by Tom Fowler
“Is the girl on drugs?” Susan said, having recovered from the indignity of someone dropping the P-word in her house.
“No. She’s quite smart. I could tell she’s well educated from the way she talked. I asked her, and she said she went to private schools all the way through twelfth grade.”
“What happened then?” said Hugh.
“A falling-out with her family. It led to her landing on the street as a working girl.” I followed Hugh’s lead.
“Sounds like an indirect path,” he said.
“I thought so, too,” I concurred. “She must be leaving a step or two out.”
“I guess she hasn’t told you her name?”
I shook my head. “I only know the name she uses on the streets.”
“What is it?”
“Ruby.” I paused and looked for a reaction. Maybe the Readings knew a wealthy family who had a daughter nicknamed Ruby a few years ago. “Does it sound familiar?”
Hugh and Susan looked at each other. Both shook their heads. “I’m afraid not,” he said.
“No one you know with a missing daughter? She says she’s twenty-three and looks it.”
“Can’t think of anyone.” Hugh looked at Susan, who shrugged.
“It’s OK,” I said. “I haven’t been able to find out much about this girl so far. Some of it is because she just doesn’t want to tell me a lot.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Keep working. Hope she tells me more. Try to fill in the gaps if she doesn’t. Ultimately, I want to find her stalker and persuade him to stay away from her.”
“Do you think you’ll be able to?” Susan said.
“I don’t know.” I said, glancing down at my plate. Most of the food would be cold by now. “I think I can, but some of it is going to depend on Ruby.”
“Good luck,” said Hugh. “Gloria tells us some of the cases you work, and your parents do, too. They’re quite proud of you.”
“They have a funny way of showing it sometimes.”
“I hope it all works out with them,” Susan said. “You’re upset with them now, but they’re good people, and they’re your parents. It couldn’t have been easy for them to bury a child.”
I nodded to hide the fact Susan’s comment compelled me to think. So far, I’d only focused on my anger at my parents’ thirteen years of deception. However, to start the whole mess off, they buried their first child and only daughter. Parents aren’t supposed to inter their children. Such upheaval in the circle of life can make people do things they wouldn’t otherwise do.
I resumed eating my breakfast. The four of us chatted some more but not about my caseload. Gloria’s parents were vacationing in France and Italy for a couple weeks. They rented a chateau and a villa for their stays. When breakfast was over and the dishes were put away, I wished them safe travels, kissed Gloria goodbye, and went back to my house. A lot occupied my mind.
Chapter 11
I got home, changed into workout clothes, and went to the dojo. I’d studied martial arts since high school, refined my knowledge in Hong Kong, and joined a dojo when I got back to keep in practice. I took a class once a week and sparred two other days, time permitting. When I arrived, I learned I would be practicing with Max, a black belt student and occasional instructor. He was a few years younger than I and wore his hair in a ridiculous Mohawk. Perhaps he first took up martial arts to offset the deserved beatings his hairstyle brought him.
Max and I stretched, geared up, and hit the mat. We wore cups, faceguards, and light gloves. He and I were veterans of sparring, but this was only the second time we’d opposed each other. We paced around the mat for a minute, going through a few simple punches and blocks to warm each other up. Once we both nodded to acknowledge we were ready, we got down to business.
I favored defense and counterstrikes while Max tended to prefer attacking first. True to form, he came in with a high kick I turned aside. He followed it with a series of punches, all of which I blocked before countering with an elbow from which Max spun away. He banged his gloves together and came at me again. Low punch, block. High punch, block. Follow-up elbow, blocked. Knee to the midsection, countered with a knee of my own. I snapped off a quick kick after the block and hit Max in the chest. It didn’t knock him over, but he scooted back a couple of steps.
Thoughts of my cases seeped into my consciousness. Samantha’s continued to confound me. I needed some kind of a breakthrough and didn’t know where to uncover one, even after a visit to the crime scene and several of the principals. Max led with a high side kick I blocked. He came right back with one at my midsection I also blunted. Though he couldn’t get much behind it, he followed it with a lunging short left I didn’t expect and didn’t block. The faceguard soaked up the impact, but it rattled me out of my musings.
I went on the offensive. Max turned aside all of my punches and kicks. I felt myself ooze sweat. Who else could I talk to about Samantha’s murder? The lead detective and Sun reporter added nothing to the little I knew. I could track down the City Paper reporter, but this held low expected value. Other detectives who worked the case could give me their perspectives. Two different cops, good as they both may be, can see the same scene and evidence different ways. I grabbed Max’s arm after one exchange, but he wriggled out of my grip.
We continued trading turns on the offense with only the occasional minor hit getting through. My thoughts drifted to Samantha again. I must’ve missed something. Maybe I could ask Dr. Hunt to look over the ME’s report. On the other hand, it lacked ambiguity even to a layman like me. As much as I hated looking at the photos, going through them could illuminate something new. Just as I decided to do it when I got home, Max’s foot drove into my midsection and blasted the breath from my lungs. I doubled over and staggered back three steps before falling to the mat. Max broke his fighting stance and walked after me, frowning in concern. “You OK?”
I nodded as my wind returned. “You gave me a pretty good shot.”
“I mean in general. You seem distracted. Everything all right?”
“Not really,” I said, “but I’ll manage.”
Max asked me a couple more questions, but I didn’t intend on going into further detail with him. We ended our session, and I hit the showers. After washing my hair, I stood under the spray pondering my next move in the case. Ruby crept into my thoughts. I couldn’t forget about her as much as I wanted to focus on Samantha. For the first time, I considered a link between the two cases but dismissed it. These two cases being related required enormous feats of coincidence I couldn’t buy into. Besides, if the same man who killed my sister now stalked Ruby, she should’ve been attacked by now.
The hot shower grew tepid. I turned the water off, dried myself, got dressed, and went home to see if I could figure anything out. I wasn’t optimistic.
* * *
The first thing I figured out was lunch. My recent trip to Harris Teeter left me with a refrigerator burgeoning with options. I put some turkey bacon on a skillet while I assembled the rest of a sandwich: a hearty bread, thin slices of roast beef, mustard, and lettuce. While the bacon finished, I spooned some hummus into a small bowl and put it and bag of pita chips onto the table. The bacon sizzled to perfection. I took it from the skillet, added it to my sandwich, sliced the whole thing in half, and sat at the kitchen table.
Gloria unlocked the door and came in while I ate. She hung her purse on my coat rack, usurping a space larger than any coat I would have hung there—to say nothing for the weight of the purse. Hefting it could have been the thirteenth labor of Heracles. Gloria joined me at the table. “My parents are off to Europe,” she said.
“I’m surprised you didn’t go with them,” I said after swallowing a large bite of my sandwich.
She shrugged. “Trips with the parents aren’t what they used to be. They expect me to pay my own way now.”
I grinned. “How beastly of them.”
“I know, I know . . . I can afford to. When I was
younger, I liked traveling with them. Now, I think I’d rather go by myself.” She smiled at me. “Or with you.”
“Don’t book us any trips until I finish these cases. At this rate, you might want to call a moratorium on travel for the rest of the year.”
“You’ll work it out.” Gloria patted my hand. “You always do.”
I appreciated her confidence in me but at the moment, I couldn’t share it.
* * *
After lunch, I went back to the office and took up my vigil with Samantha’s file. I read the ME’s report again. Nothing changed, and no new insights sprang to mind. Next, I looked over the police report. The result was the same. I pulled out the pictures, steeled myself, and flipped through them.
Seeing Samantha lying on the Patterson Park ground, more blood out of her than in, walloped me right in the gut. I used Google Maps and Google Earth to compare the present park they showed with the pictures. The lay of the land hadn’t changed in thirteen years even if specific details had. I went back to the police report and read the interviews with nearby residents and anyone who may have been a potential witness. Nothing. At least, nothing on the surface.
Baltimore is an insular town. We don’t like outsiders, and many residents don’t have the BPD on their Christmas card lists. I knew no reason to suspect any of the nearby residents lied to the cops, but even taking them all at their word, I looked to see if a pattern would emerge. Six residents on Eastern Avenue saw nothing. Ditto Baltimore Street with four and Patterson Park Avenue with five. On South Linwood Avenue, only one resident claimed he saw nothing. All were small sample sizes. I wondered if the police interviewed anyone else, and those notes didn’t make it into the box when it all went into cold storage.
It wasn’t much, but a single cord can unravel a sweater. I learned this in a song. Linwood Avenue featured few businesses breaking up stretches of classic Baltimore rowhouses, and it crossed other streets with the same configuration. The best place for someone to hide—other than in a random house—was the Hatton Senior Center a few blocks down Linwood at the corner of Fait Ave.
Did Samantha’s killer dash away from the scene, escape the notice of the one person the police found to ask, and hide in the old folks’ hangout? What if the killer had a relative there? What if he worked there? I wondered if I could find employment records from Hatton going back thirteen years?
Database administrators use a language called SQL to interact with their quarry. While it’s fine for what it does, someone like me can exploit vulnerabilities in SQL and gain access we weren’t meant to have. A simple injection attack opened their network, and I prowled around for HR records. Current employee files resided in a folder. Past organizational charts had been shunted off to a different location. I found the closest one I could to the time of Samantha’s murder, dated March of the same year. A quick comparison to the current employee roster showed only two people still worked there. I noted their names, then went hunting for files on the old employees. Along the way, I found a policy stating erstwhile employees would have their folders deleted one year after they left the company. Swing and a miss. I settled for taking a screen capture of the old organizational chart and printing it. Once I had what I needed, I covered my tracks and disconnected from the center’s network.
I hopped onto the BPD’s system and looked for any information I could find on Hatton employees. I entered all the names and sent a query to their database. A few seconds later, three files popped up. The lack of deviancy among the staff didn’t help my case. The first file belonged to a man whose only transgression had been a DWI. An unlikely murderer. The second was of a woman who vandalized two cars belonging to her ex-husband. I ruled her out. The third held promise.
Tim Green worked at the Hatton Center thirteen years ago. Five years prior, he got arrested for assault relating to a bar fight. Two years after, Green displayed a thick skull, getting arrested for assault again. Four years later—two years following Samantha’s murder—he got popped for armed robbery The case ended up getting thrown out. Still, he showed a history of violence, and it gave me more to go on than anything else I’d seen.
I dug into Tim Green. The first thing I noticed was he died six years ago. Maybe he killed Samantha. I hoped not. I wanted her killer brought to justice at the business end of my .45, and Green, a good candidate, inconsiderately expired. I went back and looked at his BPD file. Two bar fights and an armed robbery charge. He’d been a man unafraid of violence, but it didn’t make him a killer. I took my printout of the senior center org chart and spiked it into the shredder.
Any leads I could cobble together were evaporating. Now I knew how the BPD detectives felt thirteen years ago when this happened. However, other cases landed in their inboxes all the time, and I kept mine clean. I could afford to devote more time to Samantha’s, for all the good it had done me so far. Without anything else coming to mind, I went back to the pictures.
Samantha looked a lot like our mother—by contrast, I favored our father. She had soft green eyes, a shade of blonde hair no woman could get from a bottle, and delicate, pretty features. When some people die, especially when they’re murdered, their faces contort in horror. Sometimes, they stare forward in eternal surprise. These expressions fade when a mortician works their faces into a more calm and neutral one. At her funeral, Samantha looked like she’d fallen asleep. I could still see her lying in the casket. The memory made my eyes well again. Samantha’s face in the pictures didn’t look the same. Her eyes were open, the last thing they saw being the man who stabbed her a dozen times.
I took a deep breath and kept flipping through the pictures. The BPD photographer snapped copious pictures of Samantha, both as they found her face-down and after they rolled her onto her back. The cameraman also took pictures of interesting detritus the uniforms and detectives marked. The police report said none of it came to anything.
I looked through all the pictures. Seeing my sister lying on the Patterson Park grass saddened me, but none of the images enlightened me. The possibility Tim Green killed Samantha served as my light bulb moment. Maybe he did. I figured it to be unlikely and would go forward as if her killer were still out there.
What else could I do?
* * *
I took a nap.
Between staying out late with Ruby and getting up early this morning to have breakfast with Gloria and her parents, I was running on four hours sleep, max. As I neared thirty, the combination of a late night and early morning wore on me more and more. Gone were the days where I could carouse until the wee hours in college, then ace an exam at seven-thirty the next morning. I lay down for two hours and woke up with more energy but no more insight into either of my cases.
An image of Ruby—without her shirt on, of course—fluttered to the forefront of my mind. I’d been treading water with Samantha’s case. Could I do any better with Ruby’s? I sat up in bed. Someone stalked her. I’d seen and chased his car, and he drove like someone who’d spent years handling horsepower and speed. The car didn’t lead to anything. However, I didn’t even want to ponder the number of silver E-class Mercedes in Maryland. Half the residents of Brooklandville or Roland Park probably garaged one, to say nothing of ritzy suburban areas like Fallston or Potomac. I required much more specific information about the stalker to do much about him.
The whole case cried out for more specificity. Hell, I didn’t even know Ruby’s real name. What if—despite her claims to the contrary—the identity of the stalker could be gleaned from her unhappy past? Without knowing much about her, my hands were tied.
I called up the picture of Ruby I snapped in the diner. Though unaware I took it, she looked right at me, a small smile crossing her lips. The happiness didn’t make it to her eyes, though, giving her the look of a girl who wanted to smile and hadn’t found a compelling reason in a long time. Just about every hooker could dredge up a bad beat story. Bumper stickers proclaimed well-adjusted women seldom made history; they also seldom wound up selling th
emselves on street corners. Where did Ruby’s life come undone?
I went downstairs and transferred the picture to my PC. I accessed the BPD’s network and brought up their facial recognition software. They added the feature within the last year, and it pulled from state police records. I put Ruby’s photo into the software, set it to run, and went into the living room. Matching a picture against thousands and thousands of records took a while, despite what TV shows might tell you.
I flipped channels while I waited. Gloria must have gone back out. When the TV bored me, I got up, toasted a piece of hearty bread, and slathered it with peanut butter. After sparring earlier, I could afford the calories. I ended up watching a show about baseball. They talked about every team other than the Orioles. Typical, I thought in my provincial Baltimore way.
When it ended, I walked back to the office. The search finished. Ruby got detained for a scuffle when she was younger but never got herself arrested for anything. Her record made no mention of prostitution. I looked at the most important bit of information about her: her name. I didn’t believe it when I saw it.
Melinda Davenport.
A quick Google search told me Melinda was the daughter Vincent Davenport said disappeared five years ago . . . the missing girl who compelled him to start a large charitable foundation.
What the hell had I wandered into?
Chapter 12
Gloria couldn’t have known about Davenport. A man like him would hide a bombshell like a daughter working the no-tell motel circuit, especially from the people who helped him raise money. It’s hard to say you run a charity to support finding missing children when your own daughter turns out not to be missing. Did Davenport know Melinda ended up as Ruby? I could ask him. He wouldn’t like it, but I didn’t care. My gut told me he knew.