Tracking Bear (16 page)

“Ella, am I being fair coming to see you like this, then having to leave again after such a short time? Is this enough for you—the
way things are right now?”

She took a deep breath then let it out slowly. “What’s the alternative?”

Harry met her gaze and shrugged, confirming what she already knew—neither of them was ready to make the compromises that a serious commitment would require.

“Let’s just enjoy the time we do spend together, instead of trying to push for something that neither of us is ready for,” she said.

“Yeah,
I guess you’re right.” He gave her a quick kiss, then stepped back and smiled, squeezing her hand and looking into her eyes one more time.

As he turned and strode back to his sedan, Ella slipped behind the wheel of the SUV and took a deep breath. It was time to refocus on the job. If she wanted to get home tonight before Dawn went to bed, she’d have to get moving. She still had a lot of work
to do before she could call it a day.

Ella was nearly at the station when she got a call from Justine on the radio. They switched to a unit-to-unit frequency.

“What have you got for me?” Ella asked. “Did you get anything from the clothes left at the cleaners?”

“The shirt is the same one worn by the person who killed Redhouse. The swatch of fabric
we found fit the missing section in the wool shirt perfectly.”

“Did you get any DNA?”

“No, The dry cleaning pretty much ruined any chances of that. All we can prove is that it was blood.”

“Keep digging.” Ella dialed Wilson at home, and there was a click in the speaker that told her that his calls were being forwarded elsewhere. A few seconds later, he picked up.

“I know it’s late, Wilson,
but before I pack it in, I’d like to talk to you about Kee Franklin.”

“I’m still on campus, in my office. I’m trying to finish grading some lab notebooks before I quit for the day. Why don’t you come here?”

“I’m on my way.”

Ella was halfway to the college when her cell phone rang again. It was Officer Tache.

“Hey, Ella, I just started searching the councilman’s office, and guess what
I found?”

“A million dollars in cash and a blackmail note?” Ella replied tongue-in-cheek.

“Actually, you’re on the right track, boss.” Ralph chuckled. “There were two thousand six hundred dollars in cash in a paper bag at the back of a locked file cabinet.”

“Any idea what the money was doing there?”

“No. There wasn’t anything like this at the Redhouse home, unless there’s a stash buried in
the yard somewhere. The office staff couldn’t account for it, and the widow took a look at their checkbook and called the bank, but she still has no idea where the money came from.”

“You’ve got it locked up now, right?”

“In the evidence locker for now. Justine is going to check the bills for fingerprints later, just in case we get lucky and can link it to a suspect,” Tache added.

“There’s always
a chance. Anything else suspicious?”

“I also took possession of his appointment book, desk calendar, and the like. We can use it to backtrack where the councilman has been the past several weeks. Maybe we can find out who was gunning for him.”

“Or paying him off. Good work, Ralph. Why don’t you call it a day?”

“Okay, it’s a day. Catch you tomorrow, boss.” Ralph ended the call.

Ella set the
phone down and slowed her vehicle. Ahead was the turnoff to the college. A few minutes later, she ran into Justine as she entered the science building. “Hey, partner. Are you officially off duty now?”

“Yeah.” Justine yawned. “I was too tired to concentrate anymore. I figured I’d come by here and see if I could lure Wilson away from his work so we could spend some time together. But if you need
to talk to him alone, I can wait out in the hall.”

“No, come on in with me. I need to question him about Professor Franklin, and you’ll need to hear this, too. I suppose you know about what Ralph Tache found at Redhouse’s office.”

“Yeah. The councilman had a cash stash his widow says she didn’t know anything about. Interesting twist. I’ll be checking the bills for fingerprints tomorrow.”

By
then they’d reached Wilson’s office. Ella knocked as she opened his door, but he wasn’t there. His papers were scattered all over the desk and his reading glasses were on the table, but Wilson was nowhere to be seen.

“Wilson?” Justine glanced around. “It’s not like him to leave his office door unlocked when he’s not here.”

Justine tried the door leading to the department’s storage room, which
was adjacent to his office. The door opened easily, and she glanced inside. The lights were off, so she reached beside the door and turned on the switches. The large storeroom was in chaos. Some cardboard boxes had toppled to the ground, and science workbooks, texts, and papers lay scattered on the floor along two of the aisles of tall metal shelves. “What the hell?” Justine mumbled.

Before Ella
could speak, they both heard a soft moan somewhere beneath the boxes, and Justine spotted a blue blazer on the floor among the chaos. It was moving slightly. “There he is!”

Ella and Justine quickly began to push the boxes aside so they could get to the figure on the floor, but by the time they reached him, Wilson was already sitting up.

“What happened? Did you climb up on a shelf and manage
to topple all this stuff?” Justine asked, placing her hand on his shoulder.

“I wish. There was an intruder in here. I came in to get some supplies, and saw someone walking around in the dark, shining a flashlight. When I reached for the light switch, I saw a flash and heard a pop. At first, the sound didn’t register as anything familiar, but then there was another pop, and a sting at the back
of my head, like I was being hit by a chunk of the wall. That’s when I realized he was shooting at me, using some kind of silencer. I dived to the floor, using a shelf full of books and papers for cover, and that’s when he pushed the textbook boxes down on me from the other side. One hit me in the head.” He touched the right side of his head and winced.

“I’ll call for an ambulance,” Justine said.

“No, I’m fine.” He reached around to the back of his head, and brought out a small piece of what looked to be concrete. “Must be a chunk of a wall pillar that the second bullet chipped off. That’s what stung me, I bet.” Wilson stood up, waving away their help. “I’m just lucky he ran off instead of coming around to finish me off.”

“How long ago did this happen?” Justine asked.

Wilson looked at
his watch. “About five minutes, give or take. I looked up at the clock in my office just before I came into the storeroom. You didn’t pass anyone on the way in here, did you?”

Justine and Ella exchanged glances, and both shook their heads.

As they stepped out of the storeroom into his office, Wilson glanced around the small room. “Well, I’m not sure what else he took, but my briefcase
was
right
there,” he said, pointing to the empty spot on his desk next to his glasses.

“Did you ever get a look at the guy?” Ella asked.

“He had the flashlight, not me, but from the light coming in through my open door, I got the impression he was tall,” he said, thinking. “And he had dark hair.”

“Was it short dark hair, or long?”

“Shaggy, but not nearly as long as yours,” he said, looking at Ella’s
cut, which swept a little past her shoulders. “And especially not yours,” he smiled at Justine, who had long, straight black hair nearly to her waist.

“But you’re sure it was a man?”

“Yes, a man.” Wilson stopped and shook his head. “Come to think of it, I don’t know why I’m saying that. I never got that close a look. I couldn’t make out facial features, and the person had on a long jacket and
pants. A woman’s shape wouldn’t have been so distinctive in those clothes. But I guess that depends on the woman.” His expression was thoughtful, and Ella knew he wasn’t trying to be cute or sexist.

“What could this person have wanted from the storage room?” Justine asked.

“Maybe some electronic equipment like a computer, a precise scale, or some of the chemicals we keep on hand. A person operating
a clandestine meth lab might be on the prowl for things like that,” he said.

“If it was a druggie, that would explain why the perp was carrying a gun. But the fact that the person took a couple of shots at you with a silencer-equipped pistol changes things. This falls under our jurisdiction now. I’m going to have my people go through the storeroom,” Ella said.

“You’ll have a hard time sorting
out all the fingerprints and partials here. Faculty and graduate students working as aides come through there all the time,” Wilson reminded her.

“We’ll start with the boxes he or she buried you under. I also want to have those bullets back, wherever they ended up. We may be able to link them to a specific firearm,” Ella said. “Once we’re done, we’ll want you to determine what, if anything, is
missing,” Ella added.

Justine was already on the cell phone calling Officer Tache. From the expression on Justine’s face, Ella could see that this case was now personal to her. Although Justine didn’t like it when Wilson was protective of her, she was definitely protective of him.

“Tache is on his way over,” Justine told Ella. “He has to pass by the station on the way, so he’ll pick up the crime-scene
van.” She walked back into the storeroom and checked the wall Wilson had indicated earlier. A hole in the plaster wallboard showed the entry point of one bullet. The second had struck a concrete structural beam, breaking off a small chunk, then ricocheted somewhere else.

Ella looked around the storeroom, trying to determine the perp’s point of entry, and found the door to the next office open
a few inches. “This doorknob was twisted off with a pipe wrench or something like that. I bet the door to the hall is in the same condition.”

Justine came over for a look. Ella knew bolt cutters had been used to cut the lock on the garage door where Jason Franklin had been killed, but that didn’t mean this couldn’t have been the same perp. Both methods of entry were common among burglars. The
look on Justine’s face told Ella that they were both thinking the same thing.

“Maybe we’ll find a bullet, and it’ll turn out to match the others,” Ella said. “Look for shell casings, too.”

It took two hours to go through the crowded supply room, moving papers and fallen items around to gain access, and at the same time trying to make sure they didn’t miss any potential evidence. Campus security
had noticed the activity and one of the guards had come to take a look. Ella learned that nobody had heard the shot, which wasn’t surprising considering the storeroom was an interior room, the guard had been across campus, and, of course, a silencer had been used. No one had noticed any suspicious vehicles on campus either.

Finally, Justine came up to where Ella was seated in the storeroom at
a borrowed student desk, writing her report. “I managed to locate one of the bullets, but it’s mushroomed pretty bad. All I know for sure is that it’s a .380 hollow point. I found both shell casings. I guess the shooter didn’t want to hang around and look for them in the dark this time.”

“The shell casings are a first. Is the bullet the same make as the two from the murders?” Ella asked.

“Looks
like it. But we’ll never be able to tie this round to a particular weapon in court.” Justine shook her head.

“What about the other round, the one that ricocheted off the pillar?”

Justine rolled her eyes. “I’ve only found pieces of it so far. It broke up pretty bad.”

“So we can probably write that one off. What else do you have?” Ella asked.

“I’ve got a lot of prints, and some dark hairs I
recovered from the floor, but it’s going to take me a while to sort it all out.”

“I know. At least the storeroom had been swept earlier this evening. Hopefully the hairs belong to the perp and not staff, student, or you or me. We already know they didn’t come from Wilson’s head. His are much shorter.” Ella glanced at her watch. “It’s eleven o’clock. We have to get some sleep if we want to get
a good start in the morning. Wilson looked a little unsteady to me last time I checked him in his office, so you might want to try and talk him into going to the emergency room. I’ll make sure campus security keeps everyone out of this place, then I’ll be heading home. Ask Ralph to start putting things away, then call it a night one more time.”

Ella went to meet Wilson, who was still in his office
checking inventory sheets. “Don’t worry about that tonight, security is calling in another guard to remain in the building. You can get to it tomorrow, then make sure you call and tell me what was taken, okay?”

“Sure. In the morning, I can have a couple of student aides help me, and it’ll go faster.”

Justine came up next, and, after a brief argument about the hospital, Wilson reluctantly agreed
he was still a little light-headed. He and Justine left for the hospital in her unit.

Once Ella made sure campus security knew what was necessary to protect the scene, she headed home.

Her cell phone rang at six the following morning. Ella stirred, and with a groan, reached toward her nightstand. “Ella Clah,” she grumbled, pressing the answer button.