In a Split Second

by Timothy Glass

  Stanley Jenkins, the last person on the list, answered the door on the first ring. He was a short man, about five feet tall, and had a barrel chest. He welcomed Kate and Connor into his house and ushered them to the kitchen table. As he excused himself to retrieve his records, Kate looked around and noticed that an artificial Christmas tree stood in the corner of the living room. She also saw a large deer head mounted on one wall. She was glad Sundae was in the car.

  Mr. Jenkins returned quickly with his record book, along with copies of all the receipts for the show. “Brad Hopper, the name sounds familiar. Let me look,” he said, setting the record book on the kitchen table. “I did sell a Glock at the show.”

  He turned the pages and stopped, his index finger coming to rest on a name. Kate and Connor leaned over to get a better look. There it was. On line 23, the name listed next to the make and model of the gun was Bradley Hopper.

  “Mr. Jenkins,” Connor said as he pulled out a photo of Brad Hopper, “do you recognize this man?”

  “Hold on just a minute.” Mr. Jenkins left the room and quickly returned with a folder. “Here’s the photocopy of the driver’s license,” he said, laying the copy in front of the detectives. “I even copied the license number of the car he drove.” Mr. Jenkins showed Connor and Kate the description and license number.

  “Do you have a copy machine here that you could use to make us a copy of both of these?” Connor asked.

  “No copy machine, but I can make a copy from my printer, if that’s all right,” Mr. Jenkins said.

  “That would be great.”

  Connor and Kate remained at the kitchen table while the printer copied the papers.

  “The photo on that license just doesn’t look right,” Kate said.

  “I know. I thought the same thing,” Connor said.

  As they walked to the door, Connor turned back to Mr. Jenkins. “One last thing. Does the name Jeff Gilbert sound familiar, by any chance?”

  Jenkins scratched his head in thought. “Can’t say that it does.”

  Chapter 17

  Connor and Kate drove slowly from Mr. Jenkins’ house. As Connor drove, Kate busied herself in the police unit, examining the copy of the driver’s license Mr. Jenkins had given them. The rain hadn’t let up; rather, the steady rainfall had become a downpour. Visibility was poor, even with the wipers on high.

  Kate hardly noticed the weather outside the car and how the branches of the tree-lined state road hung low, soaked with rain. She was too busy comparing Brad’s photo to the one on the copy of the driver’s license. The copy was grainy at best; therefore, intricate details were hard to make out.

  “Connor, the photo on the driver’s license just doesn’t look like Brad Hopper. Remember when you showed Jenkins the photo of Brad from our file? He said he couldn’t be one hundred percent sure. It looks close but…”

  “Kate, he also said the man who purchased the Glock was wearing a Western hat with the brim pulled down. That in itself could explain why he wasn’t able to definitively identify the man,” Connor said. He didn’t take his eyes off the wet, winding highway that curved in front of the police unit.

  “But he also told us he couldn’t be certain the man with the hat was the man in our photo,” Kate said. “Look!” She held up the photocopy of the driver’s license.

  Connor glanced at the photo. As he did, the police unit’s tires hydroplaned on the wet asphalt. Connor rapidly corrected his steering before the car began going off the highway, narrowly missing a guardrail.

  “Kate, I’ll look at it once we get back to the PD.”

  Kate muttered under her breath, “This photo is not Brad Hopper. The nose is all wrong.”

  They approached a sharp curve, which Connor successfully navigated. As they came out of the curve, Kate looked up and screamed as Connor hit the brakes. Just ahead, an overturned car lay in their path.

  Connor quickly pulled the police unit to the side of the rain-soaked shoulder and engaged the emergency lights on the police unit. “Call it in to dispatch!” Connor yelled as he jumped out of the unit to see if anyone was hurt.

  Kate watched Connor run toward the overturned car. Her heart was beating hard and fast, and she felt short of breath for a few seconds. Even Sundae had perched her front paws on the back of the front seat, watching intently. Kate picked up the mic and gave dispatch their location. She reported that they had come upon an overturned car and that they needed a sheriff’s officer and an ambulance dispatched to the area.

  Connor pulled the driver out and over to the side of the highway and started CPR. “ETA on the ambulance?” Connor asked, glancing at Kate. As she approached, he kept administering CPR.

  “They said about five minutes or less. I put the flares behind our car. Anyone else in the vehicle?” Kate asked as she opened the first aid kit. She stacked several 4X4 gauze pads and used gauze wrap to hold the pads in place on the young man’s forehead.

  “No, it looks like he was the only person. More than likely, by the look of those tires and the lack of tread, he lost control on the wet highway as he came out of that curve.”

  In the distance, they heard the ambulance approaching the scene. Within a few minutes, two EMTs ran to the victim.

  “What do we have?” asked one of the EMTs as he ran to Connor’s side.

  “Head wound. He was bleeding badly. He had a faint pulse, then stopped breathing. I made sure the airway was clear and started CPR.”

  “We’ll take over from here, detectives.”

  Connor and Kate slowly walked back to their police unit. Sundae looked at them from the backseat of the car.

  “I better let her out to take care of her business. Tell dispatch we’ll be heading back to the PD.”

  Sundae bounded out of the car, sniffing in a zigzag pattern. After relieving herself, she took off into the bushes, sniffing the brush along the way.

  Two sheriff’s department cars rolled to a stop. Deputy David Smith exited the patrol car, grabbed his rain slicker, and put it on as he walked over to Connor.

  “What brings you three out here in the middle of nowhere, Detective Maxwell?”

  “Still working on that Hampton homicide.” Connor turned, looked back, and pointed at the stretch of highway. “That sharp curve back there can really be a challenge when it’s raining.”

  “Even when it’s dry, that piece of Highway 10 can be a challenge,” said the deputy.

  They heard Sundae howl in the distance.

  “Deputy, if you no longer need us, I better find my dog and get us back to the PD.” Connor walked off into the thick brush in search of Sundae.

  He knew all too well that scent hounds like beagles could be difficult. Sometimes, when left to themselves, they simply wanted to do what came naturally to them as hunters. Sundae was no exception. While she was a well-trained canine, Connor knew she may have simply treed a critter and started howling at it. For the most part, though, she was on point and all work.

  “Sundae, come!” Connor yelled in the direction of Sundae’s howling.

  In a few minutes, Sundae was beside Connor. Her coat was soaked and muddy.

  “Look at you,” Connor said as the two walked back to the police unit. When he approached the car, he noticed that Kate was still looking over the paperwork Mr. Jenkins had given them. Connor punched the trunk release and grabbed a dry towel to wipe Sundae off.

  Kate looked up as Connor got behind the wheel. “Wasn’t that Deputy Smith?”

  “Yeah. Ms. Sundae must have treed herself a critter back there and was having a blast.”

  Before Connor could pull back out onto the highway, his cell phone rang. He looked at the caller ID and saw that the call was from Malcolm Greenblatt, ME. Kate half-listened to the call. When Connor hung up, he put on the emergency lights and pulled back onto the highway.

  Kate looked over at Connor. “What was that all about?”

  “That was the ME. It seems they just had another homicide. He thought it might be the same
MO as the Hampton one.”

  “Is he sure?” Kate asked.

  Connor drove as fast as he could back into the city, to the latest crime scene.

  “So, we have a serial killer out there?” Kate asked. “Who did they dispatch to the scene?”

  “Detectives Bob Barton and Grant Harris.”

  Chapter 18

  Beth Ellis sat looking at the two white boards. One board had “Hampton” across the top while the other had “Jefferson”. On each board, the victim’s photo appeared under the name. Beth, Connor, and Kate were meeting with Bob Barton and Grant Harris, the detectives assigned to the homicide of Craig Jefferson.

  Bob was a tall man, standing a little over six feet. He was in his late forties and was a seasoned cop, having moved up the ranks from the uniformed division to detective. Grant had been a lateral transfer from a police department out of state. He stood only five-feet-two. Their height differences had led the members of the Lakewood PD to give the detectives their nicknames: “Mutt” and “Jeff ”.

  “We’re waiting for all the reports from the ME and the CSI team to come back on this latest victim, Craig Jefferson. I thought this would be a good time for all of us to regroup and compare notes to see if, in fact, we have a match with the two cases,” Connor said.

  Beth tapped the end of her pen on a yellow tablet. Deep in thought, she stared intently at the two white boards.

  Connor continued. “As you may know, Candy Martin’s report on the morning show speculated that this is a serial killing.”

  “Did someone call the TV station with a tip that caused her to come to that conclusion?” asked Bob.

  “No. I’m sure this is just for ratings. She asked me for details. I told her that this is an ongoing investigation and that I couldn’t comment,” Connor said.

  “We did the same on the Jefferson case,” Grant said.

  Beth looked up from the white boards at Connor. “Is there any link to a person or persons in the Hampton case to those in the Jefferson case?” she asked.

  “Not so far. But we’re still looking into it,” Kate interjected.

  Beth continued scrutinizing the white boards.

  “Both killings occurred early in the morning. Both perpetrators entered the home and killed the victim while they slept in their own bed. Very similar, yes,” Kate said. “However, that’s as far as it goes at this point.”

  Connor remained in front of the white boards. “The difference with the Jefferson case is that no one was home except the victim. With the Hampton case, two other people were in the house – the victim’s girlfriend and her daughter.”

  “Very gutsy, if you ask me,” said Grant.

  “We still haven’t ruled out a copycat killer,” Bob said, looking at Beth.

  “Tell that to Candy Martin.” Connor was clearly irritated about the way the media was handling things. He tried to avoid the press. Some of the other officers wanted to be in the limelight. Connor said it was their 15 minutes of fame.

  “What’s that?” Beth pointed at a sheet of paper taped to the Hampton board.

  “That’s a copy of the driver’s license provided to a gun dealer for the sale of the 9 mm Glock at a gun show to a man named Brad Hopper,” Kate said.

  Beth glanced back at Brad’s photo, then looked through her file. “I thought you said he owned a rifle years ago and didn’t have a handgun anymore.”

  “When we picked up this copy from the gun dealer, Kate kept saying something looked wrong with it. Back here, we compared it to our copy from when we had questioned Mr. Hopper. It wasn’t the same license, so we pulled the original DMV record. The photo on file doesn’t match what was given to the gun dealer,” Connor said.

  “We’ve called Mr. Jenkins, the gun dealer who sold the weapon on the day of the show, and asked him to come in,” Kate said.

  Connor walked toward the white board, looking it over. Bob and Craig examined the original DMV photo and the copy.

  Bob turned around and leaned on the table. “On the Jefferson case, dispatch received a call from Jefferson’s sister. When we questioned her at the scene, she said they were planning to have lunch together, like they did every Wednesday. When he didn’t show up, she called his cell phone. Our victim didn’t answer, so she became worried and went to check on him. She found him dead in his bed. As one of you mentioned, no one was home with him, unlike with the Hampton case. Therefore, we don’t have a definitive time when the crime happened. The ME felt that the victim had been dead at least seven hours before the sister discovered the body.”

  “There were no signs of struggle, nor was anything out of place,” Grant added, looking around the room.

  “Not even a photo?” Kate asked.

  “A photo?” Bob questioned.

  “In the Hampton murder, the girlfriend, Ellie, called several days later to tell us she had noticed a photo that our victim always kept on an end table in the den was missing,” Connor explained.

  “A trophy for the killer,” Bob said.

  Beth looked over the crime scene photos and said, “I don’t think so, not in this one. I still think the killer in the Hampton case had an intimate connection to the victim or his girlfriend.” She walked over to her chair and sat. Crossing her legs, she put her tablet back on her lap and jotted notes.

  “Gentlemen, please get back to us once you talk to your victim’s sister. If any of the names we have on the Hampton case match, let us know.”

  Brad Hopper and his attorney sat in the small interview room with a single metal table in front of them. They waited for Connor to enter. Just outside the room, Mr. Jenkins stood in the narrow, darkened hallway, looking at them and listening.

  “Mr. Jenkins, is this the man who purchased the Glock from you at the gun show?”

  Mr. Jenkins listened to both men talk. As he studied the younger man’s face and body language, he shook his head. “No, that’s not him.”

  “Mr. Jenkins, he’s wearing a suit and tie now. Could that be throwing you off?” Kate asked softly.

  Mr. Jenkins rubbed his hands over his beard and looked once more. “No, that isn’t him.”

  “Mr. Jenkins, this is extremely important. Are you positive?”

  Mr. Jenkins moved closer to the one-way glass and looked at Brad Hopper. He shook his head. “I’m one hundred percent sure that isn’t the man I sold the gun to.”

  Chapter 19

  “You’re late,” Kate told Connor as he rushed in and hung his sport coat on the back of his chair.

  “I had to drop Sundae off at the vet’s office to have her teeth cleaned.”

  Kate smiled at Connor. “Ah…even the K9 gets days off.”

  Connor looked at Kate and wished, as he had many times, that they weren’t partners. He found her extremely beautiful and almost irresistible sometimes. Nonetheless, the policy at the Lakewood Police Department was very clear. An officer was never to become romantically involved with another member of the department whom they worked with. A relationship would be acceptable if Kate worked with someone else inside the department, but with them teamed up, romance wasn’t allowed.

  “I sure wish Sundae could be here today,” Kate said as she walked over and picked up her coffee cup.

  “What?” Connor said.

  “Where are you today Mr. Maxwell?”

  “Sorry, just worried about Sundae, I guess.” That wasn’t at all what he was thinking about. He felt his face blush.

  Kate smiled and chuckled.

  “Jeff Gilberts is coming in for questioning today. I thought it would be good to see how Sundae reacted to him. Mr. Jenkins is already in the private lobby, waiting for us.”

  “That was nice of him to come in again,” Connor said. He grabbed his coat and started down the hallway toward the private lobby.

  Kate put her hand on his arm and stopped him. “He told me … he feels responsible.”

  Connor gave her a confused look.

  “Why?”

  Kate turned Connor around
to face her. She looked at him for a second, then responded. “Because he’s the one who sold the gun that killed Hampton.”

  “He’s not responsible.”

  “I just thought you should know.”

  Connor and Kate entered the private lobby. Mr. Jenkins got up and removed his baseball cap.

  “I’m sorry I was a little late this morning. Mr. Jenkins, thank you so much for coming back in. We have another person of interest I’d like you to take a look at today.”

  “Anything I can do to help.”

  Mr. Jenkins, Connor, and Kate walked down the hallway. They stopped in front of the same interview room. This time, Jeff Gilbert sat at the table, his arms crossed over his chest. His legs were stretched out under the table. Mr. Jenkins pulled his eyeglasses from his shirt pocket and put them on.

  “I can’t be sure … I, well, he looks more like the man I sold the gun to than the other man did but…”

  Connor nodded at Kate. She took her cue to enter the room and get Jeff to talk. Once inside, Kate asked Jeff a few questions.

  “The way he talks … does that help you, Mr. Jenkins?” Connor asked.

  “I simply can’t be sure. The show was back in August, you know. The one thing I can say for sure is this man seems more like the man I sold the gun to than the man from yesterday.”

  “Are you sure this isn’t the man?” Connor pressed.

  “I’m sorry, I just can’t be sure.”

  Chapter 20

  John eased his old pickup truck into the parking lot off Main and 2nd streets. Just beyond the parking lot loomed a large building with an electric blue sign that read “Lakewood Police Department”. Next to the sign was a replica of the Lakewood Police Department badge. Mature oak trees and a beautiful manicured lawn surrounded the building. What looked to be a bronze statue of a policeman bending down to talk to a little girl stood a few feet from the front door.