Chapter 5
“…No, I think your deposition and the video you provided will be all that’s required. It went very well and covered all the bases. I doubt we’ll even have to put you on the stand. I think it’s a slam dunk, John. He’ll do time, for sure. Thanks for all your hard work. Send us your invoice.”
This was apparently the satisfactory end of an insurance fraud case I had worked.
“You bet. Thank you, Gwen. Call if you need me.”
In this case, the guy had almost managed to swindle a personal fortune out of the insurance company, which you and I would have had to pay for in higher premiums. Instead, he would soon be on his way to prison.
I drove back to the scene where Victoria Winslow had been taken. On a previous visit, I’d started by observing the supermarket from a distance, at the same time of day Victoria had disappeared, watching the traffic patterns and the ebb and flow of customers. Standing where Sandy Winslow had parked her car, I headed off on foot in the same direction Victoria and the perp had gone, as they disappeared from the store’s video image. I hadn’t learned anything very useful on that first visit except investigating the location convinced me the kidnapper must have had a car somewhere nearby.
Today, I was trying to figure where the kidnapper had parked his car. It had to be somewhere fairly close, but not so exposed someone would have noticed him taking the girl. If he had put the girl into his car in the parking lot, someone would have seen it, and it would have appeared in the surveillance video.
The supermarket was located on south Broadway, the busiest street in Tyler, at one of the busiest intersections. It was a commercial hub, with big box stores and restaurants all around, only half a block from the Broadway Square shopping mall to the north and a strip mall to the south.
All that traffic, but no one had reported seeing anything. The media had let Sandy plead for information. The police, and the news anchors continued to request that anyone who saw anything remotely suspicious on the day of the abduction, call in. There had not been one useful report.
I was now persuaded whoever had done this was a local person. Someone randomly passing through the area could not have planned this so well.
That was the key.
I started thinking about how I would have done it.
Evidently the perp had used the old trick of pretending to look for a lost pet. Kids always wanted to help look for the lost kitty or puppy. It had worked on Victoria. He must have done this before.
I found myself standing in the parking lot of the strip mall, only a half block south of the supermarket. There was a spot here where a car could have been parked and no one driving by would have noticed it. There were no video cameras here. This was where I would have parked. I would have backed into the space, putting the back of my vehicle within two or three feet of a high wall that wrapped around an apartment complex. The car could not been seen from the apartments.
As I considered these things, I felt I was being watched. There was a very tall and thin, black man, standing in the narrow space between the wall of the apartment complex and the wall of the strip mall, about 50 feet away.
He had a shopping cart with him. I remembered there was a homeless man who routinely travelled around this area. I’d seen him frequently over the last few months. This might be the same man.
Could he have taken the girl?
It was highly unlikely, for a number of reasons, not the least of which was he was not the man in the images on the video tape. I knew nothing at all about him. I decided to try to approach him.
He was waiting for me, with a big smile!
“You that angel, Good Angel,” he said.
“My name is John Wesley Tucker. What’s your name?”
“You not the bad angel,” he replied, with a frown.
“I’m John. What’s your name?”
“They say I’m Dustin. My cart is rustin, when I dance I’m bustin’!” He did kind of a rolling wave movement starting with his right hand, up the arm, over his shoulders and down the other arm. He ended by pushing his face to one side, with his left hand. He rolled his eyes and laughed.
I laughed too.
“Hello, Dustin, where do you live?”
“I live here, I live there, I be livin’ everywhere!”
It was apparent he had all his worldly possessions in the shopping cart. There was even a bible on the little shelf by the push handle.
He saw me looking at the bible.
“He told me you was comin’. He say you help. He say you a good angel.”
“Who told you that, Dustin?”
He looked up at the sky and closed his eyes.
“Our Father. He say you come to help her.”
“Dustin, look at me.”
He looked me in the eye.
“Who am I supposed to help?”
“It was the bad angel done it, he that took her.”
“Dustin, did you talk to the police?”
“Uh huh. When it gets cold, they come get me,” he replied.
I thought for a moment. This could be just the confused ramblings of a troubled mind. Maybe he had seen something happen here, or maybe he had just been told about it.
“Did something happen to a little girl?”
He looked away and choked a little. “The bad angel hit her and put her in his car.”
He had my full attention now. This was going to require careful questioning.
“What car, Dustin?”
“It was like the sky, and it had a reindeer.”
What did that mean? Like the sky…?
“Was it a blue car?
I regretted the question immediately. I was suggesting things to him, not asking questions of him.
“You stupid for an angel,” he snorted.
I decided to try a different line of questions.
“Tell me about the bad angel.”
He shook his head.
“It’s not my war, you the one that gots to deal with him.”
I thought some more.
“Tell me about the reindeer.”
“It was flying, over a silver football.”
What did that mean? Was the silver football some kind of Dallas Cowboys emblem? Their colors were blue and silver. On the other hand, everyone knows the Cowboy’s logo is a star, not a football or a reindeer.
“Where was the car?”
He pointed to where I had been standing a few moments ago.
“I got to go on now, I got me my rounds”
He started to push his cart up the narrow little alley.
“When did you see the bad angel?” I called.
“Last time he was here. When he took the girl,” he said, walking away.