To Love and to Kill by M. William Phelps Page B

if it was Heather withdrawing the money. Who knew—perhaps Heather was hiding out for some strange reason? Ocala didn’t seem like a place she would normally go to use an ATM, so it was possible she was trying to stay under the radar.
    Forty-two dollars had been withdrawn from the work account where Heather’s last paycheck had been deposited automatically. The manager of the supermarket met both detectives and gave them a CD of that entire day. Publix had a camera pointed directly at the ATM machine. When they got back to Major Crimes, the detectives popped in the CD and had a look.
    A male, bald, in good shape, wearing what one detective described as a T-shirt depicting a “commercial type leaf blower on his back” had withdrawn the funds.
    It surely wasn’t Heather. She was nowhere in sight.
    After zooming in on the T-shirt the man wore, they learned the shirt advertised a local lawn service company.
    â€œThe estranged husband, Joshua Fulgham,” said one detective to the other, “he works for that lawn service. . . .”
    The MCSO had who it believed to be Josh Fulgham withdrawing money from Heather’s account more than two weeks after she went missing.
    Huge red flag.

CHAPTER 15
    WHEN A CASE opens up, sometimes it moves as fast as detectives can absorb the information and run it down. The MCSO had developed another bit of interesting evidence during that same March 18 day. Once they put their focus on Josh Fulgham as a potential suspect in his wife’s disappearance, things started to fall in place. After investigators visited the school where Josh and Heather’s oldest child attended classes, they learned from the principal that Josh had actually withdrawn his child from that school and registered her at another school, closer to his home. Apparently, Josh had shown the school a letter signed by Heather giving Josh full custody of the children. The school had a copy of the letter.
    While that was happening, Detective Donald Buie had interviewed James Acome, Heather’s boyfriend, and a female whom both Josh and Heather knew. During those interviews, Buie heard this from James Acome: “Heather left on a Greyhound bus bound for Mississippi on that last day she was seen around here.”
    Buie grew up in Gainesville, Florida. Gainesville is south of Jacksonville, in the northern part of the state. There was no family plan of going into law enforcement or some tragic event in Buie’s life pushing him toward a career as a cop.
    â€œI just decided one day to go into law enforcement, and there I was,” he said.
    Buie had been working for Cox Communications when the law enforcement bug bit and he decided to go for it. His first job was at the University of Florida Police Department. From there, Buie found himself working just outside Tallahassee, in a small police department in Perry, where he truly learned the ins and outs of community policing. It was 1998 when Buie took a job at the MCSO and made it into Major Crimes as a detective the old-school way: pounding the pavement, paying his dues. He had eight years in Major Crimes before the Heather Strong case came across his radar and he began to see that it needed further investigation.
    Looking at the reports, Buie had a strong suspicion that Heather had not left town. The case just had that feel. But before he had a chance to develop the gut instinct, Buie later pointed out, it was the system the MCSO had in place that actually began to point out that this was more than your run-of-the-mill missing person case.
    â€œTo give credit where due,” Buie said, “the girls we call ‘Star Operators’ get the cases . . . and they write them up in the computer.” From there, the detectives and other investigators have a look to see where they can help maybe fill in the gaps. Detectives and officers can call into the Star Operator system and dictate a report (instead of sitting down and typing it out),