Malevolent (Lieutenant Kane series Book 1) (17 page)

He counted them. “Missing five. There might still be stock in the vans.”

I nodded.

He slid the bin back onto the shelf and headed for the parked cargo vans. He went through them one at a time. Each van was empty.

He stood and looked at his inventory sheet when he closed the back of the last van. “Hmm,” he said.

“Missing?” I asked.

“Our inventory is computerized. It’s dead on. It updates with each order.”

“When was the last time you took a physical inventory?” Hank asked.

His face said he was thinking. “Five months ago. We do it twice a year—next audit is next month.”

“Let’s check on the other ones,” I said.

He waved his hand over his head at the guy walking toward the back of the warehouse. “Jerry! Can you bring the picker over?” he shouted.

The guy gave him a nod.

He rubbed at his eye and then pointed. “Buprenorphine is in the row over there.”

We walked over. The warehouse worker he’d called drove around the corner with the picker a few seconds later. “Bin six, fourth row—Buprenorphine,” he said to the guy.

The warehouse worker raised the platform on the stock picker up to the shelf. He pulled the bin and made his way back down.

“There you go,” he said. The guy handed the bin to the office manager.

He set it on the ground to go through it like the last one. The vials sat in the bottom of the bin, four by four. He didn’t need to count. “One missing,” he said.

“I would venture to guess that you are missing some Alprazolam as well,” I said.

“Let me check.”

He rattled off its location to his guy on the stock picker. He brought the bin down, and it was two vials short.

“I don’t know who would steal from here. You would think someone would jump out at me, but I just can’t see anyone here doing it.”

“How many employees do you have here?” I asked.

“Sixteen, not counting myself and the owner.”

“Has anyone been fired, quit, anything like that?” Hank asked.

“We have some turnover with drivers and warehouse workers. Maybe ten that have been let go or quit this year.”

“Think we could get a copy of your past and present employees?” I asked.

“I don’t have the authority to give that out. You would have to talk with Todd, the owner.”

“Can you call him?” I asked.

“Um, yeah, one minute.”

We followed him back to the front of the building. He ducked into an office toward the back of the room and grabbed a phone. Hank and I walked back around the counter. We sat and waited at the front desk. Minutes passed as the guy spoke on the phone.

“Think he’ll give us a copy?” Hank asked.

I saw the guy hang up. “Guess we’ll see. Here he comes.”

The office manager returned to the front counter. In his hand were a few sheets of paper. “The owner said okay. Here are copies of all of our staff from the last year.” He set the papers on the counter and slid them over to me.

I glanced over the sheets. Addresses and phone numbers sat next to the names. I counted roughly twenty-five employees.

We thanked him and made our way back to the station to dive in.

He’d been flipping the local news channels back and forth through the night and all morning. He was looking for anything on the girl he’d released. None of the local stations were reporting anything. He didn’t understand why it wasn’t getting any coverage. The call of a woman in distress had come through the police band around half past midnight. He heard the officer radio back to dispatch to tell them he was taking her to Tampa General Hospital. After that, the police radio went quiet about her. There wasn’t so much as a peep about her on the police band all morning.

He pulled the lever on his recliner and kicked his feet up. He slid his phone out of his pocket and called information, and they put him through to the hospital.

A receptionist picked up. “Tampa General Hospital. How can I direct your call?”

“Hello. This is Sergeant…” He looked around the room for a name and coughed to buy himself time. “Excuse me. Sergeant Watkins with the Tampa Police. I wanted to speak with someone about the Jane Doe one of our officers brought in last night.”

“Hold one second for me.”

Hold music played in his ear as he waited on the line.

“This is Doctor Wallace. I handle the day-shift patients for Doctor Winters.”

“Sergeant Watkins with the TPD. I wanted to send an officer by to pick up the lingerie the Jane Doe wore when she arrived last night. We wanted to have our guys in forensics take a look at it.”

The doctor’s response would tell him everything.

“We have it in a bag in her room. Just have the officer ask for me, Doctor Wallace.”

“Thank you.” He hung up.

“Hmm.” He curled his mouth to one side in thought.

The cops must have told the staff at the hospital to keep quiet. If anyone from the media knew about the woman, the news would have been everywhere already.

He’d take it upon himself. The police weren’t telling the media enough about the women. So far, they had been keeping the branding and the lobotomies under wraps. He’d fix that. He dialed information and had them put him through to every television station and newspaper in the area.

While coughing and hacking, he informed each news outlet about the lingerie, the branding, the lobotomies, and the woman at the hospital. He stayed on the phone for over an hour. The press would run with the story. He clicked the volume up on his police scanner and went back to flipping the channels. He started to doze off to the daytime talk show that was on.

Television crews and reporters engulfed the front of the police station—never a good sign. We parked the car in the structure and got out. A couple of back-entrance-savvy reporters rushed out at us as we walked toward the door.

A reporter jammed a microphone in my face. Not far behind the microphone was a television camera. “What can you tell us about the lobotomies?”

“No comment.”

“What about the woman who was found alive?”

I didn’t respond.

A Channel 6 microphone held by J.R. Steele blocked my path. “Lieutenant! Lieutenant! The media is calling this guy the Psycho Surgeon. Care to comment?”

Hank turned to me. “Psycho Surgeon?”

I shook my head and held out my palm toward the camera. “No comment.” I continued walking.

Steele followed me with the microphone. “Why has this killer singled you out?”

I stopped. “Singled me out?”

“We have a source that said that the lobotomized woman found last night had a message written on her to you.”

I shook my head and walked inside.

The ringing of telephones was filling the station. We made our way to the captain’s office. He was sitting at his desk, talking on the phone. He hung up when we walked in.

“Looks like we have a leak. Where did it come from?” I asked.

“Either the hospital or someone here at the station. It could be a combination of the two. Nothing we can do about it now except lay it all out for them. I have a press release scheduled in an hour.”

“One of the reporters called him the Psycho Surgeon,” Hank said.

Bostok pushed his chair back. “Great. So they gave him a name?”

“Not a very clever one,” I said. “Anyway, we found the place the drugs came from. We have a list of all employees from the last year. About to go through it now.”

Captain Bostok nodded. “Do it.”

Hank and I split the list of employees. He took his half to his desk, and I did likewise. I clicked away at the computer. One by one, I checked backgrounds and called each employee, past and present. Nobody I managed to speak with could think of anyone who might have committed a workplace theft. Most of my stack was gone when Hank burst into my office.

“Third guy I called is on his way in. Says he may have something.”

“What’s the something? When is he coming?”

“He mentioned a video. On his way now.”

“What’s the name?”

“Bob Cross.”

“Past or present employee?” I asked.

“Past. Looks like he quit a few months back.”

I nodded. “Let Cap know we got someone on the way in. See if he wants to sit in.”

Hank nodded and walked next door.

I plugged the guy’s name into the system. He was clean. His address was listed out in Carrollwood. I printed his sheet off.

Hank walked back in. “Cap says he has his hands full with the press but wants an update if we turn over anything during the interview.”

I finished looking into the rest of the employees in my stack. They all looked clean. Within an hour, we got the call that our potential witness was waiting. I popped into the lunch room to get my standard offerings and headed to the interview boxes. An officer from the front sat him down in box one. Hank waited for me outside the door, and we entered together. A thin man sat at the table. He was wearing an old T-shirt and khaki shorts. The front of his hairline receded. The rest of his hair was chin length. A beard covered his face. I looked at the weight on the sheet again. That guy was fifty pounds lighter than what was listed. I set the soda and candy in front of him.

“Mr. Cross, I’m Lieutenant Kane. This is Sergeant Rawlings. You have some information to tell us?”

We took seats across from him.

“Yeah, I have to say I was surprised to get a call.” He scooped the candy bar off the table and began unwrapping it.

“Surprised how?” I asked.

“Well, I’m pretty sure I have your smoking gun here.”

“We’re listening,” I said.

“I think I have the guy you are looking for on video.” He took a bite from the candy bar and chewed with his mouth open. He popped the soda and took a big gulp.

“On video doing what?” I asked.

“Stealing the drugs in question. Like I said—smoking gun.”

“Do you have the video here? Can we see it?”

“Yeah, sure.”

He removed his cell phone from his pocket and clicked a few buttons. He turned the phone so Hank and I could see the screen and then pressed Play. A video began. I recognized the inside of the Pet Med Plus warehouse.

The video looked to be filmed from behind a product rack. The man in frame stood in front of the bin where the Xylazine was kept. The man put some items from inside the bin into a bag and walked out the warehouse doors. The video stopped.

“His name is Chad Packard. He’s one of the delivery drivers.” He took another sip of soda.

I wrote down the name, which wasn’t one from my stack of employees. “How do you know that those were the drugs in question?” I asked.

“After he walked out, I went to see what he took. It was a couple vials of Xylazine. I’m not sure about the other two the sergeant here mentioned, but I’m positive about that one.”

“And you’re sure it is this Packard guy?” I asked.

“A hundred percent.”

“We’ll need that video,” I said.

“Sure, whatever.” He slid the back off his cell phone and popped out the small memory card. He let out a couple coughs into his shoulder and set the card on the table in front of him.

“How did you acquire this video?” Hank asked.

He raised his eyebrows. “I recorded it.”

“Why?”

“Well, here’s the thing.” He squinted. “My medical bills were starting to pile up.” He paused.

We sat in silence.

“Short version, I’m dying of cancer and don’t want to leave my wife with a pile of debt.”

“So this was going to help that how?” I asked.

“I don’t know, I thought maybe I could… I don’t know.”

“Extort him for stealing?” Hank asked.

Cross shrugged. “I’m in a tight spot. I can’t work anymore because of my illness. Our money is running low. I guess I just figured if I could get a few hundred bucks or so out of the guy, it may help at home. Not really one of my finer moments or brightest ideas, I guess.”

“Did you get any money out of this guy?” I asked.

“No. Here’s the kicker in your case, though. Before I could even attempt to get any money out of the guy, he quit at Pet Med Plus to start a taxi business.”

I had a question bubbling. It was bothering me. “So, why didn’t you come forward earlier?”

“I would have if I would have known what was going on. I don’t watch the news or read the papers. What do I care about what’s going on in the world? I just want to spend some time with my wife before I go. We have one rule: nothing depressing. That means no news, basically. The world’s problems will still be there after I’m gone, or so my wife says.”

Cross rattled his fingers across the top of the desk.

I glanced at his left hand—no ring. No tan line from a ring. No indentation from a wedding ring. It normally wouldn’t be a big deal. Wearing a wedding band could be hazardous on countless jobs. The problem was he was unemployed and just gave us a yarn about his wife.

“Your wife doesn’t mind that you don’t wear a wedding ring?”

He rubbed at his finger. “Technically, we’re still divorced. We’re actually getting remarried next Tuesday. When she found out about the illness a few months back, we reconciled, and I moved back in. It’s funny how death can bring two people back together. We have known each other since we were kids.”

I nodded.

“Can you give us a minute, Mr. Cross?” Hank asked.

“Yeah, sure.”

Hank stood and motioned for me to follow him out. I grabbed the memory card with the video on it and followed Hank. I closed the door behind me.

“What do you think?” Hank asked.

“It’s too good. Was this Packard guy on your list?” I asked.

“Yeah. Didn’t see anything of concern, though.”

“Come on.” I walked toward my office. Hank followed.

I sat at my desk and plugged Chad Packard into the computer. He showed up right away. He was local. I rattled off his information to Hank, “White male, forty-two, hair brown, eyes brown. Height, five foot ten, weight one seventy-five.”

Hank leaned against my doorway. “Do you think it’s the guy on the video?” he asked.

“Hard to tell.”

“I don’t remember seeing any priors,” Hank said.

I shook my head, “None.” I scrolled down the screen to double-check. I ran through his DMV record. He only had a minivan registered.