Caching Out (9 page)

CHAPTER 13

It
was time to go. Gavin stood in front of the mirror, adjusted his tie, slipped
on a dark blue jacket, and then grabbed his bag from the chair. Leaving the
cabin at White Clay Lake he drove his rental car to the airport in Chadron,
Nebraska, and pulled into the rental return lot. Gavin entered the airport and
boarded his flight to Little Rock without incident. “I’m coming home Mama,” he
whispered.

Dropping
into his designated seat in the first class cabin and buckling in, Gavin caught
the eye of a petite blonde stewardess and asked her for a bottle of water. As
the uniformed attendant returned with his request, Gavin’s chocolate eyes roved
over the woman, taking in the curve of her breast and the flare of her hips. “Too
bad I can’t put a cache on this plane and let you find it,” he muttered under
his breath.

Smiling
down at him, the flight attendant asked, “Did you need something else sir?”

Gavin
flashed a smile taking note of her nametag, “No thank you, Tanya.”  He settled his
water bottle in the cup holder attached to the seat, then leaned back and
closed his eyes even though he knew he wouldn’t sleep. Knowing that he would
see his mother before the day was over filled him with both anticipation and
dread.

As
the wheels of the airplane touched the tarmac in Little Rock, Gavin pulled his
cell phone from his pocket and dialed the number for the Little Rock realtor
that he had commissioned to sell his mother’s house. Setting up a meeting for
the following morning, he pocketed the phone and then pulled his backpack from
the overhead compartment.

Gavin
moved down the center isle to the exit row where Tanya was directing the first
class passengers off of the plane. Catching her eye as he passed, Gavin winked
and gave her his best Hollywood smile. Who knew? They just might meet again.

Stepping
up to the car rental counter, Gavin flashed his corporate card and a few minutes
later he drove away in red convertible. Even though he could easily afford a
car, Gavin didn’t own one. No car and no house other than a remote cabin that he’d
bought a few years ago tied him to any one place for very long and nothing, not
even the credit card he’d just used, was registered in his name. Turning left
on the 440 and cranking the radio up, Gavin sang along with an old George
Thorogood song. “Bbb…bad….bad to the bone.”

A
few miles down the road, Gavin sucked in a calming breath and slowed to make
the turn. He arrived at the Park Central Alzheimer Center just after six p.m. He
parked the rented car, and finger combed his short dark hair as he slid out of
the leather seat. Grabbing a brown paper shopping bag from the back floorboard,
Gavin slid on sunglasses and walked through the double doors leading into the
center.

“I’m
here Mama. I’m here.”

CHAPTER 14

Tate
parked the SUV in the rear of the courthouse just after six the following
morning; he waited as Martin pulled in. The two men agreed to meet before hours
to review the murder cases without having to field calls from the press or
locals.

Leaning
against his SUV, Tate waited as Martin exited his patrol car. The metallic
click of the cruiser’s door lock sounded out of place in the early morning
stillness. Side by side they climbed the courthouse steps. Other than a nod of
acknowledgement, neither man spoke. Their wordless pact to bring a killer down didn’t
require it.

Unlocking
the wooden door to his office, Tate walked over and flipped the coffee maker on.
Both men hung their coats then took opposite chairs across the desk.  Before
the coffee finished brewing they’d opened both case files, their resolve
palpable in the small room.

“Sheriff,
we’ve got a serial on our hands. I don’t fully understand the profile on this
guy, too many differences in victimology, but I know he’s going to kill again
if we don’t stop him. On top of that, we have a serious leak somewhere in the
department.”

Martin
glanced up. “You mean you think someone on the force is feeding details to the
locals?”

Nodding
his head, Tate continued. “I do think that. I barely walked through the door
last night after dropping you off when my phone started ringing. The Mayor
demanding an arrest, Parker’s mother wanting to know how I could let something
like this happen again and a couple more that I only half listened to. Someone
at the scene brought the news back to town last night. Since it was a county investigation
that means one of your deputies, a member of the CSU team or the ME office.”

“What
about the other campers?  Couldn’t it have been one of them?”  Martin asked.

“It
could have been, but I don’t think it was. People know that it has a lot of
similarities to the Parker case and those campers were nowhere near that first scene.
Someone is making a serious effort to undermine our investigation and inflame
the locals. Maybe that someone is actually our killer or maybe they just want
us to appear inept at our jobs. Either way its damned frustrating thinking that
one of your own is working against you.” Tate continued, “Right now frustration
weighs in at just over a ton and its all sitting right here.” He bounced his
fist lightly against his chest.

Picking
up his coffee cup, Martin nodded. “I know exactly what you mean. I can’t recall
this job ever being any harder than it is right now. I called the ME’s office
on my way in. Daniel and Royce Wiggins were both hard at work. Royce promised
me the official report on the Babcock kid by ten this morning.” 

Comparing
notes from the field reports, medical examiner reports and from personal
observations, Tate and Martin worked uninterrupted with Tate making notes. “Okay,
Martin, starting with what we do know about both cases, it’s obvious that there
are several key pieces of evidence  common in both murders.”

Martin
grunted in acknowledgement then stood and poured them both a cup of coffee, the
last in the pot. “What I know so far is that the same perp killed them both. The
tattoo cuts are the same, he cut the same eye and ear on both of them and the
red cord he used to tie them both up is the same. I don’t need to wait for any
damned lab results to know that.”

Tate
accepted the offered cup. “That’s all true buddy, but it’s also surface data
and as hard as it is to move past what we’ve seen, we’ve got to look deeper.” 

Concern
lined Martin’s face, “It’s a hell of a lot easier to talk about forgetting what
you’ve seen than it is to actually forget it, Tate.”

 “I
know,” Tate said. “But we’ve got to find this killer and the only way to do
that is to focus on the facts. I once had a superior tell me that there was no
room for supposition in an investigation and that we were to deal with
pragmatic information only. At the time it didn’t mean much to me because I was
running on raw emotion, but in the end he was right.” 

Martin
moved to the window. “You’re right. Logically I know that but I’m having a real
hard time coming to grips with the thought that there’s a serial killer right
here in our little nothing of a town. And finding that little boy was something
I’ll never forget.” Taking his seat again, Martin hesitated, “So where do we go
from here?”

“We’ve
got a lot of loose ends and we need to tie them together. We know that in both
cases the victims were raped and we know that there was overkill. That leads me
to believe that either the UnSub knew both victims, or that it was personal to
him in some way. We need Royce to confirm if the rape was complete or if there
was pre-ejaculate only like in the Parker rape. We also know that Babcock was
killed at the lake and that Parker had been at the lake earlier in the day
before she was attacked. That’s a lot of similarities.”

Closing
the Babcock folder, Martin leaned back, “I talked to the family last night at
the scene, but they really didn’t tell me anything that would help with the
case. Understandable, considering what happened. They moved in from the lake
last night and stayed over at the Pine Ridge B&B. What say we take a ride
over there and talk to them together?”

Tate
closed the Parker folder. “Sounds good to me, maybe they’ll remember something
that they forgot to tell you last night in the chaos of the moment. On the way
back we can stop at the morgue and save Royce or Daniel a trip to the courthouse.” 

The
decision made, both men grabbed their hats and coats on the way out. Even
though summer was just weeks away the chill of spring still hovered in the
mountain air. In the parking lot they agreed to take the SUV since Tate was on
duty for the city while Martin had worked the night shift the evening before
and was officially off-duty today.

Tate
turned down his radio. “You know that we can pretty much rule out that Parker’s
murder was linked to her marijuana use, right?  I really don’t have any reason
to doubt what Troy Donaldson told me about that night at the party or his own
drug use. I’m pretty sure that the Babcock boy’s tox report will confirm
Ketamine in the bloodstream just like Saralyn Parker’s did. Right now the only
common denominator other than the way they were killed is the lake. Did you
happen to ask the Babcocks if they knew Saralyn Parker?”

Martin
shook his head. “The Babcocks live just across the state line in Chadron and
had come up to the lake for a long weekend. I didn’t want to bring up that we’d
had a similar homicide with them until we had more details. Both of them were
upset, but Mrs. Babcock was on the verge of a breakdown. I had Caroline over at
the B&B call Doc Shriver over once they were checked in. He gave her
something to settle her down. As bad as we need answers, it didn’t seem right
to keep at it with her as upset as she was.”

Pulling
the SUV into the Pine Ridge B&B, Tate parked the vehicle. Both men sat for
moment staring at the building, not wanting to question grieving parents. Picking
up his hat from the back seat, Martin turned to Tate. “Sitting here won’t make
it any easier.”

CHAPTER 15

Gavin
passed two women bent over and fussing with flowers in a huge ceramic pot near
the entrance. He pushed through a  set of double doors into the state of the
art center where his mother lived, then wrinkled his nose and grumbled, “Damn
that nasty old people smell. Don’t they ever bathe?”

Pausing,
he glanced into a sunny community room, his eyes searching for her. Gavin wasn’t
surprised that his mother was not one of a gaggle of blue haired old women clustered
around a TV watching some reality show.

Shaking
his head, he muttered in frustration, “Shit. I pay a fortune for this place and
she won’t leave her room.” Frozen in the doorway, Gavin closed his eyes willing
his mother to appear.
You used to love flowers Mama, you could be outside
right now. Those women wouldn’t care about your scars. They wouldn’t Mama,
they’d love you, just like I do
.  Winking at an old woman who stopped
watching television to look up at him with a searching blank stare, Gavin moved
through the elaborately decorated lobby and into the heart of the center. Not
slowing, he passed the reception desk and took a left down a long, sterile, white-painted
hallway. Only now his steps slowed as Gavin approached the last door on the wing.

His
mother’s room.

Gavin
paused outside the door to Silvia Wheeler’s room and took a deep breath,
letting it out slowly. Pasting a smile on his face he pushed into the room. At
first he thought his mother was sleeping, but as he took a step closer to the
bed her eye fluttered open. For a brief moment he caught the fear in her
expression before she was swallowed back into the nothingness that she lived in.
Standing next to the bed, Gavin stooped to kiss his mother’s forehead.

Gavin
grasped her small, blue-veined and paper-thin hand and  asked, “How are you Mama? 
It’s me Gavin, remember?” 

Nothing.
Not one damn word.

Trying
again, Gavin asked, “Did you like the new clothes that I had sent over for
you?  You look really pretty today, Mama.”

More
nothing.

Pulling
a chair close to his mother’s bed, Gavin sat and then reached to push Silvia’s
thin, graying hair back from her forehead, careful not to disturb the black
patch that she insisted on wearing over one eye to cover her  scar.

“You’re
due a haircut, Mama. I’ll get someone over here to take care of that for you. I
brought you a present today, want to see?” Reaching into the shopping bag,
Gavin pulled out a soft bodied baby doll with dark curly hair and eyes that
opened and closed.

Silvia
turned to look at her son for the first time since he entered the room. She
reached out for the doll and snatched it from Gavin’s hands, pulling it tightly
to her chest.

Gavin
chuckled, “You like that Mama?” 

Smiling
Silvia reached out to touch Gavin’s face lightly with one hand. Haltingly she
spoke, “B-baby.” 

Covering
her hand with his own, much larger one, Gavin closed his eyes, remembering a
different mother. He turned his mother’s hand over in his own and pushed the
sleeve of her dress up, revealing a faded tattoo. Using one finger he traced
the three rings on her arm.