The Sacrifice of Lester Yates by Robin Yocum

Author:Robin Yocum
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781951627591
Publisher: Arcade Crimewise
Published: 2021-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

Jerry went to the war room and asked Liberatore to come back to my office to update us on the progress in tracking down the tractor-trailer rig Fenicks had been driving when he was arrested.

She walked into the room and, without hesitation, said, “I checked on Lucky this afternoon. The vet said she’s doing better than expected, but she’s still really weak.”

Jerry looked at me, one brow arched. “The dog you stole?”

I ignored him, pointed to a chair, and motioned with a finger for Liberatore to have a seat. Jerry smirked and took a seat across the table from her. “How goes the effort to find Fenicks’s truck?” I asked.

“Not bad, but not great. I contacted the detective bureau at the Cuyahoga County Sheriff’s Office and got lucky. The lead detective on the case, a guy named Thacker, happened to be working. He was a detective then; he’s now the chief of detectives. He said the truck sat in a county impound lot for eight months. The prosecutor would not clear it to be repossessed until Fenicks had gone to trial. Once he was convicted, it was repossessed by the loan company that held the title. Thacker said that was the Oil City Lending Corporation in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

“I called Oil City and spoke to a woman in commercial lending—Helen McKee—who could not have been more uninterested in talking to me. She was trying to blow me off and said she couldn’t look up anything unless I had the vehicle’s VIN, which fortunately I had because Thacker was kind enough to share it with me. She said the trailer was owned by OCO Leasing of Oklahoma City and it went back to them. The tractor was sent to First Florida Auctions in Sarasota for resale. She said it was sold on July 13, 2004, but she has no record of who purchased it. She made a point to tell me that was not germane to her job and any additional information would need to come from First Florida Auctions.”

“Did you call the auction company?”

“I did. That’s where the ‘not great’ part comes in. The guy I talked to was only slightly more cooperative than the woman at the loan company. He said they auction off or sell sixty to seventy thousand cars and thirty thousand trucks a year—some to dealers, some to trucking companies, some to brokers who ship them overseas, and some to individuals. If the tractor went to them, the transaction records were there. He said if we have a VIN and a subpoena, we’re welcome to go down there and look at their records.”

“Good job,” I said. “I’ll have legal start drafting the subpoena. You get a flight to Sarasota.”

“I’ll book a flight in the morning.”

“Book one for tonight.”

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