Concrete Evidence (33 page)

“I still don’t follow,” Gwen said confused. “Are they missing?”

“That depends on your definition of missing,” Kowalski sighed. Gwen rolled her eyes and listened. “The prints that we found match up to their rap-sheets, right?”

“Right.”

“That’s where Rosa Martinez and Maria Hernandez cease to exist. We don’t have any tax returns, medical insurance, driving licenses or dental records to follow.”

“They’re illegals?”

“Them and a few million others just like them.”

“So they gave false addresses?”

Kowalski scoffed. “We don’t even know if they gave their real names. All we know is that something bad happened in those RV’s but we’re not even going to begin looking for women who never existed,” he sighed. “I hope I’m not coming over as an asshole but that’s the reality here. Until DNA comes in, we’re batting blind.”

“I understand.” Gwen felt deflated. She felt sad too. She tossed the pen back onto the desk.

“That’s the bad news,” Kowalski chirped. “Do you want the good news?”

“Yes please,” Gwen said routing for the pen again. “I would love to hear the good news.”

“We asked the RV company to run their records for those two vehicles, looking for customers from the UK who hired them in the last three years.”

“And?”

“Only one British customer has ever returned to rent another RV from them. He rented them two years apart. The guy paid the rental and the insurance with a platinum card in the name of Robden Derry.”

“Can you spell that for me?”

“Sure, Robert, Ocean, Boy, David, Edward, Nora, Robden,” he paused. “You got the second name as, Derry okay?”

Gwen frowned at the use of a different phonetic alphabet. If they didn’t spell things the same way, why would they use the same phonetic alphabet? She asked herself. “Derry?”

“You got it?”

“I have, thank you very much.”

“The name mean anything to you guys?”

“Let’s say it’s been mentioned by one of our suspects.”

“Is he in the tombs?”

“Pardon?”

“Has he been charged?” Kowalski chuckled.

“Yes, he has.”

“Can you keep me posted?” he sounded concerned. “My captain is gonna need to close off this case if we get a DNA match. You know how it is, right?” he laughed sourly, “figures and targets. If we don’t hit them, the captain kicks us in the ass.”

“Figures and targets,” Gwen smiled. “I get it. I’ll keep you up to speed as soon as we have anything solid.”

“Cool.” He paused. “You guys are working in Liverpool, England, right?”

“Right.”

“I looked it up,” he said. “The Beatles, right?”

“Oh, yes,” Gwen said smiling. “The Beatles.”

“John Lennon, right?”

“Yes, John Lennon,” she said flatly.

“Cool! I heard they named the airport after him.”

“They did,” Gwen said chirpily. “Do you know why?”

“Because he’s from the city, I guess?”

“No, it’s because it’s the first place that he went to when he made some money, to get a flight out of the city!”

“Really?”

“No, it’s a joke,” Gwen said but Kowalski remained silent. “Thanks again for your help.”

“Welcome,” he said a little confused. “The Beatles, cool!”

“Yes, cool. Bye now, thanks again, I’ll be in touch,” she said hanging up. “We all walk around Liverpool with bowl haircuts singing ‘Love me do’,” she muttered beneath her breath. “Not.”                 

                                                    CHAPTER 37

The MIT office descended into a hushed silence. The crime scene photographs from the beach recovery flicked across the screens. Annie was leaning against a desk clicking the remote to move the images on.
Bodies in the sand, déjà vu
, she thought. “Kathy Brooks is positive that the bodies belong to young males around the age of Simon Barton and James Goodwin,” she stood up and composed herself. “Their hair colour matches but that is all she can say for certain.” Her heart was pounding in her chest and she could feel her blood rushing through her ears. Anger boiled just below the surface. “First impressions from the decomp are that they have been in the sand for several years so we can assume that they were buried not long after they disappeared,” she paused. The room remained silent. “You can see that breathing tubes were inserted into the nostrils and taped to the forehead,” Annie paused. The images were a cruel reminder of Brendon Ryder’s victims. “They were buried alive in a similar manner to the Butcher’s victims.”

“The killer made them look like prawns,” Stirling said shaking his head. “Just like the Butcher did.”

“How far away from the Butcher’s victims were they buried?”

“About three miles along the sand.” Annie answered. “That’s why they weren’t found during the initial searches four years ago.”

“What we need to clarify is if their burial is similar to or the same as the Butcher’s victims?” Alec mused. “I mean they look the same but are they?”

“We won’t know until she’s extracted the bodies completely and got them to the lab. For now, we have to think it’s similar rather than the same.”  

“Tod Harris has their underwear in his collection,” Stirling added. “He is denying killing Jackie Webb, Jayne Windsor or the boys,” he added looking around the room. “The evidence against him is conclusive. We think he buried the boys in a copycat fashion hoping that their disappearance wouldn’t be linked to him.”

“If they had been found, he wanted us to assume that they were victims of the Butcher.” Annie nodded.

“We’ll know soon enough, until then what else have we got?” Alec nodded for them to move on.

“Google, can you brief the team on the link to the case in America, please,” Annie gestured to him. She clicked the remote and an image of the number plates appeared on the screen.

Google stood up and referred to his notes. “We translated part of the text that was carved into Jackie Webb but it made no sense to us. We ran the format and identified that this sequence of numbers and letters matched up with a popular format of Californian vehicle registration plates.” He smiled proudly.

“Why would he do that?”

“We have to assume that Harris was leaving us clues to follow. He wanted us to know about his other victims. He’s bragging about it to us.” Google frowned. “I’m of the opinion that Harris is a narcissist who craves attention and wanted us to catch him,” he looked around the gathering. A few nodding heads agreed with him. “Gwen followed up on the plates with the San Francisco PD, so she’s best placed to bring you up to speed about what they found.” He pointed to Gwen and she stood up.

“Firstly, we had to confirm that the sequences were registration plates that actually existed and if they were still in existence. The San Francisco traffic division confirmed that these plates were assigned to two vehicles registered to a business in the city and they passed us over to the Metro division.” She paused to take a breath. “The Metro Investigations department traced the plates to a company in the bay area of San Francisco and because of the nature of our investigation, they decided to take a look at them. Their CSI’s found blood trace and two partial prints that belonged to a couple of illegals, Maria Hernandez and Rose Martinez.” Images of the women appeared on the screen. “They were in the system for soliciting and minor drug possession,” she paused and looked at her notes. “This is where it gets complicated,” she shrugged. “They can’t tell us if these women are missing because in reality, they never existed. They used false ID’s and their addresses didn’t check out.” Murmurs drifted around the room. “I don’t think that Metro will find the real identity of the women. It’s a dead end.” Disappointed faces looked on. “The good news is they traced the man who rented both vehicles, two years apart, Rob Derry.” An image of a platinum credit card appeared on the screen. “You can see from the card that he used his full name, Robden Derry. There are no records of flights being booked in that name and no British passport exists in that name either.” Gwen paused. “This is all we have. It’s a prepaid card that was loaded with cash at a post office in the Knightsbridge area of London so we think he took a flight from either Heathrow or Gatwick under a different alias. The Met looked into the address where the card was originally registered and it’s a car park.” Gwen shrugged. “We have a two month wait on the DNA results from Metro before they can try to trace the victims.” She shrugged and nodded to Google. “We know that Rose and Maria were hurt in that campervan but I don’t think they’ll find them.”

“Thanks Gwen,” Google took the reins. “Once we had confirmed that Harris had given us the license plate numbers involved in his crimes, we applied the sequences to some of the other parts of the text.” He pushed his glasses against his nose with his index finger. “We’re currently following up on three more plates, one in Flagstaff, Arizona and two more in Spain. Bearing in mind that we arrested Harris in Benidorm, we could be onto something,” he smiled. “We have identified the card that he used, were hoping that he used it before so that we can track where he has been. We should be able to trace the vehicles quite easily as long as they’re still on the road. The Spanish traffic division are running the plates.” He paused. “We’ve acquired a warrant for the platinum card records,” he held up his finger and took a breath, “if he was stupid enough to use the same card each time that he travelled abroad then we should have something solid to work on. We’ll know later on tomorrow.” He smiled at Annie signaling that he was done.

“Thanks, Google, good work.” Annie gestured to Becky. “Becky, could you bring us up to date on Peter Barton and Brian Taylor.”

“Guv,” she stood up and Annie noticed the male detectives giving her the once over. Some were more discreet than others. “We knew that Peter Barton had served in the force but we didn’t have much detail on him,” Becky began nervously. “His personnel records have been redacted but I did a little digging and it turns out that he was an analyst for the Met. He left under a cloud but his file isn’t clear why.” She held up a sheet of paper with Barton’s image on the top left hand corner. “I have a copy of his appeal and it looks like he found something that he shouldn’t have on a senior officer’s computer.” Murmurs rippled through the detectives. “It looks like he was forced out because two months after his termination, he made a claim for unfair dismissal and he won.” She paused. “He refused the offer of reinstatement and sought compensation. He was awarded two hundred and fifty thousand pounds and forced to sign a confidentiality clause.” Murmurs rippled again.

“That kind of money will buy you a decent alibi.” Stirling muttered.

Becky grinned and carried on. “The search of his house has revealed a vast amount of what can only be called research,” she shrugged and smiled nervously, “press cuttings from across the world, maps, crime scene photographs, autopsy reports, the list goes on. We’ll be collating it all but without his input it’s hard to know what his focus was on. The information he has is too broad for us to pinpoint what he was doing.” She nodded to Annie who switched the image on the screen to a map of the Crosby Beach area. “He had a considerable amount of material revolving around the Butcher murders especially about where the burial sites were located.” All eyes were riveted to the screen. “We found spades and metal detectors during the search of his vehicle, which leads us to think that he was either burying something or looking for something.” She shrugged. “We know that Simon Barton was taken during the height of the Butcher investigation and now we know that James Goodwin was taken at the same time.” She paused for breath. “Peter Barton was arrested and convicted of Simon’s kidnap but was released on appeal when Jackie Webb stepped forward with an alibi supported by Jayne Windsor’s uncertain testimony. We also know that they received a significant amount of money from Peter Barton’s inheritance fund. Financially he was in a strong position.” Annie changed the image once again. “We have to surmise that Peter Barton was holding Brian Taylor in his cellar before he killed him with a shotgun.” She picked up another file and Taylor’s image appeared on the screen. “Barton had a stack of old cuttings about Taylor’s arrest and trial. He was following his conviction in fine detail and with good reason.” She shook her head. “An initial search of Taylor’s flat has turned up a substantial amount of child porn. We’re still going through his laptop and a more detailed sweep of the flat will be made tomorrow. Peter Barton could have discovered Taylor’s record, connected him to his aunt next door and decided that he could have abducted Simon. All he had was a hunch so he decided to interrogate him himself.” She shrugged. “There’s a possibility that Peter Barton was searching for Simon’s abductor.”

“On the flipside, what if Barton did take his nephew and Taylor knew about it? He could be systematically silencing his alibis, all the loose ends and other possible suspects?” Alec said.

“We have to consider all the options, Guv,” Becky blushed. “It may well be that Barton knows Harris. He could be the mysterious Rob Derry,” she gestured to Annie that her summary was complete.