Sam Kincaid 01 - The Commission

report a strange vehicle parked in front of his home around the time of the murder.”
    Realizing that I was probably embarking on a wild-goose chase, I got his name and address and drove to his home. Baxter Shaw turned out to be a charming, southern transplant, in his early seventies, who still retained a trace of his Southern accent.
    I asked him about the vehicle he had observed parked near his home on the night of the Vogue murder.
    “Well, it’s probably nothing,” he said. “I couldn’t make up my mind whether to report it or not. But after watching the local news and hearing about that awful murder here in the neighborhood, I thought it best to call someone. I belong to a Neighborhood Watch group, so I try to pay attention to anything going on around here that seems out of the ordinary.
    “On the night Mr. Vogue was killed, I looked out my front living-room window and saw a light-colored Ford Escort parked across the street one house down from mine. I’d never seen it before. I’m quite sure it doesn’t belong to anyone living here in the neighborhood.”
    “Do you recall what time it was when you first saw the vehicle?”
    “Sure do,” he replied. “It was about five minutes before the ten o’clock news started. You see, I watch the ten o’clock news on KSL every night, and then go to bed promptly at ten-thirty after saying my evening prayers. I’ve been following the same routine for years.”
    “Did you see anyone in or around the vehicle?”
    “Oh, no,” he said. “I would have called the police immediately had I seen anybody out there. That’s what we’re supposed to do, you know.”
    “You didn’t by chance happen to get a license plate number, did you?”
    “As a matter of fact, I did,” he replied, handing me a folded cocktail napkin with Utah license plate number 184HBC printed on it in a shaky hand. “The car was still parked there when the news ended at ten-thirty, so I walked outside right before I went to bed and jotted down the license plate number. Did I do the right thing?”
    “You sure did. This could turn out to be very important.”
    I was anxious to leave so I could run a registration check on the plate, but I could tell Baxter Shaw was in no hurry to rush me out the door. He seemed lonely. He told that he’d moved to Salt Lake City sixteen years ago from Savannah, Georgia, after the death of his first wife. He married a divorced Mormon woman and converted to the LDS faith. His second wife had passed away eighteen months ago. He confessed that after his wife died, he returned to two old vices—an evening glass of wine and an occasional smoke with the pipe.
    I liked Baxter Shaw. I wondered if Aunt June might like him as well. I decided to give some serious thought to playing matchmaker.

Chapter Sixteen
    The license plate number Shaw had provided belonged to a 1995 Ford Escort. The registered owner was Charles Watts, a name that sounded vaguely familiar. The registration showed a Salt Lake City post-office box for an address.
    I called the duty probation officer and requested a record check on Charles Watts. Moments later, I had an answer. Charles Watts, alias Chuck Waters, alias Slick Watts, was definitely one of ours. A local thug with a long criminal history, Watts had recently served a five-year sentence in the state prison on an aggravated robbery beef. He had been released from parole after undergoing community supervision for almost three years. I couldn’t recall having had any contact with him either as an inmate or a parolee.
    I decided to dig a little deeper into Watts’ background before calling Kate. I wondered which parole board member had heard his case. Was it Levi Vogue? Was there any record of his having made threats against Vogue or other members of the parole board? What kind of an inmate had he been in prison? How had he performed on parole?
    Department records confirmed that Watts’ name didn’t appear in the database of offenders who had threatened members of the parole board. The records did, however, portray a troubled history.
    At twenty-eight, he had spent almost nine years of his life behind bars. He had served over two years in juvenile prison on two separate commitments. As an adult, he was in and out of county jail and prison several times for a variety of offenses, including his five years on the aggravated robbery conviction. What piqued my interest most was that Vogue had handled his parole grant hearing.
    His prison