“I’ll put it on a flash drive,” said the banker.
We drove south on Highway 41, crossed the Manatee River on the Green Bridge, and a few miles farther turned right onto Highway 301 Boulevard and pulled into the Manatee County Sheriff’s Operations Center. Debbie called just as J.D. was parking the car.
“Doug Peterson rented the van from a U-Haul center on North Irby Street in Charlotte yesterday morning at eight o’clock. He returned it at six p.m. yesterday. Paid by a credit card in his name. He put a hundred thirty-four miles on it and returned it full of gas. I checked his credit card, and he paid for the gas with the same card he used to rent the van. He also bought lunch with that card at a McDonalds in Hickory, North Carolina. And before you ask, Hickory is about sixty miles from Charlotte.”
“You’re a doll,” I said.
“I know. See you later. I gotta go to work.”
“Thanks, Deb.”
I related the conversation to J.D. and Jock.
“Sounds as if young Doug took the Brewsters to Hickory,” Jock said. “Why?”
“We’ll work on that tomorrow,” I said. “Let’s see if the sheriff’s wizards can help us with this video.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
We entered the building, identified ourselves, clipped visitor’s badges to our shirts, and went to the Audio-Visual Department. J.D. knew one of the technicians and she gave her the flash drive and told her what we were looking for. The tech told us to have a seat and she’d see what she could do with the images.
We’d been waiting for about twenty minutes when the technician came through the door with several photos and the flash drive. She had cleaned the images up pretty good. One showed the man in the parking lot clearly. His hair and beard were gray, just like Big Tony and Clyde had said. Based on the height of the car, we guessed the man to be a bit under six feet tall. Maybe 170 pounds.
The car was a late model Pontiac with Florida plates that we could now read. “Got him,” said J.D.
“Unless it’s a rental,” I said.
“Let’s hope not,” she said.
We thanked the technician, and left the operations center. J.D. called the Longboat Key Police Station and asked somebody to run the license plate number. She held. Then, “Okay. See if Hertz has anything. Tell them the renter is a person of interest in a homicide. That might wake them up.”
She hung up. “The car was a rental from the Sarasota-Bradenton Airport. Those guys are pretty cooperative. We might pick up something out there. Let’s go.”
We got in the car. I was in the front passenger seat and Jock was in back, pouring over the pictures the technician had given us. “There’s something off about this guy,” he said. “Look at this picture, Matt. Doesn’t it look like he’s wearing a wig?”
I took the picture and looked more closely at it. The pictures were in black-and-white, and not the best quality, but I could see what Jock was talking about. “I see what you mean. Looks like different colored hair peeking out from under it.”
“If the hair is fake, the beard will be too,” said J.D.
We pulled into the airport and parked in short-term parking, walked to the Hertz desk. J.D. showed the clerk her ID and told him she was interested in who rented the car in the photo she was sliding across the counter.
“Your office just called,” said the clerk. “My manager told me to give you a copy of the contract.” He handed over a sheet of paper. “Do you need anything else?”
“Do you remember this guy?” J.D. asked.
“No. I was working yesterday when he rented the car, but we were pretty busy. All the customers are just a blur.”
J.D. looked at the contract. “Damn,” she said. “Look at this.”
The name of the renter on the contract was John Nguyen.
“That’s Vietnamese,” I said. “Nguyen is about as common in Vietnam as Smith is in this country.”
J.D. turned to the clerk. “Do you remember an Asian man renting a car yesterday?”
“Vaguely. I couldn’t describe him, though.”
J.D. said, “Let’s go find the security chief. The airport has more security cameras than almost anywhere. Maybe we’ll get a hit.”
J.D. led us to an office off the main terminal area. She introduced herself to the Sarasota police lieutenant who was the chief of the airport security detail. She explained what we were looking for and why.
“What time did your guy rent the car?” asked the lieutenant.
J.D. looked at the copy of the rental contract. “One p.m. yesterday.”
“Do you know if he came in on a flight?”
“No idea.”
The officer typed onto his keyboard and a schedule popped up on his monitor. “There were only two flights that came in around the time he would have rented the car. His name is not on any of the passenger manifests.”
“He could have been using a different name,” said Jock.
“I suppose,” said the cop, “but let’s look at the cameras at the entry points to the airport first. There’ll be less traffic there than on the concourses where the flights come in. People don’t tend to bunch up at the entrances like they do coming off a plane.”
He pulled some video up on the monitor, showing a slice of the driveway that ran the length of the terminal building and the concrete walkway in front of an entrance. “This is the door closest to the car rental booths. I’m starting it at twelve thirty yesterday.”
We watched for a few minutes and then Jock said, “There he is.”
The officer stopped the video. We were looking at an Asian man who was about the same size as the man we saw on the bank’s video. No wig or beard.
J.D. said, “I’d like a close-up of this one.”
The lieutenant fiddled with the keyboard and the mouse and a printer whirred to life. Out popped a black-and-white photo of the Asian man entering the terminal.
“That’s the second guy on the boat,” I said. “The one with the man and woman who tried to kill me.”
J.D. looked closely at the photo. “No doubt about it. I want to take this to the clerk at Hertz and see if he can identify this guy. Why don’t you two stay here and look at some more video. There might be more Asian men.”
She was back in ten minutes. We were still looking at video. No more Asians. She waved the picture. “The clerk said this was the guy who rented the car yesterday.”
“So he didn’t fly in,” said Jock.
“No. I called the station. They’re running his name through all the databases. See if anything pops up. You ready to head back to the key?”
We thanked the lieutenant and drove back to Longboat Key.
It was almost five when we crossed the Ringling Bridge. Dark thunder-heads were building over the Gulf, the harbingers of our afternoon thunderstorm. I rolled down my window and a whiff of rain tickled my nose. The storm wouldn’t be long in coming.
“Anybody want a drink?” I asked.
“I could use one,” said Jock. “It’s been a long day. J.D.?”
“Sure. Let me stop by the office and check out.”
We drove north on the key. Rain drops splattered on the windshield. Lightning slashed the dark sky over the Gulf. Thunder boomed, rolling over us like a low-flying jet. The storm was moving north and a little east, running parallel to the island. It would catch the northern end of the key if it stayed on its course. The worst of the rain was over the water. By the time we got to the police station near the north end a sheet of rain obscured the Gulf, but we were getting only sprinkles.
“I’ll be right back,” said J.D. She left the car and ran into the station.
Jock and I sat quietly, each absorbed in his own thoughts. J.D. returned. “Where to?” she asked.
“Let’s go to Mar Vista,” I said. “We can watch the storm.”
“There were no hits on John Nguyen,” she said. “Not even a driver’s license. He must have used a fake one. The numbers don’t match anything on file.”
/> “I wonder why he would use a Vietnamese name,” I said.
“Maybe to throw us off if we got on his tail,” Jock said.
“Could he be Vietnamese?” asked J.D.
“I doubt it,” I said. “The Vietnamese and the Laotians aren’t generally very compatible. A long history of hatred there.”
We parked in the shell lot adjacent to Mar Vista. We sat at a window table, had a couple of drinks, and watched the storm move inland. It came over us and moved across the bay. It was quick, as our afternoon storms usually are. A lot of light, noise, and water, and then it was gone, leaving a bank of dark clouds hovering over the island.
J.D. said, “We’ve now got three Asians positively identified as being on Dulcimer the night of the murders and they just happen to be the ones who have some hand in trying to kill Matt.”
Jock laughed. “My feelings are hurt. Nobody seems to think I’m important enough to kill.”
“Maybe they’re afraid of you,” said J.D., winking at us.
“Or,” I said, “nobody sees any percentage in killing a weenie.”
“I’ve already got a nice eulogy written for your funeral,” said Jock.
“Where do we go from here?” J.D. asked. “Assuming neither one of you gets killed tonight.”
“I think Jock and I need to go to Charlotte,” I said. “See if we can find young Doug Peterson and get a line on the Brewsters.”
“Aren’t you getting a little off subject?” J.D. asked. “The connections between the Dulcimer murders and Jim Desmond’s seem to be pretty thin.”
“They’re linked,” I said. “I don’t know how or why, but my gut tells me they’re part of the same operation.”
“That’s not a lot to go on, Matt,” said J.D.
“No, but my gut is hardly ever wrong. I want to show the pictures of the Asians to Billy Brugger. See if he can pick out one of them who was at the Hilton the night of the wedding.”
“I should have thought of that,” said J.D.
“You want to stop by the Hilton before you call it a day?” I asked.
“No. My car’s at your place, Matt. Drop me there and you two go ahead. Let me know what you find out.”
Jock and I drove south to the Hilton over a rain-slicked Gulf of Mexico Drive. The rain had moved across the bay, but the low clouds still hung over the island, giving it a look of somberness. Night was approaching and I turned on my headlights. We pulled into an almost empty parking lot and nosed into a place next to the ramp leading to the deck and outside bar. A cool breeze blew off the Gulf giving some surcease to the heat.
“Jock,” said Billy. “I heard you were on the island. Welcome back.”
“Thanks, podna. Good to be back.” We ordered burgers and drinks and took our seats at one end of the bar. A tourist couple in bathing suits sat at the other end. Laughter from children in the adjacent swimming pool floated across the deck. A mother called out to her child to be careful.
I laid the photos of the three Asians on the bar. “Billy, does any one of these look like the guy who came to the bar the night of the Desmond wedding?”
He looked closely at the pictures, pulled some reading glasses from his pocket, put them on, and peered some more. “This one,” he said, pointing to the photo from the airport security camera. “That’s the one who was at the bar that night.”
“You’re sure?”
“Positive. I’ve got a great memory for faces. No doubt about it. That’s him.”
Jock looked at me. “Your gut’s probably right. It’s too much of a coincidence to have Mr. Nguyen show up here on the night of the wedding and be aboard Dulcimer the next night.”
“Not to mention that he hired somebody to try to kill me.”
“Or to scare you.”
“If that was his intention, he did a pretty good job.”
On the way home, I called J.D. and told her that Billy had identified John Nguyen as the man who’d been at his bar the night before the murders.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
The University of Virginia campus in Charlottesville was busy with summer school students scurrying from one class to another, lugging books and computers, frowns of concentration on their faces. A few lolled in the grass under the trees that studded the campus, the light from the July sun diffused by the leafy cover.
A U.S. Army first lieutenant dressed in the summer uniform of dark green skirt and light green shirt, black epaulets with the single silver bar of her rank, strolled toward the army’s Judge Advocate General Corps School. She was in her second week of learning how to be an army lawyer.
She was a very bright young woman, blonde, fit, and personable. She’d easily finished college and law school, never breaking a sweat while earning top grades. She’d had a number of offers from large civilian firms, but decided to be a soldier, like her dad, the man who’d meant the most to her growing up. She wasn’t sure if the army was the ultimate career for her, but the four-year commitment she’d made would give her time to mature, gain some courtroom experience, and serve her country. In a way, she was putting her life on hold, but it seemed the right thing to do. She needed some breathing space before locking into the future.
The JAGC School wasn’t particularly difficult. She’d met some nice young people, all with the same interest, law. The class was small and everyone seemed compatible. The only blot on this otherwise idyllic portrait was a student from New York who had attached himself to her on the first day. He had, in a short time, become almost obsessive about her. She’d tried nicely to tell him that she wasn’t interested, that she had a boyfriend back home, and that they should just be friends. But the New Yorker was getting worse. There were calls to her cell phone from a blocked number. The caller always hung up when she answered. She’d see him watching her, even in places where he had no reason to be, like the local shopping mall when she was buying clothes the day before.
Only this morning she’d found him waiting outside her quarters when she left for class. She approached him, angry and a bit frightened, and told him that he had to stop following her, that it was creepy and unbecoming for a brand-new army officer. He laughed at her, told her to grow up, that he had a right to be where he was and if she happened by, so be it. He knew that she wanted him and that it was just a matter of time. She told him that if there was one more phone call, one more stalking incident, she would go to the colonel who commanded the school. He laughed and walked away.
She’d thought some more about talking to the administrators of the school, but she didn’t want to be tagged as a complainer, a wimp. She was in the army, and that sort of thing was not tolerated. She only had eight more weeks of school before being assigned a duty post. She could handle the harassment until then, and she’d probably never see the guy again.
The day was drawing to a close. She was headed for the library for some book time with her study group. There were four of them, two men and two women, who’d come together in the lounge of the school on their first day. Their backgrounds were varied, different colleges and law schools, hailing from different parts of the country. She was the only northern Californian in the group, although there were a couple of students in her class from the southern part of the state. She’d grown up in a small town in the Trinity Mountains, not far from the Oregon border, in a close-knit family of four. Her sister, older by two years, was married with a baby, living happily within spitting distance of the trim house in which the two girls had lived their entire lives.
A good life, but not for her. She wanted to see some of the world, and the army was a good vehicle for that. Her life was good, her future rosy and exciting. She was looking forward to joining a unit somewhere in the world, to suiting up and going to court, to representing the interests of the army and the United States.
She mounted the steps to the school building, warm thoughts of the years to come suffusing her brain. She walked into the portico and was reaching for the door when a man stepped out of the shadows and plunged a knife
into her heart.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Jock and I were sitting in a rental car outside a duplex near the campus of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. It was late afternoon, the sun hanging at a low angle over the city, a bit cooler than in Florida, but not much.
A ten-year-old Honda pulled into the driveway and stopped. The young man who got out of it was tall and lanky, a mop of brown hair sticking out from under a ball cap. He was in jeans and a T-shirt stained with sweat. He moved slowly, a man tired after a long day of work in the sun. He walked to the front door and let himself in. He was the man in the photograph I held in my hand, the one of the boyfriend sitting across the table from Katherine Brewster on the night she died.
I’d talked to Debbie the night before, after she got off work and was home and in a less than great mood. I asked her to hack into the University of North Carolina at Charlotte computers and see if she could come up with an address for Doug Peterson. She gave us the duplex.
We’d taken a plane from Tampa nonstop to Charlotte that morning, arriving just after noon. We had open reservations back to Tampa and enough clothes to last us a couple of days if necessary. We’d come looking for information on the Brewsters and we figured Doug Peterson was the one who could enlighten us.
We’d been there for an hour, sitting in the car, watching the neighborhood. It was quiet, most of the people at work or school or somewhere. The area was depressed and depressing, a place for minimum-wage job holders and students struggling to better themselves, to live, or exist, until things looked up for them. Hope kept the residents moving forward, toward a college degree or the next promotion on the job. Hope that the future would relieve them of the necessity of living in a rundown part of town that had seen its best days shortly after World War II.
We had seen no movement in the other side of the duplex. No one home. Jock looked at me. I nodded. We got out of the car and walked to the front door. I knocked. Doug Peterson opened the door, a quizzical look on his face. Probably thought we were Jehovah’s Witnesses or something.
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