But Not For Love, page 20
part #9 of Clint Wolf Series
“Garner knew he was surrounded that day, and that’s why he offered to do what he did. He was a desperate man and he was willing to do and say anything to get away. Had he been armed with a gun, he would’ve shot his way out, but he was unarmed, so he had to use the only weapons he had—his mouth and his brain.” Sheriff Chandler turned toward Susan. “You know, I didn’t find him that day—he found me. I’m convinced he eluded the others and sought me out during the search so he could play on my weakness and use me for his escape.”
“How would he know to use your daughter against you?” Susan asked.
“Because everyone in town knew how much she meant to me, and they all knew what I had done to that little bastard while he was in custody. They all thought I would do anything to protect my daughter, and Garner was smart enough to use that against me.”
“How’d you get him out?” Susan asked again.
“I radioed that I heard something heading north and it was moving fast, so I thought it was Garner. It drew my deputies away from this area. When all was clear, I led Garner to my truck and he slipped into the back seat and lay across the floorboard. I covered him with an old jacket and some boxes of motor oil that were back there, and then I returned to the river to continue searching. When I called off the search later that night, I simply drove him out of the net and dropped him off at the end of Gill’s street.”
“So, you basically hand-delivered your son-in-law to Garner, isn’t that right?”
“That bastard was not my son-in-law!” The outburst caused Chandler to start coughing again. When the fit passed, he said in a weak voice, “He was not my son-in-law. He was just some piece of shit my daughter married in a moment of weakness. And I can’t argue with you—I did lead Garner right to Gill, knowing full well what the man was capable of doing.”
“Did anyone suspect you of murdering Pratt?”
He grunted. “I’m sure everyone thought I did it, but after that surveillance video surfaced, all eyes were on Garner.”
Chandler went on to explain that everything had grown quiet in town after Gill Pratt’s murder. “We continued the search for Garner, but when we stopped receiving reports of sightings, I knew he had stayed true to his word and left town. I didn’t want to continue wasting time and resources on a lost cause, so I started floating this theory that Garner had perished in the wilderness. It’s happened before—where someone disappears without a trace, never to be heard from or seen again—so it made perfect sense to everyone around these parts.”
After Chandler finished talking, there was a long moment of silence between him and Susan. Finally, Susan asked if he was willing to help us capture Garner.
“I don’t know where he is.”
“Surely, you must’ve heard from him in all of this time.”
He hesitated, and then nodded slowly. “A couple of years ago, I got a call on my home phone from someone claiming to be Walter Garner. He told me Abel had contacted a police department where he was living and the detectives there would be contacting me about a fingerprint they found at a crime scene. He told me if I didn’t want my daughter to end up like Gill Pratt, then I’d better make damn sure the print didn’t match his applicant card. I…I know it was wrong, but I knew he was capable of finding her and killing her—Walter is extremely resourceful, after all—so I lied about the print matching.”
“So, it was a match?”
“Yeah, and so was your print.”
“We know.” Susan sat silent for a moment, and then asked Sheriff Chandler why he wanted to commit suicide.
“I didn’t want to commit suicide—I wanted to accidentally kill myself.” The elderly man sighed heavily. “If I commit suicide, Walter will think I did it on purpose to get out of helping him. That might provoke him into coming after my daughter. But if I died an accidental death, my daughter would get the life insurance money and Walter would just move on with his life. I’m sure he’d find some other way to avoid getting captured. The man’s a magician.”
“By the way,” Susan asked, “how tall is he?”
“About five-six.”
Susan turned to look in my direction, nodded. When she was facing Sheriff Chandler again, she asked if there was anything else he could tell her that might assist us in capturing Garner.
After another long moment of silence, Sheriff Chandler nodded his head slowly. “There is one other thing. He can’t work, so he makes me send him money—not a lot, just enough for him to get by. He told me if the money ever stops flowing, he’ll take that as a sign that I’m no longer in his corner and he’ll need to pay a visit to my daughter. I told him the only way I’d stop sending money was if I was dead, and I begged him not to hurt my daughter if I died. He told me if I died a natural death, he’d let my daughter off the hook.”
“Where do you send the money?” Susan asked. “What’s the address?”
“It’s a post office box in a town called Eagle.”
“That’s in Northern Chateau.” Susan twisted on the tree. “Clint, are you getting this?”
I nodded and asked for the box number.
“It’s 231,” Chandler said. “P.O. Box 231.”
I dug out an ink pen and scribbled the address on the inside of my palm.
Susan asked for the name associated with the address, but Sheriff Chandler said Garner told him to leave the name blank, and he was instructed to only send cash. In order to hide his tracks, the sheriff said he would drive to Tennessee or Alabama to mail the cash.
“What about the other detectives who contacted you?” Susan asked. “Where were they from?”
“The first one was near Tallahassee, Florida. We got a teletype from the police department there and then a detective met me here with the print he recovered. I might still have his card. And the other contact was from Mobile County in Alabama. I think I still have that detective’s card, too.” Sheriff Chandler shot a thumb in Abel’s direction. “I told Abel if he contacted another agency about our case, I’d fire his ass. I thought sure he’d contacted y’all, but he swears up and down he didn’t.”
“Would you send money to Walter in Florida and Alabama, too?” Susan asked, ignoring the bit about Abel.
“Yeah—cash only, no names.” The cold wind had picked up a bit and Sheriff Chandler pulled his jacket closed to shield himself against its icy fingers. He sighed heavily. “Well, now that you know the truth, what are you going to do with me?”
Susan stood and looked down at the dejected man. From my vantage point, they both looked like spooky shadows in the ghostly moonlight. When Susan spoke, her frozen breath drifted around her face and added to the mystique. “There’s nothing I can do. I’m far out of my jurisdiction, and you haven’t committed any crimes in Mechant Loup.”
Susan started to walk toward me, but a thought occurred to her and she stopped. “Sheriff, if you’re trying to help Walter, why’d you keep his print all of these years? Why not just destroy it?”
“If I destroyed the print, then I’d have no leverage over him and I’d have no proof that he killed Gill Pratt.”
Susan nodded and walked away, calling over her shoulder, “Now, please don’t try to accidentally kill yourself again—your daughter and grandchild need you.”
CHAPTER 41
Four hours later…
We were a hundred miles south of Atlanta when Susan finally reached someone from the Tallahassee Police Department who could help. She had been working the phone from the moment we entered my Tahoe and left the river parking area.
First, she had called Mallory on speaker phone and provided her with the address to the post office box in Eagle. Mallory had immediately dispatched a sniper team to the location. Next, she had filled Mallory in on all the details we’d learned thus far, and then listened while Mallory told her about the steps she was taking to track down Garner. Mallory also said they’d combed the backgrounds of every officer working the domestic violence unit and then interviewed them.
“They all consented to searches of their homes, the rolling of their fingerprints, and they took polygraphs. They’re all clean. We also rolled Baylor Rice’s prints and were able to clear him. As for our victims, none of them have called to drop charges against their husbands, so we shouldn’t have any problems.” Mallory had inhaled deeply and blew into the receiver. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and this Walter Garner will kill himself and leave a note confessing his crimes.”
“While you’re wishing for miracles, I have to get back to work.” Susan then ended the call and it wasn’t long before Abel called and provided the contact information for the detectives from Tallahassee and Mobile. Susan had made a number of calls, but had gotten nowhere. It seemed the detective from Alabama had retired and the detective from Florida was on a cruise ship.
“I wish we were back on our cruise,” Susan had mumbled while waiting for the desk sergeant in Tallahassee to patch her through to the chief of detectives. After spending another hour on the phone, most of it on hold while the chief of detectives researched his files, she finally hung up and gave me the low down.
“Their case was identical to ours—a battered woman signed a drop slip, she was stabbed to death later, and the husband was arrested for the crime. They found an unidentified thumb print in blood on the inside of the door stop, but everything else had been wiped clean. They had expected to find the husband’s prints—along with the victim’s—on everything in the house, but they didn’t. That detail—and the fact that the husband was seen on video at a casino three hours away—helped them confirm it couldn’t have been him.”
“Did they ever develop a real suspect?”
She told me they hadn’t and that the case had grown stale after Sheriff Chandler told them the print didn’t match Garner.
“This chief of detectives ran through his list of witnesses for me, but none of them sounded familiar,” Susan explained. “When I asked if they had a domestic violence team and if anyone on that team quit soon after the murder, he said no.”
I continued driving while Susan called a number that was supposed to be for the retired detective from Mobile. She’d received it from a dispatcher who’d had a lot of bad things to say about the detective, including that he was lazy and never wanted to work.
“It was good that he retired,” the dispatcher had said over the speaker, “because it freed up some air that a more productive detective could breathe.”
“Why would you say that?” Susan had asked the woman. The woman would only say that he botched a murder investigation, and then she said she had to get back to work.
It was about twenty minutes to nine in the morning when Susan got the retired detective on the phone, and it sounded like he was tired and hung over.
“He must be getting a head start on the weekend,” I whispered to Susan, who only shook her head and introduced herself. She let him know he was on speakerphone and that I was in the background.
“Ned Jones,” sounded the detective’s gruff voice. He had a thick Alabama accent. “What’s this about? And how’d you get my number?”
“I called the sheriff’s office and they gave it to me.”
“Of course they did.” Ned yawned and then coughed roughly. “I’ve been off the job for two years, so I know my cases have all cleared the court system by now.”
“Well, I’m calling about an unsolved murder case you worked not long before you retired.”
“I’ve only got one unsolved murder on my record, so it’s got to be about that poor woman who was stabbed in her house.” The detective suddenly sounded wide awake. “Did they finally locate Gregg Smith?”
Susan shot a look at me, then turned back toward the phone in her lap. “Who’s Gregg Smith?”
“A janitor who worked at the sheriff’s office. He was my number one suspect, but no one wanted to hear me out about him. They all thought the husband killed her, but I was able to prove he wasn’t home when the murder happened. Of course, that didn’t convince those who had prejudged the case. They all claimed I screwed up the investigation, but then the lab developed an unknown print on a latex glove that was thrown in the trash outside the home—”
“You found a print on a latex glove?” I asked, interrupting him.
“Yeah. I believe the killer removed the left glove with his right hand, which was still gloved, but when he removed the right glove he touched it with his bare fingers. He then threw it in the outside trashcan and disappeared.” Springs squeaked in the background and it sounded like the detective was shifting his position in bed. “I got a random call one day from a detective in north Georgia saying he believed his case was connected to mine, but when I met with the print examiner up there he said the prints didn’t match. I wasn’t surprised, because I’m certain Gregg Smith is the one who did it. Of course, the other detectives in my office still believe that glove was from a first responder.”
“Why’d you suspect this Gregg Smith?” Susan asked.
“He was always snooping around when he’d pick up the trash at my office. I even caught him thumbing through a case file on my desk one day. I chewed his ass out and moved my garbage can by the door so he wouldn’t come behind my desk anymore. I thought that fixed the problem, but then I’d gotten a call from the DA’s office one morning saying my victim wanted to drop charges against her husband. I raised some hell and I know I mentioned the victim’s name a few times. My back was to the door and when I turned around I saw Gregg standing there watching me. I asked him what the hell he was doing, but he just apologized and walked out.” Detective Jones sighed. “Next thing I know, my victim’s dead and Gregg Smith skips town.”
“Did you have any leads at all?”
“No, nothing. Since he was just a janitor, our personnel division didn’t get much info on him and I later learned he used a bogus address and that he had stolen the identity of a man in a neighboring county. After doing some more digging, I found out where he was staying and I went to the apartment. The landlord let me in and I searched every inch of that place, but the only thing I found was a sliver of paper from a torn envelope.
“As luck would have it, there was a number on the envelope and that number led me to a post office box in town. I got the post master to open the box, and guess what I found?”
I had just crossed into Mississippi and Susan looked up. She pointed to the rest area sign and mouthed that she needed to use the bathroom. She’d been doing that a lot lately, and I figured the baby must be pushing on her bladder.
“What did you find?” Susan asked Detective Jones, turning her attention back to the cell phone in her lap.
“I found an envelope full of cash,” Ned said. “A little over seven hundred dollars. There was no name on the envelope and no return address—just the post office box number and a postal stamp from Huntsville, Alabama.”
I turned to Susan.
“Sheriff Ralph Chandler!” we both said in unison.
“Sheriff who?” Ned asked.
“I have to go!” Susan quickly ended the call. Not wasting any time, she dialed Mallory’s phone immediately. I smashed the accelerator, racing through Mississippi and heading for the Louisiana border as fast as I could without endangering our lives or the lives of anyone else on the highway. Thankfully, there wasn’t much traffic on this Friday morning. The school buses had already run and most people were already at work, which left the road relatively clear.
“Mallory, you need to run the name Gregg Smith sideways to Sunday through every computer we have!” Susan said excitedly when Mallory answered. “And check every employee record—including janitors—from the sheriff’s office and the DA’s office. Cross-reference them to the address we got from Sheriff Chandler. This killer is hiding in plain sight, and we need to stop him before he goes dark again.”
CHAPTER 42
Chateau Parish Sheriff’s Office’s Criminal Operation Center
It was almost noon when Susan and I arrived at Mallory’s office. She was on the phone when we entered her cubicle and waved for us to have a seat. We did and watched as she spoke in hushed tones to whoever was on the other end. There was a concerned expression on her face that I didn’t like. Without saying goodbye, she dropped the handset to the cradle and spun in her chair.
“That was Britt,” she said slowly. “Another victim wants to drop charges against her husband. Britt said the woman’s scared of this serial killer running around and she wants her husband at home to protect her and their kids.”
“We need eyes on her,” I said as we all rose to our feet. “Who is she and what’s her address?”
“Who else knows about this?” Susan asked before Mallory had a chance to respond to my question. “As long as we keep it confined to our tight circle, then it shouldn’t get out and she won’t be in danger.”
“So far,” Mallory said, “the only people who know about it are Britt, Natasha, DA Investigator Rory Carney, and the three of us. They didn’t even inform the domestic violence team—just in case.”
“Let’s keep it that way,” Susan said. “Now, where does this lady live?”
Mallory snatched a notebook from her desk and thumbed through it as we all walked toward the door. “Her name is Julia Hebert and she lives in Northern Chateau on Cedar Street, the last house on the right.”
“It’ll take at least twenty minutes to get there,” I said. “Is there anyone closer?”
Mallory stopped on the sidewalk and called Britt again. After speaking briefly with her, she nodded and hung up. “Natasha is already on her way to the house. She’ll give Julia a ride to the DA’s office and we’ll meet with them there.”
Susan and I jumped in my Tahoe and Mallory hurried across the parking lot to her Charger. I was on the highway first and flipped on my lights. Susan turned the dial on her police radio and stopped when she reached the secure SWAT channel. She checked the status of the officers out in the field. They all reported that they were Code-4, which meant everything was under control.
