Judged (18 page)

I pulled the door open for Beth, and we took a seat on a couple barstools at the long counter.

A man in a blue long-sleeved button-up shirt approached from the kitchen area. He looked to be in his thirties and stood before us with a smile. His yellow name badge read Jeff. “What can I get ya?” he asked.

“Two coffees.” I glanced over at Beth, who had her face in a menu. “I think we’ll need a minute on food.”

“Two cups of mud coming right up.” He turned, pulled two cups from the rack, and set them before us. He grabbed a big gold carafe of coffee and filled them. “Just give me a shout when you’re ready to order.”

“Sure thing,” I said.

My phone buzzed in my pocket. I took it out and looked at the screen—a new e-mail from Ball. I opened it to find the accident report from Carrie Baker. The message Ball attached just said to call him if I was still awake. I opened the e-mail and looked over the report that was taken at the scene.

“What’s that?” Beth asked.

I glanced at Beth. “Accident report from the sister. Ball just sent it.” I looked back down at my phone and continued scrolling and reading.

“Anything of interest?” she asked.

“Not that I see yet. Single car accident. Fatality.”

Beth went back to looking at her menu then folded it back up and slipped it into a menu holder in the metal condiment tray in front of her.

I scrolled farther down the report to an eyewitness statement. The eyewitness had been her brother, Timothy Wendell. I quickly glanced over what he’d claimed to have seen—another vehicle running her off of the road, causing the accident and her death.

“We might have something here,” I said. I let Beth read over the statement and then dialed Ball. He picked up right away.

“See the e-mail of the accident report?” he answered.

“We just read over it. What do you think?” I asked.

“Well, no signs that this vehicle ever existed, but Wendell claimed it was a black Mercedes SUV with Florida tags.”

“Which I’m sure there are thousands of.”

“Well, we went through all the victims that we could attribute to this guy so far back at the office. I had the twins do it right before I kicked them loose for the night. None of your victims owned such a vehicle or have in the past. That means that he may not have found or got around to killing this guy yet. Well, that is, if he found him and planned to. Keep in mind this is speculation, but it could be a lead. I’d go through all those files, papers, everything you guys found at the house and see if you can get a match on that vehicle.”

“It’s something,” I said.

“What was that scene like over there? I got your message that said we had another.”

I gave him the highlights of what we’d found at the Jensen house.

“And the woman didn’t see a thing?” Ball asked.

“No. But she’s going to set a time to come in and give us a statement recounting everything from her day. I figure I’ll show her a photo of Wendell and see if she’s seen the guy before.”

“What’s going on locally there? Are you going to put together some kind of press conference to get this guy’s face everywhere?”

“I’ll have to talk to Couch and put something together. He already put alerts out everywhere on this guy. I guess the only thing left is to get the word spreading to the public.”

“Okay. Give me a ring in the morning. I’m just pulling up to my house now.”

“Sounds good. Thanks for the help,” I said. “Tell the team the same.”

“Will do,” Ball said. “You guys go get some sleep. We’ll talk in the morning.”

“Yup.”

Ball clicked off, and I tossed my phone on the counter.

“Well?” Beth asked.

“Let me shoot Couch a message quick, and then we’ll go over it.”

Tim lay on his back on the man’s bed, trying to get some rest. His arms were crossed over his chest—his hand holding the gun. Every few minutes, the sounds of the man moving around and banging into things in the closet would jar him awake. Tim hadn’t heard anything for the past few minutes aside from the faint sound of a helicopter. Just as he was about to drift off to sleep, the lack of noise registered as odd. Tim had told the guy to be quiet numerous times, and after a few minutes of the guy following Tim’s orders, the noise would normally start up again. Either the man had fallen asleep, or he was up to something.

Tim pulled himself from the bed and walked to the light switch on the wall. He flicked it on and stared at the closet doors behind the dresser and the foot of the bed. He quietly walked over and put his ear to the doors. He heard the faint sound of scratching and a few sounds of grunts and groans, as if the man was struggling with something.

Tim slid the bed away from the dresser and then moved the dresser away from the closet doors as the sounds from the man inside intensified. Tim held the pistol on the closet doors and opened the right side. He looked in to see feet protruding from a rough hole in the back wall.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Tim said.

Tim watched as the man’s feet kicked and swiped off the carpet on the closet’s floor.

Tim let out a breath and left the bedroom to the living-room area that shared the wall with the closet. From his waist up, the man was protruding from a scrappy hole in the living room wall near the front door. He was covered in drywall dust and had bits of insulation surrounding his waist. The man’s hands pawed off the tile floor of the foyer area, searching for grip.

“So close, but yet so far,” Tim said. “I see you got your hands free. Here, let me help you.”

Tim kicked the man in the side of the face. Tony groaned and spat blood on the tile but remained conscious. Tim kept an eye and his gun on Tony as he searched the kitchen for something to restrain Tony with again. He found a plastic tube of cable ties under the kitchen sink and walked back over. Tim popped the plastic top off the container and ordered Tony to place his hands together outstretched in front of him. Tony didn’t obey.

“Look, idiot, you can keep the bullshit up, and you’ll die here like an asshole hanging out of this wall. That, or you can let me tie you up again.”

Tony grumbled something under his breath and placed his hands out flat, palms down on the tile.

Tim zipped multiple cable ties around Tony’s wrists and then yanked and pulled until the man was free from the wall. Covered in white dust, Tony lay on the foyer tile. Tim pulled the man to his feet and then used a few more cable ties to secure the man’s hands to his belt and a couple more connected cable ties to go around the man’s ankles. As Tim went to secure Tony’s ankles together, something caught his eye. Tim lifted one of the man’s pant legs, looked, and then continued to secure his legs.

“Hop your ass to the kitchen and sit down,” Tim said.

Tony, like a bunny, did as instructed, hopping the twenty feet to the kitchen table.

“Sit,” Tim said.

He did.

Tim took a seat next to him. “Almost a good vanishing act, Houdini. Good try, I’ll give you that. Though I think you missed the part of playing it cool, and in return, I’d play it cool. Now that I know that I can’t trust you if you’re out of my sight. We’re going to sit here. You’re going to look at my face until I decide that you no longer have to.”

“Whatever, man,” Tony said. “Break into my house, hold me at gunpoint, and tie me up. You expect me to just go along with that?”

“I one-hundred-percent expect you to go along with that.”

“Yeah, okay. You give me another chance to escape, and I’m gone.”

“So what you’re saying is that I should just kill you so I don’t have to worry about you?”

“If that’s what you’re going to do, then do it. If you’re not, then take whatever the hell you want and be gone.”

“Are you learning challenged or something? I have my gun, as well as your gun, and you’re tied up. Do you not see the situation here?”

“I see it just fine. You’re hiding from the cops for probably stealing a car or some other weak-ass crime and break into my house to hide like a bitch. I’ve been to jail. I’ve seen killers. You don’t strike me as one.”

“Right,” Tim said. “Well, seeing as how you’ve brought up jail.” Tim kicked one leg up over his other knee and rested the gun on his thigh, pointed at Tony. “I saw your house arrest monitor on your ankle there. Tell me, what did you do that got you sent to jail?”

“Huh?” Tony asked.

“I want every last detail about your crime.”

My phone rang on the desk of my hotel room. I scooped it up and clicked Talk. “Yeah, Couch. What’s up?” I answered. I brought my coffee to my lips and took a sip.

“You guys are up?” he asked.

“I haven’t seen Beth yet this morning. I’ve been up for a bit—figure I should probably see what her status is.” I looked at the clock on the nightstand of my hotel room. “I told her that I wanted to be back over at the office at eight thirty. I spoke to Linda Blackwell, the woman from the Jensen house. She said she’d be in around nine thirty to leave her statement.”

“Okay. Did you get enough sleep?” he asked. “You sound a little rough.”

“I’ll be fine. I got just enough sleep to function.”

“Okay. I’m just getting to the office now. We got everything from Wendell’s house brought over. Hell, I didn’t get home until around four this morning. We’re going to dig into these files and try to find our Black Mercedes SUV. We’ll probably have to get into the DMV database to check for past ownership. You can give me the details of the Doug Jensen place when you get here.”

“Sure,” I said. “Let me go rustle up Beth. We’ll be over shortly.”

I clicked off, took another sip of my coffee, and crossed the hall to Beth’s door. I gave it a knock and waited.

“Yeah?” She called from the other side of the door.

“It’s Hank. Are you almost ready?”

“I’ll be over in a second.”

“Okay.” I headed back to my room and took a seat on the chair next to the small table. I dialed Karen, who picked up right away.

“Hey, babe. Late night?” she asked.

“I think the clock said four thirty-six when I closed my eyes, so yeah.”

“Ugh. You tired?”

“Yup, but I’ll manage. I’m on my fourth or fifth cup of coffee now, so I should be okay. What’s going on there?”

“Nothing. Headed to work. Nothing too exciting. Oh, um, when are you going to be done down there?”

“A couple days, probably,” I said. “I don’t really know right now. I guess there’s no real time frame yet. We got a little bit of new evidence, so we’ll have to follow up on that and see where it leads us. We have our guy’s name. We have control of his home and vehicle. I’m guessing that we’ll be spreading the word about him to the public, and if we don’t catch up to him in another day or two, we’ll have to assume that he fled and wait for him to get tripped up somewhere.”

“Well, that all seems like good news. I mean, last time you went down, you didn’t get much. Now that you know who he is, it should only be a matter of time.”

“We’ll see, I guess.”

“So, no concrete return date set yet?” she asked.

“No. Why? What’s up?”

“Well, I was talking to Callie, and if you’re done down there over the weekend, maybe I could fly down, meet up with you, and we could spend the weekend with Callie and Kane.”

“Yeah, maybe. We’ll see if it works out. I guess a handful of different things would have to fall in place for it to work, but I’m definitely not against it.”

“Okay, we’ll play it by ear. Just let me know.”

“Sure,” I said.

I heard banging, presumably by Beth, on my hotel-room door.

“Hey, babe, I’m going to have to run. We need to get over to the field office and get started.”

“Sure. Give me a call when you can.”

“I will.”

“Love you.”

“Love you, too. Have a good day.”

I clicked off and went to the door. When I pulled it open, Beth was standing in the hall, jabbing away at the screen of her phone. She said the word
asshat
and dumped her phone into her purse.

“You ready?” she asked.

“Asshat?” I asked.

She shook her head and grumbled. “Yeah, Scott is. I guess he figured he’d start his day by being a jackass to me. I’ve had about enough of it.”

“You know, you could just stop talking to the guy. I’m pretty sure you could find someone out there that doesn’t suck.”

She cleared her throat. “It’s getting there.”

“Yeah. You’ve said that.”

“It’s hard, Hank. I really thought we had a chance this time. But I think I’m going to have to just end it.”

I didn’t respond. Beth had been talking about dumping her ex-husband, now current boyfriend, for months. I’d believe it when I saw it.

“So are you ready to go or what?” she asked.

“I’m ready. I just talked to Couch. He just got to the office and was going to start looking through the files for the black Mercedes. I figure we’ll give him a hand, check in with the forensics department, and maybe try to come up with what we want to do about a press conference.”

“Okay.”

We left the hotel, made the short trip over to the Miramar FBI building, and passed through security. We made our way up to the serial crimes unit and found Couch holding a briefing in the large meeting room. When Beth and I entered, I spotted a handful of familiar faces: Colt, the forensics lead; Rivera; Pottsulo; and a few others.

Couch waved us to the front and two empty chairs nearest him.

“Why don’t you guys go over what the scene was at the Jensen place last night,” Couch said.

We gave the ten or so agents our account of what we’d seen, and they gave the speaking duties to Colt, to let the room know what he and his forensics team had gathered.

The forensics guys distributed some copies of photographs that had been taken from Wendell’s and went over what they’d found there with the agents and forensics guys that hadn’t been at the scene.

I looked over some of the photos from Wendell’s home and spoke up. “Have we confirmed that everyone he had pegged up on this wall is deceased?” I asked.

“It was the first thing that we went over last night,” Couch said. “We did it as we removed each piece from the wall. Everyone that was up there is already deceased.”