This Doesn't Happen In The Movies (The Reed Ferguson Mystery Series)

by Renee Pawlish

  “What’s the fifth book in the Bible? Not Genesis. Numbers?”

  “Keep guessing.”

  I scratched my chin. “Deuteronomy? Is that the fifth book in the Bible?”

  “Very good, Holmes.” I rolled over on my side, and felt around under the bed to find the Bible my mother had given me. I blew the dust off of it and coughed.

  “It hasn’t seen much use, huh?” Cal asked.

  “No, to my mother’s chagrin,” I said. “Let’s see.” I cradled the phone with my shoulder and turned to Deuteronomy, chapter 32, verse 41. “When I sharpen my flashing sword and my hand grasps it in judgment, I will take vengeance on my adversaries and repay those who hate me.”

  “These women are creative, if nothing else.”

  “And scary. They’re not leaving much to the imagination.”

  “I wouldn’t want to run into them in a dark alley,” Cal said.

  “Since you rarely leave your house, I don’t think that’s a problem.”

  “Yeah, right. Anyway, I searched for anything on ‘Ultionis Femina’, but didn’t find anything on her, either here or in the Cayman Islands. Not that I expected to, but you never know. And you know how simple it is to create fake names, identities, the whole works. So I continued with the money trail instead. Amanda’s funds were rewired that afternoon to an account in Lucerne, Switzerland. The money was withdrawn from that account a day later. The name on that account is Wilma O. Trace.”

  “Wilma O. Trace?” I pondered that for a second as I wrote it down. Then it made perfect sense. “Oh, I get it. Without a trace.”

  “They are cute, aren’t they?” Cal chuckled again. “Same thing with that name. Nothing. And the money trail disappeared, too. It’s all that layering going on. They essentially vanish.”

  “Without a trace.” I pulled the covers up over me, getting more comfortable. “This is a well-connected group,” I said. “It still takes a bit of rope-pulling and power in order to set all this up. It takes a good bit to put together fake I.D.’s, credit cards, Social Security numbers, and who knows what else for a bunch of people.”

  “I spent quite a while searching for the X Women,” Cal continued. “Once I got past the porn sites, I contacted a number of sources,” his polite way of saying computer hackers, “but it was a dead end.”

  “Too bad,” I said.

  “No, I really mean a dead end,” Cal repeated. “I’ve never seen a bunch of geeks get so frightened all of a sudden. And these guys break the law all the time, so it’s not like this should’ve scared them. But it did. I finally got one of the guys, Scatter D, to talk with me a little bit in one of the chat rooms, and he said he’s heard a few things here and there, but he wasn’t saying much. He did say that people who talk end up dead. Reed, this organization of yours does not mess around. They remind me of the Mafia.”

  “It’s not my group,” I said. “Please, I want nothing to do with them, especially if they’re like the Mafia. Hey, I didn’t tell you what happened to me last night on my way home.” I proceeded to relate my adventure with the SUV.

  “You should get out, now.”

  “I wish I could.” I heard Cal let out a huge sigh.

  “I’ll be careful, Mom.”

  “Your mother would say the same thing,” Cal said.

  “I know.”

  “I’ll keep looking. Go back to bed.”

  I tried, but I couldn’t get what Cal had said off my mind.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  There was no way I was falling back asleep. I was wide awake after my conversation with Cal, and this new information was running a race in my head. I pulled on a pair of sweats and plodded barefoot into the bathroom. I splashed cold water on my face, and carefully took the butterfly bandages off the cut on my temple. It seemed to be healing well, so I cleaned the wound but didn’t bother to reapply bandages. I’d have a small scar, but nothing more. I smiled at myself in the mirror and sauntered into the kitchen where I fixed coffee. The aroma of the gourmet beans filled the kitchen, and I took a steaming cup into my home office.

  I don’t indulge in many things, but my office is one of them. It’s a cozy room with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves on one wall where I keep most of my prized possessions. I have a DVD case full of my favorite detective movies, along with a collection of Alfred Hitchcock classics. The bookshelves are packed with a ton of books, mostly murder mysteries, and a collection of rare first edition detective novels.

  I set the coffee down and started up my computer, and began an Internet search on “Janet Delacroix”. Maggie had given me little information about the football player she claimed to have helped eliminate, but I had her daughter’s name. That would be my starting point.

  I typed in ‘female student murdered’ and received a list of more than fourteen thousand matches. I needed to narrow the search, so I typed in the name Janet Delacroix. This brought the list to a measly five websites. I quickly scanned the highlighted search words, and the associated web link, and determined that, except for the last one, none fit my criteria. The last one took me to a website for the National Library of Medicine, with Janet listed as an employee in the research department. If it was the same Janet, Maggie’s daughter, she lived in the Washington, D.C. area. That didn’t help me in finding out about her murdered friend, but contacting her might be a possibility, if I wanted to follow that trail. I thought about my Internet search. I’d gone too broad, then too narrow, now could I find something in the middle?

  I took out ‘Janet Delacroix’, kept the words ‘female student murdered’ and added ‘college’. Still over seven thousand. I added ‘football star’. This narrowed the search to a thousand. I checked a number of the websites, but none had anything to do with a girl murdered by a college football star. I mulled over how to narrow the search even further while I sipped my coffee. I scrolled through another page and was about to start a new search when one website caught my eye. It was an archived article from the Miami Herald about a university student murdered near the school campus, and how that had an influence on campus safety at some Florida college campuses. The article wasn’t specific to the murder, and didn’t mention the school or the student. I added the words ‘Florida’ and changed ‘college’ to ‘university’. Now I had a little over a hundred.

  Not only was the list more manageable, I was hitting a number of archived articles about the murder of a university student. Unfortunately the websites were for newspapers that wanted a fee to check the articles, or I could request a hard copy that would be sent in the mail. I didn’t have time for that, so I kept scrolling down the screen, clicking on each website and scanning the web page. After the first ten or so, I began to doubt my research methods. By twenty, I began to devise ways to get Maggie to divulge the information. Tell me or I’ll force you to wear polyester.

  On twenty-eight, I hit gold.

  “Murder of popular teenager has police puzzled,” read the teaser line under the website address. I clicked on the link. The logo for The Gainesville Sun appeared on the top of the page, with “archives” in bold letters underneath. Six articles were listed on the page, and I didn’t have to pay to check the articles. I held my breath as I clicked on the first link and opened the article.

  Two sentences into the article I knew this was the one. The article was about a nineteen-year-old woman named Elaine Richards, found murdered on November 1, 2006. Her semi-nude body had been discovered near Lake Alice, close to the University of Florida. She had extensive bruising around her neck, and rape was suspected. The police were not releasing further details until after an autopsy could be performed.

  The next article had even more information. The night before the discovery of her body, Elaine and her boyfriend, Derek Jones, star linebacker for the University of Florida Gators, spent the evening together. When I read the name, a vague memory popped into my mind. I’m not a big fan of college football, but I seemed to remember something about the incident because the announcers for one of the Bowl
games mentioned how Derek’s potential pro football career had been in jeopardy because of the murder and his possible culpability in it.

  The couple had gone out to dinner on Halloween night at a posh restaurant near the university. The waiter and maitre’d both remembered Derek eating there with a pretty girl, but could offer little else about them. Elaine’s roommate and best friend, who wanted to remain anonymous, hadn’t expected her friend to come home at the end of the evening, and hadn’t worried until Elaine didn’t show up for a ten a.m. class they shared. Elaine’s roommate still hadn’t told anyone of Elaine’s disappearance when the nightly news reported finding the body of a woman on the shore of Lake Alice, near the university’s nature preserve. Elaine’s roommate had a gut feeling and went to the police. She identified the body.

  Poor kid, I thought of Janet Delacroix. Barely an adult and being thrust into a situation like that. The rest of the story centered on the lack of clues in the investigation, and how the police had initially suspected Derek Jones, but dismissed him after his roommate and another friend provided an alibi for him.

  I read the other articles, each shorter than the last. Cause of death was asphyxiation caused by being choked, most likely with a belt. She had been raped, and due to bruises on her back, wrists, legs and face, beating and possible torture were also suspected. The police lamented the lack of clues and leads, and the campus population was on edge. The last, tiny article said that Elaine’s funeral was being held out-of-state, and that the police still had no leads or suspects.

  Now that I had a name, I searched on “Elaine Richards” and “Derek Jones”, and came up with some more articles that didn’t divulge much more than what I already knew. One victory was the mention of the detective in charge of the investigation, George Romero from the Gainesville Police Department.

  I spent a few minutes finding the number for the police department in Gainesville, Florida. It was a few minutes after eight, Denver time. As I dialed the number for the Gainesville PD I hoped that George was both still employed with the department and available.

  A woman with a slow drawl informed me that George Romero had retired. Maybe that was a good thing – a retired cop might be more likely to talk to me about an old case. After thanking her and hanging up, I searched phone directories in the area and found a couple of George Romeros. Now I just had to hope one of them was the former detective.

  I struck out the first time. “Please be the right George,” I whispered as I dialed the next number.

  “George Romero.” A deep voice rumbled into the phone.

  “George, my name is Philip Marlowe,” I said, using the name of the fictional detective in The Big Sleep. “I’m with the Boulder Police Department.” After Jon Benet, I didn’t need to identify the state. Everyone at all related to criminal investigation knew of Boulder, Colorado.

  “Yes?”

  “You were the detective investigating the death of Elaine Richards, correct?”

  “Yes sir, that's true.” I did a silent high five into the air.

  “I'm sorry to bother you, but I'm wondering if I can ask you a few questions?”

  “What can I do for you?” Polite, but cautious.

  “I’m investigating a rape case that took place near the college here, and some of my research into similar cases around college campuses led me to one you investigated a few years ago, a woman by the name of Elaine Richards.”

  “Yes sir, I remember that case. The unsolved ones can stick with you.” His voice boomed so that I held the receiver an inch from my ear. “She was a popular young lady, had quite a future in front of her. One of those cases you hate to see.”

  “Why did the case remain unsolved?” I asked.

  “We didn’t have anything to go on.” He stretched out his words as he spoke. “I looked first at Derek Jones – you familiar with him?” I said I was and he continued. “Of course, you always look at the husband or boyfriend, right? But he had an airtight alibi, so I had to look elsewhere. And we didn’t have that much to work with. We think the killer, or killers, dropped her body there after she’d been raped and killed.”

  “What about forensic evidence?”

  “Very little of that. The perp, or perps, used condoms because the autopsy didn’t find any sperm, even though she was violated. Hair and fiber results came up with very little as well. No DNA evidence. Whoever murdered that poor girl must have read a lot of detective fiction. They were careful. Really careful,” he mused.

  “So after Derek Jones, did you have any other suspects?”

  “We checked into a few boys she dated that fall, but never did get enough on anybody to take it to the D.A. You know how that goes.”

  I concurred. “You mentioned that Derek had an airtight alibi.”

  “Yes sir, his roommate and his best friend both swear he was with them after he took Elaine home. All three said they dropped Elaine off at her dorm. They watched her disappear through the front door and they left. We checked around the dorm and found a few students who remember the car, a black Firebird, driving through the parking lot at the time those boys said they were there. No one specifically remembers Elaine getting out of the car, but it was dark, and the witnesses saw the car, not the people in it. I tried to find loopholes in Derek’s alibi, but I couldn’t.”

  “You think Derek did it,” I said.

  Romero breathed heavily into the phone. “That wasn’t a popular viewpoint around here, him being a football player, and a damn good one at that.” I waited for him to continue, hoping he would share what he really thought. He finally spoke. “Yes sir, I think that boy was guilty. He raped and murdered that girl. I’d hang my badge on it.”

  “Why so sure?”

  “My gut told me those other boys were lying for him, giving Derek his alibi so he wouldn’t take the rap. And when I looked into his background, he wasn’t the all-American boy that he appeared to be. He had a history of violence, some bar brawls, and some allegations from a former girlfriend.”

  “None of that was ever reported?” I asked, thinking about the articles I’d just read. This did not fit the football star described by the papers.

  “No sir. Derek had that little girl scared silly. She never pressed charges, never said anything to her parents, or any authorities. I stumbled on it when I interviewed some of the girls in Elaine’s dorm; would’ve missed it otherwise. That girl told me she’d deny it if I reported it or said anything public about it. Now she may’ve been lying, but my gut says no way.”

  I pondered that for a moment. “So the case remains unsolved?”

  “That’s right. And it’ll probably remain that way.”

  “Why?”

  Romero grunted. “You know what happened to Derek Jones?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Derek was driving down Highway 75 two nights after he played in the national championship game. He had two interceptions in that game, played just great. Maybe he was still celebrating. Anyway, he ran his truck straight into a guardrail, and down an embankment. He was thrown from the car, killed instantly.”

  “It was an accident?” I couldn’t contain my surprise. I naturally assumed the X Women wouldn’t worry about covering up a murder.

  “Yes sir, an accident. And I can’t say that I mourn his passing,” Romero said.

  Silence filled the phone line between us. “What’s this case that you’re working on?” Romero finally asked.

  “Oh, I can’t divulge any information right now,” I said. He murmured understanding. “But I appreciate your help.”

  “My pleasure,” he said. “I hope that helps you in your investigation.”

  “Let’s hope so,” I said truthfully.

  “What was your name?”

  “Philip Marlowe,” I said.

  “Isn’t that the name of a detective from an old book or something?”

  “Yes,” I said. “My mother was a fan of the old classics. Hey, thanks again,” I said and hung up the phone.

&nbs
p; CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  I must’ve sat at my desk for ten minutes mulling over my conversation with George Romero. So the X Women made Derek’s death look like an accident. This group looked more and more like one that operated with a cold efficiency, swooping down like Spiderman, I thought wryly, to mete out justice, then leaving without a trace of ever having been there. I wondered how many other murders the X Women committed in the name of justice, murders that they made look like an accident.

  I plodded to the kitchen for a fresh cup of coffee, then returned to the computer. I ran some searches, trying to come up with a way of finding accidental deaths of people who had recently been accused of a crime, or had been convicted of a crime. I didn’t have much luck, hitting way too many websites that had nothing remotely to do with my search. I also had a difficult time getting a reasonable list. Most searches resulted in thousands of hits. I sat back, thinking of how I could glean this information from the World Wide Web. There was only one thing to do.

  “Hey, aren’t you going to get some sleep?” I asked when Cal picked up the phone.

  “Tonight. I’ve got some work to get done.” He didn’t even sound tired.

  “Have you come up with anything more on the X Women?”

  “I just got off the phone with you a couple of hours ago,” he said. “I have a client who’s screaming to get his software back tomorrow. I need to work on that for awhile, then I’ll look into it some more.” Cal’s work as a consultant allowed him to work from home, but I didn’t understand much of what he did. He once told me his work was similar to Sandra Bullock’s in The Net and I took his word for it.

  “You’re not going to believe what I found out since you called,” I said.

  “That you drool in your sleep?” Cal asked. The sound of him tapping on his keyboard clacked through the phone while we talked. “Want me to find out more about the X Women? Are they really women? Or does the X stand for women who’ve had sex change operations, hence they are ex-women? See it on the next Jerry Springer.”