Page 66 of Red Snow
“No, dick face,” he replies, just before reaching for the doorknob and turning it. The door opens without a fight. Marcus looks back as he motions for the two uniformed cops who came with us to draw their weapons and come closer. “Mr. Chapman! This is Detective Phillips from the APD. I’m here with two uniformed officers to serve a warrant for your arrest. We’re entering the premises. If you have any weapons, set them down right now. Don’t make us do anything we’ll regret.”
“Regret? Speak for yourself,” I counter, and Marcus throws me a frown that I ignore.
Marcus leads the way inside, drawing his revolver as he pushes the door open, with the three of us following closely behind. The house is completely silent, and there are only a couple of lights on, but it’s enough to show us that the living room is empty. Messy, but empty.
It’s a single-wide trailer, so there isn’t a lot of places for a person to hide, and it only takes us a minute to clear the living room and kitchen. We move down the narrow hall, peering into the first bedroom. Empty. We move further down, passing the washer and dryer, and peak into the bathroom. Nothing. The last room is also the finish line to the trailer. We look inside and see there are some dresser drawers open with clothes hanging out, but Jeffrey is nowhere to be found. He fucking fled.
“Motherfucking son of a bitch!” I snap as we all realize what has happened. “He fucking knew we were going to come after him, and he left. I knew we should’ve fucking arrested him as soon as we saw him on that tape from Koot’s. Damnit!”
“Shit. I hate that I have to call this in to Danielle,” Marcus says. “She’s gonna be pissed.”
“Fuck Danielle.I’mpissed! We had him, man. I knew he was our guy, but we didn’t have anything to pin it on him for sure. Now that we do have it, that little creepy fucker is out there running. Shit.”
“Alright. Calm down, there’s nothing we can do about it now. We had to get something on him that actually gave us a case for the charges. We’ll find him.”
Marcus dials up Danielle and puts the phone on speaker when she answers.
“Sergeant Howell, he ran,” Marcus says as he holds the phone up high enough for both of us to be able to hear and speak with Danielle. “The trailer is empty, but his truck is outside.”
“Shit!” Danielle snaps. “I was worried about that. I had a feeling we should’ve just held him in custody until we searched his house and talked to his boss. That’s my bad.”
“We gotta find this fucker, Danielle,” I say into the phone. “We can’t let this bitch kill somebody else. We have to put our ears to the streets. Put out a BOLO to every police station, airport, and taxi company in the state of Alaska. He’s a serial killer, and we need to lock him down before he hurts someone else.”
Danielle lets out a frustrated sigh, then she agrees. “You got it, Jarrod. I’ll put the word out to everybody. You two come on back. Leave the two uniforms there to watch his trailer, just in case he fucks up and goes back to it. Don’t worry guys, this is far from over. We’ll catch him.”
