No Place to Die (6 page)

Cross-checking Alma and Robert Fletcher’s phone records against those of Beverly and David Thompson gave us nothing. There had been no calls from the Fletchers’ phones to the Thompsons’ and none from the Thompsons’ to the Fletchers’. The two couples had made no outgoing calls to the same numbers, nor had they received any incoming calls from the same numbers. That accomplished, Maggie and I left the office at four thirty and returned to the street where Beverly Thompson’s Lexus had been abandoned.

We continued to assume that the killer had transferred Thompson from the Lexus to the black van that the Chasen girl had described for me. Given the timing of Thompson’s abduction, we further reasoned that the killer had probably parked the van near the Chasen home sometime between five o’clock and six thirty last night. We were hoping to find someone who had not been home while we were canvassing last night but who had been home earlier in the evening and who might thus have seen either the van or perhaps even the killer himself.

Again, Maggie took the south side of the street while I took the north. I began with the house in front of which the van had been parked. Unlike last night, the couple who lived in the house was at home, and a small gray-haired woman opened the door as far as the security chain would allow. I introduced myself and showed her my badge and ID.

The woman took a good long look at both through
the crack in the door, glancing back and forth from me to the photo on my ID. Finally she called to her husband and only when he was standing protectively beside her did she finally loosen the chain and open the door. “I apologize for being such a fraidycat,” she said sheepishly. “But after what happened only a couple of blocks away last night, I’m feeing a bit nervous.”

The woman, who looked to be in her late sixties, introduced herself as Helen Fulton. I assured her that she needn’t apologize for being sensibly cautious and asked if she or her husband had noticed any strange vehicles parked in front of their house on the previous evening.

“I certainly did,” she said. “That’s why I called the police.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” I said, caught off guard. “You say you called the police?”

“Yes, I did.”

Pointing to her husband, she said, “I was waiting for Marvin to get home because we were going to our daughter’s for dinner last night. He was late and I was looking out the window for him a little before six o’clock when I saw an old black van pull up in front of the house.

“Well, I wasn’t expecting anyone other than Marvin and I didn’t know who it might be. I watched a man get out of the van, but instead of coming up to the door, he simply started walking off down the street.”

“Which way did he go, Mrs. Fulton?”

“That way,” she said, pointing east.

“Okay, just so I understand, the man got out of the van on the driver’s side, which would have been the side away from the house?”

“That’s right.”

“And once he was clear of the van, you watched him walk away?”

“Yes.”

“And the man was alone?”

“Yes. That is, unless there was someone who stayed in the back of the van where I couldn’t see them.”

“How well did you see the man?”

She gave me an apologetic look. “Not all that well, I’m afraid. My eyes aren’t what they used to be, and I really only saw the man at a distance from the side and from the back. I didn’t get a good look at his face.”

“How was the man dressed?”

“In black. He had on a long-sleeve black shirt and a pair of black pants. I remember thinking that was odd, because it was still fairly warm, even at six o’clock last night. I thought that a person walking any distance in that outfit was bound to be hot and uncomfortable.”

“How old would you say the man was?”

She shrugged. “I could only guess, Detective. The way he carried himself, he struck me as a young man, probably between twenty and forty, but I didn’t see him well enough to make a better guess.”

“Was the man wearing a hat?”

“No.”

“What color was his hair?”

She thought about it for a moment, then shook her head. “I’m sorry. I don’t have any recollection of his hair.”

“Why did you call the police, Mrs. Fulton?”

“Well, I was angry because he just parked his van there and walked off. This is a fairly narrow street, and most of the residents are careful to park in their garages and driveways. If the man had been visiting someone nearby, it would have been different. But I thought it was very inconsiderate of him to leave his van in front of our house and then just walk away like that.”

I nodded sympathetically, and she continued, a bit sheepishly. “To be honest, I was in a bad mood anyhow, because Marvin wasn’t home on time, and so I went out and wrote down the license number of the van and called the police to report it.”

“Did you call nine-one-one or your local precinct?”

She gave me a look as if she was questioning my sanity. “Why the local precinct, of course. I’m not silly enough to call the emergency number for something like this.”

“No, of course not,” I agreed. “And what happened?”

“Well, the person who took my call said that she’d refer it to the traffic division. She said that if the van was still there this morning, I should call again. But of course, it wasn’t, and so I didn’t think any more about it.”

“I understand,” I said. “By any chance do you still have the license-plate number?”

“Yes, it’s still on my pad in the kitchen.”

Mrs. Fulton retrieved the plate number. I thanked her, raced back to the car, and asked Dispatch to run the plate. While they did, I drove up the street and spotted Maggie coming out of a house three doors down. I tapped the horn and waved her over.

Just as she got into the car, the dispatcher returned to the line. “The plate belongs to a 2003 blue Volvo sedan. It’s registered to a William Desmond in Scottsdale.”

“A Volvo sedan—you’re sure?”

“The computer is.”

“Well, shit,” I replied.

The dispatcher gave me the address, and as we headed in that direction, I brought Maggie up to speed. “For the last nineteen hours, we’ve had a CIB out on that van, and all the while, the goddamn plate number’s been in the system. Some idiot at the precinct level wasn’t bright enough to make the connection between the black van that Fulton reported and the one we’re looking for in a murder/kidnapping that occurred only three blocks away?”

“What can you say?” Maggie sighed. “As usual, the right hand is paying no fuckin’ attention to what the left one is doing.”

“No shit,” I agreed. “It looks as though the plate that Fulton reported was almost certainly boosted from some unsuspecting citizen and doesn’t belong on the van we’re looking for. Still, it would have been nice to know that last night. We might have had a slight chance of catching this bastard. By now, he’s almost certainly ditched the stolen plate.”

Carl McClain had, in fact, ditched the license plate that he had “borrowed” for the purpose of abducting Beverly Thompson, and had replaced it with the one that actually belonged on the van.

He’d bought the van for fifteen hundred dollars, cash money, and the seller had given him a bill of sale and the title to the van. Like any good citizen, McClain had dutifully gone to the DMV and registered and licensed his new vehicle. Unlike any good citizen, however, he had done so using a name and address other than his own. A little after five thirty, he pulled the van back into the garage of his rental house.

The insulation in the bedroom and bathroom was effective enough that Beverly failed to realize that McClain had returned until she heard his key in the dead bolt that locked the bedroom door. Sitting on the bed and leaning back against the wall, she watched as he slowly opened the door. He looked in to see her sitting there and then bent over to pick up a medium-size cardboard box. He closed the door behind him and returned the key ring to his pocket. Turning to Beverly, he said, “Dinner time, princess. Did you miss me?”

Without waiting for a response, he carried the box
over and set it on the card table. Reaching into the box, he set out two plates, two forks, two bottles of Diet Coke, and a roll of paper towels. He arranged them on the table, tearing off two paper towels, folding them in half, and setting them next to the plates. He then reached back into the carton and produced a large pizza box. He opened the box, set it in the middle of the table, and pointed Beverly toward the chair opposite him.

“Eat up, Beverly. You must be hungry, and it won’t stay hot forever.”

Without waiting for her response, he pulled a slice of sausage pizza out of the box, dropped it onto his plate, and attacked it with a fork.

The thought of sitting across the table from the man was repellant, but Beverly had eaten nothing, save for her morning cereal, in over sixteen hours. Reluctantly, she pulled herself off the bed, walked across the room, and sat in the second folding chair.

McClain pointed at the box. “Help yourself. I didn’t know what you might like, and so I got half sausage and half pepperoni.”

Beverly, who hadn’t eaten pizza in at least six months, didn’t want either sausage or pepperoni. But opting for the lesser of two evils, she picked up a fork and took a piece of the sausage half. McClain watched her take a bite, then opened one of the Diet Cokes and set it in front of her. “So how was
your
day, honey?”

Beverly stopped chewing for a moment, unsure of how to respond and afraid of provoking the man. Then, her rage and frustration momentarily overwhelming her fear and her grief, she swallowed the pizza. Stabbing the air with her fork, she said, “
How was my day?
How do you think my day was, you despicable asshole? What sort of sick fucking game do you think you’re playing at here?”

She held her eyes hard on his, refusing even to give
him the satisfaction of seeing her blink. McClain returned her stare for several long seconds. Then he leaned back in his chair, smiled, and nodded his head. “That’s the spirit,” he said approvingly. “That’s the Beverly we know and love. And as to what sort of ‘fucking game’ I’m playing at, sweetheart, I’m about to give you another demonstration. Finish your dinner first.”

Beverly set the fork down and pushed the plate away, leaving the slice of pizza unfinished. Looking at the center of the table and not at McClain, she pleaded softly, “Who
are
you? Please…Why are you doing this to me?”

McClain waited until she raised her eyes to meet his again. Then he said, “You should goddamn well know the answer to that, Beverly. But the good news is that you’ve got nine more days to figure it out. The bad news is that after that it won’t make a damn bit of difference—not to you, at least.”

He held her eyes until she looked away again. For the next fifteen minutes she said nothing more as McClain methodically ate several more pieces of pizza and sipped at his Coke. Finally, he pushed his plate away and reached back down into the cardboard box he had set off on the floor next to his chair. He came out with a toothbrush shrink-wrapped in cellophane and a tube of Crest. He set them on the table next to Beverly and said, “Go brush your teeth.”

Without looking at him, she shook her head slightly. Again in a soft voice, she said, “No.”

McClain gave her a couple of seconds. Then speaking very quietly and deliberately, he said, “Go brush your teeth, Beverly. If you do not, I will tie you down on the bed again and hurt you in ways that you’ve never imagined, even in your worst nightmares.”

He waited patiently as she sat there for another full minute. Finally, and still without looking at him, she
reached out and picked up the toothbrush and the Crest. Then she got up from the chair and slowly made her way to the bathroom, the cable snaking across the floor behind her.

The address in Scottsdale and the Volvo sedan both belonged to a William Desmond. Shortly after seven, Maggie and I rang his doorbell. From inside the house, we heard what sounded like a small child crying, and a few moments later a young woman with a baby at her shoulder opened the door. A little boy, maybe two or three years old, was wrapped around the woman’s right leg, still crying. “Yes?” she said in a voice that indicated clearly that she had no time for small talk.

We let her take a look at our shields and IDs. Then Maggie said, “Mrs. Desmond?”

The woman nodded apprehensively, and Maggie said, “We’re very sorry to bother you, ma’am, but is your husband at home?”

At that, the baby started to cry as well. Desmond shifted it to her other shoulder and patted it on the back. “No, he’s not. My husband is traveling out of town on business. Why? What’s happened?”

Skipping over her question, I said, “When did Mr. Desmond leave on his trip?”

“Sunday night.”

Maggie jotted in her notebook, then said, “Your husband owns a 2003 Volvo sedan.”

“Yes, why do you ask?”

Again ignoring her question, I said, “And is your husband driving the car on his trip?”

“No,” Desmond replied, clearly confused. “He left the car at the airport and flew. That’s what he always does.”

Maggie sighed. “Do you know where at the airport he might have left the car?”

The woman shifted the baby again. “I assume that it’s in the West Economy lot. That’s usually where he leaves it when he flies United.”

We thanked the woman and left. Forty-five minutes later, we were in an airport patrol car with a Sky Harbor security officer driving up and down the aisles of the West Economy parking lot. Twenty minutes after starting the search, we were looking at a blue Volvo. It had been backed into a parking space, and the rear of the car was shielded by the minivan parked immediately behind it. I got out of the patrol car and walked behind the Volvo. Its license plate was gone.

I took it for granted that the person who’d taken the plate had been careful enough to wear gloves. Still, we stood guard over the car until a Crime Scene Response van arrived. The techs carefully dusted the area around the license-plate holder and raised a few fingerprints. We could only hope that at least a couple of them might belong to our killer.