But Not For Love, page 15
part #9 of Clint Wolf Series
“Even if we do think the two cases are connected, how do we prove it’s Walter?”
“Remember getting your prints rolled when you became a cop?”
I nodded, forgetting for a moment that Mallory couldn’t see me. “Do they have Garner’s applicant fingerprint card?”
“Yeah, Abel said the sheriff’s got it locked in his office vault.”
“Well, that’s easy. Ask him to scan the print card and send it over. We’ll have your guy compare it to the print from the glove. If it’s a match, then we know exactly who we’re looking for.”
“There’s a catch.”
“What’s that?”
When she told me what Detective Adams had said, I pursed my lips. “How do we get around it?”
“I’ve got some ideas. Why don’t you meet me at my office so we can do some game-planning?”
“Sounds good.” I ended the call and turned to Susan, explaining everything I’d just learned. “I’d like you to come with me. We might have to go for a long ride.”
Like me, she was fully awake now and nodded. “I’ll get dressed.”
While Susan occupied the bathroom, I called Baylor’s cell phone. It sounded like I woke him up.
“Hey, Clint, what’s up?”
“I have to head to the sheriff’s office for a bit,” I said. “Can you go around town and check the motel, every bed and breakfast, and every vacation rental in town to see if they’ve rented to a man named Walter Garner? I’ll send you his mug shot as soon as I get my hands on it. And go undercover. Use your personal vehicle and wear street clothes. The town will reimburse you for your mileage.”
“Walter Garner? Is he the killer?” Baylor asked. “Is he the guy who murdered Cassandra Billiot?”
“Maybe—it seems so. If he is, he’s apparently a very dangerous killer. I don’t know a lot about him, but I do know he’s eluded capture for five years.” I paused, wondering if I should be asking Baylor to do this. It was a dangerous assignment, and I didn’t want him taking unnecessary risks. “Look, if you do find out where he’s staying, don’t approach him without backup. In fact, call me immediately and we’ll assemble the sheriff’s office SWAT team. I’ve got a feeling this’ll be a big deal.”
Baylor promised to call if he got any useful information and I swiped my thumb across the screen. When Susan came out of the bathroom, I got dressed, brushed my teeth, and then let Achilles into the back yard.
There was no time for breakfast, so we each grabbed a banana and bottle of water and jumped into my Tahoe. It was at least twenty degrees cooler than it was yesterday, and the wind was blowing something fierce.
“It’s supposed to drop into the fifties,” Susan said as I turned south off of Paradise Place and headed for town. She made more small talk, but I could tell something was on her mind.
“What’s going on?” I asked. “Are you feeling okay?”
“I’m great.” She smiled and her beautiful face lit up briefly, but then she frowned. “I was wondering how you’re dealing with the shooting. Are you still getting the urges to drink?”
I loved that I could be totally honest with Susan and her not judge me. I’d never had that connection with anyone, not even my first wife.
“Every now and then—when I think about how young she was and how her life was cut so short—I feel the temptation.” I slowed as we approached the Mechant Loup Bridge, which was the only thing connecting our town with the rest of the world. “I just never thought I’d have to take the life of someone so young. It’s not natural, you know?”
She frowned and placed a hand on my arm. “I know, but I’m glad you’re here to talk about it. I’m glad you were the one who survived.”
I glanced into her eyes, and then down at her belly. Although she said she could feel the baby growing inside of her belly, she didn’t look a bit different than she did before she was pregnant.
“I’m glad I survived, too, and I can’t wait to meet our daughter.”
“Daughter?” Susan’s eyes widened. “I wanted it to be a surprise! How do you know it’s a girl? Did the doctor say something when I wasn’t paying attention? Why’d you ruin it?”
“No, I don’t know.” I laughed. “I’m just messing with you.”
She socked my arm playfully. “You’ve got to stop doing that to me!”
“It’s too easy,” I said, still laughing. “It works every time.”
Susan grunted and turned to look out of her window as we put Mechant Loup North in the rearview mirror. She didn’t speak again and my mind drifted to the case. I was eager to learn more about this Walter Garner and curious to find out what the connection was between him, Cassandra, and Allie, if any. I also needed to see a picture of the man. In a town as small as Mechant Loup, it’s quite possible I’d already come into contact with him—and the thought gave me chills.
CHAPTER 29
Chateau Parish Sheriff’s Office’s Criminal Operation Center
It was almost lunchtime when Susan and I strode into Mallory’s office. We found Mallory sitting at her desk. She was working the keyboard on her computer furiously while using a shoulder to pin her phone to her right ear. She glanced up when our shadows fell across her desk, then shot a thumb toward a couple of chairs against the nearby wall.
“Pull those up,” she said. “I’m on hold for the sheriff from Buckheed County.”
As we took our seats, Mallory’s fingers danced across the keyboard and an article from the Buckheed Times popped up on the computer screen. She had accessed the article through a hyperlink Detective Adams had sent her, and she was supposed to tell the sheriff that’s how she found out about Walter Garner. She scrolled down the page and a color photo of a man in police uniform filled the computer screen. I leaned close. Man? Hell, he looked like a teenager.
“He doesn’t even look like he can grow a mustache,” I said. “How old is this kid?”
Mallory pushed the phone away from her mouth. “According to the article, he was twenty-four at the time of the murders, so he’s twenty-nine now.”
Susan and I read over Mallory’s shoulder, but the details were sparse. Garner, a former sheriff’s deputy, was on the run for murdering a man and his ex-wife. His motive—if known—was not revealed, and neither were the names of the victims. After searching through more online articles, we learned that there had been extensive coverage of the manhunt. The news stories spanned several months, but the trail eventually grew cold and the stories stopped coming. More than once, the editor of the newspaper had used the editorial column to complain about the lack of transparency from the sheriff and his department.
Mallory printed some copies of Garner’s photograph and handed it to Susan.
“He does look pretty soft,” Susan muttered. “I’m surprised he was capable of murdering anyone, especially a woman. He doesn’t look like your typical—”
“Sheriff Chandler?” Mallory said, straightening in her chair and pressing the speaker button. “Sheriff Ralph Chandler?”
“Yeah, this is Chandler. What can I do for you? My secretary said it was important.”
“Yes, sir, I’m calling about Walter Garner.” Mallory paused to let the name sink in, and I thought I heard the sheriff groan on the other end of the phone. “We had a similar case here in Chateau Parish, Louisiana and I think we’re dealing with the same person.”
“First off, how in the hell did you hear about the Walter Garner case? That happened over five years ago.”
Mallory glanced over at Susan and me. Nodding knowingly, she mouthed, “Detective Adams was right.”
“Well?” Sheriff Chandler pressed. “How’d you find out about my case?”
“I did an online search for cases with the same elements as ours—a domestic violence victim, killed in her home, stabbed multiple times, not the husband—and I found an article from the Buckheed Times,” Mallory lied. “The article directs anyone with information about the case to contact you, so here I am, contacting you.”
The man grunted, but didn’t say a word. Mallory went on to provide all the relevant details of our murder cases, but the sheriff seemed unmoved. After she was done talking, he cleared his throat.
“Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but there’s no way Walter Garner murdered your victims. He died in the wilderness five years ago while on the run from us.”
“How’d he die?”
“A wild bear, hunger, hypothermia, drowning—take your pick. You can die a thousand different ways in the mountains. While we don’t know exactly what killed him, we know for sure that he’s dead.”
“So, a body was never recovered?” Mallory kept her tone light and inquisitive.
“No, detective, but that’s not uncommon out here in the mountains. We lose people every year, and some of them are never found. They simply disappear without a trace. That’s what happened to Walter Garner.”
“I see.” Mallory glanced over at Susan and me and shook her head, not believing the sheriff. “Well, my sheriff is on my ass pretty bad to solve this thing and I know he’ll want me to make sure it’s not Walter Garner. Would you mind sending me a copy of his employee fingerprint card so I can compare it to some prints I found at one of my murder scenes? If I can prove it’s not him, my sheriff will let me move on to some other suspect, but, for the time being, he seems convinced it is Garner.”
I was impressed with how smoothly Mallory brought up the fingerprint card, and Sheriff Chandler didn’t even think to deny it like Detective Abel thought he would.
“I’m sorry, but the fingerprint card is evidence and I only release evidence to the courts.”
Mallory explained how she wasn’t asking him to release the card, but simply to scan it and send a copy to us. “I don’t want the original piece of evidence, just a copy.”
“I know what you’re asking, detective.” There was finality in his tone. “I don’t release evidence. Period.”
Mallory glanced up at me and raised her eyebrows, wondering if I had any ideas. Neither of us had time to go to Georgia, but if we could identify our killer, it would open new doors and might lead us directly to him.
I leaned close and whispered for her to tell the sheriff that I’d bring the print to Georgia myself. She nodded, liking the idea. There was a lot of work to be done here, but we needed to know if that print matched.
“What if my partner brought a copy of our fingerprint evidence to you?” Mallory asked the sheriff. “Would he be able to have it compared to Walter’s fingerprint card?”
Sheriff Chandler was silent on the other end. After what seemed like too long, he finally grunted. “I guess we can arrange that, considering I’m a fingerprint expert, but I can tell you right now it’s not him—he’s already dead and gone. You’d be wasting your time and mine.”
Ignoring him, Mallory covered the phone with her hand. “When do you want to leave?”
“Tell him I can be there sometime in the early morning hours,” I said.
Mallory did and he reluctantly agreed to meet me when I got to town. “Just have your guy come on over to the sheriff’s office. I’ll have my chief of detectives, Abel Adams, waiting here for him and they can call me when he gets here.”
Mallory thanked him and ended the call. Abel had warned Mallory that his sheriff was overly protective and uncooperative when it came to the Walter Garner case, so the conversation had gone better than we’d expected.
Next, Mallory printed up more copies of Garner’s picture from the newspaper article. “I’ll circulate these to all of our deputies and detectives, and hopefully we can turn something up.”
“Can you email it to me?” Susan asked. “I’ll send a copy to my officers so they can be on alert.”
I tapped the picture I held in my hands and hesitated, weighing the risk to public safety against the chances of catching this animal. If we wanted to keep everyone safe, we had to plaster his face on the cover of every newspaper in the parish and spread it far and wide across social media, but that might force him into deep hiding—to never be found again.
“We have to be smart about this,” I finally said. “I think we need to keep his identity a secret for the time being. Otherwise, he might find out we’re onto him and go back under the radar.”
“What are you suggesting?” Mallory asked.
“We need to keep future victims safe while conducting a covert search for this guy, which means keeping his identity a secret.” I nodded as I talked, realizing this just might work. “He’s only attacking domestic abuse victims, so we need to get with the district attorney’s office and have Britt open her books for us. We need the names of every victim associated with her outstanding domestic violence cases, and we need to reach out to them and let them know what’s going on.”
“That’s a great idea,” Susan said. “One of the victims might have already come into contact with Garner.”
“That makes perfect sense.” Mallory turned around in her chair. “I wondered why there was no forced entry into either of the homes or why they allowed the killer to get so close to them, but it has to be because the killer was familiar to them.”
I turned to Susan. “We need to meet with Britt before I leave for Georgia.”
“Before we leave for Georgia,” Susan corrected. “You’re not going without me.”
CHAPTER 30
One hour later…
Britt Lucas had agreed to gather up all of her files and meet us at Mallory’s office. She had estimated she could be there within the hour, so Susan and I had rushed home, packed our toothbrushes—we didn’t plan on making a mini-vacation out of the trip, so we didn’t need extra clothes—and then made it back to the Criminal Operations Center about fifteen minutes after Britt arrived.
“Y’all are just in time,” Mallory said over a cup of steaming coffee when she met Susan and me in the lobby and led us toward the conference room. “I brought Britt and Natasha up to speed while waiting for y’all.”
I shifted my copy of the case file to my left arm and held open the door to the conference room so Susan and Mallory could enter. I followed them inside and saw Britt Lucas sitting at the table with Natasha Lee at her side. They were pulling files from a large brown box and spreading them on the table in front of them.
Mallory sat beside Natasha, while Susan and I took up seats across from the three women.
“We have twelve active domestic abuse cases pending,” Britt said, indicating with a wave toward Natasha, “and she’s compiled a list of our outstanding victims.”
Natasha nodded and distributed copies of the list to each of us, then said, “I’ve included their addresses, phone numbers, places of employment, types of vehicles they drive, and family members on the information sheet. In addition, I’ve listed everything we know about their abusive spouses. As you might notice, one of our victims is a male.”
I scanned the list of names. None of them looked familiar and none lived in Mechant Loup.
“Are we sure this killer isn’t targeting past victims?” Britt wanted to know. “Only God knows how many domestic cases we’ve handled over the past few years. I don’t know how we’d even begin to track those.”
“The only real common denominators between the two victims that we know about,” I began, “are that they were current victims of domestic violence and they each wanted to drop the charges against their abusers. We’ve delved into their pasts, but can’t find any other connections to speak about.”
After carefully reading over her copy of the list of names, Susan placed it on the table. “I guess the real question is this; why did Walter Garner care that these women wanted to drop the charges? And what is the connection between him and our victims?”
Natasha and Britt shook their heads in unison.
“I’ve got no idea,” Britt said. “I was hoping y’all might have that answer.”
I explained to Britt that Susan and I were heading to Georgia just as soon as the meeting was over.
“We might have more answers once the prints are matched and we get to see their file,” I said. “Meanwhile, Mallory’s going to spearhead a covert search for the suspect here. Since he doesn’t know we’re looking for him, he should be going about his business as usual and we might get lucky.”
As everyone stared thoughtfully at their own list of names, I posed an obvious question to Britt. “Other than you two”—I nodded toward Britt and Natasha—“who else knew these victims wanted to drop the charges?”
“We usually notify the domestic abuse section at the sheriff’s office as soon as we find out they want to drop the charges.” Britt turned toward Natasha. “Did you contact their office when Cassandra came in to drop the charges?”
“I didn’t, but Carney might have because he’s the one who talked to her that day. I talked to her the day before when she called about dropping the charges.”
“Wait, she called first?” Britt asked.
“Yeah...don’t you remember? She called saying she wanted to drop the charges and cancel the protective order, but I told her she couldn’t do it over the phone. I thought I told you about it.”
“I’ve been so busy lately, I don’t even remember if I brought my youngest to school this morning.” Britt sighed heavily. “For all I know, she might still be home sleeping—or still in the back of my Suburban.”
We all laughed, but it was short-lived. This was a serious matter and we all knew the clock was our enemy.
“There is a chance this joker is hiding in plain sight.” I turned to Mallory. “We need the names of every man in the domestic violence unit. What if Walter Garner got a new identity and he’s working as a cop again?”
Mallory nodded slowly as she studied my face. I could almost see the wheels in her head turning, and I knew she was thinking back to our conversation at the crime scene where she had said the killer could look like her or me.
“There are four male officers working the unit,” Mallory finally said. “I’ll get Internal Affairs to pull their personnel files right away. We can compare their commission photos against the picture of our suspect.”
