Chapter 7: Peculiar Clues (Part 2)
Tucker Farm
Route 6
10:00 AM
Meanwhile, Bill Harvey, Hank Voight, Hailey Upton, and Winterville Officer Jeanette Franco were in the middle of a walkthrough in the large barn at the Tucker Farm, where Nate Tucker had been found murdered just 2 days before.
Harvey was busy closely inspecting the large star that had been intricately spray painted underneath one of the several rectangular windows lining the right-side walls of the barn. The others, for the moment, stood around the taped outline that highlighted the supine position in which Nate's body had been discovered.
"So, Officer" Voight said, "Why don't you guide us through the events of the other night?"
Franco nodded, albeit with some apprehension. "I was on patrol by myself," she explained, "And I was actually headed toward Route Six when I received the call over the radio that referenced a nine-one-one call reporting the discovery of a body at this location."
"How long did it take you to get here?" Upton asked.
"I'd say less than five minutes at the most," Franco replied, "I saw Shirley Howard's Animal Control truck in the driveway as I rolled up. A Black Cadillac Escalade, which I recognized as belonging to Mister Tucker, was also parked there. I met up with Shirley here in the barn. She was doing her best to keep her composure, but I could tell she was nervous as all get out and understandably so."
"Right," Voight said, "And you found Nate lying face up on the ground here?"
"Yes," Franco replied, "I briefly knelt down to check his pulse. I found none, and once I saw that slice across his throat, I backed off because I knew it was now a crime scene. I escorted Shirley back outside, radioed for EMS, and asked that Chief Porter be dispatched to the scene ASAP."
"What happened once Porter showed up?" Upton asked.
"He helped me secure the rest of the barn as well as the farmhouse," Franco said, "Once we secured everything, he radioed for the State Police, their crime lab, and the Medical Examiner's Office to report here. He then took Shirley aside for a few minutes to take her statement."
"Officer Franco?" Harvey cut in.
Franco turned around to address him. "Yes?" she inquired.
Harvey didn't take his eyes off the bottom edge of the black star. "How long did it take the crime lab techs to process this part of the barn?" he asked.
"I'm not entirely sure," Franco candidly replied, "Chief Porter had asked me to escort Shirley back to WPD before they had even arrived with the troopers. Why do you ask?"
Still not taking his gaze from the painted star's bottom edge, the temporarily reinstated FBI agent grinned. "Because I've got what looks like a latent print adhering to the dried spray paint," Harvey said.
Office of Chief Jayden Porter
Winterville Police Department
15 Minutes Later
Harrison, Asher, and Mannell were seated in the three chairs across from Chief Porter's desk, while the chief himself was seated in his brown leather office chair behind it. Harrison was on his cell phone with Harvey, who was evidently informing him of the fingerprint that they had discovered.
"A fingerprint, huh?" Harrison said into the phone, "Do you think it's viable enough to run through the databases? Okay. Send it to me and I'll take a look. Let me put you on speaker while I'm at it. Hang on."
The sheriff then took his phone from his ear and opened his e-mail application, while also simultaneously putting Harvey on the speakerphone.
"Okay Bill," Harrison said, "You're on speaker with me, Abby, Chief Porter, and Detective Robbie Mannell from Vermont State Police."
"Hi Robbie," Harvey's filtered voice greeted through the phone.
"How's it going, Bill?" Mannell replied, "Good to hear your voice again, man. It's certainly been a while."
"Right on, dude" Harvey said before addressing his cousin, "Troy? Did you get the image of the print?"
"Yep," Harrison replied as he switched his screen to the fingerprint image, "I'm looking at it right now. It looks like it's got four ulnar loops, three dots that seem to form a perfect equilateral triangle….That's pretty cool…and a single tented arch."
"I know it's been a while," Harvey said, "But that is enough to run through the system, isn't it?"
"Eight characteristics is the bare minimum," Harrison replied, "But yes."
"Send the image over to me," Mannell piped up, "I can send it off to our Latent Print Section and have them send it through all the databases."
Harrison clicked a few buttons on his phone and Mannell's phone soon chimed accordingly. "There you are, my good man!" Harrison said, "Have them run it through Interpol while they're at it, just in case our suspect has a record somewhere overseas."
Mannell nodded. "I'm all over it," he replied as he drafted his e-mail message to the Crime Lab.
Lieutenant Asher spoke up. "While we're waiting to hear back from them," she said, "I think we should check up on something." She then looked to Chief Porter. "Jayden," she continued, "Did you have any luck following up on your inquiry into the Fuego Fuel Company?"
Porter nodded. "Yeah," he replied, "I heard back from Brattleboro PD a little while ago. Turns out one of the fuel company's Two-Thousand-Eighteen Ford Transit work vans was jacked from Fuego's lot the night before the Buccio murder. I asked Detective Halstead to follow up with Katie in the Dispatch Room."
Asher nodded before looking to Harrison. "Let's go check on them," he said to him and was met by an affirmative nod from the sheriff in response.
Harrison picked his cell phone and spoke into it. "Hey Bill," he said, "Abby and I have to go check on something. You guys keep up the good work at the farm and we'll check back in later, okay?"
"Copy that," Harvey replied, "Catch you guys later on." He then hung up the phone.
Harrison and Asher then went out into the department's Dispatch Room, where they found Katie Alvarez, the department's most seasoned dispatcher and Asher's best friend since childhood, sitting at her computer console.
Katie was a tan-skinned white woman in her late 20's who was dressed in a black women's polo shirt embroidered with the WPD's official logo on the left chest, black jeans, and black running shoes. Her black hair was tied in a ponytail and she also wore a white telephone headset on her head. Detective Halstead sat next to her and the two conversed amongst themselves.
Katie was then surprised as Harrison affectionately wrapped his arms around her from behind and kissed the back of her head. "Hey Katie," Harrison said, "It's so good to see you again, doll. Despite the tragedies, it's been like old home week these past two days or so."
Katie chuckled as she settled into the embrace. "Hi Troy," she replied, "Good to see you too, hun."
"We see you're making friends with our pal Jay," Asher commented as she pulled up a chair next to the two of them.
The young dispatcher chuckled once again. "Yeah," she said, "We're bosom buddies." Halstead smirked at this as well.
Harrison broke the embrace before he pulled up a chair and sat next to Asher. "The chief says that you guys are making some progress on that Brattleboro van theft," he said, "What've you got so far?"
"The investigating officer sent over some surveillance footage he got from the Fuego Fuel Company's back parking lot," Halstead explained, "It's not the best quality considering that the offense happened at night time, but I think I got a clean enough ID on our van jacker."
The detective then pulled up the aforementioned footage on Katie's secondary high-definition computer monitor. With the time/date stamp reading February 26, 2021 at 11:31 PM, the grayscale footage showed a tall yet very slim bald Hispanic man dressed in a heavy black hooded sweatshirt, ironically with the hood down and the man's entire head and face very clearly exposed.
The man fumblingly ascended and jumped down from the chain-link side fence and slim-jimmied one particular 2018 white Ford Transit work van from the company's fleet consisting of roughly half a dozen identical-looking vans. He then entered the vehicle and hastily peeled out of the lot.
"Okay," Asher said, "Were you able to get a clean look at the dude's face?"
Halstead nodded and rewound the footage to the point where the suspect had hopped into the vehicle and quickly slammed the door shut. He zoomed in on the man's facial reflection that was caught in the driver's-side mirror. The thief was a thin-faced man appearing to be in his 20's with a very obvious nose piercing.
A very fascinated Harrison smiled and put a hand on Halstead's shoulder. "Check you out, man" he said, "Bringing those CPD Intelligence skills to our small little Vermont town."
Halstead laughed in retort. "Thank you for that, Troy" he humbly replied, "But I'm just working the job like any other one of us."
Asher then turned to Katie. "Katie," she said, "Send that image back over to Brattleboro so they know who to look out for. Then let's send it out in a statewide alert so we can get as many eyes out there as we can." Katie nodded and began carrying out her instructed tasks.
Detective Mannell then stepped out from Porter's office. "Hey guys," he said, "We have a bit of an issue."
Asher, Harrison, and Halstead then got up from their respective seats and went back into the chief's office, at which point Mannell guided them to his laptop. "Our Print Lab was able to run that print," Mannell said, "But it seems they hit a wall."
He then pointed to the screen, which showed an image of the print beside the screen that would normally show all the basic vital information provided with a fingerprint match. However, filling every field of information was the words "RESTRICTED ACCESS" along with a warning in big uppercase red letters that G14 security clearance was required by law to view the particular record.
"G-Fourteen security clearance?" Asher inquired, "Who has that kind of pull?"
"Those who work in some of the highest levels of our government's intelligence community," Harrison replied, "Everybody from the CIA to some of the higher-ups in the armed services. And that's just a fraction of the list."
"He's right," Halstead added, "I served with the Army Rangers for a while. We dealt with a lot of those shadowy government spook types, especially in the Middle East when we were dealing with threats like Al-Qaida."
"Where does that leave us then?" Mannell asked.
Harrison sighed with a tinge of regret. "Before I recruited him into the FBI years ago," he began, "Bill spent some time doing covert intelligence work overseas. My point being, I think he still has the connections to ID our suspect for us. I'll call him back."
[Author's Note: Sorry this chapter took a little longer to put out. I've been fighting a wretched cold this week!]