“Sure, Lieutenant,” the assistant director said.
“We’ll talk soon.” I hung up and dropped my phone into my pocket as I rounded the corner into the station’s lunchroom. My eyes found the coffee machine and the empty pot. The light on the front of the coffee maker was on, signaling that it had been burning whatever bit of coffee remained in the carafe.
“How hard is it to click the stupid thing off?” I mumbled.
I took the carafe from the machine and held it up at eye level. Roughly an eighth of an inch of coffee remained at the bottom. I poured it out, washed the carafe, and started a fresh pot. I put my back to the counter and waited. My stomach grumbled, reminding me that I hadn’t eaten much of anything all day. I walked to the vending machine, pulled out my wallet, and browsed my choices.
“So what do you think?” I heard Hank’s voice ask at my back.
“Banana muffin, I guess,” I said. I pulled two bucks from my wallet and fed it into the vending machine.
“Grab me one too,” he said. “And I meant about the immunity thing. Think they’ll offer it up to him?”
I got Hank his muffin and tossed it to him. “Lunch is on you tomorrow. Make sure Karen gives you enough money to cover my steak.” I walked to the coffee maker. “And I don’t know. Sticky situation.”
I heard the sound of metal chair legs sliding across the lunchroom’s floor. I filled up a cup of coffee and turned around to see Hank taking a seat at one of the tables and unwrapping his muffin. I dumped some creamer into my coffee and joined him at the table.
“Westbrook tracked the sister’s phone number. It came back to Arizona, where it was supposed to,” Hank said.
“Okay.”
“Do you think he’s actually going to do what he says? Tell us exactly where she is if we give him what he wants?” Hank asked.
“Maybe,” I said. “But there’s going to be some other bullshit involved.”
“Like what?” Hank asked.
“Not sure. This all just seems like something that he has orchestrated, though. Like he’s leading us by the nose to something.”
Chapter 35
Within an hour, the decision was made. There would be no deal. The district attorney in Wisconsin was dead set on bringing new charges against Koskinen as soon as his exact involvement was determined. We all agreed locally, in Tampa, that it was the right decision—we owed it to the families of Eve Kleeman’s victims to make sure anyone involved was brought to justice. Personally, I found the thought of Koskinen out of a mental health facility and behind a nice set of bars where he belonged appealing. It was up to me and my team to find Kleeman without the so-called help of another killer. I’d spent the time waiting on the decision down in the tech department, watching the video that had been sent over from my condo’s security company. The footage of the actual body drop was grainy and didn’t give us much of a look at what exactly transpired there—though the video of her calling me from the front door was far better. Aside from getting confirmation of something we’d all but determined, it got us no further in the investigation. We never saw a vehicle on camera. I went back to my office.
I sat at my desk, reached out, and dropped the phone back on its base to hang it up. I’d just gotten off the line with the assistant director, informing him that there’d be no deals and letting him know that he could go ahead and stuff Koskinen into whatever little black hole that he planned. I left my office and walked out to the bull pen, where I found Hank and Jones at their desks.
“Anything?” I asked.
“Just following up on a couple of calls that came in on Kleeman,” Jones said. “Mostly of the ‘I saw someone over here that could have been her’ variety. Nothing that seems to be really turning into anything.”
“No reports in the same area? Anything like that?”
Jones shook his head.
“What about the BOLO on the father’s vehicle? Calls on that?”
I got another headshake.
I looked at Hank. “What are you on?”
“Well, the sisters are squared away as far as being where they are supposed to be,” Hank said. “I talked to the Madison PD sergeant again. Nothing really new on that front. They have a forensics unit on the scene, and I gave them Rick’s number to coordinate. Figured I’d just get back into the records we got on Kleeman and keep going through that.”
I felt my cell phone ringing in my pocket. I pulled it out, and the screen said that it was the assistant director at the state hospital.
“All right. Keep at it,” I said.
I walked to my office and clicked Talk.
“Lieutenant Kane,” I said.
“Yeah, Charles Gill. Koskinen says he wants to talk again.”
I walked through the doorway of my office and sat at my desk. “For what? There’s no deal happening.”
“He says that he wants to help you, anyway.”
“How nice of him,” I said.
I sat quietly in thought for a moment. Koskinen was playing around, probably to avoid being stuck in solitary. Yet I couldn’t just dismiss the fact that he might tell us where she was. I had to get back on a call with him. “Can you just put him on the phone?”
“He wants to be on video helping. Says it will help his case.”
“Whatever. Text me over the information for the call, and I’ll go down to my tech center. How soon do you want to do this?”
“We can be ready for it in a couple minutes.”
“All right. Call me when you’re ready.”
“Sure,” he said and hung up.
I walked next door to the captain’s office and stuck my head in. “Koskinen wants to do another video call. Says he wants to help, minus the deal.”
“Sounds like bullshit,” Bostok said.
“Agreed. We can’t just dismiss it, though.”
“Right,” the captain said. “When?”
“I’m going to head down to tech now and have Terry get it set back up. It should be just a couple of minutes.”
“Okay. I’m going to give Danes a call. He’ll probably want to sit in on this one.”
I nodded, left Bostok’s office, and grabbed Hank and Jones from the bull pen. Fifteen minutes later, I sat in front of the computer monitor in our tech department. I had more company than I did on the last call. Major Danes leaned against the wall next to the captain and Terry. Jones, Hank, Westbrook, and Rick stood at my left shoulder. The screen in front of me said connecting.
Koskinen’s tattooed face showed up on the screen a moment later. He was in the same room with the same surroundings as on the previous call.
“I thought you weren’t going to say another syllable without seeing the word immunity?” I asked.
He chuckled. “It was worth a shot,” he said. “So no deals, eh?”
“None,” I said.
“Bummer,” he said. “You know what they’re going to do to me here, right?”
“I don’t care,” I said. “Are you going to tell me where Kleeman is?”
“Right down to business? I thought maybe we could chat for a bit.”
“Not interested,” I said.
“Ugh, fine. I just thought that us two old pals could shoot the breeze a little.”
“We aren’t old pals,” I said. “I talked to you a handful of times in life. You’re just another murderer that I arrested that is now property of the state.”
“Ouch,” he said. “That’s all you think of me? I guess I feel closer to you from all of the time that I had to think about you in here. Having said that, I think you probably know that I’m more than just your average murderer. I think my little social experiment in Eve Kleeman proves that.”
“So now Eve Kleeman is a social experiment of yours?”
“That’s correct.”
“What is she, a follower of your satanic bullshit?”
Koskinen let out a quick laugh. “Maybe in her mind, she is. To me, she’s merely a pawn.”
“A pawn in what?”
I asked.
“In something that I’ve been cooking up for a bit. That’s a conversation we’ll have at another time, though. Speaking of time, I’ve probably bought her enough time with the immunity try. I can’t believe you guys actually considered that. What time is it, exactly?” he asked.
I glanced at my watch. “Three thirty. And what do you mean ‘bought her enough time.’ Time for what?”
“I suppose,” he said, “she’s probably ready for you now.”
“What does that mean? ‘Ready for you now’?”
“Oh, don’t worry, Lieutenant.” Koskinen shook his head. “No harm should come to you or your men. That’s not what this is about.”
“Then what’s it about?”
“I told you. It’s a conversation for another time. Right now, you and your other Joe Fridays need to go and find Eve. I have a phone number for you. You’ll be able to track it straight to her.”
“We have the number for her mother’s phone.”
“This isn’t her mother’s. Not sure whose phone it is. Just a different number that I have.”
“When did she give you this number?” I asked. “I thought that you weren’t in contact? I thought that you only called her once and she didn’t answer?”
He smiled. “We’re past the bullshit, remember? You want the number or not?”
“Yeah.” I pulled out my notepad and pen.
“Okay. It’s three-eight-three, seven-eight-four, three-nine-eight-four.”
Koskinen laughed. “Wait. That’s not the number. Okay, I remember it now.”
He gave me a different number, with a Tampa prefix, that I wrote down below the first.
“That’s all,” Koskinen said. He leaned closer to the camera. “I have a good feeling that we’ll talk again soon, Lieutenant.” He smiled before he leaned back in his chair and told whoever was in the room with him that he’d say no more.
I wrapped up the video call with the assistant director, and Terry clicked our equipment off. I turned in my chair toward everyone else in the room.
“I’m running the phone numbers now,” Westbrook said. He came to the computer station next to me and clicked a few keys. “The first isn’t a North American area code.”
“Do the other one with the Tampa prefix. We’ll get back to that one later,” I said.
“Yup.” Westbrook went back to clicking keys.
“He knows every last detail of what’s going on,” Hank said.
“I know. But what the hell is he sending us into?”
“What’s the first number he gave you?” the major asked.
“Phone number?” I asked.
“Yeah,” the major said.
I rattled it off from my sheet of paper.
“This guy doesn’t strike me as the ‘I’m going to slip up and give you the wrong number’ type. There was a reason he gave you that number. Let’s get someone looking into that number and seeing who the second number actually belongs to,” the major said.
“I got it,” Terry said. He left the group and went to his office.
“I got the second phone number coming up now. One second,” Westbrook said.
I turned toward him and got a look at the computer monitor. “Do we have a signal?” I asked.
“Yeah, it’s in Florida. Hold on, it’s closing in,” Westbrook said. “Tampa area. We have the location.” He rattled off the coordinates and plugged them into his computer. “Looks like a storage facility four miles east of here.”
“Text the address to my phone,” I said. “Let me know if that location moves.”
“Got it,” Westbrook said.
“Have Timmons get Collison and his team,” Bostok said.
Officer Collison, when not on patrol, was the lead of our station’s SWAT unit.
“Yup.” I left the tech unit with Hank and Jones in tow.
Chapter 36
Eve sat, naked, upon a single chair inside of the mostly empty storage unit. The door was closed. The cell phone remained on, inside of the service bay. In her left hand was her knife. On the floor, beside her, was a gas can. In her right was a lighter. She waited.
Chapter 37
We gathered with the SWAT unit in the station’s parking structure. Major Danes had gotten us a warrant to search the storage facility. We’d gotten nothing on the first phone number, but Terry had the name of the owner of the second number—the phone belonged to a Dana Haden. She was a short, mid-thirties, dark-haired woman with no priors. The interesting part was that her last name matched the name of the storage facility that we were gearing up to go to—Haden’s Self-Storage. The woman’s address was listed as across the street from the storage business. Danes thought a search warrant for that property was also needed and secured it for us. How Kleeman had the woman’s phone, or whether the woman herself was somehow involved, we didn’t know. Dana Haden had a Toyota pickup truck registered to her, and we put out a BOLO on it as a precaution.
I pulled a strap tight on my body armor and clipped a mic to the collar of my shirt beneath the vest. I draped my shoulder holster back over the top of the body armor and adjusted the fit.
As I twisted an ear radio into my ear and began fishing the wire through my vest, Collison waved me over. He stood at the nose of an unmarked cruiser a few feet away. Six other officers in SWAT gear stood to his side. Behind Collison and his group were another four patrol officers that Timmons had provided.
I joined them. The officers gave me space so I could look at the map unfolded on the hood of the car. Hank and Jones finished suiting up and came to us.
Collison scratched at his goatee. “We have our approach set,” he said.
“What have we got?” I asked. I stared down at the map. A big red X was drawn on it where the storage facility was located.
“We’re going to take eight cars down Adamo.” He traced his finger along the map. “You, Sergeant Rawlings, and Detective Jones will ride with my team and me. We’ll take four cars. Three guys in two cars, two guys in two cars. Patrol here is going to take another four cars, driving each car solo.” Collison nodded over to the other officers, dressed in uniform. He continued. “We’ll separate into two pairs of four cars here at East Seventh Avenue,” Collison said. “One unit, led by me, will head up to Tenth Avenue and approach from the west. The unit that splits off is going to take Seventh Avenue to North Forty-Third Street. They’ll take that north to Tenth and then approach from the east.”
“What about blocking off the road?” Hank asked.
“That’s where the four patrol cars come in. We’ll take our four cars to the front of the storage facility. The patrol guys driving solo will hang back and park two cars to the east and two to the west to block the road here, and here.” Collison pointed at the two locations on the map. “The officers will sit with each set of cars at the blockades.”
I nodded.
“Everybody got it?” Collison asked.
He received yeses and nods.
“Okay. So we have ten men that will be at the front of this place.” Collison moved the map. “Who has the building aerial?” he asked, looking back over his shoulder at the other guys from the SWAT unit.
One of his team, a taller, thin officer named Lapone, produced a standard-sized piece of paper with a photo of the facility. He handed it to Collison.
Collison slapped the paper down on the car’s hood.
I looked down at it. The photo showed the street in front of the storage facility we were moving on as well as a home directly across the street. My eyes went to the image of the main building of the storage facility. A rectangular building that appeared as if it had a higher and lower roofline sat in the center of the paper. The center building was surrounded by three long and narrow rectangular buildings creating a U-shape around it.
“We’re going to split into four groups when we get to the location. One of you, Lapone, take the one side, with the entrance gate—Russell, you take the other with the exit gate.”
The
officer named Russell, mid-thirties and wide shouldered, nodded.
Collison continued, “Four of you will be taking the home across the street which belongs to the owner of the cell phone. Her last name matches that of the business, so she may in fact own that as well. Her name is Dana Haden. This is her here.” Collison held his hand over his shoulder until someone handed him a piece of paper.
He passed the sheet to me.
“That’s a photo from her DL,” Collison said. “Everyone get a look at her.”
I looked at the woman. She was thin with short brown hair and brown eyes. She smiled big in the photo, showing off straight white teeth. I passed the paper to Hank.
“We have a warrant to search this woman’s property,” Collison said. “If we see her, she’s to be detained until we know more. Kane, Rawlings, and Detective Jones will be with me, taking the front rental office of the business.”
“Do we know if anyone is at the location?” Jones asked. “As in friendlies. This Dana woman, employees, other people?”
“We don’t know anything until we arrive on the scene,” Collison said. “Business hours right now say that they’re open. I made a call to the place and received no answer.”
“Is the signal still there?” Hank asked.
“Westbrook was supposed to call if it wasn’t. Let me double-check,” I said. I dialed the tech office and got Terry on the line. He checked with Westbrook, who was still at the computer and confirmed that the location of the cell phone hadn’t changed. I clicked off and stuck my phone back into my pocket. “Still there.”
“All right,” Collison said. “We’re a go. Let’s get this show on the road. Radio check and then mount up.”
We ran through a quick check and piled into cars. I got into the passenger side of the cruiser that Collison drove. Officer Troyer, another SWAT team member, hopped into the caged-in back. We left the station for our address. I looked over my shoulder to see the group of cars trailing as we made the split at Seventh Avenue. We continued north, getting location updates from the SWAT member leading the other group. Collison made a right on Tenth and slowed. The cars trailing behind us did as well.
The Ninth Life Page 19