by Blair Howard
Anyway, they spoke little, listened a lot, and finally they stood, took possession of the thumb drive and the paper printouts, and we followed their black Chevy Suburban to the Sheriff’s Department on Walnut. It was almost five o’clock when we arrived.
Now you might think I was upset at the takeover of the case by the TBI, but I wasn’t. As far as I was concerned, we were done with it anyway. My only concern at that point was to discover the connection between Emily and the sheriff, and I was already pretty sure that it was little more than sexual: he was charging for protection, and taking his pay in kind.
He wasn’t expecting us. Nobody, so it seemed, had thought it worth informing him that he was under investigation.
“TBI?” he asked. “What? Why? And what the hell are you doing here, Starke?”
I didn’t answer.
“I think we need to go somewhere a little more private,” Caster said. “Your conference room, perhaps… and if you could ask Detectives Hart and McLeish to join us….”
“Hart and McLeish? What…? Yeah, sure, okay, but he goes,” he pointed at me, “and her.”
Kate smiled at him.
“They stay,” Caster said quietly.
Hands grumbled angrily, but called Hart on his cell phone and then led the way down the hall to the conference room, where the two worried-looking detectives were already waiting. He opened the door and politely held it open for everyone, then he closed it, locked it, and took a seat at the head of the table.
“So,” he said, leaning forward on his elbows, hands clasped together. “What’s this about?”
I could see he was desperately trying to act unconcerned, but it wasn’t quite working. His face was red, accentuating the scar on his chin. He had a tick at the corner of his right eye that twitched, as if he were constantly winking at us. Sheriff Hands was a worried man.
Caster opened his laptop, inserted the thumb drive, opened one of the files—Wendy Tanner’s—hit play, and then sat back as the sheriff and his two officers watched, mesmerized.
The video ended, and Hands began to bluster. Caster said nothing. He spun the laptop toward him, opened the second file, and again hit play.
“So?” Hands asked, when the video finished playing. “We provided a little security once in a while is all. There’s no crime in that.”
“If that’s all it was, you would be right,” Caster said. “But it isn’t, is it? These young women allege that you demanded sexual favors in return for your not arresting them for prostitution.”
“Nonsense. It was all consensual,” Hands said, but his words lacked confidence. I watched the tick go wild.
“You know better than that, Sheriff. The statute says, and I quote: ‘Consent cannot be given when it is the result of coercion, intimidation, force, or threat of harm.’ That’s what you did. You coerced them into providing sexual favors. You and your two detectives abused your authority. Coercion, Sheriff. That’s rape. Sexual battery by an authority figure. Oh, and by the way, we have a third complainant. All three are willing to testify in court.”
Hands had gone white, as had Hart and McLeish. They were done for, and they knew it.
“I need to call my attorney,” Hands said. It was almost a whisper. He didn’t even move to stand.
It was time. Surreptitiously, I slipped Emily’s burner phone from my jacket pocket, went to contacts, and tapped the number from the coded Apate short list. After a few seconds, the iPhone on the table in front of Hands began to vibrate. He picked it up, looked at the screen, and the color drained from his face. He touched the screen and the phone went quiet. He placed it back on the table.
I grinned at him, then touched the screen again with my thumb. Again, the phone of the desk began to vibrate.
Hands stared at the phone, hypnotized. He was Mowgli to the phone’s Kaa.
“Someone you know?” I asked. “Why don’t you answer it?”
“It’s… it’s just a wrong number.”
“Oh, I don’t think so. Go on. Answer it.”
Reluctantly, he picked it up and put it to his ear. “Hello?”
With my eyes locked on his, I slowly put the burner phone to my ear. “Hello, Israel,” I said gently.
He slammed the phone down on the desktop so hard it was a wonder it didn’t smash.
“Where did you get that from?” he asked.
“The question, Israel, is why did Emily Johnston have your private cell phone number, heavily encrypted, in her journal? Did you kill her, Israel?”
“I need to call my attorney, now.”
“Agent Mendez,” Caster said. “Please place these three men under arrest and read them their rights. Then Sheriff Hands may call his attorney. Following that, they will be taken to Bradley County Jail, where they will be held until they go before a judge.”
He turned to me and Kate and continued. “Thank you, Lieutenant, and you, Mr. Starke. You should know that a team of agents are already on their way to the college to arrest Captain Rösche and Chancellor Mason-Jones. They, too, will be charged with coercion, along with several other charges related to human trafficking.
“Now, if you’ll excuse us. We have a sheriff to look after.” He said it with a smile, but there was steel in his eyes. “The Harper Foundation,” he continued, “is another story. Little Billy did a good job when he set it up. It’s almost impenetrable. Almost, but that’s for another day. Then again, who knows what we’ll be able to dig out of this little mess. Immunity is an amazing and extremely useful tool.”
-----
It was almost six thirty when I dropped Kate off at her car and then headed home. Amanda was waiting for me in the kitchen, glass in hand. I accepted it gratefully.
“The TBI has arrested the sheriff and two of his detectives,” I told her.
She sat down on one of the bar stools with thud. To say she was surprised, well, the word “understatement” comes to mind, but it would be inadequate. She was stunned. I stood by the bar and sipped on the drink.
“Well…? Are you going to tell me or not?”
I laughed. “Sure. Sure. It all started, as you know, with—”
“Whoa. Hold on a minute.” She ran off, and came back a few second later with a digital recorder. She turned it on and set it on the bar in front of me. “There, now go. I’ll transcribe and edit it later.”
And so I told her. It took more than an hour, but when I’d finished, she had the bones of her story… well, part of it anyway. There was still Emily’s murder to solve. And I still had a lot of thinking to do.
Chapter 32
The following morning, Tuesday, the airwaves were once again alive. Channel 7 and Amanda took the lead at seven; she had left me in bed and gone into the office at five o’clock. Hell, I didn’t know there was such an hour.
The story of the arrest of Sheriff Hands took over the news channels for two hours. Amanda had woven a tail of intrigue and corruption the likes of which our city had never known. Needless to say, I figured prominently in her coverage. By eleven o’clock that morning, she had turned up at my office with Charlie in tow and interviewed everyone in the office. Well, most of them. I gave her what she needed, as promised, but I insisted she leave Jacque out of it, along with Wendy, Alexa, and Jessica.
From there she went to Cleveland and the Bradley County Jail and somehow managed to get footage of the three musketeers—Hands, Hart, and McLeish—as they were hauled before a judge and arraigned for a whole litany of crimes, some I’d not even heard of. The news that evening would be sensational.
So the Kalliste thing was just about wrapped up, with the exception of its connection to the Harper Foundation. But connection or not, that damned foundation was not going away, and neither were the Greenes. There was nothing illegal about running a website, and there was no way to connect them to Jones and Rösche’s activities, or even the sheriff, unless one of them spilled their guts. And that, I was pretty sure, was not going to happen. What we had from Wendy about Greene using the girls
… it was nothing more than hearsay.
It was already after eleven, but way too early for lunch. I called Kate. She answered, but was busy tying up loose ends. Kalliste was in the past, and I was suffering, just a little, from depression.
There I was: that case was closed, but I was still no closer to solving Emily’s murder. I was at an impasse. I had three viable suspects. Mason-Jones and Rösche? Maybe, but I didn’t think so. There were still those missing five days. Neither of them had the means to keep her hidden away for that long. Jessica Henderson? Nope, and for the same reason.
I sat at my desk, feet up, closed my eyes, and dozed. Well, that was what I intended, but something was bothering me.
Maybe they did do it, Mason-Jones or Rösche, or both. Maybe there was somewhere on that campus—a shed, a disused storage building—but why would they kill the girls and Padgett? They wouldn’t. The three girls were the golden geese, and Erika? I didn’t think so. Her only connection to Kalliste was as a client, and that connection was tenuous at best. The girls were just a tiny part of the whole, and as far as we knew, they knew little of the inner workings and nothing of the principles besides the chancellor. No. It had to be something else, but what?
The more I thought about it, the more it made no sense. And then there were the murders themselves. There was so much anger in the way Emily and Erika had been killed, especially Erika. What was it that generated such anger? Only two things came readily came to mind: revenge and jealousy. And that was what kept niggling at me. Who would be jealous of Emily and Erika? Jessica? Maybe, but she couldn’t have hidden Emily, not for five hours, let alone five days. There was no way. No. It wasn’t Jessica.
Who the hell was that shadowy figure in the Sorbonne? Mason-Jones? Nah. Well, okay, so, white hairs, white paint, mold… mold…. dog hair…. Whoa! The neighbor! “Collins,” she told me. “Lindsey Collins, and it’s miss.” She’s single. Lives alone, right next door. Has a dog, a white Jack Russell. Damn! It could be. It just could be…. But how could she have held Emily right next door to Padgett without her knowing? Adam and Eve on a raft, my brain hurts.
In the end, I had to give it up. Jeez, what the hell am I missing?
I decided to go back to the beginning, to the day when they found Emily. I let my mind wander. Detail after detail flooded back through my mind. Some of it I could have done without, but it was no good. There weren’t any answers there. The nagging tick at the back of my mind was still as elusive as ever, and the more I tried to grasp it the more elusive it became.
For some reason, my mind kept returning to that morning up on Wicker Road, the crime scene, Emily’s dump site, whatever. There was something I’d missed, and it was bugging the hell out of me. In the end, I gave it up went and made myself a cup of Dark Italian Roast. It was close to noon anyway.
“Hold my calls, please, Jacque,” I told her. I went back into my office and closed the door. I dropped into my throne and sat sipping silently, savoring the full-bodied flavor. There are many things in life I can live without. Coffee wasn’t one of them.
I thought some more, finished the coffee, scribbled some notes on a legal pad, stared at them, tapped my teeth with the pen. I picked up the papers that Tim had left with me. The ones with initials and dates.
I need to talk to Jones, and to Jessica again. And how about Lindsey Collins? Hmmm…. Wicker Road, Wicker Road…. There’s something about that morning I’m not getting. Jeez. And where the hell are those two cell phones?
I sat there for a long moment, remembering that morning, remembering the people I’d talked to. Kim Watson, I thought suddenly. The woman who found the body. Maybe she can help.
But first I called Doc Sheddon, asked him a couple of questions, and then I called Mike Willis, asked him several more, and then….
Aha. Oh yeah. That’s it. I got it!
I grabbed another cup of coffee, sat back down at my desk, and opened my laptop. I went to the Kalliste website and clicked slowly through the first half dozen pages, looking carefully at each model. Damn. I could have sworn….
I flipped through the paperwork, found the number I was looking for, then picked up phone and tapped in the number.
Jessica answered on the third ring. By now she well aware of the unfolding events, but she was still willing to talk, bless her. I asked her several questions and got answers, but not the ones I wanted.
So I made the third call. “Hello Miss Watson. This is Harry Starke. We met the other day, if you remember.”
She said that she did.
“Great. Listen, something’s been bothering me for a couple of days. Something about that morning when you found Emily. I think that you may be able to help me figure it out. I have to visit the college this afternoon and I was wondering if I might drop by for a quick word? It won’t take but a minute. Well, maybe a couple of minutes. I want to show you something; see if it stirs your memory.”
She paused, then suggested two thirty.
“Okay, thank you, Miss Watson. I’ll see you then.” I disconnected, sat back in my seat, put my hands behind my neck, and stared up at the chandelier. All I could see was the stark white shape of Emily’s body lying face down in the depths of the forest.
Chapter 33
It was a quarter after two—I was a little early—when I arrived. I parked the Maxima at the side of the house, walked to the door, and knocked.
I heard noises inside, someone walking and a dog barking, and then the door opened a crack.
“Hi, Miss Watson,” I said. “It’s me, Harry Starke.”
She smiled, and opened the door a little wider. “Hi. Come on in.”
I walked past her, and was immediately struck by a blinding flash of white light. Everything went black.
----
When I woke I was in the center of some sort of room and sitting with my ankles tied to the legs of a chair. A big wooden chair, with arms. I was leaning sideways over one of them; it was all that was keeping me from falling out of it. My hands were tied behind my back, between me and the chair back.
I guess the chair’s too wide to get my arms around it, I thought woozily. Blistering pain coursed through my head when I tried to sit up. What the hell did she hit me with?
I made it upright, and tried to look around. It was quite dark, which was good, because I had the mother and father of all headaches. What little light there was came in through a small window set high up in the wall, and I could tell I was in an unfinished area of the house. Probably the basement.
I looked down at my feet. My ankles were tied to the chair with plastic cable ties.
The lights came on. “Ah, you’re awake, good,” she said as she came down the stairs. She stood in front of me, twisting a nasty-looking boning knife in her hands.
Jesus Christ.
She was even bigger than I remembered.
Must work out a lot. Damn. The strangest things go through your mind at the strangest times. Who the hell cares if she works out?
“I always knew you’d come back, Mr. Starke,” she said. “You’re smart. When I met you that day on the road, when they found Emily, I knew that if anyone would figure it out, it would be you. What was it? What gave me away?”
She pulled up a chair and sat down in front of me, far enough away so I couldn’t reach her. Not that I could have, with my hands tied behind my back.
“You did, when you whacked me over the head.” She blinked, but said nothing. “Oh, I had my suspicions, but that’s all they were. I had nothing concrete. But I’d also been thinking about those two girls. The ones on bikes, remember? I needed an excuse to talk to you. I thought that would work. I thought that if I could show you some photographs of some of the girls from the college, maybe you’d recognize the two girls you saw on bikes. Either way, I’d be able to talk to you again without arousing suspicion. But the mind of a killer works in mysterious ways, most often driven by guilt and anxiety, as was yours. You had to fix it, but there was nothing to fix. Yes, I did have my suspi
cions. Your initials are in her journal, along with a list of dates. I assume those were the dates she met with you. That was what got me thinking. You were one of her clients, right?”
She stared at me, but didn’t answer.
“And then there were the dog hairs. There were hairs from a Jack Russell terrier on Emily’s body, and on Erika Padgett’s. They say that criminals always leave something behind at a crime scene, and they always take something away. Where’s Emily’s phone, Kim?”
Her mouth twitched, but her eyes never left mine.
“Merry’s a Jack Russell, right? You have her hairs all over you. I can see them from here.
“You want to know something really funny? Erika Padgett’s next-door neighbor also has a Jack Russell. His name is Harris. He’s a cute little thing. He and Merry would make a great couple.”
“So what? There are thousands of Jack Russells around here. Good God, man. I can name at least six, maybe more. It proves nothing. Neither do my initials. K. W. Damn it. There must ten thousand people in Hamilton county with the same ones.”
“Well, of course you’re right. It’s all circumstantial. The initials. The dog hairs. They could have come from anywhere. There was tissue under Emily’s nails, so we had DNA. But there was no one to match it to, until now, so you would have been off the hook, except….”
“Except what? You just said you can’t prove anything.”
“You’re right. I couldn’t. Not until you whacked me over the head and tied me up. It’s funny how things work out, don’t you think? All you had to do was talk to me, look at the photographs, answer a couple of questions, and I’d probably have been on my way.”
She stared at me, open-mouthed. I think she suddenly understood what she’d done, and it horrified her.
I decided to turn the screw a little. “You know, she was my next in line, Erika’s neighbor, after I’d finished with you. If I didn’t get what I needed here, I’d planned on visiting her. She lived right next door, alone, with a Jack Russell, and plenty of room to keep Emily hidden away.” I looked around the room. “Just like you have here. This is where you kept her, right. Yep, there it is. The swing, over there in the corner. Jeez, I bet you enjoyed yourself.”