Murder! Too Close To Home (23 page)

Chapter 60

March 22, 1997

When I got back with the coffee, Betty met me with a loving smile, a vision of loveliness indeed for these tired eyes. You could tell she was worried about me, thinking I was wearing myself out, but we all were overworked on this case and a vacation was probably on the minds of each and every one of us.

Squeezing her hand quickly, we took our seats as the others trickled in. Harry started the meeting by confirming that the plates spotted by the train engineer matched the car they were on, and that the car was registered to Wesley.

He had used his own car!

The fact that our perp was getting bolder was not lost on me, knowing the bolder he got the easier it would be to catch him when he tripped up.

I also realized that an emboldened murderer was more likely to pick up his pace, the lust for more becoming all encompassing in their life.

Frank and I were next. We explained how the targeting of the Sheriff’s department had led us to the notion that if the mysterious woman was leading the charge, maybe it was someone that had been previously arrested…maybe wrongly in her estimation.

We next laid out our plan to investigate women arrested in the last two years and see if we could find a correlation. In other words, someone that may have it in for the sheriff and that matched the physical build of the woman on the security footage.

“I’ve been thinking about the two year thing Gabe” Frank offered. “I think we should extend it to maybe five years. Many repeat offenders could have been incarcerated from three to five years and may have just gotten out in the last few months.”

Although this would increase our work load tremendously, we all agreed with the logic and included it in the plan. Harry and Tucker volunteered to weed through the files and come up with a list of suspects, relief probably showing on my face as the thought of getting out of days of mundane file searching reached my brain

“I’ve got some information that may help,” Betty piped in suddenly. “I’ve received the list from the stationary company of customers they’ve sold their pens to in the two counties, actually thirty two names of women in all. Crossing this with the lists from the parochial and private schools in the area, we pare that down to six names. I propose we run these names through our files first to see if any of them show up in our arrests.”

Could it be this easy?

I was cautiously hopeful, but knew it was probably a long shot. Betty gave Harry and Tucker her list and they went off to cross reference the names.

“Good work Celtic!” I schmoozed, “that must have taken a lot of time.”

“You know how much I enjoy a puzzle,” she replied. “Just another day on the job,” she finished with a shy smile.

“My hero,” I added, “I knew marrying you was a smart move, makes me look like a genius.”

“I wish I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard that” she replied as she stood to leave, her face nonetheless showing the color of embarrassment. “See you later.”

My heart skipped a beat as I watched her and her uniform leave the room, reminding myself once more what a lucky man I was.

Chapter 61

March 25, 1997

“What’s this all about anyways?” Christine Mattox uttered irritably, smoke darting out of her mouth in little puffs as she spoke. The cigarette held between her slightly trembling fingers created a cloud that hung eerily in the room, her eyes darting around quickly like a rodent.

Ms. Mattox was the winner of our suspect lottery, the one person that fit all of the parameters that we had set to find the mastermind of the recent murder spree. Having now met the lady in person, however, I had a hard time believing this emaciated redhead was capable of pulling together a good party, much less an ingenious string of murders.

Nevertheless we needed to eliminate her as a suspect, a job Frank and I, having volunteered for the duty in haste, were now trying to muddle through.

“We just need to ask you a few questions in relation to a case we are working on,” Frank said in his best professional detective voice. “You were incarcerated for over a year for assault and battery, the particulars involving a black iron skillet and your now ex-husband Hank, is that correct?”

Taking a long drag on her cigarette while giving Frank a look of concern, she blew the smoke out slowly before answering. “Yeah, so…?”

“You were released approximately six months ago, is that also correct?”

This time she didn’t take a drag, but gave Frank a long stare before uttering another, “Yeah.”

“What have you been doing with yourself since your release, Christine?”

She inhaled deeply on the cigarette again, followed that with an amazing display of holding the smoke in her lungs, and finally executed the longest smoky exhale I have ever witnessed.

“I sell Mary-Kay, can’t you tell by my gorgeous skin. Pretty successful at it too, throw in free sex if you buy the deluxe kit.”

She pounded her cigarette butt into the ashtray, taking the time to grind it thoroughly before continuing.

“What the f*** is it to you anyway?”

“Need I remind you of your duty to readily submit to an interview at any time as part of the terms of your parole?”

“Of course I know that, my PO reminded me. I’m here ain’t I? Doesn’t say anything about liking it though…or answering dumb questions.”

“To tell you the truth, Christine, you fit the profile of someone we are looking for. We really don’t think it is you we are looking for however, so if you will cooperate freely we should be out of here shortly. Sound good to you?”

“Let’s go then, gotta important appointment I gotta get to,” Christine replied with resignation.

“Did you order a ‘Writer’s Nirvana’ ink pen from Florida Stationers? Our records indicate you received it at your current address about a week after you got out of the penitentiary.”

A look of confusion crossed Christina’s face before her eyes lit up in recognition. “That fancy pen my crazy ma bought for me?”

A loud cackle escaped from her lips, followed by a coughing fit that lasted half a minute or more. When she had composed herself again, she smiled conspiratorially.

“That crazy old woman thought I could write a book about my time in the big house, like anyone would be interested in that. I told her right to her face she was crazy.”

“Do you have the pen with you?” Frank asked hopefully.

“Sure do, it
is
a nice pen. Hand me my purse.”

I reached behind me and snatched the purse off of the table, handing it to her with two hands. She dug through the crowded purse for several seconds, finally giving up and dumping the contents on the table in front of her.

“There you are!” she said, picking up the green and black writing instrument from the pile and handing it to Frank. She immediately started grabbing the other pieces and stuffing them back in her purse.

“That’s definitely a nice pen, Christine, you use it much?” Frank asked.

“Nope…never have. Just carry it around to impress my beau’s.”

I snickered at her response, earning myself a sly smile for my efforts.

“We need you to fill out this form for us, just standard policy, you understand,” Frank said as he laid a form in front of her.

The form Christine was filling out was one we had quickly put together for our interview, contrived to force her to unknowingly write out certain key letters we would later compare to the handwriting in the code book.

When she had finished with the form, we told her she could go. Taking up the form, I compared it to the book. The style of the lettering was the same, indicating the parochial school training I suppose, but it was also no surprise to me that the quality of the lettering was not to the same standard as the author of the book.

Before she had left the room, I had nonchalantly praised her writing skills, asking her what kind of grades she had gotten for it in school.

“B’s and C’s mostly. I remember ‘cause that really pissed off my ma. She used to say ‘Good handwriting is the mark of a real lady,’ I guess she was right about that.”

Thinking of the code book sitting next to me, and the implications of the regally drawn letters within it, I thought I might have to disagree with Christine’s mom wholeheartedly on that matter.

Chapter 62

March 25, 1997

We were pretty sure of Christine’s innocence, in this matter anyway. We asked her to keep the subject of the interview under her hat for now, and she readily agreed when we cut her loose.

Meeting Betty in the conference room after the interview, Frank and I gave her a point by point breakdown of the meeting. You could see the letdown in her face as the realization hit that her theory had been blown to hell.

“I really thought this would pan out, all of the points were met with Christine Mattox, now I’m not sure which way to go.”

“She was at the top of the list, sure,” I stated, trying to reassure the lovely but fretting girl of my dreams.

“But there are others on the list; we have the people that bought the pen and went to private schools but weren’t arrested. Let’s interview them, and if that doesn’t pan out, we look at the others that bought the pen only. That still leaves quite a few suspects to look at.”

“Look,” I continued, “We know the ink was involved, we are pretty sure the lettering indicated private schooling, but the previous arrest was just a theory. We haven’t lost anything. It’s just going to take longer to follow the clues is all.”

“Ok,” Betty stated, her shoulders back again. “I’ll set up some more interviews.” Getting up then, she left the conference room to make the calls.

“Want to get back to our Franklin County excursion tonight?” Frank asked, seemingly with some excitement in his eyes. “After all, you’ve seen the house now, kinda.”

I was getting anxious to get back to it, the look and smell of the house still fresh in my mind.

“Sounds good to me, I was thinking that we could start in the southwest instead of the southeast to give us a different perspective.”

That seemed acceptable to him and we made plans to leave right after work. I found Betty and let her in on our plans. She acted reluctant to agree, but I knew she had other plans anyway. Reminding her of her previous engagement, she grinned brightly.

“Aw, I didn’t think you remembered!”

Her conveniently forgotten plan, a sales party given by one of her friends, was an evening of sexy lingerie and toys to liven up one’s bedroom. I must admit, I was more then a little anxious to see what she bought.

We were holding hands for a moment in the file room when a look of concern crossed her face.

“You be careful tonight, I’ve got a funny feeling about it.”

“Maybe it will be a
good
funny feeling,” I said nonchalantly, also having a strange feeling of our night’s travels ahead. Kissing her on the cheek and giving her hand a quick squeeze, I left her to her labors as I went to get ready to leave.

The strange feeling stayed with me throughout my preparations…what was it that was bothering me about tonight’s investigation?

Being able to come up with no good reason, I tried shrugging it off as I left the building to meet Frank in the lot, determined to ignore the feelings as we got down to the business at hand.

If I’d known what this night was to bring, I might have approached it a little differently.

Chapter 63

March 25, 1997

We started our night on the southwest corner of the area we were searching. I had brought a blue pen to mark the progress of our new search to differentiate it from the first search’s red markings. Road after road passed as we followed the grid like layout of the roads. One mile straight, right one mile, right once more, then traveling over the original road again to get to the next mile. It was a maddening course, but we buckled down and attacked each road in turn as we got to them.

Since we had been on the roads before and we knew a little more of what we were looking for, the search progressed much faster than our first efforts. By the time it was almost dark, we had covered ten sections. We were a little dejected as we had found nothing of interest the whole night, but decided to do one more round before we called it quits.

We were reliving the earlier interview with Christine Mattox, laughing about the now absurd notion of her being a mastermind. It was a fine way of passing the time, keeping the mood light while we continued on our monotonous search. Road after road passed by in a blur as we looked at every house we passed, marking our never ending progress on the map as we went.

My jaw suddenly became slack at the sight before me. Finally regaining function I yelled “STOP!” Frank hit the brakes rapidly, centrifugal force pressing us into our shoulder harnesses.

“Is that it?” Frank asked as he stared at the house to our left. Setting back from the road, the newly painted two-story farm house seemed to match the vision in my dream perfectly.