“Fine. Let’s move on,” he said.
“Here is what we do know. Our first victim Alice Harding appears to have been an abduction of opportunity. Right now it looks like she was at the wrong place at the wrong time. The only tangible thing we have is a set of car keys that haven’t matched anything so far. The second victim was Elaine Gregory. We have even less from her. Someplace in all of this the late Professor Hilton is involved. At least that’s what I think. I don’t believe in coincidences. He was killed because of something he saw or heard.”
“And you think this last girl; Leigh Leonard was taken by the same guy?” Marcus asked.
“I think that is exactly what happened. None of the victims have been sexually assaulted so the motive is still a mystery,” I replied.
“Everything is a mystery at this point,” Dan chimed in.
“So what do you want us to do?” Marcus asked.
“Our first priority is getting Leigh back before she turns up like the others. I would like to have you start looking into her background. Talk to the parents; they seem really nice. Find out about friends, boyfriends, or anything else you can about her. Find out who her teacher is and see if he or she knows anything about Leigh.
We have a warrant for Professor Hilton's house and garage. Dan and I will go check it out and talk to the neighbors. We’ll see what we can did up and maybe find a connection,” I told them.
For once LeRoy didn’t act like a jerk. The questions he asked were good ones and I was honestly hoping we could work together. Right now I need all the help we could get. I wasn’t the least bit worried about Marcus. He was a good detective and didn’t need to be told how to do his job. With him, you just pointed him in the direction you wanted him to go and let him have at it.
CHAPTER THIRTY- SEVEN
Professor Hilton’s house was a lot like he was. Sort of stodgy, a little rundown, and neglected. If the place had elbows, there would be patches on them. Snow was piled up on the front porch a foot deep or more. I could see mail sticking out of the mail box and foot prints where the mailman had struggled to get up the stairs.
It was another case where I doubted we could get the door open unless we shoveled off some of the accumulated snow. I wasn’t too inclined to undertake the task.
“Did you bring the garage opener?” I shouted at Dan.
He held it up in his gloved hand. Dork. I didn’t want to see it; I wanted him to push the button. Finally he must have figured it out because the door started to go up. The two car garage sheltered some sort of a sports car that was covered. The other bay was empty expect for a few oil spots on the floor.
“Okay, when we get inside make sure you have your gloves on and go slowly. We have all the time in the world. I’m not sure what we are looking for but hopefully we will know it when we see it.”
“That could be anything,” Dan said.
“Yes. Yes it could.”
We only made it about ten feet into the room before we could see that someone had trashed the house. Obviously we weren’t the only ones looking for something. What I didn’t know was if the killer came here first and when he couldn’t find it, went to the hospital and killed the professor. It just as easily could have been the other way around. Bottom line, we were just a little late.
“What a disaster,” Dan said, looking the place over. Broken dishes, tables turned over, the couch ripped apart and foam and stuffing all over the place. Tornadoes have done less damage to a trailer park than this place had experienced.
“Wonder if they found what they were looking for?” I said more to myself that Dan.
“A bookshelf had been dumped in the middle of the floor but strangely enough the books appeared to be held in place, still on the shelves.
“Help me lift the bookcase.”
He looked at me sort of strangely and did a little shrug.
“They dumped the bookcase but it doesn’t look like they went through the books. The guy was a professor. Books are his thing. Maybe whatever it is we are looking for is in one of these books.”
“I suppose stranger things have happened,” he replied, bending down to help me pull the bookcase back upright.
This seemed perfectly logical to me. They probably just dumped the bookcase over thinking there was a safe or something behind it. All we had to do was go through the books and we would be heroes.
Ninety minutes later we were not heroes. We were more like zeros. We had gone through every single book and found nothing. I guess whoever broke in wasn’t so dumb after all.
“That’s kind of strange,” Dan said, pointing to one of the biggest and thickest dictionaries I have ever seen.
“The spline is a different color and there is no writing on it.”
I started to lift it but the damn thing must have weighted twenty pounds. I stuck two fingers in the top of the spline and pulled. The backing came off with a ripping sound and a SD card was tucked inside.
“Wow. Good eye Detective Roberts. Nice pick up. This has to be what they were looking for. I think what is on this might be what got him killed.”
“Is our warrant good for looking or things not in plain sight?” he asked.
It was a good question. A warrant doesn’t give you carté blanch to do whatever you please. They are often very specific in what you can and cannot do. Since the good professor was no longer an issue, the warrant didn’t place limits on what we could or couldn’t do. Whatever we got off the card was legal and would hold up in court.
That is assuming it wasn’t some shots from his last vacation. It would be my luck that they were from an old folk’s nudist colony.
“Let’s look around just in case we are missing something. I don’t want to get too excited and possibly overlook something else important,” I told Dan.
An hour and a half later we had pretty much exhausted our search possibilities. I did find an Android Tablet under a big pile of clothes in his bedroom. The face had been smashed. I tried to boot it up but it was no go. I decided to let the tech-heads take a crack at it.
“Boss, I don’t think we are going to find anything else,” Dan said, sitting down on one of the kitchen chairs.
“You’re probably right. I’ll tell you, I sure hope this SD card has something useful. If it doesn’t we are right back to square one again.”
“He kept it there for a reason. There has to be something important on it.”
Dan was right. Most people don't go around hiding their SD cards. It was going on five-thirty by the time we closed the house up and locked the doors. Dan put down the garage door and we headed back to the station.
A lot of hope was riding on this one little card.
CHAPTER THIRTY- EIGHT
Leigh had worked frantically for the past thirty minutes to try to get free. She knew time was running out. Her wrists were raw where she had tried to rub the restraints on the edge of the table. Even though she could see her breath because of the cold, she was sweating.
Twice she had stopped and laid back down thinking she had heard him coming back but all she did was waste valuable time. Just as she was about to give up, the strap on her right wrist broke.
She quickly undid her other hand and then each of her feet. Jumping off the table she looked around for her clothes. She was frantically searching everyplace but they were nowhere to be found. She knew time was running out. She grabbed the blanket and wrapped it around her the best she could.
She stopped and listened. She looked out the window and could see a set of headlights heading towards her. She ran across the room and yanked the door open. Snow was piled up to her knees. She didn’t hesitate, she took off running.
The cold bit into her face and legs and she tried to get as far away as she could from the building. She knew she was leaving tracks but there was nothing she could do about it. She fell once, tumbling through the snow. She jumped back up, grabbed the blanket and started running again with it under her arm.
She could hear shouting behind
her but she didn’t even look back, she just put her head down and kept running. Where to go? Which direction? It was dark and she had no idea where she was or where she could get help. The one thing she did know was that if she stopped she would be dead before the hour was over.
She came to a small creek. She had to make a decision. Go across or run parallel to it? The shouting was louder as it cut through the cold night air. She decided to just run straight ahead. The water was freezing as hit her feet and legs but she didn’t have time to worry or care. She needed to put some distance between her and the mad man chasing her.
Taking a quick look over her shoulder she didn’t see the fence until she ran right into it. The force threw her back and she landed sprawled in the snow. The wind was knocked out of her and it took her a few seconds to realize what had happened. She got to her feet and saw dark spots dripping in the snow. She had sliced her leg and arm open. Barbed wire ran along the length of the fence.
Grabbing the blanket and tossing it over the barbed wire she climbed over the top and fell on the other side. She tried to retrieve the blanket but it was tangled in the spikes.
“I’ll find you and kill you,” came the voice drifting across the field.
It sounded off to her right. Maybe he had lost her trail. It was getting darker. It gave her new energy and she took off running again. She headed in the opposite direction from where she thought the voice had come from. She ran until she could no longer pick up her legs high enough and she stumbled and fell face down in the snow once again.
It felt good at the moment. She was breathing hard and even in the cold she was a mass of sweat. She rolled over on her back and looked up at the sky. It was heavily overcast. More snow was on the way.
“Damn you. You had better come back. If I have to drag you back you aren’t going to like it,” the voice cut through the night air.
He was closer than she had expected. She lifted her head slightly and could see him walking, head down, just a few yards away. He was trying to track her but it was too dark and he didn’t have a flashlight. She decided all she could do at this point was stay still and hope he kept going.
She was suddenly chilled. The snow and fear had overcome the physical exertion. She wanted to get up and run again but she knew if he saw her that he would overtake her and that would be the end.
“Where are you Leigh? If you come back I won’t hurt you. We can talk about how to make this all work,” he yelled.
He was no more than ten yards away. She considered trying to cover with snow but knew even that movement might lead him to her. For now all she could do was wait.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Marcus and LeRoy were waiting when we got back. I sent out for a couple of pizzas so we could eat while we compared notes.
“We may have something here. A burgundy GMC Envoy, registered to a Terrance Ashton has been involved in a couple of fender benders. The interesting thing is that he had also had a couple of complaints filed against him by female students. One for harassment and the other for breaking into her apartment. Rumor, and it’s a rumor only at this point, has it that he has been in several more altercations with females,” Marcus told us.
“So why is he still in school? Does he have a sheet?”
“No.”
“No?”
He just shrugged.
“Okay, why not?” I finally asked.
I bit into the pizza and immediately burned the roof of my mouth. Why is it that you have to burn yourself on the first bite? It’s like Newton’s twelfth law of pizza. You have to burn the skin off the top of your mouth in order for the pizza to be really good or something like that.
“Benton Ashton III.”
“And he is?” I managed to get out.
“The father of Terrence Ashton. Benton Ashton owns the city. Maybe the state for all I know. Obscenely rich.”
“Ah.”
“Why does that matter?” Dan asked.
We all just looked at him.
“The rich rule goes into effect,” Marcus finally said.
“The rich rule?”
“Yeah. We have a three law system. The Average Joe system, The White Color Crime system and the Obscenely Rich system.”
“We pretty much handle the Average Joe cases. The rich have a different set of rules and laws. We don’t get to dally in those very much,” I explained to him.
“Hmm,” was all he said, taking a big bite out of his pepperoni pizza.
I could see the wheels turning. He was trying to figure out if we were yanking his chain. I wish we were but the fact is; that’s how our system operates.
“What else did you turn up?”
“Not much really. All the people we talked to told us what a really great girl she was. You know, the usual answers they give when they talk to the police. They don’t want to come across like they may have had something against them. Her teacher, Doctor Lance Stone, was very complimentary about her. Great student, A grades, hard worker, blah, blah, blah. A tad too friendly for me. You got the feeling he thought he was pretty hot stuff.”
“Think he had anything to do with her disappearance?”
“I don’t think so. From what we got from the other students, Leigh was in and out of class and never hung around. She didn’t seem to hang out at the college even to study. Did it all at home or at work.”
“Check him out anyway. Just to be sure.”
“You got it.”
“Well, we went to toss Professor Hilton's home and found someone had beaten us to it. The place was wrecked from one end to the other. Dan spotted a book that looked strange and we found an SD card stuffed in the spline. It’s at the lab as we speak.”
“Hey, way to go Dan,” Marcus said.
“No big deal,” Dan modestly replied.
“Damn right it’s a big deal. Small things like that are often what we need to break a case open. You did good.”
“Gosh, thanks.”
OMG. Did he just say gosh? This guy is a hoot. Gosh. I haven’t heard anyone say that around here in...well forever.
Since there was little else we could do at this time of night we decided to wait until the lab work came back.
~~
I was all bundled up when I stepped outside of the station.
“Hey Bartoni,” a voice said. It was Jimmy Cromwell.
“Hey yourself. What are you doing in this neck of the woods?” I asked.
He started walking toward me and staggered a little. That was not a good sign. He had probably been drinking. Jimmy was not a good drunk.
“I thought I would take you to get a beer,” he said, his speech slightly slurred.
“Wow, gee. Listen Jimmy, the thing is, I’m in the middle of this case and I need to get some rest. We have been going at it sixteen hours a day. You know how it is.”
“Awe come on, just one little drink isn’t going to hurt you.”
“I’m sorry Jimmy. I just can’t tonight. I've got to get some sleep.”
“Hey, I’ll bet I could wake you up. Get the old juices flowing. You know what I mean?” he said.
He was starting to get in my personal space. I’m not good with that. I have this little layer I like to keep around me and when people push against it, I have a tendency to push back.
“Jimmy, you have been drinking. I’m tired and I don’t need this right now. Go home and sleep it off.”
“Come on Bartoni. You know I could get even a cold broad like you warmed up,” he said grinning like a fool.
Wasn’t he just the cutest thing? So clever. And what a pick-up line. Made me want to consider taking him up on the offer, instead I brought my knee up into his groin. He doubled over and went down to his knees.
“Go home Jimmy. You have a wife and two kids. Go home,” I said and turned to walk away.
He fell forward and grabbed me around the legs and I fell face forward. I just had time to get my hands down. The snow helped some but it still knocked the wind out of me. I fel
t him crawling up on top of my back, pinning me to the ground.
“Jimmy. Stop this. Damn you. You need to think about what you’re doing. Stop. Now,” I yelled at him.
“No Bartoni. I swear, I’ll do you right here. You think you’re too good for every man that comes along. Well not for Jimmy Cromwell,” he panted.
“Stop. Jimmy this isn’t worth going to jail for. Stop before it’s too late,” I screamed.
Where the hell are all the cops when you need one? Oh, I am a cop. Still I needed a different one just now. He was trying to raise my coat up and I felt him yanking at the back of my pants. Suddenly he was just gone.
I rolled over and Jimmy was lying on the ground, looking up dazed. Blood was running out of his mouth. Dan Roberts stood over him, his fist balled.
“I’m pretty sure she said no,” he said, looking down at Dan.
“Who the hell are you,” Jimmy managed to get out.
“The guy that will beat the living snot out of you if you ever bother Detective Bartoni again. Understand?” he said and slapped Jimmy across the face so hard he fell over on his side.
“I mean it. You even look at her cross-eyed and I’ll come after you,” he said and reached down and helped me up.
“Where did you come from?” I said wide-eyed.
“I knew you needed a ride home. Did you forget I brought you in this morning?”
“Crap. I forgot all about it. The four wheel drive.”
“Ready?” he said.
“Yeah, get me out of here.”
“I mean it Cromwell. I’ll be keeping a close eye on you. Don’t make me have to really hurt you,” he said kicking him on the bottom of the foot.
Just as we were walking to the car, several cops came out of the station. They looked at Jimmy lying there and us walking off. No one said a word.
CHAPTER FORTY
“Are you okay?” Dan asked while I was putting on my seat belt.
“Sure, I’m fine.”
We drove in silence for a few minutes before I said, “No. Actually I’m not. I had trouble with Jimmy once before when he was my partner. He is a pretty good guy until he starts drinking. He has always kidded about getting in my pants but he has never done anything like this before.”
DEAD AIM - Angie Bartoni Case File #3 (Angie Bartoni Case Files Book 1) Page 12