Judged (8 page)

“There were numbers on the back glass.”

“What kind of number? Like a phone number?”

“I don’t think so.”

I wrote that down.

“Would you be willing to meet with us and look through some photos of vans so we can make sure we’re looking for the right one?”

“I don’t think I’d want to do that. I don’t know if it is even related.”

“It may really help us,” I said.

“No. I can’t. I don’t want to be involved.”

“Can I get your name?”

I got a dial tone in my ear. “Shit.” I finished writing down everything the woman had said and dialed Beth.

“Hank,” she answered.

“I just got an anonymous call. The caller, a woman, said that she had been seeing a van parked in the neighborhood of the scene we just came from. It didn’t belong to anyone local, and the driver would just sit inside—possibly watching our most recent victim.”

“What kind of van?” Beth asked.

I looked over the description she’d given me. “She just said newer, dark windows, low to the ground on the sides. She said it had some numbers on the back glass window and it was shaped differently.”

“Full-size van?” Beth asked.

“She couldn’t decipher that question. That’s where I got the ‘it was shaped weird’ response.”

“Numbers on the windows could have been something for hire,” Beth said.

“Could be.”

“Okay. I’ll see if we can do anything with it. Maybe cross-check our possibles with having vans registered to them. You said it was an anonymous call?”

“She blocked the caller ID and hung up on me after I asked for her name.”

“We could always get who called from your phone records if needed.”

“That’s kind of what I was thinking.” I stuffed my notepad back into my inner suit pocket.

“All right, we’ll get to work on it. Are you coming back here after the dealership?”

“I’m planning on it,” I said.

“Okay. I’ll call you if we leave the office.”

“Sounds good. See you in a bit.” I clicked off, waited for a gap in the interstate’s traffic and merged back on.

I pulled into a parking space in front of the Miami Acura dealership that Scobee worked at and grumbled. A man in a dress shirt and tie spotted me through the glass of the front of the building. He spun from his desk before I put the car in park. I stepped out and swung the driver’s door shut. The same guy that spotted me pulling up was already walking quickly toward me from the front doors of the dealership.

He stopped and held out his hand for a shake. The guy looked as though he was in his early twenties and was drowning in his purple dress shirt. He flashed me a giant grin. “Welcome, sir. How can I help you out today? Looking to trade up? What is that, a 2015?”

I shook the guy’s hand—it almost seemed more awkward not to. “Not here for a vehicle, but maybe you can help me out anyway.”

He looked like I’d just backed my car over his dog. His shoulders sank. “Um, yeah, what can I help you with?”

“I’m looking to speak with someone about Glen Scobee.”

“Are you a police officer or something?” he asked. “I just mean that I heard what happened.”

“I’m with the FBI,” I said.

“Oh, okay. You probably want to talk to Kevin Prassey. Here, follow me to the front desk. They’ll get him paged for you.”

“Sure,” I said.

I followed him inside to a large circular front desk with two women seated behind it.

“This gentleman would like to speak with Kevin Prassey,” the guy said. “Could we get him paged?”

The dark-haired girl sitting nearer to us picked up her phone without responding. She paged Mr. Prassey over the intercom and clicked her phone back down. “Should be just a minute,” she said.

I turned to thank the salesman, but he’d already left my side. He was back at the front door, standing in front of an older couple with his hand extended for another handshake. I turned my back to the desk and looked over at the vehicles located on the sales floor—a couple sedans and two SUVs. At my back, the phone rang.

“What is your name, sir?” the girl asked.

I glanced over my shoulder and said, “Agent Hank Rawlings, FBI.”

She told whoever was on the other end of the call, I assumed Mr. Prassey, my name and hung up.

“Kevin is going to be about five minutes. There’s a lounge right around the corner, leading out to our service department. There’s complimentary coffee and donut holes.”

I didn’t know if the donut-hole reference was meant to be a snide remark at my being law enforcement, but I thanked her and headed to the suggested lounge. There, I filled a cup of coffee, grabbed a donut hole, and took a seat beside two older women. An older man in a Hawaiian shirt sat across from me. The women were doing their best to keep quiet voices while talking about the fact that one of the vigilante’s victims had been the manager at the dealership. I tuned the women out, ate my donut, sipped my coffee, and stared at the television playing sports highlights in the corner. Moments later, a gray-suited midforties man with dark, slicked-back hair approached. He looked at the two women, the Hawaiian-shirted man, and then me.

“I’m Kevin Prassey,” he said.

I stood to greet him. “Agent Hank Rawlings. Is there some place we could talk?”

“Sure, my office is this way.” He waved for me to follow and weaved between the cars on the show floor to enter a glass office tucked in behind the vehicles.

A man stood at the office’s door, scraping a pair of E stickers from it.

“Can you excuse us for a moment?” Prassey asked him.

The man nodded, picked up his supplies, and walked away. Prassey waved me through and closed the door at my back.

“Sorry about the mess in here,” he said as he rounded the desk and took a seat. “New office.”

I took a seat across from him, noticing the boxes stacked along the wall of the room.

“I’m assuming that the visit is in reference to Glen Scobee?” he asked.

“Correct. This was his office, I take it?”

“It was, yes. So what can I help you with?”

“I’m actually looking to see if I could speak with anyone that the man would consider friends around here,” I said. “People who maybe knew him outside of work.”

“Friends or outside of work, you’re probably not going to have a ton of luck. Alice upstairs will be your best bet—family friend, I believe. They’d go to lunch a few times a week. Not to speak ill of the dead, but the guy wasn’t the most personable. I was a sales manager under Scobee for five years—worked with him every day. I still addressed him as Mister the last day I saw him, if that tells you anything. The guy had a high opinion of himself and his position.”

“Okay, is this ‘Alice from upstairs’ here?”

“She is. I can take you up to her office to speak with her.”

“I’d appreciate that. After I speak with her, I’d also like to maybe take a look at whatever video you have from Scobee’s last night here. Maybe from a camera that covers the employee parking area, if you have one.”

“Well, we don’t really have any kind of specific parking area for staff, but Mister Scobee generally parked on the far edge of the lot—away from possible door dings would be my guess. When you’re through with Alice, I can give you a hand with looking into that.”

“Sure,” I said.

Prassey stood from his desk. I followed him down the hall outside his office and through a doorway that led to a stairway up. Upstairs, Prassey stopped at an empty office with the name Alice Schipper and Human Resources on the door.

“Hmm,” Prassey said. “Why don’t you have a seat inside her office here? I’ll find her. Maybe she’s in with the rest of the administrative staff. I’ll be right back.” He opened the door for me, motioned me toward the chairs inside, and then left down the hall.

I took a seat in one of the guest chairs and stared at the shelved wall filled with photos behind the woman’s desk. All the photos had one woman that was similar, I assumed Alice Schipper. She appeared to be in her early thirties, with short blond hair. From the couple pictures of her rock climbing, I figured that was her hobby of choice. The only photo that included a man was one of her being presented a plaque by Scobee. On the floor to the right of her desk were a couple of filled boxes with the tops open. I craned my neck to get a better view of the contents. Miscellaneous awards, certifications, and some photos filled the boxes. I leaned forward and moved a plaque to one side with my fingertip to get a better look at a photo—it was of Glen Scobee. I leaned back in my chair.

A minute or two later, the office door opened at my back. I turned, saw the woman from the photos, and stood to greet her.

“Ms. Schipper?” I asked.

“Yes. Kevin said that you were with the FBI and had some questions regarding Glen.”

“Correct,” I said.

She rounded her desk, and I retook my seat.

“What can I help you with?” she asked.

I took the woman in. While she was dressed for business, something about her struck me as disheveled, but I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what it was.

“What was your relationship with Mr. Scobee?” I asked.

“Professional,” she said quickly.

The answer immediately struck me as off.

“Um, okay,” I said. “Mr. Prassey had said that you were a family friend earlier?”

“Oh, I was close with Rachael. His wife.”

“And how long have you known her?”

“Six or seven years.”

“Sure, and you knew Glen Scobee for the same amount of time?”

“Roughly,” she said.

“Okay. I guess what I’m looking for is someone who was close enough to know his routines. What he did and where he went. The night of Mr. Scobee’s murder, he didn’t return home until the early morning hours. Have any idea where he went?”

She didn’t immediately respond. A moment later, she shook her head.

I scratched my cheek and looked at the woman, who looked away. Something was up. She wasn’t behaving normally.

“Did you know any of the Scobees’ other friends or family?” I asked.

“A couple of friends that would show for a dinner party here or there. I never met any of their family, though. Both he and Rachael were only children.”

“Right,” I said. “So who were you going to give Scobee’s personal items to?”

“What?” she asked.

I pointed to the open boxes. “The boxes of his personal items.”

“Oh, they were going to throw them away, so I, um, brought them up here.”

“To give them to someone?” I asked.

She rubbed her nose. “Yeah, I’ll have to get in touch with his family somehow to collect the stuff.”

“Okay. So you don’t know what he was out doing the night he was killed? Can you think of anyone who would?”

“No,” she said.

“Do you know any places that he might frequent late at night?”

“I wouldn’t know that,” she said.

“You guys never talked about anything non-work-related when you went to lunch? It seems to me that a pair of friends who went to lunch together a few times weekly would know something about the others interests, places they go, things like that.”

She didn’t respond.

“You were close with his wife? Did she ever mention anything?”

Ms. Schipper looked away and didn’t answer my question. When she looked back, tears were welling in her eyes.

“He was at my house the night he was killed, okay?” She wiped her eyes with her fingers and sniffed. “Glen and I had been having a relationship for a few years. He was planning on leaving Rachael.”

I nodded. That revelation was the conclusion I’d been building toward. I pulled out my notepad to take notes. I had a feeling the woman would give me a decent amount of information. “What time did he leave your house?”

“Two thirty in the morning or so.”

I wrote that down. “Okay. Did he ever mention that maybe someone had been following him?”

“Following him? No.”

“Nothing about the same vehicle popping up at different locations?” I asked.

“Not really that I can remember.”

“Maybe a lighter-colored van, tinted windows, low on the sides, numbers on the rear windows.”

She pulled her head back, a look of surprise on her face. “I’ve seen a van like that parked across the street from my house. Come to think of it, it was usually the nights that I saw Glen off when he left. Light-colored handicap van.”

“Handicap van? Do you mean something outfitted with a wheelchair ramp? That kind of handicap?”

“Yeah.”

“Make or model? Tag number?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Aside from working at a car dealership, I know pretty much zero about cars.”

“This was a Tuesday that he was at your house. Did you see the van that night?”

“I don’t remember,” she said.

“Do you think you could pick the van out from a group of photos?”

“Maybe.”

“Okay, we’ll get back to that,” I said. “What other nights did he come over?”

“Mostly just Tuesdays. It was our night together. He would tell Rachael he was playing cards.”

“Did he go straight to your house after work? Go straight home after?”

“Um, not really. After everyone left, he’d get picked up from the dealership here by a taxi and then dropped off at my house. He’d usually be over around eleven. The taxi would pick him back up around two thirty or so and bring him back here to get his car.”

“Why the taxi?” I asked.

“In case Rachael ever checked up on him, his vehicle would be here. He told her they played cards in the dealership’s lunchroom.”

“I see,” I said. “Okay, Ms. Schipper. I’m actually going to need to get a time set up where you can come to the FBI’s Miramar office, give us a recap of what you told me, and have a look at some photos of different vans. The sooner we can get this done, the better.”

“I’m off at five tonight. I guess I could come after work.”

“I’d appreciate that.”

I left her with my card and the instructions to call me when she was en route to the FBI office. Then I headed back downstairs in search of Mr. Prassey so I could get a look at the dealership’s video.

Tim parked along the curb, staring up at Dr. Douglas Jensen’s Miami Beach office. The building that housed the doctor’s practice might have been the strangest in the area. Tim had done some research into the building when he originally thought it might make a suitable location to rid the world of the doctor. The building was seven stories, recently built by someone with a vision of the future of the modern city building—or so the news articles had said when it was constructed. The loftlike, rectangular building blended a parking structure with surrounding high-priced offices and studios. The ground level was a fine dining restaurant. The doctor’s office took up a glass-walled corner on the top floor and had an outdoor patio area that Jensen would sometimes conduct his sessions on.