Текст книги "Detective Jason Strong: The Early Cases"

Автор книги: John C. Dalglish

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Текущая страница: 18 (всего у книги 21 страниц)

 

Chapter  12

 

Donnie turned the corner and pulled in behind the small strip plaza. Tied in the backseat of her own car was Suzanne Cooper. The van was waiting for him and he transferred his captive to it, putting a hood on her when she was inside.

The plaza was about a mile from Suzanne’s house and Donnie had walked to get her. He would leave her car here and take her to the farm. The hood over his captive’s head was to protect him after he completed his mission, just in case anyone survived. He didn’t want them to know where they had been.

He started the van and drove out from behind the plaza. Home was just twenty minutes away.

****

Suzanne lay as still as she could. She was trying to trace in her mind where they were going. She knew they had gone to the plaza near her house but it only took a few minutes before she realized it was hopeless. She didn’t even know what direction they were headed.

There was no way for her to grasp what was happening, it just wasn’t real. Time had ceased to exist and her mind reeled with possibilities of what might happen when the van stopped. She wanted out of the hood and the darkness it brought but at the same time she was terrified of what she might see.

She didn’t know how long they had been going but she felt the van slow and make a hard turn onto a gravel road. She could hear the dirt and rock kicking up beneath her. After just a moment or two, the van ceased moving and the engine went silent.

She heard the driver’s door open and then the van’s side door slide open. Her captor grabbed her by the feet and tried to drag her out but she kicked wildly. He let go. Next to her ear came the distinct sound of a gun being cocked.

Click!

Her heart stopped.

“No, no. I’m sorry. I’ll get out.”

Again, she felt the tug on her feet but this time she didn’t resist. When her knees were past the edge of the door, he took her by the shoulder and stood her up.

“Walk slowly, I’ll guide you. Don’t do anything stupid and I won’t be forced to hurt you.”

It took all the strength she could muster just to say nod her head up and down once.

They walked a short distance and then up a couple steps. She heard a door open and she sensed they had moved indoors. The hood came off.

She blinked at the brightness, trying to focus, and found the man staring at her.

“Please don’t hurt me. What did I do? Why are you doing this?”

He ignored her and pointed the gun towards the basement steps. She walked slowly to them and down into the basement. What greeted her there was shocking.

A small prison with four doors, two of which were locked. She could smell urine and it made her gag. She began to cry.

“In there.”

She turned towards him.

“Please don’t do this.”

He got behind her and grabbed the cuffs around her wrist, forcing her to follow him into the cell. Pushing her to the floor, he looped and padlocked a chain around her leg before removing her restraints. The door shut and she heard the lock snap. His steps retreated up the stairs, then nothing, just quiet.

“Who are you?”

A female voice from the next cell broke the silence. Suzanne leaned as close to the wall as she could.

“Suzanne. Who are you?”

“Chelsea. The man next to me is Ed. Do you know why he brought you here?”

“No. I was at home and next thing I know, I’m in a van with a hood on my head. Do you?”

Suzanne could hear Chelsea start to sob.

“No. He won’t tell us.”

“How long have you been here?”

“A couple days, Ed’s been here four.”

“Has he hurt either of you?”

“No. Not yet.”

Suzanne heard a man’s voice from the far cell.

“What did you say you’re name is?”

“Suzanne.”

“Suzanne what?”

“Suzanne Cooper.”

“Is that your maiden name?”

“Yes, why?”

Ed ignored the question.

“Chelsea, you said your last name was Morris. Is that your maiden name?”

Chelsea tried to stop crying.

“No. Burt…my maiden name is Burt.”

Silence fell over the three of them as the girls waited to find out what Ed was driving at.

“Shit!”

“What?!” Both girls asked at the same time.

 “Does the name ‘Billy Jarvis’ mean anything to either of you?”

****

It was near closing at the Dollar Store and Curt needed to take out the trash.

“Wendy, taking trash out. Back in a minute.”

“Okay.”

He unlocked the back door and carried the two bags to the dumpster behind the plaza. After throwing them in, he turned to go back and noticed a teal colored car parked at an odd angle. The dome light was on and the back door open. He didn’t recognize the car and everyone that worked at the plaza knew to park in the outer lot up front.

Curt walked down towards the vehicle and looked in. The keys were still in the ignition but the car wasn’t running. Standing up, he looked around. He was alone in the back alley. He pulled out his cell phone.

****

Two uniformed officers responded to Curt’s call. One was calling in the license plate and the other was getting the final details of how Curt found the car.

The first got off the radio.

“Car belongs to a Suzanne Cooper. Address is not far from here.”

“Get a phone number?”

“Yes. Trying it now.”

The second officer turned back to Curt.

“Thanks for your help. You can go now. Sorry to keep you so long.”

“No problem.”

After the Dollar store employee walked away, the first officer hung up the phone.

“Answering machine.”

“Okay, call in for a car to go by the address and I’ll get a tow truck coming to take the car.”

By the time the officers heard that no one could be found at the residence, the car was on the truck and ready to go. Instead of the impound lot, it was sent to the forensics garage.

****

Ed Garland could hear both girls suck in their breath. Neither said anything and Ed waited while it sunk in. He had already figured out the connection, all three of them had been there the day Billy Jarvis had shot himself playing Russian Roulette with a .38 revolver.

What he hadn’t decided was who their captor was. Finally, Chelsea spoke.

“Ed, Ed Garland from McCollum High?”

“Yes.”

“And Suzanne Cooper, Billy Jarvis’ girlfriend?”

Suzanne didn’t answer immediately but Chelsea could hear her crying.

“Suzanne?”

“Ye…yes.”

“You’re Billy’s ex– girlfriend?”

“Yes.”

“That mean Dexter Hughes…”

Ed slammed his hand on the wall.

“That’s his name! I was sitting here trying to remember the other guy’s name that was there that day. That’s who the last cell is for.”

Suzanne had regained her composure.

“If you’re right, and Dexter is put in the last cell, then what? And who is the guy doing this?”

Ed’s answer chilled them all.

“I don’t know who he is and I don’t want to know what’s next.”

 

Chapter  13

 

Jason received a call the next morning from Lieutenant Banks.

“Go see Doc Josie when you get here.”

“Okay. What’s up?”

“You would have me ruin Doc Josie’s surprise? I wouldn’t think of it.”

The phone went dead. Jason called Nina, who was apparently just leaving the house.

“Hello?”

“Morning, Nina. You just heading in?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Banks called. She said we need to go see Doc Josie first thing, I’ll meet you there.”

“Okay. She say why?”

“Nope. Said it was a surprise.”

“A surprise? Okay, see you in about twenty minutes.”

****

Jason found Dr. Jocelyn Carter staring through a microscope.

“Morning, Doc.”

She pulled her head back, rolled her eyes and went back to the scope with a chuckle.

“Maybe for you, Detective. For me it’s more like afternoon. Got a call at midnight to come in and process a car.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

Nina came through the doors and joined them. Jason stopped her before she had a chance to wish Doc Josie a ‘good morning’.

“She’s been here all night.”

“Oh. Did you find out what the surprise is?”

“I was just about to ask. So Doc, is this car you were telling me about our surprise?”

Doc Josie got off the stool and walked to her office with the detectives in tow. Grabbing a sheet of paper, she handed it to Jason.

“If this set of prints is what you’re referring to, then yes, this is your surprise. Those partial prints were found on the car I’ve been processing.”

Jason gave her a quizzical look.

“Let me guess. You’ve seen them before.”

“Very good. You should be a detective.”

Nina couldn’t help herself and started laughing. Doc Josie continued.

“Not only have I seen them before, I’ve seen them recently. They match the ones we pulled from the two missing persons cases you’re working.”

Jason looked up from the print sheet.

“Who does the car belong to?”

“A Suzanne Cooper. It was found abandoned, keys in it but not running, behind a plaza near her home last night. Lieutenant Banks said they haven’t been able to find Miss Cooper.”

Nina walked over to a table and put her briefcase down. She opened it up and pulled some papers.

“What was that name again?”

“Suzanne Cooper.”

Jason watched as his partner ran her finger down the sheets. On the second sheet she stopped.

“It’s here, Jason.”

“Are those the McCollum reunion lists?”

“Yes and she’s on them.”

Jason moved for the door as Nina packed up.

“Thanks, Josie. Go home and get some sleep.”

“You’re welcome and I plan on doing just that.”

****

Lieutenant Banks was in her office when they got to the second floor.

“Got a minute, Lieutenant?”

“Sure. Find your surprise?”

“Yes. Do you have the report from the scene?”

She slid the file across the desk.

Nina followed Jason into the room and sat next to him opposite the Lieutenant. Jason picked up file but didn’t open it.

“We’ve got a connection between the three missing cases besides the fingerprints.”

“Okay. Please share.”

Nina pulled out the phone lists and slid them across the desk towards Sarah Banks. She picked them up, glanced at them and then up at Nina.

“What are these?”

“Those are the phone lists for this summer’s ten year class reunion of McCollum High. All three of our victims show up on them.”

The lieutenant looked at them with a disbelieving stare.

“You’re suggesting someone is stalking, then taking their classmates before the ten year reunion. You’re kidding me, right? It sounds like a slasher film.”

Jason shrugged his shoulders.

“I know it’s thin, but right now it’s the only link we’ve found.”

“Okay. Thin is one word for it. What’s next?”

“We run a record search on everyone listed.”

“So, you’re thinking that the person or persons taking these people, or at very least possibly his next victim, is on these lists.”

Jason nodded. The lieutenant stared at the sheets for a minute.

“When’s the reunion?”

“The fifth of next month.”

“Okay. I’m going to have a press briefing on this at three this afternoon. We’ll see if the public can help us. Somebody must’ve seen something. I want you two present. In the meantime, that’s a lot of names, so you better get started.”

Jason and Nina gathered their files and left the office. Nina gave Jason a grin.

“Press briefing with Banks. Boy that sounds like fun!”

Jason just laughed and rolled his eyes.

****

Chelsea was cold. The basement was damp and the blanket didn’t give much protection. In addition, the chain was rubbing her ankle raw. She had spent the last several hours trying to figure out who their captor was.

“Suzanne?”

“Yeah.”

“I figure the guy doing this has to be family of Billy.”

“Why?”

“Well, it doesn’t make sense for someone to go to all this trouble without a personal connection.”

Ed agreed.

“I’ve been thinking the same thing. Billy was my best friend and I don’t remember much family. His dad was dead by the time Billy killed himself and he had only his mom and brother.”

Suzanne’s memories were the same.

“The whole time I knew Billy, I only heard him talk about two people. His brother and his mom. I think the brother’s name was Ronnie…Lonnie. Something like that.”

Ed remembered.

“Donnie. His brother’s name was Donnie.”

Chelsea pulled her blanket tighter around her. She wasn’t feeling well. She had vomited once and it had just added to the stench now surrounding them.

“That has to be it. It must be the brother. How old was he when Billy died?”

She could hear Ed rolling over, his chain scraping the floor.

“Eleven or twelve, I guess. I’m not sure. I don’t even see how knowing who he is helps us, in fact, it may make it worse.”

The room went quiet again. Knowing who their captor was should have helped but it didn’t. In fact, it made him all the more dangerous if he found out they knew.

Chelsea could now guess at what Donnie had in mind and she didn’t like it.

 

Chapter  14

 

Jason looked at his watch. Four hours of pouring over the files of the three missing persons and still no hint at who might be taking them. Nina was equally engrossed in the phone records and when she looked up at him, her red eyes told the story. They needed a break.

“Two hours to press conference, want to get something to eat?”

Nina stretched out and groaned.

“Definitely.”

“Want to bring the phone records?”

“Definitely not!”

****

They got back with twenty minutes to spare. Lieutenant Banks was waiting for them.

“Let’s go, you two.”

The three of them rode down to the first floor together. When they came out of the elevator, a small group of reporters was waiting for them in the briefing room. In its early days, the room had been the patrol briefing room, but that was done elsewhere now. The department hadn’t spent any money to make the press corps comfortable. It was still desks and white concrete walls.

Devin James gave a nod to Jason, followed by a big smile for Nina. When Sarah Banks came into the room behind them, Jason saw the reporter’s face go immediately blank. Jason smiled to himself.

Is everybody afraid of this woman?

Jason and Nina stood at the back of the small stage, the only thing that had been added to the room, as the lieutenant walked to the podium.

“Thank you for coming. We are investigating the disappearance of three people in the San Antonio area. The cases appear to be connected and we’re seeking the public’s help.”

On a screen behind the lieutenant, three photographs were put up.

“The first is Ed Garland, 28. The second is Chelsea Burt-Morris, age 28. Last night, a third person went missing. Her name is Suzanne Cooper, age 29.”

Devin James stood up.

“What’s the connection between them?”

Lieutenant Sarah Banks did something Jason had never seen done before. She ignored the senior reporter from the San Antonio News. But what really surprised Jason was that James sat down without a fuss. Lieutenant Banks carried on where she left off.

“All three have gone missing in the last six days. We are asking the public to let us know if they have seen any of these people. We have set up an 800 number for people to call if they have any information on the whereabouts of these individuals.”

She paused and Jason expected James to try his question again but he stayed seated.

“The lead investigators on this case are Detective Strong and Detective Jefferson. I will let them answer any questions you might have.”

With that, the lieutenant stepped back and motioned for Jason and Nina to step up. Jason looked out over the group.

“Questions?”

Devin James stood again and asked the same question.

“How are the three connected?”

“First of all, at all three sights, we’ve found fingerprints from the same individual. We do not have an ID on this person yet but we believe the prints belong to the individual who is responsible. Also, we have phone records from all three of the missing person’s and there is a number that connects them.”

A different hand went up.

“What’s the number?”

“I’m sorry but I can’t reveal that.”

James was still standing.

“Do the three know each other?”

“We don’t know. It’s possible but we’re unable to say for sure.”

Nina stepped forward.

“I have a hand out with the full description of each person and the location they were taken from. It will be on the table by the door.”

Lieutenant Banks, moving so swiftly that she caught Jason by surprise, leaned in to the microphone.

“That’ll be all. Thank you for coming.”

And the briefing was over.

Jason didn’t like these things and treated them as a necessary evil. Always glad when they were done, he couldn’t help but be impressed with the way Sarah Banks handled it. In the elevator, he said so.

“Short and sweet, my kind of press briefing.”

Lieutenant Banks gave him a half smile.

“Give ‘em what you need them to have and then go back to work.”

Jason thought it might be the best philosophy for dealing with the press he had ever heard.

****

As the senior writer at the San Antonio News, Devin James could have a glass paned office, pictures on the wall and a walnut topped desk but he had turned it down every time it was offered. He had kept the same heavy school teacher-looking desk he got when he moved to crime duty more than twenty-five years ago.

Whenever they would offer a new desk or an office, he would politely decline and say he preferred the bustle of the press room and the feel of his old desk. Truth was he didn’t like the idea of being inside a ‘glass cage’, as he referred to the offices.

He pulled up the rolling chair that matched the age of the desk and got out his notes from the briefing. Something was nagging at the back of his brain and he couldn’t get it to come out. He knew if he was patient, it would eventually make its way to where he could remember it. Unfortunately, it was taking longer these days to make those nagging things come forward to his memory.

Devin James attachment to antiques ended with the desk. He got himself a new computer every year and this year was a very nice Dell laptop. He turned it on, waiting briefly for it to boot up, and began writing the story from the briefing.

As he typed out the three names, he couldn’t shake the feeling he knew them. It was like he’d done a story before where he’d typed these names out together. He stopped what he was doing and pulled up the search window for the San Antonio News archives. After typing in all three names, he hit search.

In just a few seconds, a story that James had written over ten years ago, popped up.

Of course. The Billy Jarvis suicide. I knew those names were connected somehow.

The reporter began to read the story and some of the details began to come back. He remembered showing up at the house in the north San Antonio neighborhood after hearing a scanner report. It was a tragic scene and stayed with him for a long time. A screaming mother, crying neighbors and the feeling it was so senseless.

As he went through the article, the three names he’d searched were highlighted in bold print but there was a fourth name. Dexter Hughes. He was also there that day. If the three missing were connected by the suicide, that meant Hughes could be next.

Devin opened up a phone book and ran his finger down the large number of ‘Hughes’ listed in the San Antonio area. There was no guarantee that the man still lived in the city but the first three people missing had all remained local, maybe Hughes was also still around.

There was over eighty ‘Hughes’ listed with the initial ‘D’. Most could be eliminated because the entire first name was listed but James was still left with seven names.

He began dialing and hoped Dexter Hughes was not an unlisted number. Four numbers later, no luck.

Number five was an answering machine.

“You’ve reached Dex, Trish, and the boys. Leave a message.”

Devin hung up. He checked the address that matched the fifth number. It was in west San Antonio and he made a note of it.

Next, he got up and went to the file cabinet behind his desk. In it, Devin James kept the files containing his notes from every major story he had covered. It took some digging but, in short order, he found the file marked ‘Jarvis Suicide’.

Taking it back to his desk, he opened it up and read what he’d jotted down ten years before. The main thing he was looking for was family of Billy Jarvis. If the disappearance of these people was tied to the death of Billy Jarvis, it made sense to James that a family member would be responsible. He hoped he had the names of the people close to Billy.

His notes revealed that Billy had a father who was already dead, a mother and a younger brother. Betty Jarvis was Billy’s mother. James went back to the phone book. He knew this time he was looking for a woman who may have remarried and no longer had the same last name.

James found the last name Jarvis had far fewer listings than Hughes and only ten with first names starting with B. One listing said Betty. He dialed the number.

“Hello?”

“Hello. Is Betty Jarvis there please?”

“Who’s calling?”

“My name is Devin James. I’m a reporter for the San Antonio News.”

“She’s not here. Can I give her a message?”

“Yes. Could you ask her to call me?”

“Sure.”

James gave the man the phone number and hung up.

****

Donnie put the phone down and stared at it. The call scared him. He had one person left to pick up. The last thing he needed was a reporter calling and asking questions. He’d watched the news on TV tonight and had seen the story about the missing people. The same one’s he had in his basement. It was clear he needed to move more quickly.