Pursuit (41 page)

Julie and Walker spent most of the day scouring the back roads and byways of the Missouri countryside. Julie ended up driving, as Walker coordinated a massive hunt by nearly all the troopers on duty throughout the state. Cruisers on both Interstate 70 and country roads searched for Charles Clegg.

“The problem,” Walker stated, “too damn many back
roads. We can't cover them all. How much time passed between when he took off and when we were able to chase him? Five minutes? More?”

“Yeah, a little more,” said Julie. “We had to wait for Smitty to come up the drive, load Adams, check out the utility road where he came out. Seven, at the rate he was driving. He could have been at least nine miles down that dusty road before we got started.”

“Damn, what bad luck. What do you think set him off? Seemed relaxed to me. I didn't tell you at the time, but that piece of crap, what's his name again?”

“Clegg. Charles Clegg.”

“Yeah, right. Clegg. Couldn't take his eyes off you. Looked at you like he'd never seen a woman before. Did you notice? Get a feeling from him?”

Julie ran her hands over the plastic-covered steering wheel. “I'd gotten a funny feeling from him the first time we met. It was at the factory. I told you that, didn't I?”

“Maybe, I don't recall.”

“Oh, it was Todd. We had just left the factory after our series of interviews, and I got this odd sense about something Clegg said. We were leaving, and he says, ‘Hope everything turns out well for you, Detective.' I told Todd the statement was off. He dismissed it, saying he meant both of us, as in ‘Detectives.' At the time, I remember being tired and just dropping it. But now I get it. He was being facetious. Cheryl was in his basement right at that moment. Cocksucker.”

“And when he goes to the slammer, he'll learn the true meaning of that word along with bum bruising and golden showers.”

Julie wished she'd arrested the bastard when she
looked through the window. The few strident chords he'd managed on the guitar could have at least been grounds for disturbing the peace. She remembered something else.

“With the fracas at the house getting Adams to the ER, I forgot to tell you—”

“Yeah, what?”

“When I was in the basement and you went upstairs, the lights flashed on and off a few times.”

“Hm. How's that pertinent?”

Julie took a moment to get her thoughts in order. She noticed of late how anything regarding her daughter and her experience tinged her thoughts of a whirlwind retaliation. She came close to acting on it while at the window of the lakeside cabin. She willed herself to be calm. “Cheryl told me that almost every day the guy would flash the lights. She thought he did it to show off his power.” She cracked the steering wheel with the ball of her fist. “I'm not a vigilante, but this one, I want.”

“You're lucky. You can talk about it. Lots of troops can't, Jules.”

It might have been the first time Walker had ever called her Jules, and it touched her.

They called it a day. Walker broke down the concerted effort by his troopers, instructing them to pass along anything relevant to their replacements and shut it down. “We'll get him. There's always another day.”

Julie picked up her vehicle at the station house and went home.

In meetings and simple office conferences over the next few days, the consensus seemed to be that their Mr. Clegg had truly gone to ground.

Julie's routine remained about the same. She continued
her work on cold cases whenever time permitted and was back on her old watch. Todd was also back; their discussions about Topic A seemed to revolve around the fact that Charles Clegg probably left the state.

Over the next ten days, she flashed back to her window of opportunity. His back to her; it could have been perfect. A quick spraying of her double ought, shot into the back of his chair. No rifling—lands and grooves nonexistent in the shotgun—beyond identification. A brief check of the pulse, a few rudimentary swipes of the footprints under the windowsill. But when she thought about it later, she felt shame. She wasn't a killer. The shooting at the mall had been necessary.

T
he letter, when
it came, bore a Kansas postmark.

Julie stared at the crumpled envelope. She scolded herself for being so suspicious; after all, it could be one of a hundred different things: a thank-you from a traffic warning, a donation request from Hungry Children of Kansas. A long-forgotten relative.

She couldn't remember the last time she'd gotten a personal letter at the station house. Just in case, she used a letter opener and a pair of scissors to handle the envelope. She held the mailer with the point of the scissors while slitting the glued flap with her opener, pulling out one sheet of paper along with an earring. Though hammered flat, the earring looked familiar. She also noted a number of newspaper clippings glued to a piece of plain white paper.

Sometimes a complete word had been taken from a headline. Other times just a series of different letter sizes and fonts:

I have my eye on your daughter. Hope things are going well for you.

Or did I already say that? One of these days I'll pay you a visit. Can't help wondering how you found me. That tap on the shoulder in the middle of the night will be me.

Mr. C

Julie called on George Rogers, their resident forensics guy. “Rogers, I've got a letter that needs looking at. Could you come down to the basement and pick it up?”

He showed up in no time. “Hey, nice digs. How do you rate, Sarge?”

“Just one of those sliding promotional things. Being in the right place at the wrong time.”

“What do you have?”

Julie explained the letter, her case, which he'd heard about, and that she knew who sent it. “Could you get this to the FBI, Detective Devlin, and Captain Walker? After you've done your thing with it, of course.”

Julie thanked him and called Todd about lunch.

They ate in their favorite hamburger joint, Julie getting her obligatory turkey burger while Todd loaded up on his Double Daddies—a huge bacon-laden sandwich with two beef patties, cheese, and all the trimmings.

“You're gonna die young. You know that, don't you?” Julie asked.

“But happy as a pig in slop.”

“Oink.”

They talked about Charles Clegg. “Damn,” exclaimed Todd. “I wished I'd been there at the warrant service.”

“Yeah, me too. It would have been exciting watching you waddle down that dirt road with a greasy sandwich in your hand, chasing our Mr. C.”

“Is that what you're calling him now?”

“That's what he's calling himself. I think Jackson Ross is a little annoyed we didn't wait for him. He isn't calling much,” Julie said.

“Maybe he thinks you didn't want him there because you maybe want some extrajudicial remedies in this case.”

Julie didn't respond.

Todd changed the subject. “So, you say, Kansas postmark. But it's easy enough to drive across the border and drop off a letter. Could you tell where in Kansas?”

“No, it was blurred. The stamp looked wrinkled, so maybe that's why the town name came out illegible. Only
Kansas
was clear.”

“Probably doesn't matter; it's just a ruse, anyway.”

“You think?”

They parted, agreeing to meet later. Julie took her time driving back to the station.

“This seems like a joke. No offense, Sergeant, but wouldn't you agree?” Walker opened up the conversation with Todd and Julie.

“It's not terribly original, like if some square dude read a lot of police thrillers. But to answer your question, Charles Clegg kidnapped my daughter and was responsible for the death of my best friend. Not much of a joke there.”

“Well, yes. What I meant was, it's exactly the way you describe it. A copycat would be a ‘dangerous man.' ” He made air quotes with his fingers. “He is dangerous, but maybe not a creeper-in-the-middle-of-the-night kind of guy. As I said, a wannabe. He wishes he had the balls to walk into your bedroom in the middle of the night.”

“I don't know, sir,” Todd said. “He ran the sergeant off the road, had the presence of mind to scout out Thousand
Pines and establish an elaborate scheme there with the dog business. He kept Cheryl locked up a couple of weeks. I think—”

Julie reached for her clipboard. “I've got some new info. Excuse me, Todd. I ran a word search on the name Clegg. Looked at some microfiche from local newspapers too. Nothing much of interest except two little items in the
Kansas City Star
newspaper's morgue. Listen to this: February 10, 1993. Blurb in the nuptials section. ‘Mrs. Priscilla Linn of Kansas City, Kansas, would like to announce the engagement of her daughter, Patty, to Mr. Charles Clegg of Affton, Missouri.' Affton, by the way, is close to Drew Box Factory. It goes on, ‘The couple's planned marriage will be held at the Olathe Bible Church on March 30, 1993.' ”

“And . . . And
what
?” Walker asked, along with a “Get on with it” gesture.

Julie checked her anger at her boss's impatience. “The ‘and what' is this: first, a brief article in the
Star,
September 18, 1993. ‘Woman's body discovered in trash container behind Old Town Mall. An unidentified female in her early twenties was discovered by the driver of a Dumpster truck.' Goes on to describe the victim. Then the following day, ‘Charles Clegg, husband of the previously unidentified woman left dead in a trash container on Sunday last has identified the woman as his recent bride. Police, in an earlier news conference, stated Mr. Clegg was not a suspect in what authorities are now calling a homicide. Mr. Clegg, when contacted by this reporter, said he had been across the state in Saint Louis at the time of his wife's disappearance. Authorities confirmed Mr. Clegg's alibi.' ”

The room took on the somber ambiance of a funeral parlor.

“Anything else?” Walker was the first to break the silence.

“Rogers confirmed the presence of a postmark from Olathe, Kansas. The same town where Charlie and Patty were married. Coincidence? I think not.” She hurried on. “Can we convict him of his wife's murder? Unlikely, but—” She leafed through her notes. “This is a duplicate of a ticket issued on September 14, 1993, by a trooper on I-70 outside of Kansas City, Missouri. It lists as the lawbreaker our Charlie boy traveling east with a broken taillight and expired insurance.”