The Killing Place, page 18
So maybe that wasn’t how they hunted down their victims. What their method was, unfortunately, remained unclear.
Another couple of things bothered her too. The killer was right-handed but pretended to be a leftie in an attempt to throw off investigators. Graeme Foster actually was a leftie.
Also, the killers had driven a Ford Fiesta from either 2019 or 2020 with old tires and a slow oil leak, not a four-by-four with comparatively new tires. Was the Ford Fiesta the girlfriend’s vehicle? If so, why weren’t there oil stains on the driveway or the road out front?
“We need to put out an A.P.B. on that Ford Fiesta,” Stuart said, as if reading her thoughts.
“Good idea. It’s such a popular car we’re going to get a lot of hits.”
“It’s a start, though. While we’ve nabbed Foster, we’re still on square one with the girlfriend. We don’t even know her name.”
“Let’s go work on Foster some more. He should be processed by now. These guys can finish up here.”
“All right.”
Alexa looked at him. “You OK to drive?”
Stuart flexed his fingers. The hand was still swollen but he could move it fairly well now.
“Yeah, sure. You didn’t break anything. Just don’t hit me again, OK?” he said and chuckled.
“Sorry.”
“You’ve already said you’re sorry at least fifteen times. You can prove it by not hitting me again.”
Alexa rubbed her eyes, momentarily overcome with fatigue. “I’ll just be glad when this case is over.”
“Hey, at least Stacy got in touch.”
“At the worst possible time.”
“Did she explain why she’d gone silent?”
“Some teenage drama about her phone. I don’t need teenage drama right now.”
Stuart cracked a grin. “Come on, you love it.”
Alexa smiled at him. At last the ice had broken. Not exactly in the way she would have liked, but at least they could work on fixing the wedge that had been driven between each other.
What that next step would be, however, she wasn’t quite sure.
First thing first, she thought. We need to pry some more information out of Foster.
“Let’s get to the station,” she said.
“Yeah. On the way, you should text back your foster daughter. Her drama may not be as big as yours, but it feels like it to her.”
Alexa laughed, then found the laugh catch sort.
Foster daughter?
Stuart had said that without a hint of irony or even emphasis. He had said it like it was an established fact.
Well, isn’t it?
As they got in the car, she felt foolish for doubting the kid. She should have known there had been some sort of trouble with her phone. It wasn’t like it was the first time. It was ridiculous to think that Stacy would ghost her immediately after she moved across town.
More than ridiculous, it was unfair to Stacy.
As Stuart peeled out of Foster’s neighborhood, Alexa pulled out her phone and found a text from her.
“Finished arresting the bad guys yet? I need to buy you a cape.”
Alexa smiled and texted back. “Capes aren’t an approved part of the uniform.”
She got a reply almost immediately. “Your uniform is boring. It makes you look like a sack of oats.”
“Thanks.”
“Smith and Wesson are going to eat you.”
“Not if I chop you up and feed you to them first.”
“I’m so sweet they’ll think I’m a bunch of sugar cubes. But seriously, the uniform is ugly.”
“I don’t think so.”
“That’s because you don’t have any fashion sense.”
Alexa chuckled and settled back in her seat. “Right. I’m going to take fashion advice from a thirteen-year-old.”
“You should. Stuart too. He’s got to get out of those suits.”
“I’ll agree with you there.”
“You two dating yet?”
“NO.”
“:-D Why not???”
“If I gave you all the reasons, your attention span would never get you through to the end of the list.”
“Har har.”
“Glad you got through your phone drama.”
“It wasn’t drama. Why do you call everything drama?”
“I’m a cop. I live with drama.”
“You shouldn’t be working.”
Alexa tensed. Had she heard about Melanie’s hack job?
“Who told you that?”
“No one. It’s common sense. You have like fifty million cuts and bruises. DUH!”
Alexa relaxed a bit. Of course she didn’t watch the news. No one in the Carpenter household watched anything but bad movies and game shows.
“I’m fine.”
“You should be in bed for a month.”
“Oh, I guess we can’t go riding next week then.”
“”
“Gotcha.”
“Well, maybe you’ll feel better next week.”
“Maybe, but I sure am sore. Might have to take it easy.”
“Come ON!!!!”
That actually got Alexa to laugh out loud. Stuart glanced her way, a smile on his face.
Both stopped smiling as they pulled onto the street where the police station stood, only to see an ambulance parked outside.
Alexa’s heart did a little skip. She texted a quick “Got to go” and put her phone away.
The break from the case had been all too short. She knew who that ambulance had come for.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Alexa braced herself as Stuart squealed to a halt in front of the police station. Even when she was in this much of a hurry, she could never get used to his driving.
They rushed in, only to get stopped by the desk sergeant.
“Where do you think you’re going? We need to see ID for everyone, and that includes uniformed officers.” He said this to Alexa, but then turned to Stuart.
“We’re on the Foster case,” Alexa said, her words coming out breathless. Stuart flashed his FBI identification.
“They’re with him back in the cells,” the desk sergeant said, buzzing them through. “Pass through the office and go to your left. The guard there will let you in.”
They’re with him, Alexa repeated in her head as they rushed through the office, which was in an uproar. Cops talked hurriedly on phones, gabbled together in small groups, or simply stared toward the open door to the corridor that had the holding cells.
Running past a sweating guard at the open doorway, they rushed down a long concrete corridor past a holding cell where a dozen men clutched the bars and tried to press their faces between the metal to see down the hallway. Further on, in a couple of smaller cells, individual men did the same.
The corridor turned and dead-ended after ten feet. Two cells stood to either side, one empty, the other filled with a trio of EMTs and a couple of worried-looking guards.
Graeme Foster lay on the floor, eyes bugged out, tongue distended, with a livid bruise around his neck. His shirt was off and lay beside him, twisted into a rope. Someone had cut through one end and a piece of it remained tied to the top crossbar of his cell door.
“Is he going to make it?” Alexa called in through the crowd.
The EMTs ignored her. They were using a pump to put air into his lungs, but the electrocardiogram they had hooked him up to was turned away from her and she couldn’t see the reading.
“Hey!” Alexa shouted. “That’s my prisoner. Is he going to make it?”
One of the EMTs looked up. “Probably not. He was in here a while before he was discovered.”
Alexa rounded on a tall, gangly lieutenant standing just inside the cell, the highest ranking officer there.
“How could this happen? He was here less than an hour!”
The lieutenant shrugged. “He seemed stable when we booked him. Didn’t resist arrest, didn’t say much of anything. We took all personal items, of course, as well as his belt and shoelaces. Standard procedure. We didn’t do more because he gave no indication that he was suicidal.”
Alexa remembered Foster’s last words to her. My life has been pretty much worthless, and now it’s over. Her body let out a little shiver.
I should have heard what he was saying. I should have seen the warning signs. A mentally unbalanced suspect saying his life is over? Damn, I’m slipping. Slipping hard.
“Well, why is he all the way over here?” she demanded, her self-blame turning on the guard. It had been her oversight, but the prisoner was his responsibility.
“He’s ex-law enforcement. We couldn’t put him in with the other prisoners.”
Alexa flushed. It had been a stupid question, borne of frustration, but she had noticed a couple of spare individual cells on the main corridor he could have been put in.
She looked up at the security camera, pointed toward a set of mirrors that gave a view into both cells.
“I need to see the video,” she said.
“Why?” the lieutenant said. “It’s straightforward.”
Alexa glared at him and took a step closer. The man stiffened, but didn’t retreat.
“Because you had my guy for less than an hour and now he’s dead. Show me the damn tape.”
The lieutenant shrugged his bony shoulders and took her to the camera desk, set at the front of the cell block. Here the guard could look at all the cells at the same time.
As soon as they stepped up to it, Alexa let out a gasp.
She didn’t need to be told which screen showed Foster’s cell, because it was obvious.
Not because it showed a team of EMTs working on his unresponsive body. Far from it.
It showed Foster lying on the bunk, apparently asleep.
“What the hell?” The lieutenant exclaimed.
Stuart leaned in closer. “It’s on a loop. Look, see how his left arm shifts a bit on his chest? Now it’s back. Now it shifts again. It’s not much of a movement, but it shows it’s not a still frame. You can see him breathing, too. Whoever altered this feed wanted it to look like he’s lying asleep.”
Alexa staggered, and had to hold onto the desk.
“Altered the camera feed?” the lieutenant said as Alexa’s head spun. “None of my people would alter the feed. Why would they?”
Because Foster needed to go, Alexa replied silently. Just like he said he would.
Stuart’s horrified face told her he felt the same.
Someone in this station is a murderer.
“Well, someone did,” she said, trying to keep her voice level. “We need to figure out who did this, now.”
Looking half-enraged and half upset, the lieutenant strode over to a nearby desk, his long legs eating up the distance, and hit the P.A. system.
“Attention, attention. This is Lieutenant McClure speaking. All personnel currently in the building are ordered to remain on the property. Anyone—I repeat, anyone—who leaves the property without my express permission will face disciplinary measures. Members of the public who try to leave the property will be arrested for interfering with an investigation. Officers, please close all exits and guard them. Do not allow anyone to leave. That is all.”
He then strode over to the dispatcher. Alexa and Stuart followed. He bent over the woman and said, “Tell all units not currently in the field not to return with suspects. They are to take them to nearby precincts or keep them in their vehicles. The fewer people we have here confusing the picture, the better.”
The dispatcher looked pretty confused herself, as did many in the office. While news of Foster’s death must have spread like wildfire, so far very few knew that the camera had been tampered with.
Alexa realized that would change soon enough. Already several officers stood around the camera bank, talking and gesticulating wildly.
“How the hell are we supposed to discover the culprit in this circus?” Stuart whispered to her.
“At least Lieutenant McClure is being helpful,” Alexa whispered back.
“Or at least acting helpful.”
Alexa grunted. Yeah, that’s a possibility.
She looked around, unsure what to do next. McClure hurried back, and pointed to three different officers.
“You and you. You two brought Foster in. And you, you had command of the lock up. All of you come to my office.”
They meekly followed. Alexa and Stuart came too. Lieutenant McClure gave them a disapproving look over his shoulder, but obviously couldn’t think of a valid objection to having them along, and so said nothing.
They ended up in the lieutenant’s glass-walled office. Even though he closed the door so no one could hear their conversation, everyone in the rest of the office was staring at them. Alexa felt like she was in a fishbowl. The three officers kept their heads down, eyes moving every which way as if they didn’t know where to look.
Lieutenant McClure, on the other hand, looked like he didn’t know what to say.
Alexa felt sorry for him, assuming he had nothing to do with it. She still wasn’t sure about that. If he did know what happened, he was a damn good actor. If he didn’t, he was having the worst day of his career.
Lieutenant McClure did not sit down. Instead he stood behind his desk, hands behind his back, his three officers standing at attention before him. The lieutenant glared at each one for a long moment.
Then he turned to the two officers who had brought Foster in.
“All right, tell me what happened.”
They looked at each other, and one of them, who looked a good ten years older than his partner, spoke.
“We responded to Special Agent Barrett’s call, sir, and took over custody of the suspect after they had already made the arrest. He and his partner, the Deputy Marshal here, wanted to stay on and examine the suspect’s property, and so we brought the suspect in.”
“All right, and then what?”
“We brought him here, processed him with Desk Sergeant Guzman, and then brought him to Officer Cowley.”
He nodded toward the police officer in charge of the lockup, and who also monitored the cameras.
Officer Cowley blushed, but didn’t say anything. Lieutenant McClure turned to him.
“Officer Cowley, what was your assessment of the state of the suspect, Graeme Foster?”
“A bit agitated, sir, but that’s not unusual, as you know. Mostly he looked down at his feet. Like he’d given up. He listened as I gave him instructions on the rules of the lockup, and when the arresting officers informed me that he was ex-law enforcement, I put him in the furthest cell.”
“Did the suspect say anything to you?”
“No sir, nothing except simple yes and no answers.”
“And you two?” he asked, looking at the arresting officers.
“He didn’t speak at all on the way over here,” the younger one said.
Lieutenant McClure glanced at Alexa, then turned back to Officer Cowley.
“So when you took him down the line, did any of the other prisoners say anything?”
“No, sir. I didn’t announce that he was former law enforcement, sir.”
Lieutenant McClure frowned at the man’s tone, but let it pass.
“Did anyone go with you?”
“No, sir.”
“You went alone with the prisoner?” The lieutenant’s tone took on a hint of tension.
“Yes, sir.”
“You know that’s against regulations, Officer Cowley?”
Officer Cowley blinked. “But sir, we do that all the time.”
His lieutenant glowered at him, fists on hips. “What do you mean, ‘we do that all the time?’”
“But sir, you gave us the go-ahead. If the prisoner is cuffed and unresisting, you said we didn’t need to waste the manpower.”
“I never said anything of the sort.”
Alexa studied the three men’s faces. Judging from their expression, Lieutenant McClure was trying to pull a fast one.
Did that mean he was lying? Alexa’s heart fluttered.
Not necessarily, she realized. If he was trying to cover up, he wouldn’t tell a bare-faced lie in front of three of his subordinates who knew he wasn’t telling the truth. Besides, bending the rules for the sake of convenience was something all police precincts did. While the book said two officers had to be with a prisoner outside his cell at all times, a lot of stations ignored that rule if the prisoner was cuffed and not resisting, just as poor Officer Cowley had pointed out. The police were just too busy to follow all the rules that state and federal bureaucracy placed on them.
So maybe the lieutenant was trying to save face, circle the wagons in front of two federal agents.
If so, his men weren’t playing along.
“Did you interact with the prisoner at all after you placed him in the cell?” the lieutenant asked Officer Cowley.
“No, sir.”
Scowling, Lieutenant McClure went to his desk and started tapping on his keyboard. Then he turned the screen around so everyone could see.
He had brought up the camera bank, showing small screens for every camera in the police station. Apparently he could access it remotely. Alexa wondered how many others in the station, or the state, could do that. How easy was it to hack this place? She didn’t know much about cybercrime. It had never been her specialty.
“What time did you lock Mr. Foster in his cell?” the lieutenant asked.
“It was about half an hour ago, sir. I’d have to look at the log sheet for the exact time.”
“Never mind.” Lieutenant McClure adjusted the cameras, scrolling them back over time. Police officers and prisoners walked backwards in jerky high speed.
Then suddenly every camera went blank.
“What the hell?” Lieutenant McClure started tapping keys, then banging keys, swearing under his breath.
Alexa looked out the office window at the rest of the precinct, and saw the officers around the camera bank at the entrance to the lockup staring in confusion. One fiddled with the keyboard but didn’t seem to be fixing the problem.
