Judged (14 page)

We needed answers to those questions. I pulled out my phone and dialed Ball. The phone rang in my ear repeatedly.

As I was about to hang up, Ball answered. “Yeah, Hank. What’s up?” His voice sounded as if I’d woken him.

“I left you a message earlier,” I said. “We’re out at our suspect’s house.”

His voice perked up. “Damn. Hold on.”

I heard rummaging around on his end of the phone.

“Sorry,” Ball said. “Yeah, I see your message now. I fell asleep in front of the television. What have we got? What do you need?”

“The guy’s name is Timothy Wendell.” I gave him the spelling of the last name. “I need whatever we can get on him. I want friends, family, marital status, any businesses registered or vehicles registered to that if he does have one. I need whatever you can tell me about this address we’re at. Who the home belongs to, owner or renter. Who else resides here. Basically every last damn thing we can find out about this guy. We’re here, his only registered vehicle is here, but he’s not. Get me banking, cell records if you find them, the works.”

“Okay. I’m going to have to call the twins. Probably Scott and Bill as well. What’s the scene?”

“I’m standing in a home office that has a wall-sized bulletin board of victims. We have a calendar containing his kills. I’m staring at who-knows-how-many police file boxes from Miami Dade stacked everywhere.”

“How would this guy have that?” Ball asked. “Was he law enforcement?”

“No. Not that we know of.”

“Okay. I’m going to head to the office and get everyone in. If you need anything else, call. Otherwise, you’ll get whatever we have as we find it.”

“Sure.” I looked over at Harrington and the other two officers turning cover sheets of case files. They flipped through each one and then stacked them as checked off. “Look to see if he makes any kind of payments to a psychiatrist as well. The word was written on the calendar we found for today.”

“Got it. We’ll talk soon,” Ball said.

“Thanks.” I clicked off and looked at Beth. “Ball is getting the team in to start getting us everything.”

Couch was staring at the wall covered in victims. “I’m going to call in some forensics guys. At the very least, we’re going to need to get all of this photographed. We’ll go through all the information on each person here and see exactly what we have.” He pulled his phone from his pocket and called back to the office.

Beth and I gave Harrington and his pair of officers a hand with the files. After fifteen minutes of the five of us searching, we had nothing that looked like a clue of who our mystery doctor could be. According to my browsing of the case files, they all appeared to be a number of years old. I checked the names of the officers that were the leads of the cases—they were all different and looked as if they’d come from different precincts within Miami Dade’s jurisdiction.

Agent Pottsulo walked into the office.

“Anything from the neighbors?” Couch asked.

Rivera, with a man following him, appeared in the office doorway before Pottsulo could respond.

“This is Mr. McAulay. He lives next door,” Rivera said. He turned to the man. “These are Agents Couch, Harper, and Rawlings. Why don’t you tell him what you told us.”

The man appeared to be in his midforties, with a pair of wire-rimmed eyeglasses, a thin face, and a receding hairline. “I just said I saw him walk past the front of my house carrying a duffel bag earlier today.”

“What time?” Couch asked.

“Right after I got home from work, so probably around four thirty or so.”

“Did you speak with him?” I asked.

McAulay shook his head. “I tossed him a wave, which he did back. That’s about the extent of it. I talk to him every now and then. We mostly just chat about neighbor stuff—small talk, basically. I can’t say that I really know him.”

“Which way was he headed? And you said he had a duffel bag?” Beth asked.

“Yeah. He walked past my house, so that would be north. But you have to do a couple turns to get out of the subdivision.”

“The duffel bag?” Beth asked.

“He had a big black bag for sports or something. About the size of a bag for baseball, meaning that you could probably hold something the size of a bat inside of it. He had it draped over his shoulder. There’s a park with a couple batting cages about a mile away. That’s probably the closest place where he could hit some balls. The park is southwest of here.”

“The park name?” Harrington asked.

“Kings Grant.”

Harrington nodded to one of his officers, who called it over the radio.

The park needed to be checked out, but after glancing at my watch, I highly doubted he had been there in a batting cage for the last five hours or so. I also had a sneaking suspicion that whatever was inside of the bag had nothing to do with sports.

“Was this a common occurrence?” I asked. “Him walking with a large duffel bag?”

McAuley shook his head. “I can’t say that I’ve seen him doing it before. He never really struck me as the sports type. I’ve tried chatting him up about scores and plays and things like that. It seemed like he never really knew what I was talking about.”

“What else can you tell us about this guy? Friends? Family? Occupation? He owns a wheelchair transport van. What do you know about that?” Beth asked. She stared at him, waiting on answers for her barrage of questions.

“Um, what question do you want answered first?”

“Employment and the van,” Beth said.

“Yeah, he transported those in wheelchairs—mostly elderly I think. As far as I know, the business was his. Pretty sure it was the on-call type of thing. Like, he didn’t leave at nine and come home at five or anything. I guess when someone needed a ride, he would go and transport them.”

“Did he own any other vehicles here aside from the van?” I asked.

“I don’t think so,” McAuley said. “There was never really another car here.”

“He lived here alone?” I asked.

“He did.”

“Do you know anything about this guy’s friends and family?” Beth asked.

“Friends, no. He never had anyone over. His father was never mentioned. I’m guessing he was never in the picture. Tim’s mother passed away when he was young. My wife and I knew his sister prior to her death.”

Beth and Couch perked up. The deaths of those close to our suspect would line up with our profile, depending on the circumstances.

“What do you know about these deceased family members?” I asked. “You said you knew the sister?”

“Yeah, Carrie was Tim’s sister. Carrie Baker. She died a few years back. This was her house prior to her death. I guess I can’t say for certain, but I assume it was left to Tim. Carrie didn’t have any children—deceased mother. Tim was her only sibling.”

“The mother’s death?” I asked. “When was that and how?”

“I couldn’t say. Years ago. Carrie had mentioned losing her as a child.”

“Any idea what the mother’s last name was?” I asked.

“No,” he said.

I pulled my notepad out and wrote down the sister’s name. “The sister’s last name was Baker?” I asked.

“Baker, yes,” McAuley answered.

“Was she married?” Beth asked. “Accounting for the different last name?”

“At one point. I didn’t know her then, though. She was already divorced when she moved here. I didn’t know that the two had different last names. I just knew Tim as Tim.”

“Yeah, they’re different,” Beth said.

“Maybe Ms. Baker never dropped her ex-husband’s last name,” I said.

No one responded.

“What did she do for a living?” Beth asked.

“Carrie was a detective, and then maybe a year or so before her death, she quit the department and started some kind of private investigative deal.”

“Detective where?” Harrington asked. He stood from the file box he was digging through.

“Miami, here,” McAuley said.

I looked at Harrington. “You’re not familiar with the name?”

“She wasn’t from my department. Let me find out who she was. Carrie Baker, you said?”

McAuley nodded.

Harrington removed his phone from his inner suit-jacket pocket and left the room.

“How did Ms. Baker die?” I asked.

“It was a car accident. A pretty bad one, too. I guess she just veered off of the freeway and hit a big freeway sign. Too bad. It seemed like she was pretty happy the last few times we’d spoken. She had talked about business picking up and things like that.”

“Do you know any other details of this accident?” Couch asked.

He shook his head.

“If there was a police file, we should be able to get everything on it,” Beth said.

We went through a few more questions with McAuley before Agent Rivera walked him from the house. I sent Ball a message asking for everything he could get on Carrie Baker as well.

Tim paid the driver, closed the door of the taxi, and walked toward the entrance of the gas station located a few blocks from his house. Tim bought a hot dog and a soda from inside. He ate one and drank the other as he walked into his neighborhood. Tim tossed the empty can of soda into someone’s yard and heaved the duffel bag—filled with his supplies, cash, and watches—over his shoulder. He considered how he wanted to handle distributing the money. Tim went back and forth on his decision, torn between trying to find family members of the people that had left Jensen the inheritances or just donating the funds to some kind of charity for the elderly.

He continued walking down SW 146th Street, the main road into his neighborhood, until he got to SW 150th Street and turned right.

Tim put one foot in front of the other down the sidewalk—SW 145th Court passed by on his right as he continued walking. Tim neared SW 144th Place. He glanced up to the street to see headlights shining in his direction from the end of the block—the car was parked along the side of the road. As he neared the corner where SW 150th Street bent right and turned into his street, SW 144th Court, he stopped in the light of a streetlamp to check the time on the newly acquired watch around his wrist—a few minutes before ten.

“Hmm,” Tim said. He rocked his head back and forth.

Since he’d dispatched the doctor so early in the evening, he could still visit the next name on his list that night if he so desired. The man, Kenny Ridley, normally stayed out until bar close every night of the week, and the plan Tim had for the man would only work in the early morning hours, after Ridley was good and intoxicated.

“Television and a full night’s rest, or Ridley?” Tim questioned himself.

He pulled his sleeve back over the watch, adjusted the bag, and walked toward the corner where he would make a right toward his house. With each step, the roadway bent right and Tim could see farther up his block. He saw the flicker of red and blue lights. Tim took a few more steps until he had a clear view of the street in front of his house. Multiple police cars were parked in the road, and people were walking back and forth around the area. Tim saw too many cops for it to be anything other than them finding out his identity and being there for him.

He quickly turned around and retreated from the area the way he’d come. Tim once again neared SW 144th Place, off to his left. The car he’d seen the headlights of was closer. A spotlight attached to the car turned on and shone through the yard of one of the houses on the block.

“Shit,” Tim said.

He walked across the intersection, figuring a man jogging or running would draw the attention of whoever was in the car searching yards. Just before he hit the sidewalk on the other side of the street, he was lit up by the spotlight. Tim heard the sound of a motor rev and looked back toward the light to see the car advancing.

He yanked his pistol from his back waistline, broke to a full run, and dipped left into yards that split the houses on the block. Tim ran through three sets of backyards and then glanced back. The police cruiser slid to a stop, and the door flew open. He wasn’t going to be able to avoid capture while lugging around the bag of cash. Tim pulled the strap from around his head and tossed the bag to the grass. He made a right through a backyard and out to the front of the house to the next street, SW 145th Court.

Tim crossed the street, ran through the front yard of the house across from him, along with two more backyards, and reached SW 146th Ave. He stopped at the home’s edge and looked up and down the street. Headlights came toward him from a block down to his left, near the entrance to his subdivision. The patrol car’s spotlight lit left and then right as it approached. He took a breath and ran across the street as quickly as possible, disappearing along the side of the house facing the street. He continued just as he had on the last block, weaving his way through backyards at a full run. Tim never let up—the sounds of his pounding footsteps, gasping for air, and thumping heartbeat were all he could hear.

“Well, she was a detective at one time,” Harrington said. “Looks like her last year or so was spent in records.” He stuffed his cell phone back into his suit pocket.

“How does a detective get sent to records?” I asked. “That just doesn’t happen.”

“She could have screwed up. The detective position could have been too much. Who knows,” Harrington said. “We’ll have to start talking with those she worked with that knew her. I’d say we find her old partner if we want any kind of accurate portrayal of how she was or how she landed in records. Her old partner’s name was Detective Isaac Sellers.”

“He’s still active?” I asked.

“No. Retired but local.”

“Okay. Was there any record of demotion or punishment in her employee jacket?” I asked.

“Nothing as far as what I was told,” Harrington said. “I’ll have to get into the file tomorrow and have a look for myself.”

“When you were out on the call, Lieutenant, the neighbor told us she died in a car accident. We’ll need to have a look at the accident report,” Beth said.

“I’ll call back to the station and see what we can get on—”

Harrington’s sentence was cut short by something coming over the radios of the other two officers, still searching through boxes.

Harrington looked at the officers. “Get a ten nine on that,” he said. “Who called it?”