Best Laid Plans...

Best Laid Plans - Chapter 3

Detective Brianne Archer snapped her fingers several times in an attempt to get the attention of the man standing before her, and then said testily, "Excuse me, sir, can you stop ogling my footwear and answer the question?"

Clarence Eugene Garvey slowly looked up from Detective Archer's expensive brown boots and smiled coyly. "I'm sorry, detective, but I really like your boots. Are they Calvin Kleins?"

Brianne's eyebrows went up. "How did you know they were Calvin Klein?"

Garvey cocked his head and smiled even more. "I have a bit of a boot fetish, if truth be told. Weird? Yeah, I guess, but I've always loved when people wear boots."

Brianne tried unsuccessfully not to roll her eyes and said, "Any possible way you can tear your thoughts away from my boots and answer my question?"

"What was the question again, Detective Archer?" Garvey asked sincerely.

Brianne sighed in exasperation. This weirdo was doing the river dance on her very last nerve. All the young detective wanted to do was finish this interview and get back to the station. Hopefully, the information she had subpoenaed from Scarlett Wilde's internet service provider would arrive sooner rather than later, because, finally, after almost a week of investigating, Brianne had finally started making some headway on the missing person's case. Not a lot of headway, but definitely some forward momentum.

"Are you sure you never met a newspaper intern or college student named Scarlett Wilde?" Brianne repeated as she showed a picture of the twenty-year-old girl.

Garvey shook his head. "No, ma'am. I've never heard of or met Scarlett Wilde. Should I have?"

Brianne shrugged unconsciously. "Not sure. She's a college kid who went missing about a month ago. She was investigating the Bens case for the paper and interviewing witnesses who were listed on the police report. She never talked to you?"

Garvey glanced at Brianne's boots quickly and that back at the detective. "Nope. She never interviewed me. One of your detectives talked to me a couple times back in January or February about the missing detective. You said the kid was doing a story on the detective's disappearance and now she's missing too?"

Brianne nodded. "Yeah. Apparently around the time she was conducting follow up interviews with all the listed witnesses."

Garvey looked surprised. "That's creepy. Do I need to get a lawyer or something?"

Brianne looked at her notes again, saw that she had written down Gavey's information and that his date of birth was February 29, 1996 - a leap year baby. She looked back up and saw Garvey was gawking at her boots again.

Brianne snapped his fingers. "Mr. Garvey, up here!"

Garvey looked up slowly and gave Brianne a sheepish grin. "Sorry officer, I really like boots and I really admire your style. Those are sharp boots. Bet they cost you a pretty penny."

Brianne nodded. "They weren't cheap. But regarding your question, I don't think you need a lawyer, but it's your right to retain one if you wish."

"Any luck on finding this Scarlett girl?" Garvey asked.

Brianne cocked her head. "I'm starting to get a little traction so hopefully something breaks soon"

Before Garvey responded, Brianne's cellphone buzzed in her pocket. She excused herself, fished it out and answered, "Detective Archer."

"Detective Archer, this is Emily Dester," the woman on the other side of the line said.

"Hey, Ms. E," Brianne said. "What's up?"

Emily Dester was the Jacksonville Police Department's administrative assistant assigned to the Missing Persons Unit. She said, "A gentleman from the Echols County, Georgia, Tax Collectors Office just called for you. He said he found the information you wanted and emailed it to the address you provided him."

"Thanks, Ms. E," Brianne said happily and disconnected the call. Because of some stupid state regulation, employees could not receive work emails on their personal phones. So, she would have to go back to the office to get the information. Still, the chance that she could have a name and then they could go check out the property in Georgia, at least filled her with a little hope.

"Was that good news, Detective?" Garvey said.

Brianne put her phone back in her pocket and started heading for her vehicle. "Hopefully, Mr. Garvey. We will soon see."

Garvey followed Brianne back to her car saying, "If I can be of any further assistance, please don't hesitate to ask. Good luck in finding the girl...and the cop too!"

Brianne nodded as she jumped into the running Ford Taurus unmarked police cruiser, put on the seatbelt, put it in reverse and backed out of the space faster than she had intended. She unintentionally spun the tires as she pulled out of the Department of Transportation lot and turned toward Interstate 95.

Brianne Carmen Archer was a twenty-three-year-old detective and had only been working with the Jacksonville Police Department for a little over two-and-a-half years. She was assigned to Missing Persons when Colleen Bens went missing and the administration assumed the missing detective was not coming back anytime soon. Brianne's uncle was the Chief of Detectives and used his position to get a relatively inexperienced Brianne into that vacated slot. Therefore, most everyone in the Missing Persons Unit assumed Brianne was only there because of nepotism, but if they had paid her any attention, they would have noticed that she was a gifted investigator with a keen sixth sense and a dogged mentality that pushed her to exceed all standards.

Brianne had, since her arrival in the unit almost four months previous, had an exemplary record. She had tracked down several missing adults and children - one of the children who was in the custody of a sexual predator - and was not afraid to tackle the tough cases. Unfortunately, her exemplary work went unnoticed by her peers and superiors. Not only because of the nepotism belief, but because of her personality.

Brianne was a little aloof at times and a bit narcissistic. Everyone in the office said she was a fashionista, but Brianne disagreed with their assessment. She thought she was more of a femme. She was a beautiful young lady who liked to look good, took pride in her appearance and always outshined her peers in effort, work product and fashion. On the typical day when everyone in the office was wearing button-down shirts and khakis, Brianne was wearing an expensive, tailored business suit and heels. Even on this particular day, what was known as a Dress Down Friday, while her co-workers were all wearing Levis, Jacksonville Jaguar polos and sneakers, she was wearing a black J.Crew Madelyn blazer over a white, polyester-spandex blend, sleeveless cropped tank, a Sapphire blue Fit Jeans 360 High Waisted stretch jeans and light brown Calvin Klein Cerine Booties. Her entire "dress down" outfit cost more than the Glock 17, two spare magazines, handcuffs and badge she wore on her limited edition Christian Dior 30 Montaigne belt!

Brianne stopped at a light, thought about activating her emergency lights and siren, decided against it and thought of the case she was working. She had been assigned the Scarlett Wilde disappearance on this past Monday and had made a little - be it not very much - headway. Scarlett had been interning at the local paper and was working with a reporter named Tom Dean. Scarlett was researching information on Detective Bens' disappearance the previous January by reinterviewing witnesses. According to Tom Dean, Scarlett had interviewed the three highway troopers to last see Bens on the side of the interstate back in January. All three state troopers verified this to be true. The only other witness listed on the original report was a DOT employee that one of the troopers mentioned had been on the scene when he arrived, but Dean was adamant that Scarlett never reinterviewed the DOT employee. In fact, Dean said he told Scarlett not to interview Garvey.

Scarlett's parents, who lived in New Jersey, contacted the Jacksonville police after two weeks when they could not get in touch with their daughter. A report had been filed, but it took almost another week before it made its way to Brianne's desk.

Brianne had subpoenaed Scarlett's cellphone records, email, GPS and internet search information. These types of companies were notoriously anti-law enforcement and took their time on turning over the required data. On Wednesday, Brianne had received the email information, but there was nothing there to assist the investigation. The next day, Thursday, she was informed that the cellphone provider could no longer provide location information on their customers because of a change to their software. This sounded like a bullshit excuse at best to Brianne, but nothing she could do about that in the short term.

This morning, the cellphone provider had emailed her a list of calls that Scarlett had made during the month of July, up until the day she disappeared. Also, Scarlett's internet service provider has emailed a list of sites that Scarlett had visited on the day she disappeared.

Brianne discovered that the last call Scarlett had made was to the Jacksonville Police Department's Missing Persons Unit. Ms. Emily Dester remembered taking the call and said the caller wanted to talk to the detective in charge of the Colleen Bens missing person case. She added that she forwarded the request for a call back to Detective Salazar, who was the lead detective on the Bens case. Salazar told Brianne that he tried to call the number back a week later but no one answered. Brianne did inquire why it took him a week to call Wilde back, and Salazar claimed he had been busy. Brianne thought that was a bullshit excuse as well, but she bit her tongue.

Scarlett's ISP had emailed the sites she had visited on the day she went missing, but only a general list. The last several sites she had visited were every possible social media site and then county tax records of Jacksonville, every surrounding county and then outlying counties. The last search was Echols County, Georgia. Unfortunately, this list was not specific in that it did not show exactly what Scarlett was looking for, but rather it was only the sites she visited.

Fortunately, Brianne found a helpful woman, after twenty minutes of talking to robots and playing phone tag, at Scarlett's ISP. After she explained she was working on a missing person case with the possibility of foul play involved, the woman broke company protocol and looked up the specific information that Scarlett had been researching. She told Brianne that Scarlett Wilde had been looking up tax records for an unincorporated area near the town of Needmore, and she even provided Brianne with the address.

Next, Brianne contacted the Echols County Tax Collector's Office and found another helpful person. An older gentleman looked up the information and discovered the property in question was owned by a limited liability company called Cool Protege, LLC. There was absolutely zero information about Cool Protege, LLC on the internet, and the tax collector employee stated the property appeared to have been recently transferred from private ownership to that LLC within the last few weeks. The gentleman promised to look up the previous owner's name but it might take a couple hours.

Brianne gave the man her cell number, the office number and her email address. He promised to expedite Brianne's request and had apparently come through in only two plus hours.

Brianne had decided to interview Clarence Garvey to ensure he did not talk to Scarlett Wilde. She traveled to the DOT yard and had to have the DOT dispatcher radio Garvey to return. It took almost an hour, but he arrived and, unfortunately, did not shed any light on the situation. Not that Brianne thought Garvey would, but she was just trying to keep the case moving forward now that she had the slightest momentum.

Also, because she had always believed the Wilde case was linked to Detective Colleen Bens' disappearance - a theory that Brianne's superiors and peers in the Missing Persons Unit vehemently disagreed with - she had asked for and received, from the DOT dispatcher, Clarence Garvey's work schedule over the past two years. She wanted to see if Garvey was working on the nights that the seven women - the seven women that Detective Bens thought were a pattern and had pushed her lieutenant and sergeant to conduct proactive deployments to apprehend a possible serial abductor and/or killer - had disappeared. Brianne also figured she would check to see if Garvey was working the dates that Bens and Scarlett Wilde also went missing, just to officially scratch him off the list of potential suspects.

Brianne glanced at the papers on the passenger seat that annotated Garvey's work schedule over the last two years. She figured it would be a waste of time, but better to check all the boxes. Garvey was definitely an oddball, but Brianne did not get a bad vibe from the guy. The light finally turned green, and Brianne sped off toward the I-95 on ramp.

She pulled the Taurus onto the interstate, heading toward downtown and laid down on the accelerator. She was driving faster than she should, wanted to get to the station as quickly as possible, when a warning light illuminated on her dashboard. It was a horseshoe-shaped light with an exclamation point in the center. Then, before she could do anything else, the vehicle dipped to the left and the steering wheel began to shake in her hand.

Brianne slowed the Taurus, put on the flashers and made her way to the left shoulder. Brianne knew she had a flat. She put the car in park, shut down the engine and exited the vehicle. Sure enough, the front driver's side tire was completely flat.

The August morning was already turning brutally hot, so Brianne decided not to waste any time. She removed her blazer and left it on the passenger seat. Then, she popped the truck lid, emptied out all her assigned equipment and placed it on the side of the car away from the interstate. Once the trunk was empty of all her police gear, she pulled up the floor, revealing the spare tire. One of the only good things about vehicles that were purchased with a "police interceptor package' was that they had a full-size spare.

Brianne began manhandling the jack out of a side compartment in the trunk that came with the vehicle, when a DOT Road Ranger truck pulled in behind the Taurus and activated the yellow emergency lights. Brianne could see that the man behind the wheel was Clarence Garvey. The light board in the truck bed extended up warning drivers to move over a lane.

Garvey exited the white pickup and said, "Fancy meeting you here, Detective? Flat?"

Brianne nodded. "Yeah."

Garvey nodded. "Let me get my hydraulic jack. Don't mess with that silly little thing that Ford pawns off as a car jack."

Brianne smiled as she placed the ineffectual jack back in the side compartment in the trunk and pulled out the spare tire. Garvey walked over with a large hydraulic jack on four wheels and a long, steel handle. He also was carrying a four-way lug wrench.

"You're a life saver, Mr. Garvey," Brianne said.

Five minutes later, the unmarked police vehicle was jacked up. Three minutes after that, the flat tire was removed. There were nine roofing nails all in one area of the flat.

"There's your culprit," Garvey said. "Probably fell off a work truck or maybe in the DOT yard."

Brianne just wanted to get this done. She was starting to sweat and ready to get back into the air-conditioned interior of the Taurus.

She grabbed the spare, squatted down, started getting the tire on the lugs and said, "I appreciate the help."

"No problem, Detective Archer," Gavey said from behind Brianne. "It's truly my pleasure."

Brianne had started to put the lug nuts on by hand when she thought about the roofing nails. How had so many gotten into the tire? She had seen a nail or two in one of her tires in the past, but never as many as nine.

It was like someone intentionally put those nails...

Brianne thought.

Then her fingers stopped turning the last of the lug nuts, as she thought about what Garvey had said about the nails.

"

Probably fell off a work truck or maybe in the DOT yard

."

Roofing nails in a DOT yard? Why would there be roofing nails in a DOT yard?

That's when Brianne felt a slight prick behind her right ear. She reached back with her right hand, rubbed the area and then looked at her fingers. In the grime from changing the tire, she could definitely see a tiny spot of blood. Then, her sweating dramatically increased, her hands began to tremble, she became very confused and was overwhelmed with fatigue.

She slid onto her rump, spun around slowly and awkwardly and leaned her back against the front quarter panel of the Taurus. She looked at Garvey, who had a syringe in his right hand and a malicious smile on his face.

Brianne's vision blurred and she tried to say something but was only able to moan.

Garvey looked at the empty syringe, shrugged and said, "Insulin. I injected you with insulin. Probably not enough to kill you but enough to make you, shall we say, compliant."

Brianne tried to reach for her sidearm, but her right hand would hardly obey her brain's commands. Garvey put the syringe away in the pocket of his reflective jacket and knelt next to Brianne. He relieved the detective of her 9mm service weapon and placed it in the waistband of his work pants. He also took the two spare ammunition magazines and put them in his jacket pocket.

Garvey turned Brianne's drooping head in his direction and said, "The dispatcher radioed me and said you had requested my work schedule. I'll make it easy for you, my young, pretty detective. All the dates you will compare will match up to the nights that I was working. I'm very impressed with your deductive reasoning."

Garvey then rolled Brianne onto her stomach and straddled her by sitting on Brianne's rump. Brianne's face was lying on her left cheek and looking at the new tire she had just started to affix to her police vehicle. Her head was swimming and she felt like she had on her twenty-first birthday when she had gotten fallen down drunk.

"Sorry to ruin your nice, white tank top in the dirt and gravel," Garvey said pleasantly. "It looks very sexy on your athletic figure, Detective Archer."

Brianne tried to bring her hands under her chest and push herself up, but her arms felt as if they weighed a thousand pounds each.

"But don't worry," Garvey continued. "You won't be needing that shirt much longer. And, I could hear the other end of the conversation you had in the DOT yard. Your volume was somewhat loud, and I already know what information is waiting for you back in your office. Your hunch on Echols County, Georgia would most definitely lead you in the right direction."

Brianne felt Clarence Garvey grab each of her wrists and pull them behind her back. Her palms were placed together and held in Garvey's left hand while he pulled the handcuffs from the case on Brianne's belt. Garvey wrapped one of the steel cuffs around Brianne's right wrist and ratcheted it tightly closed. He then repeated the process to Brianne's left wrist, securing the detective's hands in the small of her back with her own handcuffs.

As Garvey spun around and faced Brianne's feet, he said, "The good news is that you will soon crack your case, Detective Archer. In a matter of hours, you will know exactly what happened to Detective Bens and young Scarlett Wilde."

Brianne felt her immobile legs forced together as Garvey removed two plastic cable ties from a pocket in his reflective jacket. The cable tie was zipped around Brianne's ankles and then directly below her knees. Then, Garvey watched the oncoming traffic. When he got a break in the approaching vehicles, he hoisted the bound and drugged Brianne over his shoulder and deposited his newest captive the now empty trunk of the Taurus.