The Piper (CASMIRC Book 2)

by Ben Miller

  Brett opened his notebook computer on his lap, which was already connected to the AV center in the front podium. Amanda cleared her throat as she stood up to face the group. “The footage from Wal-Mart security has already been quite helpful. We’ve been able to establish a clear timeline and get some visuals on the perp. We’ll start with what Brett and I spliced together from that.”

  Black and white, low definition closed-circuit video appeared on the screen in the front of the room. It showed the main entrance to the parking lot from the street. Amanda narrated, “Here we see Fiona Evans’ Corolla enter the Wal-Mart parking lot at 8:34 am. In this next view the Corolla pulls into the parking spot.” The camera providing this second vantage point focused on cars about thirty yards from Fiona’s, putting her car in the top middle of the screen at quite a distance away.

  “Do you have any closer views?” Reilly asked.

  “No, unfortunately we don’t,” Amanda answered.

  If they did, I bet they’d be showing us that, Jack thought, but he kept it to himself.

  “But,” Amanda continued, “here we can see, entering from the right, the perpetrator.”

  On the video a stocky figure in a sweat suit and baseball cap entered around the middle right of the screen. He walked with a slight crouch, using the surrounding cars as cover as he sneaked up on Fiona. Jack squinted his eyes, but he could not make out any distinguishing facial features. Nevertheless, Jack had a feeling—perhaps based on the man’s build, perhaps just on gut instinct—that he knew who he was.

  Fiona had gotten out of her car and opened the back door to retrieve her son Tyler. Within a few seconds, the unknown subject sidled up, one car away from Fiona’s—along the back bumper of the Chrysler who’s owner wanted so badly to drive away this morning. Suddenly Fiona stiffened and turned toward the man, the car seat resting in the crook of her elbow. Quickly he pulled his right hand out of his pocket and thrust it toward her throat. She stood startled before he jutted the knife at her again. He picked the car seat off her arm before she swooned back against her car and slumped to the ground.

  A muted pall had fallen over the room. All of the officers and agents stared at the screen. None of them noticed that they hadn’t breathed in several seconds.

  The man looked over his right shoulder, back toward the front of the Wal-Mart behind him and, incidentally, toward the camera. The image froze, then cut to a zoomed, pixelated picture of the killer’s face. Everyone sitting in the room leaned in, trying to soak up every feature.

  “This is the best look we get at the perp,” Amanda announced.

  “I’ve already sent a copy to our branch office to run through our facial recognition software,” Brett interjected. “No word yet.”

  “He’s wearing sunglasses,” Jack observed, “but I don’t see any facial hair.”

  Amanda nodded. “I agree, but Brett feels differently.”

  Brett hunched over his computer and maneuvered the mouse over the grainy photograph. “I think there’s a bit of a shadow over the upper lip here. I think he could have a light mustache.”

  Jeff turned from facing the screen to address the entire group behind him. “Either way, this seems to differ from the description of the Piper from Tina Langenbahn and Sara Gardner. They both commented on a thick, dark mustache.”

  “Right,” Jack concurred.

  Amanda nodded in agreement as she continued. The picture on the screen went back to the wide camera view of the whole parking lot, with the video playing forward again. “Our perp then proceeds to exit from the southwest portion of the parking lot, away from the entrance to the store. We don’t have any other video of him from the Wal-Mart cameras. We searched back to 5:00 am and never found anyone looking like him entering or leaving the store.”

  Jeff stood up again. “That’s great work, guys. I know you have more for us, but let’s keep the timeline tight and stay focused on the time in the parking lot. Rita, Will, Heath, what did you gather from your interviews?”

  “Dog turds,” Rita answered. The group waited for her to elaborate, but she did not.

  Reilly interpreted this as a bit of a fumble—though the other members of the team got her gist—so he tried to pick up the ball and run with it. “Metaphorically speaking, of course. We didn’t actually gather dog turds,” he said.

  Jeff Pine was polite enough to smile at Reilly’s attempt at humor. “Of course,” he echoed.

  “We did confirm the presence of our perp from the video in the parking lot before the attack by two different witnesses,” Reilly continued, more business-like in his tone. He leafed through a few pages on his lap. “They remembered the ball cap and the sunglasses. Neither mentioned any facial hair. One of the two witnesses saw him walk into the parking lot from the northwest corner, by the driving entrance.”

  “OK, so he walks in from the northwest corner, attacks Fiona, takes Tyler—car seat and all—and leaves on foot via the southwest corner of the lot,” Jeff summarized. “What do we have from there?”

  Amanda Lundquist answered first. “We have one more video shot, from a Denny’s parking lot across the street.” Brett maneuvered the cursor around the screen to open up the other video. After it popped up, Amanda continued to narrate. “Here we see him cut through the parking lot, carrying the car seat. He goes just off-screen on the right here, seemingly approaching a car.” A few seconds later, the top of a car backs into the screen from the right, but the entire vehicle doesn’t come into view. “It looks like a white, grey, or silver car, but it’s difficult to know from the black-and-white video. We do not get a shot of the license plate.”

  Jack noticed Camilla get her iPad out and open up a program. He wondered if she were having the same thoughts as he.

  “Any other video yet?” Jeff asked.

  “No,” Brett answered. “We currently have officers canvassing other businesses in this district, asking for copies of surveillance video. I think we’ll get a lot more in and may be able to track this car, hopefully getting make, model, maybe even license plate.”

  “We—” both Reilly and Rita said simultaneously. They looked at each other, and Rita deferred to Reilly by bowing her head and extending an open palm. Reilly therefore continued. “We interviewed the staff at Denny’s, and only one hostess remembered seeing him. She confirmed what we just saw, nothing more. She repeated a couple of times how fast he was walking. Said it struck her as strange. No one remembered seeing him park the car there, but they all seemed confident he had not come inside the restaurant before the attack.”

  “Patrons?” Jeff wondered.

  “By the time we got this video information and got over there, it was after noon. None of the patrons remained from the morning.”

  “I have submitted a warrant request for receipts from that morning,” Rita offered. “We can hopefully track down some witnesses by credit card information, for those who didn’t pay cash.”

  “OK. Very nice work, everyone,” Jeff commended. He stood up in the front of the room as Amanda sat back down. He opened his arms, palms up. “Other thoughts? Contributions? Musings?”

  Jack looked over at Camilla, who still worked on her iPad. Then he made eye contact with Jeff. He hesitated to verbalize his suspicion, because he knew it came mostly from intuition and not from evidence. He didn’t want to improperly color the way others saw the case. “Does the perp in the video look familiar to anyone?” Jack asked the group, but by keeping his focus on Jeff, he made it clear that he directed the question mostly at him.

  Jeff returned the look. He began to open his mouth in response.

  “Me,” Camilla blurted before Jeff could say anything. She looked up from her tablet, first at Jack, then at Jeff. “I think it’s Aiden Dolan.”

  “Yeah. Me too,” Jack agreed.

  Jeff nodded as well. “The guy’s build seems like a perfect match.”

  “That’s the boyfriend?” Reilly asked.

  “Ex-boyfriend,” Jack clarified. “And baby daddy.
Anyone know what kind of car Aiden Dolan drives?”

  Jeff shook his head and began turning to Brett Valente to ask him to look it up, when Camilla replied, turning her attention back to her iPad. “Aiden Dolan does not have a car registered with the state,” she said. “But Wendy Jenkins does. A 1995 Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera. Silver.”

  28

  “I miss you,” Jack said into his cell phone. He had stepped outside into a small courtyard to give Vicki and Jonah a call after he and the rest of the investigative team had finished their debriefing.

  “I know,” Vicki replied on the other end of the line. “I’m glad you’re coming home tomorrow.”

  “Me too.”

  “When does your flight arrive? What time are you getting in?”

  “Don’t know yet. Probably late. I think we’re making good headway on this case. We’ll see how things are progressing.”

  “I hope you can solve this thing before you come home. That would feel so good for you to wrap it up before this horrible effing trial starts.” She dropped her voice to a whisper for “effing,” even though she didn’t actually use the desired expletive in full.

  “Me too. Thanks, Love. Give another big hug to Jonah for me.”

  They each signed off with an “I love you” before hanging up. As Jack put his phone back on his belt clip, Jeff Pine came out into the courtyard.

  “Oh, you’re off the phone,” Jeff observed. “How’s the family?”

  “Good,” Jack replied. He didn’t remember telling Jeff whom he was calling. Jeff must have assumed—correctly—that Jack would call his wife and son.

  “Well come on in and meet mine. My wife brought the kids in, along with a huge pan of lasagna and some salad. Come eat with us.”

  “Oh, no, we’ll just grab something quick.”

  “Nonsense,” Jeff said as he waved Jack to follow him back inside. “Camilla, Heath, and Amanda are already digging in.”

  Jack accompanied Jeff back to the conference room, where a large glass casserole dish sat on the front table, now only half-filled with steaming lasagna. Though he had initially envisioned a store-bought frozen lasagna, Jack wasn’t surprised to see the homemade version in front of him. Jeff introduced Jack to his wife Sabrina—a doe-eyed, bubbly, beautiful woman with curly brown hair—and their three children, two boys and a girl, ranging in age from four to eight. All three stood in turn to shake Jack’s hand with a “Pleasure to meet you, Mr. Byrne” as their father introduced them before returning to their seats to finish their dinner. Jack filled a plate with salad and lasagna, careful to sling the gooey cheese hanging off the plate back on top. He sat on the corner of the makeshift dinner table on the side of the room with the rest of the team.

  “We were just discussing what each of us is going to do next,” Reilly reported as Jack sat down.

  At the end of their debriefing, they had all honed in on Aiden Dolan as their prime suspect. Will Frievogle, the officer working with Rita Ferroni, had already left to talk more with the Denny’s hostess and the two other eyewitnesses from Wal-Mart, planning on presenting them with a photo line-up that included Aiden Dolan. Other local officers had been charged with finding some of Dolan’s family members and associates, attempting to find a place where he could be keeping Baby Tyler if he did indeed have him. Rita was currently meeting with the district attorney and a judge to get a warrant for Dolan’s phone records, credit cards, and financial statements. They doubted they could get a warrant for tapping his phone yet; they already pushed the envelope with their attempt at the phone records without any more evidence than they currently possessed. They also had decided to initiate an overnight stakeout of Dolan’s apartment, which Jeff had already arranged with some assistance from Rita. Jeff, Jack, and the rest of the CASMIRC team had yet to assign themselves a task.

  “I’m going to pay Aiden Dolan another visit,” Jack replied. “Maybe he’ll let me look around a little more.” Jack forked a bite of lasagna into his mouth. “What about you?”

  Amanda announced she would work with Brett Valente to scour through the new surveillance tapes that had come in from other area businesses this afternoon.

  “I’m taking Dolan’s photo to Sara Gardner and Tina Langenbahn,” Camilla said.

  “That’s brilliant,” Jack said. “I’ve been so focused on Aiden Dolan since meeting him today that I have not put this into the proper larger context.”

  “Right.” Reilly wiped his mouth with a paper napkin and plopped it down on his empty plate. “Camilla and I thought we needed to bring this back around to the larger context.” Reilly’s asserting his self-importance into the conversation was not lost on Jack. He had grown accustomed to such behavior, even when it didn’t hold entirely true.

  Reilly continued, “I’m going to spend the evening leafing through more of our witness statements from today. I want to compare them to notes from the other two kidnappings.”

  Jack inhaled his last bite of pasta. After washing it down with some water, he said, “Jeff, Sabrina, this is really delicious. Thank you so much, this was very generous of you.”

  The other agents, who had all finished their meals, nodded in agreement and echoed Jack’s gratitude.

  “My pleasure,” Sabrina answered. She looked over at her husband, “We’re so grateful you are all here to help support Jeff. We keep praying for a quick resolution to this awfulness.”

  “We all do,” Jack replied, though, after getting to know Jeff Pine the past two days, he guessed “praying” meant something different to him from what it meant to the Pine family. His use was in the colloquial “hoping” sense, whereas he could easily envision the Pine family on their knees, hands clasped, asking God for His assistance.

  29

  Heath Reilly stared out of the car window at the rows of headstones. Most were plain, unadorned slabs of granite, but a handful struck him with their lavishness. One about thirty yards to his right had a white marble sculpture of what looked like the Virgin Mary standing about twelve feet high. A pigeon perched on one of Mary’s open palms, catching the last rays of the evening sun.

  “Are you gonna get out?” Corinne asked him from the driver’s seat.

  Reilly abruptly looked over at her as if snapped out of a trance. After a brief pause, he answered, “Yeah,” but he didn’t begin to get out of the car.

  Corinne leaned toward him. “Are you scared?”

  “No,” Reilly insisted.

  “OK. Then let’s go. It should be in those couple of rows over there,” Corinne said as she pointed through the windshield.

  “It’s just that I don’t think I’ve ever been to a graveyard.”

  “I think most people over the age of ten call them cemeteries.”

  “Oh.” Reilly looked at Camilla. “Yeah, that sounds better.” He opened his car door and got out, as did Corinne.

  After Reilly’s initial hesitance at dinner last night to go to his mother’s gravesite, Corinne had done some additional research today to locate the burial sites of his foster family, the Dellahunts. She had mentioned this to Reilly when he called on his way back to their hotel from the police headquarters, and he voiced an interest in going. He thought it could serve as a stepping-stone to seeing the place where his biological mother had been lain to rest, though he still hadn’t decided if he would ever go there.

  Not surprisingly, the Dellahunts’ headstone fell into the simple, unpretentious category. Faye lay on the left and Richard on the right, their birth and death dates etched into the granite under their names. The center of the stone was engraved with two flowers, each growing out of intertwining rings below. Compared to the dusty and dirty markers around it, the immaculate façade of their stone looked as if it had been scrubbed down daily. Bright yellow marigolds grew out of a small flowerbed in front of the stone, nary a weed tainting the mulch.

  “This suits them,” Reilly decided aloud.

  “How so?”

  “It’s just them. I remember them as neat, tidy people.
And she—Faye—had tons of flowers, both inside and outside of the house. She spent a ton of time tending to her flower gardens. It’s nice. Fitting.”

  “Good,” Corinne replied, not letting her feeling of self-satisfaction creep into her tone. “Do you want a minute to yourself with them?”

  Reilly looked at her. “No. I’m good.” He looked back down at the stone in front of them, and they stood in silence for a few more minutes.

  “Hey,” said a woman’s voice from behind them. “Heath?”

  Reilly and Camilla turned around to see Dana Dellahunt walking toward them, carrying a gardening kit with hands covered by work gloves.

  “Dana?” Reilly said.

  “Hi, Dana.” Corinne seemed less surprised to see her.

  “Hey, Corinne. When you asked for Mom and Dad’s gravesite location on the phone today, I didn’t think you guys would be coming out here tonight.”

  “I just mentioned it to Heath at the end of the day, and…”

  “I thought it would be a good way to break up the day,” Reilly finished. “I still have some more work to do on our case tonight.”

  “Oh,” Dana said as she set the gardening kit down on the ground beside her and tossed her gloves on top. “How’s it coming?”

  “It’s coming,” he replied. “Unfortunately—maybe you heard—there was another one this morning.”

  Dana trembled, visibly shocked by this news. “Really? No, I hadn’t heard. Whoa. That’s awful.”

  “Yeah,” Reilly agreed. “We have some good leads on this one though. I hope we’ll get our guy and it will be over soon.”

  Dana offered a concurring smile. “Definitely. Wouldn’t that be nice. Hey, do you guys want to come over for dinner some night while you’re in town? Heath you could see what I’ve done with the old house.”

  “You still live there?”

  Dana nodded. “I inherited it when Mom passed. It’s such a cute place, and they kept it in amazing condition.”

  Corinne looked at Reilly, signaling to him that she would defer to him to decide about dining at his former foster parents’ old house. Reilly returned her gaze before looking back at Dana to respond. “Well, Corinne has to fly back tomorrow to cover the Playground Predator trial. And I’m not sure how much longer my team and I will be in town.”