Read Online Kill For Me by M. William Phelps - Free Book Online Page B

Sandee had always been scared that Mr. Humphrey would find out where she worked and eventually, through that, where she lived.”
    After speaking with Erb, Ski drove to the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office with another detective and spoke to an investigator who had remembered Humphrey from a case a year ago.
    Another sexual battery charge.
    The investigator pulled out the file and gave Ski Humphrey’s last known address. It was time someone headed out and spoke to the guy. See where he was with all of this. Maybe put his feet to the flame and see what he had to say.
    “Here, he lives with this guy….” The investigator gave Ski the address of Wade Hamilton (pseudonym).
    Ski and his partner drove out to the address in downtown Pinellas Park.
    Wade Hamilton answered the door. “He’s not here,” Hamilton said with an attitude. “Let me give you his cell phone number.”
    “Here is my card,” Ski said. “Give it to Humphrey for me, would you?”
    Hamilton took the card in his hand and looked at it. “Yeah, okay.” He nodded.
    “Tell him to call me as soon as possible.”
    “We heard Humphrey works at the Athletic Club in Brandon,” Ski’s partner said. “Do you know if he still works there?”
    Hamilton thought about it a moment. Eyed both of the cops standing on his front porch. “Yeah, he does.”
     
    The following morning, July 7, at approximately nine o’clock, Ski stopped by his desk to check his voice mail again. He had finally gotten some rest the previous night. This after what had turned into running on hyper speed for the past twenty-four hours. Homicides dictated the course of action that as a cop, you struck while the information was hot. If not, an officer could miss out on a crucial piece of evidence.
    “Let people talk,” Ski told me. “It opens up all sorts of doors.”
    After he listened to several unimportant voice mail messages, there was the man of the hour’s soft voice on Ski’s phone: Timothy “Tracey” Humphrey. He sounded calm, and quite in control of himself. He had a supple, wispy tone, a hint of smugness there. Humphrey sounded like one of those guys who thought he was smarter than he actually was—someone who spoke as though everything out of his mouth was supposed to be believed based on the merits of him saying it.
    “I have no idea why you need to talk with me,” Humphrey’s voice mail message said. “But I heard you’re looking for me.” He gave Ski his phone number. “Feel free to call me anytime.”
    Ski didn’t want to phone Humphrey; he wanted to greet him, face-to-face, judge his reactions to questions. While looking over documents associated with a file on Humphrey, Ski realized that Hillsborough County prosecutors were involved in not one or two sexual battery cases against him, but three, including Sandee’s.
    How could three separate women who didn’t know each other be making up the same accusations against the same man? The odds were insurmountable. Based on the accusations alone, Ski suspected the guy was a chronic abuser. Toss in his criminal record and the time he spent in prison over the years, and you have a career criminal—a guy, moreover, whose crimes seemed to have escalated throughout the years. In addition, add in the fact that Sandee Rozzo had reported to more than one person that one of the things Humphrey repeated to her, over and over, during her two-day ordeal with him was that he said he was never going back to prison.
    No matter what.
    “I’ll do whatever I need to,” Humphrey had told Sandee more than a dozen times.
     
    There was a meeting that morning between PPPD detectives and the Pinellas-Pasco County State Attorney’s Office (PPCSAO). It was time to coordinate a plan of attack. Assignments were given out to various investigators. The PPCSAO was there to assist the PPPD, and the teams of detectives needed to get together and discuss what, when, where, how, and by whom.
    Ski met with Tony Ponicall later that day.