Out For Justice (6 page)

“Yeah, I do. I take it Mike does too?”

“It’s his favorite.”

“Of course it is.” Karen sighed. “Fine. Tell him I’ll meet him there at seven thirty. Gotta go. Bad guys to catch.”

Susan hung up her cell phone and let out a whoop. She startled the driver then laughed. She hadn’t felt so good in years. She thought she might just go into the matchmaking business and give up all this death nonsense.

Chapter Eleven

After hanging up with Susan, Karen radioed dispatch their exact location before stepping out of the car. The hot afternoon dragged on. It looked as if it were going to rain today, but not until much later. The fluffy clouds were too high and scattered. If she had a better view of the east she might be able to see if there were any storms forming. What was certain was the thumping of Karen’s heart as they drew nearer to the house. The killer was here. She could feel it in her bones. Forgotten was the conversation she just had with her friend Susan and her date with Mike tonight. All her instincts were trained on this moment.

Sam climbed the wobbly, rickety steps to the door. He knocked twice. Karen kept guard from below where she had a view of the front yard and the car. If Thomas attempted an escape this way, he wouldn’t get past her.

Karen looked at Sam. He shrugged and knocked again.

“Someone’s coming,” Sam said, indicating that he heard noises on the other side of the door.

“I’ve got your back.”

The door swung open wide. “Can I help you?” a small, woman with a tentative voice and short, blonde, curly hair asked. She was dressed in a Disney character t-shirt and a pair of torn jean shorts. Her feet were bare.

“Ma’am, I’m Detective Anderson and this is Detective Sykes.” Sam motioned to Karen. “We’re from the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office and we’re looking for a Mr. Raymond Alan Thomas. Ma’am, is there anyone by that name living here?”

“Ray? Yeah. Ray lives here.” The blonde looked to her left.

Alerted, Sam immediately drew his gun all the way from his holster. Karen put her hand under her blazer and felt for her gun. “Ma’am, is Mr. Thomas in the house right now?”

“Ray? No. Not right now. He stepped out for a few minutes.” She ran her hand through her short, blonde curls. They bounced then settled back against her head. “Said he’d be back later,” she sighed. “He always comes back later.” She gaped at the gun in Sam’s hand. “Is Ray in some kind of trouble?”

“We’re not sure yet. We need to talk to him,” Sam answered the woman then looked to her left. He shook his head letting Karen know he didn’t see anything. He motioned to her to start taking notes.

Karen took her hand off her gun and pulled out her notebook. Sam kept his drawn. He eased forward a bit on the small front step and leaned into the house looking to his left and right. Karen asked the woman, “Ma’am, could we have your name?”

“Me? Sure. My name is Maggie Morris.” Maggie looked from Sam to Karen with curiosity brimming in her eyes.

“Ms. Morris, is this your legal address?”

“Here? I guess so. I only hooked up with Ray about a couple of months ago. Has he done anything wrong?”

“That’s what we’re here to find out.” Karen saw that Sam had seen into the house as far as he could from the front step. “May we come in?”

“Inside? I don’t know.” Maggie’s eyes darted back and forth as if she were trying to make a hard decision. “Sure. I guess so.”

“Thank you, ma’am.” Sam holstered his weapon, but kept his hand on it.

They walked into the house and stood in the middle of the living room. The room stank from smoke and mold. It smelled like it hadn’t been aired out in months. Maggie motioned to them to sit on the couch. Dirty stains marred the faded gold and brown flower pattern. Karen would have bet that if you gave the arm of the couch a hard slap a cloud of dust would fly.

Sam and Karen declined and remained standing. Reading through her notes, Karen looked at Maggie and asked, “So, you’ve only been living here a couple of months. Where did you live before this?”

Maggie looked down at her feet, then lifted soulful eyes bright with unshed tears. “Before here? I was on the street for a while. Ray, he…he said he liked me. Said I could stay with him until I got back on my feet. He’s been real good to me.”

“Uh huh. And what about the domestic disturbance call a month ago?”

“A month ago? It was nothing. Nothing at all. We got a little loud and the neighbors called the police. If they’d just minded their own business there wouldn’t have been any trouble.” Maggie wrung her hands then gripped the front of her shirt near the hem. “We had a little disagreement. Nothing serious. We’re fine now. You’ll see. When Ray comes home he’ll tell you. He’ll tell you we’re fine now.”

Sam and Karen exchanged a glance. Where was the crazy bitch that Raymond’s friends described? Somebody definitely had his or her wires crossed. Would she be willing to cooperate? Karen nodded, her head bobbing slightly. She knew what Sam wanted. A look around the house. “Ms. Morris—”

“Ms. Morris? Please, call me Maggie.”

“Maggie. Would you mind if we had a look around?”

“Why? Are you looking for something?”

“We’re not sure, actually. But we’ll know it when we see it.” Karen shrugged her shoulders and looked bored. “It’s all a matter of paperwork anyway. I could go down to the district attorney’s office and get a search warrant and come back here when we’ve wasted God knows how many hours, or we can just have a look around now.” Karen shrugged her shoulders again. “No big deal, really.”

“Really? Well, if it’s really not a big deal. I don’t know what you’ll find. Me and Ray, we haven’t done anything wrong.” Maggie’s eyes widened and she smiled.

“Well, then that should make our search easy then, right?”

“Huh? I guess so.”

“There’s just the matter of your signature. If you’d sign this consent-to-search form, we’ll be out of your way in no time.”

Maggie stepped only as close as she needed to sign the form. She took the pen Karen offered, signed her name, and stepped back. Karen gave her a searching look before accepting the pen and placing it back in her pocket.

Sam was already heading for the kitchen while Karen made her way around the small living room.

“Detective? The bedroom is that way.” Maggie pointed to a closed door.

“Thank you, ma’am.” She saw that the woman was going to protest and said, “Maggie, I mean.” Karen stood aside. “But we can only search the common areas of the house while Mr. Thomas is away from the premises.”

“Mr. Thomas? Oh, you mean Ray.” Maggie’s lips turned upward into a smile.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“What are you looking for? Maybe I can help you out here.”

“We’re not sure exactly.” Karen wondered how much she could say. She looked toward the door where Sam disappeared and made a decision on her own. “We might be looking for a pair of boots or some kind of work shoe.”

“Boots? What kind of boots?”

“We’re not exactly sure. We’d have to take them in for a comparison to see if we have a match.”

Maggie left the room and went into the bedroom. She closed the door behind her. Karen continued to look around the small living room, cringing when she realized that meant she’d even be looking behind the dingy couch. The small house, with so few common rooms, would be relatively easy to search in a short period of time. Karen knew Sam wanted to finish before their suspect arrived home.

Pulling a pair of rubber gloves out of her back pocket, Karen prepared to get to work. The warm, airless room was dark. There was no air conditioning. The only light filtered through the partially covered windows. Karen’s hand roamed along the wall inside the doorway looking for a light switch. Finding one, she switched it on. She took in the room as she stood in the entryway, deciding on the best tactic to take.

Karen decided that a logical approach would best suit the situation. She started on her left and figured she’d sweep the room from left to right ending back at the doorway.

Grimy, sweat stained throw pillows were tossed haphazardly about the faded and torn couch. Ashtrays, overflowing with cigarette butts spilled onto the dusty surface of the small tables that bookended the couch. The rest of the dusty, sticky surface held empty and partially empty beer cans. Beer cans and soda cans even littered the floor along the front of the couch and the only chair. Looking up at the ceiling, she could see brown-ringed watermarks where the roof leaked. From the look of the house, it probably hadn’t had any repair work done in years.

The room had an unpleasant, sour odor that Karen wrinkled her nose at. The more she stayed in the room, the stronger the odor became.

An avalanche of clothes spilled out of a box in the corner. Karen couldn’t tell if they were dirty or clean. Looking for anything that might link Thomas to the crime scene, Karen used a gloved hand to sift through the mess of jeans and t-shirts. Finding nothing, she turned and perused the room. She’d made her way mostly around the room, stopping once to pull the couch from the wall so she could look behind it. As she looked around the room from her new angle, she hoped she’d find something, anything she might have missed.

Her gaze fell on Maggie. She wondered when she returned to the living room and how long she’d been standing in the doorway. Karen looked at what Maggie held in her hands. A pair of brown hiking boots with red laces. They looked to be about the same size as the print they found near the body. Karen crossed the room to get a closer look at them. She itched to snatch them up and examine them closer. Keeping her hands behind her back, she kept her distance in order to preserve the possible evidence.

Karen called out, “Sam, get in here.”

Footsteps sounded in the other room. The floor creaked in the kitchen as Sam strode across it and entered the living room.

He stood in the middle of the room, not looking at Maggie. “What’d you find?”

Standing next to Maggie, Karen gingerly held up a boot between her gloved finger and thumb. “How about these?”

Sam let out a low whistle.

Karen nodded and smiled. “I think Mr. Thomas has just become a very special person of interest in this case.”

“Sykes, how did you find these? Were they in one of the common rooms?”

“I mentioned to Maggie that we might be looking for a pair of boots. She went into the bedroom and returned with the pair you see here.”

“Ms. Morris, do you own these boots?”

“Me? No, sir.”

“Do these boots belong to Mr. Thomas?”

“Ray? Yeah, I think so.”

“Ms. Morris, are you offering these boots to us?”

“These boots? I don’t know. I mean, they’re not mine, but the detective did say you were looking for boots, and these were the only ones I could find. Do you think I should?” Maggie turned from the doorway and cast questioning eyes toward Karen.

“I can’t make that decision for you. You must make it on your own.” Karen kept her voice level and tried not to sound too excited. She didn’t want to influence Maggie in any way that could lead them to trouble in case they had to go to trial.

“Me? I can’t do that. I guess I’d better keep them here and talk to Ray when he gets back.” She held the boots close to her chest, hugging them and staring at the floor.

“That’s your prerogative, ma’am.”

“Sykes?” Sam leaned against the door jam, his eyes narrowing. A crease wrinkled between his eyebrows.

“Yeah, Sam?”

“Let’s talk outside.”

After explaining to Maggie that they were finished for the moment, Sam and Karen headed out of the stifling little house and into the cooler comfort of their air-conditioned car.

“So, what do you think?” Karen asked while she stripped off the gloves she’d been wearing. Sam had already taken his off as soon as he left the house.

“I think we need those boots.”

“But how do we get them if she’s not going to give them to us?

“I don’t know.” Sam adjusted the vents in the car to blow the somewhat cold air toward his face. “We’re walking a fine line here. We can tell her how much they mean to our case, even to Mr. Thomas. If they’re not the boots we’re looking for they’d help in clearing him. She might be more approachable using that angle.”

“If not? Then we hurry downtown and get a search warrant issued as soon as possible,” Karen answered, and then asked, “is that even a possibility right now?”

“Absolutely.” Sam tilted his chin to let the cold air drift across his face. He sighed. “Okay then. Head back in?”

“Yep, may as well. Let’s try one more time.”

Sam and Karen walked quickly across the street, through the yard and back up the small rickety steps. Sam knocked rapidly on the door. Once again, it was opened by Maggie. She still held the boots in one arm.

“Ms. Morris, about those boots…”

“These boots? Oh pooh, I decided to let you take them.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Huh? You can take them with you. Ray won’t mind, I’m sure of it.”

“We appreciate your cooperation, Ms. Morris. Maggie.” Karen smiled as she watched the shorter woman begin to protest about the use of her formal name.

Sam felt in his pockets then asked Karen, “Do you have another pair of gloves?”

Karen patted her pockets. “No, but I have a pair in the car. I’ll grab a paper bag while I’m in there. Be right back.”

In a matter of minutes, the boots were secured in a paper bag in the trunk of the car. Karen and Sam drove away from the house in the early dusk. The purple tinge to the night sky made reflections shine extra bright in the car’s headlights.

“We got him, Sam.” Karen grinned. “I think we should nail this sucker.” Karen grinned again and gave a nervous laugh. “I can’t believe we’re this close. This close.” She held up her hand and pinched the air with her thumb and forefinger.

“We’ve gotta do this right, so we can make the charges stick. You got the woman to sign a consent form so we could search, right?”

“Yep, got it right here in my notebook.”

“Good. That’s first. You also got her statement about offering the boots to us, right?”

“Yep.”

“We need to get these boots to Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) as soon as possible so they can start testing them to see if they match the print found at the scene.”

“How soon do you think we’ll know?”

“They’re notoriously backed up. Hopefully only a few days.”

“Good, I want to nail this bastard.”

“Well, now we have to figure out why or how Thomas would ever logically be around the Hunts and how he could have left a print on the boy’s clothing.”