Danger Close (John Taylor #7) - Chapter 9

Taylor stood over the sheriff, looking down at her crumpled body, while Whitaker stepped outside to call her deputies and let them know what had happened. The cause of death was fairly obvious and unfortunately all too familiar at this point. Although her head was turned to the side, Taylor could still see the dark red slash across her neck.

Taylor had dealt with a lot of law enforcement over the last few years and he thought he was getting pretty good at judging their quality. She may have been informal in her methods, but Sheriff Martin had struck him as being fairly competent. She paid attention to detail, she had an eye for when things were out of place and she seemed to be able to detect bullshit pretty well.

All that added up to one big question. How did this guy get her to drop her guard and let him close enough to do this? She clearly hadn’t seen it coming. Not only was her gun still in its holster, but the strap was still snapped, holding it in place. She hadn’t made any try at pulling her weapon, which meant she didn’t feel like she was in danger, probably right up to the moment the guy grabbed her hair and pulled the knife across her throat.

“They’re on their way,” Whitaker said, coming back inside and starting to circle the scene.

While Taylor liked to stand still and take in the scene from one spot, usually where he thought the killer might have stood, Whitaker preferred a slow circle around the scene, gradually closing in on its center. Over the last few years, she had driven home the importance of not disturbing anything on the scene and watching for evidence to keep from destroying it, which is why Taylor had eventually settled on the ‘stand in one spot’ method.

“This is really hard to believe,” Whitaker said as she methodically took each step, eyes scanning the area around the body.

“I was just thinking that. How the hell did they get close enough without her even pulling her weapon?”

“That’s a good point, but I meant, how did they even know to come here and why now? Clearly, they knew she’d found something to tie in more bodies, right? If it was just to get her out of the way, why wait for months, killing people around town, and until now to go for her.”

“It’s not a coincidence.”

“That’s my point. They went for her now, so they must have known she’d found something, but how? She called your cell. I guess it’s possible they were set up to capture cell calls, but the base has a lot of people with cell phones. That’s not easy to do. We left as soon as the call came in, so how did they beat us here?”

“There’s still color in her cheeks, so it didn’t happen very long ago. We probably just missed them.”

“I noticed that, but it doesn’t matter. For this to work, they’d have to be listening to our calls since we walked onto the base and have someone standing ready to move as soon as they heard something they needed to act on. They didn’t have time to call their guy who does this, have that guy get in a car, get here ahead of us, and then leave when the job was done. The delay would have put them behind us. We’ve been here for days though. I’d be hard-pressed to keep a surveillance team on that kind of readiness over several days, and we train for this. I just can’t see how they got ahead of us.”

“Yeah, that’s a problem. This whole thing just keeps getting weirder and harder to figure out.”

“Any sign of the evidence she said she had?” Whitaker asked.

“No. I looked around, but no boxes of documents, no storage devices that I can see, no envelopes or folders. I mean, she could have it in her pocket, but if they were doing this to silence her, they would have made sure to take it with them, right?”

“Yeah.”

“When we first met her, did you notice that ring on her right index finger? It was pretty distinctive. Black band with some kind of blue stone. Not gaudy but definitely unusual looking.”

“I think so. What’s your point?”

“Go around the other side of the body. Her arm’s underneath her, but you can just see her hand. The ring isn’t there.”

“So, she could have taken it off.”

“Maybe, but we’ve been here for days, and she’s been wearing it every time. When we saw her earlier, she definitely was wearing it. Weird that she’d come home to find whatever information she needed and decide that was the moment to take it off.”

“It could have fallen off. Maybe it’s under the body.”

“Maybe,” Taylor said, sounding unconvinced. “Did you see that?”

Taylor pointed at an area off to one side of the garage, against a wall. While the garage was clean, it wasn’t immaculate. There was a layer of dust and scattering of debris on the floor. Not a layer of it, but enough to see marks where someone had been moving around. Against the wall there was a rough square outline, barely visible, like that of a box that had sat there for a while, keeping the dirt from collecting. Taylor had a pretty good guess what had been in that box, or boxes plural possibly.

“The case files?” Whitaker asked, seeing the outline.

“Probably. A good bet that’s what our killer came for.”

They heard screeching tires outside followed by running feet. After a beat, two deputies appeared in the doorway, their faces falling as they looked at their boss’s body.

“Holy shit,” the first deputy said, turning slightly white and walking back out the door again.

Whitaker would have told them everything that was happening but it was human nature to not really believe it until you saw it with your own eyes. The second deputy went the other way when faced with the reality, looking furious.

“I’m sorry Dep…”

“Get out,” he said through clenched teeth.

Taylor took a beat and tried again, “Look, I know …”

“GET OUT!”

Whitaker walked around the body and put a hand on Taylor’s elbow, prompting him to leave. There were still things that Taylor wanted to look at here, but he knew Whitaker was right. They were going to blame the army, and the two of them by proxy, for their sheriff’s death. Taylor worried they might make an error with the crime scene while they were dealing with their own shock, but there was no chance either man would listen to what they had to say.

“This is going to make it harder,” Whitaker said.

“Yeah, but it does confirm that she was right. The only reason to kill her is because she was getting too close to something, and the only thing she was pushing was that more of the murders in town were connected to our case.”

“Okay, but which ones? All of them except that thing in the bar? How will we know which ones?”

“I have a thought on that, but first let’s canvas the neighbors. Maybe one of them caught a glimpse of our killer.”

“He’s managed to keep out of sight on all the other murders.”

“Yeah, but he was in a hurry this time. He had to get to her and shut her up and get whatever evidence he was worried about out before we showed up. He didn’t have time to play it safe.”

“Let’s hope,” Whitaker said.

Since it was the middle of the day, most of the sheriff’s neighbors were at work. “That’s a bust,” Taylor said after they checked all of the immediate neighbors and all of the houses next to them.

“Maybe not,” Whitaker said, looking down the street.

A curtain moved in a house near the end of the block. Taylor hadn’t been looking that far down the block, since it was a good distance from the sheriff’s house. Far enough that it was unlikely anyone living there would have noticed something happening.

“You think?”

“Ohh, yeah. When I was a rookie I got put on running canvases with the locals a lot, since it’s a shit detail. The thing I learned is that every neighborhood has its busybodies, and they notice everything.”

“How could they see anything down here?”

“If it was just a citizen going about their life, they wouldn’t. But someone with nothing better to do than get in everyone else’s business? They would have been focused on any activity, especially in the middle of the day when the neighborhood’s quiet.”

“Okay, I guess, let’s go see.”

The nosy neighbor turned out to be an old woman somewhere in her 70s with steel gray hair in curlers. She examined Whitaker’s badge for longer than seemed necessary before harrumphing and stepping back to let the pair inside.

“Thank you,” Whitaker said.

Taylor had gotten used to Whitaker’s various modes when working. With witnesses, she was usually pleasant but official, speaking in short sentences almost like a character out of some old police procedural. She said it helped people remember why she was there and keep them from wandering off-topic. He found it odd that this time she used the tone she would when just talking with a friend. It was clearly deliberate and Taylor assumed she had a reason for it, but he found the switch confusing.

“We appreciate you taking the time to talk to us. There was some excitement down the street at Sheriff Martin’s house earlier today, and we were going around and talking to her neighbors, hoping someone saw something. I don’t suppose you noticed anything, did you?”

The woman looked doubtful at Whitaker for a moment and said, “Everyone around here’s up to something. If you’re looking for criminals, you should look at that hoodlum Eddie Richmond. People coming in and out of his house all hours of the night. He’s dealing drugs out of there, no doubt in my mind.”

“Really,” Whitaker said, sounding interested. “That’s good information. We’ll definitely have to have a talk with Mr. Richmond. Right now though, we’re trying to gather information on Sheriff Martin’s house. Did you see anything down there today?”

“There’s someone who doesn’t listen well enough. I’ve told her about Eddie a dozen times, and she just tells me she’ll look into it, and nothing happens. If anyone would run against her I’d vote for them, I’m telling you.”

“I can see why, if she ignored a drug dealer on her street,” Whitaker said. “I really need to find out about today, though. She would have come home a little bit ago. Did you see anyone visit her after she went home?”

“I didn’t see anyone, no. My eyes aren’t what they used to be, so it’s hard for me to see that far down the street. I saw her drive past an hour or so ago, and then you folks showed up.”

“Ohh, that’s okay. We were just hoping you might have noticed something out of place to help us with our investigation.”

“Nope, other than that green car, mind you.”

“Green car?” Taylor asked.

The old woman stared him down for a second before Whitaker touched her lightly on the arm and asked, “You saw a green car?”

She gave one more, long look at Taylor and said, “Yeah. It came through not long ago. Driving much too fast mind you, and pulled up into her driveway. A man got out, but I couldn’t see him very well. He left a little bit after that like a bat out of hell again, then I saw you two come up. I thought it was the same person coming back, except you drove slower and two of you got out of the car.”

“It was the same car?”

“Close enough. Olive green, U.S. Army written on the door in white letters. I couldn’t tell them apart.”

“And a man got out of the first car?”

“Yep. I couldn’t tell you what he looked like, mind you, but he walked like a man.”

“So it could have been a woman who walked like a man. A female soldier, maybe,” Taylor asked.

“Sonny, I can tell a woman from a man, even if they’re one of those lesbians. This was a man.”

“Did he carry anything out of the house?” Whitaker asked.

“I couldn’t see. I was looking over at Eddie’s house, since he starts getting his first druggies around this time of day. I didn’t notice him get back in the car, just it pulling out of the driveway.”

“You’ve been a big help,” Whitaker said, standing up. “We really appreciate it.”

“You’re going to look into Eddie and his drug dealing, right?”

“Yes, ma’am, we’ll get right on it,” Whitaker said.

They let themselves out of her house and hurried back to their car.

“An army staff car?” Whitaker asked.

“Sounds like it. They don’t assign staff cars out to many people, so it narrows down our suspect list a lot.”

“Assuming it was assigned out, and not another computer glitch.”

“Doesn’t matter. Gate guards would have clocked a staff car leaving and written it on their logs, which is good ol’ fashioned pen and paper. Can’t hack that.”

“Okay, so back to base and see who had a staff car?”

“No, I want to go and talk to a few people here in town first. I think I might have a guess on what the sheriff was onto. Let me make some calls first, just to see if this is some crazy idea or there’s something to it.”

“You could give me a clue.”

“You hate it when I get these wild guesses. Shit,” Taylor said, as a van drove past them and pulled up in front of the sheriff’s house.

It was a news van with a satellite dish and the whole setup on the top. As far as Taylor knew, there weren’t any TV stations in town, which meant they came from somewhere else in the county or one of the larger cities in the area, all of which were several hours drive away. They had to already be in town, which was concerning enough, but this also meant the sheriff’s death was going to hit regional news by that afternoon. That was very specifically not what Caldwell had wanted.

“That’s going to be a problem,” Whitaker said.

“I know, but there’s not much we can do about it. We knew the news was already sniffing around, so it’s not surprising the local news sent someone out here to report on it. In an area like this, where the weather report is the most exciting thing they have to report on, this’ll be big ratings.”

“Well, don’t talk to them, whatever you do. Even the best agents with media training get messed up, saying the wrong thing or wording a statement the wrong way. The last thing we need is you trying to be funny on the news.”

“I’ll be good,” Taylor said.

They’d gotten close enough to the car for the reporters unloading from the van to notice. Their car, with its army markings, was enough to draw their attention. The cameraman was still trying to clip stuff on his belt while running over with his camera, following close on the heels of a reporter, who shoved his microphone at Taylor.

“Are you here investigating the murder of the local sheriff? Does this mean the recent string of deaths in Silver Plains is connected to the army? Could you identify yourself and your connection to the army?”

The man just started spitting out questions in rapid fire, not giving Taylor a chance to process them, let alone answer any of the questions.

“No Comment,” Whitaker said as she opened the car door.

The reporter started circling the car, maybe assuming Taylor was just a driver, although seeing neither was dressed in military uniforms had to give him pause. Especially Taylor who, although he might keep his hair regulation and have the bearing of a soldier, was dressed in his normal jeans, button-up shirt, and leather jacket, didn’t look military at all.

Whitaker was in the car and had the door closed by the time the reporter made it around to question her and Taylor followed suit. Since the guy didn’t seem to want to get out of the way, Taylor had to back out to keep from running them over, but a few seconds later they were heading out of the subdivision.

“Where are we going?”

“Main Street. I want to talk to the husband of the last victim again and I’m hoping he’s at work.”

“He hates you.”

“I know, but he’ll still answer questions I think. After that, the police station to look at their files, although we might have to wait till they get back from the scene.”

“They seemed pretty pissed at us too. You’re not planning on stirring all these people up, are you? We have reporters sniffing around now and Caldwell wanted us to keep this quiet. The last thing we need is you working everyone up into a fit.”

“I’ll be good, I promise.”

Whitaker just harrumphed, giving him a look he knew all too well.

“What was the deal with the old lady?” Taylor asked. “That whole thing was weird.”

“It’s just how you have to deal with that type, I ran into them a lot in my early days. They come in two versions, the wanna-be neighborhood watch, who desperately wants police to like them, and the angry busy body. She was the second version, obviously. They’re angry at the world and seem to watch everyone else because they want reasons to be angrier. If you come at them wrong, they’ll shut down and give you nothing.”

“I guess that’s why we work well together.”

They pulled up in front of the hardware store and made their way inside. The real estate agent’s husband, who they’d spoken to just a few days before, was working and grimaced as he recognized Taylor coming through the door.

“What do you want?”

“I just have one follow-up question and then we’ll leave you alone. I know you’re probably still pissed at us for the questions we had to ask last time, but I promise everything we’re doing is to find your wife’s killer.”

While that was about as diplomatic as Taylor got, it seemed to be enough this time. The man still looked pissed, crossing his arms and taking a closed-off stance, but he didn’t walk away.

“What?”

“The crime scene reports said nothing was taken from your wife’s possessions. That she still had her jewelry on. Was this correct?”

“I guess. I didn’t see her leave that morning and she rotated out what she wore, so I can’t be sure what exactly she had on, but it seemed to be there.”

“What about a ring. Maybe her wedding ring? I don’t remember seeing it in the report.”

“She sometimes left it at home. She said it was because she’d sometimes have to move stuff around when showing houses and she was worried about losing it. Of course, now I know it’s ‘cause she took it off when she went to see him, but …”

“Have you seen it in her things, afterward?”

“I don’t know. Honestly, I haven’t had the heart to go through her things. My sister’s coming down next week and she was going to help me, so I didn’t have to look at it.”

“Could you look at her jewelry tonight, and tell me if you can find it? We know it wasn’t on her, in her purse, or in her car, and I want to make sure it’s accounted for.”

“I guess.”

“I know it’s hard to do, but it’ll help us with the investigation. We want to catch her killer and this could help us do it.”

“Okay, I’ll check. Anything else?”

“No, we won’t take up any more of your time.”

Taylor could feel Whitaker looking at him as they left the store.

“What?” He asked as they got back in the car.

“This is about the sheriff’s ring?”

“Maybe. I noticed the sheriff’s ring was missing and it occurred to me that, even though nothing seemed to be taken from Stewart, I didn’t remember seeing a wedding ring. Her husband wore one, so it followed that she most likely wore one too. Considering how animated the sheriff sounded on the phone, it didn’t make sense she would have rushed home from the coroner’s office, taken off her ring, and then started looking through case files. We’ll have to ask the deputies to look for it, but I’d bet they don’t find it. The sheriff was on to something; some kind of connection between the murders we know were connected to the base and the other murders in town. We know that’s true, because she was murdered right before she could tell us what that connection was. I think, maybe, that connection was the missing rings.”

“Even for you, that’s a stretch. There are a lot of reasons her ring could have been missing. There are also reasons Brittney Stewart’s ring could have been missing. Just because we know Sheriff Martin found some kind of connection, doesn’t mean this is it.”

“Maybe, but it’s too much of a coincidence for me. I realize how this sounds and my reasoning for it is weak, but I just have a feeling there’s something here. I’ve been bothered the whole time we’ve been here that we’ve been missing something. There are too many things that don’t add up to this just being about protecting a bunch of thefts. I’m not saying the ring thing is it, but I have a feeling we’re on the right path finally. Besides, we don’t have anything else right now. What’s it going to hurt?”

“Fine. So, what next?”

“We need to go to the station and talk to the deputies. I want to look at the files on the other murders.”

“I don’t think they’re going to be in a very cooperative mood. They were pretty pissed at us at the sheriff’s house.”

“I’ll have to sweet-talk them then.”

Whitaker gave Taylor a doubtful look but didn’t say anything.

The old lady covering the front desk was the only person at the station when they got there, which made sense. The rest of the deputies would still be at the sheriff’s office, going over the crime scene and waiting on the corner.

“Agents?” she asked, probably confused as to why they’d be there and not at the sheriff’s house.

“We were hoping to look at some of the case files of the other murders,” Taylor said.

“I’m sorry, but I’ll need the sher… one of the deputies to approve that first.”

“I know they’re busy, but could you call them and see if you can get us approval? I know you guys just suffered a huge loss and they’re really busy, but we’re working on a lead to find whoever killed your boss. We’re trying to help.”

“Let me call them. One sec,” she said, excusing herself and walking to one of the deputy’s desks, further away, probably to be able to have the conversation in private.

She spoke in hushed tones, but the way she kept glancing back at Taylor and Whitaker spoke volumes about how unhappy the deputies were. She talked to them for several minutes before hanging up and coming back over, a lot more closed off than she had been when they first walked in.

“Please have a seat. Deputy Morris said he will be back in a few minutes to deal with you.”

The ‘to deal with you’ did not strike Taylor as a phrase that boded well for getting cooperation, but Taylor already knew this was going to be an uphill battle. He knew this time he needed to take a page out of Whitaker’s playbook and try to be somewhat more diplomatic.

A few minutes was closer to fifteen, but that wasn’t unexpected either. Taylor had been at enough crime scenes to know how much it took to keep them from becoming a chaotic mess that would ruin the investigation. Taylor assumed Morris was Martin’s second in command and the person who’d be taking over for her until a new election could be held, which meant he had to make sure everything was proceeding without him.

The deputy who finally walked through the door was the one who’d yelled at them at the crime scene. They’d dealt with him a few times since coming to town, but Taylor hadn’t caught his name before.

“Come with me,” Deputy Morris said through barely contained rage.

They followed him through to the small room they’d met with Sheriff Martin in the first day they’d met with her. As soon as the door closed, the deputy turned on them, the mask he’d been trying to hold over his feelings gone.

“What the hell could you two want? Haven’t you done enough here?”

He all but screamed the questions at them. While it seemed unlikely the thin door would keep his voice from filling the entire, Taylor could appreciate that he’d held it together to try and do this in private. It suggested he wasn’t unreasonable or out of control, just angry at the situation and looking for someone to blame.

“Deputy, I know you’re pissed at us and you blame the army for what’s happened here, and I don’t blame you. We respected Sheriff Martin a great deal and we want to catch her killer too. It’d be insulting to say, ‘as much as you do’, since she was your friend, but I want you to know this is very important to us. The sheriff went home because she thought she had an idea of how the murders all connected together, something that could lead us to the killer. I think she was on the money, because she was killed to keep her silent. I know you have a lot to deal with right now, and I’m not asking for any manpower or to get in the way of your investigation at all. I just want to look at your files of the earlier murders and see if I can work out what she’d discovered that had her so excited when she’d called us.”

The deputy didn’t respond right away. He was still clearly pissed, but Taylor hoped it was a good sign that he was willing to at least consider his words before throwing them out of the office. If he did, there were still avenues they could use to get those files, but it would be a lot harder. More so because he couldn’t use leverage of the federalized investigation without accepting responsibilities for the other murders, something the army was going to be very much against him doing without really solid evidence.

“What are you looking for?”

“I’m not sure yet. I’ll be honest with you, I’m playing a hunch and if I’m off base, I don’t want to poison your investigation with my wild ass theory. I liked Sheriff Martin, and it pisses me off she’s dead. Let me help you find her killer.”

The deputy eyed him for almost a full minute, which felt like an eternity. Whitaker, thankfully, was letting Taylor take the lead. Taylor would bet that was mostly because she didn’t buy into his theory, but she was also good enough at these kinds of situations that she knew an added voice wouldn’t make things better. Finally, the deputy sighed heavily and let his head drop, shaking it slightly.

“Fine. I’ll tell Evelyn to help you find the files. We’re all going to be busy on this for a while, so that’s all the help you’re going to get for now. My only deal is, if you find something, you come to me first. I don’t want this jurisdiction crap. We get to make the collar.”

“I’ll do my best, but I’ll be honest with you. If they’re on base, the army’s authority supersedes mine and they don’t have to listen to me if they don’t want to, which they probably won’t. I’ll keep you in the loop and try and make sure you stay involved, but I don’t want to promise something I can’t deliver.”

“Well, I guess I appreciate the honesty. Fine. Look at the files. I have to get back to the sheriff’s house now. I want to be there when the coroner lets us move the body.”

“I understand. Thanks, Deputy, and I am really sorry for your loss,” Taylor said, sticking his hand out.

The deputy shook it reluctantly, saying, “I appreciate it.”

As he walked out the door towards the front of the station, Whitaker said, “Look at you, being patient and diplomatic.”

“I’m only an asshole when I need to be,” Taylor said, watching the deputy leave. “I know what it’s like losing a member of your team, and I don’t blame them for taking it out on us. They need someone to be pissed at. Let’s go look at those files.”

It took a lot less time to go through all of the files the police department had on hand than Taylor thought, which was a problem. They didn’t have a lot of serious crime in Silver Plains, so there weren’t that many stored records to go through. Unfortunately, all of the murders except the bar fight were missing. The woman from the front desk explained that the sheriff had taken the rest of the cases home after the fifth murder.

Some of the deputies had questioned the decision, but Taylor understood her reasoning. The army had already disavowed any connection to the murders, and she hadn’t been able to get anywhere on them on her own. It would have eaten away at her, not being able to find the killer, and she refused to just put the files in a drawer and go about her business. Taylor was pretty sure that, if he’d been in her place, he would have done the same thing.

Unfortunately, it also meant that the killer had been able to take it all with him. He’d probably destroyed them all by now, which meant they’d have to find another way to verify Taylor’s hunch about what she’d found that had gotten her killed.

“Do you have a list of the names of the people murdered over the last few years? Maybe contact information for their families?” Taylor asked the station secretary after his third useless search through the file room.

“I can make a list. Everyone here probably could.”

“We don’t need Mr. Stewart or the family of the guy killed in the bar fight. Any of the others would be helpful, though.”

“I can get you three. The Johnsons, the Dillards, and Jenny McKay’s husband all left town since then. I can do some searches, but you could probably have better luck tracking them down than us. As far as I’m aware, Teddy Duncan didn’t have living family, so not much you can do besides talk to some of his friends.”

“Three families would be enough,” Taylor said. “If it isn’t, we can start talking to friends of the victims.”

The secretary pulled up contact information for the survivors of three of the victims still in the town, two parents of the victims and one spouse.

“Now we just have to hope they remember what their loved ones had on them when they died,” Taylor said to Whitaker as they left the station.

“They’ll remember. Cases like these, where they never found the killer, haunt the families of the victims. I’ve had parents be able to list off everything their child ate the day of their murder and spouses who could give you a minute-by-minute breakdown of what their husband or wife did the day they died years after the fact. Without closure, it lives with them.”