Tunnel Vision (29 page)

“A career criminal in the making,” Brodie said. “I knew he wasn’t a beginner. Grab your coat, Nicholls, and call the lab boys to meet us. Maybe we can turn up something more concrete.”

“Who’re we gonna hit first?” he asked as he picked up the receiver.

“The girlfriend,” she answered. “I want to confront her with the records she falsified and get that part wrapped up. We’ll meet you at the car.”

Brodie started the car as Maggie slid into the passenger seat. “You know you’re not officially back on duty yet,” she said.

“Victim’s rights. I’d really like to be there when you bust him.”

“You will be, Maggie. I promise,” Brodie said as she smiled warmly at her. “The bastard almost cost me a very good detective. You’re thorough and you know how to work your hunches. You’ve dealt with my shit better than anyone would have expected.”

“I knew there would be issues when I applied for this position, Royce, and sooner or later I knew we had to deal with them. It’s hard to plan a future when there’s still past unfinished business,” Maggie said.

“We’ll work on it, Maggie,” she said, shifting the car into drive as Nicholls jumped into the back. He passed Maggie a slip of paper as he fastened his seatbelt.

“I already told the backups where to meet us,” he said.“Karen Dietrick lives at the El Dorado Apartments on North Grand,” Maggie said. “You know where it is?”“Yeah,” Brodie said. “Not far from the university.”

Two black and whites were already in the parking lot of the apartment building when Brodie brought her car to a stop.

“Send a couple of these officers to cover the back and have the other two come with us,” she ordered as she walked toward Apartment 128. “Maggie, find the apartment manager in case she isn’t home.” She and Nicholls drew their service revolvers as they approached the door. He stood to one side of the door while Brodie stopped on the other side.

She struck the door soundly with her fist. “Cedar Springs Police, Miss Dietrick. We have a warrant to search your apartment,” she announced loudly. She had made the announcement twice when

Maggie rounded the corner of the building with a stocky man in his mid-sixties. She held her hand up to stop them.

“Maggie, get the key,” she ordered.

Maggie took the key from the apartment manager and tossed it to Nicholls. Drawing her revolver, she moved closer to the apartment door and crouched down. Brodie nodded at Nicholls as he slipped the key into the lock and turned it. Turning the knob, he pushed the door open, but it was stopped by a chain lock.

“Fuck it,” Brodie said as she stepped in front of the door and landed a solid kick to the door, popping the chain from the doorframe.

She entered the apartment, followed by Nicholls. Within a few seconds of entering, she knew they would need the forensics team and the coroner. Breathing through her mouth, she signaled Nicholls to move to the right and they began checking to make sure no one else was in the apartment. Down a short hallway, the bedroom door was partially closed. Standing to the side, she crouched down and nodded again to Nicholls before cautiously pushing the door open. She swept her gun quickly around the room before reholstering it.

“Jesus Christ,” Nicholls breathed.

Karen Dietrick’s bloated naked body was spreadeagled on her bed, hands and feet tied to the headboard and footboard, her head encased in a plastic bag. It was obvious she had been dead more than a few hours. More like a few days. Brodie could feel her gag reflex begin to kick in as she and Nicholls backed out of the room.

Walking quickly out of the apartment, she said solemnly to one of the patrol officers, “Call forensics and don’t let anyone else near this apartment.”

Although she was taking in deep, cleansing breaths, she knew it would be a while before she got the scent of death out of her nose and her mind.

“Are you all right?” Maggie asked, resting her hand on Brodie’s shoulder.

“Better than Karen Dietrick,” Brodie said as she exhaled. “This fucker’s not leaving any loose ends, that’s for damn sure.”

“He has to know he’ll be the primary suspect for her death,” Maggie said.

“Didn’t you say he was going out of town for a job interview?”

“That’s what he said.”

“We’ll have to wait for the medical examiner to determine her time of death. If he was out of town, then he couldn’t have killed her and will be the luckiest fucker on the planet. Have this whole area, front and back, cordoned off until Frank and his guys finish. There’s nothing more we can do here for now. Where’s Nicholls?”

When Nicholls finally joined them, he was wiping his face with a handkerchief. “Boy, that was nasty, RB,” he said softly.

“You okay?”

“Yeah, but I think I’ll burn these clothes as soon as I get home,” he answered, attempting a weak smile.

“I’m betting we won’t find the same thing at Mr. Chambers’ residence. Since he knew this victim, I’ll take what we have and ask for a warrant.You up for it?”“Only if we can ride with the windows down,”

Nicholls said as he pushed his handkerchief into his pocket.

DARYLL CHAMBERS RENTED a small twobedroom house on the north side of Austin. Brodie requested back up from Austin PD via a secure frequency to the Austin dispatcher. Parking a block away from Chambers’ house, she briefed the patrol officers and instructed them to cover front and back entrances to the house. When no one responded to her call to open the door, a patrol officer broke the door open. It was quickly determined that the house was empty. The three detectives spread out through the small house. The second bedroom had been converted into a study. Brodie looked through the drawers of an old desk without finding much of interest. A desk calendar was filled with scribbles, notes and phone numbers. A calendar entry for the previous Sunday showed what appeared to be a flight number and times and she jotted down the information in her notebook. The airline might be able to tell her when his return flight was scheduled.

“Royce!” Maggie’s voice called from another part of the house.

She found Maggie in Chambers’ bedroom. “Find something?”

Maggie backed out of the closet and held up a shoe. “Look familiar?”

Moving closer, she examined the pattern on the sole of the shoe. “Looks like a match for the pattern in the pictures we have.”

“I’d like to wear these when I kick his ass,”

Maggie fumed.

“Well, bag them and we’ll let the lab determine if they match. Hopefully they won’t be the most popular shoe ever sold,” Brodie said.

The remainder of their search didn’t reveal much to indicate that Daryll Chambers had been involved in any type of criminal activity. If he had the key ring, it was probably with him and it was the only solid evidence they had against him, but he could argue he had found it. Lying to Maggie about where he got it was the only incriminating thing they had. Conveniently, any witnesses to his academic misdeeds were dead. With Daryll Chambers’ shoes in hand, the three detectives left Austin and drove back toward Cedar Springs.

“Now what, RB?” Nicholls asked as he seemed to be getting the color back in his face from their earlier discovery. “The only other place covered by the warrant is his work area at the university. Want to try there?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Might as well check that and get it out of the way.”

Reaching into her jacket pocket, she pulled out her notebook and handed it to Maggie. “See if you can find out what date and time Chambers’ flight will return to Austin. There was a lot of doodling on his calendar, but he traced over a couple of things several times to make them bolder. I think he used United Airlines. Either that or he’s planning something at the University of Alabama.”

“Or Arizona,” Nicholls added.

“Or Arkansas,” Maggie said.

“Or Alaska,” Brodie laughed.

As Maggie called directory assistance for the phone number, they all laughed. It had been a horrendous day, but their laughter broke the tension they were all feeling about the spiraling murder spree in Cedar Springs.

PRESSING THE WARRANT into the campus

security guard’s chest, Brodie took the master key from him and entered the outer office belonging to Malcolm Roth. “Unlock the inner door,” she ordered Nicholls as she began rummaging through the desk used by Daryll Chambers while Maggie pulled open the top drawer of the first of six four-drawer file cabinets.

“I’ll have to contact Dr. Roth about this,” the security guard said.

“Knock yourself out,” Maggie answered,

thumbing through a row of horizontal files marked examinations. “What are we looking for specifically?”

she asked.

“No clue,” Brodie muttered. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and find a stolen copy of Brauner’s exam.

“You’ve been watching too much Perry Mason.”

“Waiting for the one piece of evidence to fall in her lap always worked for Nancy Drew,” Brodie chuckled. “You find anything in there, Nicholls?”

“Just remnants of some pot smoking,” he called back. “What do you want me to do with it?”

“Leave it. It’s not listed on the warrant.”

As Maggie moved to the second file cabinet, Brodie got her knees and felt along the bottom of the desk drawers, but found nothing more than cobwebs. Standing, she joined Maggie. “I’ll start on this end and meet you in the middle. This is probably a waste of time anyway.”

“About half of what we do is a waste of time,”

Maggie said. “But you never know until you look, right?”

“You shouldn’t even be here, Maggie.”

“It beats watching my bruises turn a lighter shade of green and purple.”

Half an hour dragged by and the three detectives had nothing more to show for their efforts than they had when they began the search. By the time she reached the final file cabinet, Brodie’s back was beginning to tire from bending over. Kneeling in front of the bottom drawer, she tried to pull it open, but something inside caught and stopped it less than half way open. “Well, damn,” she mumbled. The drawer rested at a slight angle.

“What’s wrong?” Maggie asked.

“The drawer came off the roller and there’s too much damn weight in it.”

“If you can lift it while I pull, maybe we can get it back on track,” Maggie said, joining Brodie on the floor. Rising to her knees, Brodie put her hands under the drawer and lifted slightly. Maggie put a foot against the adjoining file and tugged at the drawer. It inched forward accompanied by the screech of metal against metal.

“Well, hell,” Brodie fumed. “Scoot over.” Sitting in front of the drawer, she placed a foot on the cabinets on either side of the stubborn drawer. Jerking it up and toward her, they heard a loud pop as the drawer broke loose and off the rollers, landing in front of Brodie.

A quick look through the files revealed nothing of interest. “Okay,” Brodie said, taking a deep breathe.

“You grab your side and I’ll take mine. We’ll lift it onto the rollers and hopefully it will close.”

Maggie nodded and on the count of three they lifted the drawer. After three tries, Brodie gave up.

“Nicholls! Give us a hand out here!”

Grinning as he knelt in front of the drawer, he said,

“Finally needed a little manly muscle, huh girls?”

“Whatever,” Maggie laughed. “Watch your

fingers.”

Two tries later, Nicholls said, “Check the rollers. It feels like it catching on something.”

“So much for Mr. Manly,” Brodie said. She took her penlight from her inside jacket pocket and shined the light under the cabinet. “What the hell? Looks like a piece of plactic that has lodged on the track. Move the file cabinets away from the wall,” she said as she stood up.

“What?”

“Just move the damn thing,” she ordered. When Nicholls was out of the way she went to the end file cabinet and, with Maggie’s help, walked it away from the wall.

Three file cabinets later they were looking at what appeared to be a utility door hidden behind the file cabinets. Brodie flipped the latch and pulled the door open, using her back to move the file cabinet farther away from the wall. Clicking on the pen light, she peered into the opening. “Call the lab,” she said.

“What is it?” Maggie asked.

“An entrance into the tunnels,” Brodie said as she stuck her head into the opening. “The original entrance used to be in this hallway. I can see where it was bricked up.” Pulling her head back, she said,

“Get the Mag-Lites from the car and bring some gloves.”

“IT’S AN OLD utility entrance for the wiring in this part of the building,” a university maintenance worker said as he wiped his hands on his pant legs.

“How many more of these are there?” Brodie asked.

“Probably one on each floor.”

“We searched those tunnels. I didn’t see any evidence of these then,” she groused.

“If you go inside the tunnel and close the door, you can barely see the seam. It’s just cut into the plaster. Over the years and about twenty-odd coats of paint it sort of blended in. I doubt anyone would be looking for a way out of the tunnels now, only in, for maintenance,” he explained.

“These weren’t on the original blueprints we were given,” Nicholls said.

“They wouldn’t have been on the originals,” the technician said. “They were more than likely added after the tunnels were shut down in case they needed to get to the wiring inside.”

“Get some people over to the other original buildings. Tell them to look for openings near the original entrances for the tunnels. Then padlock the damn things,” Brodie said.

Chapter Eleven

IT WAS FINALLY the weekend and Brodie was

exhausted and wired at the same time. They discovered Daryll Chambers was booked on a flight scheduled to arrive in Austin at 1:42 Sunday afternoon. The forensics lab hadn’t been able to contribute much to their investigation. Bruising on her body indicated Karen Dietrick had been sexually assaulted. Deep bruises and bite marks around her breasts and thighs suggested it had been more than rough sex and had taken place over a period of time. Her exact time of death was difficult to determine due to the condition of her body. The best guess they could make on the preliminary report was she had been dead between four and six days at the time her body was found. Six was good for their case because Chambers would have still been in town at the time of her death. Four was bad because, according to the airline, he would have been out of town. All they could hope for was that he would still be carrying that damned key ring.