Tainted Pictures (8 page)

           “How did he die?” The warden’s eyes were shifting around the room, as if he was trying to come up with some lie to tell them.  He had not been expecting to be questioned further.  It was clear that he was the boss in these halls and not often challenged by others.   His unassuming demeanor was a front for a calculated mind inside and McCraig quickly saw that this warden was not one to be trusted.  Phil cleared his throat and took a few steps back, smoothing down his suit jacket in an attempt to take back control of the situation.   

           “Okay, okay.  No need for the dramatics. It really is still unfolding, we aren’t entirely sure of the whole story.  Tracy had another visitor before you, a relative of some sort or so he says.  Turns out the identification he gave the front was false, which we only know now after looking back into it.  He was given room one with Tracy and when the guard went in fifteen minutes later to get Tracy, he was dead and the visitor was nowhere to be seen.”  Phil explained.  McCraig immediately opened the door and walked out, heading to room one to see for himself.  Snow took the warden’s arm and followed McCraig, forcing the warden to continue explaining the situation to them.  

           “We don’t know what happened.  We have footage of him coming and going, but his face is turned away from the camera every time.  The front desk clerk saw him and is giving a description to the officer’s in this district who are working the case but there doesn’t seem to be anything that would make him easy to pick out of a lineup.  It was just your average white guy.”  The warden continued as he and the detectives walked into room one.  

           The room was full of Maryland police officers, guards, and crime scene technicians surrounding a large figure on the floor covered in a black plastic sheet.   McCraig had no hesitations and just walked right up and lifted the sheet, looking underneath.  He nodded a few times then turned to look at Snow, holding the sheet up so she could look.  The man on the ground looked like a gray version of the photograph they had in their file of Tracy Glen. There were purple splotches around his neck and his eyes were still open with a startled look to them.  It was haunting and unsettling to Snow but McCraig was unfazed.   

           Snow wrinkled her nose in disgust, she never could get used to seeing a dead body even after this many years on the job.  She looked back at the warden who looked apathetic and was just standing in the doorway with his hands on his hips, his best attempt at making himself look bigger than he actually was.  

           “Strangled?”  Snow asked him.

           “Seems like it.  Like I said, you gotta wait for the report if you want the full story.  All I know is what you know, you know?”  Phil Williams said to her, shrugging.  She felt the same disgust curling up in her stomach again as she thought about punching the warden just to knock the cockiness out of him.  She took a deep breath to calm herself instead, a much less satisfying alternative.

           McCraig shifted his gaze to the warden and looked him up and down slowly.  He was trying to decide if it would be worth it to call this warden out and bring him to his knees, McCraig could smell a dirty cover-up easily and this stunk of lies.  He knew the warden had screwed up big time with letting Glen be killed and was now doing anything he could to cover his ass.  McCraig stood up and walked over to the warden, looking down at him and squaring his stature in front of him.  The size disparity between the two was laughable and Phil attempted to stand up straighter to make himself bigger.

           “Listen up, Peter.”  McCraig started in a low, ominous tone.

           “Uh, it’s Phil.”  The warden popped up a finger in objection and took a step backwards but McCraig stepped forward to close the distance between them again.

           “I don’t give a fuck what your name is.  This is your fuck up.  You will get a report to me on everything there is to know about Tracy Glen.  Within the next day.  Everything there ever was to know about him, you will turn it over.  Do you understand me?”  McCraig said.  The warden just nodded quickly and gulped.  McCraig slid a business card out of his pocket and wedged it into the wardens shirt pocket on his chest.  

           “Alright, Snow, let’s go.” McCraig told her, walking out the door. She quickly followed him, pressing her papers under her arm to hold them.  

           “I want that report on Glen the moment it’s typed up. ON MY DESK.” McCraig shouted back to the warden who just nodded and waved at them, glad to see them go.  He didn’t need other jurisdictions sniffing around this embarrassing breach of security.  

~~~~

           “I told you we shouldn’t have said anything to Jackson until we had already spoken to Glen.  Now what the fuck are we supposed to tell her?”  McCraig was sitting in the driver’s seat referring to Kate as he navigated their way back to Washington, DC from the prison.  Snow sat quietly in the passenger’s seat, brooding angrily.  

           “Don’t blame this on me, it wasn’t my hands around Glen’s neck.  It’s not a total dead end, we just need to look elsewhere.  We can look further into Tracy Glen and see what pops up in his history that might give us a clue to our perp, or did they not teach you how to research in the damn military?” She snapped back at her partner, trying to offer some solutions even though she really just wanted to bite his head off in an act of misplaced frustration.  

           McCraig was silent, he was the older of the duo and sometimes had to choose to take the high road.  He didn’t sling a comment back at Snow but just let the silence settle between them.  They weren’t angry at each other anyways, they were angry at their unknown suspect who seemed to just slip out of their grasps at every turn.  Neither one of them knew how they would explain this to Kate or if they even should at this point.  They hadn’t really known anything this entire time and today was just a reminder of that.  

           “We have to tell her.”  Snow said after a few minutes of silence.  McCraig just nodded, knowing that she was right.  

           “Tomorrow.”  He responded.  They both knew that they were going to spend every minute until then pouring over case files, research, and following every possible lead they knew of.  They were missing something.  They knew it wasn’t there, but they couldn’t figure out what it was.  Something was definitely missing from this case.  

CHAPTER SEVEN

           Although her day had gone smoothly, Kate was glad to walk through her front door and finally relax that evening.  She tossed her purse and keys onto a side table and scooped up her cat who immediately began weaving around her feet when she walked in.  She cuddled her for a few moments and then walked into the kitchen to feed her.  She poured some cat food out of the bag and into the bowl on the ground, then put the bag back away.

           She reached behind her and slid the zipper of her dress down from between her shoulders to the small of her back, shrugging off her dress as she walked towards her bedroom.  She continued undressing, removing all her uncomfortable work clothes and relishing in the freedom of those restraints.  She pulled some lounge pants out of her dresser and slipped those on, then opened the top drawer for a t-shirt.  

           She froze as she was reaching in and immediately withdrew her hand.  She opened the drawer further and stared, puzzled and shocked.  The photograph was sitting on top of her t-shirts staring at her.  That photograph.  Had she left it there?  She had been keeping it in her nightstand or her purse ever since the attack and no one knew of its existence except her.  She had never told the detectives or Derrick.  It was her secret.  And his.  

           Kate turned around and walked over to her nightstand, leaving her dresser drawer open.  She slid open her nightstand and pushed aside different items to find her Bible at the bottom.  She breathed slowly as she opened the Bible to the last page where she had left the photograph, or so she had thought.  She exhaled when she saw a white instant photograph still jammed in the pages of her Bible.  

           Kate’s mind suddenly caught up with what she was seeing and she jumped backwards, dropping the Bible suddenly and staring at the photograph that slid out onto the floor.  Her cat wove herself between Kate’s feet and walked over to the Bible and its spilled contents, sniffing it slowly.  Kate dropped to her knees and pushed the cat away, grabbing up the photograph.  This was a photograph but not THE photograph.  

           The image she was looking at now was her living room.  She was sitting on her couch, reading a book.  Entirely innocent, nothing out of the ordinary, except the entire photograph itself.  The photograph was not taken from inside her apartment, it was through her living room window.  Someone had been standing on her fire escape to take this picture.  

           She stood up and went to the dresser and grabbed the original photograph and looked at the two side by side.  The first picture of her brutalized and naked, the second of her completely unaware of the imminent threat.  Someone had entered her apartment with this new photograph and switched it with the old one, leaving the old one to be discovered in her dresser.  No, not someone.  Him.  He had been back in her apartment.  He wanted her to know that he wasn’t done with her yet.

           Kate walked out of her bedroom and into the living room, double checking the locks on all the windows.  They looked secure, still locked.  She peered out onto the fire escape but saw nothing out of the ordinary.  Kate gulped her nerves down and traveled into the kitchen, feeling like she was in a trance.  She poured herself a glass of water and sat down at the kitchen table, laying both photographs in front of her.  

           Kate knew that she didn’t have the option of privacy anymore.  He hadn’t just taken it from her once, he was still stealing it from her.  She pulled her cell phone out of her pocket, while still staring at the photographs.  Numbly, she scrolled through her recent contacts and picked out the name she was looking for.  The phone began ringing as she held it up to her ear.

           “Kate, how are you doing?  I was going to call you in the morning.”  The voice responded immediately upon picking up the call.  

           “I can’t wait until tomorrow, I need you to come over now.  There is something I need to show you.”  Kate said flatly, trying to push away any emotions.  

           “Okay, yeah, I’m heading over now.”  The call disconnected and Kate placed the phone on the table.  She leaned her head down into her hands and began to cry.  Small little tears at first but she was sobbing loudly within a few minutes.   She had been holding back these tears for a while now, but she couldn’t any longer.  How had things gone from good to bad quickly?

~~~~

           The knock on her door couldn’t come soon enough and Kate jumped up from her kitchen table to go answer it.  She had still been sitting there staring at the photographs side by side, her mind swollen with swirling thoughts.  She wanted to pour them all out to someone who could pick it apart and make sense of it all because Kate certainly couldn’t.  She yanked open her front door quickly without even checking through the peephole.  

           “Hi, Kate.” Detective Liz Snow greeted her with a small wave and friendly smile.  It was clear that she had been working too many long hours in a row because she was still in her business wear but her clothes were wrinkled and slightly disheveled.  

           “Come in.” Kate said with no greeting or smile, no attempt at civility.  She didn’t have it in her to think about proper introductions or conversation etiquette.  Her mind was at capacity and she was about to overflow.  

           She didn’t even close the door behind the detective, she just walked straight into the kitchen.  The detective followed her into the kitchen, closing the front door for her.  She could tell that the mood was off, there was something upsetting Kate.  She didn’t say anything, giving Kate the floor to speak first as she sat down at the kitchen table across from where Kate had sat.  

           Without saying a word, Kate slid both photographs across the table towards Detective Snow.  She took them from her and her eyes widened in surprise as she tried to figure out what she was looking at.  One picture was clearly taken from outside the apartment, looking in.  The other picture took a few seconds to decipher because of how violent the image was, but Detective Snow finally pieced out Kate’s face somewhere under the swelling and blood.  

           “Kate, what are these?”  She looked up at her, talking gently with as much compassion as she could muster on top of her shock.  

           “The first one. The really bad one.  I didn’t tell you about it. It’s from that night.  He took it.  After he was done.”  Kate slowly tried explaining in choppy sentences, not sure how to figure out what she was saying and how to explain something that was still so confusing to her.

           “He took it with his own camera right after the attack?  And then gave it to you?”  She clarified, picking up the pictures again.

           “Yeah, he had brought one.  It was in his pocket.  He took two, he kept one of them.  The other one, that one-“ Kate pointed to the original photograph, “it fell behind the bed.  I forgot about it until I came home from the hospital and was rearranging my room.”

           “And you kept it.  What about this one?”  She asked, holding up the photograph of Kate sitting on her couch.

           “That’s why I called you. I just found it now, I didn’t take it and I didn’t put it here.” Kate said, her hand shaking a bit as she pointed to it.  

           “I had put the first photograph in the pages of my Bible in my nightstand, its been there since I first found it.  I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about it, I knew I should, but what would it have helped?  It was just so embarrassing and I just, I just couldn’t handle... I don’t know what to say, I don’t have a good excuse.”  Kate started going off topic, feeling guilty about having kept such a large secret from Detective Snow.  She had done nothing but try to help her since the attack and Kate had lied to her, hidden the photograph.