by Thomas Scott
I still think maybe it’s a little excessive.”
“Think what you want. Her last name was Pope. Never mind the fact that she was the modern day equivalent of Lucrezia Borgia, I’m erring on the side of caution. I’ll be over at your place tomorrow to see how badly you’ve been compromised.”
Virgil puffed out his cheeks. “Jeez, I didn’t think about any of that. I thought it was probably a spreadsheet and some Word files or something.”
Becky pulled out a laptop of her own. “Uh huh.”
“So why not use mine?”
“Two reasons: One, they don’t update Windows XP anymore.” She held up her computer. “And two, this little baby is air-gapped.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“Duh.”
“Becky…”
“Okay, okay. Air-gapped is a network security measure that ensures a secure computer is physically isolated from unsecured networks…you know, like that little thing they call the internet. That’s why I killed the WIFI. There’s more to it than that, but you can Google it if you want the rest of the details.”
Virgil shook his head. “I don’t. But if that drive is compromised won’t you ruin your computer too?”
She let her eyelids droop. “Do you have your gun with you?”
“Yeah. Why wouldn’t I?”
“Is it loaded?”
“Of course.”
“And you know how to use it, how to aim and shoot and reload and make sure it’s safe when it’s in your holster and all that jazz?”
Virgil held his hands up. “Okay, I get it…you know what you’re doing. How long to crack the password?”
“Depends on how many characters. I’ve got a rainbow table that runs through a sequence—”
“A what?”
“It’s called a rainbow table. Please don’t make me explain it. We’re looking at anywhere from a couple of hours to a couple of days.”
“A couple of days?”
“It is what it is, Jonesy.”
Then Virgil had a thought. “Hey, wait. Maybe this will speed things up.” He handed Becky the list of failed passwords he’d already tried.
Becky managed to say thank you, sucking on her cheeks the entire time.
“You have a bad tooth or something?”
“Nope. I’m good.”
He went downstairs. Huma was still at the bar making eyes with Delroy.
Virgil went home.
24
Virgil was back in Brown County again the next day. He had the last known whereabouts of Patty Doyle…the Yellowwood state forest, but if she was out in the hills, they’d need dogs and helicopters and hundreds of people searching. And they wouldn’t be searching for a survivor. They’d be searching for a victim. He pulled up to the park ranger’s gate and hung his state ID out the window. “Virgil Jones with the state’s MCU. Where can I find whoever is in charge around here?”
The ranger at the gate was an overweight, jolly looking man with a crew cut and a dark green uniform that made him look like a boy scout troop commander. A single button was missing on his uniform shirt. His pants were tucked into his black military-styled boots. The boots themselves were scuffed and dusty.
“What’s the MCU?”
“Major Crimes Unit. Part of the state police.”
The ranger tucked a bubble of air inside a cheek, his head bobbing up and down. “Yeah, I’ve heard of you guys. You’re looking for the park office,” he said, his face open and honest. He pulled a park map from a clear plastic holder nailed to the side of the gatehouse, took a pen from his pocket and circled a spot on the map. He held it out for Virgil to see. “We’re here,” he said, pointing with the pen. “Follow this road straight ahead and it’ll take you right to the office.” He handed him the map. “Never been here before?” His question was friendly and sincere.
“Never had the pleasure,” Virgil said. “Do you have a name for me?”
The ranger looked down at his chest and pointed to his name tag. “Jim. Says so right here. See?”
Virgil bit into his lower lip. “Sorry. That’s not what I meant. I need the name of the person in charge at the park office. The head ranger? Is that what they’re called?”
Jim nodded in an exaggerated manner, his face taking on a reddish tint. “Gotcha. That’d be Bill Moyer.”
Virgil closed his ID and put it back in his pocket. He laid the map on the dash. “Thanks.”
“Everything okay?” Jim the jolly green ranger asked.
Virgil stared straight ahead. The forest was deep green, the trees packed tight across the rolling hillside. A lone deer—a Buck—stood still at the edge of the tree line, his head turned toward the park entrance. “I doubt it,” he said. “Sure is pretty out here, though.” He took out his phone and brought up a picture of Doyle and showed it to Jim. “Ever see this woman before?”
Jim studied the picture for a few moments then shook his head. “I’m sorry, no.”
When Virgil pulled away from the gate the deer took two quick strides and disappeared into the forest.
Virgil had no expectations of what the park office might look like, but if he had he probably would have been disappointed. The building wasn’t much bigger than the gatehouse at the entrance; a small single-story affair with a single entry door and two small windows on either side. A large radio antenna bolted into a concrete base jutted skyward. He parked his car and went inside the office.
Moyer was waiting for him. Virgil introduced himself and the two men shook hands. Moyer’s grip was strong. He was stocky and looked as solid as a slab of granite. His uniform was starched and creased to perfection. “Some sort of trouble?” he asked. Then without waiting for an answer, he added, “Jim said you needed to speak with me.”
Virgil took out his phone and again pulled up a picture of Patty Doyle. He handed his phone to Moyer. “Ever see this young lady before?”
Moyer didn’t hesitate. “Sure have. She’s the one gone missing, right?”
“When did you last see her?”
“Uh, maybe I better revise my last statement,” Moyer said. “I’ve never actually seen her, seen her. In person, I mean. I’ve seen her on the news. That’s how I recognized the picture.” He handed the phone back.
“I was told she liked to run the trails out here. With some regularity as I understand it.”
Moyer looked around the small office…like maybe he was expecting Patty Doyle to pop up behind him. “I wouldn’t know, to tell you the truth. We get thousands of people through here every month. I’ve been here long enough that I know a few of the local regulars, but that’s only a fraction of the whole.”
“What about any of the other rangers or employees?”
Moyer shrugged. “I can’t really speak for anyone else. You’d have to ask them. Not an easy task, either.”
“Why not?”
“Because between the rangers, the groundskeepers, the guides, and the volunteers we’ve got over a hundred people here and most of them are on rotating shifts in different parts of the park. You want to talk to all of them, you’re going to have your hands full for a while.”
Virgil didn’t want to hear that. He wanted to clear this case one way or another as quickly as possible. “I don’t have a while, as you put it. Or more to the point, Patty Doyle doesn’t.”
They both stood with that sobering thought for a moment. Then Virgil asked a basic question. “Does everyone in the park report to you?”
Moyer gave him a half nod. “In a manner of speaking. I’m in charge of the entire park, so the rangers and some of the other staff report directly to me. But not everybody. For example, the guys who mow and take care of the trees and whatnot, they report to the head grounds keeper, and he reports to me, and so on and so forth.”
“That got Virgil thinking. “Tell me about it…the reporting process.”
Moyer gave another little shrug. “Not much to tell, really. Most of the time the grounds keeping stuff is fuel and mai
ntenance reports. Expense items, you know, like a new mower part or something. It makes my eyes bleed sometimes.”
“What about the rangers? What sort of reporting do they do?”
“Depends on the day, really. I imagine it’s a lot like your police work. If it’s a busy day, there’s lots of paperwork and reporting. If it’s a slow day, there isn’t any paperwork at all.”
“We don’t have any slow days.”
“I suppose not,” Moyer said. “But you take my meaning.”
Virgil did. He gave Moyer a date and asked to see all the reports filed for that day.
Moyer turned to get the reports then stopped. “Uh, listen, I’m all for departmental cooperation and all that, but aren’t you supposed to have a warrant or something?”
Virgil closed his eyes momentarily and rolled a kink out of his neck. “That’d be a subpoena, not a warrant. In any event, we both work for the state, Mr. Moyer. I’m trying to find a missing college student. How about we stay inside the boundaries of the state and not make a federal case out of procedural protocol.”
Moyer thought about it for a few seconds. What was the harm? Besides, he had a daughter at I.U. “Wait here, I’ll get the logs.”
It took them all of two minutes to find what they were looking for. One of the rangers, a guy by the name of Chip Hamlin had a log entry that caught Virgil’s eye. “Is he working today?”
Moyer turned and looked at the whiteboard behind his desk. “Sure is.”
“Let’s get him in here.”
Moyer picked up the radio and made the call.
Hamlin turned into the lot ten minutes later and walked through the door. He was tall and narrow shouldered, with thick black hair turning grey at the temples. He had dark, deep-set eyes, and a hawkish nose. Virgil brought him up to speed and told him what they were after.
Hamlin started nodding right away. “Yup. I remember. I seen the girl too. Didn’t know it was her though. In fact, now that I think about it, I seen her out here quite a bit. She’s sort of easy on the eyes, if you know what I mean.” Then after realizing the possible implications of his own statement, he quickly added, “But that’s just a middle-aged man’s fantasy.”
Virgil made a circular motion with his hand.
“Right. So anyway, I was up in the tower closest to the entrance. We let the visitors climb them for the view but we keep the lookout at the very top locked up. Had some problems with dope and sex over the years. Anyhow, I was in the lookout and I seen her standing next to her car outside the entrance.”
“What kind of car?” Virgil asked. “What color?”
“Toyota Camry. Red. Older model, I’d say.”
That’s exactly right, Virgil thought.
Hamlin went on. “I used the field glasses we keep in the tower so I had a pretty good view. She had a flat and it looked like she was getting ready to change it out herself when a pickup pulled up and stopped.”
“Tell me about the pickup.”
“Not much to tell. Looked like a piece of shit. Couldn’t tell the make. Might have been a Dodge, or an older GMC, but I can’t say for certain. Didn’t have no paint on it that I seen. Like it had faded away or something. Sort of a light gray color. Might have been primer, but I think it was just faded. Couple of old guys—way older’n me and I’m just past fifty—got out to help her. I watched for a few seconds to make sure everything was okay and it looked like it was. They started to change the tire out, and I climbed down from the tower.”
“Then what did you do?”
“I locked up the tower and made the climb down. That takes a few minutes, especially with these knees of mine.” He looked down at his knees to emphasize the point. “Anyway, once I got down I hopped into the Gator and buzzed on out there. Time I got there, everyone had gone. It’s all in my report.”
Virgil sucked on his cheek and looked down at the floor for a moment. Then he looked at Hamlin. “Let’s take a little ride.”
He followed Hamlin out of the park and they stopped near the area where he’d spotted Patty Doyle and the two men.
Hamlin pointed. “Right over there. Other side of the drive.” Virgil walked over and looked around. He didn’t see anything. The drive was paved, the blacktop was free of blood or anything that could be of any evidentiary value. The grass along both sides of the drive was cut short in sections that extended about eight feet past the edge of the pavement. Beyond that it had been allowed to grow wild and tall.
Virgil squatted down next to the edge of the grass and looked around. The area was completely free of debris of any kind. “They do a nice job of keeping this area clean.”
Hamlin nodded. “They sure do. Gets mowed twice a week and we’ve got volunteers who come out every day and pick up the litter.”
“Is that a big problem? The litter?”
“Not too bad,” Hamlin said.
“It’s a state park. You’d think people would have more respect for the land.”
“Most people don’t know the meaning of the word respect.”
Virgil thought Hamlin’s statement might have been a little extreme. When he stood and moved closer to the tall grass, Hamlin said, “Watch out for snakes.”
“I will. How about you come help me?”
“Help you what?”
“Help me look for evidence…and snakes.”
Hamlin joined him and together the two men walked back and forth through the tall grass covering an area roughly twenty yards in either direction from where Doyle’s car had been parked. It was slow going, the tall grass bending and obscuring the view of the ground with every step they took. “You think those two men I seen had anything to do with that young girl’s disappearance?”
“No way to tell. If they did, your sighting of them could be significant. If they didn’t, they were most likely among the last people who—”
“What is it?” Hamlin asked. They were about ten yards away from each other.
Virgil was balanced on one leg, his other stuck part way up in the air. “Two things. I’ve got what looks like a busted cell phone here.”
Hamlin started to rush over.
“No, no, no. Stop,” Virgil said. “Wait, forget I said that. Get over here, but slow down. I’ve got a snake wrapped around my ankle.”
Hamlin crept close, inching his way over to where Virgil stood. When he finally got to him, he rolled his eyes, uncoiled the snake and held it up in the air. “It’s a Garter snake. They’re harmless. Want to hold it?”
“No, I don’t want to hold it. I want you to get it away from me.”
Hamlin shrugged and laid the snake back in the grass.
“Jesus Christ, not next to me.”
“They don’t even bite,” Hamlin said. “Lots of people have them as pets.”
“Snakes bother me. And I’m not lots of people. See that phone?”
“Yeah.”
“Stay exactly where you are and don’t take your eyes off it. Don’t touch it either.” Virgil high-stepped it out of the long grass and got a pair of latex gloves and an evidence bag from his truck. He put the gloves on and returned—with some reluctance—and picked up the phone by its edges. He dropped it into the bag and ran out of the tall grass.
Hamlin followed without running. He looked at the phone through the clear plastic bag. “Not going to call anyone with that.” The phone was split almost completely in half, held together by only a few wires. “Must have been clipped by the mower.”
“You sure this is the exact area where her car was parked?”
Hamlin nodded. “Yes. Absolutely. I had a perfect fix on it.”
“Was it in the grass or on the pavement?”
“About half and half, I’d say.”
Virgil could practically see it. The flat tire, the two men, a struggle, the phone getting lost under the car then struck by a mower and chucked into the snake infested weeds.
“Think it belonged to her?”
“I’ll know soon enough.”
Hamlin gave him an odd look, and Virgil caught it.
“What?”
“Thought you’d be happier about it. Maybe it’ll help you find her…get her back.”
Virgil looked away, toward the forest. When he answered, his voice was heavy with regret. “Been gone a long time.”
25
Virgil called Becky and read her the phone’s serial number. She called back ten minutes later. The phone was hers. He thanked her and hung up. Okay, the phone was Doyle’s, but that didn’t tell him much…only that Doyle had been to the park. He already knew that.
Rosie had been right all along, Virgil thought. The case was dying a slow death. The only other thing to check was one final piece of information the boyfriend had told him about. Nate Morgan said on the day of her disappearance Patty Doyle had gone to the post office to pick up a package. He knew the post offices had security footage. If he could review that footage, maybe he’d see something that would help. It was a long shot at best, but one he had to follow through on.
The postmaster turned out to be a stickler for details. He wore the traditional blue post office uniform—apparently the only one in the building who did—and very unapologetically educated Virgil on the complexities of federal law with regard to the United States Postal Service. “I need a subpoena, plain and simple. My hands are tied.” He said it with satisfaction, the corner of his mouth twitching upward.
“Look, I’m trying to find Patty Doyle, the missing I.U. student. She was in here a few weeks ago and I need to see if there’s anything to see on those tapes. What’s the harm? This isn’t exactly Fort Knox.”
The postmaster’s left eye tended to wander, and Virgil found himself swaying back and forth in an attempt to remain within his field of vision.
“Bring me a subpoena and I’ll show you whatever you need to see.”
Great. Virgil had just wasted a trip to Bloomington, time he felt he didn’t have. He needed to wrap this thing up one way or another so he could get back to figuring out a way to help Murton. He was about to let the postmaster go, but took one final run at him. “What about the package?”