Tunnel Vision (24 page)

“I’m sorry,” Maggie said, leaning back against the car seat.

Chapter Nine

THEY COULD HEAR the roar of planes taking off and landing as they stepped out of their vehicle at the Austin airport and stretched. The pungent smell of airplane fuel and exhaust hung over the parking lot. Hundreds of people were going in and out of the automatic doors leading to the terminals of over a dozen airlines. Skycaps whistled for taxis and loaded and unloaded baggage from rows of cars temporarily stopped in front of each terminal entrance.

“What are we looking for?” Nicholls asked.

“I’m not really sure,” Brodie said as she looked around.

There were nearly a hundred cars parked in the executive long-term parking area. Most of them looked as if they belonged to people who earned a lot more money than the two detectives combined. She hadn’t been to the new Austin airport since it was moved to the old Bergstrom Air Force Base. Ruling out writing down the license plate numbers of all the cars in long-term and executive long-term parking as an exercise in futility, she decided to speak to whoever was in charge of parking in general and was directed to the office for airport security. They were greeted by a military-looking older man whose desk plate identified him as George Jackson, Chief of Security. As soon as they were seated across from Jackson’s desk, he smiled, “What can I do for you, detectives?”

“A car was stolen from your executive parking area about a week ago,” Brodie explained. “The same vehicle was later involved in a homicide in Cedar Springs. The owner didn’t report it missing until he returned from an out-of-town business trip. We need a few facts about your procedures for vehicles entering and leaving your parking areas.”

“You’ll have our full cooperation, Detective Brodie. What do you need to know?”

“When a vehicle enters your parking area what kind of security is there?”

“The driver takes a ticket from an automated system and parks. When the vehicle is reclaimed the driver stops at a toll booth and pays whatever the fee is for the length of time the vehicle was here.”

“But the booth tellers assume that the driver is the owner of the vehicle, correct?”

“Pretty much. We don’t cross check vehicle registration and driver’s licenses.”

“Would someone be able to walk into the parking area and steal a car?” Nicholls asked. “Do you have roving security in the parking areas?”

“Yes, but we rely primarily on video cameras which sweep the areas.”

“We’ll need to see all your tapes for the last week,” Brodie said.

Jackson punched a button on his desk phone. “Just for executive parking?” he asked.

“Unfortunately, we’ll need the videos for all the parking areas,” Brodie frowned.

“Y’all are gonna need a super-sized bottle of NoDoze,” Jackson chuckled. After he completed his phone call, Brodie asked,

“Is there any chance a vehicle might be abandoned in airport parking?”

“Rarely,” he shrugged. “If a vehicle has been parked two weeks, we request a DMV check for the owner and attempt to contact them. Usually, if travelers are going to be gone longer than that, they take a cab to the airport to avoid the parking fees which can get pretty steep after about a week.”

More than an hour passed before Brodie and Nicholls returned to their car. They had been handed a box containing more than fifty security videos.

“Well, this should kill the rest of the month,”

Nicholls said.

“You’re always telling me how great technology is.” “Okay, okay. I knew my words would come back to bite me in the ass one of these days.”

“Guess I’m frustrated because we don’t have much to go on in this case,” she said as she pulled a pack of cigarettes from her jacket pocket and shook one out.

“Maybe we’ll get lucky with these videos,”

Nicholls said as he put the car into reverse. “Maybe Maggie’ll turn up something in the files.”

Brodie laughed. “We’re supposed to be

professional investigators, dealing in facts. But lately

‘maybe’ seems to be our favorite word.”

“If we get really desperate, I have an old Ouija board someplace.”

NICHOLLS LEANED BACK in his chair and

rubbed his eyes. “Jesus, RB, this is less exciting than watching paint peel.”

They had been watching cars come and go for nearly three hours. Brodie looked at her watch. “Well, I think I’ve had enough for today, kiddies. Probably a wild goose chase anyway.”

“Free at last, free at last!” Nicholls said as he stood up. “Thank you, massah.”

“I can watch some at home where I can kick back and relax,” Maggie offered.

“Go for it,” Brodie said as she stretched.

“Jenkins left his car in executive parking Sunday afternoon and it became rubble Thursday night. If I had to take a guess, I’d bet it wasn’t stolen until sometime late Thursday. Our doer probably wasn’t expecting to have to dispose of multiple bodies. That’s less than twenty-four hours of video tape”

Maggie shrugged. “It’s as good a place to start as any. Besides, department insurance pays for work related injuries, right?”

“What work-related injury?” Nicholls asked.

“Going blind from staring at these tapes comes to mind.” Maggie said as she picked out tapes covering the times in question.

Brodie and Nicholls laughed in spite of

themselves.

MAGGIE POURED A cup of coffee and sat down heavily at her desk early the following morning, pushing her hair back with her hand.

“Long night?” Nicholls asked with a smile. Turning her head slightly toward him, she said,

“Yeah, I spent an exciting evening watching America’s Most Boring Security Tapes. Remind me not to volunteer for shit like that again.”

“It was a long shot at best,” Brodie said. Reaching into her purse, Maggie held up a single video. “But not a total waste of time and sleep,” she announced with a grin.

“What’s that?” Nicholls asked.

“Excerpts showing Jenkins’ car and a van that could have been used to transport a body to the airport,” she answered as she sipped her coffee.

“You have got to be kidding!” Brodie said as she sat up in her chair.

“Do the bags under my eyes look like I’m

kidding?” Maggie retorted.

“Show us,” Brodie said.

The three detectives took the tape to an

interrogation room with a video player and switched on the television. Maggie took the remote control and stood next to the television as the tape began.

“I copied the pertinent parts of the security tapes to save time.” Less than a minute into the tape she paused the video.

“This shows the Jenkins car when it was parked at 1545 the Sunday before the murders,” she explained as Jenkins removed a suitcase from the trunk and rolled it toward the terminal.

“Well, it was a nice looking car at one time,”

Nicholls commented.

“The next clip shows the vehicle being removed,”

Maggie continued as she pressed the play button. Obviously a night shot, the picture became grainier as they observed a figure approach the car and,
after looking briefly around the parking area, slide something alongside the driver’s side window.

“Looks like he used a slim jim to open the door. This particular tape was made Thursday evening at approximately 2015. Fortunately for the perp and unfortunately for Mr. Jenkins, the vehicle was surrounded by rather large trucks or SUVs which obscured ground security from noticing anything unusual,” Maggie went on.

“And obviously no one was watching the

television screens in security,” Brodie observed.

“I checked the security tapes for vehicles leaving executive parking and put together the remainder of the tape.” Although the tape was a little jumpy from the starts and stops of the dubbing, they watched as the Jenkins car exited the parking area and stopped at a tollbooth.

“Long-term parking is to the left of executive parking,” Maggie explained. “So I guess this last part is worth one sleepless night.”

The Jenkins vehicle was picked up by another security camera as it moved into long-term parking and came to a stop behind a light-colored van. As they leaned closer to the television screen, the driver exited the car and opened the rear of the van. In less than two minutes the van door closed and the Mercedes pulled away. Maggie stopped the tape while Brodie and Nicholls looked at each other.

“Guess Maggie’ll be getting an okay evaluation, huh?” Nicholls said.

“Looks like,” Brodie said. “It also looks like we’d better get back to the airport and find that van. Too bad we can’t tell anything about the person who took Mr. Jenkins’ car, but we can’t have everything.”

“I can send the tape over to the lab and see if they can enlarge and enhance those parts of the tape,”

Nicholls offered.

“Can’t hurt, but this guy covered himself pretty well,” Brodie shrugged as she stood up. “We’ll meet you at the car, Nicholls.”

An hour later, accompanied by airport security, they approached an older, rusting tan Dodge van with a cracked windshield sitting in long-term parking. Before they left Cedar Springs, Brodie requested and was granted a warrant to search the van and seize anything incriminating it might contain. After handing the warrant to the security officers, she tried the driver’s door and found it unlocked.

“Obviously not worried about anyone stealing this POS,” Nicholls said.

Brodie glanced around the interior of the van without touching anything. “It’s been hot wired,” she said over her shoulder. “Don’t see much in the front. The son of a bitch probably didn’t leave clue one. Check the back, Maggie.”

Maggie opened the doors to the cargo area
and used a flashlight to inspect it as closely as possible.

“A couple of dark spots that could be blood,” she reported. “Looks like something was dragged across the carpet back here from front to back, too.”

“How can you tell that?” Nicholls asked as he peered into the cargo area.

“It’s a woman thing.” Maggie smiled. “The carpet looks relatively new. The fibers in this area are brushed toward the back doors while along the sides the fibers are either straight up and down or brushed toward the front of the van.”

“Well, how about that shit!” he said.

“You need to vacuum more often,” Brodie said.

“Call the plates in to DMV and find out who the lucky owner is.”

As Nicholls turned to call in the license plate, she added, “And contact the lab to have this vehicle towed to the impound lot for a closer exam.”

Nicholls nodded and trotted to their car. Brodie joined Maggie at the rear of the van. “Good work, Maggie,” Brodie said. “Damn good.”

Maggie blushed slightly and glanced at her. Royce was finally using her first name. “Thank you.”

“Tow truck’s on the way, RB,” Nicholls said when he rejoined them. “And the owner is listed as none other than Antonio Obregon. He filed a stolen vehicle report last Friday morning.”

“Obregon is Brauner’s assistant at the university,”

she said as she squinted at the sky.

“He didn’t say anything about his vehicle being stolen when I interviewed him,” Maggie said.

“He didn’t mention it when I spoke to him either,”

she frowned. “It’s possible he didn’t connect his stolen vehicle with Brauner’s death. Cars are stolen every day.”

“It’s possible he reported it stolen to cover himself if he’s our perp. We’ll need to speak to him again.”

“So what’s the plan now?” Nicholls asked.

“You wait here. Go to impound and stick with the lab guys when they go over the van. Contact us if anything earthshaking turns up. Maggie, you and I are going back to the university to ask Mr. Obregon a few more questions.”

BRODIE SHIFTED THE Camaro into park near the Science Quad. She got out of the car and stopped to lean against the front of the vehicle.

“What did you think about Obregon when you interviewed him the first time?” she asked.

“A little hostile, but no more than anyone else with his background.”

“He probably hasn’t had many pleasant

encounters with the police in the past,” Brodie said as she turned her head to look at Maggie. “Tell you what. I want you to go up and interview him again...alone.”

Maggie looked puzzled. “What are you going to do?”“When I talked to him he said his girlfriend worked in payroll. I’ll check her out and see what she has to say about the van and about Obregon. She shouldn’t be expecting the police and maybe she’ll drop something unintentionally.”

“You don’t really think he killed Brauner, do you?”

“He may have been a gang member, but none of this looks like a gang killing to me. You ever see any Austin gangs try to cover up a killing by burning a body or dissecting it?”

“It wouldn’t be your typical gang killing. Most of the gang related deaths I saw were usually over some misguided point of honor and left where Helen Keller could have found them.”

“Just feel him out to see if there was something, even something trivial and seemingly unimportant, that he might have noticed about Brauner or Garcia. I’ll meet you here in about an hour.”

WHEN MAGGIE REACHED Brauner’s office, the

door was unlocked and she found Obregon sitting at his desk jotting notes onto a legal pad. He looked up when the door opened. Removing his glasses and leaning back in his well-worn chair, he sighed.

“What can I do for you today, Detective? More questions about stuff I don’t know nothin’ about?”

“Well, I was hoping you would know something about your van,” she said as she glanced around the office. The door into Brauner’s office was open.

“Mrs. Brauner gave me access to his office and files,” he stated before she could ask. “If they expect me to teach this class, I have to be able to get to the doc’s files.”

“Sounds reasonable.” She smiled. “Now about your van...”

“What about it? I reported it stolen already. Not like the Austin PD placed it at the top of their priority list.”

“We found it,” she said. “It was in long-term parking at the airport.”

“No shit!” he laughed.

“When was the last time you saw it?”

“The night Brauner went missing. I was with my old lady and when I left the next morning the hunk of junk was gone.”