Forensics, as Powell lays them out for him, are at this point rather mundane. There’s no aha moment here. It’s good police work but no forensic epiphany. The team scratched up identical fibers (black, woolen fabric) from the dirt at both gravesites. The fibers are not consistent with clothing worn by either victim and, thus, are assumed to belong to a third party, presumably the killer. All that simply confirms what Mills already suspected; two murders, same murderer. The fibers appear under Davis Klink’s fingernails, indicating that the CEO might have tried fighting off his assailant before assisting in the excavation of his own grave. By “assisting,” the forensics show that both Klink and Schultz only dug briefly with their hands before a shovel was introduced into the activity. There’s no sign of the shovel, but marks in the dirt suggest that hands, alone, were not responsible for the shallow graves. Blood-spatter analysis concludes both impact spatters and cast-off stains at both crime scenes. Blood samples from the lab confirm that the blood found at the two crime scenes was human blood, belonging to each victim respectively. No other blood evidence was found. Lab tests for toxins are forthcoming. Shoeprint impressions in the dirt appear to match shoes worn by the victims; a third impression was taken at both scenes, results to be determined. As for fingerprints, techs identified an individual Sharpie marker at or near each grave. Latent friction ridge prints found on each match the respective victims’. Identical prints appear on the cardboard signs used to mark the graves. At the Schultz scene a second pair of prints appears on the sign but does not match prints in the criminal database system. The second pair of prints will be preserved for matches with potential suspects.
Prelims from the autopsy show that both victims died from blunt force trauma to the head—blunt craniofacial trauma—with multiple fractures of the skull resulting in brain hemorrhages. Klink time of death was approximately 10:00 p.m. Schultz time of death was approximately 11:00 p.m. As indicated in forensics reports, lab tests for drugs, poisons, and/or other toxins are forthcoming.
“I didn’t say it was going to knock your socks off,” Powell concedes.
“That’s okay. I wasn’t expecting much.”
Powell starts to gather the paperwork, but Mills asks her to wait. He tells her about his visit to Jennifer Torento. Describes the nuanced shift in her attitude. “Protective but bitter, I would say. Depleted.”
“Depleted?”
“Like she’s had enough.”
“With us?”
“Not necessarily.”
Powell smiles mischievously. “I’m just surprised you haven’t heard from the sergeant already, all spastic because the chief is hounding him again ’cause you’re hounding Torento.”
“Technically, the day isn’t over,” Mills says with a laugh. “And maybe Mrs. Torento didn’t alert her husband this time.”
“Obviously not.”
“I take that as a good sign.”
“You do?”
“Yes.”
A long fucking day segues into a long fucking night. Not by design. He blames his provocative imagination. He recognizes it. Comes with the turf. He knows this will be one of many sleepless nights ahead. After a few hours of tossing and turning and incurring the gentle but convincing wrath of his wife, Mills climbs out of bed and heads for the family room, where he contemplates an interview with Your Pal Al. It’s one o’clock in the morning. An hour later, the imagined interview turns into an interrogation and every muscle from his neck to his ass is on fire. The congressman just sits there opposite him with an insufferable smirk on his face. Mills throws a magazine at him. Then a stray shoe. The shoe lands in the fireplace they never use. Then Mills stretches out on the sofa and closes his eyes. He refuses to sleep, or his subconscious refuses to let him sleep until he has that one stroke of genius that will unmask the killer. He laughs at himself. The stroke of genius doesn’t come at two in the morning. It doesn’t come at two thirty. It doesn’t come at three. That’s when he goes back into the bedroom and collapses beside Kelly, and he’s sure it’s her lovely scent, a secretion all her own, that puts him at last to sleep. Three hours later, three deeply slept hours later, his phone rings. And rings. He rakes his hand across the nightstand to find the damn thing and answer it. He knocks over Bleak House and a water bottle. It’s 6:06 a.m.
“Hello?”
“Alex Mills?”
“Yup. Who’s this?”
“It’s Detective Ernesto Nevada with Avondale.”
“Nevada? Like the state?”
“That’s correct, sir,” he replies. “Sorry to wake you up at this hour.”
“No problem,” Mills says. “My alarm’s set for six thirty. What can I do for you?”
“Your department sent out an advisory last week, I think, and I got a crime scene here in Avondale that kind of matches the description of your cases. Somebody put me through to you.”
“You got a body?”
“I do.”
Mills tosses the covers back, throws his legs over the side of the bed, and his feet hit the floor squarely. “No shit,” he whispers, suddenly aware the conversation might disturb Kelly. He drifts into the kitchen, then sits at the breakfast bar. “Crude grave?”
“Yeah. Red Creek Cemetery.”
Mills tries to stifle a yawn but can’t.
Nevada recites the cross streets. Mills tells him he’s on the way.
24
Jan Powell hands him a cup of coffee. They’ve met up in the cemetery parking lot.
“You look like shit,” she tells him.
“Thanks,” he says. “I told you, three hours of sleep.”
“Did you speak to Woods?”
“I called him on the way out here after I called you,” Mills replies. “He’s aware.”
They find Detective Nevada toward the back of the cemetery, almost at the fence, and they make introductions. The makeshift grave is about twenty feet away. Nevada stands about five-five and wears a baseball cap emblazoned with the Avondale Police logo. The morning’s attire consists of crisp khaki shorts and a polo shirt sporting the same logo as the hat. “Looks like our John Doe is not exactly a John Doe,” Nevada tells them, hosting a smile on his face. “One of my officers recognizes him.”
Mills can feel the whiplash on his face. “Well, it’s my lucky day,” he says.
“My officer has personally arrested this guy for DUI. Twice. That’s just here in Avondale,” Nevada says. “He had another drunk driving offense in Scottsdale last year. How he’s kept his license I don’t know.”
Nevada guides them over to the open grave.
“Detectives, please say hello to Joseph Gaffing, age forty-five, resident of Avondale,” he recites as he hands two photos to Mills. “I had his file pulled for you. As you can see from his mug shots, we have a very likely match.”
Mills stares down at the partly bludgeoned man. There’s enough left of the victim’s face to get a decent look. He hands a mug shot to Powell so she, too, can compare. She nods affirmatively. The face is so swollen and purple, but thankfully the guy’s got a deep scar on his left cheek that matches the scar in the mug shots.
“It’s him,” Mills says. “But you’re getting his prints just to confirm?”
“Oh, yeah,” Nevada says. “We also found an abandoned Mercedes parked illegally three blocks away. Confirmed it’s leased to Gaffing. So we have at least two crime scenes if you want to take a look.”
“You mind if I bring out some of my techs to work alongside yours?” Powell asks.
Nevada smiles widely. “I was waiting for you to ask,” he says. “I’m sure it’s going to end up in your hands anyway. Something else I want to show you . . .”
Mills and Powell follow the detective to a row of bushes where a cardboard sign is resting against the hedge, blank side up. Nevada pulls on his latex gloves and flips it over. “Pretty fucking weird,” he says. “I mean, I saw your advisory and all but couldn’t really picture it until I saw this.”
As promised another grave
I’m sorry, so sorry
For the part I played
I’m a troublemaker and this is my penance
I deserved this. Love, Joe
Mills takes a picture with his phone. “I want our photog out here,” he tells Powell, and then he turns to Nevada. “Why was the sign moved? If our perp’s being consistent, the sign should be right beside the grave.”
The man stuffs his hands in his pocket. “Sorry about that,” he says. “The groundskeeper moved it. Said it would disturb people.”
“Jesus,” Mills whispers. “Is that the only contamination that you know of?”
“I’m confident the rest of the scene’s intact,” Nevada replies.
“The groundskeeper called this in?” Mills asks.
Nevada points to a lanky guy leaning against the fence. “That’s him. Hey-Zoos Pacheco. Called us around five this morning. Says he starts his day early.”
“You take a statement from him?” Mills asks.
“Yep.”
“I’ll go have a talk as well, if you don’t mind,” Mills says.
“I don’t. But he only speaks Spanish.”
“I have to learn,” Mills concedes. “Can I get his statement translated?”
“Of course.”
Mills returns to the body, then kneels to the ground. The victim died wearing a black T-shirt, black jeans, and a black leather blazer. As if he just came from some kind of hipster funeral. Forty-five trying to pass for thirty. There’s dirt everywhere. All over his clothes, in his hair, caked in his silver watch, and yes, Mills notes, under his fingernails. This was, as the others were, a sadistic burial. He takes a close-up shot of the guy’s face and verifies that he captured every groove of the scar. He gets up, then flips through the folder Nevada handed him. Joseph Gaffing, forty-five, was not, according to his record, an angel: cocaine possession (twice), writing bad checks, forgery, domestic battery (twice), and three DUIs. Mills doesn’t need to know much more to understand that Joseph Gaffing had been a lifelong party boy who became an overage party boy who pissed someone off in the same way Klink and Schultz had pissed somebody off. But there’s just something about the dead man staring back at him that lacks the pedigree of a CEO or a physician—assuming a dead man can have a pedigree at all. How this man had a connection to the other victims mystifies Mills. He looks for Gaffing’s last known address, picks up the phone, calls Preston, and instructs him to go knocking. The Avondale detective approaches.
“Hey, I got press gathering at the entrance,” Nevada tells him.
Mills scoffs. “They’re going to be waiting for a while. Too early to make a statement of any kind.”
“They just want the basics.”
“It’s your jurisdiction,” Mills says. “I’d have your sergeant call my sergeant. Let them figure it out. For now, I think your officers should get the media off cemetery property.”
“Just wanted to check in case there’s any reason you want to talk to them.”
Mills laughs. “Are you kidding? I want the opposite of that.”
Nevada drifts toward the parking lot, and Mills rejoins Powell who’s watching from a distance as the Avondale team does its measurements and samplings around the gravesite. “Are you getting our techs out here?” Mills asks her.
“Still waiting to hear,” she replies. “Gonna be a long day.”
“Can you look something up on your iPad for me?”
She nods.
“See if this dude has a LinkedIn profile.”
She pulls out her device and taps in a series of entries. She scans the screen and scrolls. At first she shakes her head and grimaces, saying without saying that this is a dead end. “Maybe he’s too highly employed like a CEO, which I doubt, to be bothered with a profile,” Mills says. “Or maybe he’s not employed highly enough. I’m guessing the latter.”
“No, wait,” she says. She stops, scrolls back, and clicks. “Here he is. Joseph Gaffing. ‘Owner/President Student Blast Travel.’”
“Student Blast?”
She hands him the iPad. “Here. Take a look.”
The man with the scar smiles back at him. His expression in the profile photo bears no resemblance to the expression on his face this morning, but it’s the same guy. He’s been with the company, holding various positions, for almost thirty years. According to Gaffing’s profile, Student Blast is a “full-service travel agency with a specialty in chartered student tours.”
“Hmpf.”
“That’s all you can say?” Powell asks.
“Impressive enough,” Mills says. “I mean, that he held down a job for thirty years, considering his run-ins with the law. Never mind that he ended up running the company.”
“And the connection to Klink and Schultz?”
“Hell if I know. Maybe he was their travel agent,” Mills says with a laugh. Then it hits him. “Wait a minute. Our boys on the beach. They were somewhere on vacation, right? Maybe that is the connection to Gaffing. Think I’ll pay a visit.”
“To?”
“Student Blast, if I can find them. Might as well do something while we’re waiting for Woods,” he says. “I’ll put Myers on social media. From what I know about Mr. Gaffing, I’m guessing he’s a frequent user, with tons of friends, and tons of parties, and tons of selfies . . .”
“And probably a few dick pics on his phone,” Powell says.
“And probably a few dick pics on his phone,” he affirms. “Feel free to check if you locate a device. You’re scene investigator once we hear from Woods. So stick around.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
When he gets to the parking lot, Mills finds that a circus of reporters and photographers and cables and lights has converged on the first available square inch of public property outside the cemetery. A few reporters recognize Mills and fire questions.
“Detective, can you confirm that this case is tied to the murders in Phoenix?”
“I have no comment at the moment.”
“Can you confirm that you have a body?”
“No comment means no comment,” he says but then almost instantly recoils from his own dick-waving hubris and adds, “I cannot confirm anything at this time.”
“Will anyone be making a statement?” a whiny reporter shouts.
“I’m sure someone will,” he replies as he reaches his car.
“When?” another barks.
“I’m sorry. I really don’t know,” he tells them. “But you should plan on being here a while.”
As he ducks into his car, he can hear a chorus of cursing and groaning from the antsy reporters and photographers, as if, once again, a murder has failed to cater to their deadlines. He drives off, then puts Student Blast Travel into his navigator. It pulls up a Central Phoenix address, and estimates his ride at twenty-six minutes. He heads back to the highway. Morning rush hour is just clearing. About six hundred feet from the on-ramp he pulls over, mindful of two cars in his rearview mirror. The white unmarked van slips past him, accelerates hard, and continues straight ahead. The SUV sporting the decals of KPXT TV26 hits the curb and stops abruptly. Mills jumps out of his car, holds his hands high, and points to the driver. “Roll down the window,” he says. “Where you headed?”
“Back to the station,” the driver says nervously.
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“Is there something wrong?” asks the reporter riding shotgun. Her voice seems to suggest some kind of First Amendment umbrage.
“I just wanted to make sure that you or the other dude behind me weren’t following me,” Mills tells them.
“We weren’t,” the driver says sheepishly.
As a detective, Mills has been lied to so many times that he no longer has to filter the answers through the truth detectors in his brain; he just has a buzzer that goes off instantaneously. He imagines it blinks red. “Well, good,” he tells the news crew, “because if you were following me to my next destination, I might have to arrest you for i
nterfering with a police investigation.”
“If truth be told, we have the freedom to travel anywhere open to the public,” the reporter says with all the moxie of a made-for-TV judge. “We’ve never been pulled over for doing our jobs.”
Her driver, a cameraman no doubt, turns to her, his eyes begging her to shut up.
Mills smiles. Nods. Leans in. “You certainly raise some good points, ma’am,” he says. “I’m impressed with your argument. But be forewarned that if I have to pay attention to you in my rearview mirror, tailing me, instead of paying attention to where I need to be next, that could slow me down. Much like this conversation with you is slowing me down. And if you slow me down, you impede my investigation. This is not a game. Do not follow me onto the highway. Do not do that.”
She shifts in her seat. Sweat runs down the driver’s neck.
“If you want to cover the story that broke this morning, you should make a U-turn and go back to the cemetery,” Mills adds. “Am I clear?”
“Yes,” the driver says. “Of course.”
The reporter says nothing, just looks ahead, feigning interest in something beyond the windshield.
“Ma’am? I asked you a question.”
“No need to be condescending,” she says.
He drums the roof of the car with his hands. “Yuh. Okay. I’m honestly not trying to be condescending. I just want to be sure that you are aware of the possible consequences of following me. So, let me ask one more time. Are we clear?”
“We are,” she says, sneering.
He’s probably just broken a thousand rules just now, but he doesn’t give a shit.
He arrives, not followed, about twenty-five minutes later. Student Blast Travel occupies a one-story, low-slung yellowish building on Seventh Avenue, north of Osborn. If Gaffing worked at this place for almost thirty years, it’s fair to say that in his tenure the cosmetics of the business never underwent a facelift. Even the posters in the window (Jamaica! Cabo! Puerto Plata! Cancun!) show signs of sun damage, fading, crackling, their corners curling. Mills walks in to find busy cubicles, about eight pods of four stations. The buzz of operators chanting, “It’s the best spring break you’ll ever have!” and “Would you like the beverage bracelet option?” sounds a lot to Mills like children singing rounds of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.”
Dig Your Grave Page 23
