Chapter 32: Connecting the Dots

It was just after 11am Monday when Dt. Hale called his team to the conference room to discuss what they had and where they were in the James Dryden murder. Dt. Geoff Greene had just returned from a lunch break, so now all were present. Cassidy had been at her desk working since Brooke’s call. After Dt. Hale’s summons, she hurried to the printer to grab some printouts and then followed the team into the conference room. When they were all together, Dt. Hale began the meeting.

“Without some break in the case, we will soon have to put the Dryden murder on the back burner,” Dt. Hale said in a solemn voice. “As of now, we are back in the rotation. So, if anybody has an idea, some theory on how to proceed, now is the time to speak up.”

Dt. Hale’s declaration that they would soon have to focus the bulk of their attention on another investigation had a dismal effect on everyone other than Cassidy. The team desperately wanted a successfully close to the Dryden case, but only Cassidy knew how to proceed.

“I think I may have something,” Cassidy spoke into the silence.

All eyes turned to Cassidy and the papers she had on the table in front of her.

“Okay, Tremaine,” Dt. Hale acknowledged with a nod in her direction. “Tell me what you’ve got.”

“I found an old boyfriend Kathryn Dryden had in high school,” Cassidy began while shuffling sheets of paper.

“We’ve already cleared him,” Vera quickly spoke up in a dismissive tone. “There’s nothing there.”

“I’m not talking about Adam Reese,” Cassidy quickly countered. “His name is Karl Volker,” she continued while pushing the paper toward Dt. Hale.

“What about him?” Vera snarled as Dt. Hale began looking over the paper.

“I spoke with some people who brought up Kathryn Dryden, or Kathryn Wells as she was known then, and Karl Volker in the same sentence.”

“So?” Vera challenged in a nasty tone.

“This guy has to be four years older than Kathryn Dryden,” Dt. Hale pointed out as he continued to read what was on the paper in his hand.

“Five,” Cassidy corrected. “But that didn’t appear to be a problem for him or Kathryn,” she added. “There was a rumor that she was—intimate with Mr. Volker.”

“A rumor?” Vera asked in a challenging return. “What is this, the new hope and a prayer investigative technique?”

Cassidy paused to allow Vera to voice her criticism, but she paid her no courtesy beyond her momentary silence.

“As you can see,” Cassidy continued, pointing to the paper in Dt. Hale’s hand. “Karl Volker was released from prison three years ago, and his probationary period ended two months before James Dryden’s murder.”

In response to that remark, Vera’s attention turned from Cassidy to Dt. Hale and the paper in his hand. Her suspicion, and fear, was that there was more of Cassidy’s story to come.

“Karl Volker is now in the wind and has been for the past two months,” Cassidy continued while sliding another sheet of paper down the table toward Dt. Hale. “The prison log shows that a Kathryn Wells visited Karl Volker seven years ago.”

Dt. Hale snatched up the paper that Cassidy had just pushed his way and began scanning through it at a rapid pace. All eyes were on Dt. Hale as he looked over the prison log sheet.

“This is something,” Dt. Hale announced a few seconds later with an approving nod. “But it doesn’t make this Karl Volker our shooter,” he finished with an approving look at Cassidy.

Just after Dt. Hale spoke, Cassidy pushed her last half a dozen sheets of paper with pictures toward him.

“I took the liberty of doing an image search with the CCTV video footage that we have from the day of the shooting,” Cassidy advised pointing toward the pictures.

Dt. Hale quickly began spreading the pictures out on the table as Detectives Russo, Greene and Vera Washington moved in alongside him.

“I got multiple hits. One of the pictures has a 94% probability match in it. There are eight more with probability matches between 89 and 72%,” Cassidy professed as though it was a minor discovery. “Each one is the same individual.”

“I’ll be damned,” Dt. Hale exclaimed as he and his team members examined the pictures and the male figures circled in red.

After looking through the pictures for several seconds, Dt. Hale turned his attention back toward the papers in his hand.

“This is it,” Dt. Hale exclaimed with excitement in his voice. “This is our guy. I need everyone to make preparations to work late today. “We have to find Karl Volker,” he insisted while flagging the prison photo of Karl Volker before his team. “I want an APB out on him ASAP,” Dt. Hale instructed with a gesture toward Dt. Russo.

“I’m on it,” Dt. Russo acknowledged as he turned and started for the conference room’s door.

“Geoff, Vera,” Dt. Hale called out in a commanding tone. “I want you to show these surveillance pictures to Mrs. Dryden—don’t tell her what we know. As far as she is concerned, we don’t know who this guy is, all we have are pictures. Just wave it in her face. Rattle her cage and then fall back into a surveillance posture. I want to see what she does. I’ll have a tap on her lines by the time you get there.”

“We’re on it,” Dt. Geoff Greene enthusiastically returned as he started for the conference room’s door.

Vera hesitated to give Cassidy an angry glare, and then she turned and followed Dt. Greene out.

“Cassidy,” Dt. Hale called out with exhilaration. “Great work. Now find this guy for me.”

Cassidy agreed to do this with a nod and then went back to her desk, but she put no effort into finding Karl Volker. She already knew where he was. She chose not to provide that information to the team because she had no explanation for her possession of that knowledge. Cassidy could reasonably argue that she discovered everything else through investigative research, but she knew there was no explanation for knowing where Karl Volker was and the name he was hiding under. It was her hope that a broad search with the help of the patrol bureau or some action by Kathryn Dryden would expose Volker’s location. With that hope in her mind, Cassidy went back to her desk and did busy work. An hour later, it had become clear to her that nothing was going to happen soon, so she made a call to her mother. Cassidy asked Margaret to collect Cynthia and John from the sitter and take them to her home.

“I’ll come by and get them when I get off from work. I’m working late today.”

A few minutes after the call to her mother, Cassidy saw an activity report on her computer screen that caught her attention. The activity was a police report on a person named Jeremiah Kingston. Cassidy promptly made the association between the names Jeremiah and Jerry, and she chose to give the report a look. She quickly learned that a Sandra Moore reported an incident to the police that involved her roommate, Patricia Boyd. In the report Sandra stated that Jeremiah Kingston argued and scuffled with her roommate and then he and another man drove off with Patricia Boyd. The report also noted that Patricia left with the men voluntarily and that no action was taken by the police.

Because of the association between the names Jeremiah and Jerry, Cassidy elected to do a check for a criminal record on Mr. Jeremiah Kingston. She quickly discovered that he had no arrest records or warrants, and she then gave a thought to dismissing her interest in Jeremiah as folly. She was a mouse click away from closing the internet window on the subject when a new thought popped into her head. She decided to take the extra step of checking to see what was in the system on Patricia Boyd. When she input her name in the computer Cassidy was surprised to see a recent missing person report.

What surprised Cassidy the most about the missing person report on Patricia Boyd was that it was less than a week old. She thought it odd that two reports about the same person came in during the same week and that both were dismissed without an arrest or a fine being issued. Mildly intrigued by that anomaly, Cassidy decided to look a little deeper into Jeremiah Kingston. Using the license plate listed in the activity report, Cassidy retrieved Jeremiah Kingston’s home address, age and social security number. Armed with that information, Cassidy did a background check. Approximately five minutes later, she learned that Jeremiah Kingston graduated from the same high school as Tony McGuire, and he did so in the same year.

Now that she knew that Jeremiah Kingston attended the same high school as Tony McGuire and during the same years, Cassidy was eager to know more about the scuffle he had with Patricia Boyd. Cassidy tried calling Sandra Moore, but there was no answer at the number listed for her home in the police report. Cassidy then tried calling Toby Kennedy’s phone number that was listed in the missing person’s report, and again she got no answer. Frustrated and still very much intrigued, Cassidy decided that she had to go to them.

“Jason, I’ve got a situation with my kids, and I need to leave so that I can take care of it,” Cassidy insisted with a slightly pleading intonation. “But I can come back if things run late here.”

“That’s fine,” Dt. Jason Hale said with a nod. “Call before you come back though. It doesn’t look like anything is going to happen this evening.”

It was a few minutes past 12:30 in the afternoon and nothing new had occurred in their investigation beyond what they had after Cassidy presented Karl Volker’s name as a person of interest. Dt. Hale was hoping that Kathryn Dryden would do something that would lead them to Karl Volker, but the report back from Detectives Greene and Washington was that Kathryn denied recognizing the man in the picture and she had yet to take any action to reach out to him. Kathryn Dryden’s lack of action made Dt. Hale believe that their efforts to find Karl Volker was going to take more than a single day to complete.

“Cassidy,” Dt. Hale called out as she was shutting down her desktop computer. “Good work,” he finished just as Cassidy looked up.

~~~~~Line Break~~~~~

It was 11:49am when Detectives Vera Washington and Geoff Greene arrived at the Lenox Hill home of Kathryn Dryden. She was elegantly dressed in a long flowery dress, and she accepted the detectives into her home with a smile and grace. When she was shown the surveillance pictures of Karl Volker, Kathryn Dryden denied knowing the man or ever having seen him before. In her voice and manner, Kathryn showed no sign of unease with her denial. She made the appropriate inquiries about the man in the picture and his relationship with her husband’s murder, but she showed no more interest in him than a mailman at her door. After answering all their questions politely and with a smile, Kathryn showed the two detectives to the door.

“Do you believe her?” Dt. Geoff Greene questioned as he and Dt. Vera Washington approached their car.

“I never believe anything that woman says,” Dt. Vera Washington answered in a cynical tone.

The car that Dt. Geoff Greene and Dt. Vera Washington came in was parked a short distance down the street from Kathryn’s expensive five story home. When they got back inside the vehicle, they made no attempt to leave. Vera called in her report to Dt. Hale and listened to his instruction for them to stay where they were. They then settled in and began their wait for something to occur.

Detectives Geoff Greene and Vera Washington had been waiting outside of Kathryn Dryden’s home for more than thirty minutes when a thought that Vera had been fuming over since the meeting spilled out of her mouth.

“There’s something not right about Tremaine,” Vera grumbled while staring out the front window of the car.

Dt. Geoff Greene was unprepared for that comment and thought for a moment to catch up with Vera’s thinking.

“Well, whatever is wrong with her, I hope it keeps closing cases,” Detective Greene returned with a shrug and a smile. “She’s really been a boon to our team.”

Dt. Greene’s upbeat response had no effect on Vera. She was set on a course to despise Cassidy Tremaine, and she could not imagine any amount of successfully resolved investigations changing her inclination.

“Yeah, too good if you ask me,” Vera grumbled mostly to herself.

Vera fumed over Cassidy in silence after that remark. Despite the task she was there to do, Cassidy remained the focus of Vera’s attention up until the moment that Kathryn Dryden came out of her home and climbed into a cab more than four hours later.

“There she is,” Dt. Greene declared.

Within seconds, Dt. Greene started the car and followed the cab. Vera was already dialing Dt. Hale.

“Kathryn Dryden is on the move,” Vera reported into her cellphone. “She just jumped into a city cab.”

“Yeah, I got her,” Dt. Hale returned in a placid voice. “DAS is up. You can fall back. We’ll guide you from here.”

~~~~~Line Break~~~~~

The instant Detectives Washington and Greene left the Dryden home, Kathryn went into a sour mood. The photographs that the detectives showed Kathryn had a depressing effect on her. Kathryn’s calm and disinterested demeanor was gone, and an almost panicked persona appeared in its place. She went upstairs to her room and closed herself off for several hours. The housekeeper’s query about coming down for lunch was given a sharp “no” in reply. It took Kathryn no more than an hour to figure out what she would do, but it took another three hours for it to be the right time to do it.

When three o'clock came round, Kathryn began preparing herself to go out. She put her hair up into a twisted topknot and adorned herself in an elegant spring dress, matching high heel shoes, a pair of simple stud earrings and lipstick. Then she stuffed a pair of sneakers, jeans, a pullover blouse, a pair of large sunglasses and a tan colored baseball cap into a large handbag. Once she was ready to leave the house, she added the last of her preparations into her handbag: a medium sized string purse filled with her identification, cellphone, a wad of cash and a .38 caliber revolver.

It only took a few minutes for the taxicab to appear after Kathryn’s call for a pickup. She told her housekeeper that she would be back late in the evening, and then she hurried out to the cab. It was Kathryn’s suspicion that the police were watching and following her, but she was reluctant to look out the back window to see. She rode in the cab as if nothing were amiss. It took the cab driver just over fifteen minutes to take her to her husband’s office tower in Lower Manhattan. When the cab stopped, she promptly got out, went into a large high-rise office building, through the lobby and up to her husband’s office floor.

After entering the waiting area outside her husband’s office, Kathryn politely told the secretary that she needed to get something from his office and went inside. She went behind her husband’s desk and inserted her cellphone into the top desk drawer. After that, she sat there for a couple of minutes and then left.

“Thank you, Anna,” Kathryn said as she passed the receptionist.

When she was back in the hallway, Kathryn bypassed the bank of elevators and took the stairs down to the floor below. Then she went to the women’s public restroom on that floor, secured a stall and immediately began undressing. She took off the dress, the earrings and the shoes, and she put on the jeans, the blouse and the sneakers. She let her hair down, put on the baseball cap and donned the string purse. Then she turned the large shoulder bag inside out and stuffed her other clothes inside. When she left the stall, Kathryn went to the mirror, washed away the lipstick and put on a large pair of sunglasses.

When Kathryn left the restroom, she went to the bank of elevators and took the first available car down to the second floor of the building. Then she took the stairs down to the lobby floor and waited just inside the doorway. The time was just after five o’clock, rush hour. Kathryn could hear the throngs of people moving about in the lobby. After a short wait, a group of people came down the stairs. Just as they approached the door to the lobby, Kathryn opened it and exited the stairwell just ahead of them. She then brazenly walked through the lobby within a cluster of people and out onto the sidewalk. Without stopping to look back, she quickly crossed the street and set a course for the nearest subway station. When she reached the far end of the block, Kathryn looked back to see that no one was following her, and she then went on her way.

~~~~~Line Break~~~~~

Kathryn Dryden’s exit from the cab was seen by Dt. Hale using the real-time surveillance capability of DAS. He advised Detectives Vera Washington and Geoff Greene by telephone that Kathryn Dryden had entered the office building where James Dryden used to work.

“Stay in the lobby and watch for her,” Dt. Jason Hale instructed over the telephone. “And Vera, keep an eye out for anything. She might try to disguise herself.”

“Understood,” Vera confirmed.

The Domain Awareness System (DAS) was a video surveillance capability that Dt. Hale used to track Kathryn Dryden’s movements in real-time. By the time Vera entered the office building, several minutes had passed. It was only through DAS that Vera knew Kathryn had gone into the building. After parking the car, Dt. Geoff Green joined Vera in the building’s lobby. It was another twenty minutes later when Dt. Howard Russo arrived to help in the stakeout for Kathryn Dryden.

“Where’s Cassidy?” Vera asked sharply.

“Personal business,” Howard answered as he examined the dozens of people leaving the building.

“Bitch!” Vera exclaimed in a reflexive outburst.

“Hey, some people have lives,” Howard casually defended as he continued to scan the crowd.

“Some people have jobs, and they should be here to do it,” Vera angrily countered.

It was the height of the rush hour, and a hundred or more people were spilling into the lobby every thirty seconds. Each person that came out of an elevator and stairwell set off without hesitation for one of the many exits that opened out to the street. Shortly into the deluge of workers pouring out from the upper floors of the building a tall slender woman in a tan baseball cap, blue jeans, sneakers and sunglasses carrying a brown valise and a small string purse, strolled through the lobby and out the exit to the street unnoticed by Detectives Washington, Greene and Russo.