“May I see your records for the Centelle Blade Runner?”
“Yeah, surely. Trying to keep up with the norm. I get it. Not used to police-type people having style.”
I wanted to explain, but I decided it wasn’t worth the time or energy it would take me to get this young man on my wavelength. I only had a couple of hours until I would begin my second jogging appearance at Barraud Park.
I watched him climb some stairs to what appeared to be an office on another level. He was gone for several minutes. At some point I feared that he had forgotten about me and was involved in some activity that excluded gathering the information I had asked for.
I walked back to the car and retrieved Sam. We entered the store together. I told Sam to climb the stairs and find the young man who had still not returned from his trip to that upper level.
Sam bolted to the top of the stairs in short order and began to scratch on the door of the office.
“Holy crap!” I heard the young man exclaim. “Is this your dog, lady?”
His voice sounded a bit strained and full of significant tension.
“You bet,” I said.
“Can you get him to come to you? He’s kinda scary.”
“Yeah, he’s tends to have that effect on people. I need you to come back with that information you went after. He’s there to make sure you do that,” I said.
“What information is that?” he yelled down to me.
“Are you kidding me?” I said in complete frustration.
“No ma’am,” he answered. He sounded almost pitiful.
“Records! I need your shoe sales records on the Blade Runner! Bring it to me now!”
“Oh yeah, that.”
He went back into the office and a moment or so later came out. Sam was still sitting by the door waiting on him.
“Is it safe to pass the dog?” he called out to me.
“Safe enough. Come, I need that data before Christmas.”
He traveled down the steps about twice as fast as he had ascended. Sam was on his heels. Nothing like incentives. He was breathing heavy when he arrived.
“Christmas is a few months off, you know,” he said with complete sincerity.
He handed me the file on Centelle. I thumbed through it searching for the Blade Runner shoe. I found seventeen sales over the past three years. I took a blank piece of paper from the back of the file and made some notes. I started with the oldest sale three years ago and worked my way forward. I excluded the sales of the last year figuring that those shoes would not likely be the ones losing their trinkets. That eliminated five pairs of jogging shoes. My list was now at twelve and a little more manageable.
“Any complaints about the quality of these shoes?” I said to the young clerk who had decided to place a wad of gum in his mouth while I had studied the information he provided.
“Are you kiddin’?” he said amidst his furious chewing.
“No.”
“Lady, those shoes sell for a hundred and fifty on sale,” he seemed impressed. Still chewing as if the gum was an obsession.
“And that addresses the issue of quality?”
He chewed with wild abandon as if dumbstruck by my question. Confusion reigned on his face as if it was a natural expression. He was speechless. The only sound he made was the smacking of the gum and movement of his lips, up and down, close, apart. It was not a pretty sight.
I closed the file and handed it back to him. I smiled. He smacked.
“Come on, Sam,” I said and turned to go.
“You’re not going to buy a pair of shoes after all that?” the teenager said to me.
“You have anything that would fit him?” I said and pointed to Sam.
“What size does he wear?” he said, still chewing as if his life depended on it.
I turned and left without answering. Sam didn’t need the tennis shoes anyway.
The file gave me names but no addresses except for the ones who used plastic to purchase their goods. The oldest purchase was made in cash. I had the name, the date, but nothing more. It was a start. Not much of a start, but a beginning.
I drove to Barraud Park for my afternoon jog. I parked on Hanson Avenue to conceal my approach to the ball field. I gathered up the jogging gear and walked to Drew’s house. Sam followed. I figured I could still gain access to the house and use it to change. The sliding back door that led to Drew’s deck was unlocked. So much for police vigilance. I had counted on it.
I changed and called McGrady. He didn’t answer and I left a message.
I perched Sam on the back deck and told him to stay there and keep an eye on me. I had no doubt that he would be diligent in my request. I trusted him more than McGrady. I was planning to jog around the baseball field several times before I would venture into the wooded trail area. I wanted to give McGrady time to arrive.
As I began my second trip around the field, McGrady called. I told him my location and where he could find Sam. He said he was ten minutes out.
I continued my jog around the field. After five more laps, I was bored with that routine and wanted to expand my run. The danger of this change would be that I would leave Sam’s line of sight for several minutes. I would be out of his view by running into the small wooded area that separated the ball field from the river.
Two more laps around the field, and I couldn’t stand this baseball field routine.
McGrady had still not checked in, so I decided to go for it. Nothing had happened earlier, so I was fairly confident that I was safe from an attack. I had serious doubts about the assailant showing up at all. My idea of bringing the killer out into the open to attack me was losing ground with each minute that passed.
On the following lap I veered off to the right and ran along the tree line until I entered the little forest. I followed the trail created by previous joggers. I was not more than a hundred feet into the trees when the attack came. The assault was sudden, and I went down hard. The weight of the person who had jumped me was sufficient to knock me off my stride. During the fall, my assailant and I became separated. I rolled over in the pine needles and immediately jumped to my feet.
I was now staring at a hooded figure who had a large hunting knife in his right hand. He had managed to come to his feet a few seconds before me. He was wearing a facial mask that belonged to some scary movie killer, and a ball cap underneath his hood. The ball cap was on backwards. Stylish assailant. He was not more than ten feet away. Upon instinct, my right hand moved quickly to my back to retrieve my 9 mm under my sweatshirt. It was not there. Yikes.
It had been some time since I had been forced to use hand-to-hand combat with another person. I could not, of course, recall any previous occasion in which I faced another person who had a large hunting knife and I had only my wits with no weapon. I hoped that any moves I might recall would help me as opposed to helping him. At the very least, I was hoping that I could stay away from his blade. Survival of the cagiest.
He lunged at me and I side-stepped him easily. He didn’t seem to be a master of mano a mano combat. I was no master either, but at least I knew better than to lunge at my opponent and throw myself off-balance. He obviously had not taken that part of the training.
“You’re no match for me,” he said in muffled tones from under his mask.
“We’ll see about that,” I said. “You didn’t look too skillful with that first move.”
He came at me once more. This time I side-stepped and shoved him as he ran past me. He stumbled and caught himself against a tree. He grunted.
“Damn you,” he said.
“Sticks and stones,” I said.
He came at me a little slower this time. He must have thought that slowing his advance would confuse me. I grabbed his knife-hand with both of my hands as I turned my back into his midsection. At the same time, I raised my elbow and thrust it hard in an upward direction. It caught his chin with a solid crack. He grimaced. I hit him again with the same elbow thrust and when he grimaced once more, I dislodged mysel
f from him. My movement caused his knife to fall to the ground in front of me.
I picked up the knife and turned a few degrees to face him. I held it as if I planned to attack him with his own weapon.
I was ready for almost anything, except for what happened next.
He ran away. He simply ran towards the Lafayette River.
As I stood there breathing hard – a little out of breath from the jogging and more so from the brief skirmish – I was bewildered with my assailants’ reaction. Sam immediately came running into the woods. I watched the man disappear beyond the trees that followed the river. Sam sniffed the knife, growled, and then bolted following the path that my attacker had taken to the river. I watched Sam disappear before I took my small towel and wrapped the knife in it. I was hoping to protect any useable prints that the lab might pull from it. Any besides mine.
A few minutes later Sam returned.
“No trail?” I said to him.
He ignored my question and sniffed his way around the area as if looking for something. I watched him for a short period and then decided I wanted to leave the spot for fear that the man would return with another weapon.
I decided that Sam was more concerned with my welfare than he was with chasing after the hooded figure who had danced momentarily with me before running away. That was my take on what had happened. Nothing more than a little, violent dance with intended foreboding.
McGrady approached as Sam and I exited the trees on the ball field side.
“You quitting already?” he said to me.
“You missed the show.”
“I’ve seen people jog, thank you.”
“The knife-fight. You missed that show. I got his weapon,” I said as I walked past him and held up the confiscated blade still wedged in my towel.
Chapter 14
Besides my prints, the lab was able to pull a couple of quality prints off the knife. They were running the prints through their computer files while I waited to see if anything might hit sooner rather than later. It seemed to be going slowly.
I had taken a series of photos with my super-duper flip-phone camera of dubious grainy quality and downloaded said photos to Rogers for her to research. Uncle Walters had done some upgrading to my flip-phone that allowed me to send and receive email. I could also send tiny, grainy pics to whomever I desired. The upgrade did nothing for the picture quality.
The large blade had some Chinese characters on it and since I was such a crafty detective, I wanted Rogers to see what she could find. Might be a clue or something.
I was sitting in Wineski’s office. Sam was asleep by the door. McGrady was seated next to me.
Wineski was not happy. McGrady appeared to be his normal, disgruntled self. Hard to tell if McGrady was happy. His usual demeanor suggested otherwise. I was euphoric. I had lived to fight another day.
“I got the knife,” I said.
“You could’ve been killed.”
“Sam was watching.”
“More than hundred yards away, and from the way you tell it, he couldn’t see you once you entered the woods.”
“Grove of trees,” I corrected. “Let’s not make it sound more dramatic than need be.”
“Are you kidding me?” he scolded. “It was a dumb thing to do, Clancy. You should’ve waited on McGrady.”
“My assailant was no match for me,” I said.
I turned to look at McGrady. He shrugged and said nothing. He never did tell me why it took him longer than his estimated ten minutes out from our brief phone conversation prior to my attack. I doubt if he was about to confess to the irate person sitting across the desk from us.
“You get anything off the knife?” Wineski said.
“Waiting to see what your lab finds. I’m doing some research on the knife as we speak.”
“How are you doing research on a knife as you sit here in my office?” Wineski said.
“Computer program.”
“Runs on automatic?” he said.
“Most of the time,” I said.
“That knife…I’m guessing it was not something I would find in my kitchen,” Wineski said.
“Not unless you live with Rambo,” I said.
“You two are gonna have to start working together on this thing, or one of you is not going to make it through alive. Three dead bodies is quite enough.”
I updated Wineski on the shoe store info and my list of buyers dating back three years. I was hoping to deflect some of his soft rage by informing him of my diligence at some of the less glamorous detective field work.
He was not to be deterred nor deflected. Nor impressed.
“Let’s get something straight. You make damn sure that you have your firearm with you next time you go rolling around in a forest with a murder suspect still at large.”
“I had my firearm,” I said.
“But you apparently didn’t use it,” he shot back.
“He knocked me down and my weapon went flying.”
“So, you didn’t have your firearm,” he said, addressing what I considered the obvious.
“It was close. I really didn’t need it.”
“That could have been it for you, you know,” he said.
“Yeah, I know. But I’m well trained.”
“And sometimes carelessly stupid.”
“He ran away when I forced him to drop his knife. What kind of macho killer is that?”
“Tell me about this man,” Wineski said ignoring my assessment.
“Average height, weighed about one seventy-five, maybe ten pounds more or less. You know, hard to say since he was wearing loose-fitting jeans and a bulky sweatshirt.”
“And a mask covered his face, right?”
“Yep. Nothing to note there. He probably thought it was a scary mask. Me, not so much.”
“Tell me about his style,” Wineski said.
“He had no style.”
“So, he wasn’t a trained fighter,” he said.
“Not any training that I would want to have. He had no technique to speak of other than lunging and trying to stab me a couple of times. I easily countered his uncoordinated moves.”
“Did he feel strong, muscular?” he asked.
“No, but that’s hard to say with any certainty. All I can say is that I had no difficulty hitting him with my elbow a couple of times and sent him falling against a tree.”
“Super-woman,” he snarled.
“Close,” I said.
“Could you tell anything significant about his voice?”
“Not that I recall,” I said. “He didn’t talk much. Cursed me a little. Captain, truthfully, I never felt as if I was in danger. And the fact that once I had the knife and then he bolted, well that was the one thing that did genuinely surprise me.”
“You think he’s a kid?”
“You mean a teenager?” I said.
“Yeah, a youngster. Whataya think?”
“I have no idea. It’s worth considering, I suppose. I just think he’s an untrained, unnatural fighter and that in order to accomplish what he intends for his victims, he has to have the element of surprise…and their backside facing him.”
“And fear,” McGrady added. “Hence, the large knife he used.”
I glanced at McGrady and smiled. It was unusual for him to contribute anything worthwhile to our conversations with Wineski. He ignored my effervescent smile.
I stood to leave. Sam immediately jumped to his feet and moved towards the door. McGrady stood and waited.
“What’s next?” Wineski said.
“I’ll be jogging first thing in the morning.”
“Are you crazy?” Wineski said.
“Persistent. I have his knife. Maybe next time I’ll get him. Then all this will be over and done.”
“Sounds like a cake-walk,” Wineski said. Despite his gruff monotone, his sarcasm was evident.
“He ran away from me at our first encounter.”
“And he has no more knives, of course,” Wine
ski said.
“I have my gun and my wits.”
“Right, your gun…and your…wits,” Wineski repeated as he shook his head.
“You have any info on any of our victims?” I said.
“Full names…Jeffry Allan Goodall,” Wineski read the report on his desk. “Candace Ann Glover…and Drew Sizemore.”
“Anything more?” I said.
“Nothing that is helpful, at least not so far. Candace worked as a waitress at a small restaurant on Tidewater. We haven’t found anything concerning a place of employment for Goodall. He may have been between jobs as they say. I have a guy checking.”
“And the name of the restaurant that employed Glover?” I said.
“The New Swell Café.”
“I have an angle I’m considering, but I have nothing of substance as yet to report,” I said as I was thinking about that video Rogers found from the restaurant. I had decided not to enlighten either McGrady or Wineski until I could look into it.
“Anything on Sizemore?” I asked.
“He was from New Brunswick, New Jersey. We have an address. I’ll make the necessary calls to notify any family. Nothing much else. You already knew he wasn’t employed anywhere,” Wineski said.
“Yeah. Let me know if you discover anything,” I said.
“McGrady, you make sure that you show up and keep an eye on her. And take two or three guns with you.”
I smiled as I left Wineski’s office. He didn’t return my smile.
McGrady grabbed my arm as I was leaving the building.
“What angle are you considering?” he said to me.
I shook my head. “Still pursuing connections on our three victims.”
“Only connection is between those two homos,” McGrady said.
“That’s the stuff that makes you such an exemplary detective.”
“I’ve done okay in my years of service,” he said and walked off.
“Bring your service weapon and some treats for Sam. He likes bacon wraps,” I called after him.
I was wondering if he was correct about our singular connection. The fact that Drew and Jeffrey were gay and had a relationship was the only thing that tied them. The video connected Jeffrey and Candace. It wasn’t much to go on. I doubted if it was enough to lead us anywhere at all. Such was my life of crime fighting – a little of this and not much of that.
Jewel of a Murderer Page 9