Judged (19 page)

“Okay,” I said.

Once everyone had some time to look over the information presented and get familiar with what we’d found in the two locations the previous day, Couch brought out some copies of the accident reports and passed them out.

“I just want everyone here to read the witness statement for themselves,” he said.

The room went quiet for a moment while the agents read.

“So this Tim Wendell actually witnessed his own sister die in a fatal car accident?” Rivera asked.

“Seems so,” Couch said. “And claims that another vehicle, this black Mercedes SUV ran her off the road. We want to find out if any name we have in any of the file boxes, or anyone from his wall of people, owns or has owned this vehicle—past or present.”

“All we have to go by is black Mercedes SUV and Florida tags?” Pottsulo asked.

“That’s it,” Couch said.

“Says here that the witness, Wendell, was cited for DUI at the scene. Could be why the police at the scene didn’t buy his story. Do we know if the officers at the scene knew that he was related to the deceased?”

“I’m assuming so,” I said. “I mean, I guess we don’t know for sure, but how could they not? You would think that Wendell would have given that information. Speaking of the officers at the scene though, we should get some of those guys in to get their accounts of the accident.”

“That’s not a bad idea.” Couch looked at me. “Did you want to handle that?”

“Yeah, I have to call Harrington in a little bit here, anyway. I’ll get some information on the officers that were on scene, and then I’ll make contact with them individually.”

“Okay,” Couch said.

“What do we want to do about circulating this guy to the public?” I asked. “Are we going to get a press conference set up here?”

“I think you guys came in right after we went over that. I put something together for noon today. We have a couple of stations coming. We’re going to give the media a brief statement, but Wendell’s face should be everywhere by this evening. I was going to ask if you and Agent Harper wanted to join me on that.”

“Yeah, we will,” I said.

“Okay. Everyone else, it’s time to start digging through files. Use the DMV database and let’s find this SUV if it’s in there.” Couch looked at the two men seated on the far side of the table, whom I hadn’t met before. “Brown, Thompson, I discussed what I needed from you guys earlier. I want records of every last Mercedes SUV in the area. Delete every entry where the vehicle is newer than when the accident happened. I don’t care how you guys get the list of registered vehicles—just get it. I want every owner’s name in a seventy-five-mile radius of where the accident occurred.”

The room cleared—the agents and tech team went to take care of their assigned duties. Colt and the other member of the forensics team at the Wendell house went back to the lab, I assumed. Beth and I headed to Couch’s office and had a seat. We spent the next twenty minutes going over what needed to be included in the press conference and planned out the rest of our day after the Linda Blackwell statement and dealing with the media. While the forensics team had been through Wendell’s house and removed all the files and information he had pegged to the wall, I still wanted to take a drive back and have another look around.

Linda Blackwell had come, given us her statement, and left. Her memory of the events that transpired hadn’t gotten any better overnight—she basically knew nothing about her assault or the assailant. The only new information we picked up was the tox screen from the medical examiner and an identification of the long aluminum rods Jensen had in his bag. The toxicology report stated that Jensen had been overdosed with the same drugs he’d confessed to giving to the elderly under the table. They were the same drugs from the empty vials found on scene. Forensics informed us the aluminum rods were jab sticks—used to administer tranquilizers on game farms and zoos. Neither piece of new evidence put us any closer to hunting down Wendell. When I spoke with Harrington briefly, he’d said he was going to see when he could get the officers from the scene of the Carrie Baker accident—as well as her old partner, Isaac Sellers—in for interviews.

I was sitting at the front of the Miramar field office’s packed media room. Reporters sat shoulder to shoulder in folding metal chairs—those who couldn’t find seats lined the walls. From the left wall to the right, each person was taking notes or using a voice recorder. A handful of camera crews took up the back corners of the room.

Beth was sitting to my side, and Couch was standing at the podium, giving the name of our suspect and asking the press to distribute the photos of Wendell that he’d passed out at the beginning of the press conference. The plan for the press release was Couch giving a brief overview of the case and our suspect and then introducing Beth and me. My segment would be to give the media the details of the prior evening and some more about our suspect. Beth’s part of the plan was to not get stage fright while she delivered a couple sentences aimed at asking the public for help.

Couch was wrapping up, about to pass the speaking duties to me. I looked down and read over the bullet points I’d written in my notepad, things I wanted to touch on. My phone vibrated in my pocket, so I slid it out and glanced at the screen. The message was from Harrington. I opened it, read it, and showed it to Beth so she could have a look.

“Tell Couch,” she said quietly.

I stood and went to his side.

“One second guys,” Couch said to the room.

I showed him the message from Harrington.

Couch returned to the podium. “That’s going to do it for us, folks,” he said. “We’d like to thank you for coming. Make sure we get his photo distributed to everyone. As soon as we have more, we’ll issue a statement.”

The room rumbled with questions. Reporters raised hands and fired off question after question, but they received no answers. Couch held up his hand and said we wouldn’t be answering any questions at that time. He motioned Beth and me from the room through the side door.

We followed Couch into the hallway.

“Call him,” Couch said. “See what exactly is going on there.”

I dialed Harrington.

“Lieutenant Harrington,” he answered.

“It’s Rawlings. What did you guys get?”

“I’m on my way over there right now. The extent of what I know was what the message was. A guy, a little less than a mile away from Wendell’s home, claims he was held hostage by an intruder last night.”

“Wendell, I assume,” I said.

“I have a DL photo of Wendell. I’ll get the guy to confirm or deny as soon as I get there. I should be over at this guy’s house in about twenty minutes.”

“Send me the address. We’ll be on our way in a minute or two here.”

“You should see it in a second,” Harrington said.

“Thanks for the call.”

“Yup. See you guys in a bit.” Harrington clicked off.

I hung up.

“Well?” Couch asked.

“Pretty much all he knows right now is what the message said. He’s on his way there and is sending me the address.” I stared at the screen of my phone and saw the icon for a new text message show up in the top-left corner. I tapped the screen and read off the address.

“Let’s get over there and see what we get,” Couch said.

The three of us left the building and headed back toward Wendell’s neighborhood and the address we’d been given. Ten minutes out, I received a message from Harrington that the intruder was in fact Wendell and that he’d stolen the man’s vehicle. Harrington said he’d issued a BOLO already. I shared the information with Beth, who called Couch, driving ahead of us, and relayed the information. We pulled up to the address a couple minutes before one thirty. A pair of patrol cars and Harrington’s gray unmarked Crown Victoria were parked along the curb in front of a beige single-story home with gray shutters. The three of us got out of our vehicles and approached the house. The lawn of the home was overgrown, more weeds than grass. The garage door was open and empty. Couch led us to the front door and knocked.

“Come in through the garage,” someone said from the other side of the door.

We did and entered the home through a small laundry room and then into the kitchen. Three patrol officers stood around, and Harrington sat with a man at the kitchen table.

Harrington glanced back toward us. “Agents.” He then pointed toward the doorway.

Near the front door was a hole in the wall, and the tile of the foyer was covered in broken drywall chunks, dust, and what looked like handprints.

“We might have to have someone look at that, so I figure it’s probably best to not disturb the area there.” Harrington waved us over to the table. “This is Tony Sirtis, the homeowner.” He looked at Sirtis. “These are Agents Rawlings, Harper, and Couch. Why don’t you run through your story again?”

The man, looking around thirty years old and wearing a black heavy metal T-shirt, put his hand through his long, dusty-looking hair. Some of the dust dropped to the shoulders of his shirt. “The guy came up into my backyard while I was out on the patio area, having a smoke. I was looking at my phone and playing some music, so I never saw or heard him until he was right at the screen door with a gun pointed at me. Anyway, the guy made me come into the house and followed me in. That’s when I saw that he was all wet and covered in pond scum.”

“I’m thinking he probably swam across that channel,” Harrington said.

I nodded but said nothing, wondering how close I’d actually been to him at any given point.

The man continued, “So the guy orders me around a bit: do this or I’ll kill you, do that or I’ll kill you, things like that. That’s really about it. He took my car and left a couple of hours ago. As soon as I got free, I called 9-1-1.”

The man’s story didn’t account for the hole in the wall or the dust on him or the hours Wendell had spent in his home. I pointed at the area near the front door. “What happened there?”

“Oh, he wanted some clothes, so I went for the revolver in my dresser. He caught me going for it, tied my hands, and locked me in my bedroom closet, I broke through the wall in an attempt to get out, but he caught me. That’s how I got this.” He pointed at his swollen lip and nose. “The guy kicked me in the face while I was hanging out of the wall.”

“Okay, back up a bit,” I said. “You gave him clothes?”

“Yeah, he was all wet and asked for a change of clothes, which I gave him.”

“What did you give him?”

“A plain gray hooded sweatshirt, a pair of jeans, some socks, and shoes.”

“He was still wearing this when he left?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

I took my notepad from my inner pocket and wrote down what the man was wearing. Couch took his phone from his pocket to make a call, probably to get the clothing added to the description for the media.

“And you confirmed the photo was in fact the man that was here?” Beth asked.

“Yeah, that was him. Who is he?”

“Have you been watching the news at all?” Beth asked.

“Yeah, every day. I’m on home confinement. Not much else to do other than stare at the television. Wait, this wasn’t the vigilante guy, was it?”

“We believe it was, yes,” Beth said.

“Hmm,” the guy named Tony said thoughtfully.

“What?” I asked.

“Well, I guess that kind of explains the guy’s little interrogation deal that he did with me.”

“You’ll have to expand on that,” Beth said.

“Well, so after he drags me out of the wall and ties me up again, he sits me down and asks why I’m on house arrest. He seemed real interested in my offense or whatever you want to call it.”

Couch clicked off from his phone call and rejoined the conversation. “What did you do?” he asked.

“Felony assault,” Harrington said.

“It sounds worse than it was,” Tony said. “I shouldn’t have gotten anything for what I did.”

“Let’s hear your version quickly,” Couch said.

“I beat the shit out of my sister’s boyfriend for knocking her around. You want to beat on a woman, especially my little sister, and well, you get what’s coming to you. The guy deserved everything he got. Anyway, I got a year inside and six months of home confinement. If I would have known that I was going to get that, I would have put a better beating on his punk ass.”

The nature of his crime, in my head, somehow didn’t qualify him to receive death at Wendell’s hand, which was probably why the guy was sitting before us and still breathing. The next thing that registered with me was the realization that his crime had been a felony, along with the fact that he’d admitted to owning a firearm, and surely everyone else in the room realized that also. I was fine with leaving that to the locals to deal with, for we had more pressing matters on our plate at the moment.

“So he took your car,” I said. “Did he mention anything about where he was going, what he was doing?”

“No. He said, ‘I’m taking your car. Where are the keys?’ After that, he left.”

“This was last night that this all happened, and you said he didn’t leave until this morning. Did he sleep here? How did that go?” Beth asked.

“I think he was trying to when I was in the closet. But that all occurred in the early hours of the morning. After that, we sat in the kitchen when he questioned me about my offenses. That took an hour or so. After that, we sat in the living room, and he watched television all night. I actually fell asleep for a little while. I’m not sure if he did, though. We didn’t talk much after.”

“So you guys just snuggled up in front of the TV all night?” I asked.

“My hands were zip-tied together. So were my ankles. He made me sit just off to the side of the television so he could watch me and the TV at the same time. I guess after I tried for the gun once and tried to escape through the wall, I didn’t want to press my luck with the guy by trying to do something again. There was something with his whole questioning thing that he did—it kind of spooked me. His whole demeanor changed, like someone flipping a switch. It sounds weird, but I could see something in his eyes. He looked like he was contemplating killing me.”

“Yeah, he probably was,” Couch said.