Judged (7 page)

“I’ll get you guys in touch with Captain Benelli. He runs our patrol division. I’m sure he’ll get you guys whatever you need. I have to say the updated profile didn’t win any awards at the station. Seems people aren’t that keen on the possible suspects being part of law enforcement.”

“It’s a profile,” Couch said. “Take it for what it is, a piece of paper.”

Harrington shrugged.

“What about you?” I asked. “Anything new on your front?”

“Other than the major and captain down my throat, not much. They want this resolved, and seeing as I was the one who brought the case to light with them, somehow that means that all the shit falls on me. I’m sure this is only going to add to that. We need to find something here, anything that can get us closer to this guy.”

“Did you guys ask around the neighborhood? Do any door knocking at all?” Beth asked.

“We haven’t started, and I’m guessing that it won’t go so hot,” Harrington said. “This is going to be one of our more no-talking-to-cops neighborhoods.”

“We still have to do it,” Beth said. “There’s a chance someone saw something. I’ll go and get started with the crowd out front. Worst-case scenario, maybe me standing there asking questions will make them disperse.”

Beth walked out the front.

Past her, through the open doorway, in the streets and sidewalk out front, the crowd of people had grown from just standing beyond the police cars to encircling the entire scene. News vans and crews could be seen in the distance. Beth was going to need a hand, and I knew she wasn’t the best with speaking under pressure.

“Crowd is growing, huh?” Couch asked.

“Yeah. It looks like the media is here too,” I said.

“Okay, let me make my call to get the 9-1-1 recording and then go give the press something,” Couch said.

“Sounds good.” I walked outside to assist Beth with the crowd.

“Can you turn off the air conditioning?” Mrs. Belford asked.

Tim looked at the white-haired woman beside him in her power wheelchair. She suffered from sarcopenia. The muscle loss had started in her late sixties, from years of a nonactive lifestyle, or so she’d said.

“Too cold for you, Mrs. Belford?” he asked.

“A little.”

“Sure.” Tim reached forward and adjusted the knob on the dash. “You let me know if that’s better.”

“Okay,” she said.

Tim brought his eyes back to the road in front of him. His turn into the clinic was just a half a block up. “How long today?” he asked.

“What’s that?” Mrs. Belford asked.

“How long will your appointment be this morning?”

“Oh, around an hour. Just a little therapy and a checkup today. I’ll have them phone you when I’m ready to be picked up.”

“Okay, I don’t think I have anything else pressing, so I’ll be in the parking lot, waiting. And you wanted to stop at the drug store on your way back, correct?”

“Yes, I’ll need to pick up my prescriptions after.”

“Okay,” Tim said.

He put on his turn signal to pull into the medical facility and drove to the covered entrance. Tim put the van in park and hit the button to open the sliding door and extend the ramp. He rounded the nose of the van to the passenger side, opened the door, and unhooked the safety straps securing Mrs. Belford’s chair. She backed up, made a Y-turn inside the van, and pulled down the ramp that extended from the sliding side door. Mrs. Belford stopped a few feet from the ramp’s end. Tim hit the button inside to retract the ramp and close the sliding door.

“Have them call me when you’re finished, Mrs. Belford.”

“I will, Timothy. Thank you.” She powered herself toward the clinic’s entrance.

Tim returned to the driver’s seat and pulled into the parking lot to wait. He turned on the radio, set the volume low, and leaned back in his seat. Within minutes, he nodded off. The late nights of surveillance and righting wrongs were catching up with him. Tim woke to his phone chirping from his pocket—he rubbed his eyes, yawned, and pulled it out to answer.

“Hello.”

“Mrs. Belford is ready to be picked up,” a woman said. “She’ll be down in a few minutes.”

Tim looked at the radio’s clock. He’d been asleep just over an hour.

“Sure. Thank you,” Tim said. He clicked End on his phone and tossed it onto the dash. The word
vigilante
caught his ear from the radio’s speakers. Tim turned the volume up. The disc jockey was talking about another body being found in Liberty City—Quincy Hightower. It seemed the broadcast was being sent to the scene for an update. Tim turned the volume louder. He glanced out of the passenger window and saw Mrs. Belford appearing from the sliding doors of the clinic.

“Shit,” Tim said.

He stayed put and listened to the broadcast airing live from the scene. Mrs. Belford waved at his vehicle. A man was speaking on the radio—an FBI agent speaking about a task force being assembled and leaving no stone unturned. Tim continued to listen for another minute or two. The man mentioned additional help assigned to the investigation. Apparently, capturing him was now the FBI’s number one priority. Tim stared out the passenger window at Mrs. Belford, who waved at him again.

Tim pulled the gear selector down into reverse and backed from his parking spot. He pointed the nose toward the clinic’s front doors and idled through the lot. The FBI agent went on to remind the city that the so-called vigilante was a common criminal, guilty of multiple murders, and in no way shape or form any kind of hero. Tim flicked the radio volume down and pulled under the covered entrance, where he stepped out and loaded Mrs. Belford. After that, he pulled away.

“Sorry about that, Mrs. Belford,” he said. “I didn’t see you out there. Guess my eyes are getting bad.”

The woman smiled. “They’ll get worse. Believe me.”

“So, on to the drug store then?” Tim asked.

“Yes. I have two scripts that need to be filled.”

“Sure.” Tim pulled from the clinic.

“Can you turn the radio up a bit?” Mrs. Belford asked. “It sounds like they’re talking about the vigilante.”

“You’ve been paying attention to the news, huh?”

“Since they started reporting on it. I’ve been following it daily.”

The broadcast had gone back to the studio. The disc jockey was giving his opinion, which sounded scripted and neutral. The radio went to a commercial. Tim reached out and turned the volume back down.

“What do you think?” he asked.

Mrs. Belford looked at him. “About what this man’s doing?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“I’m torn. On one hand, I think it’s the good Lord’s job to judge people. When you reach heaven’s gates, your sins will be taken into account. On the other, what city isn’t better off with fewer bad people roaming the streets. If the police can’t do it, maybe someone else should. All of these people he’s killed should have been behind bars. I think this man only came about because of what the city was turning into—drugs, murder, crime everywhere. It’s saddening. Maybe if they had better law enforcement, we wouldn’t be dealing with any of this.”

“Agreed,” Tim said. “My sister was a detective—a damn fine one. The city needs more people like her.”

“You said
was
? What’s she doing now?”

“She died a few years back,” Tim said.

“Oh, I’m sorry, Timothy. I didn’t know. It wasn’t in the line of duty, was it?”

Tim’s face twitched. He rubbed his nose with his hand and slowed for a red light up ahead. “No. Auto accident.”

“Oh, heavens. I’m so sorry. Is that her?”

Tim looked at the photo hanging in a small plastic frame from the rearview mirror of the van. “Yeah, that’s her.” He reached out and tapped the photo, causing it to spin. “Someone ran her off the road. They were drunk.”

“That’s terrible. Are they in jail?” she asked.

“No,” Tim said. “The police didn’t do their jobs.”

Couch had been answering questions for the press at the barricade to the east of the home for the better part of twenty minutes. Beth and I had been trying to question the crowd, who seemed unruly and in no way helpful. Each time we’d approach a group standing and talking, they would back away and leave the area. I’d passed out a total of two cards to people willing to accept them. We just weren’t getting anywhere.

Beth and I stood on the sidewalk in front of the chain-link fence of the home. The coroner had just wheeled in a gurney a couple minutes prior. Two uniformed patrolmen walked toward Beth and me.

The taller, dark-haired, and mustached one on the right spoke up. “We knocked on the neighboring houses in each direction and across the street. Only three people answered their doors. Nobody saw or heard anything.”

“Seems to be a common trend around here,” Beth said.

“Okay, I appreciate the effort,” I said. “Maybe we’ll get some phone numbers for the neighboring residences and make some calls. Could be that they just don’t want to be seen speaking with the authorities,”

The officers nodded and headed back to the house.

“Well, what do you think?” Beth asked.

I motioned to Couch, who was walking back toward us. “Let’s see what he wants to do.”

“Anything?” he asked, stepping up to Beth and me.

I shook my head. “All deaf and blind around here.”

“I kind of figured as much.”

“What did you give the cameras?” I asked.

“Basically that it’s our main priority. Additional help brought in—the FBI and local authorities are working together to capture the suspect. Reiterated that the person responsible for these killings is not someone that should be admired for taking the law into their own hands.”

Harrington walked from the front of the house and joined us. “Forensics is just about wrapped up. Medical examiner will be taking the body shortly.”

“Anything standing out?” Beth asked.

“They lifted prints and collected everything. The ME is putting the TOD at about eight hours. I’ll make sure our forensics guys coordinate with yours.”

Couch pulled up the sleeve of his suit jacket to look at his watch. “It’s pushing eleven. We should get back to the office and get going on these possible suspects.” He looked at Harrington. “Are you all right with us leaving the scene with you? Otherwise I can call in some agents to take it.”

“I think we can handle it. Not much to do but wrap up,” Harrington said. “Speaking of which, let me go and round everyone up so we can get this taken care of.” He headed back toward the house.

“Okay,” I said. “When we get back, I’m going to shoot out to the car dealership Scobee worked at. Maybe some of his coworkers knew his routine or saw something suspicious recently. I also wouldn’t mind taking a look at their lot cameras from the night of Scobee’s murder.”

“Sure,” Couch said.

We left the house in the care of the local PD and headed back to Couch’s Chevy. Near the patrol cars blocking the street, I saw one of the two cards I’d handed out, lying on the ground. I dismissed it and hopped in the truck.

Our drive back to the Miramar office was spent discussing the scene and the confession left behind—aside from a recap of what we witnessed, nothing in our half-hour conversation was going to push the investigation in any other direction than where we were headed. I left Beth with Couch in the parking lot and walked to my rental car. Inside, I brought up the navigation app on my cell phone and pulled up the car dealership where Scobee was a general manager. I clicked the button to take me to the address. The robotic voice said the drive would take forty-four minutes. I hopped on the interstate heading south.

Twenty minutes into my drive, I felt my phone buzzing. I looked at the screen—the number was private. Someone had blocked the ID on the call. I clicked Talk and brought the phone to my ear.

“Agent Hank Rawlings,” I said.

“Hi. I might have some information,” a woman’s voice said.

“Regarding?” I asked.

“Quills,” she said.

“And who is Quills?”

“Quincy. The man’s home you were at today.”

I figured I knew who the caller was. The two business cards I’d handed out were to a twenty-something-year-old woman standing alone and to a younger man standing with a group. The woman that took my card disappeared into the crowd of people, and I hadn’t seen her afterward.

“What can you tell me, miss?” I clicked on my turn signal and rumbled to a stop on the shoulder of the interstate.

“You were asking about if anything seemed out of the ordinary around the neighborhood. Cars or anything like that.”

“Right.” I pulled my notepad from my pocket. “What did you see?”

“Well, Quills did what he did, which I’m sure you know what that was. So there was always cars coming and going at all hours. But there was this van.”

“What kind of van?” I asked.

“I don’t know. It was real low to the ground on the sides. Dark windows.”

“Color?”

“Silver or gold. Something lighter, but it was always parked down the block from Quills’s place. There was always some guy just sitting in there.”

“And this didn’t belong to a neighbor?” I asked.

“No.”

I jotted the information down. “Was this during the day or at night?” I asked.

“Always at night. Real late, like three in the morning.”

“All right. Did you ever get a look at the guy inside the van?” I asked.

“No.”

“How did you know someone was inside? You said this was at night and the vehicle had dark windows.”

“The person would turn the inside light on every now and then. My boyfriend and I would sometimes watch the van up the block.”

“For?” I asked.

“He seemed to think it was the feds or the DEA or cops or something watching Quills.”

“Okay,” I said. “What else can you tell me? Did you ever see the guy exit the van?”

“Never,” she said.

“Was this a full-size van or a minivan?”

“I can’t really say. It was shaped weird. Like I don’t think I’ve seen a van like that anywhere else.”

“New or old?” I asked.

“Newer.”

“Was this a personal or commercial vehicle?”

“I don’t know.”

“Anything distinguishing about the van itself? Maybe some lettering on it or a dent or something?”