Take the Fourth (42 page)
Authors: Jeffrey Walton
L
aying in bed with nothing much to do he was contemplating the differences between Bob Barker and Drew Carey as the host on The Price is Right. Though he grew up with Bob during his sick days from school, he actually enjoyed the dry humor from the squinty man behind the glasses, though it might have had something to do with both of them being marines. Sure, Barker was a military man himself, a navy man but the camaraderie of all things marines placed a big fat plus sign next to Drew. It was during the showcase showdown that Smith’s laptop binged announcing an email had arrived in his inbox. It was from his friend that he had sent the pictures to the night before. The email was several megs in size and took a rather long time to download from the server due to its attachment. He read the brief email stating the fact that the four enclosed files were all hits within a ninety-five percent accuracy rate given the distance of the shots.
The first picture was Sarah Conner which looked nothing like the mother from the Terminator series. This photo was from the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation and listed Sarah at 135 pounds with green eyes. He compared them to his photos and besides the hair color it was a pretty good match. The accuracy rate on this photo was in the highest percentile being ninety-eight point seven five. Even though the next photo was in a lower percentile as soon as he saw her name and read the enclosed dossier he knew in a flash Jorja Carson was the person he captured on his smart media card. One didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to see otherwise.
Now he had a decision to make. His mind wrestled with the pros and cons and it drew only one conclusion. He had to go see her and explain.
While en route back to the office Jorja came to a conclusion as well. The car dropped her off at the office yet she headed for the garage instead. It was still early in the day and she didn’t want any confrontations, mainly with Greg until she was absolutely positive. She wanted to do a bit more research but in the comfort and safety of her home and she was going to have to log into the system to do so.
Jorja’s car was still in the garage from the night before and her keys still in her purse so she was good to go, though she was feeling apprehensive for leaving early and unannounced. She tried to formulate an email on her blackberry that would explain her abrupt departure but her mind was elsewhere. She would correct that as soon as she was home. When she finally reached her vehicle on the second level she felt a slight sense of relief like a small personal goal had been reached. That all changed when she heard Greg’s voice.
“Jorja!” Ignoring him like she didn’t hear him and going for her door. “Jorja, wait, wait I need to talk to you,” from two car lengths away.
“It will have to wait Greg, I’m in a rush,” as she unlocked the door and opened it
“You don’t understand,” now in between the two parked cars giving Jorja a sense of being trapped.
“Greg, I can’t right now, I have to go,” with a slight tremble in her voice.
“Where are you going, I can come with you.”
“No, it’s personal,” turning around and looking right at him.
“But,” as he came even closer and evading her personal space.
“But what,” now becoming defensive, “how did you know I was here?”
Completely taking him by surprise, “I . .”
“You are following me, spying on me.”
“No, I…”
“And you are using the system to do it.”
“No, no, I…”
“Then explain the bag this afternoon.”
“Bag?”
“Yes, the bag, the bag from the very same restaurant I had dinner in last night, that is not a coincidence by any stretch of the means.”
“I always…”
“Don’t you lie to me.”
“Okay, okay, I wanted to find out who you were with so I went to find some answers.”
“You knew who I was with so don’t give me that, besides why does it matter who I was with,” then it clicked and she waited a bit and said in a sort of demeaning tone, “you are jealous aren’t you, yes it all makes sense now.”
“No,” he said in almost a yell.
“Greg, you are scaring me.”
“I just wanted, I just wanted…,” she didn’t feel safe and she tried to get into her car and he slammed the door shut. “I just wanted to, to protect you is all.”
“Protect me? Protect me how? By spying on me?” She reached for the door again.
“No, that’s not it, I wanted to protect you from them, they’re evil, more evil than you could ever know. I just wanted to protect you.”
“Then tell me how my aunt plays into all of this.”
“Your aunt?”
“Yes, my aunt, my aunt who was murdered remember, it appears that all these emails were on our servers. I’m starting to do the math and in some way it all makes some twisted sense.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The emails, you following me, you, you had something to do with my aunt’s death didn’t you?”
“Jorja, I don’t know what you are talking about, what emails?”
“The emails on our servers to and from my aunt’s killer. It all points to you.”
“Jorja, I would never, never in a million years… I swear to you… you gotta to believe me.”
“No, no I don’t, you spied on me, God knows for how long and now you deny your involvement. All this time I trusted you, dammit Greg, I trusted you.”
“I wanted to protect you, I wanted to protect you from them, from them and your uncle I swear that’s all.”
“My uncle? So you did have something to do with my aunt’s death.”
“No!”
“Then why did you just say you wanted to protect me from my uncle?”
“I didn’t.”
“You had my aunt killed didn’t you, didn’t you?”
“No, no, I just made the phone call is all.”
“Phone call? What phone call?”
“I just wanted to see what your uncle would do is all.”
“What phone call are you talking about?”
‘The phone call from the pay phone, I… I told your uncle about the affair.”
“What?”
“I wanted to see his reaction, see if he could do it again.”
“Do what again?”
“He killed your mother Jorja.”
“You have no proof of that.”
“Those fingerprints on the boat, it puts him there, he did it.”
“So you believe my uncle killed my mother and to prove it you placed my aunt’s life in danger.”
“It wasn’t like that I swear.”
“Then why all the emails to John Smith?”
“I don’t know of any emails.”
“Liar, you fucking liar!” Again she tried for the door.
He grabbed both her biceps with each hand, she tried to move but he pushed her against the car. “Jorja, it’s not like that… I . .”
“Greg, you are hurting me.”
“I, I just wanted to protect you… because… because I love you.”
“Greg, let go of me.”
“I said I love you, didn’t you hear me, I fucking love you Jorja.” as he slammed her harder against the door.
She fought back but was surprised by his strength as he slammed her again against the car
“Greg!” she shouted
“I did this all for you, because I love you.” His rage was growing and Jorja was about to scream but he spun her around a cupped his hand over her mouth while maintaining complete control over her. She kicked him in the shin with her high heel and he winced in pain. He pushed her body forward; this time her head hit the roof of the car. She was dazed. She felt the pressure of his hands dissipate then she heard some commotion like scuffling feet and then a rather large thud. Her hands immediately went to ease the pain in her forehead as she tried to gather her feet from under her.
She felt two strong hands helping her up and a voice say, “Are you alright?”
Still dazed, she glanced down between the cars and saw Greg’s lifeless body. “Yes, yes I think, is he, is he…”
“No, I don’t think so,” and with that he reached down to check for a pulse, “No, just unconscious it seems. I’ll call for help.”
Jorja was in the midst of gathering her senses as the call to 911 was placed, she looked at the man on the phone, trying to place him but couldn’t. She waited until he finished the call, “who are you?”
‘They’ll be here in a few minutes Jorja.”
“You know my name?”
“Yes, I’m John Smith, we sort of met last night.”
She backed away, “You are the one who murdered my aunt,” backing away even farther now.
“Yes Jorja, I was sent to kill your aunt, that is true and I would have completed my mission if it wasn’t for the fact they were already dead.”
“Already dead?”
“Yes, both of them.”
“Are you saying you didn’t kill my aunt?”
“Yes, that’s what I’m saying, I already told you I was sent there to kill her.”
“Actually, you were only sent there to take photographs but for some sick and twisted jealousy plot you were set up by that guy over there.”
“So either way my mission was a failure, good to know. You didn’t answer my earlier question, are you alright?”
“I think so, yes, what are you doing here?”
“I wanted to talk to you, to clear the air, after you tried to contact me last night, I figured you needed to know the truth, the truth that it wasn’t me, plus I wanted to meet that woman who had the balls to confront the person who may have killed her aunt.”
“How do I know it wasn’t you, just because you say it wasn’t you?”
“Why would I risk coming out in the open, I could have disappeared never to been seen again.”
“Anticipatory deniability.”
“What?”
“Nothing, something I picked up from the Chief of Staff, besides they’ll find you, no one can truly disappear.”
“Maybe that’s true with today’s technology.”
“You know about the system?”
“What are you talking about, what system?”
“Nothing, never mind,” as sirens were heard in the distance.
“Jorja, I know it’s a tough pill to swallow but I think you have to look in another direction, outside the box in order to find the truth regarding your aunt’s death.”
“I, I will,” still rubbing her head with her hands and apparently becoming more woozy.
The flashing red and white lights were now bouncing off the concrete walls of the parking garage. John went to flag them down and point them in the right direction. The EMT’s arrived on the scene and loaded both Jorja and Greg into the ambulance. Jorja awoke on a gurney in the ER with a splitting headache. Greg was still unconscious with IV’s dripping into his veins. He already had a CAT scan and some of the best doctors by his side but the prognosis was grim. His brain had hemorrhaged during the ride to the hospital. It was mainly a waiting game now, waiting for family and loved ones to say their goodbyes. Jorja was the first to say her goodbye. She never really knew the strong emotions that played out in her colleague’s mind. She never felt that connection but she did feel she had lost a good friend, a friend who had shared one of the biggest secrets held from the populace and now that burden was squarely on her shoulders; in a way he did protect her. She now had some really big decisions to make.
. . .
T
hings started to fall into place like the chips falling into the money slots on the Price is Right’s Plinko board. It seemed like everywhere they looked a piece of the puzzle was being revealed like clues on the familiar game show Concentration, though there was not that many pieces and most of it was speculation at the moment.
Josh found the medical records. Garfield pulled up Kyle’s home statistics and found no living relatives; he also pinpointed his home address via Google maps. The feds brought up the remaining digital files, such as tax records and phone calls. And Lynch found pink paint and a shovel. Pink was a girl’s color, a pretty little girl color. Barbies and easter dresses, and lunchboxes, and braids, and the color of a girls’ room were all pink in Lynch’s mind. Pink Pink Pink… what the hell was Kyle buying pink paint for… he knew that answer. The shovel—he knew that answer as well.
Did they have their man, at this point only God knew and in the back of Lynch’s mind he knew as well, call it a hunch, a cop’s intuition, call it something but he knew, he also knew he needed more facts.
Josh broke the tension, “he doesn’t seem to have many neighbors, it would be a good place to take a child.”
“That alone doesn’t get us a warrant,” Lynch ejected.
“Fuck a warrant, I’m tired of playing by the rules,” Garfield shouted from behind his laptop.”
“We need more than Garfield ‘s Google coordinates and my pink paint, what else do we got?”
“Not much,” almost in unison by the two feds, then the dark haired one spoke “pretty sparse, even his phone records look bleak.”
“Can you pull them up?”
“Click the phone icon in the upper right hand of the app.”
“Okay got it, yeah like you said not much, what maybe two calls a month on average, this guy has no friends or family so it seems.”
“Or not many left, pretty lonely if you ask me… . hey isn’t that one of the signs?”
“Yes.”
“Hey can we get a reverse lookup on the calls he made?”
“Sure, see the arrow the points up, click on that.”
“Seems like most calls are to the pharmacy.”
“Probably for his prescriptions, one for pain, the other is a mild sleep aid.”
“Here’s a strange one, KB toys, what’s a man in his thirties with no family or friends doing calling a toy store?”
“Hot Wheels collector or maybe a batman figurine collector, you know like that forty year old virgin guy, a real geek slash hard-up type of guy.”
“Okay, if that’s true, does he belong to any type of club or forum?”
“Not that we could tell.”
Josh spoke, “okay this is strange.”
“What,” the entire room questioned?
“The one phone call he made to KB Toys was two days prior to my little girl’s case.”
“So?”
“So I’m just saying.”
“No, no, he’s right,” Garfield added, “same thing for my case, two days, just before she went missing.”
“Helluva a coincidence don’t you agree?”
“That and seventy-five cents will get you a morning paper and still not enough for a search warrant,” the number two FBI guy stated.
“But not the case with Ripley… in fact no calls were made this past week, none at all.”
“Wait a sec will ya,” and Josh pulled up the phone records from KB Toys; he zoomed in on two days before Ripley’s disappearance, there were twenty-two calls that day, and a reverse lookup proved insightful. “Who the hell uses a payphone in this day and age?”
“Even money it’s Kyle Kraner.”
“You think so?’
“Bet your life… . same m.o. here, always calls two days before, but as with all criminals they get smarter, well they think they get smarter, the longer they play the game. Somewhere along the line he decided that a payphone is much safer to use than his home phone. Where is that phone located?”
“Just a mile and half from his house.”
“That’s got to be him.”
“So we are saying because this guy is registered as a sex offender, walks with a limp, has no family, bought a can of pink paint and a shovel, and calls a toy store two days prior to his kidnappings that this is our man?”
“Damn straight. I can feel it.”
“All that is circumstantial evidence and still not enough for a warrant.”
“Pull up his driver’s license please.”
Then Lynch picked up the phone.
“Do you have access to a computer?”
“Yes.”
“Right now?”
“Yes, upstairs in my father’s room.”
“Do you have an email account?’
“Yes.”
“Okay give it to me, I’m going to send you a few pictures, okay?”
“Okay,” and a few minutes later his email box beeped.
“I got them, hold on, I have to download them onto my desktop, okay, I have them, now what?”
“Open them, do you recognize anyone?’
“Should I?”
“You tell me?”
“Okay number one… . no… . number two… . no… . number three… . no… number four… .”
“Did you say number three?”
“I’m on four… . wait that was four… . number four I mean no… . now number three… .”
“Did you open it?”
“Yes”
“And?”
“And that looks like the pencil sketch guy… . the one who gave me the ten dollars.”
“Are you sure?”
“No, he looks different somehow, it could be him.”
“But that could be him?”
“Yes.”
“Percentage wise, how sure are you?”
“Eighty-five, maybe ninety.”
Dial tone was all he heard.
“Let’s roll!”
Since this was now a national case the judge was a little lenient in regarding what constitutes proper evidence for a search warrant plus there was the added fact of the FBI breathing down his neck. It was granted without hesitation and the squad cars and an EMT unit gathered at Kyle’s home in Roberta, Georgia. It was a little after eleven pm. Kyle’s car was nowhere to be seen, an APB was placed, and even though it was a weekend night, a squad car was sent to his place of work just in case.
The rest of the group assembled and went over entry strategies. Josh, Lynch, and Garfield covered the front while the FBI covered the rear. They knocked and received no reply. They weren’t expecting one. They knocked again and still no reply. Garfield checked the door and it was locked but it was forced open with one swift kick. They went in with guns drawn. The only light was coming from the rear of the house in the kitchen, where the FBI had just entered through an unlocked door. They gathered in the kitchen and decided to divide and conquer. Josh and one of the g-men went upstairs, and unlike those CSI TV shows, they actually turned on the lights to see where they were going. Lynch covered the other three very small rooms downstairs. Garfield and the remaining g-man tried the cellar door and proceed down the steps. It wasn’t long until the rest of the house heard the commotion.
The steel door was opened and Ripley’s body was lying on the floor, her blonde hair covering her face. Garfield checked for a pulse. To his surprise there was one. The EMT unit was quickly summoned, and they quickly surmised annophalitic shock brought on by the peanut butter sandwich that was half eaten and left by the bed. They had seen this many times in their career. Josh, Garfield, and Lynch watched as the two worked their magic. An injection of antihistamine was all that was needed. She was going to be alright. Lynch grabbed his cell phone and punched in the number to the Newenburgs. He was never expecting to make this phone call. He had rehearsed the other alternative over and over in his mind throughout the past couple of days but not this one.
“Hello, Mrs. Newenburgh, this is detective Lynch, we need you…,” he was trying to hold back his emotions, they seemingly came all at once, “ . . . we need you to come down to the hospital.”
“You found… you found my Ripley?”
“Yes… . yes we did.”
Mrs. Newenburg immediately starting crying for she thought the worse.
“She’s going to be fine Mrs. Newenburg… she’s going to be fine… I will meet you there… don’t worry, everything is going to be fine.”
“Thank you… . thank you,” in between sobs.
“I will take good care of her until you arrive… I promise.”
“Thank you.”
And before he hung up the phone… “You’re welcome”
The big man, Lynch, started to cry. The past few days had really taken its toll on him. Garfield was in the same boat. His bottled up emotions that he kept inside for over a year came to the surface as well. They had found Tanya’s kidnapper, now it was a matter of finding her body, for he knew all too well she was not alive. Josh was a bit more apprehensive, his case was still hot, and there might be a fleeting chance, all he needed to do was talk to Kyle.
As the EMT prepared Ripley for her ride to the hospital, each man shook each other’s hands and exchanged a good bear type of hug; it was an emotional scene. Once outside, Lynch, as promised, took good care of Ripley, he rode in the ambulance with her. Josh and Garfield waited for Kyle’s inevitable capture, while the FBI guys called for even more FBI guys.
Josh went back inside. He searched the house again. He found nothing. Before he did anything else he remembered his partner, his partner worked two solid months straight, sixteen and eighteen hour days, his partner needed to be here. It was now after midnight but he made the call anyway.
After the call he learned that he was not going to get the chance to talk to Kyle Kraner, ever.
It was a fitting demise for Kyle Kraner. He saw the flashing lights in his rearview mirror; he hit the gas, and turned the corner. It was the shortest chase in Roberta’s history. Kyle turned the corner, hit a pole, and his head impacted with the windshield giving yet another mortality statistic in the case for the slogan ‘seatbelts save lives.’
In the hour that followed, the house was a full blown crime scene, with lights, even more FBI and GBI guys, trucks, cameras, and all sorts of investigating equipment. It wasn’t long before they unearthed Tanya’s body from beneath a bed of daisies in the backyard. She was wrapped lovingly in a pink blanket in a little white dress. It wasn’t until late afternoon that Josh and his partner could close their case as well. Becky’s body was found just a short distance from Kyle’s house, in a nearby water reservoir, just off of Kirby Avenue. They found burlap, rope, and a cement block in a small boat by the shed in the backyard. It wasn’t hard to solve the equation by putting two and two together. Within a half an hour of dredging they found Becky. Kyle Kraner was responsible for at least three abductions, possibly more, possibly even Colleen Reinhardt, though her body was never found. Their cases could now be closed after a few final entries. Some questions where still left unanswered, like why? Why did he do it? Why did he kill the other girls but not Ripley? Both Tanya and Becky’s body were unable to answer the question of any child abuse but Ripley’s did. She was unmarred in that nature. As far as she was concerned she lived in a pink room for a few days of her life where she played with a bunch of toys. She’ll soon forget the face of her captor, only to be buried in the deep recesses of the mind.
Charles Lynch was bedside by a sleeping Ripley, when her parents rushed in. They couldn’t help but wake her; they loved and missed her so. Her smile alone was worth every bit of thankless tasks he had performed through his lifetime of being a cop. It was moments like this that made him proud to have taken the oath to serve the public even though he feared the worst for this little girl. He made up his mind right there and then that he wouldn’t be accepting his gold watch this year, in fact, they would have to drag him out the door for he had a new lease on life.
He kept Ripley’s picture on his desk from then on.
Josh Cerrito wanted so badly to question Kyle. He couldn’t leave well enough alone and wanted to find out all he could. He went to the County seat in order to find something, anything, the only thing we found, Kyle Kraner was an only child with no living relatives. He searched old school records and found he had dropped out during his junior year for reasons unknown. Josh just couldn’t put his mind around why this would happen, what would drive a person to do such a thing. To Josh this case would never be closed.
. . .