Allies

by Wolf Riedel

  “Two National Guardsmen?” Sal had asked when he had gotten into the car.

  Sal was Staff Sergeant Salvadore Watts, a twenty-seven year old Virginian nicknamed Pitbull because of his small stature yet heavily muscled body. His shaved head—compensating for early signs of male-pattern baldness—and tenacious aggression had contributed considerably in earning him the name.

  Sal’s stature stood in contrast to the slightly older Mark who stood at six foot one and carried a hundred and eighty-five pounds on a fit, muscular frame. While Sal stood with a slightly crouched menacing stance, Mark’s bearing reflected an almost parade-like, military look. His brown hair was severely close-cut by a barber who catered primarily to Lakeland’s black and Latino residents. Whatever the hair, or lack thereof, Mark’s round face was dominated by his brilliant blue eyes, a throw-back to his Dutch ancestry.

  “Technically a National Guardsman and a Guardswoman,” said Mark as he waved goodbye to Roxy, Sal’s significant other and a legal secretary for a local ambulance chaser.

  “Bring him back in time for lunch and there’s a barbecue in it for you,” she called out.

  Mark smiled and managed to pull out of the driveway without squealing the tires, but only just. He could feel Roxy shaking her head behind him.

  They sped out quickly, ducking under the I-4, leaving behind the warm glow of the city and plummeting into the velvet black of the night. Ahead of them the amber reflectors set into the middle of the highway provided a line of perfect glowing beacons pointing the way; on the radio CCR’s Bad Moon Rising set the tone.

  The functioning radio was another fine feature of the SUV that had set it apart from their previous car, an aging Ford Police Interceptor—dubbed the Piece-of-Shit—whose radio, like its air conditioner, had rarely worked. The POS had finally crapped out completely and, by some miraculous luck of the draw, the supply chain had delivered a black 2006 GMT800 3/4 ton Suburban complete with a police pursuit push bumper, grill wraps, a radio and light package, working air, all-wheel drive, a 496 cubic inch Vortec V8 and only forty-seven miles on the odometer. Sal had vacillated between calling it The Pig or the Heavy Chevy before finally settling the question by not settling the question and alternating the use of the title as the mood struck him.

  “So what do we have?” asked Sal.

  “Not much. Just what I told you on the phone. Looks to be a home invasion and the two vics were in National Guard units in Ocala. More than anything else I think that the local cops want us to carry their water for them on investigating their military backgrounds.”

  “Doesn’t sound like a Saturday night emergency, if you ask me,” Sal said. He pointed at the radio. “Does that thing get the game?”

  “What game?” Mark inquired.

  “The Bolts are playing the Panthers tonight.” The Bolts were the Tampa Lightning, Tampa’s National Hockey League team. With their Stanley Cup win two seasons ago interest in the team had spiked notwithstanding the following year’s league-wide lockout and the team’s dim performance the subsequent year.

  “Why does anyone in Florida follow hockey?” Mark asked rhetorically. “I mean you have to build arenas that suck up masses of energy to make ice down here. It’s not like the kids can play a pickup game outside. Who gives a shit anyway. Better to play basketball. Or soccer. Balls are cheap and you can find a flat field pretty much everywhere out here.”

  “Nobody cares about a game where one goal is considered a major achievement,” said Sal derisively. “All folks do in soccer is run back and forth for a couple of hours. It’s like watching paint dry.”

  “Same with hockey. You get maybe a goal every half-hour.”

  “But the skating is fast and there’s full-body contact.”

  “Basketball’s fast and you get tons of scoring. There’s a game for you.”

  “Well you got that, but there’s no basketball tonight while, on the other hand, the Bolts are playing right now. What with them and Atlanta flipping back and forth for the Southeast Division’s lead, every game matters.”

  The Bolts had lost six to two by the time Exit 350 into Ocala came up. Just short of a kilometer after the exit, Mark’s Garmin lead them on a circuitous route through a residential area to the Oceola Parkway, down SW 4th Avenue before hooking up with SW 7th Avenue Road and into the neighborhood Harris had directed them to. Mark caught sight of a low sign at the entrance: Lemon Wood II.

  From here, finding the scene would not have been difficult even without the GPS. Flashing red and blue strobes lit up the thick canopy of the trees and were visible all the way to the development’s entrance.

  They followed the road around to the lights’ source; nearly a dozen cruisers, vans and unmarked cars nestled on a narrow paved street where low houses on wide lots lined both sides. On one side of the street the lots consisted of treed lawns, on the other dense woods and scrub.

  “Looks like the press is here already,” said Sal pointing to two white vans with transmission masts run up just outside the yellow crime tape closing off the scene.

  “Like flies to carrion.”

  Mark and Sal had to drive down nearly three lots in order to find an empty slot on the lawn side of the street.

  Sal was about to exit the car when a spray of water hit the windshield and the passenger side of the SUV.

  “Shit. That was close,” he said as he waited for the impact sprinkler to move on and then quickly exited the car and dashed around onto the street out of its range. Once outside, they slipped into blue-black nylon rain jackets with gold lettering prominently featuring the words POLICE and US AGENT on the back and CID and the CID crest on the right and left breast respectively.

  They walked down the middle of the road toward the house that was the focus of all the attention. The slapping sounds of several more impact sprinklers to their left gave evidence to the fact that at least one of the residents here was smart enough not to water the grass during the heat of the day. Deep drainage ditches ran along either side of the road; no sidewalks here. Interested neighbors stood in small clumps on their front porches or lawns whispering to each other, their arms hugging themselves tightly to ward off the chill of the evening and the violence that had struck their community.

  A dimly lit driveway of Roman-style paving stones beyond the yellow tape led up to a two car garage attached to the house. A small cluster of cops stood at its end, one holding a leash attached to a German Shepherd who gave them a serious stare as they walked past. No one asked for their credentials, their jackets giving them general acceptance onto the scene.

  Mark tossed a question their way, “Sergeant Harris?”

  “Inside,” answered the K-9 handler pointing to the house’s front doorway.

  At the door a uniformed cop finally checked their credentials and marked them down on a clipboard site access log while Mark and Sal slipped on paper booties and latex gloves.

  The house’s foyer opened into a large open-concept living area; kitchen, great room, dining area all unified by way of an expanse of yellowish-red terracotta tiled floor. The heavy Spanish-style furniture was a blend of pastel fabrics and wrought iron accoutrements.

  Mark took in the layout at a glance. Several crime scene technicians in disposable coveralls were scattered about the premises concentrating on their tasks. There was no second storey and Mark expected that, like most Floridian houses, there would be no basement, just a slab foundation. To the right, as he faced the living space from the foyer, lay a short hall which led to what appeared to be a master-bedroom suite. To the left lay another short hall which branched back toward a bathroom and a set of small bedrooms and a mudroom/laundry room which he assumed also served as a garage entrance.

  Any further examination of the premises was cut short by presence of an ACU clad body lying crumpled in the doorway of the laundry room. Next to the body stood four plainclothes officers whose hushed conversation stopped as they spied Mark and Sal.

  “You Chief Winters?” asked one of the
four.

  Mark took their measure. The speaker was a forty-something, white male a couple of inches shorter than Mark but about ten pounds heavier and wearing a grey, rumpled suit. To his right stood a tall, bald black man in a neat tan suit, maybe mid-thirties, six-three, two-forty pounds. A mid-thirties woman, five seven and a hundred and fifty with blond hair and blue eyes in a blue pant suit and a blue-suited man who could have been a carbon copy of the speaker completed the foursome.

  “Yup. You Harris?” Mark replied.

  “Yeah. Call me Wayne. This is Detective Tyron Anderson, from our homicide office.” he said nodding to the black cop. “These guys are Sgt Gary Dunn and Detective Phyllis Agnew from the Marion County Sheriff’s Office.”

  “Staff Sergeant Sal Watts,” Mark said flicking his head toward Sal. “You can call me Mark.”

  They all nodded to each other except for Agnew who said “Pleased to meet y’all,” in a thick southern belle accent uncommon for Florida. Must be an immigrant from Georgia, thought Mark.

  “And this would be . . . ?” he said looking toward the crumpled body.

  “This would be Staff Sergeant James Lewis based on the name tape on his uniform, photos around the house and identification by one of his neighbors. We haven’t found a wallet or any photo identification cards,” said Harris. “He and his wife are the registered owners of this house.”

  Harris pointed through an open door into the garage beyond.

  “Over there, in the garage, we have his wife Carlie. We identified her the same way since we haven’t found any purse or wallet. Neighbor says she’s in the Guard as well; a corporal. There’s a uniform hanging in the master bedroom’s walk-in closet that looks like it would be hers.”

  Mark stepped forward and looked through the open door where he could just make out the body of a woman with a coverall clad man and woman examining the body.

  “Okay to look at the bodies?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” Harris replied. “The ME has finished the husband but they’re still working on the wife.”

  Mark and Sal with Harris trailing moved toward Lewis’s body. The other three stepped back toward the great room.

  Mark squatted down and began to methodically scan the body and the area around it. Sal took out a notepad.

  “20th SFG,” Sal said pointing at the shoulder patch on the arm. “What have they got up here? Company C of the 3rd?”

  “Nah,” said Mark. “CHARLIE’s down in Wauchula. Up here in Ocala, it’s ALPHA. They’re over at the Armory just south of downtown.”

  The body was slumped up against the washer next to the doorway leading into the house, like he’d gotten tired, bent his knees and settled down with his cheek nestled up against the machine. There were a scattering of puncture wounds in the uniform’s jacket soaked in blood and one directly into the right forehead. His hands had been encased in baggies by the ME.

  “Looks like one, two, . . . three to the chest and one to the forehead.” Mark looked around at Lewis’s back. “No sign of exit wounds. Smaller caliber. My guess is he took three to the chest while standing up, collapsed and was given one more to the head. There’s some light spattering here on the side of the machine that looks like it would match to a hit right where he’s come to rest.”

  “Yeah that’s our preliminary thought as well,” said Harris.

  “Looks fresh,” said Sal.

  “It is,” said Harris. “Our primary witness would seem to lock down the timing as between seven and seven thirty this evening.”

  Mark continued to scan the body methodically then started working a grid outward from it. Not much. Some droplets on the floor. No sign of casings. Cabinets closed, an empty clothes hamper, a fairly new white-enameled, front-loading washer and dryer set. A neat, clean room except for the body in it.

  “Anything on the hands?” Mark asked of Harris.

  “Nah,” he said. “A clean hit. No sign of a struggle that we can see. The ME will let us know more.”

  Mark looked at the tan combat boots on Lewis’s feet—no sign of mud or dirt.

  “Anyone seen his patrol cap?” he asked. Harris shook his head.

  Carlie Lewis’s body was the reverse of her husband’s. Dressed in blue shorts, a white blouse and blue-white sneakers, she was laid out face down, just inside the garage with two shots in her back and one in the back of her head. Mark took it in from a few steps away while the ME and her assistant continued to work on the body.

  Harris left them at it for a minute waiting for a break in the work-flow before introducing Sal and Mark to the District 5 ME, Doctor Velia Castaneda and her assistant Alex Noica.

  Castaneda noticed the newcomers and stood. A slight, short, young woman with a pretty face and an olive complexion crowned by long black hair tied back in a pony tail. Noica didn’t stand but Mark estimated him as of average height with a skinny frame. His defining feature was hair died a garish red with a one inch wide, white streak that ran from the crown of his head diagonally to the right.

  “You’re with the army?” she asked.

  Mark nodded. “Criminal Investigation Command. From Lakeland.”

  “These are your people then?” she said.

  “More like all of ours,” said Mark. “They’re National Guard; full-time citizen, part-time soldiers.”

  “Not anymore,” she said wistfully. She turned to Harris. “We’re done here and ready to transport the bodies unless you need them for something else.”

  “No,” said Harris. “We’re good here. When will you do the autopsies?”

  “Monday morning. Let’s say nine o’clock. Is that suitable?”

  Harris looked at Mark who nodded in reply.

  “Good that’s settled,” she said.

  “Any preliminary observations that could help us?” Mark asked.

  “Two,” she said. “Firstly there are abrasions to her hands, knees and face that would indicate that she was running away when she was shot from behind and went down flat and hard on her front. The second is what appears to be crushing to the fingertips of the right hand. We’ll know better later but it looks like the tire of a car ran over a part of her hand.”

  Mark looked at the empty space in the garage. One car, an older Honda sat on the left side. The other side, where Carlie’s hand had lain was empty.

  “I’m missing something here,” said Mark as they walked back into the laundry room. “What am I missing?”

  “It’s not what you’re missing, it’s who,” said Harris. “Their two daughters are missing.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Courtyard Marriott, Ocala, Florida

  Sunday 04 Mar 07 0300 hrs EST

  Mark sighed. Another late night checking into a motel rather than being at home with his family. The down side of working the CID beat in the Floridian Peninsula is that virtually every case took him somewhere away from Lakeland. On the plus side, the hotels were generally good. This one had a small balcony overlooking a pool complex surrounded on all four sides by the three-storey hotel. He stood with his hands on the railing looking down at the dim illumination that shone throughout the night. The pool was deserted this early in the morning and in fact only two rooms that he could see had any lights on—more probably business men starting a new day rather than ending an old one.

  The prior day’s off-and-on rain had stopped but the humidity still hung in the air despite the cold, mid-forties night air. Today would be clearer and dry; maybe hit seventy. A shiver went through him, partly from the night’s chill but mostly from the dilemma of the missing girls. They weren’t his primary responsibility—that was the focus of the Ocala PD and the Marion County Sheriff who had already issued an Amber Alert, engaged the Florida Department of Law Enforcement’s Missing Children Information Clearinghouse in Tallahassee, and stood up a Child Abduction Coordination Center.

  Megan Lewis. DOB October 22nd, 1994—twelve years old—four foot ten, eighty-nine pounds, blonde hair, fair complexion, blue eyes, no distinguishing scars or m
arks. Emma Lewis. DOB March 14th, 1996—a week and a bit short of eleven—four foot eight, eighty-one pounds, blonde hair, fair complexion, blue eyes, no distinguishing scars or marks. The sum total of what they knew about the girls at this time gleaned from the few photos and documents available in the house. Not much even for their short lives. With first light, Harris and Dunn’s teams would follow up on the family’s background contacts—school, friends, relatives—anyone that could give context to their lives and relationships and their abduction, and, with luck, the murders.

  To Mark and Sal had fallen the task of contacting the couple’s military and civilian employers looking for leads.

  A sharp rap on the door carried easily across the small room and to the balcony. Mark shook the last fleeting images of the two girls faces from his mind and answered the door.

  “Find any crawlies?” asked Sal. Mark had recently become highly conscious of the growing rate of bed bug infestations throughout the hospitality industry. Whenever they checked in he’d pull back the bedding and check the mattress’s seams in several places looking for the vermin’s telltale signs. So far no sightings nor any end to Sal’s persistent needling.

  Mark avoided the dig. “Any luck with the 20th?” he asked.

  “Yes and No,” answered Sal. “I got hold of the duty officer for the 20th SFG up in Birmingham. They were able to confirm that Lewis was a member of ALPHA of the 3rd here in Ocala. They passed me on to the 3rd’s S3 up at Camp Blanding who again confirmed Lewis as a member of the battalion and added that Lewis has been working at SOCCENT every second weekend for the past few months. Something about comms; he wasn’t sure offhand what but something comms, he said.”