You Can’t Stop Me Read online

Finally Harrow said, “You may be right.” His smile was sad—that it was intentionally so made it no less real. “And I can guarantee my wife would be offended, if I turned this into a media circus.”

  In cameraman Arroyo’s ear, director Phillips said, “Go in tighter, Leon…nice and tight….”

  “On the other hand, I believe Ellen would support me—does support me—in bringing our son’s murderer to justice. She would encourage me to do everything in my power to do that—and David would feel the same, where his mom was concerned.”

  His eyes were tear-filled. Though he was reading the words, words he had only co-scripted, the emotion was genuine.

  “And until we have their killer or killers, I promise you this—I will not speak to you of my family again.”

  Harrow turned back to Hathaway’s camera position, who was ready with an even tighter close-up.

  “I understand that some of you may find what we’re doing distasteful, and if we offend you, turn us off, switch the channel…but as you do, ask yourself—would you do any less for your family?”

  The monitor revealed that the director in New York had cut away to a pre-recorded wide shot of the ranch-style home at night with lovely palm trees and a full moon touched by dark smoky clouds providing a picturesque, vaguely film noir effect.

  Over this image Harrow was saying, “Carmen, could you bring us up to speed?”

  Back on camera at the semi-trailer, Carmen said, “Thank you, J.C. Over the summer, our Crime Seen! team has been very busy following leads.”

  Dingle was waiting with hand-held to follow her up the stairs of the trailer and inside. A pan of the lab revealed bustling activity within, staged but convincing (Carmen had spent much of the previous afternoon rehearsing her forensics stars, much to their dismay).

  Nearest was Michael Pall, sitting at a computer monitor. The diminutive DNA scientist wore a white lab coat with his name on the left breast over the UBC logo set within a magnifying glass (Harrow had put his foot down, and the Killer TV logo was conspicuously MIA). Under the lab coat, Pall wore a light blue button-down dress shirt and a darker blue tie with a geometric pattern.

  Carmen guided Pall down a path of easy questions concerning the DNA of the corn leaf found at the Ferguson crime scene. They were not on prompter, but the exchange was very much canned.

  “Does that mean we know where the killer is from?”

  “No,” Pall said, “that’s too big an assumption. But we’re making progress.”

  “How so?”

  “We know where in Kansas that particular corn seed was sold. It will help us narrow down where the killer might have traveled.”

  “Anything else?”

  Pall gestured toward a table on the other side of the lab, where Billy Choi sat at a computer screen displaying two bullets side by side. Under his UBC-insignia lab coat, Choi wore a navy blue T-shirt emblazoned with a huge badge and the words NYPD HOCKEY.

  After introducing Choi as the resident firearms expert, Carmen said, “What’s the story of these bullets, Billy?”

  Playing to the camera, Choi said, “These two slugs represent evidence developed using NIBIN.”

  “NIBIN?”

  “National Integrated Ballistics Information Network.”

  “Which is?”

  To Harrow, the pair seemed to be competing for the camera, trading smiles, but the audience probably thought they were just flirting a little.

  Choi was saying, “NIBIN’s an imaging system and database of firearms-related evidence developed by the FBI and the ATF in partnership. Each had their own ballistics imaging programs—Drugfire at the FBI and IBIS at ATF—but NIBIN allows the two to communicate, and share information.”

  “What have you learned using this technology?”

  Choi pointed at the bullets on the screen, and the camera moved in, Harrow’s monitor filled now with the two bullets. “The bullet on the right came out of Stella Ferguson—from a nine-millimeter automatic, a completely different type of bullet than the one used in the murders at the Harrow home.”

  “Does that mean different perpetrators in these two cases?”

  “No, just that a different weapon was used. May or may not be the same killer, but there are significant similarities in the crimes…Still, the weapons don’t match.”

  “To the layperson,” Carmen said, “these bullets look the same.”

  “Actually, they’re not.”

  As Dingle’s shot widened, Choi moved to another monitor, where a picture of a third bullet was waiting. “This slug came from Ellen Harrow. It’s bigger, the striations completely different.”

  Looking at a bullet pried from his wife’s chest, televised or otherwise, sent acid rushing into Harrow’s stomach, and, involuntarily, he pictured his wife and son on the floor back in their home.

  What was the son of a bitch who did it thinking, if he was watching this?

  “What about the bullets on the other monitor?” Carmen was asking. “You said you had a match for one in the Ferguson murders—but not the Harrow case?”

  “No,” Choi said. “This is new—that comes from a double murder in Rolla, North Dakota, two years ago.”

  “Where has that led you?”

  “Check back next week,” Choi said, delivering a scripted line very naturally.

  The show was running smoothly, and Harrow was of course pleased.

  But he also knew that by serializing this investigation on live TV, he was giving the killer a tutorial on what evidence they were finding, and how close they were coming to him. Of all the risks they were taking, this was the worst—instead of closing in on the killer, they might well drive him to ground, and never track the bastard down.

  Carmen turned to camera and asked, “J.C., why didn’t the police in Florida pick up on this connection?”

  Back on, Harrow said, “Carmen, they did run the bullets through NIBIN, but Rolette County in North Dakota—like many rural areas—hasn’t widely participated in the program. Only recently, through the state crime lab in Bismarck, did the information get into the database. The match we found has only been available for the last few weeks.”

  “J.C.,” Carmen said casually, but scripted, “I understand you interviewed the surviving member of the Ferguson household.”

  “Yes,” Harrow replied, framed against the stucco home in the moonlight, “this afternoon I spoke with Placida city marshal Ray Ferguson, here in his home.”

  Microphone lowered, Harrow watched the monitor.

  In a two-shot, sunlight filtering in sheer-curtained windows in the background, Harrow was seated in a straight-back chair facing a sofa where Ferguson sat.

  Paunchier and generally older-looking than Harrow—though possibly as much as five years younger—Ferguson wore boots, jeans, and a blue denim shirt with a gold badge embroidered over the left breast. Jowly, with empty blue eyes and a wide nose, he had thin, bloodless lips over a strong chin.

  “Marshal Ferguson, we’re sorry for your loss.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Ferguson said, with a tiny nod. His baritone was soft spoken, with a touch of drawl. “I consented to this, Mr. Harrow, because I know you suffered such yourself.”

  “Marshal Ferguson, would you tell us about that night, almost a year ago to the day?”

  Ferguson had been expecting the questions, but the words hit him like tiny punches. His eyes glazed over.

  “Marshal, I apologize for my bluntness. But I have to ask.”

  He nodded. “Well, after work, I came home, and the lights weren’t on. Which surprised me, ’cause it was well after dark. Stella’s car was in the driveway, and that was when I first got spooked, really spooked. Just knew something was wrong.”

  “Go on.”

  “Rest of the block was quiet, but what really shook me was that the lights, in the other houses? They were all on. I’d kinda hoped that somehow it was…you know…a power outage or some damn thing.”

  As he watched the monitor, Harrow winced when a close
cut to the marshal’s trembling hands in his lap underscored the man’s misery. His own hands began to tremble, and he marveled that he’d been able to summon his inner cop enough to conduct this interview.

  “I just ran into the house,” Ferguson was saying. “Or anyway I did after I got the door unlocked, which was another thing—Stella never locked the door when she knew I was coming home.”

  Neither had Ellen.

  “I suppose,” the marshal said, “he locked up after himself, to keep somebody from discovering what he’d done too soon. Of course, he’d have known I’d have a key. Do you suppose he wanted me to find them, Mr. Harrow? Did he do the same to you?”

  “Please go on, sir.”

  “Sorry,” Ferguson said. “Anyway, I went in, and there they were…all dead. All lying in the entryway, like they were there to…greet me. But it wasn’t…wasn’t me, was it?”

  “Then you called the sheriff’s office.”

  “Yes, and they arrived within minutes. Coroner told me that Stella and the kids’d only been dead for about an hour. If I’d got home earlier that night…? Maybe they would still be alive.”

  “Marshal, that kind of speculation doesn’t do any good. Did you get home at your regular time?”

  “Right around. Not much to marshaling in Placida, Mr. Harrow.”

  “Nothing unusual that day?”

  “No. On the way home, though, I did have a traffic stop. Not that that’s unusual.”

  Sitting forward, Harrow asked, “Did you tell the detectives about it?”

  “Oh yeah,” Ferguson said. “Perfectly routine. Guy was a salesman from Tampa, just passing through. Sheriff’s office and state patrol both did an extensive investigation into the guy. It was nothing.”

  Live again, Harrow brought up his mic and said, “We interviewed Marshal Ferguson for an hour, and, thanks to his years as a trained investigator himself, he shared with us several puzzle pieces that for now we must withhold…because we know that our audience very likely includes the perpetrator of these crimes. Carmen, I understand you have more to share now, with our team….”

  And as the image on the monitor showed Carmen back in the mobile crime lab, where she was introducing the rest of the superstar criminalists, Harrow lowered his mic. The show’s sign-off would follow Carmen’s last mini-segment, and would be handled by Moreno, back in LA.

  But Harrow’s on-air claim of Ferguson providing puzzle pieces hadn’t been TV hype.

  In the Ferguson living room, the marshal—late in the interview—had frowned and said, “You know, Mr. Harrow, there was this one thing.”

  “Yes, Mr. Ferguson?”

  “While I had that first guy pulled over, another vehicle, a pickup truck, was coming from the direction of my house…and it slowed way down, and the guy gave me, you know, the old hairy eyeball as he went by.”

  “You made eye contact?”

  “Oh, yeah. Impossible not to. He knew he’d caught my attention.”

  “Did you tell the detectives about the guy eyeballing you in the pick-up?”

  “No, sir, I don’t believe so. I forgot all about it till just now.”

  “Did you get a plate?”

  “No, damn it. Couldn’t even tell you the state. Don’t even know for sure what the make was. But it was blue—light blue.”

  “Sounds like you got a look at the driver.”

  “Yeah, I saw him, all right. That SOB was trying to tell me something with his eyes. Like he was sending a goddamn message. Sorry. Didn’t mean to curse on TV.”

  “That’s okay. Could you recognize him?”

  “You bet your ass I could. Sorry.” The marshal sighed. “You know, in my day, I wrote more than my share of traffic tickets, ran down kids for doin’ the kinda shit kids do, even investigated a burglary or two.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “But this is the first homicide I was ever involved with—my own wife and kids.”

  “It might have been him, your eyeball pick-up truck?”

  Ferguson nodded, his mouth and chin tight. “You know, I can’t explain why I forgot about that truck till now. Goddamn it!”

  “We’ll get you with an artist,” Harrow said.

  “Why did he do that, Mr. Harrow?”

  “These killers all have their own tortured—”

  “No, not that. Why did he have to mutilate her? Why cut off her damn…her sweet…finger?”

  Harrow had no answer.

  The interview had wrapped, and crew were tearing down as Harrow and Ferguson sat in the kitchen where Mrs. Ferguson had been killed. The two men had coffee in Styrofoam cups provided by a production assistant.

  “Everybody knows your story, Mr. Harrow. While your family got shot, you were off savin’ the life of the President of the United States.”

  “Don’t tell the Secret Service,” Harrow said, “but I’d trade him for them in a heartbeat.”

  The marshal smiled at this bleak humor. “You’re better off than me, amigo. I was writin’ a goddamn traffic ticket, busting the ass of some salesman for goin’ forty-two in a thirty-mile zone.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. And the goddamn murderer slowed down to watch me do it.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Laurene Chase liked to sit in the back of the bus.

  It tweaked her sense of irony, as a black lesbian who’d managed to survive and even thrive in Waco, Texas. Right now she had the aisle seat next to Carmen Garcia by the window, with Jenny Blake and Nancy Hughes across the way, as they headed for a town in North Dakota (were there towns in North Dakota?) called Rolla.

  She held in her hands hard copy of material Jenny Blake had downloaded about the burg of fourteen hundred or so, which covered a scant mile and a quarter. Median income was just a shade over thirty thousand, meaning nearly twenty percent of the population lived below poverty level. One statistic stood out to Laurene: seven-tenths of 1 percent of the population was African-American.

  Across the aisle Jenny was pounding at the laptop keyboard as if sending repeated SOS messages from a sinking ship. The petite blonde, hair pony-tailed back, wore jeans and a white T-shirt, the letters OMG printed on the front (the back, Laurene had previously noted, read: WTF).

  Laurene asked, “How’s your math, Jen?”

  Jenny reacted with her usual caught-in-the-head-lights freeze, fingers poised over the keyboard like gripping claws. “Okay.”

  “Good, ’cause mine sucks. What’s seven-tenths of a percent of fourteen-hundred-seventeen?”

  “About ten.”

  Jenny had given up three whole words in the exchange. What did that make, in the three days they’d spent together on the bus, twenty-six words out of the cute little nerd?

  Laurene settled back in the bus seat. So they were headed for a town with ten black people. Two-thirds of the populace was white, with nearly 30 percent Native American. Totals for Asians and Latinos were higher than blacks, with those listing their race as “other” outnumbering African-Americans three times over.

  Suddenly, Waco seemed pretty damned progressive.

  Sure as hell wouldn’t be a police force in Rolla, which meant they’d be dealing with the Rolette County sheriff, a thought that in itself made Laurene uneasy. She kept thumbing through the information, and when she read about the last sheriff being removed from office for gross misconduct, she immediately pictured a big old redneck John Madden-looking motherhumper, sweat stains in the pits of his dirt-brown uniform shirt, nose a mass of red veins below mirrored sunglasses and a campaign hat.

  Then she laughed to herself, thinking, That’s me, just another progressive from Waco.

  Laurene remembered what her mother had once said to her: God made us each in His own image, darling child. That’s why we are all completely different. Still wasn’t sure she understood that, but it often floated through her mind.

  “Something funny?” Jenny asked, with just a little attitude.

  Laurene, who’d been laughing to herself, held u
p a hand, like one of Rolla’s Indians saying, How.

  “Not laughing at you, Jen,” Laurene said. “Just amused by my own dumb ass.”

  From her window seat, where she’d been half-napping, Carmen Garcia looked over and asked, “Did I miss something, girls?”

  Jenny, naturally, said nothing.

  Next to her, the ponytail blonde, Nancy Hughes—who’d also been napping—came slowly awake and stretched.

  “So,” Carmen said, looking over at Laurene, “spill it. What’s so funny?”

  Shaking her head, Laurene said, “I was wondering how the folks in Rolla, North Dakota, are gonna react to me and Jenny here—the world’s most beautiful black Amazon, and a nearly mute blond girl wearing a T-shirt sayin’ Oh My God, What The Eff?”

  Jenny looked injured, and Carmen frowned. Nancy wasn’t awake enough yet to have an opinion.

  Laurene made a dismissive wave. “Jen…guys…I’m not making fun of anybody.”

  Carmen said, “Kinda sounds like you are.”

  “Well, maybe myself a little. The locals see my fine gay black ass, they are going to shit gold bricks, and start the gold rush all over again.”

  That made Carmen laugh, Nancy too, and even Jenny managed a tiny smile.

  “Hey,” Laurene said, “we’re all freaks to somebody.”

  “You can’t just be figuring that out,” Nancy said.

  But the other two had given all their attention over to Laurene, who not only was Harrow’s right hand, but the oldest and maybe wisest of them.

  “I always lived my life the way I wanted,” she said, no laughter now. “Nobody could make me believe I was wrong—even when I was.”

  That drew wry smiles out of Carmen and Nancy, though Jenny remained poker-faced.

  “I really thought I was in charge of myself, if not my destiny—I mean, no cop thinks the world is anything but a random damn mine field. But I was in a relationship that was working, and I really thought I was the captain of that frickin’ ship too. Me and Patty. That was her name.”

  Now it was Carmen and Nancy whose expressions had gone blank with the fear of getting too much information, while Jenny had tight eyes and a cocked head, like a dog just figuring out what those words its master had been blurting were all about.