man’s photo. “Known as Cliff to friends and acquaintances, the former of which he seemed to have few. He ran a check-cashing slash payday loan business in Camp Washington.”
“Camp Washington?” Ransom asked. “That’s nowhere near the parking garage downtown where he was found.”
“No, and he only lived three blocks from his business.”
“Huh,” Ransom muttered as he unwrapped a breakfast biscuit sandwich and took a bite. “Okay, what else?” he asked around the food, a smear of melted cheese gracing his upper lip.
“Dude, what is this? Animal House? Chew with your mouth closed, you heathen.”
“Welcome to my world,” Reed muttered.
Jennifer gave Reed a sympathetic look before turning and leaning against the edge of the table at the front. “His business received lots of ethics complaints. Nothing stuck. The last complaint filed was five months ago by Ted and Nellie Bradford. I paid them a visit this morning and then came straight here.”
“Were they able to tell you anything?” Sergeant Valenti asked.
“Yeah. It turns out their thirty-year-old daughter, LuAnn, suffers from a mental illness. She’s usually pretty functional, even manages to work somewhat consistently. But she got involved with drugs a few years back, and it’s been a monkey on her back ever since. She lives in that halfway house on Spring Grove Avenue. New Hope?” She looked at Reed and Ransom for confirmation.
“Yeah. I know it,” Reed said as Ransom nodded.
“Anyway,” Jennifer went on, “her parents say they’ve offered to let her live with them, but she doesn’t care for the rules they insist upon. They’d noticed that things they had in their name for her—a phone, and some streaming accounts—went past due, and when they asked LuAnn about it, she told them about using the check cashing service several times when she needed an advance on her paycheck. They took fifty percent, and after going back a second time, she was quickly behind on her bills, and having to borrow money for food from the folks.”
“Yeah, sucks, but that’s how those places operate,” Sergeant Valenti said.
“The Bradfords—and from what I can tell from many of the other ethics complaints—charge that Cliff Schlomer takes advantage, specifically of the clientele at that halfway house. People say there’s always a line on the first of the month when disability checks come in. He not only takes fifty percent, but he skims a little more off the top and if they notice, tells them it’s some surcharge or another. They call the cops and when someone arrives, the complainant is yelling, practically incoherent, paranoid . . . you get the drift, and old Cliff”—she placed her hand over her heart—“is just a man trying to run an honest business. Terms are all up front, he says. It’s not his fault if people don’t read the fine print.”
“Okay, yeah, we get the picture,” Ransom said. “He was a bastard who took advantage of other people’s weaknesses for profit.”
Reed sat up straighter. “Similar to Toby Resnick, who apparently sold prescription medication originally prescribed to those with mental health disorders. Has anyone been able to track down the patients those prescriptions were made out to?”
“Not yet,” Sergeant Valenti said. “Olson is working on that today. Unfortunately, the names are pretty common so not a lot to work with.”
Reed tipped back slightly in his chair. “Okay, with the proof that Steven Sadowski was taking pornographic photos of female patients, we could have a connection between the three victims,” he said, a clutching in his chest, the excitement that came with a possible breakthrough in a case, one that might lead to another breakthrough and another until the whole mystery unraveled. He set his chair upright with a small jolt, looking around at his fellow detectives and sergeant. “This killer is targeting those who targeted the mentally ill.”
Reed’s mind was whirling, threads weaving together in some semblance of a pattern. But not one he could make out yet. They needed more.
“Okay, okay,” Ransom said. “It can’t be general, though, can it?”
“Meaning?” Sergeant Valenti asked.
“Meaning,” Jennifer answered, her gaze going between Reed and Ransom, “the killer knew about these three people somehow, became aware of what they were doing. How? Could he be one of the ones taken advantage of?”
“We need to gather as many names as possible of people who came into contact with these three, specifically those they victimized and start cross-referencing,” Reed said.
“On it,” Jennifer said, jotting a note in her notebook.
“And how does Whiting fit in? It doesn’t appear she lived a life where she’d have