“We’ll get to him in due time.”
“Are you sure he’s someone you want to keep putting off?” Paige came back into the conversation. “He had a connection to these cases. He would have seen the people at the time, the animals after they were brought in. He would have seen them fighting for life.”
“Once Nadia has his full background, we’ll talk to him,” Jack replied.
“His stepbrother found the body.”
“And that could be completely unrelated.” Zachery made a play on words and waited for us to acknowledge, but his efforts were lost on Paige, who crossed her arms.
“I’m not dismissing it that easily.”
Jack went into his jacket pocket and moved toward the front door, signaling an end to the conversation. The debate was squashed before it gained flame.
Stepping outside, the cold morning air bit my ears and stung my face. It was still dark and the wind howled, kicking up snow from the ground. But, thank God, nothing fresh was falling.
Jack lit his cigarette and hopped into our SUV. I got in the passenger side and watched Paige and Zachery load into theirs.
She had a point, and I wasn’t sure why Jack wasn’t listening to her. Kent Fields could be working with his stepbrother to exact revenge on these men. The time that had passed would sever the connection and relieve them of suspicion. Maybe that’s what the man was counting on. What’s that term?—hiding in plain sight.
*****
Craig Bowen was of average height. He had dark hair, brown eyes, and wore silver-framed glasses. We caught up with him at the city yard when he was getting ready to head out.
His orange snowsuit would be visible in the dark, so it wasn’t hard to find him. We walked in his direction, holding up our credentials.
I took the lead. “We’d like to talk to you about—”
“The body I found? It’s making me a celebrity around these parts.”
“Hey, hey!” Another garbage man called out and pointed at him. “You are the man!”
Bowen dismissed the compliment with a wave of his hand and moved toward his truck. “Now, I’m sure you spoke with my boss to get back here, but I’ve got a schedule to keep.”
“You have ten minutes before you have to head out.”
Bowen’s face cracked into a smile. “That sly bastard.” His arms dropped to his sides and he tucked his hands into the pockets of his snowsuit. “Have at it then.” His shoulders hiked upward and didn’t return to a relaxed state, giving the saying shoulders at the height of one’s ears a literal manifestation.
“Had you seen Darren Simpson before that day?” Jack asked.
“No, why would—”
“Think about your answer.”
Jack was at it again. The searing eye contact, the locked jawline. His entire aura challenging the man to lie.
“Okay, fine. I saw the man previously, but the whole city did.”
“Why?”
“Seriously?” Bowen glanced at me. “You don’t know this?” He pointed a finger between us. “You’re testing me, aren’t you? This is a test.”
“We’re trying to find out who killed a man, Mr. Bowen.” Jack’s dry tone propelled Bowen’s energy into a regressive landslide.
He held up both hands. “I’ll play along. He was in the paper years ago.”
Jack and I remained silent.
“For poisoning a dog,” Bowen added.
We still didn’t say a thing.
“Listen, I don’t know what you two—the FBI—want from me, but I didn’t kill the guy.”
“You found the body.”
“Trust me when I say I wish I hadn’t.”
“Most people would vomit if they stumbled across a body. The only trace recovered from the surrounding area belonged to the victim.”
“Sounds like you’ll have a tough killer to catch.” His eyes skimmed over us to a clock on the wall.
“Surplus of five minutes left. You’re still good,” I said.
Bowen’s eyes shot to me. “I don’t know what to say. I can’t help you.”
Jacked asked what he was doing around the estimated time of Simpson’s death.
“What, are you serious?”
“Completely.” Jack’s face remained indifferent.
“You think I killed the man and staged the find?”
“It would be a good thing to fall back on, and you would have a good reason to want the man dead. You are the leader of Humanity Against Animal Abuse, are you not?”
“Ah, that’s what this is about? Yeah, I’m guilty of giving a shit. People abuse animals all the time thinking they can get away with it. You know what the sad part is? They can. They do. All the time.”
“Sounds like you have passion.”
“I absolutely have a passion when it comes to this. Someone has to stand strong for those animals. God created the earth and put man in charge of caring for them, not in charge of abusing them. Good men strive to make a difference.”
“Your records show you’re the stepbrother of Kent Fields.”
Bowen laughed. “Yeah, good for me, eh? A lot of good it does me. The arrogant son of a bitch hasn’t been a part of the family for years. It’s almost Christmas and I doubt he’s given us a thought. I can’t remember the last time we had dinner as a family. He’s too big for us now.”
I glanced at Jack and worked through my assessment of Bowen. He had motive. He hated animal abusers and made his opinion public. On top of which, he found the body, had a stepbrother who reported on the original cases, and may have had a hand in helping the animals to recovery. If this wasn’t enough, his background check made me question his judgment.
“You spent some time behind bars,” I said. “Maybe you miss them and want to go back.”
“If you had anything against me—proof—we wouldn’t be standing around talking.” He passed another glance at the clock. “Time’s up. Good day, gentlemen. I’d wish you luck in finding your killer, but if he’s targeting animal abusers,” another shoulder shrug, “I’d say they are getting what they deserve.” He reached for the door handle on the truck’s cab.
I put my hand on his forearm. “Not so quick.”
His eyes went to my hand.
I kept it there a few seconds longer just to prove I was removing it out of my own accord. “You sent hate mail to Simpson when the charges were dropped. We have testimony to that.”
Bowen dropped his arm and laughed hard enough that tears seeped from the corners of his eyes.
“Something amusing about that?” Jack asked.
The laughter stopped instantly, as if it were on a soundtrack and someone hit pause.
“Yeah. The fact she, I assume it’s the woman Simpson was married to, remembers. That tells me I made a difference.”
“She said when she called you, you couldn’t have cared less about the death threat you had made on behalf of the organization.”
“It was just talk.”
“Threatening people’s lives isn’t just talk.”
“You must believe me. I didn’t kill that man, or no man for that matter. I can’t say that I’ve never thought of taking revenge on these people, but I’ve never acted on it. The letters, the threats, they were as far as I went.”
“So you’re confessing to threatening a man’s life?” I asked.
“Please don’t arrest me.” He backed against the truck. “It was a long time ago.”
“Any other time I’d take the pleasure, but right now there are bigger things we need to deal with.”
Jack gave me a look and I wasn’t sure what he was trying to communicate. Maybe I was taking the machismo too far? Oh well, it had to be let out for fresh air sometimes.
“One more thing, if you didn’t kill Simpson, maybe your stepbrother did?”
Bowen licked his lips, and his face paled like he was going to be sick. “Hey, anything’s possible.”
Chapter 11
The sound of barking dogs resonated through the shelter. The cacophony was comp
rised of several breeds, the ranges going from a higher octave to a lower register.
The front of the building had a couple of large chained-off areas for animals, but there weren’t any out and it likely had to do with all the snowfall they had received yesterday.
Paige had never had a dog in her life, even as a kid, but after she’d moved away from home, her parents had gotten one. They said it would have taken too much to care for kids and an animal, but they now had the time to devote to a pet. Paige didn’t buy their reasoning. She put more stock in the house feeling empty after nearly thirty years of having kids in the home. She never voiced her suspicion.
A woman in her mid-twenties approached. She held a cat in her arm and scratched its ears. Its purrs could be heard several feet away. “Can I help you?”
“We’d like to speak to the manager.” Paige held up her official ID, as did Zach.
The woman analyzed them. “Well, you’ve got one of them.”
Paige proceeded with the introductions. “And what is your name?”
An extra-deep massage behind the cat’s head. “Alisha Clark.”
“Do you have some place we can talk?” Paige’s eyes fell to the feline in the woman’s arms.
Alisha held it up in the air and nuzzled its forehead to hers. “Time to sleep for a bit, my friend.” She smiled, a flash of contentment washing over her face, as if the cat could understand everything she said. She placed it in a kennel behind the desk. The cat peered up at her and then headed to the back of the space and curled into a tightly knit ball of fur.
Alisha smiled at Paige. “That’s Thor.”
Paige laughed.
“Yeah, like in those superhero movies. He’s a real fighter and not of this world. Any other cat may have given up, but not my boy. I see it on your faces—I get a little attached, what can I say? I actually helped nurse him back to health and served as his foster care for a while.” Alisha paused, assessing them. “I take it you don’t know much about what we do here besides let people adopt animals. You do know that much?”
“Actually, part of the reason we’re here is to get a better understanding,” Zach said.
Alisha leaned on the counter. “You came to ask about what we do here? Something like that could be found on the Internet, I would think.”
“We’re specifically interested in how things work when it comes to animal abuse cases.”
She pulled back, her arms laced tightly together. “What about them?”
“How do charges get filed in a case like that?”
“There’s a process. It’s not really complicated, but it needs to be followed perfectly, or the bastards walk.”
“Bastards?” Paige said.
Alisha’s eyes snapped to hers. “Yeah. The dicks who abuse animals.”
Paige found the sudden shift in Alisha to be unsettling. “This makes you very angry.”
“Damn right it does. There is no reason for it, and the people—if you want to call them that—who do this, they deserve so much more than what they get.”
They could have rushed to a conclusion about their unsub being a man. A woman amped on revenge would be capable of most anything as well. Paige had to probe Alisha’s statement. “What do they get?”
“Monetary charges, sometimes a little jail time, probation. It’s a joke. You know the expression, getting away with murder, well, these people, even when they are—quote/unquote—held accountable, they get a slap on the hand and sent away.”
“You think that these people should meet the same fate they inflict on the abused animals?”
Alisha’s eyes fired. “I know what the right answer is, but in a just society…When you’ve seen animals barely clinging to life and realize the only reason is because some bastard used it as a punching bag, or neglected it, it’s a test of one’s inner character. Before you ask, the fight between right and wrong, that’s in all of us. Our conscience, some call it. I can’t say I haven’t fantasized about exacting the same treatment on these animal abusers.”
Paige and Zach remained quiet.
“Something happened, didn’t it? I can tell by your faces.”
“You don’t read the paper, or watch the news?” Zach asked.
She slowly shook her head. “Between here, night class, and another paying job, no. What happened?” She paraphrased her original question. Her eyes clearly communicated she wasn’t going to back down until she had her answer.
“A man was murdered, and we believe it has to do with his past. He was charged with poisoning a dog, but ended up beating those charges.”
Alisha’s eyes blanked over. “We haven’t had a case like that in a while. We recently brought in a few cats who were given antifreeze to drink.”
“This specific instance goes back over twenty years.”
“He was killed twenty years ago?”
“No, he was killed last week, but the charges go back that far.”
“Oh.”
“Oh?” Paige mimicked, hoping Alisha would expound on her line of thought.
Alisha shook her head. “All I know is, I didn’t do it. I know what I just said—” She crossed her arms.
“We’d like you to walk us through the process of placing charges,” Zach said.
“From the beginning? Let’s see. We have what we call agents. They are specifically trained for handling these types of situations.”
“Types of situations?” Paige asked for clarity.
“When we have to go in and get the animals out of these homes. First, we’ll receive a report of abuse. From there we arrange for one of these agents, along with staff from the shelter, to go to the address, and, of course, cops need to be there too.”
Paige nodded. “Whenever a formal charge is involved, that would make sense.”
“Exactly. That’s the gist of it, but basically, just as a lawyer makes a case for the courts, the same is true when it comes to the agent. They are responsible to ensure that we gather everything to support the charge and have this submitted as evidence in the case. If they mess up and forget to log something, it’s too late. There’s no amendment. A few guilty parties have walked because of this.”
“Give us an example.”
“Proof of ownership.” Alisha adjusted her stance. “First you have to prove that the animal fell under the person’s care. Whenever you remove an animal from a property, they must sign off that you’re taking them. This serves as proof of ownership. I know in at least one case this let a man get off. He and his live-in girlfriend had over thirty cats. They were tired of them taking over. They called for us to get them off the property. It started off as a plea for help, but when our volunteer told them it would take time to arrange something like this, the man said that if we didn’t get there within a half hour, they’d poison the cats.”
“What happened?”
“Everything was arranged in a thrown-together rush and we were still too late for some of them. We pulled in and the man was walking back to the house from the barn. He had just laid out the rat poison and antifreeze.”
The thought that a human being would do something like this had Paige’s stomach churning. “I can’t believe people are capable of this.”
“You’ve probably seen a lot worse.”
Paige swallowed awkwardly. The woman was right, on a certain level. The victims she sought justice for were humans, but it somehow struck her as worse when the abused were animals. It went against the natural order where men were to care for them. She spoke her thoughts out loud. “I’m used to seeing people taking out their own perverse justice against other people, but not their aggressions on an innocent animal.” Realizing that she phrased it used to seeing made her realize how callous the job had made her.
“It is rough to witness.”
“So what happened in this case?”
“The one with the cats? The property owner signed off for every cat removed, but these weren’t submitted as evidence, and once you’ve had your say, well, you’re done
there.”
“They walked?”
“Yep. And sadly, this happens more than it should. The agent is responsible for ensuring everything is filed properly. That’s the point of training them, and they are to have an attention for detail. If they don’t, then they are of no use to us.”
“What about photographs? Aren’t these taken as evidence?”
“Yes, but without the proof being submitted, our hands are tied. Here’s another sad fact. We were called out to a farm once. This horse’s hooves were so long, they were curling upward. They got a five thousand dollar fine and were put on probation for two years. Meaning that after two years they could go get themselves another horse and abuse it. The cycle would be able to start all over again.”
Listening to Alisha tell these stories made Paige empathetic toward their unsub. Typically the driving force to stop a killer was to bring about justice. On this case, the line was blurred. “You mentioned that these agents are integral. So what happens when an agent fails to do their job properly? Do they get let go or can there be charges laid against them?”
“They are reviewed, and if it was negligence, they’ll be let go.”
“Being an agent is a paid position?” Zach asked.
“Absolutely. While most of us at the shelter are volunteers, there are a few paid positions. Supervisory staff, agents, vets, fund managers.”
Paige regained eye contact with Alisha. “Fund managers?”
“The person who basically manages the shelter, ensures we have enough money to keep running. They are also responsible for arranging fundraisers, but the bulk of our support comes from our volunteers and donations.”
Paige had a thought and wanted to see it out. “You mentioned donations? Do you have regular contributors?”
“Of course.”
“Could we see that list?”
“With a warrant. I’m sorry, but if I just handed it over I’d lose my post here, and even though I’m not paid, I love my work.”
“I can understand that, and if we had questions on a specific case?”
“You’d best be speaking with the manager who runs the place.”
Paige nodded. “And their name?”
“Kim Delaney. I can leave a message for her to call you.”
The Defenseless (Brandon Fisher FBI Series Book 3) Page 6