Ruckman Road: An Alex Penfield Novel

by Robert W. Stephens

  “Yeah, and why keep it in the garage?”

  “Would you want that thing in your house?” Torres asked.

  “Good point.”

  Penfield’s phone vibrated in his pocket. He pulled it out and looked at the display as they walked through the lobby. It showed the California area code.

  “This is Detective Alex Penfield.”

  Penfield listened to the caller speak as he and Torres exited the building and walked to the car.

  “Okay. The airport’s about thirty minutes from the house. We’ll meet you there shortly,” Penfield said.

  He ended the call and slid the phone back into his front pocket.

  “Was that Hannah Talbot?” Torres asked.

  “Yeah. She called me from baggage claim. She wants to drive straight to her brother’s house.”

  “Good. I wanted to head back there anyway. I want to go through his computer.”

  Penfield and Torres stopped by the leasing office and got the key to the house. They waited in their car for Hannah Talbot to arrive. She called after pulling into the fort, and Penfield told her where to park her rental car. She pulled her dark blue rental sedan into the empty spot beside theirs. Penfield watched her close her eyes, take a deep breath, and exit the car. They greeted her and walked toward the house.

  Hannah was much younger-looking than Penfield had expected. He knew Joseph Talbot was thirty-eight years old from the birthdate given on his lease application. Hannah looked like she couldn’t be more than twenty-five years old. She was tall, and her slender body looked to be shivering under her thin gray jacket. Her body clearly had no time to acclimate to the colder Virginia climate. Her long dark hair was pulled back in a ponytail like Torres, but it had been pulled through a black baseball cap without a logo or name on the front. Penfield could tell from the circles under her eyes that she hadn’t slept in a while.

  “Are there any updates on my brother?” Hannah asked, as they continued to the house.

  “No, the Coast Guard did another search this morning but found nothing,” Penfield said.

  “When will they call off the search?” Hannah asked.

  “They just did about an hour ago,” Penfield said.

  Hannah didn’t react to the news as Penfield expected her to. She seemed more interested in looking at the large white house her brother had rented.

  “Is this the place?” she asked.

  They stopped on the sidewalk directly in front of the house. The white boards of the house were almost blinding with the bright winter sunlight bouncing off of them.

  “Your brother had the unit to the left,” Torres said.

  “He described the house to me. It’s even bigger than I thought it was,” Hannah said.

  They walked onto the front porch and unlocked the door. Penfield stood to the side while Hannah walked through the doorway, followed by Torres, and then Penfield taking up the trail. Both of the detectives watched Hannah as she gazed at the large but empty surroundings.

  “Did your brother ever mention a break-in?” Penfield asked.

  “You asked me that last night. He never said anything to me,” Hannah said.

  Torres pointed to one of the cameras in the upper corner of the living room.

  “He’s placed these cameras in most of the rooms. Did he ever say anything about them?”

  She shook her head.

  “I’m not sure why he would put them here, but my brother’s a video nut. He’s always messing around with cameras and editing software.”

  Penfield noticed she referenced her brother in the present tense.

  “As you can see, there’s not a lot of furniture in this place. In fact, just a couple of rooms have anything in them. Did he say anything about that?” Penfield asked.

  “My brother went through a divorce about a year ago. His ex-wife took everything. He doesn’t have a lot of money, so I’m not surprised the place is mostly empty. He came here for a fresh start.”

  “Does his ex-wife know he’s missing?” Torres asked.

  “I called her last night and left a message. Who knows if I’ll get a call back?”

  Her tone was bitter, and it was obvious she wasn’t a fan of her former sister-in-law. Hannah turned away from them and walked into the kitchen. She looked around briefly and then headed into the back room where the sofa, table, television, and desktop computer workstation were. She walked over to one of the windows and looked outside at the playground.

  Penfield and Torres followed her into the room. Torres sat down at the fold-out table and powered up the desktop computer while Penfield stayed near the doorway. He studied Hannah but couldn’t get a good read on her. She seemed detached. He assumed it was a coping mechanism, but there was no way to be sure.

  “Did your brother ever mention anyone named Sarah?” Penfield asked.

  Penfield couldn’t see Hannah’s expression since she was still looking out the window. She turned back to him a few seconds later.

  “No. I’ve never heard him mention anyone by that name.”

  “What was his ex-wife’s name?” Penfield asked.

  “Beth.”

  “We’d like to get her number from you.”

  “Of course.”

  Torres powered on the computer and looked at the monitor. She saw Joseph Talbot’s name listed in the username box and a blank box underneath for the password. She looked up at Hannah.

  “Have any idea what your brother’s password is?”

  “Try ‘Hannah-is-nuts,’” she said.

  “Serious?” Torres asked.

  “It’s his password for everything.”

  Torres typed the phrase into the security box and the screen changed to the desktop photo, which was an attractive scenic shot of the Fort Monroe lighthouse.

  Penfield hoped the phrase was more of a friendly sign of one sibling teasing another and not an accurate description of her mental state. The last thing he wanted to deal with in this strange missing person’s investigation was a crazy person.

  “Anything jump out at you?” Penfield asked Torres.

  Torres looked at the monitor screen. There were over a dozen folders on the desktop. Some had generic labels like “Word Docs” and “Fort Monroe Photos.” There was also one called “Tax Stuff.” She then found one labeled “House Video” and clicked on it. That folder revealed several subfolders, each one named after a specific room in the house.

  “Looks like I found the video files for these cameras,” Torres said.

  “These must be back-ups from what’s on the digital video recorder,” Penfield said.

  Torres looked under the table and saw an orange Lacie-brand portable drive plugged into one of the USB ports on the front of the desktop computer.

  “I’m guessing that’s another back-up,” she said.

  Hannah walked over to Torres and stood behind her.

  Torres clicked on the folder named “Living Room.” It had twenty to thirty subfolders of its own.

  “Each one has a date on it,” Torres said.

  She clicked on the folder that had the date for three days ago, which was the most recent folder as far as she could tell. Inside that folder was a QuickTime video file. Torres double-clicked on the file, and an image of the living room appeared on the monitor. She hit the play button on the video player. They watched the color video advance, but nothing was on the screen besides the empty room.

  “Check out the shadows on the floor.” Torres pointed to the screen. “They’re jumping around when the sun moves throughout the day. I’m guessing these cameras were set up to record just a few frames every minute or so.”

  “Makes sense. I doubt he’d have enough storage capacity on the DVR or the drives to roll footage every second of the day,” Penfield said. “Try another folder.”

  Torres closed the video file and opened the folder labeled “Den.” She opened the sub folder from three days prior and played the video file. They saw the room they were in now. Sofa, table, television, c
omputer workstation.

  “Can you scroll faster?” Penfield asked.

  Torres dragged the arrow slowly across the video’s timeline. She saw the shadows in the room change until they eventually vanished and were replaced by the darkness of the night. Then they saw a man enter the room. He flipped the light switch on beside the doorway, and the three light bulbs on the dusty ceiling fan illuminated. He walked over to the workstation and sat down on the old desk chair. It was difficult to tell his height or even see his face very well from the high angle of the camera. Penfield did notice the full head of dark hair. It was long on top and would easily cover the face if it was wet. That matched what the jogger who saw the body in the bay had mentioned during her interview with the detectives. Penfield also noticed the black sweatshirt that resembled Tom DeAngelo’s from Talbot’s surveyor job. He couldn’t see the company logo from the camera’s angle.

  “That’s Joe,” Hannah said without hesitation.

  In the video, Joseph Talbot powered his computer on. They watched as he opened various folders and checked the different cameras throughout the house. They could just make out the different rooms changing, mostly by looking at the placement of the windows and the shadows or absence of shadows, but they weren’t able to ascertain if Talbot was seeing anything of interest in those rooms. He didn’t react to anything, at least his body language or lack of body movement didn’t make it seem that way. The skipping forward in time from the infrequent video recording also made it more difficult to judge body movements. They couldn’t see if his facial expression changed, although the big jumps in time would have made it impossible anyway. Torres turned to Hannah after they had watched him for a couple of minutes, which probably equated to an hour of the actual time Talbot spent reviewing the video files.

  “You have no idea why your brother may have done this?” Torres asked.

  Hannah shook her head.

  “I spoke to him maybe once a week. He said he loved living here. I don’t know why he would have done something like this. It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “What about his job? Any stress there?” Penfield asked.

  “Not that I know of. It wasn’t his dream job by any means, but he said it paid the bills. I know he just wanted to start over after his divorce.”

  “Did you know your brother was fired from his job? We met with his boss yesterday. They let him go because he wasn’t showing up for work,” Torres said.

  “My brother’s never been fired in his life. He always did great at work. His last boss offered him a big raise to keep him from quitting and moving to Virginia.”

  “I’m sure the divorce was hard on him. How was he handling that?” Penfield asked.

  “I know what you’re getting at. You want to know if my brother would have hurt himself, and the answer’s no. He loved life. He would have never done anything like that,” Hannah said.

  Torres opened up some of the other folders.

  “There must be well over a hundred videos in all. It will take a long time to go through these,” Torres said.

  “We don’t even know what we’re looking for, what he was looking for,” Penfield said.

  “I can help go through them. It will give me something to do. I feel like I’m going to go crazy if I don’t have something to do,” Hannah said.

  Torres looked at Penfield. He nodded.

  “I can get a few thumb drives. Make copies for everyone,” Torres said.

  “Where are you staying?” Penfield asked.

  “At the Hampton Arms,” Hannah said.

  “It’s about ten minutes from here. Nice place. Lots of restaurants across the street,” Penfield said.

  “What are you going to do next?” Hannah asked.

  “We go through the video files like Torres suggested. Maybe something will turn up. Beyond that, there’s not much more we can do,” Penfield said.

  “So my brother just goes missing, and nothing is done about it?” Hannah asked.

  “We’re doing something about it, but there’s not much to go on. There’s no sign of any break-in. No one has seen or heard anything suspicious, including the guys who patrol the fort. People at his job haven’t heard anything from him. You didn’t notice anything wrong. There’s nothing else we can do at the moment,” Penfield said.

  Hannah didn’t respond. She just closed her eyes. Penfield immediately regretted what he’d said. He should have put the situation more delicately, but he had been right. They were at a dead end if those videos didn’t reveal anything. Of course, there was always the chance someone would come forward, but he hated relying on that stroke of luck.

  Torres went back to her car and returned a few minutes later with three thumb drives. She inserted them into the USB ports of the computer and copied all of the folders, including the ones that weren’t labeled “House Video.” It took close to thirty minutes due to the large number of video files. Penfield took the opportunity to show Hannah around the house while the files were copying. They explored the second and third floors first. Hannah stayed silent most of the time. Penfield watched as she quickly took in each camera placement. The situation seemed even more bizarre to Penfield the second time through the house. He was glad his side didn’t bother him once while he climbed up and down the various wooden staircases. They concluded the tour in the basement, which was even damper and mustier than Penfield remembered.

  “Joe told me how much he loved this house,” Hannah said. “But I don’t know why he would have wanted something so big. I know he was trying to keep his expenses low because of the divorce. He owed her alimony and couldn’t really afford it. The rent for something this large can’t be cheap. I don’t know how he managed it.”

  Penfield thought about her comment on her brother’s finances. You’d think the high rent would make him motivated enough to be the model employee and not lose his job. Of course, maybe he’d borrowed money from someone and found himself unable to pay it back. That might have been the reason someone might have tossed him into the bay.

  They finished walking through the basement. Hannah turned to Penfield before they climbed back up the stairs.

  “I appreciate you and Detective Torres working on this case. I know you’re doing everything you can.”

  “We’ll figure this out,” Penfield said.

  Hannah hesitated a moment. Penfield wondered if she was trying to decide whether she believed him or not. He wasn’t sure whether he believed himself. Maybe he was just pacifying them both. They headed up the stairs and into the living room. Torres walked into the room a moment later. She handed Hannah and Penfield two thumb drives. She held onto the third. Penfield slipped the drive into his jacket pocket. He walked out of the house and took a deep gulp of the cool winter air. It felt good compared to the mustiness of the basement. Torres followed him out.

  “You okay?” Torres asked.

  “Yeah, just bad air in that basement,” Penfield said.

  Hannah walked toward the open front door. She stopped in the doorway and turned around. The afternoon sun cast long shadows on the wooden floor, just as it had done in the surveillance videos. She wondered why her brother had installed the cameras. She had no idea what he could possibly be looking for. Hannah turned to leave and then noticed the keys on the table beside the door. She took a quick glance outside and saw the two detectives talking to each other. They weren’t looking at the house. Hannah grabbed the house keys and placed them in her jacket pocket. She exited the house and joined the detectives.

  “All done?” Torres asked.

  “Yeah, I’m ready to go to the hotel. I’ve got to get some sleep if I can.”

  “Would you like to follow us there? It’s not that far,” Penfield said.

  “No, I can find it on my GPS. It’s not a problem.”

  Torres shut the door and locked it with the key Amy had given her earlier.

  They walked back to their cars. Penfield and Torres sat in their car and watched Hannah drive away.

&nb
sp; “What do you think?” Torres asked.

  “Not sure. She seems okay. I can’t imagine what she’s going through,” Penfield said.

  “Do you think she knows anything she’s not telling us?” Torres asked.

  “I didn’t sense that, but you never know.”

  “I was surprised you didn’t ask her about the skull.”

  “I don’t think it’s related to this case, based on how old it is, or at least how old Hammond thinks it is,” Penfield said.

  Torres started her car and backed out of the parking lot. She exited the fort and headed toward the highway. She turned to Penfield as they passed the area where the jogger had spotted the body in the water.

  “Want to grab a beer? There’s a decent place right up the street?”

  “Sure,” Penfield said.

  The truth was, though, he didn’t want to stop. He was already worn out from the day’s work, which was ridiculous considering they hadn’t done anything physical. He couldn’t believe the injury had taken so much out of him, and he wondered if he’d ever be the same again. There was also the recent birthday. Maybe he was just getting old. Maybe his fatigue was a combination of these things. He hated feeling this way. He hated the notion that he might never be as strong as he once was.

  Torres turned left at the post office on Mellen Street and then made a quick right into a gravel parking lot that was in the back of a string of tiny restaurants and antique shops. She found a parking spot close to the restaurant’s outdoor patio, which was empty due to the cold weather. They entered through the back door and found the place mostly empty.

  “Sit anywhere you like, folks,” a waitress said.

  She looked to be about thirty years old and wore tight jeans and a black t-shirt with the words “The Coast” written in white letters across the front.

  Penfield and Torres grabbed a booth in the corner near an old-fashioned jukebox. Penfield wondered if it actually worked, or if it was just a fun prop.

  “I’ve never been here before,” Penfield said.

  “It just opened a month ago. Good food and not as expensive as the place on the corner,” Torres said.

  The waitress arrived a moment later and handed them two menus.