Ray Elkins mystery - 02 - Color Tour (13 page)
“Morning,” said Ray turning in her direction. “I’ve been listing the people we need to interview and other tasks. Can you get the crime scene finished up today?”
“That shouldn’t be a problem. I’d like to pull Evans from the day shift to help me.”
“That’s okay,” Ray said. “Do you need anyone else?”
“Just people to continue to secure the scene until we’re done. I’d like to get the tarps off and go over the area again. We should vacate the area by this afternoon.”
“Good,” said Ray. Pointing to a list he said, “You can see the people I’m planning to talk to today. I’ve keyed my interview notes from yesterday. You need to read them. I talked to Jack Grochoski at the Last Chance and Sarah James—she seems to handle the day-to-day administration at Leiston School. They both identified Jason Zelke as someone who dated Ashleigh in the not-too-distant past. So I visited with him. Do you know him?”
Ray summarized his conversation with Zelke, concluding with, “Jason is a nice kid with a good reputation, hard to see him as the killer.” He paused and looked at Sue, “It would be interesting to talk to other women he’s dated. I wonder if there’s a violent streak there that we don’t know about.”
“Warrington, you’ll see it in my note. It looks like he might have had a fling with Ashleigh.”
“When?” Sue asked.
“It would have been her first year. I wonder if there were things that might have motivated him to commit… ”
“If there are,” interrupted Sue, “he wins the prize for best performance on a beach. He was pretty convincing.”
“Yes,” Ray agreed. “Before you leave, promise me one thing?”
“What’s that?”
“You’ll come back with the weapon and a good set of prints.”
“That would be nice,” she agreed.
The chirping sound from Ray’s cell phone interrupted their parting. “Elkins here,” he said. He nodded as he listened several minutes. “How’s his mother doing?” He listened some more and said, “Thank you for the call, doctor.” He slowly closed the phone and set it on the table.
“Bad news?” Sue asked.
“That was one of the ICU doctors,” he responded, his eyes filled with sadness. “Arnie coded early this morning. They were able to resuscitate him, but he’s in very critical condition.”
“What happened? Why did he code?”
“They think it was a pulmonary embolism.”
“What are his chances?”
“Gonzales said fewer than 10 percent of those who code in the hospital and are resuscitated survive.” He paused, “Kim, that poor woman. She collapsed while they were trying to resuscitate Arnie. So they’ve admitted her. The doctor says she’ll probably be okay by tomorrow.”
19
The two-lane drive entering Leiston was divided by a small gatehouse sitting in the middle with wooden barriers on each lane. As Ray entered the drive, he slowed near the building. The man inside, Gary Zatanski, the head of the school’s security detail, waved him through. Ray parked his Jeep nearby and walked back to the building. “Good morning, sheriff,” offered Gary, holding the door.
As they shook hands, Ray noted that Gary was about his height, average for their generation. A ring of short gray hair surrounded his round shiny head. Gary’s thick neck and heavily muscled chest and arms gave him the appearance of a weightlifter or Greco-Roman wrestler, but an expansive waistline suggested that culinary joys had replaced a passion for fitness.
“Want some coffee?” He pulled a clean cup from under a counter that ran across the front of the building. “It’s fresh.”
“Sure. Thanks,” said Ray.
“Any developments?” Zatanski asked as he poured the coffee, his voice grave.
“We’re collecting evidence, doing interviews, but no, we don’t have a suspect.”
“I’m still in shock. You know bad stuff happens every day, but,” he motioned with his two hands, “why here? And why Ashleigh?”
“Wish I had an answer.” Ray sipped his coffee. There was a long pause where both men were lost in thought. Then, Ray surveyed the array of monitors suspended from the ceiling. “Looks like you have a very sophisticated security system,” he said.
“I’ve pushed them hard to keep things modern. But in a place like this there is never enough money. That said, we’ve got better stuff than most places, especially schools.”
“And this setup, it’s your baby?”
“Yes,” Zatanski answered with obvious satisfaction.
“Dr. Warrington mentioned that you have a police background.”
“ATF, actually. And after I got tired of busting down crackhouse doors in Baltimore, I did corporate security around D.C.”
“How did you end up here?”
“My wife, she was a middle school science teacher in Silver Springs. A couple of years ago she took an early out. Man, I don’t know how she lasted that long. Anyway, she had inherited this little family farm up here. Me, I’d rather have gone to Florida, but you know how it goes.” He lifted both hands, showing his powerful arms, and made a submissive gesture. “And she’s pleased as punch. She has started an apple orchard and is growing grapes. And she’s doing watercolors, even had a little show at the Wayside Tap last summer. She’s got a million activities going in the winter, and in the summer we’re carting visiting grandkids all over hell’s half-acre. But me, well, how much can you fish and golf? So, when Warrington contacted me to do some consulting on security, I was glad to have the work, but I wasn’t looking for a full-time gig. We finally worked out a deal that I’d take over the management of campus security as long as it would only be part-time.”
“How many hours do you work?”
“I try to keep it under thirty hours.”
“And there’s always someone on duty?”
“Yeah, 24/7.”
“I imagine most days things are fairly routine.”
“Yeah, and we’re trying to make sure it stays that way. That’s why we got all this.” He gestured toward the monitors and other electronic devices. “The year before I was here they had a student abducted by a parent. You know, it was one of those custody things.”
“I remember that,” said Ray. “We heard about it after the fact, long after the fact.”
Zatanski continued on, not responding to Ray’s comment. “So, after that incident there was finally an understanding of how easy it was to forcibly pick up a kid without being noticed.”
“Yes, incidents like that tend to… ”
“Well, you don’t know the half of it. Warrington wanted a plan to prevent something like that from happening again. So, I drew up a plan for a centralized security system. It was the whole nine yards: improved campus lighting, video cameras at strategic places. When Warrington saw it and the price tag, I thought he was going to shit. He wanted to know why we needed all that stuff, so I walked him about and showed him. Like they thought they were doing good by putting new batteries in the smoke detectors in the dorms every year.”
“But I take it, you did get the funds?”
“It wasn’t easy. I had to tell him some war stories. You know, it’s not like talking to business people. Educators are used to working with such little money.”
“How were you able to prevail?”
“Warrington had me speak to the school’s governing board. I told them there wasn’t even a rudimentary security system. I took them on a tour. I started a fire in a wastebasket right under one of those old smoke detectors. And we waited and waited and waited.
“Hey,” he said with a laugh, “there’s no business like show business. And after it was clear the device didn’t work, I asked them how they’d sleep knowing their kids had this kind of protection. Then I laid on what it would take to bring this place up to industry standards. That’s just the way I said it, industry standards. The board is made up mostly of corporate types; they respond more to fear than reason, so I played to their fears.” Zatanski chuckled to himself.
“So, you pretty much got what you asked for?”
“Yeah, I did. Several board members have kids here. One has two grandkids enrolled. I didn’t have to do much convincing. The former board president came up with the cash, so it didn’t have to come out of the current budget. But there was hell to pay.”
“How so?” Ray asked.
“The system was installed in the summer when the students and most of the faculty were gone. And I don’t think anyone would have noticed, or even objected much if it hadn’t been for the lights.”
“Lights?”
“There was hardly any exterior lighting, and what there was hadn’t been maintained. Most of it didn’t work. We put modern perimeter lighting on all the buildings, lights on the main drive and parking areas, and lights along all the footpaths between buildings. We also put security cameras in key locations so one person sitting here could pretty much monitor what was happening anywhere on campus. Well, when we made the system operational this fall the faculty went nuts. We were accused of making the place look like a maximum-security prison. They said we had destroyed the rural nature of the place and petitioned Warrington to have some of the lights turned off.”
“How was it resolved?”
“The board president invited the faculty to a board meeting. He went head to head with the most contentious faculty members. His well-reasoned arguments, tied with the fact that the board was considering a new salary schedule, seemed to quiet things down.”
Ray took this all in, then turned his attention to the video monitors in the gatehouse. “Is this recorded?”
“Yes. Everything goes on tape. The system recycles every 144 hours.”
“How do you monitor the vehicles, the comings and goings?”
“That one,” Zatanski pointed to a camera mounted on a steel post in front of the gatehouse, “picks up the vehicle from the rear so we get the license plate. The one mounted over there,” he gestured toward a camera on the other side of the drive, “gives us the passenger side. Same is true on the exit lane. Sort of overkill, but I wanted to have capacity if we ever needed it. The person working the desk is supposed to log in and out each license number, then the computer can give you output on what vehicles were here and for how long.”
“So, do they do it, log every vehicle?”
“Not really. I had a hell of a time getting the guys to do it consistently. We’ve come up with a compromise; people we know, staff, faculty, the usual delivery guys get waved through. People we don’t know get logged in by hand. By next spring I’ll have the software to automate license plate function. A camera and computer will do it, and I won’t have to depend on my guys’ pisspoor keying.”
“And the gates are open all the time?”
“During the day. From six in the evening to six in the morning they’re closed both ways.” He pulled a clipboard from a hook. “People coming during those times need to check in, they need to have a destination, and the name of the person they’re visiting. We call and check before they are allowed through.”
“So, for Friday evening you can give me a printout that shows everyone who entered and left the school?”
“Yes, that’s assuming that the guy in the booth actually logged the plate number. We may be less than 100 percent. ”
“And the destinations, you log that in also?” Ray asked.
“The guys are supposed to.”
“So, Ashleigh Allen, anyone log into her place?”
Zatanski looked down at a screen mounted under the counter as he keyed in a series of commands. A printer hummed to life. He pulled a printout from the tray and placed it on the counter.
“Looks like Ashleigh only had one visitor. David Dud— spelled D-U-D. See what I mean about getting people to key things correctly?” Zatanski said, his round faced reddening with irritation. He looked over at Ray and explained, “The guys were all in love with Ashleigh. She was quite a babe.” Pointing back to the printout, he continued. “Dowd entered the grounds at 7:13—the computer does the date stamping, so we know that’s accurate. He left at 7:46 and returned at 11:46. He and Ashleigh probably went to dinner.”
“How about Saturday?”
“Saturday is a problem. We had a big crowd here—parents up for the weekend, the soccer game, fans from the other school. Most of the day we just had to wave people through. It’s a situation that I haven’t figured out how to fix.”
“So there’s no log of who… ”
“Correct, from about nine in the morning until seven or eight in the evening. Sorry.”
“But, you can give me tapes from these cameras for Thursday through Saturday?”
“No prob. And I’ll print up the plate logs, such as they are. What else?”
“Tell me about Ashleigh?” Ray asked.
“We all liked her; she was beautiful and funny. And she always had a smile and something clever to say when she came through. She’d take the time, you know what I mean? She’d stop and roll down her window and chat. Like I said, the guys loved her.”
“Arnie Vedder, he used to work here?”
“Yes, I think they let him go a few weeks ago. We all knew little Arnie well. He liked to hang out in the booth and watch the monitors. He thought this place was real neat.”
“Do you know why he was fired?”
“I heard he just couldn’t do the work.”
“No one talked to you about the possibility that Arnie might have been stealing things from the laundry?”
“Oh, the panties. I heard the story, but I didn’t think much of it. Anytime you have teenage boys around, panties are going to go missing.”
“During your time here, has Dr. Warrington asked you to keep an eye on a specific student?”
“No, I don’t think there’s ever been a need, and I’m not sure Warrington would use us in that way,” Zatanski responded.
Ray looked at his watch. “I have an interview with Helen Warrington scheduled. In an hour or so could you take me on a tour of the place and tell me what you see that the administrators and faculty don’t?”
“Happy to. I’ll get someone to cover the booth.”
Ray cut across the lawn from the gatehouse to the mansion’s main entrance. He walked to the school’s offices in the south wing. The door to Helen Warrington’s, the first one on the left, was open. Ray tapped gently on the frame, pulling Helen’s attention away from a computer screen. She motioned him in. “Have a seat, sheriff. I’m just finishing something up here. Give me a minute.”