“Fair enough. There is one other bit of evidence here that might be helpful. It’s not in the file because we’ve been sitting on it since the murders. It seems as though our man may have made a mistake. We know what he was driving.”
“Helpful? Sounds pretty crucial.”
“Perhaps. You saw the photos of the two cell phones he took from his victims. He drove about an hour north of here to the small town of Neely, Mississippi. He put them in an envelope, a five-by-eight-inch padded mailer, and addressed it to my daughter in Biloxi. He dropped the package into a standard blue box outside the post office.”
Napier pulled out another photo, one of the mailer with the address.
The sheriff continued. “We tracked down the cell phones within hours and found them in the box in Neely. They’re still at the state crime lab but so far have given us nothing.”
He looked at Napier, who took the handoff. “Someone saw him stop at the post office. It was about seven p.m. on that Friday night, roughly two hours after the murders. There was no traffic in Neely because there never is, but a neighbor saw a pickup truck stop at the post office. A man walked to the box and dropped in the package, the only one deposited after five p.m. on that Friday. Not much mail in Neely either. The neighbor thought it was odd that anyone would choose that time to drop off some mail. He was on his porch a good ways off and he cannot identify the driver. But the truck was a gray Chevrolet, fairly late model, with Mississippi tags.”
“And you’re certain it was the killer?” Lacy asked, a very nonprofessional question.
“No. We’re certain it was the man who dropped off the cell phones. Probably the killer but we’re not sure.”
“Right. Why would he drive up there to ditch the phones?”
Napier shrugged and smiled. Black said, “Now you’re playing his game. I think he was just having some fun with us, and especially with me. He had to know that we’d find the cell phones in a matter of hours and that they wouldn’t be mailed to my daughter.”
Napier added, “Or maybe he wanted to be seen driving a vehicle with Mississippi tags because he’s not from Mississippi. He’s pretty clever, isn’t he?”
“Extremely.”
“And he’s done this before?” asked the sheriff.
“We believe so.”
“And he’s not from Mississippi, is he?”
“We think not.”
18
Jeri was not prepared for the next phase of her life. For over twenty years she had been driven by the dream of finding and confronting her father’s murderer. Identifying him was difficult enough, and she had done so only with a determination and perseverance that often surprised herself. Accusing him was another matter. Pointing the finger at Ross Bannick was a terrifying act, not because she was afraid of being wrong, but because she feared the man himself.
But she had done it. She had filed her complaint with an official agency, one established by law to investigate wayward judges, and now it was up to the Board on Judicial Conduct to go after Bannick. She wasn’t sure what to expect from Lacy Stoltz and her BJC, but the case was now on her desk. If all went as planned, Lacy would put in motion the apprehension and prosecution of a man Jeri could never stop thinking about.
In the days following her last meeting with Lacy, Jeri found it impossible to prepare lectures, or do research for her book, or see what few friends she had. She did see her therapist twice and complained of feeling depressed, lonely, of little value. She fought the temptation to jump back online and dig through old crimes. She often stared at her phone and waited for a call from Lacy, and she fought the urge to email her every hour.
On day ten, Lacy called and they chatted for a few minutes. Not surprisingly, she had nothing to report. She and her team were getting organized, reviewing the file, making plans, and so on. Jeri ended the call abruptly and went for a walk.
Thirty-five days to go and apparently nothing was happening, at least not around the offices of the BJC.
* * *
—
According to the records of the Chavez County tax office, Ross Bannick purchased a used, light gray, 2009 model Chevrolet half-ton pickup in May of 2012 and owned it for two years before selling it the previous November, one month after the murders of Verno and Dunwoody. His buyer was a used car dealer named Udell, who flipped it to a man named Robert Trager, the present owner. Darren drove to Pensacola and found Mr. Trager, who explained that he no longer had the truck. On New Year’s Eve, a drunk driver ran a stop sign and crashed into him, totaling the truck. He had settled with State Farm under his uninsured motorist coverage, sold the truck for scrap, and felt lucky to be alive. As they sipped iced tea on the front porch, Mrs. Trager found a photo of Robert and his grandson holding fishing rods and posing beside the gray pickup. With his smartphone, Darren took a picture of the photo and sent it to Detective Napier in Biloxi, who eventually made the trip to Neely and showed it to the only eyewitness.