| Subject: Re: Little Details C2/8 |
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fananicfan
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Date Posted: 11:52:04 07/09/07 Mon
In reply to:
fananicfan
's message, "Little Details" on 11:25:09 07/08/07 Sun
CHAPTER 2 – A Reunited Team Goes to Work
Friday, January 13, 2006
Bud was up early and on the job. Using his laptop, he scanned through articles about all four of the murders that had been posted on the local newspaper’s website. The information in the articles was vague, but it did give him the dates of the other murders, and a couple of the articles contained the victim’s names. Bud made some phone calls, and now it was time to bring Harm up to speed on what he’d accomplished this morning.
In his room, Harm had risen early, too. He'd read through his notes from yesterday at least twice before taking the time to get dressed.
He'd just settled back into a chair to read the reports on the murder of Ensign Tina Rodgers for at least the fifth time this morning when Bud knocked on his door.
“Morning, Bud,” Harm said as he pulled the door open fully to let Bud enter.
“Good morning, sir.” Bud offered Harm a small stack of papers. “Those are copies of the articles on all four murders that ran in the local paper. I pulled them up from the website. I had to go to the local JAG office to print them. While I was there, I made arrangements for a couple of desks for us to use while we’re here over the course of this case. I was also able to get hold of Mrs. Weathers. We can speak to her this morning at 1000. I haven’t had much success in getting the records of the other three murders yet, but I did get the names of the detectives working the case, so if we can’t get the records, we can speak to them.”
“Anything else, Bud?"
“I figured that it was too early to call anyone who worked at the Wild Waves Club, but since it's Friday, the same day of the week that the ensign’s body was found, I thought we’d want to go to the Wild Waves Club this evening to interview witnesses.”
"A very thorough job as usual, Bud, but I think you’ve taken it to a new level this time.” Bud was smiling with pride. "I mean, you’ve managed to include a visit to a strip club that we can tell our wives was business - we had to interview witnesses," Harm said with his flyboy grin in place.
Bud got an odd look on his face and he blushed a little. "What is it, Bud?"
"Hearing you say wives, sir, as in you and me both having one...it sounds odd, sir."
"You didn't think that I'd stay single forever, did you?"
"No, sir -" Bud stopped abruptly, keeping his thoughts from spilling out. ‘But I'd given up that you'd ever act on your feelings for Colonel MacKenzie after Australia’ or ‘I hadn't expected you to stay single, but I didn’t think I’d ever witness it.’
Harm just grinned and shook his head. He knew that Bud hadn’t finished his thought, but, from the delay, it was either something that he couldn't explain or didn't want to say, so Harm let him off the hook. "Have you had breakfast, Bud?”
“No, sir.”
“Then let me grab my briefcase and I’ll buy you breakfast before we go to see Mrs. Weathers.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Over breakfast, the two men reviewed the newspaper articles and discussed how the police had located Mrs. Weathers.
Two days after Tina’s body had been discovered, the news media had gotten hold of the story. The police, still not wanting to have the word spread that there was likely a serial killer on the loose, didn't even hint at the idea during the story that aired. The police opted for keeping this murder, at least as far as the public was concerned, unrelated to the other three. At the end of the story airing that night on the evening news, the police had asked the public for help in solving Ensign Tina Rodgers murder by requesting that anyone who'd seen her or her car that night call a special tip hotline. A call from Mary Weathers to the hotline, generally describing the man who police believed to be their prime suspect, helped support their theory, but when Mrs. Weathers had said that the man whom she'd seen had had on a uniform, it had confirmed the police's hunch that the sailor last seen with her was her killer and probably the killer of the other three victims.
After breakfast, the two men made a stop at the police station to see if they’d have any luck in getting reports for the other three murders. The police weren’t forthcoming with the reports. They were told that, since it was an ongoing investigation, they’d have to get the district attorney’s office to release the information to them.
Finally, they got a name of someone at the DA’s office to contact, and they left the police station to meet with Mrs. Weathers.
Harm made a call to the DA’s office while Bud drove to Mrs. Weathers’ home. The man whom they'd been told to contact was in court, and Harm ended up leaving a message.
Mary Weathers was a wonderful woman in her late fifties with a delightful personality. Her voice was like that of the loving grandmother stereotype and those characteristics would make for a credible and convincing witness for the prosecution. Mrs. Weathers repeated her statement for the two handsome men in her living room.
She'd been returning from seeing her daughter and new grandchild in Virginia Beach. She’d left Virginia Beach later than she'd meant to, so she'd been on the road much later than usual, but she was very familiar with the roads between there and her home in Portsmouth because she’d been traveling them regularly since her daughter had moved to Virginia Beach almost two years ago. She’d been making weekly visits over the last three months as her daughter's due date drew closer, and she was sure that she’d seen the car described in the alley and that she’d seen a man in uniform coming out of that alley on foot. She’d assumed that the car had belonged to the man and he’d run out of gas or something, and hadn’t given it much thought until she’d heard on the news the request for anyone who’d seen the car or anyone near the car that night to call the hotline. Mrs. Weathers' description of the person whom she'd seen leaving the alley was a male, about six feet tall and weighing about 180 pounds.
Harm had two questions. "Did you see any part of the person? Hair color, skin color, facial hair, anything at that might help in identifying the person?"
"No, it was dark. I could make out his shape. He wasn't looking directly at me, but, from the shadows created by the streetlight, I could tell that he was wearing a uniform, but that's as much as I can be sure of."
Before offering their thanks for meeting with them, Harm asked one last question. "Could the man you saw have been walking across the alley or are you sure that he was coming out of the alley?" Mrs. Weathers said that she was sure that the man was walking towards her, making him leaving the alley, not crossing it.
After leaving Mrs. Weathers home, they needed to have a place to work, and Harm was glad that Bud had secured them a corner in the local JAG office, and that’s were they were headed to next.
Harm and Bud discussed Mrs. Weathers’ statement on the way to the office and agreed on what points worked for the defense. Mrs. Weathers hadn't seen the murder itself, she hadn’t seen the victim and the man together, and she hadn’t seen the man’s face, so she couldn’t identify the man she saw. On a Friday night near a base, there was a high probability that there'd been more than one sailor in the vicinity that night around the time of the murder.
Once at the local JAG office, Harm and Bud made their way to the desks that had been assigned to them and went to work. Harm made another call to the DA’s office and left another message. With desks that faced each other, it was easy for them to spread out their own notes and documents to review, but still easy to confer with each other.
Both men focused on the contents of the newspaper articles. From the articles, the only information that they could gather was that all four women were between the ages twenty-two and twenty-seven, all of the bodies had been found in the same part of town, and all of them were brunettes. The article on the victim before Tina, Janice Walker, had a glaring line that said, 'three weeks and three dead strippers, does our city have a serial killer?' The article that ran the day after Tina's murder had a headline that read ‘the fourth woman in four weeks found dead.’ An article written the following day said that 'police were following up on leads to the murder of Ensign Tina Rodgers.’
The two men had been reading over the articles and checking notes for a couple of hours before Harm placed another call to the DA’s office.
Bud watched Harm’s face as the one side of the conversation that he could hear indicated that they weren’t any closer to getting anything on the other murders.
After Harm hung up the receiver, Bud stated the obvious. "Nothing on the other murders yet, sir.”
“No, Bud, they say that he’s still in court.”
“Sir, what if we take a break for lunch and pay a little visit to the DA’s office while we’re out? It'll be much harder for them to lie to our faces.”
"Excellent idea, Bud. The trial is slated to start on Tuesday, and, if we can’t get a continuance, I want to see everything they’ve got before then. I have the feeling that the answer to this case is in the other murders. Let’s go, Bud, but we’ll stop at the DA's office before going to lunch. With Monday being a holiday, I don’t want to wait too late in the day to put a fire under them.”
"Yes, sir,” Bud said as he stood to follow Harm.
At the DA’s office, the arrogant attorney who’d been dodging Harm’s phone calls had to face Harm. Bud watched as Harm stood up straight in front of the man’s desk and looked down at the DA. The man made the mistake of thinking that Harm wasn’t as tall as he looked from his sitting position and stood to show his lack of intimidation. However, when the man stood, Harm was a good six inches taller than him, and Harm didn’t even blink at the man’s attempt to balance the power in the room. It took Harm only fifteen minutes after the ‘stand off’ to get the man to consent to having the files ready for them to pick up in an hour.
They left the DA’s office to get some lunch while waiting for the reports to be ready.
After eating lunch, they returned to the DA’s office to get the reports, which weren’t ready when they arrived. They decided that waiting was the only way to handle the situation. It took forty minutes before they left with them in hand.
After leaving the DA’s office, they returned to their borrowed office space where they were able to make contact with the friends with whom Tina had been out the night that she'd been killed and arranged to meet two of them in the morning, thirty minutes apart, at the diner where their client had said that he'd gone to clear his head. The third woman agreed to meet them at her office at 1100 tomorrow.
It was late afternoon, and Harm and Bud’s eyes were strained from reading the files on the other murders. It was time to take a break. After looking at his watch, Harm decided that it was a good time to head to the Wild Waves Club.
There were advantages to going to the club early. There wouldn't be a crowd and they'd be more likely to be able to speak with the owner and the others who worked at the bar. They wanted to see the alley during daylight were the body had been found.
The bartender, Mark, was on their list. Mark Waverly was the owner’s best friend. They’d met while on liberty in the Philippines, going on twenty years ago. They'd both been young seamen who'd spent day and night checking out every bar they could before heading back to their ships. Three years later, they'd met again when their duty stations had put them on the same ship. They’d been friends ever since. Mark had seen the love-struck Ken through his trials of getting his Filipino wife into the United States. Mark had been Ken’s sole support during his wife’s struggle with cancer. When the cancer had taken Ken’s wife five years ago, Mark had thought that Ken would sink too low to ever come out of it, but after a couple of months, Ken had come to him with this plan to open a fine gentlemen’s club. Mark was twice married and twice divorced. He loved both wives, but he liked women too much and just couldn’t be faithful. Mark was five years younger than Ken, but even for a man over fifty, he could still attract a woman with his distinguished good looks and sense of humor. He didn’t have the drive he once had, but he loved to flirt, and the dancers would flirt back, keeping him feeling young.
After speaking with Mark, the next one they were able to speak with was Ken. Ken Rowan was the club’s owner and a retired Navy man who’d been in more than a few strip clubs. He knew firsthand that most clubs, well, at least those overseas, cheated their girls. When his wife had died five years ago, he and his best friend had opened a club where the liquor wasn’t watered down and the ladies were treated fairly. Some of his ladies were girls really, compared to his age, college students earning their way through school, and he wanted all of them to be safe. He'd opened the club as a nice place for sailors from the nearby base to relax and enjoy a show, but he wanted the girls to feel safe, and he treated them well. Ken was the only owner in the area who'd taken precautions after the first stripper had been killed. The day after the first murder, Ken had implemented a plan that all the ladies performing at his club were to be walked to their cars by either himself, Mark, or by a member of the security team. Ken and Mark were fixtures at the club. One of them was there every night. Three days a week, two of which were Friday and Saturday, they closed up shop together. When the story of the second murder broke five days after the first, Ken insisted that the ladies be escorted to their cars whether they were leaving as a group or not.
After speaking to Ken, they asked to speak to Ben or Kim. They were told that Ben didn’t report for work for an hour, but they could expect him in about ten minutes when he brought Kim to work.
Harm and Bud were at a table, waiting for the two young people to arrive. They watched one and then a second young woman strip to old disco music before a blonde took the stage, dancing to a Motown song. Harm and Bud were married, not dead, and the sight of a disrobing, young, attractive, blonde woman had their attention and they were enjoying the show. She’d just removed her top, exposing her large breasts covered with tiny triangles of material when a young man approached the table, holding hands with a young woman, and announced that they were Ben and Kim.
Kim Whatley had been inside the bar, waiting for Ben to finish work the night the body had been found. She and Ben always came in together on Friday nights, and she was waiting for him to drive her home. She said that she wasn’t aware of anything unusual until she saw Ben’s pale face when he came in to get the flashlight. When she'd asked what was wrong? He’d said, “I think she’s dead,” before turning to take the flashlight to Mark in the alley. They listened to her statement, but couldn’t think of anything to ask her, so they let her go get ready for her number.
Ben Richards was a twenty-two year old college senior. His schooling was being paid for by a full scholarship, thanks to his prowess on the football field, but he worked weekends as a bouncer for spending money. The need for spending money and a job at this particular establishment was because Ben’s girlfriend, Kim Whatley, a fellow college student of his, danced at the Wild Waves on Thursday through Sunday nights to earn the money for her education.
Harm and Bud got a repeat of what they'd read in Ben's statement, but as they listened to Ben say that he was a bouncer, something struck Harm as odd. Ben had said that he was a bouncer, but, at the door, Harm had seen a guy with SECURITY written across the front and back of his tee shirt.
The memory of the security guy at the door had Harm asking Ben, “If you’re working tonight, where's your security shirt?”
Ben explained, "I'm not security. I’m a bouncer, so I don’t wear one.”
That statement confused Harm and Bud, but Bud beat Harm to the question. "What's the difference?"
"We didn’t have both before the killings, but bouncers are employees of the club. The security guys are employed by a security company that Ken hired after the first killing to monitor ID checks at the door and keep an eye on things outside the club. He assigned the bouncers on staff to sit at tables and at the bar. You know, mingle among the customers and watch out for the girls. If a guy gets too friendly with a girl, the bouncer sends a message through the waitress and security handles getting the customer out of here so we don't have to leave our post and we don't blow the fact that we're in the crowd. Ken says that, until he’s sure they’ve gotten the stripper killer off the streets, it’ll be the way he keeps things.”
After talking with Ben, Harm and Bud left the club. They strolled up a few blocks to verify that the distance between the Tango Club and the Wild Waves Club was only five blocks. Ensign Rodgers would have turned right towards the Wild Waves Club while Lieutenant Stanton would have followed the sidewalk to the left to get to the diner. They walked back to the Wild Waves to get into the car, but stopped to see how much of the alley could be seen from the corner at night. After taking the car around the corner to verify the location of the diner where they were going to have breakfast in the morning, they drove passed the alley, making sure that they were traveling in the same direction that Mrs. Weathers would have been. They also made sure to stop at the light as Mrs. Weathers had said she'd done. Though it was earlier than she'd said she'd driven past, they were sure that it hadn't been lighter outside than it was now. Harm got out of the car and had Bud circle the block. Harm waited until he saw Bud's car coming towards the stoplight. He walked back into the alley at approximately the spot where the body had been and then walked out and around the front of the building the way Mrs. Weathers had said the man had done that night. The conclusion of their little experiment was that Mrs. Weathers was telling a plausible story, and that meant that they'd have to look for something else to prove that their client was innocent. With no theory to build on from here, it was time to report to their quarters and get some rest.
Although they had interviews with Tina's friends in the morning, both men wanted to wrap up this visit to Norfolk and get back to Washington at a reasonable hour tomorrow to spend time with their wives.
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