The King Tides

Chapter 34 Keep Moving Forward

Daniels placed a call to the retired FBI agent who’d handled the Hanover killers case. His name was Mark Eberbach, and he confirmed to her that the male employees at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center had not submitted to DNA testing during the investigation. Daniels thanked Eberbach for his time and promised to stay in touch.

“I need to go to the FBI’s office in North Miami Beach and get on a computer and do some digging,” Daniels said. “Want to tag along?”

He’d finally gained her trust. He nodded, and she pulled out of the Starbucks parking lot and drove west toward I-95. The FBI had three facilities in South Florida: one in Miami, a newly opened office in Miramar, and an office in North Miami Beach. The NMB office was the closest, but that was a relative term when driving in South Florida, where a ten-mile journey could take between ten minutes and an hour.

Traffic was at a standstill a mile from the entrance ramp to I-95. He opened the traffic app on his phone and saw that I-95 was a parking lot. Daniels punched the wheel in frustration. Every wasted minute might lead to another young woman being lost.

“Why don’t you work out of my place,” he suggested. “I do consulting work with Team Adam, and have access to all the major databases on my computer.”

Daniels answered him by doing a U-turn and heading back to the beach. He gave her instructions as she drove. Daniels had a wire in the blood and was seeing things in a new light. It was how many investigations went. Months or years of tedious searching were rewarded by a sudden revelation that propelled the case forward.

“How long have you consulted for Team Adam?” she asked.

“Two years,” he said.

“What do you think of them?”

“They have a ninety-two percent success rate.”

“Wow. How does that work?”

“I asked myself the same question when I started with them. Why is Team Adam more effective at solving difficult cases than other law enforcement agencies? After working a few cases, I saw what it was. They never stop moving forward. If a team working an investigation hits a wall, a fresh pair of eyes is brought in to review the evidence and offer a different perspective.”

“Keep moving forward,” she said. “I’ll have to remember that.”

Three blocks from his condo, they hit another deterrent. The King Tides were unpredictable and often flooded roads without warning. A pair of metal detour signs had been placed in the middle of the road, forcing drivers to seek alternative routes.

“What’s with all the water? Have you had a lot of rain recently?” she asked.

“It hasn’t rained in weeks,” he said. “The flooding is a strange phenomenon called the King Tides. No one really knows what causes it.”

“I’m assuming there’s an alternative route,” she said.

“Of course. Back up, and I’ll get you there.”

She threw the rental into reverse. Turning in her seat, she looked over her shoulder, hit the gas, and expertly drove backward down the block until she reached the intersection, where she made a sharp turn, then hit the brakes, threw the rental into drive, and headed off in the direction that his finger was pointing. He’d been trained in defensive driving while in the SEALs, but this was a cut above.

“Where did you learn to drive like that?” he asked.

“Impressed?” she asked.

“You’re way good. I’m very impressed.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment, coming from a former SEAL.”

“I trained in Southern California. We didn’t spend a lot of time learning to drive in reverse. Most of our missions were conducted on foot or using small boats. No cars.”

“I learned on a course at TEVOC at Quantico. That’s short for Tactical and Emergency Vehicle Operations Center. The FBI teaches its agents how to drive every vehicle you can imagine in an emergency situation. We’re required to go back every six months for a refresher.”

“Do they take outsiders?”

“Help me solve this, and I’ll put in a word for you.”

Soon they were at his condo. He brewed a fresh pot of coffee while Daniels sat at the desk in his study and spoke with the head of human resources at Dartmouth-Hitchcock, with whom she was on a first-name basis. The head of HR agreed to email Daniels the names of all male employees at the hospital during the time of the Hanover killings, and the call ended. He placed a steaming mug in front of her.

“Sounds like you’re making progress,” he said.

“One step at a time,” she said. “Dartmouth-Hitchcock is an academic facility and has several thousand employees. There are a lot of male nurses working there. I’ll need to run background checks on each one to see if they have criminal records. We could be here for a while.”

Running criminal background checks was problematic since there was no single database that contained every criminal record.

“I think there might be a simpler way to track down our killers,” he said.

Her eyebrows lifted. “I’m listening.”

“We know these guys have a residence in Fort Lauderdale and live here part of the year,” he said. “I’d suggest that you run the names of the male nurses the hospital sends you against the Department of Motor Vehicles database to see what pops up. The DMV database includes address changes and name changes and is always current.”

“That’s an interesting angle,” she said. “What if our killers are still using their out-of-state driver’s licenses? Your idea wouldn’t work then.”

“That’s unlikely. If our killers have a residence here, they’ve probably applied for a homestead exemption, which saves them a bundle on property taxes. They’d also want to establish residency so as to not pay state income tax.”

“There’s no state income tax in Florida?”

“Nope. It’s why so many people retire here. Once a person establishes residency, they have thirty days to get a new driver’s license. If they don’t, and get pulled over by a cop for speeding, they’ll get arrested.”

“Good thinking. Do you have access to the DMV database?”

“I sure do. And I have a Team Adam password.”

“I’m willing to give it a try.”

They drank more coffee waiting for the head of HR’s email. Daniels got up from the desk and moved around the study, admiring the collection of art hanging on the walls. There were paintings, glass work, ceramics, and a black-and-white photograph of the Everglades at sunrise taken by the state’s answer to Ansel Adams, Clyde Butcher.

“You have good taste,” she said. “There was an exhibition of Clyde Butcher’s work at a gallery in Georgetown, where I live. The prices were through the roof.”

“I actually have lousy taste,” he said. “Just about everything in my place was given to me by one of my clients. It’s how I do business. I don’t take cash.”

She sat on the edge of the desk and looked him in the eye. “Is that the deal that you have with my sister and her husband?”

“Yes. Your brother-in-law agreed to buy me a new refrigerator. I’m got my eye on a make by Bosch with all the trimmings.”

“So no cash. Are you hiding it from the government and not paying taxes?”

“No. I declare everything and pay taxes on it.”

“Okay, I’m hooked. What’s the story here?”

“I need the memories.”

Daniels shook her head, not understanding.

“While I was a SEAL, I performed a hundred and fifty missions in all parts of the world. Most were rescues and were done in secret. They weren’t written down, and our government will disavow that they ever happened. The people I rescued were kidnap victims that worked in our embassies or undercover CIA agents whose cover got blown. Except for my first mission, where we were given bad information, I got every single one out alive.”

“That’s some record. Good for you, Jon.”

“Thanks. There was only one problem. I wanted to know what happened to the people I rescued later on. Did their lives go back to normal? Did everything work out okay? Because the mission was never officially acknowledged by the government, I couldn’t contact them and find out. It bugged the hell out of me.”

“You got attached to the people you rescued.”

“In a way, yes. I wanted to know if they were okay. That way, I could move on and stop worrying about them.”

“You wanted closure,” she said.

“Yes, closure. Over time, the missions faded from memory, which bothered me even more. I had nothing to remember these people by. Not even a selfie.”

Daniels was a quick study and nodded understanding. “You make your clients pay you in material objects so you have something to remember them by. Does it work?”

“Yes, it does. It all started with Jimmy Buffett.”

“The singer? What’s your connection?”

“I saved his life once.”

“Is that how you got the autographed guitar hanging in your living room?”

“Yes. I was a cop and assigned to protect him while he was giving a concert. When the show was over, we drove back to his hotel in a limo. As we pulled up, I got out first. There was a guy inside the lobby who struck me as suspicious.”

“What caught your eye?”

“It was summer, and he was wearing a long-sleeve Nike athletic shirt and jeans. Nobody wears long-sleeve shirts in the summer unless they’re hiding something.”

“Was he?”

“A knife, two guns, and a stun grenade. He was planning to ambush us and take Buffett out. He’d been stalking him for a while and wanted to kill him.”

“Jon to the rescue.”

He smiled at the memory. “It was one of my better moments. I took the crazy bastard down and the other cops on the detail whisked Buffett into an elevator and took him upstairs. Nobody got hurt. We arrested the perp and took him down to the station to book him. A couple of hours later I got a phone call from Buffett’s manager asking me to come back to the hotel. I went, and Buffett was in his suite waiting for me with the autographed guitar. He shook my hand so hard I thought he was going to break my fingers. Every time I look at the guitar, I’m reminded of that night.”

“Do you like Buffett’s music? I saw that you had a lot of his CDs.”

“I’m a big fan. That night had a lot to do with it.”

“If you don’t take cash, what do you live on?”

“I have a navy pension and my cop pension. That keeps me in groceries and pays my condo association fees.”

Daniels started to ask another question when her laptop made a noise indicating that an email had arrived. She went around the desk and had a look.

“It’s from the head of HR at Dartmouth-Hitchcock and it has an attachment,” she said. “Looks like we’re in business.”

The email’s attachment contained the names of every nurse employed by Dartmouth-Hitchcock during the time of the Hanover murders. There were over eight hundred names, and the list included both male and female nurses. With his help, she printed the list on the HP LaserJet printer that was stored in the closet.

They spent a half hour parsing the list and running a black line through the female nurses’ names. When done, slightly less than half the names remained, which were in random order. He got on the DMV site and used his password to gain entrance.

Daniels took the chair at the desk and faced the computer while he stood next to her and stared over her shoulder. The first name on the list was a male nurse named Ronald Colley. Daniels typed the name into the DMV search engine and hit “Enter.” A second later Colley’s driving record appeared on the screen. Ronald Colley had moved from Hanover six years ago and now resided in Boston.

“Not him,” Daniels said.

She repeated this process for the next fifty names on the list. There were no hits. It was an exhausting process, but she did not tire. People on a mission rarely did.

“You hungry?” he asked.

“Starving,” she said. “What’s on the menu?”

“Uber Eats. Name your pleasure, and it’ll be here in thirty minutes.”

“I like Chinese, no MSG.”

“I’m partial to a joint called the Rainbow Palace. Any preferences?”

“I’ll let you pick.”

A half hour later, there was a knock on his door. They had run two hundred names of male nurses through the DMV’s database and not gotten a single hit. If she was frustrated, she refused to let it show. He excused himself and went to meet the driver.

Uber didn’t want customers to tip their drivers, but he slipped the guy ten bucks anyway. Taking the food to the kitchen, he doled out fried lo mein and crispy duck onto two plates, stuck some cutlery into his pocket, grabbed two paper napkins, and returned to the study. Daniels glanced up from the computer and thanked him with a smile. She balanced the plate on her lap and dug in.

“This is good,” she said. “Want to bet we find our guys at the end of the list?”

“Is that how it usually works?” he said.

“It does for me. When I do a search, the needle is always at the bottom of the haystack. I must have been born under an unlucky sign.”

“Nothing good ever comes easy,” he said.

The food was soon a memory. He stacked their empty plates and was heading to the kitchen when his cell phone rang. It was Karissa. He didn’t have time to speak with her right now and hoped she would understand.

“Can I give you a call back tomorrow?” he asked.

“Oh my God, Jon, he’s going to kill me,” she replied.