Angels & Imperfection Page 7

  In this office, there was a door in a walnut paneled wall that led into another room nearly as large as the office. I couldn’t tell what it had been used for. That room had a door out into the hallway, set up the same way as the other doors. It appeared to be useful for entering or leaving the office suite, without using the front entrance, just like on the other side. I figured all together, the suite was at least 1,750 square feet. My current office was only about the size of the reception area in this suite. I imagined properly furnishing a space this big could become very expensive, very quickly.

  After we looked at the office suite, I took Christine to lunch at Chuy’s.

  “If you can get a six month lease for less than two grand a month, we’ll take it,” I said.

  “Wahooo!” She exclaimed.

  “Well hold on, you don’t know if we can get it for those terms.”

  “Oh yes we can! I already got the management company to commit to twelve fifty a month, on a six month lease. They’ll be thrilled to get it leased. It’s been sitting empty for more than six months.”

  She was beaming at me.

  “I can do all the decorating. I’ll make it look like you are the most successful P.I. in the city. Just you wait. You’ll see. This is a really good thing.”

  “I agree, Christine, you’ve convinced me. I’m kind of excited about it myself. And you won’t have to worry about losers like Walter anymore.”

  I immediately regretted having mentioned Walter. Her face clouded up, and I felt low because I had upset her.

  “Speaking of Walter, if I were you, I’d teach him a lesson he would never forget. He could have ruined your business, not to mention the way he treated me. I can’t stand to let him get away with it. Let’s punish him! You know what they say about payback.” She suggested.

  “No, we won’t.”

  “Why not, I know you aren’t afraid of him. Are you afraid he’d send his goons?”

  “No, that’s not it. I don’t believe in getting even. I believe because I’ve been forgiven, I should forgive others.”

  “Oh, for crying out loud! Do you just let scumbags and low-life’s walk all over you?”

  “No, I don’t. I just don’t allow myself to take revenge for offenses. I remember that I’m no better than they are, really. I have said and done things I regret. I have on occasion treated people badly. Don’t get me wrong, I get mighty annoyed when people act like idiots, drive poorly, act rudely, and play their music too loud. I try to remember I’ve been guilty of all those things myself, at one time or another, everybody has. When people deliberately offend me, I choose not to hold on to the offense, I try to let it go, like water rolling off a duck’s back. ”

  She considered my response for a moment.

  “Well, I’d like to think I’m better than some people I know.” She said.

  I nodded.

  “Yep, we all do. Sometimes looking down on others makes us feel better about ourselves. When we compare ourselves to others, and start feeling superior, we forget that everybody sins and falls short. No matter how good we think we are, our own righteousness is no better than dirty diapers, from God’s point of view. Nobody can measure up to God’s standard of righteousness. That’s why He sent Jesus to pay the price. Only Jesus was perfect. Nobody else can ever be good enough. ”

  She shook her head.

  “You religious types crack me up. People like Walter are just wicked and self-serving.”

  “We’re all self-serving, Christine, and we all have a little streak of wickedness in us. If we start by seeing our own limitations and failings, we get along better with other people. Besides, what Walter did actually benefitted us.”

  “… How’s that?”

  “Well, you work for me now, Christine. We’re getting to move into a great new space, and Walter’s foolish behavior is paying for the move. Mr. Simpson felt so bad about what Walter did he gave me a bonus check. It’s enough money to pay for the new office.”

  She grinned.

  “Maybe there is a little justice in the world.”

  Fourteen

  On the way to my next appointment about fifteen miles south of Tyler, in the town of Jacksonville, I dropped Christine off at the office. I was driving south, on highway 69. Often, when I’m driving, I listen to talk radio.

  “Human beings are just highly evolved apes. We have canine teeth and finger-nails, for biting and tearing. We’re just smarter than the other, less evolved apes. We invented weapons to kill with, which put us at the top of the food chain. That’s survival of the fittest, baby.”

  “Hmmph, I don’t consider our animal ancestry to be a sufficient reason to eat meat. If you were a more evolved human being, like I am, you’d understand the only sensible diet for people, is vegetarian or vegan. Vegetables, legumes and other plants are a renewable food source and they don’t pollute the planet. No animals are tortured and killed to provide food for me. If you think the killing of fish, birds and other animals for food, is appropriate, you’re barbaric!”

  To me, the debate seemed… tasteless.

  Once again, I wondered why I ever listened to talk radio. It offered endless opinions, but very little useful or intelligent perspective, and no light.

  As I turned the radio off, I noticed the car in front of me was a black Impala.

  I speed dialed Tony’s cell.

  “Detective Escalante here, what can I do for you?”

  “Tony, it’s John, I need you to run a license plate for me.”

  “Apparently, J.W., you presume I’m your personal mole into the DMV data base. Wrong!”

  I was startled by Tony’s attitude. Evidently, he was still angry about the incident with Dustin.

  “Tony, this is important. Please run this plate. We need to find out who the owner of the car is.”

  “Why do you want that information?”

  “I’m headed south towards Jacksonville. I’m right behind a black Impala. The license plate is GEN 416. That’s G as in Giraffe, E as in Elephant, N as in Nancy, four, one, six. A black Impala, Tony! I think this is the car.”

  “Oh yeah, is that what you think? Well, everybody has an opinion. They’re as common as belly buttons. Personally, I think most stand-up comedy is really pretty disgusting.”

  “Come on, Tony… Dustin gave me the license number.”

  “Let me see if I understand you correctly. You’re following a car with a license number, some crackpot gave you, and you want me to find out who the car belongs to, that about it, wild man?”

  “Tony, just consider the possibility, I could be right. Are you willing to let a child abductor go, just because you resent me asking you to check a license number? If I’m wrong, there’s no harm, no foul. If I’m right, we can get this guy.”

  There was no answer for a moment. I was afraid he had hung up on me.

  “J.W., something’s come up. I’ll get back to you,”

  He hung up on me.

  As we approached a red light, I pulled up next to the black Impala.

  The driver was an ordinary-looking white guy. He had short brown hair and a goatee. He looked to be in his thirties. He was wearing a grey, hooded sweatshirt, a ball cap and sunglasses.

  I followed the Impala south for ten minutes. When Tony called me back, we were on the overpass, at the town of Bullard.

  “Are you still behind the Impala?” he asked.

  “Yep, we just went through Bullard.”

  “Can you keep an eye on it, for a while longer?”

  There was tension in his voice.

  “Sure, Tony, in this traffic, we’re all headed south, I can keep him in sight. Why?”

  “There are several things happening. I ran the plate. The guy who owns the Impala lives here in Tyler. He has a record, J.W. I don’t have probable cause, or even enough information to get a warrant to search his apartment, but I’m sending a patrol car over there, just to take a look around, and maybe interview some of his neighbors.”

  He was
stressed. I could hear it in his voice.

  “Tony, what’s going on? This is the guy, isn’t it?”

  Tony sighed.

  “I’m headed south, toward you, right now. I want to know where he is, and where he’s going. We don’t have any probable cause to stop him, J.W.”

  That was the problem. Tony knew we were looking at the right guy, but there was no legal reason to interfere with him.

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Just don’t lose him. I’ve alerted DPS. They’re sending a unit your way. We’ll figure something out.”

  I saw the Impala’s left turn signal go on. I put mine on as well

  “Tony, he’s leaving the highway. He’s heading east on a little county road, near Mt. Selman. I’ll tell you the number in a minute.”

  “Don’t lose him.” Tony snapped.

  “Calm down. You know where he lives. You can pick him up any time you want. What’s the big deal about keeping him in sight?”

  Tony was silent for a moment.

  “J.W., there’s another little girl missing. She was taken about forty minutes ago. There is no actual connection to this guy or his car, but I need to know where he goes. It could be important. I’m just approaching Bullard, now. What’s that county road?”

  I told him, my mind racing.

  “What if I cause a wreck? I could hit him with my car. Maybe I could disable his vehicle, and we might get a look in his trunk.”

  We had entered a heavily-wooded and very hilly area. The road curved up and down, through heavy pine and mixed hardwood forest.

  “Don’t do that, J.W., something could go very wrong. If the little girl is in the trunk, she could be hurt or killed. Don’t spook him and try not to lose him.”

  I had a hard time understanding him, because the cell phone signal was breaking up.

  “Yeah, but easier said than done. He has to know I’m behind him. We’re the only two cars headed out here, in the deep-woods. Hang on, he’s leaving the road. I’ll have to go on past him.”

  The driver of the Impala had stopped at a pipe gate, the entrance to a private gravel road, disappearing back into the forest. As I drove by, he got out of the Impala and went to unlock the gate. In my rear-view mirror, I saw him open the gate, but then I went around a curve, and the forest blocked my view. I tried to relay the information to Tony, but the cell phone signal was breaking up. I had no bars on my phone. I had to drive nearly a mile before I could find a safe place to turn around. I now had no cell-phone signal, at all.

  When I got back to the pipe gate, it was closed and the Impala was out of sight. I got out of my car and checked the gate. It was locked with a padlock.

  I ducked under the single joint of welded pipe, which made up the gate, working my way into the forest, along the edge of the gravel road. The gravel gave out after about twenty yards, the road becoming just two dirt tracks, twisting through the mixed timber. The underbrush along the edge of the road was mostly blackberry thickets, brambles and coarse bushes. It was too tangled and close for me to creep through the woods in my sport coat.

  I went back to my car to gear up.

  Tony drove up a moment later. He saw what I was getting ready to do.

  “J.W. we can’t go in there. It would be trespassing on private property. I’m a cop from Tyler. I can’t… I don’t have any jurisdiction out here. I’m not even sure what county we’re in.”

  “Well, I think we’re probably in Cherokee County, and if you don’t have any jurisdiction, then you can’t stop me from going in there.”

  Tony was troubled. I could see he was trying to figure out some legal way to handle the situation.

  I ducked under the gate.

  “Hold on a minute. I’m coming with you,” he said.

  He went to the back of the unmarked Tyler police car and opened the trunk. I couldn’t see what he was doing. When he closed the trunk, he was wearing a bullet-proof vest, under a light jacket, with ‘POLICE’ stenciled on it. He was carrying a twelve gauge, pump action shotgun.

  Now we were ready.

  Fifteen

  We walked up the dirt road, side by side, speaking quietly.

  Tony told me the man we were after was named Evan Whitaker. He had a conviction for molestation and was a registered sex offender. He had been questioned and released, the day after Victoria was taken.

  “I only got far enough in here to see there’s a building up ahead. You can see the fresh car tracks where the Impala came in.”

  “If we see anything suspicious, we’ll go back to the car and radio for backup,” Tony said.

  When we got to the spot where I had stopped before, we could both see the outline of a building, just around a curve in the road, broken up by the trees and brush.

  We eased our way as best we could through the thickets of brush and brambles into the mixed timber forest. We went into the woods because we wanted the cover, and to make our approach to the building from a different direction than the road in.

  As we got closer, we could see the building was an older, single-wide mobile home, sitting in a clearing. The Impala was parked right in front of the little porch outside the front door. The trunk was open.

  We stopped to discuss our options.

  “Now we know all we need to know. Let’s go back out to the road and do some planning. We’ll coordinate with the Cherokee County Sheriff’s office. We can set up surveillance on this place and his apartment. If we see anything suspicious, we’ll pick him up for questioning.”

  “No, Tony, we need to go ahead and arrest him, right now.”

  “… On what charge? We don’t have any evidence against him.”

  “Yes we do. We have a witness who saw him hit Victoria Winslow and put her into the trunk of that car. Dustin even gave us the license plate.”

  “Yeah? Some nutty homeless guy, who won’t be able to testify in court.”

  “Tony, stop thinking about Dustin’s disability and focus on the facts.”

  I could see Tony trying to think of a response.

  “It’s too dangerous. If he sees us coming, he can escape out the back, or open fire on us from inside the trailer.” He pointed out.

  “What if those kids are in there? Can you leave them there with him? I can’t. I’m going to go have a look in the trunk of that Impala.”

  Tony tried to stop me, but I ducked past him, and ran in a crouch to the side of the Impala. At any moment, the man inside the mobile home could come out to close the trunk, and find me crouched beside it. I had half expected the suspect to open the front door and shoot me on sight.

  Staying hidden behind the car, I took a quick look into the trunk.

  There was nothing in the trunk, except a roll of duct tape and a small, pink tennis shoe.

  I looked across at Tony and nodded my head, pointing at the trunk.

  Tony sprinted across and crouched down next to me. He took a quick look into the trunk.

  “How do you want to handle this?” I asked him.

  “I need to get some back up in here, fast.” Tony pulled out his cell phone.

  From inside the mobile home, we heard a little girl scream.

  “No signal here, Tony. It’s time to go in. There are only two doors into that mobile home, the front and the back, which one do you want?”

  “Are you trying to get us killed?” He asked me.

  “Do you plan to live forever?”

  Tony looked down at the ground for a moment. When he looked back up, he was grim.

  “I’ll take the front door, you take the back,” he said.

  Tony told me he would give me sixty seconds to get to the back door, and then he would just walk up onto the porch and knock on the door. He would get the drop on Whitaker when he opened the door. I was just supposed to prevent him from bolting out the back door.

  Less than a minute later, I was on the back porch with my .45 in my hand. When I heard Tony’s knock on the front door, I tried the back door handle, very gently
. It wasn’t locked.

  I couldn’t see anything inside the trailer, but I heard someone slam a door closed somewhere inside. I could hear a little girl crying, and I could sense movement toward the front door.

  I opened the back door and stepped into a laundry room. Just as I reached the door into the hallway, I heard the sound of a shotgun being racked, off to my left. The boom of that shotgun being fired was like an explosion. The shot had come from inside the trailer. I raced into the living area and saw Whitaker throw open the front door. The cheap exterior door had a massive hole in it. I knew he had shot Tony through the door without even opening it. He racked his shotgun to fire again. I yelled.

  “Whitaker, drop it.”

  He was in the process of aiming his shotgun, but he froze and looked back over his shoulder at me.

  He was looking into the barrel of my .45, from less than ten feet away. I wouldn’t miss.

  I saw him process the fact he couldn’t hope to swing his long gun around toward me, without me blowing a hole through is head.

  I became aware of the smell of the cordite, the vague sound of a child whimpering somewhere, some sort of movement outside beyond Whitaker, and even the dust particles gently floating in the air.

  I wanted to kill him.

  Whitaker slowly let go of the shotgun with his left hand, spreading his arms wide, holding the shotgun in his right hand. He leaned slowly to his right, and set the shotgun down against the open door. He did it without ever taking his eyes off me. He straightened up.

  “Don’t look at me,” I said. “Put your hands behind your head, lace your fingers together. Now back up slowly toward me. Stop. If you move a finger, I’ll kill you. Get on your knees. Cross your feet. Now, face down on the floor.”

  He started to unlace his fingers.

  I kicked him hard in the middle of his back. He smacked the cheap linoleum face down, sprawled out.