Page 11 of Her Last Whisper
Katie reciprocated. “Cheers.” She smiled as she felt the relaxing effects of the wine after a long day melt her anxiety away.
Here’s to new adventures…
Seven
Tuesday 1015 hours
The next day, after contacting Deputy Windham and setting up a time to meet with him before his patrol shift, Katie decided to keep digging through Amanda Payton’s file—her work, friends, and family. She keyed in some search parameters for Emily Day and patiently waited for the information to filter through. It looked like she still worked at the First Memorial Hospital where she met Amanda and had a clean record apart from having been arrested for assault and trespassing two years ago. The judge gave her leniency with time served and six-month probation.
It struck Katie that there weren’t any similar reports or background records run for Amanda in her file. Perhaps they were lost or misfiled, or maybe the original detective didn’t think it was important to run them. Clearing the search boxes, Katie ran a fresh criminal record check for Amanda. And what came back surprised her.
Amanda had been involved in several altercations of battery, one resulting in her obtaining a restraining order against a Raymond Alvarez five years ago. She’d called the police on three occasions claiming that he had beaten her up—later she retracted her statement and said it was all a misunderstanding and she was mad. The other two incidents were similar situations where she later retracted her statement. Katie sat back and allowed the new information to simmer—it didn’t make her look that reliable.
A soft knock on her door interrupted her thoughts.
“Come in,” she said.
A stocky deputy with close-cropped sandy hair dressed in uniform entered. “Detective Scott?” he addressed.
Katie stood and said, “Yes, please come in.” Extending her hand, she continued, “Nice to meet you, Deputy Windham.”
He shook Katie’s hand and took a seat across from her.
“I appreciate you taking the time to talk with me.”
“No problem, anything I can do to help.”
Katie shut several file folders and pulled the one for Amanda Payton, leaving it front and center on the desk. “I came across this kidnapping case for Amanda Payton from six months ago.”
The deputy nodded. “I’m glad you’re looking into it,” he said.
“Why do you say that?” she asked.
“Something didn’t sit right with me.”
Katie opened the deputy’s incident report. “I read your report several times and you were very thorough. I really appreciate the photos you and your partner took of Ms. Payton and the scene at the time.”
He leaned forward. “You have to understand. That entire incident was difficult to forget. I’ve never had an experience like that with a victim.”
Katie realized that her patrol experience of a little over two years paled to what the deputy must have witnessed in his decade of service.
“Why don’t you tell me what happened in your own words as you remember it?” she said.
He sighed and appeared uncomfortable. Pausing a moment to get his thoughts together, he began, “My partner and I, Deputy Miller, were patrolling the Basin Woods area on third watch. It was raining on and off. There was no activity, no calls for service, and we were thinking about getting some coffee. What seemed like out of nowhere this young woman stumbled into the street barely dressed and we almost hit her. We stopped to help her and got her into the patrol car and asked her repeatedly what happened. We saw her injuries on her wrists and ankles. She was absolutely terrified and wouldn’t talk to us at first, but she finally told us her name, some landmarks where she had been held, and that she had been kidnapped.”
“Why was this case dropped so quickly? She claimed to have been kidnapped.”
He sighed. “Detective Petersen, the detective who caught the case, felt that there was nothing more to it without corroborating evidence and Ms. Payton had since been uncooperative. Basically there was nothing more we could do. Since he didn’t want to close the case, he downgraded it to a cold case to keep it open in case new evidence became available.”
Katie frowned. “I haven’t spoken to Detective Petersen yet, but it’s obvious that’s the next step.”
“He’s…” the deputy stopped talking.
“He’s what?”
“Detective Petersen has been here a long time and he’s a good cop. He doesn’t take well to people questioning his work, shall we say. I’m just giving you a heads-up.”
“Noted. Thank you.” Katie had never been intimidated yet by a senior police officer, and she wasn’t going to start any time soon.
