Clint Wolf Boxed Set: Books 4 - 6 Page 5

  “Oh, no, it can wait,” I said, interrupting him. “I certainly don’t want to risk disturbing your wife’s sleep.”

  “She’s a school teacher, so she gets up a little earlier than I do.”

  “It seems everyone down this street works. We canvassed the neighborhood earlier, but not a soul was home. I thought the Rapture had happened and we’d been left behind.” I snickered at my own joke, but the man didn’t crack a smile. Realizing it was probably best not to joke about the Rapture, I changed the subject quickly. “What time can I come by to pick up the footage?”

  “I leave for work at eight, so you can come by any time before that. I’ll have it ready for you.” He pulled some reading glasses from a dinner tray beside his recliner and plopped them on his nose. Picking up a TV Guide, he scribbled some information on an inside page. “Everything for the past week, is that right?”

  “Yes, sir. Most importantly, the footage from the cameras facing the street.”

  He nodded as he made his notes and then set the TV Guide back on the tray. “Okay, young man, I’ll have that ready for you.”

  I thanked him and left. Before driving home, I decided to drive toward the back of the street to the location in the grass where our victim had been shot. I stepped out of my truck and stood looking around, listening. The sounds of crickets and frogs singing filled the stuffy air, but they were nearly drowned out by the buzzing of mosquito wings in my ears. Somewhere in the distance a coyote howled.

  “Who are you and why would someone want to kill you?” I asked out loud. After calling the local sheriff offices and police departments earlier to find out if they were investigating a missing person case matching our victim’s description, we had sent a teletype message through the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) computer to every law enforcement agency in the country. I pulled out my cell phone and called Marsha, who was the nighttime dispatcher. “Hey, did we receive a response from anyone on the missing person teletype?”

  “Not yet,” she said. “It’s been quiet tonight, so I’ve been searching online for any news articles about missing people. There’re a lot, but none matching your victim.”

  I was about to hang up when she stopped me.

  “Oh, and there’s a message for you from the day shift.” I heard her shuffling about. She cleared her throat when she came back on the line. “Okay, someone from the crime lab’s fingerprint department called. Who on earth wrote this message? I can’t read this handwriting! Let’s see…ah, it looks like it says the fingerprints were negative.”

  “Damn.” I thanked her and put away my phone. So, our victim had never been arrested. That was good for him, but bad for me.

  It was time to turn in for the night. Maybe the surveillance footage might offer some clues. I certainly hoped so. I didn’t want my first case back to become a cold case.

  CHAPTER 11

  Wednesday, September 28

  Susan and I were up early and I decided to join her and Achilles for a jog. It was about seventy degrees when we stepped outside at five-thirty in the morning, but it didn’t take long for us to start sweating. We jogged down Paradise Place and didn’t stop until we reached the plantation home that we’d turned into a battered women’s shelter. The road was made of gravel and it felt as though we were running in sand. Susan didn’t seem bothered by the degree of difficulty it presented, but I was winded and my shins ached.

  “I can’t wait until we can start housing women here,” Susan said, stopping to admire the product of our labor. It had taken us about a year to get the place ready and we were set to open in a couple of weeks, just in time for Domestic Violence Awareness Month. “Thank you so much, Clint. I’ve wanted to do this forever.”

  I only nodded, as I leaned forward and placed my palms on my knees, trying to catch my breath. Achilles plopped down in the shade of the nearby sugarcane, which lined both sides of the road and stretched as far as the eye could see. We owned the property on which the cane grew, but had continued honoring the lease to the farmer who had worked the land for years. I certainly didn’t know how to farm the land and I didn’t want it to go to waste, so it was a no-brainer. Not to mention I supported all the local farmers and fishermen in every way that I could.

  “Ready to run back?” Susan asked, not even winded. “Or would you rather walk?”

  I took a deep breath and straightened. “I don’t even know why I agreed to do this. I’m not training for anything.”

  “You did it because you love me and you want to watch the sunrise with me.” She kissed my cheek and bolted away, her muscular legs moving effortlessly as she raced toward the front of the street.

  Achilles yelped as though to say “Wait for me!”—and then twisted violently in the air, hurrying to catch up to Susan. I sighed and leaned into a steady jog, not caring that I would come in last place. I knew better than to race with either of them.

  When I finally reached the house, Susan was already sitting on the backyard swing with Achilles and they were watching the orange glow forming to the east. I sat beside her and she leaned her head against my shoulder. “Thanks for calling Uncle D,” she said softly. “The person I’d want training me the most would be my dad, but since he can’t be here, I’m so happy Uncle D is.”

  I nodded idly, wondering about something she’d said Sunday night.

  She noticed I was quiet and pulled away to look up at me. “What’s up?”

  Her movement caused the swing to sway and Achilles sat up and jumped off. He walked to the giant water bowl we kept outside for him and lapped up more of the water. After he’d had his fill, he placed both front paws in the bowl and began splashing the water around.

  I laughed at Achilles, but that didn’t distract Susan. “Don’t ignore me,” she said. “I can tell something’s on your mind.”

  “Did you mean what you said Sunday, or was it the sex talking?”

  “About having kids?”

  I nodded.

  “Yes, I meant every word. I’m going to take a leave of absence from work to have children.” Her dark eyes searched mine. “You believe me, don’t you?”

  “What about fighting?”

  “This’ll be my last one.”

  “Come on, Sue, I know how much fighting means to you.”

  “It used to be the most important thing in my life…until you came along.” She leaned her head back on my shoulder. “Now, all I want to do is start a family with you.”

  “Did you tell your mom this is your last fight?” I asked.

  “I did.”

  “Damn, you’re serious.”

  “I am.”

  I listened to the chain squeak above us as we gently rocked back and forth. The sun was slowly peeking over the distant treetops and birds began singing in the trees overhead. I smiled, wanting to remain in this moment forever. There’s nothing like sitting on a swing with the woman you love watching the sun come up while your best friend is fighting with his water bowl—

  I suddenly jumped to my feet. “What time is it?”

  She glanced at her watch. “Six fifty-four…why?”

  “I have to be on Dire Lane before eight.” I raced for the door to take a quick shower. “I need to hurry.”

  “You’re not going without me,” she said, matching me step for step.

  CHAPTER 12

  I pulled into Mr. Pellegrin’s driveway with five minutes to spare. He was already walking to his car carrying a light jacket and a newspaper when we arrived.

  “I didn’t think you would make it,” he said, placing his jacket on the front seat of his old car. “I thought you might have been called away to something more pressing.”

  I introduced him to Susan and he nodded. “I remember you, Chief. You did a presentation for my wife’s class last year. Saw your picture in the paper with them.”

  “Ah, I remember,” Susan said. “Fine group of kids, that bunch.”

  They chitchatted for a few seconds and then he fished a palm-sized external
flash drive out of his shirt pocket and handed it to me. “This is everything you requested.”

  I thanked him and he nodded.

  “If you’ll excuse me now, I have to leave before I’m late for work.” He turned and shuffled back to his car.

  Susan and I got in my Tahoe and I drove to the police department, where I parked under the building. We then walked up the thick concrete steps at the front of the building and entered the lobby. Lindsey, who was the daytime dispatcher, waved and buzzed us through the left-side entrance. We entered a hallway and passed the women’s bathroom, which was on the right, and Susan pointed to the second door on the left. “This is your office.”

  I glanced toward the third and last door to the left, which was her office, and smiled. “I like that you put me next-door to you.”

  “I figure if you’re going to work here, I might as well see as much of you as possible.”

  My office was already furnished. There was a desk, two tall metal filing cabinets, a large wooden bookcase, and two visitors’ chairs. I walked around my desk and took a seat behind the computer. After turning it on, I plugged the wire for the external hard drive into the USB port.

  Susan had dragged one of the visitors’ chairs around the desk and plopped in it beside me. Once the computer fired to life and I’d opened the file folder on the hard drive, I grunted. There were three different camera angles covering twenty-four hours of five days. “This’ll take forever.”

  “Yep.” Susan grabbed a notepad and ink pen and nodded her head. “Let’s do it.”

  I picked the angle that focused on the front of the street, because I could see any vehicles coming or going and would be able to determine their direction of travel once getting onto Main Street. We began at the Monday morning mark and started watching footage. At first, it was difficult to determine what was suspicious or out of the ordinary because we didn’t know which cars were supposed to be coming and going, but after watching three days of video, we began to recognize a pattern.

  “The same cars leave every morning and return every evening,” Susan noted. “And they almost all leave at the same time.”

  I nodded. Other than the mail truck or an occasional delivery van, there was no traffic on the street between nine in the morning, when the last car left, and two-thirty in the afternoon, when the first bus arrived to drop off school kids. Afterward, between four and six, the same cars that had left in the morning began returning.

  It was lunchtime before we made it to Thursday’s film, so we stopped and walked down the street to grab a hamburger. On the walk back to the office, we were approached by a few passersby who needed to speak with the chief of police about various issues, and I enjoyed watching Susan solve their problems. She was a natural, and everyone loved her.

  “You’re really good at this,” I said. “I can’t imagine you giving it up.”

  Susan brushed at a lock of hair that had escaped the ponytail on the right side. “Kids are more important than some job.”

  “Can’t you do both?”

  She was thoughtful, but didn’t say anything as we stepped back into the police department. Takecia was standing over Lindsey waiting for a computer printout. She waved through the bulletproof glass that separated the lobby from the dispatcher’s station.

  “Same time tonight, Chief?” she asked, grinning wide to expose a row of bright teeth. “I get to choke you out again, yeah?”

  “Same time,” Susan said, pushing through the entrance and into the hallway. When we were seated back at my desk, she explained how they had drilled rear-naked choke escapes last night. “Takecia’s got a death grip on her. She’s awesome at submissions.”

  Not wanting to dwell on the mental image of my future wife being choked out, I pulled up the Thursday video and hit the play button. We ran it in fast motion forward, just as we had with the other videos, and we’d only stop when we saw something that appeared unfamiliar—like the blue truck that had turned down the street at eight o’clock in the morning. It was only the second time we’d seen that truck. The first time was on Wednesday at two-thirtyish. It had turned down the street behind one of the buses, but it left shortly thereafter.

  As the minutes ticked by on the video, the truck didn’t reappear. Thinking we were on to something, we sped the video up a little and watched closely. We were both leaning forward, our heads almost touching, when the blue truck reappeared about an hour later.

  “Can you make out a license plate?” I asked, pausing the film and zooming the image.

  “No, it’s too blurry.”

  I sighed and continued playing the video. When we reached midnight, I clicked on the Friday file and began playing that one next.

  “We’d better find something soon,” Susan said. “We’re running out of days.”

  She was right. If we didn’t find anything on Friday or Saturday, that meant we had either gone too fast through the videos or our victim had gotten a ride to the neighborhood with one of the residents. I began to voice the idea when Susan stopped me.

  “Wait—back up. It’s the blue truck again.”

  I hit the pause button on the video and began playing it backward. We had rushed through the dark hours and nothing appeared out of the ordinary. When I rewound the film to eight-thirty-seven in the morning, the blue truck came into view. Susan stabbed at the screen with her finger. “It’s the same truck from Wednesday and Thursday.”

  I zoomed in on the image and we could clearly see it was a small Nissan King Cab with a camper shell over the bed. It was old, at least twenty years. After saving a screen capture of it, I continued playing the video in forward motion and we watched closely, waiting for it to reappear. It never did.

  I accessed the video files from Saturday through Monday, but we never saw the truck again.

  “We need to account for that truck.” I drummed my fingers on the desk. “It either belongs to a resident or it’s our victim’s truck.”

  “If that was our victim, where’s the truck?”

  I didn’t have an answer, so I set about printing copies of the screenshot of the truck. I glanced at the digital clock at the bottom corner of my computer screen. It was almost five. We had spent all day looking at video surveillance footage. While it wasn’t a complete waste, it certainly didn’t feel like a productive day—especially since a killer was still walking around free.

  I gathered up the pictures and stood. Susan stood with me and we both turned when we heard boots pounding outside the door. It was Melvin.

  “Any progress?” he asked.

  “Not much.” I handed him a couple of the pictures. “Have you ever seen this truck around town?”

  He held the top picture close to his face and studied it for a long moment. Finally he shook his head. “It doesn’t look familiar.”

  “Give Amy a copy,” Susan said, “and y’all keep an eye out for it. There’s a good chance it belonged to our victim.”

  When Melvin walked off, Susan told me she was heading to the gym and I followed her to the parking lot. For me, it was back to Dire Lane to see if anyone recognized the blue truck.

  CHAPTER 13

  Thursday, September 29

  Susan and Achilles were still out running when I left home this morning, but I needed to get to the office and start making phone calls.

  I’d spoken to most of the neighbors on Dire Lane last night and handed out a dozen pictures of the truck, but no one remembered seeing it down their street. I had met with Mr. Pellegrin last and asked if he could keep feeding me footage from his surveillance camera, just in case the truck left the neighborhood when no one was looking. He said he was happy to oblige. I replaced his hard drive with one comparable to what he had given me, and also gave him an additional hard drive on which to store subsequent footage.

  Lindsey buzzed me through the door and I stepped into the dispatcher’s station. Her door was directly across the hall from my office, which would most likely prove convenient.

  “Hey, um�
��do I still call you chief?” she asked, setting aside a paperback novel she was reading.

  “Just call me Clint.” I walked to the pigeonhole they’d set up for me and looked inside. There was a message from the ballistics examiner at the crime lab. I snatched it up and stopped by Lindsey’s desk. “I’m guessing there’s been no response from our teletype message about missing persons?”

  She frowned. “Not yet. I’ll let you know as soon as I hear something, though.”

  I thanked her and walked to my office. I called the firearms examiner, whose name was Vanessa, and told her I was returning her call.

  “Detective Wolf, these projectiles you submitted are definitely a first,” she said. “While we can’t use the striation marks from the rifling, I’ve been able to determine that all six bullets were fired from the same weapon.”

  “How so?” I asked. “They looked too deformed for comparative analysis.”

  “This was really an intriguing study,” she said. “The deformities are identical and, at first, I couldn’t figure out what caused them. But, after studying them carefully, I realized they were fired from a revolver with a misaligned cylinder. When the cartridge is fired, the bullet is forced through the narrow opening like—”

  “One of those Play-Doh squeeze toys,” I said, interrupting her to finish her sentence.

  “Yeah…how’d you know?” she asked, sounding a little bewildered.

  “Chief Susan Wilson”—it rolled off my tongue awkwardly, as I was not used to calling Susan by her official title—“described them that way out at the scene.”

  “Well, that’s an accurate description. So, you’re looking for a .38 caliber revolver with a misaligned cylinder.”

  I thanked her and hung up the phone. The picture of the blue truck was on my desk and I studied it. It was last seen at almost nine on Friday. Based on what we’d seen, no one from the neighborhood would’ve been around to hear the gunshots, but, if that were true, there’d also be no one around to fire the shots.