The Night Stalker (3 page)

CHAPTER FIVE

I
stayed in Ocala long enough to give my statement to the police. Then I got onto 1-75, headed south to the Florida Turnpike, and went home.

I lived in Dania, a sleepy town south of Fort Lauderdale known for its dusty consignment shops that sold the world’s best junk. It was pitch dark by the time I reached its deserted streets.

I drove east down Dania Beach Boulevard, then hung a left onto an unmarked road known only to locals. A minute later I pulled into Tugboat Louie’s crowded parking lot. Loud music blared out of the speakers on the side of the building, and I tapped out the rhythm to the Rolling Stones’ “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking?” on my steering wheel.

Louie’s was my idea of heaven. It had a good-time bar, dockside dining on a wide canal, and a small marina. It was also where I kept my office. I wanted to see if anyone had written an e-mail back about Sampson Grimes, and I went inside.

Louie’s owner—a hardworking Indian named Kumar—sat on a stool by the front door. Kumar came to work each day wearing black slacks, a white Egyptian cotton shirt, and an oversized black bow tie. Years ago I’d done him a favor, which he seemed intent on forever repaying.

“Jack, Jack, how are you?” Kumar asked.

“I’m fine. How about you?”

“Wonderful, fantastic, I can’t complain. How is your dog?”

“He’s chewing ’em up.”

“Glad to hear it. Listen, there is a man here waiting to see you. I have to assume he’s a policeman because he won’t drink any liquor, just coffee. He’s very unfriendly and keeps looking suspiciously around the room. He’s making everyone very uncomfortable.”

“Did he give you his name?”

“No.”

I glanced into the bar. It was jumping the way only a Fort Lauderdale bar can: the music was deafening, the booze was flowing, and women were dancing in the aisles and on tabletops while letting their inhibitions fly out the door. I spotted Detective Ron Cheeks sitting in the back, wearing a dark suit and shades, the proverbial turd in the punch bowl. I caught his eye, and waved. Within moments, Cheeks was on top of me.

“You and I need to talk,” Cheeks said.

“Sure,” I said. “Can I buy you a burger?”

“In private.”

“It must be important,” I said.

“Life-altering,” he said.

I unhooked a chain to the stairwell, and we marched upstairs. Cheeks was your typical belligerent white male. Mid-forties, divorced, his head anchored on a dinner roll of a neck, his droopy handlebar mustache giving his face a permanent frown. He had taken over the Missing Persons unit after I’d left the sheriff’s department. I didn’t resent him for that, just the fact that he rarely gave me any jobs.

The second floor housed two offices: mine and Kumar’s. My office was long and narrow, and contained a desk with a computer, two folding chairs, and a spectacular view of the canal. As I entered, Buster trotted to the corner and curled into a ball.

“You should get rid of that dog,” Cheeks said.

“What’s wrong with my dog?”

“He bites people.”

“Only bad people.”

“He’s the anti-Lassie.” Cheeks dropped into a chair and undid the knot in his necktie. He was wheezing from the climb, and took a moment to catch his breath. “If you were smart, you’d have him put to sleep.”

“You need to get in shape,” I said.

“Round is a shape.”

I leaned against my desk, and waited him out.

“I got your e-mail about Sampson Grimes,” Cheeks said. “I want to see what Abb gave you at the prison.”

I handed Cheeks the kidnapper’s photograph and ransom note. The detective removed his shades and gave them a cursory glance. His eyes were watery, ringed from lack of sleep. He stuffed both items into his jacket pocket.

“I know who kidnapped Sampson Grimes,” he said.

“You do?” I asked.

“It was the kid’s father, Jed Grimes. Unfortunately, I can’t prove it.”

“How can you be certain?”

Cheeks held up his outstretched hand, touching each of his fingers as he spoke. “Jed Grimes was the last person to see Sampson. Jed failed a polygraph test. Jed’s fighting with the kid’s mother over custody rights. Jed has a long history with the police. Is that enough circumstantial evidence for you?”

“Not really,” I said. In most cases, that would have been enough to convince me. Only this situation was different. Abb Grimes had received a ransom note in which the kidnapper was threatening to kill the boy. It was far too important a lead to be swept under the rug.

“Look, Jack, I’m going to stop beating around the bush. I want you to drop this case. The last thing I need right now is you running around town, stirring up the pot. Jed Grimes is guilty. It’s just going to take me awhile to prove it.”

I bit my tongue in anger. I didn’t care about Jed, just the boy.

“What about Sampson?” I asked.

“What about him?”

“He’s been gone three days. We need to find him.”

“We’ll find him eventually.”

“You’re sure about that?”

“I’d bet my reputation on it.”

I nearly laughed in his face. Years ago, Cheeks had fallen asleep on his desk, and woken up with the word
Homicide
printed backward on his forehead, the words picked up off an internal report. He’d walked around for hours without knowing it. He didn’t have a reputation, at least not one worth betting on.

“I’m not dropping the case,” I said.

“You’re making a mistake.”

I shrugged.

Cheeks retied the knot in his tie. “Okay, then I’m going to set some ground rules. One, no leaks to the press. Anything you learn, I hear about first. Two, no withholding information. If you find something out and don’t tell me, I’ll kill you. Three, no talking to suspects or visiting the crime scene without my permission. Four, no grandstanding. If you locate the kid, I don’t want you rescuing him. That’s my responsibility. You can stay in the shadows and collect your money. Understand?”

“Loud and clear.”

Cheeks stood up, and put his shades back on. We’d been friends once, or so I’d thought. The man standing in front of me now was not my friend.

“You and I go back a long way, so I’m going to give you some advice,” Cheeks said. “Drop this case, or it will be your last.”

I had been threatened before, but never by a cop. The words carried a lot more menace coming out of Cheeks’s mouth than I would have liked.

“Sure I can’t buy you a burger?” I asked.

“I’ll ruin you,” he said.

“They’re really good. I’ll even throw in a beer.”

“You’re not funny, Jack.”

“How about some dessert? The chocolate cake is to die for.”

Cheeks went to the door and jerked it open.

“Think it over,” he said.

“I’ll definitely do that,” I said.

He gave me a parting look, then shook his head. I listened to his feet pound the stairs on the way down.

CHAPTER SIX

I
sat at my desk and stared into space. Music from downstairs was making the whole building shake. I tuned it out and tried to think.

Before I’d left the police department, I’d written a turnover report. No one had asked me to, and it wasn’t part of my job description, but I’d written one up anyway. It had been a hundred and fifteen pages long.

This turnover report contained every open missing persons case in Broward County, some dating back to my first day on the job. It included the case of a fourteen-year-old girl who’d gone into a department store and disappeared, and another about an elderly man suffering from dementia walking out of a nursing home, and never being seen again. If Cheeks had bothered to read any of what I’d written, he would have known that I had continued chasing leads on those cases long after they’d gone cold. Call it an obsession, but I’d refused to file them away.

I
never
quit a case.

My unwillingness to give up had defined my career as a detective, and later on, it had cost me my job and ruined my marriage. It was both my good side and my bad side, and I was past apologizing for it. Cheeks should have known better than to ask me to drop Sampson Grimes’s case.

I booted up my computer. I had read about the Sampson Grimes case in the newspaper, but the news reports on the Internet tended to have more information than the paper did, and I now pored through them.

There were six different stories posted about Sampson’s kidnapping. Each had been filed within twenty-four hours of the boy having gone missing. Reading them, I saw an unusual similarity. From the start of the case, the police had considered Jed Grimes their primary suspect, and had focused their investigation on him. Cheeks was quoted in two of the articles as saying that a break in the case was imminent.

I do my best thinking on my feet. I went to the window and parted the blinds. A conga line of drunken revelers had spilled from the bar and was winding its way down to the marina. I thought I knew what was going on. Cheeks didn’t like Jed Grimes and had decided that he was guilty. As a result, Cheeks had not conducted a thorough investigation. Cops called this personalizing a case. It was the surest way to screw up an investigation that I knew of.

I needed to look at the crime scene. Unlike Cheeks, I wasn’t wearing blinders, and I had a suspicion I might see things that Cheeks had missed. Cheeks had warned me not to go there, but I was going to ignore him.

I pulled the phone book out of my desk, and found Jed Grimes’s address. He lived in Davie, about a twenty-minute drive. I clapped my hands, and Buster lifted his head.

“Let’s go for a car ride,” I said.

I got on 595 and headed west. Tourist season was in full swing, and the line of cars’ headlights stretched in both directions as far as my eyes could see.

Fifteen minutes later, I exited into a middle-class neighborhood sandwiched between Davie and Cooper City, and found myself staring at poorly lit street signs as I searched for Jed Grimes’s address. I had once known these streets like the back of my hand. Rampant development had changed that, and blurred the lines between where neighborhoods began and ended.

Five blocks later the scenery changed, and the streets turned mean. The houses were now made of cinder block, and many had iron security bars on their windows. Cars filled with angry young men roamed the streets, looking for trouble. Buster sat at stiff attention beside me, his lip turned up in a snarl.

Jed Grimes’s street appeared in my headlights. It was called RichJo Lane, and was lined with falling-down bungalows built during the middle of the last century. I parked in front of a bungalow with yellow police tape surrounding the perimeter. Printed on the mailbox in black Magic Marker was the word
Grimes.

I took a look around before getting out of my car. It was a rough-looking area. Had I still been a cop, I might have called for backup. I glanced at my dog.

“It’s just you and me, pal,” I told him.

Buster pawed his seat. He was ready to go. I liked that in a partner. I grabbed a flashlight from the glove compartment and opened my door. My dog climbed over me, and ran to the bushes surrounding Jed Grimes’s house.

I got out of my car and stood on the sidewalk. Jed’s place was dark, and I shined my flashlight at it. Shingles were missing from the roof, the paint peeling like a bad sunburn. The carport was empty, and no one appeared to be at home.

I started to climb over the police tape. The articles I’d read on the Internet had said that Sampson had been abducted from his bedroom in the rear of the house. Stealing kids from their bedrooms was tricky, and I wanted to see how the kidnapper had pulled it off.

Hearing a woman’s voice, I stopped what I was doing. Trespassing on a crime scene was a crime, and I didn’t want to get caught in the act.

I looked up and down RichJo Lane, then heard the voice again. It had come from a white trailer parked on the street. I hadn’t paid much attention to the trailer, thinking it belonged to a neighbor. Now I took a closer look.

It was the Broward County Sheriff’s Department’s Operations Center trailer, or what cops called the OC. When kids were abducted, the police parked the OC near the home, and conducted their investigation from it. This allowed the police to be near the crime scene, while giving the child’s family some privacy.

A door on the trailer opened, and a young woman came outside and shut the door behind her. She was no more than twenty feet away from me, and stood beneath a streetlight. She started to cross the street, then halted, and looked directly at me.

“Mr. Carpenter? Is that you?”

She was a long-stemmed beauty with slender features and deeply troubled eyes. I couldn’t place her, and I stepped forward to get a better look at her.

“Excuse me, but who are you?” I asked.

“Heather Rinker. I played basketball with your daughter in junior high school. You used to drive us to games.”

Shock was the best word to describe my reaction. The last time I’d seen Heather, she’d been a skinny little girl in pigtails, and hardly resembled the stunning woman standing before me. I said, “It’s been a long time. What are you doing here?”

“I was talking to the detective inside the trailer.”

“About what?”

“You don’t know?”

I shook my head.

“Sampson Grimes is my son.”

I didn’t know what to say. I put my hand on her shoulder. As a cop, I couldn’t do that, but I wasn’t a cop anymore.

“I’m sorry, Heather,” I said.

Her eyes welled with tears, and she wiped them away. “I spoke to Jed earlier. He told me that his father’s attorney hired you to find Sampson.”

“That’s right,” I said.

“That’s what you do, isn’t it? You find missing kids.”

I nodded. I sensed that Heather was dying inside, but I had to press her. “I need for you to tell me what happened to your son.”

“Right now?”

“Now’s a good time.”

She took a deep breath. “Jed and I got divorced after Sampson was born, and I’ve been raising him myself. Last year Jed decided he wanted to help raise Sampson, and he sued me for custody rights. The judge said okay, and Sampson’s been staying with Jed on weekends.

“It was going okay until this past Saturday. I was working, and Jed called me, and said that someone had come into his house through a window, and taken Sampson from his bedroom. Jed was freaking out, and didn’t know what to do.”

“Was anyone home when this happened?” I asked.

“Jed was, and his friend Ronnie.”

“They didn’t hear anything?”

Heather shook her head.

“What happened then?” I asked.

“I left work and raced over here. Jed and Ronnie were running around the neighborhood, looking for Sampson, and I joined in. We talked to all the neighbors. Nobody heard my son cry, or saw a car pull away. It was like…”

Her voice trailed off, and I touched her sleeve.

“Like what?” I asked.

“It was like Sampson disappeared off the face of the earth.”

The memory was tearing her apart, and she covered her face with her hands. If I’d learned anything looking for missing kids, it was that children stolen from their bedrooms did not go quietly. They screamed and kicked and sometimes even bit their abductors. Something was not right with her story.

“I need to ask you a question,” I said.

Heather lowered her hands.

“The detective handling the investigation thinks Jed did this,” I said.

“He’s wrong,” Heather said.

“You’re sure about that.”

Heather nodded. “Jed had a rough time growing up. But he’s changed. He was trying to do right by Sampson. He wouldn’t do this to him. Or to me.”

“Where is he?”

“Jed’s staying at his mom’s place. So am I. The police wanted us nearby, and I just couldn’t stay here.”

“Are you two back together?”

Heather smiled faintly. “We’re trying.”

I walked Heather to her car. She drove an aging Toyota Camry with a baby seat strapped in the backseat, and bumper stickers with Sampson’s photograph and the word
MISSING!
plastered to the front and back bumpers of her car.

“I’d like a bumper sticker for my car,” I said.

Heather opened the trunk. It contained a cardboard box filled with bumper stickers, and signs with Sampson’s photo and a number to call that could be stuck in people’s yards. She pulled a bumper sticker and a DVD from the box, and stuck them into my hands.

“I recorded this DVD at Sampson’s third birthday party,” she said. “I took it around to the TV stations, and asked them to show it on the news.”

“That was very smart of you,” I said.

I opened the driver’s door for her. Heather started to climb in, then paused to look at me with her sad eyes. “Please find my baby, Mr. Carpenter. I can’t live without him.”

I never made promises when I was looking for missing kids. They only filled people with false hope, and that was not the business I was in.

“I’ll try, Heather.”

She nodded woodenly, and left without saying good-bye.