“Keys?”
“They’re in it.”
Tim let the guy go and walked toward the car the man had described.
He looked up and down the interstate. Aside from several people standing outside their cars and gawking, he spotted no immediate danger. Tim got into the Ford and pulled out. He got up to speed and pulled the HANS device from around his shoulders. After a few miles, he tossed it out the window and exited the freeway.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
The local PD arrived a few minutes after we’d entered and cleared the property. Neither Ridley nor Wendell were there, but all the signs told us that something definitely went down at the house. The blood and liquor on the tile were still wet, so whatever had happened was recent. We found no confession letter. The bar stool had a couple of tie-down straps hanging from it. The blood on the tile was enough for a fairly significant injury, but not a fatality. The funnel had blood all over it. I wrapped up the phone call I was on with Couch and stood next to Beth in the kitchen, trying to figure out just what exactly we were looking at.
Harrington walked back into the room from a phone call he was making outside. “Any new ideas on this?”
Beth shrugged and stared down. She crouched over a spot of blood. “There’s something in this blood.” She got a closer look. “It almost looks like… Yeah it is. There are bits and pieces of teeth in this.”
“Funnel with blood, broken teeth, and empty booze bottles. Pretty much just one conclusion,” I said. “Tied to the chair, funnel jammed in mouth, and liquor poured in. About the only thing I can come up with.”
“That’s about the only thing that makes any sense. But why?” Harrington asked.
“Who the hell knows,” I said. “We need to find Ridley, though. There’s not enough blood here for this to be a homicide. If Wendell took him somewhere, we need to find out where, and fast.”
“The BOLO is out on the vehicle. We just are waiting to get a hit,” Harrington said.
“Waiting isn’t going to get us very far with this guy,” I said.
“What did Couch say?” Beth asked.
“He’s on his way with a forensics team,” I said. “We need to see if there’s any prints on any of this—specifically, fingerprints that belong to Wendell. Let’s take a look around the rest of the house until Couch and forensics get here. Maybe we can find something.”
We split up and began looking around. I left the kitchen area and walked down the hall toward the bedrooms. I took a look through each, not finding anything that would send us in a specific direction. Then I walked back to the living room and had a look around. The blinds on the window seemed to be hanging more to one side than the other, so I walked over and had a look. The window behind the blinds was closed, yet the screen behind the pane of glass looked a little bent. On the cushions of the sofa directly below the window was some dirt and grass. I stood, stared at it for a second, and then looked over my shoulder at Harrington in the kitchen. “These windows here may have been our point of entry,” I said. “You see anything over there?”
“Nothing out of the ordinary. His cell phone is here, so trying to track Ridley by that isn’t going to do us any good. Kitchen stuff in a kitchen is about all I’m seeing—some drawers and cabinets open. It kind of looks like he had an abundance of liquor on hand, so it’s probably safe to say the booze came from here.”
Beth entered the room from the garage area. “Why don’t you guys come and take a look at this,” she said.
“Find something?” I asked.
“Um, I don’t know. There’s an airbag for a Mercedes lying on the garage floor in the corner.”
“Airbag?” I asked.
“Yeah, the center section of the steering wheel holds it,” Beth said.
“I know what you’re talking about,” I said. “But why was it removed?”
“I don’t know.”
“What else?” I asked.
“There’s a suitcase that’s sitting open. The little tag that you fill out at the airport and attach to your bag—that says Ridley, with the address of his wife’s house that we were at. Inside the suitcase, there’s some empty packaging for a HANS device. Not really sure what that is,” she said.
“A HANS device?” Harrington asked.
“Yeah,” Beth said.
“That’s something they use in racing. It protects your head from coming forward in an accident,” Harrington said.
I looked at Beth. “Show us,” I said.
We followed Beth to the garage.
“There’s the airbag.” She motioned toward the far corner, where a black driver-side airbag with a Mercedes logo lay on the cement next to a couple of boxes.
“The suitcase with the packaging?” I asked.
She walked us to some shelving at the front of the garage and motioned to an open suitcase lying near a pair of garbage cans.
Harrington knelt and poked his finger through the Styrofoam, plastic, and cardboard packing. “Packaging for one.” He looked back at Beth and me observing over his shoulder. “He’s staging an accident.” He stood. “I’m betting there was a helmet involved as well. The HANS device tethers to a helmet, to keep your head stable.”
“Look for a passenger-side airbag,” I said.
We pushed things to the sides and searched the garage quickly but found nothing.
“If we only have a driver-side airbag removed, it tells me that Wendell was making Ridley drive,” I said. “The safety equipment was for himself.”
“So get the guy drunk, take away his airbag, and make him crash?” Beth asked. “That’s a hell of a dangerous plan. If his goal was to kill Ridley, the accident would surely have to be severe enough to kill them both. I mean, if you just want to kill the guy, then kill him. You’re going to crash a car with both of you in it?”
“Who the hell knows?” I said. “But the safety equipment and the manner are consistent with that theory.”
“What do you mean manner?” she asked.
“Well, if he thinks Ridley was involved in causing his sister to die via car accident, his killing Ridley in the same fashion fits.”
“Got it,” she said. “Still, it seems too reckless. Good chance of getting yourself killed.”
I shrugged. “Who is to say that he puts any value on his own life? He doesn’t put any value on others’.”
“True,” Beth said.
“So why do you suppose he left all this just lying here?” Harrington asked.
“The jig is up. He can’t hide who he is—we know. Now he’s just scrambling to check the names off of his list,” I said.
“So Ridley, he thinks, was involved in his sister’s death. It’s the closest potential victim to him. Is Ridley the last? What happens after?” Beth asked.
“I don’t know,” I said.
Harrington’s phone rang. He excused himself and left the garage to take the call.
“So back to spitballing this,” Beth said. “So, if Wendell’s plan is to kill Ridley by making him crash, where is he going to do it?”
“Well, I can think of one place,” I said.
“Where his sister died?” Beth asked.
“It fits.” I pulled my cell phone from my pocket and scrolled through the e-mails I’d received from Ball. I clicked on the accident report from Wendell’s sister.
“What are you looking for?” Beth asked.
“Where exactly this took place. When Harrington gets done with his call, we’ll have him call whatever precinct covers this area and get them on alert.”
The second I finished my sentence, Harrington shot back into the garage. His face said just about everything Beth and I needed to know.
“That call,” Harrington said. “We found our BOLO vehicle. Crashed. There’s a fatality.”
“A fatality?” Beth asked. “As in singular? Just one deceased on scene?”
“Correct. Just one. Witnesses reported a man in a helmet stealing a car from someone who saw the accident and fleeing th
e scene.”
“How long ago?” I asked.
“Maybe ten or fifteen minutes,” Harrington said.
“The vehicle that was stolen?” I asked.
“Officers on the scene said they called it in. The station put out a BOLO.”
“That’s not good enough. Get someone on the phone who knows the car description and tag number. I’m going to call Couch. We need helicopters in the air, searching. If Wendell only has a ten- or fifteen-minute head start, we at least have a vicinity to search for the car in.”
“On it,” Harrington said.
“Where did it happen?” I pulled out my phone to dial Couch.
“North of Kendell a mile or two, on Highway 821,” Harrington said.
“The same location as where his sister died.”
“It looks like it.”
“Okay. Make the call to see what he’s driving.”
Harrington did, and I dialed Couch. The phone rang in my ear.
“Yeah, Hank,” he answered.
I quickly gave Couch everything we knew.
“Where did this happen?” Couch asked.
“As far as we can tell, it happened in the same location where his sister crashed and lost her life. Harrington is now getting the exact make and model of the vehicle he stole. What can we do about getting some helicopters in the air?”
“Let me make the call to get them up now. Call me back as soon as you know the vehicle we’re looking for.”
“Okay,” I said. “How far out are you from our location here?”
“Still twenty minutes. Is the local PD on the scene?” Couch asked.
“Yeah.”
“Head to the scene of the accident and see what you can find out. Leave the house you’re at now with the locals until I get there.”
“Got it,” I said.
“Call me back as soon as you get the info on that car,” Couch said.
I confirmed and hung up.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Couch had gotten the word out to our air support that the wanted vehicle was a 2012 Ford Focus sedan, color blue. He said he would report back the second he heard anything. The last information we had on Wendell was that he left the scene of the accident heading south, which was where the helicopters would start.
Beth and I followed Harrington’s car, lights and siren on full song, for thirty minutes toward the scene of the accident. Cars gridlocked the freeway as we got within a few miles. We spent the last couple miles of the trip riding the shoulder. Ahead, through the windshield and past Harrington’s car, I could see red and blues, an ambulance, and a tow truck at the side of the road. We parked behind the last patrol car and got out of our vehicles. Fifty yards up, in the grass along the right side of the road, was the balled-up Mercedes ten or fifteen feet back from the concrete-and-metal base of a sign it had made impact with.
Harrington, Beth, and I walked to the first uniformed officer we saw.
“Who is in charge here?” Beth asked.
“That would be Patrol Sergeant Aaron Shields. You are?” the officer asked.
“FBI and Miami Dade PD. Where is the sergeant?” she asked.
“I’ll take you to him.”
We followed the officer past a string of civilian vehicles nearest the crashed Mercedes. Three uniformed officers stood together. The one in the center wore a brown uniform with a black tie, as opposed to the dark-blue uniforms of the two officers bookending him. I figured the man in the center of the group to be our sergeant. The man, looking in his later forties with a thick neck and a brown-and-gray goatee, held a clipboard full of papers he was writing on.
“This is him here,” the officer said. “Sergeant Shields?”
The man in the center of the three officers took his attention from the papers on his clipboard and looked up.
“I’m Agent Hank Rawlings. This is Agent Beth Harper and Lieutenant Harrington from Miami Dade.”
“Okay,” he said.
“The man that fled the accident here we believe is someone we are after.”
“What do you need?”
“Anyone who saw him and can let us know what happened,” I said.
“We have a couple.” The sergeant looked at the officer next to him. “Bring some of the witnesses over,” he said.
The officer turned and headed toward another group of officers standing in the grass a bit away with a number of people in street clothes. I glanced over at the Mercedes, which had a yellow tarp draped over the driver’s side of it.
“What do you have down here?” I asked the sergeant.
“DOA. He’s still in the vehicle. We’re waiting for a team to arrive and remove him. I caught a glimpse of what remained in there. It’s not something that you want to see. You can smell liquor from outside of the vehicle. We put the tarp up to block the view from the motorists passing by.” He bobbed his head back toward the clogged freeway traffic.
I glanced over at a patrol car and an officer blocking the right lane of the freeway and motioning for cars to continue on. The face of each passerby was locked on the Mercedes.
I looked at Beth and Harrington. “Start getting what you can get from the witnesses. Unfortunately, I’m going to need to walk down there and take a look.”
I didn’t get a response from either of them.
I started for the Mercedes, trying to keep my line of sight a bit away from the tarped-over area of the vehicle. I walked to the sign the Mercedes had made impact with. The base of the sign came up to my waist and was at least three feet wide. The concrete the base was made from was cracked at the top and had smeared paint and plastic on it from the collision. Around my feet was more debris that had come from the vehicle upon impact, along with what looked like pink plastic flowers. I looked down at my shoes and the grass around them—both were wet with what I assumed was antifreeze or some other fluid that had leaked from the Mercedes. A cylindrical metal pole rose from the concrete base. My eyes followed it up to where it bent at ninety degrees and held the huge sign for the next exit, hanging over two lanes of the freeway. I eyed the metal pole, so thick I couldn’t bear hug it and touch my hands. The pole, however, was free of any damage, for the concrete base had taken the brunt of the impact. Something did catch my eye on the pole, so I leaned in for a closer look—blood.
I turned away from the sign and made my way to the passenger side of the vehicle, which was far less damaged than the driver’s. In the grass was a red helmet with a clear visor that was flipped up. The helmet had a number of scratches on the right side but looked intact. The passenger door of the Mercedes hung open. I walked to it and took a quick glance inside, trying to focus on the front passenger area. The airbag was deployed. In my peripheral vision, I caught nothing but red on the driver’s side of the vehicle. I glanced up, let out a breath, and took the scene in. Ridley’s body was pinned to the dash. His right arm looked mostly undamaged. His head was crushed—the upper half through the windshield and the lower half being obscured by the dash and mangled steering wheel. The area between what remained of the twisted seat and the dash was mere inches. A foot caught my eye lower in the vehicle, but nowhere near where it should have been. I turned away and walked from the vehicle before I saw any more.
“Hank!” Beth shouted.
I glanced up to see her standing near the edge of the grass along the shoulder of the freeway. She stood with a man in street clothes. Beth waved me over.
I walked to her, trying to clear my head of the sights I’d just taken in. “Yeah?” I asked.
“This is Michael Roth. He is the owner of the stolen vehicle,” she said.
I introduced myself to the man, who looked like he was in his late twenties. He wore a white T-shirt, tight jeans, and a backward ball cap. “Run through it for me,” I said.
“Um, yeah, sure. The accident happened right in front of me. I stopped and ran up to the vehicle. So—”
I interrupted him. “Describe how the accident happened.”
“Okay,
well, I was maybe ten or fifteen car lengths behind the SUV when it just started veering off of the road. I could see the course it was on, directly for that pole that holds the sign. I mean, there really isn’t anything other than grass on the side of the freeway there. It was almost like the guy was pointing at it.”
I rubbed my eye. “Continue.”
“So the SUV hits the sign. And I mean hard. The back wheels came off of the ground. There’s shit flying all through the air. I clamp on the brakes, pull to the shoulder here, and jump out. I run over to the vehicle to help—all I see is blood on the driver’s side, but I can see through the blown-out windows someone moving on the passenger side. There was still some smoke in the car from the airbags or whatever, so I didn’t get the best of looks right away. Well, I get closer, yell if everyone is all right, and see the driver is obviously dead. His head and body were crushed. That’s when I saw the guy on the passenger side that was still moving was wearing a damn helmet. I stop in my tracks, trying to figure out what the hell I’m looking at. The guy in the helmet looks at me and asks me to help get him out. I didn’t move.”
“And then?” I asked.
“The guy gets himself out of the car, takes off his helmet, and comes at me with a gun. He grabs me, sticks a gun in my face, and steals my car.”
Beth spun the guy and showed me the back of his T-shirt with blood near the collar.
“Yeah, that’s where he grabbed me,” the guy said.
“What kind of shape was he in?” I asked.
“He was bloody. His left arm and left pant leg were covered in blood. I don’t really know if it was his or the driver’s. When he was walking, he had a bit of a limp. His left arm might have been injured, too. It was kind of hanging down a bit. Either way, after a crash like that, and seeing what happened to the other person inside, I still can’t believe anyone walked away from it.”
Beth cleared her throat. “I showed him a picture of Wendell. He confirmed that it was him.”
“And he headed south?” I asked.
“Yeah, just down the freeway there. I didn’t know what to do and couldn’t find my damn phone. It must have flown from my lap when I hit the brakes. Anyway, a woman that pulled over behind me and saw what happened called the—”
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