Double usage

by Christine Bols

  ‘I’m sorry for the mess’, he said, ‘but that’s the way I work best.’ He quickly pulled the archive boxes from the chairs and gestured them to take a seat. ‘So, how can I help you?’

  ‘We won’t take up too much of your time’, Tim said looking at his watch. ‘I’m sorry we are disturbing you during your lunch break, but I would appreciate it if you could give us a list of your personnel.’

  Tomasson looked pensive. ‘And can I ask why?’

  ‘Of course you can.’ After that there was a silence. Tomasson obviously understood he wouldn’t get his answer and a few minutes later the printer spat out a document on which were five names, after each one the address, date of birth and date of employment in the station.’

  ‘Good’, Tim said, while skimming through the list. ‘Thanks for your co-operation. If I need more information, I will contact you.’

  Tomasson nodded. ‘I hope none of my personnel is involved in a crime’, he said. ‘I wouldn’t hesitate to put my hand in a fire for any of them.’

  ‘Careful mister Tomasson, you could get burned’, Tim smiled, but Tomasson clearly couldn’t appreciate the joke. Jude gave the man a nod and they left the station.

  ‘I don’t know if this list will get us any further’, Jude sighed. ‘Five isn’t that much and apart from the railway porter they all worked inside the building. They can hardly have seen the passengers.’

  ‘In that case we start with the porter, don’t we?’ He hated it when somebody doubted the way he did his job. David would never have commented on that. From the corner of his eye he saw Jude looking at him, but he kept looking ahead. His cell phone beeped just as he was about to leave the parking lot. It was Haynes, telling him the surveillance tapes had arrived.

  ‘Have the lab start at it right away. We will be back in fifteen minutes.’ He hoped they would find something. A camera could hardly register everything. Now he had a dilemma. He had told Jude they wouldn’t be looking at them themselves, but with hindsight he realized it would be better if they did. He wondered how he could arrange this without losing face and embarrassing himself.

  ‘I really didn’t want to step on your toes’, Jude said all of a sudden. She was probably talking about the list. ‘I’m sorry’.

  He kept his gaze on the road. ‘That’s okay’. For the rest of the trip nobody said another word.

  Foster must have been looking out of his window, because just as they arrived in the entrance hall he met them. ‘And, any progress yet?’ he asked anxiously. ‘I just got off the phone with a journalist again. I told him my people are working on it 24/7.’

  ‘And that is the truth too’, Tim said. ‘We are doing everything we can. I think I know where he picked up Fitzpatrick and I summoned the surveillance tapes from two restaurants in the area. Haynes just informed me they have arrived.’

  ‘What are you waiting for then? Get working on it.’

  He felt Jude’s gaze. She coughed lightly. He didn’t have a clue what she was expecting him to do.

  ‘If that’s what you want. The personnel list of the station will have to wait in that case I’m afraid.’

  Foster looked at him startled and raised his eyebrows. ‘What list?’

  ‘I always had the feeling the trains had something to do with it. It turns out the time on the alarms match the departure times of the Saturday trains to Salem and Eugene, so I went to the station and got the personnel list.’ He waved it in front of Foster’s face. ‘But, we’ll go to the lab first.’

  He had got around that rather easily and without losing face. He couldn’t help but smile.

  After getting a cup of coffee and a sandwich from the cafeteria, they headed for the lab. Jude wondered what made him change his mind about the tapes, but decided not to ask. She remembered his outburst in the car, coming back from Albany. He really was very touchy, the reason probably being that a woman dared question his ways. Maybe he couldn’t cope with criticism in general and certainly not by a woman. He probably was a macho who still believed God had created Eve after the perfect image of Adam. She smiled. Her idea was that when God had created Adam he thought he could do better than that, and Eve came along, an improved version of his first creation.

  The lab was a small room with all kinds of appliances. At one of the desks sat a man with a handset pinched between his ear and shoulder, while scribbling on a small notepad. He gestured them to sit down. They took advantage of the short break to finish their sandwiches.

  ‘Good, what date do we start with?’ the man asked after putting down the receiver. ‘So Sackley, I see you got a new partner’. He looked at Jude in admiration.

  ‘Jude McCool’, Tim said. ‘Temporary partner until David returns,’ emphasizing on the word temporary. ‘This is Gregg, the best technician in Benton County’, he said, turning to Jude. She didn’t know if it was meant in a sarcastic way or not, but she shook Gregg’s hand.

  ‘Let’s start with May 27. With a bit of luck we will find what we are looking for. Take the Cloud 9 bistro first.’ Gregg put the tape on the required date and started it at 15:00. Slowly the images came along. They saw part of the road leading up to the little parking lot. It wasn’t a real parking lot as they had thought at first, but a tiled space with benches and bushes around it. The river bank and tow path were blurry.

  ‘What are we looking for?’ Gregg asked.

  ‘A white or creamy van and a woman jogging on the tow path between seven and eight I think.’

  In the middle of the screen cars passed by. There were several cars parked on both sides of the road. In between the passing cars they saw a few people on the lawn, enjoying the spring sun and two boys throwing a ball at each other.

  ‘Wind it forward to 17:00.’

  Gregg did as asked. The cars now passed on the screen at a nauseating speed. When he stopped the tape, the time indicated was 16:58. Nobody on the lawn anymore. Tim yawned. He hadn’t slept a lot last night. He kept seeing David in the hospital bed and wondered if he would ever turn back into his old self again. In the middle of the night he had gotten up and had drunk half a bottle of whiskey. He drank too much lately. He wondered where Cam was, if she was still thinking of him. The mixed feelings about her leaving were still there, but sometimes he wished her warm body was still in his bed, rubbing softly against his. Other times he was so glad she had left, so he had his house back to himself.

  With hollow eyes he gazed back at the screen. The time indicated 18.45. He had missed a whole part. All of a sudden his eyes were drawn to the screen. He saw Jude do the same. In the middle of the screen a white van slowly passed by.

  ‘Stop the tape Gregg’, Tim shouted. ‘I believe we got our man here.’

  The van stopped in the middle of the screen. No advertising sticker on the side. At the wheel a driver with a baseball cap half over his eyes. Tim felt the adrenaline flood through his veins. ‘Zoom in please Gregg.’

  The van filled the whole screen now and became more and more blurred. Gregg tried to readjust the image, but he couldn’t get the driver clearly in sight.

  ‘The back side doesn’t have any windows’, Jude said. Tim nodded. Gregg had zoomed out and the van was clearly visible again.

  ‘What kind of van could this be?’ Tim asked. Gregg shrugged his shoulders. ‘Looks like a Ford Transit, but I don’t know enough about cars and certainly not about vans.’

  ‘An old model Chevy’.

  Both men looked at Jude in utter surprise. She clearly enjoyed the disbelief on their faces and laughed. ‘My neighbor in Springfield has the same one, only dark blue. He takes his Great Danes with him everywhere he goes, even to work. It has a very big load area.’

  ‘Great Danes?’ Gregg asked puzzled.

  ‘Dogs’, Tim answered. ‘Great Danes, these overgrown ones that dribble all over you and take you for a walk instead of you taking them.’

  ‘A spaniel will do for me, thanks’, Gregg chortled.

  ‘Get the tape rolling again’, Tim laughed. ‘We got
some work to do here.’

  The van started moving again, but instead of following the road it turned into the narrow path that led to the back side of the square.

  ‘Stop the tape’. Tim focused on the screen. ‘Can you zoom in?’ Gregg did as he was told. Tim sat straight up to get a better view. ‘The license plate is not clear’, he said. ‘Can you make something out of it?’

  Gregg pushed a few buttons and focused on the back of the car. He adjusted and the image got clearer. It was a Washington State plate number 143-NNO.

  ‘Washington’, Tim said puzzled. He turned around to ask Jude to check the number, but she had the website of the Transportation Board on the screen already. She wrote down a telephone number and dialed it on her mobile. It took a while before she got the right person on the other end and was transferred a few times, because she tapped her fingers on the desk.

  ‘Can you print the screen?’ Tim asked, turning back to Gregg.

  ‘Of course, no problem.’

  Tim heard Jude read the number out loud and repeat it again to make no mistakes. She waited and then wrote something down on her notepad. ‘Thank you’, she said and put down the receiver. ‘A John Flannery, 2334 Strand Road, Salmon Creek.’ She opened Google Earth and typed in the address. ‘Very remote’, she said. Tim looked at the screen over her left shoulder.

  ‘Wooded area, not a lot of houses. I think we will pay a visit to Mister Flannery tomorrow.’ He turned back to Gregg. ‘Okay, roll it again.’

  The white van disappeared in the bushes at the end of the square and was hidden by the leaves. Only a light shadow was visible.

  ‘We were right’, Jude said. ‘He waited for her there.’

  Tim nodded. Apart from a few people on the road, there was not much else to see. It had started raining and the tow path was deserted.

  ‘If she came home around 18:30, she probably changed into her track suit right away and left. Let’s say from her flat to the river is about half an hour. That would put her here around 19:00.’ Indeed, at 19:02 on the tow path appeared a blurred figure heading for the square. Tim felt the adrenaline flow and gazed at the screen. Gregg stopped the tape.

  ‘The way she runs is feminine, without a doubt’, Jude said. ‘Light blue or grey track suit.’

  Gregg advanced the tape slowly. Twenty seconds later the figure disappeared behind the bushes. As slowly as possible the tape advanced. The time was now 19:10 and still no sign of the girl. At 19:15 they saw the white van leave the square the same way he had come in. Again he appeared in the middle of the screen, but the driver wasn’t visible at all this time.

  ‘Good’, Tim said, ‘now we can be certain he waited for her on the square and that she was kidnapped on May 27 at 19:10. As we assumed from the start, he forced her to make the phone call to her parents on Saturday morning.’ He sighed and looked at his watch. Six o’ clock. He was surprised they had been in the lab for such a long time. He thanked Gregg for his co-operation and went back to the office with Jude in his wake. He wanted to hand the personnel list to Susan to check if any of them had a police record, hoping she wouldn’t already have gone home by now. That wasn’t the case and she promised to have the checked list ready on his desk the next morning. He briefly checked his mailbox. One of the dentists in Corvallis had sent him the perfect dental match of Fitzpatrick. He printed it and put it in the file together with the other documents.

  ‘Well, that’s me done for the day’, Tim said. ‘A perfect evening for mowing the lawn.’ He sighed. ‘Not that I enjoy it, but it has to be done.’ He hesitated. ‘I wanted to go for a bite to eat first. Would you care to join me? Just a pizza or something, nothing fancy.’ He didn’t look at her but rummaged through the documents on his desk.

  ‘Hmm, a pizza. Yes, that sounds good. I’ll take my car and follow you.’

  Domino’s wasn’t very busy and they chose a table next to the window. The waiter took their order. Tim went for a quatro staggione, Jude had the prosciutto. They both had white wine with it.

  ‘Heard anything from Halloway?’ Jude asked to try and break the ice.

  ‘I visited him Saturday morning. He didn’t look very well. He had just learned Frank didn’t survive the accident.’

  ‘Oh, I didn’t know that, about the friend I mean. Is David….?’

  Tim was a bit annoyed with her question but he answered it anyway. ‘Yes, David and Frank have been living together for a few years now. Do you have a problem with that kind of relationship?’

  ‘No, not at all. I just wondered, that’s all.’ Tim saw a crease on her forehead. ‘Boss’, she sighed, ‘I have the feeling that everything I say or ask irritates you in a certain way. I don’t understand that. Is it because I’m a woman, or because I don’t do my job properly?’ She looked at him with clear blue eyes and clearly wasn’t going to be ignored.

  ‘You’re doing a good job Jude, let me be clear about that.’

  ‘So, that leaves just me being a woman then,’ she said with a slight irritation in her voice.

  At this moment Tim wished he hadn’t asked her out but it was too late. He was sitting in front of her and she wasn’t a woman that would settle for a perfunctory answer. He sighed deeply and looked at her. ‘No, not because you’re a woman, but……’

  ‘But what?’ she insisted.

  ‘Okay, I’ll throw it on the table if you’re insisting. It is because your father is a senator.’

  All of a sudden there was a painful silence. When she spoke again her voice sounded sad. ‘And you of course think that I got my job at the police because of him.’

  ‘Well, haven’t you?’

  ‘If you really want to know, no, that’s not the case. I was in the top three of my class, I always worked very hard, put a lot of effort in everything I did and do.’

  ‘I appreciate that, but that still doesn’t rule out that your father could have been pulling strings behind the curtains, without you knowing.’

  ‘If you knew my father, you wouldn’t say these things. He hated me.’ Tim gazed at her but kept silent. ‘Ten years ago I broke up with my parents and I haven’t seen them since. When I was eighteen I left the house and took my younger sister with me.’ Tears welled in her eyes and she frantically wiped them with her hands.

  ‘I didn’t realize that’, he said apologizing. ‘Sorry if I misjudged you.’ He felt rotten. She smiled faintly. ‘How could you have known? It’s not something I shout from the rooftops.’

  ‘It’s not my business of course, but if you like to talk about it, I’m a good listener.’ He saw the hesitation on her face.

  ‘The reason why I broke up with them is because the praised senator McCool couldn’t keep his filthy hands of my younger sister and because Mrs. McCool couldn’t care less, as long as she had the goodies and advantages that came along with his status.’

  Tim didn’t know what to say and was grateful that at that moment the waiter asked if they wanted anything else.

  He opens the cellar door and hears the rattling of the chains. He switches on the light and holds the June 18 newspaper close to his chest. He can smell her fear. Slowly, provocatively, he steps down the stairs. He walks towards the wall to which she is chained.

  ‘I’m famous’, he grins, showing her the headline in the paper. ‘Soon you will be too. Won’t that be nice?’

  CHAPTER 14

  As promised Susan had the list from Albany station ready on his desk. She had only made one note: after Jacob Dawson’s name she had written a remark in red: ‘police record – see separate sheet’. Tim looked at the print-out and saw that Dawson had been jailed for two years in 2005 for rape. In 2007 he had gotten a fine and probation for drug dealing.

  ‘Rape and drugs’, Tim said when Jude came in.

  ‘Good morning to you too’, she smiled. ‘Care to tell me who we are talking about?’

  ‘The station porter, Dawson.’

  Jude thought for a moment. ‘I can’t relate drugs and serial killing and rape, I don’t
know. Bodini and Fitzpatrick weren’t raped in the medical sense of the word.’

  ‘True and normally I wouldn’t connect it to our killer either, but he does work in the station and he does see the passengers. Dammit, I can’t get these trains out of my head.’

  ‘Maybe we could pay him a visit.’

  Tim consulted the list. ‘He works a shift system. One week from Monday till Thursday, the next from Saturday till Wednesday. I’m convinced he must have known the two women, at least by sight.’

  Jude nodded. ‘He had to have a replacement then for the days he didn’t work.’ She sipped her coffee and pulled a face.

  ‘There is instant coffee too, next to the machine’, he laughed.

  ‘Even worse.’

  He put the list in the drawer of his desk. ‘Dawson and the station can wait. Flannery is our priority now.’

  ‘And Fitzpatrick’s parents. Shouldn’t we see them too?’

  ‘Yes’, he sighed, ‘indeed, we have to. If we’re back in time from Salmon Creek we’ll go to Eugene, but I really am not looking forward to that.’ He looked at his watch. ‘If we leave now we could be there around eleven.’ Jude took one more sip from her coffee and followed him to the car. After the GPS was set, they left. They were both deep in thought and only when they turned onto the Interstate, Tim turned on the radio and popped a peppermint in his mouth.

  ‘What kind of music do you like?’ he asked.

  ‘Nothing special. Depends on the mood I’m in. You choose,’ she said.

  He selected a pop station and drummed his fingers on the steering wheel to the rhythm of the music. After an hours drive they passed the Colombia bridge which is the natural border between Washington State and Oregon. In Vancouver they took exit 5. A few minutes later they entered Salem Creek. A little wooden board indicated Strand Road. It was a rather narrow forest path with only a few houses. Number 2334 was a bungalow in greyish wood that could do with a touch of paint. Tim turned onto the unpaved driveway. At the end stood a white van with license plate 143-NNO. There was no door bell, so Tim knocked at the front door. When there was no reaction he knocked a bit harder.