Case of the Paper Trail Ch. 01

A Crime Lab team was collecting samples from two red spots that were on the carpet in the den. Each spot was about an inch and a half in diameter, but they were on opposite sides of the room. When Christina Cho had seen it, she said "Definitely looks like blood, but we'll test it out to see whose it is."

"Get Charleen's hair brush out of the bathroom." said Tanya.

"Already got it." said Christina, drawing a compliment from Tanya.

J.R. Barnes came up, holding a bagged pad of stationary paper, the same kind and color that Edna's afternoon note to her husband had been written on. "I found this on Davis's desk. We photographed it before I bagged it, and I did a UV scan for fingerprints, but none were readily apparent. We'll do a test on it to see what writing was done on the top sheet that won't destroy the evidence." I asked to examine it and did so, seeing the indentations of it from previous writing.

"Almost looks like Edna wrote her note to her husband here, then took the note to her house. That would be strange if she did that." said Tanya to me, within hearing of Martin Nash.

"Yes. A strangeness. Any other notes on this kind of paper anywhere?" I asked J.R. as Tanya watched.

"No sir, we checked for that." Barnes said. And we've also gotten samples of both the Davis's handwriting from other papers here."

"We'll compare the writing to the note at the other house when we get them all to the Crime Lab." Tanya said helpfully.

As I asked to examine what they had, Tanya said "Looks like he's a left hander, but we'll have an expert examine it." My own examination confirmed Tanya's assertion, though I was no expert. I just nodded as I handed the bagged evidence back to J.R. Barnes.

Meanwhile, Martin Nash had taken up talking with the elderly Bill Davis, who was a relatively short man that had once been very athletic, but was now just old.

"No, my wife was not here at all, from yesterday afternoon on." he said. "No, I don't remember the exact time she left. She said she was going to the grocery store, and... no, not sure when that was yesterday, but the sun was still high in the sky. She never came back at all."

"Did you call anyone?" asked Martin Nash. Detective Torres was looking through the house with Tanya Perlman, I noted out of the corner of my eye.

"I called some of our church friends." Davis said. "None of them had seen her. I called the police last night, after it got dark. They asked what kind of car she was driving, and I told them, and they said they'd look for it and for her. This morning she was still not here at home, so I called the Police again, and they said they'd keep looking, and that if they didn't find anything by noon, they'd come here and take a Missing Person report."

Nash asked for the name of the grocery store Mrs. Davis shopped at, and Davis said he didn't know. An examination of the plastic bags and canned goods in the kitchen suggested 'Kroger' was a frequently shopped place. I silently applauded my Detectives for seeing that so quickly. It seems simple, but sometimes the 'simple' falls through the cracks.

"Does your wife have a friend named Edna Biller?" Martin Nash asked.

"Edna... Edna... oh, yes, Charleen and Edna went shopping together the other day." said Davis.

"Are they good friends?" Nash asked.

"I... I don't really know Edna myself. She would come by, pick up Charleen, they'd be gone a couple of hours."

"Had they been doing this for many months?" Tanya asked as she came up. I think she saw the relief on my face that she had asked that, so that I didn't have to.

"Er, no, not that I remember..." said Bill Davis. His face looked confused as he tried to remember.

Diana Torres came up and said quietly to Tanya, but within my hearing: "Several empty liquor bottles in the trash and full ones in a kitchen cabinet. I have to hand it to our Duty Desk to go through with looking for the car last night if an obviously drunk man called in."

"Mr. Davis," said Martin Nash, also hearing Detective Torres's report, "did you do any drinking last night, or take any medications that might incapacitate you?"

"Uh, well I did have a couple of shots of bourbon, but only a couple." insisted Mr. Davis. "I was just watching TV and waiting for my wife to get back..."

Nash said to Tanya "I'll put out an APB on the car, and have them give some emphasis to grocery store parking lots.

"Good." Tanya said. "I've got Edna's cell phone number from her husband's cell phone, and I'm going to have Myron start looking for any pings it might be giving."

"Dial it now." suggested Diana Torres. Tanya looked strangely at her Detective, but dialed the number.

A cell phone from somewhere in the Davis house started ringing.

Detectives, including myself, frantically searched for the sound. We found two cellphones hidden in a drawer by an easy chair. One of them was ringing.

"Mr. Davis, is this where you sit when you watch TV?" Nash asked, pointing at the chair to the right of the table as one faced the television set. A TV remote sat on that table, to the left of the easy chair.

"Yeah, that's my chair, and Charleen sits in the other one." he said, pointing to a chair on the other side of that same table between them, the table the cell phone had been found in.

"Looks like Edna's phone." Tanya said. "Doesn't look good for Davis that it's here." She dialed another number and the other phone rang, or more accurately, silently buzzed. "It's Charleen's." Tanya said.

Part 5 - Investigation

Early that Monday afternoon, Charleen Davis's car was found in the parking lot of the Kroger nearest her home. There was no blood or any evidence of a struggle or a crime, but her purse was in the car. The store's videotape showed nothing, but it also did not have a good sight-line to Charleen's car. What was the point of cameras, I thought to myself in military terms, if they don't cover the fields of fire?

The meeting convened in the main conference room at 2:00pm. The Chief was presiding, and I made a point to sit in the corner behind and to the left of the Chief, and not at my normal spot. This was MCD's case; I was just listening in.

Myron Milton reported on the cell phones. "First, Harmon Biller's phone has only pinged the cell phone near his home in the last 48 hours; ergo, he very likely did leave the phone at home as he said. Edna's phone, however, went from her home to several shopping centers, then to the Davis home."

At that moment, the Duty Desk sergeant knocked on the door and popped his head in. "We just got a report that Sergeant Rudistan and Sr. Patrolman Morton found Mrs. Biller's car." He named the location, which was one of the shopping centers Myron had just mentioned, and the car had been parked a distance away from any buildings and almost completely hidden from public view. "Her purse was found in the car, but there was no sign of a crime or struggle." Tanya thanked the Sergeant and asked him to call the Crime Lab to send a team to the car.

"Well, we have that now." said the Chief. "Myron, did you try to find where Mr. Davis's car went, and where Mr. Biller's car went, for that matter?"

"Neither have GPS or other tracking devices." Myron replied. "Both are older cars."

"Sir," said Tanya, "Biller's car is a pickup truck with a camper top. When our Crime Lab went to process it, we found it clean and wiped down with Clorox. When I asked Biller about it, he said he'd moved some manure in it a few days before, and had cleaned it thoroughly to 'kill all the germs', as he put it. No joy on any evidence from that. Davis's car was also examined, and there was nothing on it nor inside it. The trunk was very mildly cloroxed, and Mr. Davis said he had no idea why and that he hasn't driven the car in days. His memory is bad from the start, so it looks like two dead ends, there."

"Oh, not at all." I said, then caught myself as Tanya glared at me. "Sorry, I'm not supposed to help."

"Let me just say this now, People." the Chief said, assuming a voice of command. "I understand what you guys are doing, but you damn well better not miss solving this just because you guys want to do it without the Iron Crowbar's help, and he wants you to do it without his help. Am I clear, people?"

"Yes sir." came the chorus, then I added, "Chief, we all know the deal. We are not going to let a perp get away with any crimes by doing this."

"All right, what else?" asked the Chief, not really mollified.

"Still getting background information on both the Davises and the Billers." said Myron. "As well as credit card use in the past few weeks and months. I put an alert on the women's credit card numbers; if their cards are used, we'll know it quickly."

"Good." said the Chief. "J.R.?"

"The samples we recovered from the Davis home are blood." said J.R. Barnes. "But whose blood will require a DNA workup, and that'll be a couple of days to get back."

"If that comes back as these women's blood, that looks bad for Davis." the Chief said. "Perlman, have you arrested him yet, on suspicion?"

"No sir." said Perlman. "Paulina said we don't have enough yet, even though the cellphones and the blood were found there. We've got a patrol watching Davis. He's not in good shape mentally, so I'm not sure he can just leave, anyway."

"I don't think I really agree with that... about not having enough evidence. What about Biller?" asked the Chief.

"We told him not to leave Town, all that stuff." said Tanya. "And we did that because he travels to Germany for BigPharmaCorp at least four times a year, often for a week or two weeks at a time. They have a factory over there doing the same processes he oversees over here, so he travels there frequently."

I almost spoke up, and literally had to bite my tongue to not say anything. Tanya and Myron both noticed and peered at me, but I just shook my head as Chief Griswold spoke.

"Call the FBI, have his passport flagged." said the Chief. Tanya made a note to do that as the Chief continued "Okay people, my vast years of experience suggest that we will either find these women alive within 24 hours, or we will find them dead within 48 hours. Put your minds to work and think as if you were one of these guys... where would you go to dump bodies, how far away? Then have patrols go and look."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

I was typing furiously on my computer, gathering information, when Cindy Ross came into my office. "Don, am I part of the MCD team that shouldn't talk to you about this? Or can we talk and I won't say anything to them?"

"You have a crowbar." I replied. "Which side do you want to be on?"

"Uhh..." Cindy said as she thought about it. "I think maybe I'd like to be on their side, try to solve it with them."

"Good." I said. "Okay, then, I'll keep you out of the loop... but don't you dare complain about it." I could not help but grin at that one.

"Stoppit." she replied, then asked "If you solve it before they do, what are you going to do?"

"Seal the answer in an envelope, which I'll give to the Chief." I said. "I'll also have Rudistan, Morton, McGhillie and Johnson assigned to me personally, and they'll watch the perp to make sure he or she doesn't get away."

"Got any ideas who it is?" Cindy asked.

"You're on their side." I replied. "Go away." Cindy looked shocked, so I said "Unless you have something else we need to talk about?"

"Uh, no." Cindy said. "I'll go get Tanya to get me up to speed."

As she got up to leave, I said "By the way, you can tell her that I'm very happy with their progress, so far."

To be continued.