Requite (8 page)

“Is this what you want?”

“Yeah, hit pause.”

The frame stopped and jittered back and forth across the screen.

“OK, print me a couple copies of that image.”

Murphy clicked the print button. The printer at the side of his desk clicked and beeped as it started kicking out copies.

“Alright. Now see what you can do about finding that couple on the other video feeds that cover the inside of the bar. Let me know if you find something.”

“No problem, Lieutenant.”

I grabbed a few of the images he printed and proceeded to the stairwell. I ran up the stairs to the third floor and headed for Captain Bostok’s office. Hank was sitting inside talking with the captain. I gave the door a knock and walked in. “You guys in the middle of something?” I asked.

“Not really. Come on in. Rawlings was just going over what he got from the interview with the witness.”

“Which witness was it?”

“It was Lucy Jennings.”

I shrugged. “Which was that?”

“Not the one that called 9-1-1,” he said.

“Well, anything we didn’t already know?”

“Nope. Her statement was about the extent of what she witnessed. She thought she saw a fight from across the structure. Then her memory gets foggy from there. Now, she’s not certain that it was a van she saw speeding off. It could have been an SUV. She also can’t be certain on the color—white, gold, or silver. Something light colored, she said.”

“So not a fountain of knowledge is what you’re saying?”

“Precisely,” Hank said.

“Hank told me the bar was letting you look through their surveillance videos? Get anything?” the captain asked.

“Yeah, spill it,” Hank said.

“Got them leaving.” I tossed the photos that Murphy printed off the video on the captain’s desk. Hank and the captain each grabbed one.

“So they were there?” Hank asked.

“Yup. This was the best image we got so far. It’s them leaving the bar at 2:52 a.m. I have Murphy going through the other video feeds now trying to find them inside.”

“The guy let you take the video?” the captain asked.

“Made me copies and put them on a USB drive.”

“How much footage did he give you?” the captain asked.

“I got between midnight and 3:00 a.m. on four different cameras.”

“It looks like the camera that caught this covers a good amount of the street. Call down to him and have him keep an eye out for a light colored van or SUV driving by,” the captain said.

“Sounds good,” I said.

“We better get moving, Kane. Supposed to meet that witness in like forty-five minutes,” Hank said.

“Yeah, I’m ready. I’ll call Murphy on the way.”

“Keep me posted,” the captain said.

We left Captain Bostok’s office and headed out of the station. With a half hour left to get there, we had a good shot at being late—even later if we hit traffic. For the safety of us and everyone else on the road, I wouldn’t normally let Hank drive, but he insisted. He might have been the single worst driver I had ever been in a car with. Hank couldn’t regulate speed—one minute he was doing ten over, then next ten under. He stopped for every yellow and almost got in an accident some way or another every time he was behind the wheel. How he made it to forty years of age without dying in an auto accident was a miracle.

“IHOP, huh?” I asked.

“That’s what she said. I’m guessing she’d rather not meet with two cops at her workplace.”

“Where does she work?”

“Health club across the street. She said she only had an hour break. It looks like we’re a little late.”

“If you didn’t drive the whole way like an old woman, we would have been there ten minutes ago,” I said.

“I drive defensively, Kane. I have a perfect driving record and would like to keep it that way.”

“Hank, your defensive driving is after you initiate the other vehicles being defensive to you.”

“What?” He turned on his directional and started to switch lanes for the off ramp.

“Car. Car. Car!” I yelled.

The man driving the Corolla in Hank’s blind spot laid on the horn and swerved on to the shoulder.

“What’s that guy’s problem? I had my blinker on.”

I shook my head. “Yeah, just get us there alive please.”

We exited I-75 onto Brandon Boulevard and made the couple mile trip toward the restaurant. We pulled in the drive and lucked ourselves into a parking spot up front. Hank killed the engine.

“Is that her?” I asked.

A woman sat alone on the bench before the entry doors.

“Might be?”

I heard Hank’s stomach grumble from across the car.

“Want to grab some food while we’re inside?” I asked.

“I’d be fine with that. We’d be killing two birds with one stone and all.”

We got out and approached the woman on the bench. She stared down at her cell phone. She looked to be in her mid-twenties and wore athletic apparel.

“Are you Miss Collins?” Hank asked.

She looked up at us and brushed her long blonde hair from her face. “Yes, I’m Michelle Collins. Are you who I talked to on the phone?”

“Hello Miss Collins. Yes, I’m Sergeant Rawlings. We spoke earlier. This is Lieutenant Kane. We are leading the investigation for the Tampa Police Department on this case. Shall we go inside?”

“I guess. I already told the officers last night everything I saw though.”

“That’s fine, we’d just like to hear it from you first hand,” I said.

We walked into the packed IHOP and were informed that we’d have a ten minute wait. We sat on the bench and exchanged uncomfortable small talk until the hostess called us for seating. She planted us in a booth looking out onto the busy street in front. Two noticeable detectives on one side, and a nervous looking young women on the other, drew stares from the restaurant’s patrons.

“Your waitress will be right with you folks,” the hostess said.

She turned her back on us and rushed off to the front of the restaurant.

A waitress came past dropping drinks off at the table next to us and walked up.

“Hi, I’m Missy, I’ll be helping you guys out today. Can I start you off with some drinks?”

“I’ll just have a coffee,” I said.

“Same for me,” Hank said.

“Nothing for me?” Michelle said.

“OK. I’ll be right back with those.” She smiled and walked off.

“OK Miss Collins, we won’t try to take too much of your time up here. Why don’t you go over the other night for us,” I said.

I dug in my pocket and pulled out my notepad to jot down the specifics.

“Well, my boyfriend was there with his friends watching basketball or something. He drank too much, so I went to pick him up around bar close. I pulled past the lot for the bar and there was no place to park, so I went over to the parking structure. I drove around and couldn’t find a spot on level one so I went up to level two. When I came around the corner, I saw a couple people lying on the ground with a guy leaning over them. My headlights shined on the guy and he looked over at me. I stopped my car right there. The guy grabbed the girl up from the ground and put her into a van. A few seconds later he peeled out leaving the guy lying there. I waited a minute or two and drove over. As soon as I saw all the blood, I called 9-1-1. I waited in my car until the cops came.”

Her statement matched the one we had from last night to the letter. We needed to get the little details.

“Now it says here that he was wearing coveralls and a mask, can you describe those a little for us?”

“Well, the coveralls were white—head to toe with a hood.”

“OK, white coveralls with a hood.” I wrote it down. “And a mask? Can you describe that?”

“Ski mask. Black. Just cutouts for his eyes and mouth. I remember that.”

“Shoes?” Hank asked.

“I don’t think I looked,” she said.

“Gloves or bare hands?” I asked.

“White gloves.”

I wrote it down.

“Ethnicity?” Hank asked.

“I couldn’t tell.”

“Height and weight? Do you have a guess?” I asked.

“He was thin and tall. He had to be a couple inches over six feet.”

I jotted thin, six feet plus down on my notepad.

Our waitress showed with our coffees. “Are you ready to order or do you need a couple minutes?”

“We’ll need about ten minutes or so,” I said.

“Sure, no problem.” She left us.

I added a couple creamers and took a sip from my coffee. It was about what you’d expect, but not completely terrible. We got back into the interview.

“Miss Collins, what can you tell us about the vehicle he was driving?” I asked.

“White cargo van.”

“You don’t know what kind though?” Hank asked.

“Sorry, I’m not good with cars.”

“A guess at how old?”

She shrugged. “Sorry.”

“What about identifying marks on the van? Were there any words on it or damage that stuck out at you?”

“No. It was just a white van.”

“Windows?” I asked.

“Just front ones.”

“It says here you didn’t get a plate number. Did you see any of it?” I asked.

She shook her head. “It didn’t have one.”

“So there were no plates on the van at all?” Hank asked.

“No.”

I looked at the statement she left at the scene.
No Plate
was written down, meaning there literally was no plate, and not that she didn’t get the plate number.

Michelle looked at her phone. “I have to be back at work in ten minutes.”

“That’s fine. We’re just about through. Can you just tell us about driving up to the man and what took place then?” I asked.

“Well after the van drove off, I drove up to the man lying on the ground. He wasn’t moving. I got out and walked over to him. There was blood everywhere. I thought he might be dead, but I wasn’t going to check. I got back in my car, locked the doors and called 9-1-1.”

“And you waited there until the police arrived?” I asked.

“Yeah, it only took a few minutes until they showed up. They had to break up some people that were gathering around to see what happened. I told them I was the one who called, and they took my statement.”

“Miss Collins did you notice anything else while you waited? Did you see the van again or anything? Did any of the people who gathered look suspicious, anything like that?” Hank asked.

“No, not that I noticed. Once the paramedics showed up and took him, the police taped off the scene and were looking around and stuff. After that, they let me leave. I met up with my boyfriend and we took off.”

I finished jotting down the info on my pad, closed it up and stuffed it back in my pocket. “OK Miss Collins, that should be it. If you think of anything else, please give us a call.” I handed her my card, Hank did the same.

“OK, I will,” she said.

Hank and I stood as she slid out of the booth to leave.

“Thanks for meeting with us, take care,” Hank said.

“You too.”

As she walked out, Hank took her seat in the booth.

“What do you think?” he asked.

“Not too much there that we didn’t already know, but a little more info always helps. I’ll call Murphy and tell him to keep his eyes peeled for someone thin and over six foot leaving the bar around the same time. Maybe he was following them. You never know.”

“Let’s hope he gets something from the video. It’s about all we got right now,” Hank said.

I motioned our waitress over so we could order.

Tom took the key from under the mat and let himself in. The family dog, a brown lab, met him at the door—tail wagging.

“Hi, Otis. How’s the puppy?” Tom reached down and patted the dog on the head.

Tom made an immediate left and walked up the stairs to the second level—the dog followed. Upstairs, he walked the hall and then turned right into the office. A computer desk sat along the back of the room. There was a couch to his right and a small television on a table along the left wall. He slid the door open for the closet—inside stood a four foot tall metal file cabinet. He pulled the top drawer open and flipped through the folders until he found one marked
pay stubs
. He slid the file out and thumbed through it until he found the most recent one. The file was slipped back where it came from. Otis stood at the doorway of the room observing.

The next on his list was the tax bill for the house. He found it in the file marked
property
.

With the two pieces of paperwork in hand, he just needed one more item. He flipped through to the back file marked
passports
and dug his hand into the file. There were two inside—he removed them both. Tom flipped open the first one and tossed it back. It wasn’t the one he was looking for.

He opened the second one and stared at the photo. It was perfect. Thanks to his father’s strong Irish genes, both sons looked strikingly similar. They both stood six foot three and weighed around two hundred pounds. Their light red hairstyles were similar—close on the sides and a finger length on top. Mark, older by a less than a year, often wore a goatee. Tom preferred the clean shaved look. They would have been Irish twins, if they had the same mother.

Tom flicked the photo of his older brother’s passport. “Thanks Mark. I’ll owe you one.”

He stuffed the passport and papers in his pocket and closed the file cabinet. He went back out of the house the way he came and re-locked the front door. It would be weeks, if not months, before Tom’s brother ever noticed the missing items.

Tom checked the time. He needed to hurry—the DMV closed in a two hours.

After a quick stop at a drugstore for a twenty-five dollar money order, he pulled his customer ticket and had a seat in the waiting area of the DMV. He was number four seventy-eight, they were serving four fifty-five. He grabbed a magazine wrapped in a plastic jacket and waited. The numbers clicked by one by one. He watched the customers be told over and over that they hadn’t filled out the proper paperwork for their request. After another half hour, his number lit and Tom headed for the corresponding window.

An overweight, gray skinned woman sat at the counter. “How can I help you, Sir?” Her voice was deep and had a distinctive rasp.