“Ski mask. Black. Just cutouts for his eyes and mouth. I remember that.”
“Shoes?” Hank asked.
“I don’t think I looked,” she said.
“Gloves or bare hands?” I asked.
“White gloves.”
I wrote it down.
“Ethnicity?” Hank asked.
“I couldn’t tell.”
“Height and weight? Do you have a guess?” I asked.
“He was thin and tall. He had to be a couple inches over six feet.”
I jotted thin, six feet plus down on my notepad.
Our waitress showed with our coffees. “Are you ready to order or do you need a couple minutes?”
“We’ll need about ten minutes or so,” I said.
“Sure, no problem.” She left us.
I added a couple creamers and took a sip from my coffee. It was about what you’d expect, but not completely terrible. We got back into the interview.
“Miss Collins, what can you tell us about the vehicle he was driving?” I asked.
“White cargo van.”
“You don’t know what kind though?” Hank asked.
“Sorry, I’m not good with cars.”
“A guess at how old?”
She shrugged. “Sorry.”
“What about identifying marks on the van? Were there any words on it or damage that stuck out at you?”
“No. It was just a white van.”
“Windows?” I asked.
“Just front ones.”
“It says here you didn’t get a plate number. Did you see any of it?” I asked.
She shook her head. “It didn’t have one.”
“So there were no plates on the van at all?” Hank asked.
“No.”
I looked at the statement she left at the scene. No Plate was written down, meaning there literally was no plate, and not that she didn’t get the plate number.
Michelle looked at her phone. “I have to be back at work in ten minutes.”
“That’s fine. We’re just about through. Can you just tell us about driving up to the man and what took place then?” I asked.
“Well after the van drove off, I drove up to the man lying on the ground. He wasn’t moving. I got out and walked over to him. There was blood everywhere. I thought he might be dead, but I wasn’t going to check. I got back in my car, locked the doors and called 9-1-1.”
“And you waited there until the police arrived?” I asked.
“Yeah, it only took a few minutes until they showed up. They had to break up some people that were gathering around to see what happened. I told them I was the one who called, and they took my statement.”
“Miss Collins did you notice anything else while you waited? Did you see the van again or anything? Did any of the people who gathered look suspicious, anything like that?” Hank asked.
“No, not that I noticed. Once the paramedics showed up and took him, the police taped off the scene and were looking around and stuff. After that, they let me leave. I met up with my boyfriend and we took off.”
I finished jotting down the info on my pad, closed it up and stuffed it back in my pocket. “OK Miss Collins, that should be it. If you think of anything else, please give us a call.” I handed her my card, Hank did the same.
“OK, I will,” she said.
Hank and I stood as she slid out of the booth to leave.
“Thanks for meeting with us, take care,” Hank said.
“You too.”
As she walked out, Hank took her seat in the booth.
“What do you think?” he asked.
“Not too much there that we didn’t already know, but a little more info always helps. I’ll call Murphy and tell him to keep his eyes peeled for someone thin and over six foot leaving the bar around the same time. Maybe he was following them. You never know.”
“Let’s hope he gets something from the video. It’s about all we got right now,” Hank said.
I motioned our waitress over so we could order.
Chapter 14
Tom took the key from under the mat and let himself in. The family dog, a brown lab, met him at the door—tail wagging.
“Hi, Otis. How’s the puppy?” Tom reached down and patted the dog on the head.
Tom made an immediate left and walked up the stairs to the second level—the dog followed. Upstairs, he walked the hall and then turned right into the office. A computer desk sat along the back of the room. There was a couch to his right and a small television on a table along the left wall. He slid the door open for the closet—inside stood a four foot tall metal file cabinet. He pulled the top drawer open and flipped through the folders until he found one marked pay stubs. He slid the file out and thumbed through it until he found the most recent one. The file was slipped back where it came from. Otis stood at the doorway of the room observing.
The next on his list was the tax bill for the house. He found it in the file marked property.
With the two pieces of paperwork in hand, he just needed one more item. He flipped through to the back file marked passports and dug his hand into the file. There were two inside—he removed them both. Tom flipped open the first one and tossed it back. It wasn’t the one he was looking for.
He opened the second one and stared at the photo. It was perfect. Thanks to his father’s strong Irish genes, both sons looked strikingly similar. They both stood six foot three and weighed around two hundred pounds. Their light red hairstyles were similar—close on the sides and a finger length on top. Mark, older by a less than a year, often wore a goatee. Tom preferred the clean shaved look. They would have been Irish twins, if they had the same mother.
Tom flicked the photo of his older brother’s passport. “Thanks Mark. I’ll owe you one.”
He stuffed the passport and papers in his pocket and closed the file cabinet. He went back out of the house the way he came and re-locked the front door. It would be weeks, if not months, before Tom’s brother ever noticed the missing items.
Tom checked the time. He needed to hurry—the DMV closed in a two hours.
After a quick stop at a drugstore for a twenty-five dollar money order, he pulled his customer ticket and had a seat in the waiting area of the DMV. He was number four seventy-eight, they were serving four fifty-five. He grabbed a magazine wrapped in a plastic jacket and waited. The numbers clicked by one by one. He watched the customers be told over and over that they hadn’t filled out the proper paperwork for their request. After another half hour, his number lit and Tom headed for the corresponding window.
An overweight, gray skinned woman sat at the counter. “How can I help you, Sir?” Her voice was deep and had a distinctive rasp.
“I lost my wallet with my driver’s license. I’d like to get a replacement.”
“Have you brought another form of identification and proof of current residence?”
Tom nodded. “I have my passport here and a tax bill. I was doing some looking online, and they said that you should bring your social security card. The thing is, mine was lost with my wallet. I’ve already filled out the paperwork for that and sent it in. I did bring a pay stub as an additional form though. It has my social, address and all that.”
She didn’t speak. She held out her hand for the paperwork.
Tom slid the documents over.
The woman clicked a few keys on her computer and entered the information from Tom’s paperwork. “That’s going to be twenty-five dollars for a replacement card. Is that going to be credit card, check or money order?”
“I have a money order here.”
“Made out correctly?”
Tom nodded and handed it to her.
“OK. Why don’t you have a seat over there to your left where it says driver’s licensing. Someone will call you when they are ready.” She handed Tom the papers and passport back.
He walked over and had a seat next to a couple of teenagers fresh off their driving tests. They all sat a few chairs away fr
om each other playing on their cell phones. They were called up one by one until Tom was left sitting alone. A woman came to the edge of the counter. She looked over at him “Mark?”
Tom stood and walked over.
“Replacement right?”
“That’s right.”
“Did you want a new photo or did you want to just use the old one?”
“New photo I guess. I wasn’t the biggest fan of the old one.”
The woman smiled. “Why don’t you stand on that stripe in front of the background there.”
He walked over to the photo area and stood.
“OK, look right here and say cheese.”
Tom looked at her and smiled wide.
She clicked the camera. “Should just be a minute.”
“No problem.”
Chapter 15
The wheels of the car just hit the street out front of the IHOP when my phone started buzzing away in my pocket. I dug it out and looked at the caller I.D., it was the station. I hit talk.
“Lieutenant Kane?”
“Where are you guys?” The voice belonged to Captain Bostok.
“We’re making our way back to the station. We just got finished with the witness.”
“I mean where, specifically?”
“Oh, Brandon Boulevard. We just left a second ago. Why what’s up?”
“I got a message a little bit ago brought over to me. A guy called in regarding a van fleeing the scene last night. He didn’t think anything of it until he started seeing news coverage. He can’t make it in until tomorrow to give a full statement, but could take a minute to talk with an officer if they stopped by his work.”
“Where’s that?”
“The Sheraton in Brandon. I thought if you guys were out in the area still, you could pop in by him. I know it’s getting late, but the clock is ticking on this one.”
“That’s fine. We’ll make the stop.”
“The guy’s name is Tim Parkins. He works in maintenance.”
I held the phone to my ear with my shoulder and pulled out my notepad to jot down the witnesses name.
“Sounds good. I’ll let you know what we get.”
“OK. I should still be here when you guys get back. I’ll talk to you later.”
“Yup.”
I hung up from the captain and looked over to Hank.
“We need to make another stop?” he asked.
“Yeah, need to go to the Sheraton. It’s just off the next exit.”
“For?”
“Someone called into the station. I guess the guy witnessed a van fleeing the scene last night. We need to stop in and talk with him at his work.”
“Alright.”
We hopped off of the freeway and made our first left onto Queen Palm drive and pulled up to the hotel.
Hank parked to the side of the covered entry and shut off the cruiser. We walked in through the sliding glass doors and up to the reception area of the hotel’s lobby.
“Hi. Welcome to the Sheraton. How can I help you today?”
“Hello, we’d like to talk with an employee here. Tim Parkins in maintenance.”
“Oh, hold on one second,” she said.
The girl turned her back to us and walked through a doorway into the back office.
A minute or so later a manager appeared and came to the counter. He was husky, mid-forties and sported a comb over.
“Hello, I’m Ken Branch, manager here at the Sheraton. I understand you’d like to talk with one of our employees. What is this regarding?”
“I’m Lieutenant Kane and this is Sergeant Rawlings. Mister Parkins was a witness to a crime. We won’t take up too much of his time. I believe he’s expecting us.” We showed the manager our badges.
“Sure officers, if you will follow me please.”
He shuffled us from the lobby, away from the hotel guests, and through the hallway to a service door in the back. Down a flight of stairs, we arrived in the lowest level of the building, the nerve center of the hotel. The hotel kitchen was off to our left, laundry beyond that, a few offices and parking for their hotel shuttle vans was before us. I stared at the bald spot on the back of Mister Branch’s head wondering why he was still hanging on to the little hair he had left. We followed him into the laundry room. Inside, a man appeared to be struggling with replacing an air vent on one of the machines.
“Excuse me, Tim? These officers would like to speak with you.”
He sat down the vent and turned toward us.
“Hello Mister Parkins, This is Sergeant Rawlings and I’m Lieutenant Kane with the TPD Homicide Division. You spoke with our captain on the phone.”
“Oh. Yeah, when I caught the news coverage I figured I should call in and talk with someone.”
“We appreciate it,” I said.
“I can’t say for certain what I saw was related, but figured it couldn’t hurt to give you guys a call. I didn’t expect someone to actually stop by. Good timing, I needed a break from this damn thing.”
“Mister Branch, could you please excuse us for a minute?” Hank asked.
He nodded, eager to leave. The manager closed the door behind him as he walked out.
“Mister Parkins, this will just take a couple minutes. We don’t want to keep you from your work,” I said.
“That’s fine.”
“Why don’t you go over what you saw last night,” I said.
“Well, I was one of the last people to leave the sports bar parking lot. I had been there earlier in the night and left my car parked in there. I was just about to leave when, across the street, a white cargo van came flying out of the parking structure. The guy floored it up the street and blew the stop light in front of the bar.”
“What time approximately?” Hank asked.
“It had to be a little after 3:00 a.m.”
The time fit. My interest in Parkins story increased.
“And the vehicle came from inside the parking structure?” I asked.
“Yeah, crashing right through the arm that stops you from pulling out without paying.”
“Did you get a look at the guy driving?” I asked.
“Nah, moving too fast, plus he headed in the other direction.”
“Have a guess on the make and model?” Hank asked.
“It was a Chevy Express van. I used to work maintenance at the Chevy dealer in Wesley Chapel.”
“Approximate year of the truck?” Hank asked.
“Anywhere from a 2003 until present. They don’t change too much.”
I wrote down white 2003-up Chevy Express cargo van in my notepad. It was a needle in a haystack, there had to be thousands on the streets of Tampa.
“Can you think of anything else that may help us here?” I asked.
“Not really, that was about the extent of it. I didn’t even think about the situation again until I the coverage was all over the news. I figured it was just some drunk.”
“Alright, that should be it Mister Parkins, we’ll let you get back to work. We will still need you to come in and give us an official statement,” I said.
“Yeah, that’s fine. I can stop over there tomorrow.”
“Thanks. Here is my card, if you happen to remember anything else, feel free to give me a call.” I handed him my card and Hank and I made for the door. Back through the hotel, we hopped in the Charger parked up front.
Hank managed to get us back to the station without incident. After a little stop and go traffic, we pulled in to the parking structure around 7:00 p.m. and got out.
“You need me for anything? Otherwise I’m going to bug out. Karen gets more and more annoyed for every minute past seven thirty that I’m not home.”
“Nah go ahead, I don’t need you coming in with a black eye and busted lip tomorrow.”
Hank shook the jab off.
“Are you staying late?”
“I’m just going to check in with the captain and then take off. Callie has to work tonight, but maybe I’ll pop in by her and say hi
.”
Hank nodded. “Alright, I got to go.”
“I’ll catch you in the morning,” I said.
He left for his car as I walked through the doors of the station. The captain sat at his desk on the phone when I walked in.
His finger pointed to the chair told me to take a seat. His last words on the phone told me the topic of conversation and who was on the other end of the phone.
“I will Judge Casey,” he said. He hung the phone back on the receiver.
“Casey wanting an update?” I asked.
“I wish I had more for him. I told him we had a couple leads we were following, and I’d call him as soon as we had something new. How were the stops by the witnesses? Worth the trip?”
I nodded. “The girl who called 9-1-1 gave us a little better description—thin, six feet plus and wearing white coveralls with a hood. That was about it from her. The Parkins guy had more, and the time frame fits in with the 9-1-1 call. He said he saw a white 2003 or newer Chevy Express cargo van leaving that parking lot where the attack took place in a hurry.”
“Alright, let’s get on that. When we’re done here, head over and talk with Timmons in Patrol. See if he can get a BOLO out.”
“You want a BOLO out on a white Chevy cargo van? The Patrol guys aren’t going to be happy about that.”
“Don’t care. If it’s a white Chevy cargo van, it’s getting pulled over and checked out.”
I raised my eyebrows. “OK, I’ll talk to Timmons. Did Ed ever send over the autopsy reports from the Millers?”
“Yeah, they came in earlier. Nothing we didn’t already know. Blunt force trauma. Ed puts the murder weapon as a one inch round metal bar or pipe.”
I nodded.
“Where’s Rawlings?” the captain asked.
“I told him to take off.”
Bostok looked at his desk clock. “Damn, I didn’t realize it was this late. Alright, I’m shutting her down. My boy dropped off my grandson at the house. I need to get home and spend a little Grandpa time with the little guy. Try to be in early. I want to get the morning meeting taken care of right away so we can get back on this.”
“Sounds good, Cap. I’ll send the guys out a message to let them know.”
I left Bostok’s office and made my way over to Patrol. Timmons was at his desk. He looked up as I walked over.
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