by James Swain
“I’m used to it,” Long said.
We exchanged good-byes, and I put my phone away. To Linderman, I said, “What’s going on?”
“The Hollywood police just found the van burning in a deserted lot in Hallandale,” Linderman said.
“Any sign of Sara or her captors?”
“Not a trace.”
CHAPTER 23
Hallandale was part of Broward County, only it felt more like Miami, the soulless apartment and condo buildings crammed together, the sprawl of concrete so pervasive that you could drive for blocks without seeing a blade of grass or a tree.
I followed Linderman west on Hallandale Beach Boulevard, then south on South Federal Highway to a deserted strip mall inside Bluesten Park. Hallandale was a town of retirees, and the traffic moved in slow motion.
The strip mall had seen better days, the shops lifeless and empty. Linderman drove around the building, and parked beside a Dumpster overflowing with garbage. Parking beside him, I stared at a line of police cruisers. Everywhere I looked, uniformed cops were traipsing around, poking their noses where they didn’t belong. Police departments in south Florida were revolving doors, and most cops didn’t know the first thing about preserving a crime scene. I leashed Buster and got out.
A large dirt lot sat behind the strip center. The lot was flat and dusty and filled with tire rims and torn bags of garbage. It backed up onto a large warehouse whose walls were painted white and without graffiti. Only in a retirement area did you see that.
The van sat in the lot’s center, a plume of gray smoke still billowing from its hood. The gas tank had ignited, causing the van’s roof to melt down and disappear. The smell of gasoline and burnt upholstery hung in the air like a toxic bouquet.
Linderman stood beside me, his badge pinned to his lapel. Although he’d never expressed it in words, he had a low tolerance for the local cops.
“Do you think there are any clues these guys haven’t trampled on?” he asked.
A baby-faced cop stood a dozen yards away from us. As we watched, he picked up an empty soda can with his bare hand, and dropped it into an evidence bag.
“Probably not,” I said.
Linderman shook his head, clearly disgusted.
“Sara’s abductors didn’t pick this place randomly,” I said. “They’d been here before, and knew that it was deserted. I’m guessing they had another escape vehicle parked nearby, in case of an emergency. They came here, burned the van they were driving to destroy any clues, then transported Sara to the other vehicle, and bolted.”
“That was smart.”
“Yes, it was. I originally thought these guys were both nutcases, but now I’m not so sure. The big guy is definitely off his rocker, but I think his partner is cagey, and might be calling the shots.”
“One is the brains, the other the brawn.”
I pointed at the burned-out van. “That’s another important clue.”
“How so?”
“Sara’s abductors used a stolen minivan as their first getaway vehicle,” I said. “The Fort Lauderdale cops found it in a parking garage across the street from the Broward Library. The van had been wiped clean.”
Linderman gave me a puzzled look. He was one of the few law enforcement agents I knew who didn’t get offended when he was in the dark.
“Why is that important?” he asked.
“They wiped the painter’s van down because they didn’t want their fingerprints getting lifted,” I said. “They would have wiped this van down as well, only there wasn’t enough time, so they burned it instead. But the end result was the same: Their fingerprints were destroyed.”
“So one of these guys has a criminal record and doesn’t want his fingerprints being found,” Linderman said. “Which one do you think it is?”
“It’s Mouse. The Broward cops checked the police databases for the big guy, and he didn’t turn up. If we can identify Mouse, we’ll have a much better chance of finding Sara. If we can’t, we’re in for the long haul.”
Linderman shot me a look that said he understood. Catching criminals was a numbers game. We’d had our chance to catch Mouse and his partner, and they’d slipped through our fingers. Our odds were getting worse by the minute.
Buster pulled at his leash. I looked down at him, and saw that his hackles stood straight up. He had locked onto a scent.
“I’m going to let Buster sniff around and see what he can find,” I said.
“And I’ll talk to the Keystone Kops,” Linderman said.
I walked toward the smoldering van. One of the cops working the scene stopped me, and asked me what the hell I was doing. I pointed at Linderman, who was talking to the officer in charge on the other side of the lot.
“I’m working with the FBI,” I explained.
The cop let me pass. I walked up to the van, stopping when I was ten feet away. Buster had his nose glued to the ground, and had not stopped pulling. He was seventy pounds of pure muscle and strong enough to make my arm ache. From my pocket, I removed the paper napkin with Sara Long’s lipstick, and put it up to my dog’s snout.
“Find the girl,” I told him.
Buster sniffed the napkin. He resumed sniffing the ground, and crossed in front of me, pulling to my left. I shortened his leash, and let him drag me clear across the lot, stopping at the boundary to the warehouse. I glanced over my shoulder. We had walked in a perfectly straight line from the van. My experience told me that when hurried, people took the shortest route possible. Buster had found the escape route.
“Good boy.”
I let Buster move ahead. There was pavement here, most of it broken. My dog went fifty feet, then came to an abrupt halt. We were beside the warehouse, the shade a welcome relief from the burning sun.
I stared at the ground. My eyes locked on a pair of tire tracks and a fresh cigarette butt. Mouse had been smoking a cigarette the night of Sara’s abduction. This was where their second vehicle had been parked.
The tire tracks were muddy and looked fresh. As a detective, I’d used an online company called TirePrint to identify tire tracks that I’d discovered at crime scenes. I would e-mail the company the tire track and wheel base measurements of a vehicle I wanted to identify, and they would input the information into a database, and determine the make and year of the vehicle. The simple procedure rarely took more than a few minutes.
I felt my spirits soar. I was going to find the vehicle Mouse and the giant were using, and I was going to alert every law enforcement agency in the state to be on the lookout. I scratched behind my dog’s ears.
“You make me look so good,” I told him.
Then, I cupped my hand over my mouth.
“Over here,” I called out.
Linderman was the first to reach me. The FBI agent inspected the tracks, then went to his SUV, and returned with an evidence collection kit. Using a tape measure, he measured the tire tracks and jotted down the numbers onto a notepad. He also snapped a photo of the tracks with a small digital camera. The cigarette butt was placed in a plastic evidence bag, onto which he scribbled the date, time, and location. Then he took out his cell phone.
“Calling TirePrint?” I asked.
“Yes. Let’s hope they can tell us what these guys are driving.”
Linderman’s call went through. I heard my own cell phone ring, and stepped away to answer it. Caller ID said it was JESSIE.
“Hey, honey,” I said.
“Hi, Daddy. I’m sorry to be bothering you, but I need your help.”
“What’s wrong? Where are you?”
“I’m on the team bus heading back to Tallahassee. It’s an eight-hour drive, so I decided to catch up on my homework, only I realized that I didn’t have the schoolbooks I loaned Sara Long. I’ve got an exam next week, and I really need them.”
It was rare that my daughter called me with her problems, but there was something in her voice that I didn’t like.
“Did Sara bring the books on the trip?” I asked.
“Yes. Sara had them the other night. I figured the Broward police were holding them as evidence, so I called the detective in charge of the investigation, and asked her if I could have them back.”
“Detective Burrell?”
“Yes. She was very nice, and went to the evidence locker to find my books for me. So here’s the weird part. They weren’t there. Detective Burrell found a copy of the police report that listed everything in Sara’s motel room, and my schoolbooks weren’t listed.”
“So the books weren’t in Sara’s room when the police got there.”
“No. I figured maybe they fell under the bed, so I called the motel, and asked the manager if one of the cleaning people found them. No luck there either.”
There was a simple solution to Jessie’s problem, which was to go to the campus bookstore, and buy another copy of her missing books. Only there was something else going on here that I was missing. I said, “Tell me what you’re thinking, honey.”
“This is going to sound crazy…”
“Say it anyway.”
“I think the people who kidnapped Sara made it a point to take my books.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Because Sara’s other schoolbooks were left behind in the motel room. Detective Burrell told me so. They were in the evidence locker.”
I felt myself stiffen. Jessie had stumbled upon something. I said, “Well, that certainly sounds strange. The books you loaned Sara… what were they?”
“My nursing books. Manual of Medical-Surgical Nursing Care and Taber’s Medical Dictionary. Sara sometimes borrows them from me when we travel. They’re a real pain to lug around.”
“Are they big?”
“Yeah, they’re both doorstops.”
I spent a moment processing what Jessie had just told me. Sara’s abductors had purposely removed two nursing books from Sara’s motel room during her abduction. They were big books, and had been taken for a reason. I found myself thinking back to Naomi Dunn, who’d also been a college student. Dunn’s books had been scattered around her apartment, and I didn’t remember the police taking an inventory of them.
The police file of Dunn’s case was in the trunk of my car with the rest of my belongings. I decided it was time to take a look at it.
“I need to go,” I told my daughter. “Thank you for calling, and telling me this.”
“I hope it means something,” Jessie said.
“It does. You did good, honey.”
I went to my Legend and popped the trunk. The cardboard box containing all my earthly possessions stared up at me. It should have given me pause, but it didn’t. Life was too short. I pulled out Dunn’s file and slammed the trunk shut.
I got into my car for some privacy. The interior was as hot as an oven. I looked at the thermometer on the dash. The interior was 96 degrees, and I was parked in the shade.
I started up the engine. Soon cold air was blowing through the vents. Buster climbed onto the passenger seat and promptly fell asleep. I opened Dunn’s file on my lap and sifted through the pages. A list of Dunn’s classes at Broward Community College had been included as evidence, along with the names of her classmates who’d been interviewed by the police.
The list had been typed on a typewriter, the block letters badly faded. Dunn had been taking four classes at BCC. One was in contemporary American literature, the other three medicine-related. Her major was listed at the bottom of the page.
Nursing.
Thank you, Jessie.
I flipped to the evidence log. Forty-eight items had been removed from Dunn’s apartment and cataloged by the police, including her clothes, toiletries, jewelry, a tennis racket, several pieces of expensive camera equipment, and a stack of novels written by Ayn Rand, Norman Mailer, and Saul Bellow. It was heavy reading, and no doubt part of her American literature class. Yet her nursing books, which was her major, were nowhere to be found.
I combed through the report. If I remembered correctly, the police had searched Dunn’s car, an old Mazda that she parked outside her apartment. Perhaps her nursing books had been found inside the trunk.
The car’s items were buried in the back of the file. The police had found five items in the trunk. Two beach blankets, a tube of suntan lotion, a straw hat, and a portable radio. Dunn’s nursing books weren’t there either.
I slapped the file shut and cursed. I’d been looking at Dunn’s file for eighteen years, yet somehow I’d failed to see the discrepancy. Dunn’s abductors had taken her nursing books, just like they’d taken Sara’s nursing books.
I’m sorry, Naomi.
Linderman materialized beside my car. He’d undone the knot in his tie, and giant drops of sweat dotted his brow. The look on his face was anything but happy.
I lowered my window. “What’s up?”
“Good news, and bad news,” Linderman said.
“Why don’t you climb in? It’s nice and cool.”
“Don’t mind if I do.”
I made Buster get into the back, and Linderman took his place. I let him enjoy the cool air for a few moments, then said, “What’s the good news?”
“TirePrint just made the vehicle. Sara’s abductors are driving a 2006 Jeep Cherokee with Goodrich tires. I called the Miami and Broward cops to see if any Jeep Cherokees have been stolen in the past week, and none have been reported.”
“Do you think it’s their car?”
“Yes. I’m guessing they kept it parked here, and used stolen vehicles to move around town. I’ve alerted the police and Highway Patrol to be on the lookout for the vehicle, not that I think they’re going to find it.”
“Is that the bad news?”
“Yes. Jeep Cherokees are one of the most popular makes on the road. There are literally thousands of them. Since we don’t know the color of the Cherokee they’re driving, our chances of spotting them are slim.”
I stared at the file lying in my lap, my mind racing.
“I think I know how to find these guys,” I said.
Linderman’s head snapped, and he stared at me.
“Then what the hell are we sitting here for?”
CHAPTER 24
I needed a computer. Since my office in Dania was closer than Linderman’s office in North Miami Beach, we’d caravan there. Linderman opened the door and started to get out of my car. I stopped him.
“I’ve figured out what these guys’ motivation is.” I tapped the file. “The evidence is right here.”
Linderman pulled his leg back in and shut the door. He was sweating profusely, even though the car’s temperature was comfortable.
“Go ahead,” the FBI agent said.
“They’re abducting nursing students.”
His face clouded. He shifted his gaze and stared out the windshield.
“My daughter was a nursing student,” he said quietly.
“I remember you telling me that.”
Linderman looked back at me. The pain had disappeared from his face. I’d seen this happen before. One minute he was a grieving parent, the next an unflappable FBI agent. I didn’t know how he did it. I know I couldn’t.
“Time’s a-wasting,” Linderman said. “Let’s go.”
– – I drove to my office with Linderman riding my bumper. I ran my business above a restaurant called Tugboat Louie’s in Dania. Louie’s boasted a good-time bar, dockside dining, and a busy marina. Not many respectable businesses would operate out of a place where drunkenness and all-night partying were considered appropriate behavior, but I wasn’t one of them. Louie’s owner, my friend Kumar, didn’t charge me rent, and that made the place perfect in my book.
The Rolling Stones’ “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking?” was blaring out of Louie’s outdoor loudspeakers as Linderman and I entered the building. Kumar sat on a stool by the front door, wearing his traditional white Egyptian cotton shirt and oversized black bow tie. Next to him was a blackboard with the day’s lunch specials. Cheeseburger, grouper sandwich, conch fritters, Key lime pie.
I’d been frequenting Louie’s for years, and the specials never changed. Seeing me, Kumar exclaimed “Hello, Jack! Hello, Buster! Hello, Jack’s friend!” He clapped his hands. “There is always excitement when you’re around, Jack. How about some lunch? I can heartily recommend the cheeseburgers. They are very good!”
“Sure. I’ll take a cheeseburger, medium rare,” I said.
“Well done,” Linderman said.
“And Buster?” Kumar asked.
“He would like the usual,” I said.
Kumar hopped off his stool. “Coming right up, gentlemen.”
I entered the restaurant and walked behind the noisy bar. Unhooking the chain in front of a narrow stairwell, I climbed the stairs to my office, Linderman behind me.
The second floor contained two offices: mine and Kumar’s. My office was long and narrow, and contained a desk, an ancient PC, two folding chairs, a rusted file cabinet picked up at a yard sale, and a wall containing the photographs of a dozen missing children I looked for but never found. Sitting at my desk, I booted up my computer and opened my e-mail.
Typing with two fingers, I composed a letter that I planned to send to every law enforcement agency in the state, asking them to search their databases for young women who’d gone missing in the past eighteen years who were nursing students.
Linderman stood behind my chair as I typed, staring at the computer. In the screen’s reflection I saw him shake his head.
“Something wrong?” I asked.
“How many police departments are there in Florida? Sixty-six?” he asked.
“Sixty-seven,” I said.
“How many of them are going to drop whatever they’re doing to help you? Based upon my experience, they’ll pass the request down the line, and it will end up in the hands of a secretary, who may or may not look through the files.”
“Do you want to write it?”
“I won’t get any better response. The FBI isn’t liked by most cops.”
Our food came. Two cheeseburgers swimming in french fries, and a bowl of ground beef for Buster. Linderman pulled up one of the folding chairs, and we ate our lunches.