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Back at the office, Blake placed calls to the captains in Germantown and Bartlett. He didn’t get to speak to either one of them but left a message for them to call him back. He kept busy the next few days with normal paperwork and cleaning up reports before he retired. The time passed faster than he had expected. A week had gone by without his hearing from either of the captains.
The funeral for Tomas Warner would be that Friday and Blake hoped to speak with Ms. Warner the following Monday, but her office said she wouldn’t be back to work until the end of July. He would have to catch her at her home, but in the meantime, he would go to the lake and drink beer and fish all weekend.
June Warner lived in Collierville, close to the Bill Morris Parkway, which was out east of downtown. The Parkway was a short freeway running from Interstate-240 into Collierville. In fact, all these little towns were no more than the outskirts of Memphis, including Bartlett and Germantown. Each town had its own police force and city government, and they didn’t play well with each other. Then there was also the Shelby County Sheriff’s Department, which thought everybody else should kiss their ass. With so many cops, it was hard to believe that any crime could go unnoticed. But the hitch was that no one talked to anyone else.
The more Blake thought about Keeler’s assumption of a serial killer, the more it made sense why the killings took place in three different jurisdictions. Each murder would have been assigned only to the police department where the murder had taken place. If not for Keeler’s mortuary spider web reeling in bodies from all across Shelby County, these murders might never have been connected. Someone planned it that way, it wasn’t by chance. The killer or killers had to be local to the area. How else would they know what police district they were in?
The ride to Ms. Warner’s was on the freeway almost to her front door and it took Blake just 20 minutes. He turned off onto Winchester. Ms. Warner lived in a new housing development close by the exit. He made good time and wanted to get through this part of his investigation as quickly as possible. He always hated speaking to the family of the dead. In murder cases he found that either of two things came from these meetings: either the family member was the murderer or you got no useful information. He pulled into the driveway at 2856 Oak Trees Drive and turned off the Jeep.
Two knocks brought someone to the door. A tall woman with short brown hair opened it and, with a smile, asked, “May I help you?”
“I’m Detective Harris with the MPD. Are you Mrs. Warner?”
“No, I’m her neighbor. June is in the living room. Follow me.”
Blake took in the beautifully furnished house. The dining room to the right could have been in the White House. He was thinking, Mrs. Warner has very good taste and a pocketbook to back it up. He followed the neighbor around a corner into a living room furnished in white, with light purple walls and dark curtains. Somehow the combo worked, but it was beyond Blake. He was a white-wall-and-brown-sofa kind of person.
She sat at the end of the large couch, with her legs pulled tightly to her chest. Her auburn hair was combed and pulled back into a bun. She looked up as the two entered the room and tried to smile.
Blake stepped forward and put out his hand. “Mrs. Warner, I’m Detective Harris. First, let me say how sorry I am for your loss.”
“Thank you, Detective.” Blake heard a catch in her voice; she was trying to hold it together as long as she could. “What can I do for you?”
“I just have a few questions for you, Mrs. Warner. I’ll try and not take up too much of your time.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know much. Tommy had his own life and was at the age where his freedom meant being away from me.”
“Did he have any friends that you know of in the Cooper-Young neighborhood?”
“He may have. I didn’t know but one of his friends, and he’s in Iraq right now.”
“I hope you’ll forgive me, but I have to ask – was your son gay?”
She uncoiled like a snake striking. “What would that have to do with his murder? It was a serial killer, not a hate crime!”
It took Blake a few seconds to come to grips with what he had just heard. “Where did you hear it was a serial killing?”
June Warner had her back up and wasn’t backing down. “I have the private phone number of the President of the United States. How hard do you think it is for me to get the information I want in a small town like Memphis? Three killings on the same night, with the same weapon – what else would you call it, if not a serial killing?”
“What I think, Mrs. Warner, is that you have an opinion but no established factual basis for it. This is my case and once I have completed my investigation and have all the facts, I, and I alone, will decide whether it’s a serial killer or maybe three individuals who trained with the same weapon and worked together to commit these murders.”
“Is that what you think? That there were three killers?”
“Mrs. Warner, will you please answer my question…was your son gay?
“We never spoke of it, but, yes, he was gay.” She pulled her legs back against her chest. The fight inside her had died. “Were the other two victims also gay?”
“I don’t know, Mrs. Warner. I am waiting to hear back from the other two police departments. They aren’t great about sharing, but then the MPD is not big on sharing either. If I haven’t heard from them by tomorrow, I’ll have to go see their captains.”
“I’m sorry I flew off the handle like that. I’ve been told you’re very good at your job. It just made sense to me that it was a serial killer, or maybe I wanted it to be one, so I didn’t have to believe someone killed my son because of who he was.”
Blake stood and handed her his business card. “If you think of anything that can help us, please call me, day or night.”
She took the card. “I’ll do what I can to help you, Detective. Janet, will you see Detective Harris to the door, please?”
Blake had forgotten the neighbor was still in the room. “Thank you for your time, Mrs. Warner.”
He followed Janet to the door, where he paused for a second. “Did you know Tommy, Mrs.—?”
“Fuller. Yes, not well, but he was a nice, quiet boy, and June loved him more than life itself. I don’t know how she’ll get through this.”
Janet began to cry, and Blake knew it was time to leave. “Thank you, Mrs. Fuller. Good-bye.”
Blake got back onto the Bill Morris Parkway and at the junction headed north on I-240 toward town. As he approached the exit for I-40 East, he made a last-second decision to go to the Bartlett Police Department. The captain there was an old friend, and unlike Germantown, Blake felt welcome in Bartlett.
Captain Randy Williams had graduated from the police academy the same year as Blake and both went to work for the Memphis Police Department and became rising stars in the detective division. But after Blake made captain Randy knew he needed to find a different path to becoming captain and went to work in Bartlett. It had been a good move on his part.
Blake exited I-40 onto Appling Road and headed north. The station was right where Appling dead-ended into Summer Avenue. He took a right into the parking lot and found a spot close to the entrance.
He walked past the desks of detectives and knocked on the door marked Captain Williams. Randy looked up and saw Blake through the glass portion of the door. A smile ran across his face and he waved for Blake to come in.
“Blake, you old S.O.B., I heard you were retired and gone fishing.”
Blake stepped into the office and reached across the desk to shake the hand of his friend. “Not yet. I have a few more months, and it looks like I’ve caught a case that ties into a murder you’re working on.”
Randy leaned back in his chair. “I got your message, but I was waiting until we had something to call you back. This is about the so-called serial killer that the M.E. is so hot about?”
“I’m not calling it a serial killing just yet.”
“Good. I don’t even like the sound or idea. I haven’t got a report yet with any real details other than the way they were killed.”
Blake moved forward in his chair. “I have one lead. The kid that was killed in the Cooper-Young area was gay. If the other two were also gay, then we have a hate crime and not a serial killer.”
Randy reached across his desk and pressed a button on his intercom. “Jerry, step into my office for a minute, please.”
Randy turned back to Blake. “Jerry Winters is a good detective, but he hasn’t had the case that long, so I doubt he’ll be of much help.”
The door opened and Detective Winters stepped into the office. “What’s up, Cap?”
“This is Captain Harris with the MPD. We’re old friends and he’s working one of the murders that took place last week. He’s hoping we can help him.”
Winters turned toward Blake and nodded. “I’m sorry, Captain, but I’ve got very little other than the M.E.’s report and some crime photos.”
“The M.E. is trying to make this into a serial killing,” replied Blake. “If it is, then it is. However, I believe at this point in time that it may be a hate crime. I was hoping you could check and see whether the man killed here was gay or not?”
“Sure, I’ll get right on it and give you a call.”
“Thank you, Detective.”
“Is there anything else, Cap?”
“That’ll do, but keep me in the loop. This damn thing could go sideways on us in a hurry if it does turn out to be a serial killer.”
“Will do!”
The door closed and as Jerry Winters walked back to his desk, he was thinking that a serial killer could make his career. Why should he help some broken-down captain on his way out the door?
| Copyright © 2019, 2020 by Ed Rogers |
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