He’d watched the two monitors during the twelve-hour day shift for five days in a row. He was scheduled to be off for the next two days, but on this job he never knew when he’d have free time. In fairness, his job wasn’t only to monitor the two cameras; he was expected to review recorded telephone conversations from a number of different phone lines. There still wasn’t enough to keep him occupied for twelve hours at a time.
He noticed an Impala drive up and stop at the gate. It was one of the few times there was any activity at the house. The camera he monitored was across the street from the house. Emmanuel could see the security cameras at the house scanning the car before they opened the gate and allowed it to drive in.
Emmanuel was able to copy down the tag and decided to run it instantly, rather than wait until later. He liked watching the national news at 6:30 and always tried to have his work done before Brian Williams came on TV. He turned to a small Toshiba computer, typed in his password, and ran the tag. It came back to a corporation in Jacksonville. He ran the corporation through a separate computer databank and recognized it as a company used to register cars for the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office. The practice was designed to foil drug dealers who tried to figure out who was following them. It didn’t slow him down one bit.
He hesitated, then pulled out his cell phone and dialed a supervisor to advise him about the unusual visitors. It was sad that this was the highlight of his last five days. He may have been new to the job, but he expected something different after being an Ohio State trooper for two years and then surviving the DEA training Academy in Quantico, Virginia. Somehow he thought the life of a federal narcotics agent would be more interesting than this.
Emmanuel White advised his supervisor what was going on. All the supervisor wanted to know was if he had finished reviewing the recorded telephone calls from the day before.
Emmanuel wondered if life was any different with the other federal agencies.
John Stallings kept alert and remained very aware of his surroundings as he and Patty followed Mrs. Hickam through the house to a den that overlooked a sprawling backyard and small lake. Several things had caught Stallings’s attention during the stroll through the house. It had a surprisingly homey atmosphere with a number of photos of the family. He recognized one of the kids as the victim of the alcohol poisoning case that Stallings had come to investigate. His name was Josh Hickam and he’d been a sophomore at the University of North Florida when he had died in early November, two years ago.
Mrs. Hickam was an ordinary-looking woman of about fifty-five, who had a muted personality that reminded Stallings of Maria when she was using heavy doses of prescription drugs. Aside from introducing herself and asking them to follow her, she had not said a word during the walk through the house.
Mr. Hickam met them in the den and Stallings could tell by the man’s darting eyes that he was nervous and making a detailed assessment of him and Patty. The walls of the den were lined with books and framed photographs of the family. One section of the south wall contained a locked, glass display case with more than thirty handguns on various racks and pedestals. This house was secure if Mr. Hickam felt comfortable displaying so many guns so prominently.
Patty and Stallings sat across from the Hickams on two small couches. The older couple held each other’s hands tightly, and Mr. Hickam assumed the role of communicator.
Stallings had been careful to advise them right from the start that they had no new information and were simply doing follow-up on a number of deaths in the county over the past two years.
Mr. Hickam said, “We never really thought Josh had died of anything other than alcohol poisoning. We knew the college life could get wild, but we assumed that since he was so close, he was safe.”
Patty said, “Did he live here with you?”
“No, we wanted him to have the full college experience even if he was only a few miles away. He lived in the apartment complex that houses the fraternity.”
Stallings tried to hide his surprise and calmly asked, “What fraternity was he in?”
“Tau Upsilon.”
Tony Mazzetti sat in the corner of the detective bureau with Sparky Taylor, going through reports and other documents relating to their case. The new information, that Stallings had seen a blue SUV driving away from the scene of a hit-and-run in St. Augustine, provided dozens of more leads to follow up.
The cheapskate lieutenant avoided overtime by reassigning four detectives and an analyst to help him cope with the growing investigation, but he knew the break in the case would lie with him or Sparky or one of the full-time detectives on the squad. Experience counted for more than anything else in homicide. He felt like he’d seen just about everything that could be thrown at him, and if you saw something once it was easier to spot a second time.
Sparky was reading reports from other cities, including Atlanta, Daytona, Gainesville, and Orlando. Scanning through hundreds of documents hoping to find a link to this case that could be used to find the killer. As much as he hated to admit it, Mazzetti now realized the deaths of the Tau Upsilon fraternity members had not been accidents. The lieutenant was even now conferring with officials from other cities to decide how they should notify the members of the fraternity that they could be in danger. The way Mazzetti saw it, if the fraternity brothers couldn’t figure out something was wrong by the fact that they each knew several dead men, it wouldn’t change much when the cops told them they had linked all the deaths. No one ever thinks it will happen to them.
Sparky looked up from a faxed police report and said, “I just found a report from a witness in Daytona regarding the hit-and-run of a fraternity member. The traffic investigator had asked several local witnesses if they had seen any vehicles in the area. Five witnesses listed five completely different vehicles.”
Mazzetti said, “So?”
“So one of the vehicles listed was a blue SUV.”
That caught Mazzetti’s attention. On its own, with no license tag information, the report was useless, but coupled with what a reliable witness like John Stallings had seen, it could be the link they’d been looking for.
“Do we have the list of license plates that start with A?”
“It’s two hundred and three vehicles long just for Duval County.” Sparky moved some papers around the long table and pick up another print. “Three hundred and sixteen if we include adjacent counties. The number climbs to five hundred and two if we include Volusia County. That’s a lot of vehicles to look at. Stallings had the same report run after the hit-and-run.”
Mazzetti leaned back in his chair in a sign of frustration. At what point was it useless? These were the kinds of things that the press could use to crucify him later. The reporters had the luxury of time and perspective to look at information. After the dust had settled, they loved to point the finger at detectives who tried to be efficient and prioritize investigative tasks.
As soon as Stallings heard the fraternity mentioned, he couldn’t keep from turning and looking at Patty, who gave him a quiet, professional nod and wrote a few more notes on her pad.
Mrs. Hickam said, “They were nice boys. You should’ve seen the crowd that came to Josh’s funeral. Each of them dressed up in a nice suit and they greeted all of the family members, making us feel like one of their own.”
Stallings asked a few more questions and discovered that Josh studied business, but the most important thing was they had another body to tie into this conspiracy. It wasn’t the right time to explain what was going on to the Hickams, but it could be that their son was the first known victim.
Stallings said, “I have one more question.”
Mr. Hickam said, “Sure, anything you want to know.”