Murder Mountain (13 page)

Before I got to the porch she said, “The license plate. It wasn’t Ohio. Remember, I can’t see that well, but it was funny looking; definitely not Ohio.”

“What?” Was all I could think to say, my blood running cold. “Thank you Mrs. Garrish!” I turned and ran to my car.

I was shaking and my heart felt like it was going to explode. I would get a statement from Mrs. Garrish on tape later, but I had an idea that I had to check out. Here it was—something concrete. This was not over.

I drove directly to the only gas station in Roseland; the same one Lizzie Johnston was headed for when she disappeared. I already knew they had video cameras on the inside and outside of the place. I had checked the tape of the night Lizzie had left to see if she even made it to the gas station. She hadn’t.

Most of the clerks and managers knew me. I knew they wouldn’t remember a blue pickup truck, but I asked anyway. The day shift clerks were the same ones that worked Monday through Friday, and were working that day. They didn’t remember it, which is what I expected.

I had the store manager give me all the tapes from the entire week when Boz was murdered. If my hunch was right, the truck had to gas up sometime, especially to make a drive out of state. If I was right, they did it prior to the murder. With all the blood, I can’t imagine that they stopped and gassed up after.

I called Coop while I was driving back to the office. I felt exhilarated. I told him what I had found. He was out driving around, as I had been, and said he would meet me at the bureau. Two of us could watch these tapes quicker than one, and time was running out. Andrea Dean, I hoped, might still be alive, and these videos might not only find Boz’s killer, but help find her, too.

There would be two separate angles on the videos: one of the gas pumps, and one at the checkout counter. The gas station is robbed at least once a month, so the owners put quite a bit of money into the cameras. I was hoping to get a good view of the truck and of the driver at the counter.

Coop and I pulled into the department parking lot at the same time. He must have driven ninety miles an hour the whole way in, because when we spoke on the phone he’d been up in the northern part of the county. He looked as excited as I was and we essentially ran up to the bureau. We had already agreed not to tell anyone yet what we had found. We certainly didn’t want to get hopes up and then crush them if we didn’t find anything. Just then, the only hopes that would be crushed were ours. We went to watch the tapes in the resource room, which had everything a detective needed. There were four television sets, eight videocassette recorders, wiretaps, video cameras, other surveillance equipment, tape recorders, microphones, and more.

After grabbing a cup of coffee from the break room, we sat down to begin. We started out each watching a different tape, fast-forwarding through it, looking for the blue truck. When the second hour rolled around, I started losing hope. I didn’t know why I thought I would put the tape in and immediately see the truck, but I never did have a whole lot of patience.

Into the third hour, I was well into day four of the tapes when something caught my eye and made me jump. I rewound the tape a little and paused it. I was looking at the blue pickup truck getting gas at the pumps. Even better, I had a crystal clear view of a West Virginia license plate on the front.

I yelled at Coop, and we both just stared at the screen for several minutes. I fast-forwarded the tape a few minutes to see if we could get a better view of the guy pumping the gas or paying at the counter. He never went inside. I could see by the view at the gas pumps that he was a tall white male wearing a blue baseball cap. There was another guy in the passenger seat, but I couldn’t see him as well. He was white, wearing a dark-colored t-shirt. The tall guy pumped the gas and drove away, hopefully paying with a credit card at the pump. That would be another great lead.

As I rewound the tape to play it again, Coop was already on the phone running the license plate number. The license plate, of course, was stolen. This was no surprise to either one of us, but still disappointing. These were, without a doubt, the men who killed Boz. Coop was on the phone again calling the gas station, giving them the date and time so they could pull the credit card number that was used by the tall guy. He had already checked on any gas theft reports that day and there weren’t any.

The tape we were watching was exactly two days prior to Boz’s murder. I took it out and put in the tape marked “Day Six,” the day of the murder. I fast-forwarded through and saw the truck again, two hours before the first officer found Boz. While I was looking at this, I heard Coop mumble on the phone, “Oh no!” before hanging up.

“What?” I demanded. “What did they say? What’s the guy’s name on the card?”

“You are not going to believe this ...” he started.

“What? Just tell me!”

“The credit card number the tall guy used was a Visa Card. A Visa Card belonging to Andrea Dean. I also just did a card track, and it’s never been used since.”

I put my hand over my mouth and shut my eyes. Andrea was most likely dead. God damn it!, I screamed in my head. I turned around and looked at the suspect paused on the television screen.
Soon, you and I are coming face to face, you bastard,
I thought.

We looked at the tape of the pickup’s visit on the day Boz was killed. Sure enough, we could see the tall guy paying the attendant in cash.

Coop and I printed out still photos of the truck and the tall guy. We could at least pass these to the uniforms so they could watch for them. We then went to Kincaid and told her of our find. She was thrilled.

“It’s the break we’ve been looking for, that’s for sure, but we have no idea who these guys are,” Coop said.

“Don’t worry, we’ll find them.” Kincaid sounded supremely confident. “Have you checked into who filed the stolen license plate report and where? Maybe the victim had an idea who stole it and listed a name on the report.”

“I’ll take care of that,” I said, sorry I hadn’t thought of that myself.

Kincaid clapped her hands together, “Thank god, this is the break we needed. I’m going to call Chris’s parents and let them know. They’re falling apart; he was their only child. It’s been harder for them knowing the people that did this aren’t in jail, which brings me to something else; full dress uniform for the funeral tomorrow. Everyone is meeting here at one-thirty and heading to the church. The ceremony starts at two.”

Coop and I sat there quietly. Boz’s body had finally been released from Columbus, where the autopsy had been done. I knew that his parents had been upset that they couldn’t bury him right away. I hadn’t thought much about the funeral. I didn’t want to. The thought alone made me want to break down, but here it was. I think I would rather have my fingernails pulled out one by one than go to another cop’s funeral. I’ve been to enough of them.

Before I went home, I called the Chatham County Sheriff’s Office. No surprise, the guy the license plate was registered to lived in Ovapa, which meant their Sheriff’s Department took the stolen license plate report. The dispatcher told me she actually remembered entering that particular report. The plate had been taken off an old, broken-down car that the owner had stored in his barn. There were no suspects and the owner didn’t have a telephone. I thanked the dispatcher and hung up, knowing she would immediately relay our conversation to Captain VanScoy. For some reason, this made me a little nervous. I jotted down some brief notes of my conversation with the dispatcher and headed home.

I met Eric in the doorway just as he was leaving for work. I hadn’t realized it was so late. As I kissed him goodbye, he told me he had gotten both of our dress uniforms ready for the funeral. I could tell he wasn’t looking forward to it any more than I was. After I checked in on Selina and Isabelle, I was asleep within minutes.

When I woke up, it felt like I hadn’t even slept an hour. I looked at the clock and saw that it was only three-thirty in the morning, and I realized that I’d awakened because I’d heard something. I thought I’d been dreaming, and maybe I was, but the longer I lay there I knew I hadn’t been.

I’m a cop and I lived in the sticks. Those two facts together meant I tended to sleep on edge, but I had heard a distinct noise and I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. I thought it might’ve been a car, which was very unusual, since the only people who lived on this road were our in-laws and us. I was sure I’d heard a loud muffler.
It couldn’t be,
I thought,
I’m getting paranoid and imagining noises.
I convinced myself. I listened for about ten more minutes, heard nothing, and went back to sleep.

When I awoke again, it was almost eleven o’clock in the morning. The girls woke me up, wondering why I was sleeping so late. I wondered that myself. I had taken the day off for the funeral, and had planned on sleeping in, but not this late. Eric had been awake since nine o’clock, which meant he had slept for about three hours. He was downstairs reading the paper.

“Mornin’ baby. Did you go outside last night after I left?” he asked, looking up from the paper.

“No, why?”

“Just wondering.” He went back to reading the paper without answering my question, which irritated me a little.

“Why are you asking?”

“I thought I had locked the side garage door, but apparently I didn’t, since it was open when I came home.”

“Well I didn’t go outside,” I said, starting to get a little concerned.

“No big deal. I probably didn’t shut it all the way and it blew open. I made some coffee,” he gestured toward the counter behind him.

I didn’t tell Eric about the car I’d heard in the night—if that is what I’d heard. Now that I was awake, it seemed a little silly to me that I’d been worried about it. Maybe what I’d heard had been the door blowing open. It was possible, but my intuition kept telling me it wasn’t the door. I wasn’t too concerned, though. The door wasn’t kicked open, and obviously, no one had a key to it. I brushed the thoughts off for the moment, grabbed a cup of coffee, and looked at the clock. I’d have to start getting ready for the funeral soon.

When it was time to leave, Eric and I rode together in his marked cruiser, which he gets to bring home every day. We would be part of the funeral procession, along with hundreds of other law enforcement officers from all over Ohio, as well as from other parts of the country. Cops come from as far as Texas and Missouri to a funeral for a fallen comrade.

Boz’s parents were devout Catholics and I anticipated a lengthy service. This day would take its toll, physically and emotionally, on all of us. The dress uniforms we wore had long-sleeved, heavy wool coats. In the middle of summer, standing at attention with our hats on for a long time would be grueling.

As we neared the city we saw several street barricades already in place, and uniforms were standing in intersections directing traffic to the church, St. Peters. The nearest parking place Eric could find was two blocks away from it. During the service, auxiliary policemen would move all the cruisers into place for the procession.

The front steps of the church were filled with city cops, deputies, state troopers, village policemen, park rangers, campus cops, and mayors, commissioners, and other city and county officials. Citizens lined the street in front of the church to pay their respects. Eric and I went in and found a seat in the front left side of the pews next to my dad and uncles. Boz’s family had the front center pews reserved.

I intended to get through the service as best as I could without bawling. That lasted about two minutes. The mass was held in Latin, and being Catholic myself, it was too overwhelming for me. Eric had a pocket full of tissues that he kept handing me, a clear indication that he’d anticipated my breakdown. I made it through the rest of the service and the procession to the cemetery without crying, until they played Taps.

After the funeral was over, I felt drained, tired, and depressed. Our police union hall was having a luncheon put together by officers’ wives. Eric and I went there to grab a bite to eat, although neither of us was hungry. The hall was pretty quiet, and after we’d had a small plate of food, we headed for home. Eric had to work that night and needed to get some sleep. I think we were both glad the day was over. For much of the ride home we were quiet.

Then Eric startled me. “I’m glad it was Boz,” he said in a soft but firm voice.

“What!” I responded, stunned.

“I’m glad it was Boz.”

I was floored. “What the hell is the matter with you? Why would you say something like that? He was a cop, for Christ’s sake and you’re
glad
he’s dead?”

Eric slammed on the brakes so hard I’m sure I would’ve gone through the windshield had I not been wearing my seatbelt. He put the car into park and turned in his seat, looking at me like he was ready to explode.

“You’re not listening to me! Listen to me, for once! Yes! I’m glad it was Boz that was killed. Not glad because he was murdered, but glad because it wasn’t
you!
I know you don’t think I think about things like that, but I do! Ever since this happened, all I can think about is what-if. What if that was you? What if those little girls lost their mother? What if I lost my wife? The entire time at the church, as I stood there, watching Boz’s parents cry, and looking at the casket, I thought,
that could’ve been me standing in front, looking at your casket!
And I didn’t like that feeling. Not one goddamn bit! As terrible as it sounds, and as guilty as I feel about it, yes, I’m glad it was Boz, not you! Call me selfish, but that’s the way I feel!” Tears were welling up in his eyes.

He put the car back into drive and headed home. I sat there not knowing what to say, but understanding how he felt. I’d had no idea it had bothered him that much. I felt guilty for not paying attention and noticing it before this. We spent the rest of the ride in silence, Eric immediately going to bed when we got home.

It was late, after Eric had already left for work, when my dad called.