The Stolen Hours

by Allen Eskens

  “Not much. Bebe Kavenaugh, the owner of the salon, said when she opened this morning the window blinds were down—which they never are—and the back door to the alley was unlocked. Also, Sadie’s phone was here. Bebe says Sadie would never leave her phone behind like that.”

  “Did you find Sadie’s water bottle?”

  “He must have taken it with him.”

  “What about hair clippings?”

  “The floor’s spotless,” Matty said. “There were no prints on the chair, so I’m betting he wiped it down.”

  “Pull the traps off the sink, in case he washed anything down the drain.”

  “Already on my list.”

  Niki liked Matty. He was older than her by four years and had been a detective longer, but he had been in Homicide for less than a year, coming from Narcotics, where thinking on your feet was more important than attention to detail. Niki still found herself giving Matty suggestions, double-checking details to make sure that nothing got overlooked, and sometimes she could hear an itch in Matty’s voice as he acknowledged her nudges. She was trying to do better.

  “Cameras?”

  “Not here, but I just got off the phone with Ainsley Holt in Sex Crimes. They requested surveillance footage from the restaurants along Nicollet Island. One of the bar owners sent in some digital. I haven’t seen it yet, but Ainsley said the footage shows an SUV driving down Southeast Main, passing by about the time we think Sadie went into the river. It’s driving in the direction of the power plant.”

  “Can she identify the vehicle?”

  “She said it’s an older SUV, like an old Blazer or Bronco, 1980s vintage, dark.”

  “I got a name,” Niki said as she typed Gavin Spencer into her squad’s mobile data computer. “But it’s Gavin, not Kevin. Gavin Spencer was the photographer at the Halloway wedding.”

  “Maybe Sadie misunderstood him.”

  “Or he gave her a wrong name.” A picture popped onto Niki’s screen of a man with a round face, baby cheeks made rough with acne scars, and neatly trimmed hair. “I’m sending his DL photo. Ask around the plaza. See if anybody saw him.”

  “You got it.”

  Niki switched screens on her computer and brought up vehicle registration information for Gavin Spencer. “Well, son of a bitch.”

  “What?”

  “Gavin Spencer owns a black Ford Bronco, 1986.”

  “Of course he does,” Matty said, and Niki could almost hear him smiling through the phone.

  “He lives on Franklin, near the top of Lake of the Isles.”

  “I’ll check for cameras between there and the salon,” Matty said. “There’s got to be a stoplight camera or two along the way.”

  Pleased with the turn of events, Niki let Matty get back to work, and she returned to the Halloway home. She found Janelle sitting on the couch crying into a pillow, a picture of Sadie on her knees.

  “What did he do to her?” Janelle asked.

  Sadie’s ordeal was an open investigation, confidential, so Niki dodged the question. “She’s at the Hennepin County Medical Center.”

  “Did he…?”

  “Mrs. Halloway, I can’t comment on a person’s medical condition, but I can tell you that Sadie could use a friend today.”

  “I’ll go as soon as we’re done.”

  “I just have a couple more questions. Did you ever see Mr. Spencer driving a vehicle?”

  “He came here to meet with us when we hired him. He drove a nice car, beige, I think, but I don’t know what kind. I didn’t get a good look at it.”

  “You never saw him driving any kind of SUV or truck?”

  “No. Why?”

  “One last question.” Niki mentally crossed her fingers as she asked. “Did Mr. Spencer have any kind of speech impediment?”

  Janelle’s eyes lit up. “Yes. He couldn’t say the letter S. It came out like…” Janelle tried a few different iterations of a lisp, shaking her head after each one. “I can’t do it, but it was really bad.”

  It was all Niki could do not to pump her fist. “Thank you, Mrs. Halloway. You’ve been very helpful.”

  Niki was about to stand when Janelle reached out and put a hand on her arm. People never touched her like that. They usually went out of their way to keep her at a distance, as though shunning the messenger might stop the evil from happening.

  “Is it my fault?” Janelle asked. “Did I bring someone bad to my wedding?”

  “You didn’t do anything wrong,” Niki said.

  “I’ll never forgive myself.”

  “We’ll find out who did this. You should go be with your friend. Focus on helping Sadie.”

  Janelle nodded. “Okay. But if Gavin Spencer hurt Sadie…promise me, you’ll make him pay. Don’t let him get away with it.”

  Niki didn’t like making those kinds of promises. If she was right, Spencer had raped and murdered at least three times before. Low priorities, Lieutenant Briggs had called them. Bodies washed up along the river. But now Niki had a lead. No proof, but her gut told her this was her man, and if she had any say in the matter, Gavin Spencer would never again add another woman to his tally.

  She looked at Janelle and said, “He won’t get away with it. I promise.”

  Chapter 16

  Sitting in his garage, alone with his Lexus, his Bronco, and his thoughts, Gavin ran through his cleanup tasks one more time. Something was bothering him. He had changed the tires on the Bronco, so if he had left any tread prints along the river, they wouldn’t match. And there was no way they would find the dealership that sold him the used tires, and even if they did, the cash transaction severed the connection. He had cleaned the Bronco thoroughly—twice. He had used plastic sheathing so there would have been no transfer of fibers or hair. Nothing in the Bronco could link him to Sadie Vauk, but still, the Bronco bothered him.

  Gavin knew that one of the biggest mistakes people made in committing illegal acts was to be cheap. A guy builds a bomb and keeps the wire cutter that links him to the device. A woman poisons her husband but refuses to throw away the computer she used for her research. As Gavin stared at his Bronco, he realized that he was being cheap. He loved the Bronco. It had been there for him from the beginning, and the hunk of metal felt almost like a friend. But a true craftsman would not tempt fate.

  He thought about driving it into the river, but in broad daylight, that would be a high-risk move. What if he just parked it along a random, lonely street? Undoubtedly, some nosy neighbor would wonder about it and call it in. It was well past noon, the earliest time he’d given the detectives to track him down, and the possibility of them showing up at his door grew with every passing minute.

  Then an idea came to him.

  He drove the Bronco to the University of Minnesota, an area famous for its quick vehicle impoundment, found a quiet street with a No Parking zone, and parked. He watched the sidewalks and nearby porches and windows until he was satisfied that no one was around. Then he got out of the Bronco, screwdriver in hand, and slipped under the front of the truck. It only took him a few seconds to loosen the plug from the oil pan, letting oil stream to the pavement.

  He rolled back out from under the truck, stood, and casually looked around again. He was still alone. He slid into the driver’s seat one last time, wiped his fingerprints off the key and steering wheel, and started the Bronco’s engine.

  Then he shut the door and walked a block away to watch as his beloved Bronco coughed and shuddered. When the engine seized up, it sent a wisp of smoke into the air, as though its soul were leaving. His friend was dead—ruined. By the end of the day, it would be in the custody of an impound lot. An old truck like that with a blown engine would quickly be sold for scrap and crushed into a cube of rusted metal, forever hidden from his pursuers.

  Gavin walked until he found a bus stop with a bus to take him downtown. From there, a taxi ride and he was home, pleased at the extraordinary measures he had taken to cover his tracks. He’d been surgical. A single stran
d of hair or a few skin cells was all a lab needed to put Sadie Vauk in his house, but if the police ever crossed his threshold, they would find nothing—not a hair, not a cell, not a speck to corroborate their theory.

  There was a part of Gavin that yearned for them to show up at his house with a search warrant. He would encourage them to look. Hell, tear the place down board by board. The mere thought of an army of detectives and crime scene techs rooting around his house in vain, impotent at every turn, aroused Gavin in a way he hadn’t expected, and he understood why other killers might send taunting letters to the newspapers. But Gavin would send no letter.

  And if it ever came to the point where he found himself in court over Sadie Vauk, it would be her testimony against his—and Gavin had a plan for that contingency as well.

  Chapter 17

  Lila Nash was pretty certain that Donald Gray’s bail hearing had been unremarkable for most observers, but for her it held the rush of a tsunami exploding against a rocky coastline. Gray had twice gotten away with attacking his wife, but not this time. And the best part was that Gray’s wife wouldn’t be the target of his anger; she hadn’t asked for him to be held to account. Lila had done that. It had been Lila’s work that had put him in his box, and as Andi had explained, there was only one way out. Men who harmed women should never get to walk away free—as her attackers had.

  Judge Anderson, a kind woman with more years as a judge than Lila had as a human being, ordered Gray to have no contact with the victim—his wife—and specified that any such contact would constitute an additional criminal offense. He would have to move out of his house until the case resolved. This time there would be no retaliation, no arm twisting.

  A very pissed-off Donald Gray glared at Lila as he left the courtroom, his expression stripped clean of the false humility he had so carefully presented to the judge. There was a part of Lila that thought she should be intimidated, but somehow it exhilarated her. The thrill of that moment, standing up to an abuser at her first real hearing, was something she would never forget. It fed a yearning that begged to be satiated.

  As she often did, Lila met with Ryan and Patrick for lunch in the cafeteria of the Government Center, and as they waited for Patrick, Ryan asked Lila how she was getting along with Andi Fitch. The truth was that Lila found Andi to be the most amazing woman she’d ever met. Strong and brilliant, Andi was everything Lila wished she could be. However, telling all that to Ryan might rub him the wrong way, so Lila simply said, “Well, she hasn’t thrown any books at me yet.” Ryan seemed satisfied with that answer.

  Patrick arrived, smacking down his tray of food and taking over the conversation as was his habit.

  “Sorry, I’m late,” he said, “but I have this new crim sex case. A woman attacked by three mimes. They did unspeakable things.” He followed his punch line with a comedic rim shot, tapping his index fingers on the table and hitting an imaginary cymbal in the air. “Ba-dat, tsh.”

  Ryan cracked a smile and looked to Lila as if seeking permission to laugh.

  Lila didn’t laugh. “You’re an asshole, Patrick.”

  “Get off your high horse, Nash. It was just a joke.”

  She looked at him coldly. “Fuck you.” Then she stood, picked up her sandwich and milk, and walked off. As she left, she heard Patrick say, “What the hell’s her problem?”

  And just like that, Lila was a victim again.

  She took her lunch back to her office, her anger on high boil. Patrick and Ryan would be talking about her now; she hated that. And she hated how she could so easily be thrown into a bad memory. And she hated Patrick for being such a jerk. Who the hell tells rape jokes in a professional setting?

  Lila thought about Joe’s words as she sat down at her desk to eat alone. He had called her a legal ninja Jedi, but there was nothing ninja about how she had handled Patrick that day. She had worked so hard to come across as confident and calm, only to have the façade crumble with one stupid joke. How could Ryan and Patrick not see her for the fraud she was?

  She wanted a do-over. She wanted to go back and handle it the way she imagined Andi would have—a sharp word, scolding Patrick for his disrespect, followed by a cold stare, one that she would hold until Patrick wilted in apology. Instead, her panicked reaction would, undoubtedly, feed Patrick’s misogynistic view of her.

  Ryan, on the other hand, would likely ask her what happened, and if he did, what would she tell him? He could probably guess most of it. If word got around about Lila’s past, she worried people in the office might treat her differently. They might even take her off of sex crimes cases altogether, to protect her tender sensibilities. Lila feared that far more than anything.

  She knew now that she wanted to prosecute men like Donald Gray. She needed to prosecute them.

  Lila had long ago resigned herself to the fact that her attackers would never be caught, but her hunger for justice—for vengeance—still burned hot. She could feed that hunger by convicting other men who hurt other women. It wouldn’t be perfect, but it would be close. She’d experienced it when Donald Gray stared at her in court as if he wanted to punch her, and she wanted more.

  If Ryan ever asked about her reaction, she would dodge his question. If he persisted, she would simply tell him that it was none of his business. She could not risk having her secret exposed.

  Chapter 18

  Summer days in Minnesota had a way of drifting, the sun lingering in the sky as though the earth has slowed in its steady rotation. The long days could play tricks on a homicide detective, dupe them into working far past a normal eight-hour shift, a circumstance that bothered Mateo Lopez—a father of two—but somehow invigorated Niki Vang.

  She and Matty had been working different angles of the Sadie Vauk case all day and met up in Kenwood, at a café only a few blocks from Gavin Spencer’s home. There they compared notes over a dinner of turkey sandwiches.

  “Let’s assume the tox report will find GHB in Sadie’s blood,” Niki said. “How did he give it to her?”

  Matty looked at his notes. “Bebe Kavenaugh confirmed that Sadie had been drinking from a water bottle yesterday, but we found nothing at the salon.”

  “He was smart enough to take it with him.”

  “No one saw anyone matching Spencer’s description, either.”

  “What about the truck?”

  “I had one lady say she might have seen an older SUV like that but couldn’t be sure. One of the stoplight cameras on Lake Street captured a truck that might be our guy, but it’s coming out of an alley and the plates aren’t readable.”

  “So, this is what we have: Spencer is a photographer at a wedding where our vic is a bridesmaid. The next day, the vic gets a call at her salon—some guy named Kevin wants a haircut—after hours.”

  “Waits until Bebe leaves. No witnesses.”

  Niki nods. “He comes in, sits, and right away wants to look at haircut samples.”

  “Because those books are in the reception area, she has to turn her back on him, leaving her water bottle unattended.”

  “He stalls—waiting for her to take a drink and for the GHB to kick in. But did he assault her in the salon?”

  “That’d be taking a hell of a risk, leaving his truck in the lot all that time. What if Bebe came back? The windows had blinds, but not the front door. Anyone walking by could have peeked in.”

  “So he took her somewhere.”

  “His home?” Matty said.

  “That’d be my guess. We need to get a search warrant—home, computer, phone—and we need it fast, before he has a chance to clean things up.”

  “All we have is speculation. A guy named Gavin taking pictures at a wedding isn’t a guy named Kevin coming in for a haircut. We don’t have anything hard.”

  “We have the speech impediment. Janelle Halloway confirmed it.”

  Matty leaned in. “A lot of people have a lisp. Hell, my own brother has one. That’s not enough for a warrant.”

  “No, it’s not. We need to d
o a lineup. If Sadie can identify Gavin, that’ll get us our warrant.”

  “In-person lineup or photo?”

  “I think we should try to get him to come in. If that doesn’t work…”

  “Think he’ll agree?”

  Niki shoved in the last bite of her turkey on toast and said, “Won’t know unless we ask.”

  * * *

  Gavin Spencer lived in a large house, far too large for a low-end wedding photographer. Two stories with a three-stall garage, a house big enough that Niki’s entire family could have lived there, at least the ones who’d managed to get out of Vietnam after the war.

  Boat people, they were called, even though Niki’s family never set foot in a boat. They made their escape by walking over the mountains into Thailand. There, the family languished in the Ban Vinai refugee camp until 1986, the year Niki was born. It was Niki’s birth that compelled the Lutheran church in St. Paul to sponsor their evacuation. Her mother still called Niki their good luck charm.

  Niki parked on the street in front of Spencer’s house and looked around for any doorbell cameras that might face Gavin’s garage. The angle of the street and the vegetation along the sidewalk made the prospect of footage unlikely. Matty parked behind her and they paused for one last look around before heading up the walkway.

  A curtain on a picture window moved as they neared the front door, and both Niki and Matty popped the thumb snap on their holsters. Niki could hear the sound of footsteps approaching the door, and before she even rang the bell, it opened. The man standing there looked nothing like the picture on his driver’s license. He was bald. She looked hard at him, focusing on his eyes, and Gavin Spencer materialized.

  “Gavin Spencer?” she asked.

  “I am.” His words came out slow and formal, as though he deliberated over each syllable.

  “My name is Detective Niki Vang, and this is Detective Mateo Lopez. Can we have a word with you?”

  Spencer gave the request a moment of thought and nodded. “Okay.”