Free Requite by E. H. Reinhard Page B

until the police arrived?” I asked.
    “Yeah, it only took a few minutes until they showed up. They had to break up some people that were gathering around to see what happened. I told them I was the one who called, and they took my statement.”
    “Miss Collins did you notice anything else while you waited? Did you see the van again or anything? Did any of the people who gathered look suspicious, anything like that?” Hank asked.
    “No, not that I noticed. Once the paramedics showed up and took him, the police taped off the scene and were looking around and stuff. After that, they let me leave. I met up with my boyfriend and we took off.”
    I finished jotting down the info on my pad, closed it up and stuffed it back in my pocket. “OK Miss Collins, that should be it. If you think of anything else, please give us a call.” I handed her my card, Hank did the same.
    “OK, I will,” she said.
    Hank and I stood as she slid out of the booth to leave.
    “Thanks for meeting with us, take care,” Hank said.
    “You too.”
    As she walked out, Hank took her seat in the booth.
    “What do you think?” he asked.
    “Not too much there that we didn’t already know, but a little more info always helps. I’ll call Murphy and tell him to keep his eyes peeled for someone thin and over six foot leaving the bar around the same time. Maybe he was following them. You never know.”
    “Let’s hope he gets something from the video. It’s about all we got right now,” Hank said.
    I motioned our waitress over so we could order.

Chapter 14
    Tom took the key from under the mat and let himself in. The family dog, a brown lab, met him at the door—tail wagging.
    “Hi, Otis. How’s the puppy?” Tom reached down and patted the dog on the head.
    Tom made an immediate left and walked up the stairs to the second level—the dog followed. Upstairs, he walked the hall and then turned right into the office. A computer desk sat along the back of the room. There was a couch to his right and a small television on a table along the left wall. He slid the door open for the closet—inside stood a four foot tall metal file cabinet. He pulled the top drawer open and flipped through the folders until he found one marked pay stubs . He slid the file out and thumbed through it until he found the most recent one. The file was slipped back where it came from. Otis stood at the doorway of the room observing.
    The next on his list was the tax bill for the house. He found it in the file marked property .
    With the two pieces of paperwork in hand, he just needed one more item. He flipped through to the back file marked passports and dug his hand into the file. There were two inside—he removed them both. Tom flipped open the first one and tossed it back. It wasn’t the one he was looking for.
    He opened the second one and stared at the photo. It was perfect. Thanks to his father’s strong Irish genes, both sons looked strikingly similar. They both stood six foot three and weighed around two hundred pounds. Their light red hairstyles were similar—close on the sides and a finger length on top. Mark, older by a less than a year, often wore a goatee. Tom preferred the clean shaved look. They would have been Irish twins, if they had the same mother.
    Tom flicked the photo of his older brother’s passport. “Thanks Mark. I’ll owe you one.”
    He stuffed the passport and papers in his pocket and closed the file cabinet. He went back out of the house the way he came and re-locked the front door. It would be weeks, if not months, before Tom’s brother ever noticed the missing items.
    Tom checked the time. He needed to hurry—the DMV closed in a two hours.
    After a quick stop at a drugstore for a twenty-five dollar money order, he pulled his customer ticket and had a seat in the waiting area of the DMV. He was number four seventy-eight, they were serving four fifty-five. He grabbed a magazine wrapped in a plastic jacket and waited. The numbers clicked by