Authors: George Fong
17
Wednesday –
Jack held
a photo of the latent print inches from his face, as his eyes followed the twists and turns of the loops and whirls, the tented arches. A thumb and three fingers is what Hoskin had been able to successfully lift. Jack carefully placed the card on his desk, his fingers rounding its edges. “Are they being checked in IAFIS?” The Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System comprised the database for all prints on file.
Hoskin nodded. “Already submitted. We put a rush on the card. Hope to have an answer back within a couple of hours.”
“That’s too long.”
“I’ll go push.”
“You do that. Tell them the SAC has ordered you to be pushy.”
“You know he’s out of town.”
Jack lifted one eyebrow.
“Works for me.” Hoskin walked out of the bullpen.
Jack picked up his briefcase and looked over at Marquez who was tapping a pen on a notepad.
“Let’s go, Lucy.”
“Where to?”
“ERT’s still at Baker’s house. Let’s see what they
turned up.”
There was little else they could do and waiting was something Marquez despised. She grabbed up her jacket, and the two headed out the door. Jack yelled at Hoskin as they passed him down the hallway. “Call me the moment you get a hit on those prints.”
Hoskin gave two quick pumps with his right hand, turned and disappeared into the radio room.
They arrived an hour later. Two SUVs blocked the entrance to Baker’s driveway, and yellow evidence tape circled the perimeter. Several neighbors stood in bathrobes outside, wondering what horrible thing had happened inside the Baker home. Jack maneuvered his vehicle between an ERT Suburban and a patrol car. The lights in the house were all on and Jack could see agents milling around inside, a photographer’s camera flashing every few seconds and large brown paper sacks being carried out to the evidence van. Jack looked down at his watch.
He rubbed his tired eyes. “You ready?” he asked.
“Like a race horse,” Marquez answered.
As they made their way toward the front door, a uniformed officer gave them a hard stare before throwing a casual salute and stepping aside. A dozen agents roamed the hallways in latex gloves and Tyvek containment suits. Green light beams from the RUVIS illuminated a small monitor screen as the agent panned the equipment over the glassy surface of the back slider looking for fingerprints. Jack turned the corner and found his way into the living room. A half-empty beer bottle sat on the coffee table in a small pool of water, moisture from the sweating glass. Jack imagined Paul Baker sitting on the couch, scanning the mail while his wife lay dead in the bathtub down the hall. The thought of coming home to find his own wife, Emily, murdered gave him a chill. He paused to regain his focus. He needed to get back on track, back to finding Jessica Baker.
He turned to see three agents conferring down the hall next to a doorway, and headed in their direction. Marquez followed. An agent, Sheldon Stewart, exited the room right where the three stood, holding plastic evidence bags, which he handed over to Brad Houston, who placed them in a large box already filled with other pieces of evidence. Hoskin had designated
Houston
team leader for this search.
Houston
reached in his jacket pocket and pulled out a pair of wire-rimmed glasses, slipping them on and carefully jotting down notes in a log.
“What do you have, Brad?” Jack asked.
Houston
looked over. “I see the cavalry has arrived.” He shook Jack’s hand before waving the crew to follow down the hallway and into the master bedroom, where more evidence bags were neatly stacked on the corner of a crimson-stained mattress. A bedroom chair lay on its side and a glass lamp was smashed against the wall. Droplets of blood dribbled across the carpet, followed by larger, smeared bloodstains, denoting something heavy dragged into the master bathroom. Jack maneuvered around the evidence and into the room.
“The place has been gone over already. Samples taken, items photographed, hairs and fibers vacuumed. Nothing else of value for you to look at.”
Jack pointed at the blood smeared across the carpet. “Looks like there was a struggle.”
Houston
nodded. “A pretty bad one. Mrs. Baker must’ve put up a helluva fight. There’s handprints in blood over the broken lamp and streaked across the bed sheets. My guess is the assailant killed her here.”
Houston
pointed to a spot next to the bed where a dry, dark stain crusted on the carpet. “This is where she bled out before being dragged into the bathtub.”
“How was she killed?” Marquez asked.
Houston
pointed toward the ceiling and a long splatter of blood trailing across it, dripping down the walls. “Hit her with something hard, over and over.”
Houston
swung his arm up and down, mimicking the motion. “Her head took a good beating.”
Houston
dragged a thumb across his neck. “To add insult to injury, he sliced her throat open for good measure.”
Jack shook his head in disgust. “What about the daughter?”
“No sign of a second struggle, and we found nothing to lead us to believe she was killed.”
Jack already knew she was alive based on the photo. Still, it was reassuring to hear
Houston
affirm it.
“I guess that could be good news,” Marquez said.
Houston
shook his head. “I’m not so sure. If this guy wanted money, he wouldn’t have killed the wife.” He pointed at the blood soaked floor. “This asks for cops to be involved.”
“No ransom note found, I take it?”
Houston
shook his head. “Her bed sheet is missing. I’m guessing her kidnapper wrapped her in it to conceal her as he carried her out. I think the daughter was drugged.”
“How did you reach that conclusion?” Marquez asked.
Stewart held up a plastic evidence bag with a spent syringe. A tag dangled from the bag. Jack reached down and took the bag, reading the tag. “Ketamine?”
Houston
tipped his reading glasses below eye level. “Not just for horses. It’s used to quiet cranky patients. Like inmates.”
Jack paused and Marquez chimed in. “Inmates?”
“Yeah, wouldn’t have figured it out without some good old-fashion luck.”
Houston
pointed further in the bag. “We found it under the bed sheets. Probably fell out when he was struggling with the wife.” Inside, a smaller clear plastic bag, torn open at one end, with white typed lettering: 150 mg dose of Ketamine from
Butte
County
. “That’s Butte County Jail Infirmary,”
Houston
continued. “My sister worked as a nurse at a lock-up in
Minnesota
. Said they used Ketamine to calm inmates when they get all spooled up. We could be looking for someone with access to the drug vault in
Butte
. Possibly an employee.”
Jack paused for a moment, the pieces coming together in his head. There were too many coincidences. Drugs from Butte County Jail, where a child killer recently escaped. And now, suddenly a child is missing.
Alvin Franklin Cooper. He had come back into Jack’s life, and he was picking up where he left off.
Marquez glanced over, curiously. “What?”
“You know that case I needed your help with after this one was over?”
“Yeah.”
18
Wednesday –
The man
sounded out of breath when he walked through the creaky door that separated Jessica from the outside world. Thick tape was still over her eyes and a rag tightly knotted around her mouth. She didn’t know how long she had been struggling to breathe as the quietness voided all sense of time. Between the summer heat and fever, Jessica felt nauseated, fighting off the urge to throw up.
A sharp sting raced across her face as the tape over her eyes was ripped away; she cried out a muffled shriek. A second later, bright lights and blurry images swirled in front of her. She blinked hard, trying to get everything in focus. Suddenly, she could see. See him. Jessica dropped her stare, forcing herself not to look directly at her captor.
From the corner of her eye, she watched the man walk over to an old wooden table and shove sacks of groceries to the center. Dusty and cramped, the room looked exactly liked it smelled. The man reached into the bags, pulling out a two-liter plastic bottle of Pepsi, white bread, salami, and something that looked like cheese. He removed toilet paper and coloring books from the other bag
.
“Hello.” The man spoke in a low soft voice. “Thought you might be hungry.”
Jessica twitched her head from side to side, still refraining from looking into his eyes. She winced, the tape that bound her hands cutting deep into her wrists every time she moved. She fought against the bindings but it didn’t matter. Even if she was able to break free, she was too weak to escape.
“I’ll make you a sandwich. Do you like cheese?” He spoke like she was a guest in his home. “I like cheese,” he added. “Grilled cheese, but I don’t have a stove. Still, it’ll be good.” The calmness in his voice rattled Jessica’s nerves. She bit down hard on the rag, trying to force herself steady.
As the man prepared the sandwich, Jessica’s body started to tingle, her mouth dry and scratchy. Her head began to pound and she started to cough through the gag. Sweat beaded across her forehead, her pajamas soaked in perspiration. The man stopped what he was doing and walked over to her, placing a hand on her forehead. She jerked back from his touch.
“You still have a fever,” he said. “You’re sick.”
Jessica’s coughing advanced into spasms. The man pulled the gag from her mouth, and immediately she sucked in a mouthful of air, the ability to breathe freely relieving some of her stress.
“There, there. You need to rest,” the man said. “You’re as sick as a dog. Luckily, I have a microwave. I’ll heat you up some soup.”
Jessica cleared her throat. “Please, please untie me and let me go. I won’t tell anyone about you. I don’t even know what you look like.”
The man placed a hand over Jessica’s lips. “Shhh, it’s all right. I’m not going to hurt you.”
Jessica took several rapid breaths that made her cough. “Why? Why me?”
The man stood still, gave it a moment of thought. Then rolled his shoulders. “Why not?”
“What do you want from me?”
“In time, we will get to know each other better.”
The microwave beeped. The idea of soup on a hot day in a stuffy room made her feel even sicker.
“I’m not hungry,” she said. “Meds, I need my meds.”
“You’ll be fine. It’s just the flu.”
Jessica felt the tingle intensify, her head swimming into a deep fog. “My meds. Please, I need them now.”
The man leaned close to Jessica face, this time staring right into her eyes. There was no way she could avoid the details of his features. She slowly allowed the weight of her eyelids to fall shut, but she knew it was too late. She felt the man place an ear next to her mouth.
“What do you need?” he asked.