Chapter 48
FORTY-EIGHT
Katie awoke to the sun streaming into her bedroom. She sat up and looked at the chair in the corner, but Cisco wasn’t there. Then the smell of coffee hit her senses.
“Coffee,” she managed to say as she finished waking up. She swung her legs over the edge of her bed, sitting for a moment. She stretched and thought about the events of last night before grabbing a robe.
Opening her bedroom door, the smell of breakfast cooking made her smile even more. Her uncle and McGaven were sitting at the counter talking and eating. Both looked in good spirits.
“Hey, sleepy head,” said McGaven, eating a piece of bacon.
“Morning.”
“It looks like you slept well,” said her uncle.
Katie immediately went and poured a cup of coffee. “Yeah, I think I did. Eventually.” She sipped the hot java.
“I was just giving the sheriff the main points of last night,” said McGaven.
“That Junior is slippery,” said Uncle Wayne.
“You’re not kidding,” she said sitting down with them.
“Well, I slept great,” said McGaven. “I can’t believe your sofa is that comfortable.”
Katie laughed as her uncle brought her a plate with eggs, bacon, and fruit. “Thank you.” Katie looked around. “Where’s Cisco?”
“He’s outside doing his doggie thing,” said McGaven.
Katie went to the sliding door and let the dog in. She always had to have her morning moments with him.
The three of them chatted while finishing breakfast.
“I’m going to take a shower and get ready for another day of adventure,” she said.
“Thanks for the great breakfast,” said McGaven. “I’m going home to shower and change. See you in a bit, partner.”
Katie took a longer shower than she had planned, hoping to wash away everything about the case that didn’t move it forward. She got dressed and grabbed what she needed for the day. Her uncle had already left.
After saying goodbye to Cisco, more than once, Katie headed to work.
She tried hard to figure out what “He” meant and who Junior was talking about who was going to pay.
At all costs, everyone needed to be careful—anyone connected to the investigation and the construction company.
Detective Hamilton and a couple of police officers were at Grand’s house, searching for anything that might prove useful or answer more questions.
She hadn’t heard from him, but that wasn’t unusual until something significant happened or something was located to shed more light on the case.
Katie parked in the employee parking lot, surprised she didn’t see McGaven’s truck.
She quickly went inside the building and entered the forensic division.
Just as she thought, John and Eva were hard at work and she didn’t want to bother them.
They had a tremendous amount of work and with Sydney’s and Grand’s crime scenes, it only added more to their load.
She paused at the office door and could hear John speaking on the phone.
She had the urge to run in and talk to him.
To see him. And be with him. But she also had a big job to do and she entered her office.
She knew she would see him later and that had to be good enough for now.
On the table was a new file with paperwork inside.
There was a yellow sticky note on top saying: “Background and history of land in Pine Valley.” It was signed: Denise.
She must’ve come in early. Katie put down her jacket, box, and briefcase.
She immediately took a seat and began reading from the file.
It was thorough and interesting. She read through each section carefully.
There was an interesting report and news article that stated the property where construction was to begin for the police and fire departments’ training centers was supposedly protected.
Several preservation groups had tried to stop any construction more than a decade ago, talking about protecting the native wildlife and forests, but that had been a debate ever since Katie could remember.
She continued to read about a William Collins Jr. and Sr., who were Bruce Collins’s father and grandfather.
According to the articles and county papers that supported the stories, the grandfather was originally the sole owner of the entire area, including where the construction was to begin.
Later, due to financial difficulties, Collins’s grandfather began to sell off parcels of land, but he had been swindling other families around the county and subsequently was arrested and jailed.
There wasn’t much information about what happened next until there was an article stating that William Collins, Bruce’s dad, later committed suicide due to the fact he had lost nearly everything apart from the small farm that became—and still was—the family home.
Katie was intrigued, but there was nothing there she could work with.
She understood more about the family and perhaps those events had made Bruce into the abusive man others had witnessed.
She was just about to put the files away when she caught a very small article as a follow-up to the article about William Collins Sr.’s incarceration.
Interestingly, the article stated that some people believed Bruce’s grandfather had not only swindled money from families, specifically cash for investment of properties, but that he had buried money, gold, and deeds from all those he stole from.
It was estimated at the time to be worth over a million dollars, but today’s estimate would be double or even triple that.
However, nothing had ever been found or even validated.
“Morning,” said McGaven as he entered, looking chipper and wearing fresh clothes. “What’s that look?”
“Your lovely fiancée did some great digging and found some interesting articles about the history here. And—”
“And what?”
“I think I’ve found the motive to all these killings.”
“Greed, revenge, love triangle?” he said.
“The oldest motive: money.”
McGaven sat down and looked at the articles, and Katie updated him on everything she had learned.
“And your amazing lady uncovered it,” ended Katie, smiling.
“Bingo!” he said and stood up as if he had won the lottery. “That’s my girl!”
Katie laughed. “Now, we need to put out a BOLO for Ian Griffin Jr. for questioning in the homicide of his father.”
“And a lot of other things.”
There was a quick knock at the door and it slowly opened.
“Hi, I wasn’t sure if you both were here until I heard you yell,” said John.
“Just celebrating that we think we’ve found the motive for all these murders,” said McGaven.
“Well, here’s something else you can celebrate. The bullets that were taken out of Tom Grand match the bullet that was in Ian Griffin’s skull.”
Katie was relieved.
“Yes, another one!” said McGaven.
Chuckling, John said, “Glad I could help.” He smiled at Katie and then closed the door.
“I saw that,” said McGaven.
“What?” said Katie.
“You know… that look…”
“Stop, already.”
“I think it’s cute.”
“I wouldn’t describe it as cute.”
“You know what I mean.”
Katie changed the subject. “We need to figure out where Junior is and stop him from killing anyone else.”
“You’re right. Let’s head to Ventura’s apartment again and see if he has more memory of Griffin Sr. and any information on Junior. I just hope this time he doesn’t tell more ghost stories.”
Katie slipped on her jacket. “Have you heard from Hamilton yet?”
“Not yet. He said he would brief us.”
Once again, the detectives drove to 1775 Maple Street, Room 310. They parked and walked through the nice grounds and climbed the stairs to the third floor and Ventura’s apartment.
Katie knocked. There was no sound of Ventura coming to the door.
“Maybe he’s out?” said McGaven.
Katie knocked again—this time a little bit louder. They heard a muffled voice just before the door opened.
“You again?” said Ventura. His openness and manners seemed to have gone away. He sounded annoyed.
“Mr. Ventura, may we talk to you?” said Katie. “It will only take a few minutes.”
“What’s this about?”
“We wanted to ask you some more questions about the missing persons report filed by Ian Griffin,” she said.
“Ian Griffin?”
“Yes. You told us you took the report from Ian Griffin about his sister and niece going missing.”
“I don’t think so.”
“We were here last week?”
“Yes.”
Katie realized Mr. Ventura might be having memory problems or be in the early stages of dementia. She looked at McGaven, who raised his eyebrows as if to say he was thinking the same thing too. However, Ventura did remember the detectives being there before.
“You really don’t remember Ian Griffin? I know it was quite a while ago.”
“No, I don’t, but I have files here. Would that help? I forgot that I had more boxes here,” said Ventura.
“Yes, anything.”
“Well, come in,” he said, smiling. Ventura led the detectives to a hall closet and opened the doors.
Katie had expected it to be unorganized and messy, but there were banker’s boxes neatly stacked and identified by neat print in black marker.
“This is really organized,” said McGaven.
“What year did you say?” Ventura asked.
“It would be from about twenty years ago,” she said.
“Name of person missing?”
“Collins: Meredith and Misty.”
Ventura went to the area with cases from that time frame, which was the top shelf. “Hey, big fella, give me a hand.” He pointed at the box.
“Gladly,” said McGaven. He brought down the box and set it on the kitchen table.
Ventura flipped the lid off and revealed neatly printed labels on file folders. “Collins… Collins… here,” he said, pulling a file and giving it to Katie. “Is this what you need?”
Katie opened the file where the flyers for Meredith and Misty were and the report, but there was also a thin notebook filled with the detective’s impressions.
“Mr. Ventura, did you always take so many notes?” she said.
“Yep. My theories, ideas. What I saw. Things like that.”
“May we take this? We’ll bring it back, I promise.”
“Of course. I trust you.”
The detectives thanked Ventura and left.
Walking back to their car, they couldn’t believe there was this much information.
It would help to know Griffin’s mindset and the situation.
It may not directly help with finding Junior, but everything played a part in finding the missing pieces of the puzzle.
Katie got back in the sedan. “Can you believe this? He was a stickler about taking notes to almost a fault.”
“I’m surprised he remembered those files,” said McGaven. “And I do wish he’d remembered them earlier.”
“I know. It’s sad when the memory works against us.” She felt sorry for the old man.
McGaven took the notebook and began skimming the pages as Katie drove out of the senior living parking lot.
“What’s it say?” she said.
“He recorded everything. When Griffin came in, what he was wearing, how he acted, what he said in the report…”
Katie was surprised. “Maybe it was how he could remember everything?”
“I guess.” He skimmed another couple of pages. “Wait. Here’s something. Griffin stated that he was worried about something happening to his son, Junior.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. I think Ventura was just chronicling everything as a way of not missing anything.”
“He could have recorded it?” she said.
“I think that defeats the purpose because he couldn’t give his impression of what he saw and heard.”
McGaven’s phone buzzed. “A text from Hamilton. He wants us to meet him at 1:30 in the conference room.”
“Good news?” she said.
“I don’t know.”