by Lauren Carr
“Later on the recording shows Rodney stopping at the juice bar and ordering a green smoothie before leaving,” Helen said while slipping onto the stool next to his. “That time is eight-twenty-seven, the same time that the fire trucks arrived at the Bell home.”
Chris fast forwarded through the recording to get to the shot of Rodney ordering the green smoothie.
“He orders the smoothie, talks to the trainer while she makes it, and then he leaves,” Helen said.
“Did he take his bag into the cardio cinema?” Chris asked while slowing down the recording as he neared the point where Rodney would enter the shot again.
“He says he did. He walked straight back to the cinema and did the treadmill through the whole movie. Then he got a smoothie and headed straight home.”
With narrowed eyes, Chris watched Rodney casually enter the screen from the same direction as he had left. As before, he was dressed in a heavy athletic jacket, pants, and shoes. Chatting and smiling at the pretty fitness instructor, Rodney dropped the athletic bag to the floor while taking out his money for the drink. “Did you talk to this trainer?”
“Yes,” Helen said with a growl. “No, Rodney had never ordered a smoothie from them ever before. This was his first.”
“Because you don’t scan the gym’s key tag when you leave,” Chis said as he watched Rodney hand his money to the trainer. “He wanted to make sure she remembered him being there and leaving.”
After paying for his drink, Rodney looked up in the direction of the security camera. A slim grin crossed his face as he drew the straw up to his mouth.
“You son of a bitch,” Chris murmured.
“I talked to the arson investigator and you’re right,” Helen said. “The lamp did have a remote set up with their smart home network. I contacted the server through which the Bells had their network set up and guess what.”
“You need a warrant to access their account,” Chris said.
“Forensics says that if Rodney turned on that lamp remotely, there would be a footprint in the smart home network. He would have had to have set up the network to give that phone access. Even if he used a burner phone, tossed it afterwards, and deleted the phone from the network, there’d be a record of it and what it did.”
“We’re talking about a remote command from that phone telling that lamp to turn on.”
“Precisely,” Helen said. “The downside is—”
“If Rodney used a burner phone, he wouldn’t have been so stupid to have bought it with a credit card,” Chris said. “And he would have tossed it for sure by now.”
“And knowing him,” she said, “he’ll argue that someone else—Opie—hacked into their network. Once again, it’s a good theory, but you have to prove it.”
Chris turned back to the security recording, which had looped back to the beginning. “He got out of that athletic club, killed Felicia, burned down the house, and got back inside—all without anyone seeing or there being any record.”
“Yet, he says he had spent the whole time in the cardio cinema where it was dark, so no one can confirm he was there,” she said.
Chris slowed down the recording to watch as Rodney reached out to scan the key tag on his way into the gym.
The coffee brewed, Helen went around the counter and took a mug out of the cabinet for Chris. As she traveled the length of the counter, she slid a large white envelope containing a picture of a dog and cat snuggling together on the front in his direction. “Doris said this is for you. It’s got coupons and you need to pick up dog food today.”
“Why does she always wait until the day she runs out of dog food to tell me to pick it up?” Chris paused the recording to study Rodney’s image.
She poured the coffee into the mug for him. “I get advertisements like that all the time. I toss them without even opening the envelopes.”
“Oh, but you should open them.” Chris inserted his finger between the flap and the seal and tore it open. “You know those shoppers bonus cards you have?”
“I only have about a dozen or so.” She extracted her keys from the front flap of her purse and shook it for him to see the wide variety of key cards. “If these stores want to give discounts to their shoppers, why don’t they just lower their prices? Why do we have to sign up and carry this junk around on our key chains and remember to scan them to get the discount?”
“I say the same thing,” Chris said with a shake of his head. “Mom is always giving me those tags and telling me to put them on my key chain.” He extracted the coupons from the envelope. “But, you don’t just get any discounts or coupons when you use the shopper’s card. The bar code tells the store’s computer system what you’ve bought. Based on that, the company’s system creates an algorithm to tailor coupons just for you.”
He held up a colorful coupon for twenty per cent off a brand of dog food. “We buy grain-free food that’s pretty pricy. But since I buy it at this store and use their shopper’s card, I get around twenty percent off every bag. That’s about fifteen dollars. Now, if I bought a different brand at that store, the store’s computer would note that and send me different coupons.” He slapped the coupon down on the counter. “That’s why I always make sure I use their key tag. The others,” he shrugged his shoulders, “not so much.”
Picking up his coffee, he rewound the recording again to when Rodney entered and held the key card under the scanner.
Chris paused the recording and narrowed his eyes to peer closely at the keys in Rodney’s hand.
Helen watched Chris staring at the image on the screen. “Do you see something?”
“Maybe,” he said in a low voice. He slid off the stool and headed for the back stairs. “I need to go to the club.”
“Do you know how he left the gym without going in and out the front entrance?”
“No,” he called down to her, “but I will. You’re going to need a couple of warrants.”
“A couple?”
“A couple.”
Luckily, the gym’s cardio cinema did not view their matinee until early that afternoon. So, Chris and Helen were able to examine the emergency exit, located along the wall opposite the screen, with the lights on.
“Perfect.” Chris noted that the treadmills were lined up in the last row. They faced away from the emergency exit that led into the alley behind the club. “Once the movie got going, all he had to do was get off the treadmill, slip out the door, go kill Felicia, and return without anyone noticing that he’d left.”
“The movie was an hour and eighteen minutes long,” Helen said. “It takes seventeen minutes to drive from here to their house.”
“And Rodney was driving a county sheriff’s police cruiser, which people would have seen if he had driven that to the crime scene.”
“Nobody saw a police cruiser in the neighborhood.”
“How about Morgan Park?” Chris asked. “The park is right on the other side of the woods behind their house. The bike path is less than a mile from their back door. Rodney could run that in less than ten minutes—closer to seven.”
“Seventeen minutes to drive there. Run in seven. That’s twenty-one minutes there. Twenty-one minutes back.” She added up the numbers on her phone’s calculator. “Forty-two minutes.”
“Leaving more than a half hour to rape and murder his wife, clean up any incriminating evidence, douse the house with gasoline, and set up the lamp and match to burn the place down.”
“Except for the matter of how did Rodney leave this room.” Helen gestured with a wave of her hand at the door. “The door not only sounds an alarm when it’s opened, but it also sends a notification to the gym’s security company, who then notifies the police and fire service.”
Chris looked up at the lit exit sign above the door and examined the doorframe. There was a keypad on the wall next to the door. He rested his fingers on the keypad. “Unles
s you punch in the code first. Then the alarm won’t go off. Who has the code?”
“The gym’s manager, and it’s on record with the security company.”
“If the door is opened, and the alarm goes off, the security company calls the club to see if there’s an issue,” Chris said. “If it’s a false alarm, the manager turns it off by inputting the code. Right?”
Helen nodded her head.
“But what if the manager isn’t here?”
“The security company will give the code to the police or fire service at the scene or any employee that the manager deems okay to give it to.”
A slow grin crossed Chris’s face.
Helen’s eyes grew wide. “And Rodney is the deputy sheriff. He’s the police. But we still have to prove it.”
“Get those two warrants and we will prove it.” Checking the statistics on the fitness monitor he wore around his wrist, Chris climbed up onto one of the treadmills. “In the meantime, I’m going for a run.”
Days later, Rodney Bell and his lawyer sat across the conference table from Helen and Chris at the state police barracks.
Eyeing Chris with contempt, the defense attorney asked Helen what he was doing there.
“Chris Matheson is a retired federal agent working on contract with the state police on this case,” Helen said. “Since Felicia Bell’s murder had the same MO as that of a series of murders, which the FBI had been investigating, he was brought onto the case.”
“Opie Fletcher is a serial killer?” With a shake of his head, Rodney chomped on a toothpick. “Now I—”
“No, he’s not,” Chris said. “Opie Fletcher didn’t kill anyone.”
“Your own father named him as a suspect in Mona Tabler’s murder,” Rodney said. “Several witnesses heard him brag about it.”
“How do you know my father listed Opie Fletcher as a suspect in Mona Tabler’s murder?” Chris asked.
“He told me,” Rodney said.
“No, he didn’t,” Chris said. “Because you weren’t on the case. Dad only named suspects to those working the case.”
“Mona Tabler’s murder fell under the jurisdiction of the state police,” Helen said. “We share case files with the local department when a request is made for a copy of the case file.”
“I’m sure someone told you that Opie Fletcher had been a suspect in Mona’s murder,” Chris said. “That rumor had been flying around for years. But you didn’t know the particulars of the case.”
“That’s why you requested a copy of the case file.” Helen took a form from a folder and slid it across the table.
“I didn’t request—”
“You requested it using the sheriff’s name and email,” Helen said. “But you were the one who used it. I saw it on your desk.”
“After learning the specific details of how Mona Tabler was killed, you copied her murder when you killed Felicia,” Chris said.
“My client has an airtight alibi for the time of the murder,” the lawyer said.
Ignoring him, Chris said, “You set up Opie Fletcher. You recommended him for Felicia to hire to do yard work and odd jobs around the house so that he would have the opportunity to commit the murder.”
“My client has never met Opie Fletcher.”
“All the better for deniability,” Chris said.
“Felicia’s mother has stated that her daughter told her that your client gave her Opie Fletcher’s phone number, saying he had run a background check on him,” Helen said.
“Which is a lie,” Rodney said. “Sylvia never did like me.”
“For good reason,” Helen said.
“Mothers never did like me.” Rodney licked his lips. “But their daughters loved me.” He winked at Helen. “Something you know about personally, huh, Helen?”
“Anything Felicia told her mother is inadmissible,” the lawyer said. “It’s hearsay.”
Uttering a deep sigh of boredom, Rodney held up his hands. “Listen, Sheriff Bassett is still on sick leave. I have a police department to run. Can you prove that I left the gym and went out to Shepherdstown to kill my wife?”
“Oh yes,” Chris said. “You were on the treadmill in the cardio cinema, watching a movie, when Felicia was murdered.”
“That’s right. Unfortunately, it was dark, so I have no witnesses who can say for certain I was there—”
“If you had gone out through the front door, then the security camera would have captured that,” Chris said. “And, if you had gone out through the emergency exit in the cinema, then the alarm would have gone off and everyone would have heard it. The security company would have received a notice and called the gym to see if they needed to contact emergency services.”
“And the alarm didn’t go off and the security company didn’t get any notices,” Rodney said.
“Unless,” Chris held up his finger, “you typed in the security code on the keypad next to the door. Then you can open the door without the alarm going off. There’s a keypad on the inside and outside. Four-digit code. Both the gym manager and the security company have it.”
Helen took a sheet of paper from the file resting in front of her and slid it across the table. “The security company keeps a log of who they hand out security codes to and when. One week before Felicia’s murder, Sheriff Deputy Roger Williams, badge number 54-678, requested the security code to check out the premises after a 9-1-1 call of suspicious activity in the shopping center. He believed he saw someone entering the gym which was closed.” She slid a written statement across the table. “Deputy Williams says he made no such request. No such call was made to 9-1-1. At the time of that request, Williams was on break. But then, as deputy sheriff, you had access to that information, didn’t you, Rodney?”
“I seem to recall Williams checking Felicia out every time he saw her,” Rodney said while rolling the toothpick between his fingers. “Maybe he made a move on her after we separated and he resented her rejecting him.”
“Deputy Williams has an alibi for the night of the murder,” Helen said.
“And so do I,” Rodney said. “I was on the treadmill at the gym.”
“That’s right,” Chris said. “You were on that treadmill the whole time and you never got off.”
“For the entire movie.”
“You didn’t get off the treadmill for even a couple of minutes?”
“No.”
“Are you sure about that?” Chris asked.
“Positive.”
Chris shot a glance at Helen out of the corner of his eye. The corner of his mouth curled upward.
For the first time, a flicker of doubt crossed Rodney’s face. “Do you have any witnesses saying I wasn’t on the treadmill between seven o’clock and eight-thirty that night?”
“No,” Chris said, “we have no witnesses saying that.”
Helen opened the folder and slid a sheet of paper containing a bar graph over in front of Chris, who placed it in the center of the table for Rodney and his lawyer to see. He held up his arm to show them the fitness monitor he wore on his wrist.
“I noticed you wear a fitness monitor, Rod.”
Rodney looked down at his monitor.
Folding his arms in front of him, Chris leaned across the table. “Do you know how they work?”
Rodney looked at him from out of the top of his eyes. His mouth tightened.
“It monitors your heart rate. The more physical you are, the faster your heart beats, the more calories you burn. The faster you run, the faster your heart rate is. The less active you are, the slower your heart rate is.”
“And this bar graph proves my client killed his wife?” The lawyer chuckled.
“Actually,” Chris said, “this is my chart. You see, the other day, I re-enacted Felicia’s murder. To prove your client could do it. As luck would have it, the gym was playing the same mo
vie. Helen got the code from the security company—”
“Because I’m the police,” she said. “I gave them my badge number, and they gave it to me.”
“I got on the treadmill,” Chris continued, “and watched the start of the movie.” He pointed to the beginning of the chart. “As you can see, for the first ten minutes, my heart rate is rising. Then, as soon as everyone in the cinema was focused on his or her workout and the movie, I slipped off the treadmill, went to the door behind me, put in the code, and slipped out.”
“What about my cruiser?” Rodney said. “All cruisers, including mine, are outfitted with a GPS so that dispatch can locate it when need be.”
“That was a snap to disable,” Chris said with a wave of his hand. “Disconnected the wire in less than a minute.”
He pointed to the chart. “Now here’s the interesting part.” His finger followed the flow of the bar chart in which the tall red bars, marking the accelerated heart rate turned to blue and became shorter. “After I got in the car and started driving to Shepherdstown, my heart rate slowed down considerably. By the time I got to Morgan Park, it was a resting heart rate. Then, I parked the cruiser, less than a mile away from your house, Rodney.”
The bars once again turned red and rose in height. “This is where I started running. As you can see, my heart rate went up again for seven and a half minutes until I reached the back door of the house.” He pointed to where it turned blue and dipped again. “This is when I went into the house. I’m sure when we see your client’s chart, his heart rate will accelerate again as he rapes and murders his wife. Then once again my heart rate increased for eight minutes when I ran back to the cruiser.” Chris moved his finger along the chart to where the bars turned blue. “Then we have a resting heart rate when I drive back to the gym, used the code to go in through the back door. Then, it went up again when I got on the treadmill and spent the last twenty minutes running until the end of the movie.”
The lawyer looked over at Rodney, who had covered up his fitness monitor with his hand. “Good theory. Only proves that he could—”