter on my cell phone about Mr. Simpson’s high school days, when I noticed the chrome on the car ahead of me.
“Walter, something’s come up. I’ll have to call you back.”
I hung up on him and called Tony, as the light changed.
“Detective Escalante here, what can I do for you?” he answered.
“Tony, it could be a Chevy Impala.”
“J.W., how in the world did you find out? I just got an e-mail with photo attachments, from the FBI. They’ve concluded the car trunk is almost certainly that of a late model Chevrolet, probably an Impala. The trunk photos look to be an exact match.”
“I’m driving on Loop 323, right behind a bright red Impala. Do you remember the Impala emblem? There was usually one on the trunk, and one on each side, of older models.”
“Kind of, I guess. Why?”
“It’s a bright silver piece of chrome. It’s a leaping impala, a type of African antelope, but it kind of looks like a reindeer, flying over or through, an oval, shaped more or less like a football.”
“Good grief. You figured it out from a piece of chrome?”
“Tony, this proves Dustin saw the car. He saw the kidnapping!”
“I’ll have him picked up for further questioning.”
“No, don’t do that. If he gets scared, he’ll shutdown.”
“We have to talk to him, J.W., he’s the one, single, and only lead we have.” Tony was adamant.
“Right, locate him, Tony, but don’t interfere with him or try to apprehend him. Call me, and I’ll go wherever he is. He might talk to me, but not if he’s been hauled downtown by policemen.”
“That’s no good, J.W. I’ll have to interview him. This is official police business. I can’t use second-hand information.”
He was right.
“Then we’ll talk to him together, Tony. Just you and I, but we’ll go to him. Don’t have him dragged downtown.”
I could hear the wheels grinding in Detective Anthony Escalante’s head, even over a cell phone. It took a long time for the wheels to grind to a halt.
“OK. I’ll bet several of our patrol officers know his usual haunts. I’ll have him located and I’ll call you. We’ll go interview him together.”
That’s the thing about Tony; he’s pretty regimented in his approach to his work. He tries to do everything by the book, all the time.
Tony believes adherence to the rules and regulations helps to ensure and enforce justice. Without the rules and regulations, those who serve in law enforcement could all too easily abuse their power.
I respect his position on the matter.
It annoys the fire out of me, though.
Seven
Molly had been home from the hospital for a couple of days, but I hadn’t seen her. This evening, she was standing on the landing, smoking a cigarette, with a glass of Vodka in her hand.
“Johnny, did you call the police on Alphonsio? They got him in the hospital for parole violations.” She slurred.
She was a bit confused
“Hi, Molly, How are you?”
She made several faces. One face was sad, another angry, the next was confused. She ended on happy. She smiled. “Hi Johnny, I’m good. How are you?”
“I’m happy to see you.”
Both her eyes were blackened. Her face was swollen and colorful. Her nose was taped.
“You’re so good to me, Johnny. Give me a kiss.”
She puckered up her split lips, but I kissed her on the forehead. Even her hair reeked of vodka, and cigarette smoke.
Molly had been beautiful once. I hoped that one day, she would be again. Here, or there.
She was drinking herself to death.
Life on earth is hard. In some locations, the environment is so extreme, just living through a day can be tortuous. For many the hardships are not environmental, they are emotional, psychological or physiological. People do things they should not do.
It’s not my place to judge. We all have a judge. We’ll all face Him, soon enough.
Until
then, some of us are called to speak the truth, in love.
Sometimes, truth hurts.
The darkness hates the truth.
We are called to be salt, and light.
The darkness hates the light.
Salt preserves that which is good, it also gives flavor.
The darkness corrupts everything, and the darkness hates our flavor.
We can’t save the lost. They have a Saviour.
We can love them, though. We can lead them to the Saviour. Sometimes, that is all we can do. What they choose to do after that, is beyond our mission, or our control.
“Molly, do you want to get better? Would you like to be sober?”
She made some more faces.
It’s pretty much pointless to talk to someone while they’re drunk.
She sort of smiled, a sad smile, and nodded her head.
“We’ll talk tomorrow. I know of a program through our church, which can help you.”
Inside my apartment, I called Christine Valakova. She was the red headed receptionist at Simpson Oil and Gas.
I had called her earlier in the week, to make a date.
“You still want sushi?” I asked.
“Oh yeah, with ginger and wasabi, and red wine,” she added.
“OK, I’ll pick you up at 6:30.”
Tyler is the regional center for the professional occupations, medical, banking, legal, and a host of others. The city attracts students to the University of Texas at Tyler, Tyler Junior College, and other colleges.
Tyler has most of the amenities of a big city, while retaining a small town atmosphere. If the traffic is light, you can drive from one side to the other, in about twenty minutes. Tyler is known as the Rose City or the Rose Capital of the U.S.; because most of all the roses sold in this country, are processed, or are produced in and around Tyler, Texas.
The only Tyler rose I was interested in tonight, was Christine Valakova.
I picked her up at her apartment. It was in an upscale, gated apartment complex. Her apartment was beautiful. She had decorated it in warm jewel and earth tones. She told me she had been living alone for a couple of months, since her roommate had moved out.