by Rachel Ford
“Been a long time since I got to clock someone.” He cackled at that, balling his hand into a fist and miming the action, like he was savoring it. “Felt damned good.”
Owen shook his head at the old man’s enthusiasm. But he said, “Thanks. I didn’t even see him coming, until it was too late.”
“My pleasure. Really. Mostly good luck, to be honest. But the most fun I’ve had in too long.”
Tanney talked about his kids as they returned to the hotel: how they’d react if they knew what had happened tonight, and how he wished they could have seen him. “Might make them think twice about putting me out to pasture just yet.”
Owen thought about the case. He thought about the sheriff and wondered what he’d do with the evidence. Would he take it seriously? Would he actually review it? Or would he take the files just to shut him up and get him out of town?
“Owen?” the old man asked, expectantly.
He glanced over. They were just pulling into the hotel parking lot. “Yeah?”
“I said, you got a cell phone, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Can I borrow it?”
“Uh…”
“I got to call my daughter. I was supposed to be in Canada already, days ago. Should have already checked in with her. If she doesn’t hear from me soon, God alone knows what she’ll do.”
Owen nodded. “Sure.”
They parked close to the building, and Owen hopped out. Cold assailed his foot through the torn heel. He’d need to go shoe shopping tomorrow.
Tanney followed, though there was no hopping to his step. “God it’s cold,” he said.
Owen watched him make his way to the hotel. He worried about how long they’d been in the cold. The sheriff had had him sitting in the SUV with the heat on most of the time, but still, he’d been out before that. Too long for an old man, probably.
“You know how long it’s been since I’ve had a hangover?”
“Nope.”
“Longer than you’ve been alive. I think I’m going to have one tomorrow.”
Owen smiled at that. “Your head’s still going to feel better than that Dave guy’s.”
Tanney laughed. “True. Damned true.”
“And if you need aspirin or whatever, I can drive you to the dollar store or the grocery before I head out.”
Tanney glanced up at that. “Head out? You’re leaving, then?”
He nodded and relayed his good news. It was the first chance the old man had given him.
Tanney was silent as they walked, and silent as they passed the sliding doors and entered the main foyer. Then he nodded. “Well, it was good meeting you, Day.”
They headed to Tanney’s room, so he could make his call. He waved Owen in and told him to make himself comfortable. “This shouldn’t take too long.”
Owen handed over his phone, ready to dial. Tanney glanced at the buttons, and then glanced back up at him. “You know what’s going to happen, don’t you?”
“What?”
“The sheriff’s going to think you’re nuts.”
He’d assumed they were talking about Tanney’s call to his daughter, not the case.
“He’s going to look at your evidence, or whatever you call it, and he’s going to see the same thing I see. You know what that is?”
“Nope.”
“A bunch of dead people. Nothing more, nothing less. Nothing tying them together.” Owen started to speak, but Tanney raised a hand. “I know, I know: you’re going to say the interstate. But that’s bullshit. Nobody blindly follows the interstate hoping they’ll chance on someone to kill on a remote exit.”
“I’m sure there’s something that draws him to them, even if he doesn’t know what it is himself,” Owen said.
“Are they all men?”
“No. I told you–”
“Are they all white?”
“No. Ricky Manilow–”
“All black?”
“No.”
“Do they all have the same color hair?”
“Nope.”
“Are they all old?”
“No.”
“Are they all young?”
“No.”
“Were they all killed during hunting season?”
Owen sighed. He knew Tanney knew the answer. They’d talked about it just earlier.
“Were they?”
“You know they weren’t.”
“Were they all shot with the same kind of weapon?”
“You know they weren’t.”
“Were they all hunters?”
“No. Annie Shaw–”
“Were they all shot in the woods?”
“Nope.”
“Were they all shot at home in their gardens, like the judge?”
“Nope.”
Tanney spread his hands. “So what’s your connection? What do they have in common? They’re all dead. But is that it?”
“I don’t know,” Owen admitted. “I guess I was assuming he picked them more or less randomly. You know, depending on his mood, or whatever.”
Tanney shook his head. “No. No, serial killers aren’t like mass shooters. They don’t kill anyone they see. They’ve got some kind of motive, right? The Zodiac killer, he wanted what? Slaves in the afterlife?”
“I guess,” Owen said.
“So, some kind of psychosis there. But even so, he targeted the same kind of people, right? Young couples, and young women. See? Pattern.”
“The pattern here has to do with location. With means and opportunity.”
Tanney ignored him. “Then you got guys like Dahmer and the Milwaukee North Side Strangler, where your motive is some kind of weird sexual thing. There’s your connection.
“And you’ve got your Ed Geins, where it’s a little bit of everything. Crazy sexual, crazy crazy. Of course, that’s Dahmer too.” He paused, then frowned. “What the hell is with Wisconsin and serial killers, anyway? Something in the cheese?”
They were getting wildly off track. Owen cleared his throat. “Okay, but there are crazy people who do kill just for the thrill of killing.”
Tanney sighed in exasperation. “But there’s method to their madness. Like Dahmer: he was out of his mind, sure. But why did he choose his victims?”
“Because he was attracted to them.”
“Exactly. There was a reason he was targeting them.”
“You’re assuming they’re being targeted, though. These could just be killings of opportunity.”
“Bullshit. What do you think, someone was driving along a lonely county road at dusk and just happened to see Wynder out there in his front yard or garden or wherever he was?”
Owen considered. It didn’t sound plausible. Not when he put it like that.
“And he what? Had his rifle ready, and came squealing to a halt outside the house to take a pot shot at him? And none of this attracted the judge’s attention?
“Come on, Owen. You’re a smart guy. Smarter than that.”
“Okay. So maybe he did his research first. Maybe he came here from wherever he lives with Wynder in mind.”
“Why?”
“Hell, I don’t know.”
Tanney shrugged. “Then you got nothing.”
“I’ve got a start.”
“Until you got some idea about why they’re related, you got nothing but a bunch of unrelated deaths.”
Despite the old man’s told-you-so attitude, Owen nodded. “Alright. You may be right. I may need more to convince Halverson. But there’s a pattern there. I know that. Now I just have to make sure I know how to relate it to the sheriff.”
Tanney declared that there was no maybe about it. But then he set his focus to the phone. This proved something of a challenge for the old man. For starters, the screen had gone dark. When he pressed a button, the lockscreen came up.
So he passed it to Owen, who swiped his thumb and unlocked it. Which resolved the first issue, but others followed.
Tanney pressed two buttons at once wh
en he attempted to dial. Then he stared in confusion, trying to figure out how to erase the erroneous keypress. Owen showed him, and he nodded.
Then, more carefully, he jabbed the remaining digits into the phone. He used his index finger like some kind of spear, intent on lancing each button, one at a time, until they were quite dead. Then he put the phone to his ear, frowned, and took it away.
“This thing working?”
“You’ve got to hit the green button,” Owen said.
“What green button?”
“The one with the phone symbol on it.”
Tanney scrutinized the screen for half a second, then found the button. He nodded and pressed it. “Now what?”
“Now it’s dialing.”
“Oh.” He lifted the phone to his ear.
Owen settled into the armchair at the other end of the room, to give the old man some space during his call.
This proved an unnecessary precaution, though. There was no place in the room that would have afforded any degree of privacy. Not at the volume Tanney was speaking. “Hello?”
He said it loudly and sharply. He waited half a second and repeated it. “Hello? Jenny? You there?” He pulled the phone away from his ear, frowned at it, and then put it back.
“Jenny? Can you hear me?” He glanced up again, this time at Owen. “I don’t think it’s working.”
Owen headed over and put the phone to his own ear. It was still ringing.
“I can’t hear anything,” Tanney said. “I don’t think she can hear me.”
“It’s still trying to connect,” Owen told him.
“What?”
Owen waited in silence. The phone rang again, and then a voice asked, “Hello?” A woman’s voice, a little suspicious and wary of the unknown number that had just flashed up on her line.
“Hello,” Owen said. “My name’s Owen. I’ve got your dad here.”
“Dad? Oh my God, I’ve been trying to reach him for days. Is he okay?”
“He’s fine. He just needed to borrow a phone.”
Tanney shook his head and hunched his shoulders, like he was bracing for the inevitable storm. Owen told the woman on the other end that he was handing the phone over. The old man took it and put it to his ear.
“Jenny? Can you hear me?” He frowned. “How do you make this thing go up?”
“Volume buttons are on the side.”
“One second, Jenny. I can’t hear you.” Tanney fussed with the phone, turning it and looking for the buttons. Then he said, “Shit.”
“What?”
“I think I hung up.”
Owen took the phone and nodded. He had indeed hung up. “No worries. I’ll call her back.” He thumbed through to the call log, but before he could redial, he saw an incoming call. “She’s calling you.”
“Dad? What happened?”
“Hi,” he said, answering the phone, “me again. He hit the wrong button. One second.”
He turned the volume up and handed the phone over. “Jen?” Tanney said again. “Say something.” He frowned. “Dammit, still can’t hear. Do you have the speaker option with this phone?”
Owen nodded and pointed out the button he’d need. Tanney pressed it, and a woman’s voice sprang up from the phone: a little tinny and urgent, but otherwise clear and sharp. “Dad? Can you hear me now?”
Tanney nodded. “I can hear you.”
Chapter Fourteen
Owen went back to his seat. He felt less like an eavesdropper, but he heard everything anyway. Jen was worried, like her father had predicted she would be. He was half a week late in calling her.
He pshawed this, reminding her that he’d told her before not to worry. She reminded him that he was the one who had been in a car accident.
“Not my fault. Talk to the damned deer.”
She wanted to know if he’d gone to the hospital.
“Of course not. Why would I? The deer was the one who got hurt, not me.”
She wanted to make sure he was alright in the meantime. How was he getting around? Did his hotel have food options?
“That’s what they call it,” he answered. “But there’s a diner across the street. And I had a burger tonight, at a place on the other end of town. And before you ask, no, I didn’t walk there. Owen drove me.”
Here, Jenny’s tone changed a little. It was clear that she wanted to know more about the mystery character her dad was trusting, but it was also clear that she knew she was on speakerphone. So she had to ask her questions in a non-offensive manner.
“That’s great, Dad. That’s very nice of him.”
“That’s what I said. He took me to get a new toothbrush, too.”
“That was nice. You guys are right in town, then?”
“Yup.”
“So…does Owen live around there?”
“No, he’s here because of the murder.”
A full two seconds of silence followed that. “The what?”
“The murder. Or the hunting accident. There was some guy who was shot the other week, by a hunter maybe. Owen thinks it was a murder.”
Her tone was a strange mixture of relief and mortification – relief for her father’s situation, and mortification about the murder, presumably. “Oh, then Owen’s a cop?”
“No, murder’s just a hobby of his. Solving them, not committing them.” Tanney laughed. Jenny said nothing.
“Anyway, he’s got a theory. Got a bunch of holes, but we’re working on it.”
“You’re working on it too?” The apprehension was back, in spades.
“Yup. If there’s a killer out there, we’ll find her.”
Which was exactly the wrong thing to say, of course. It threw Jenny into a near panic. She seemed to envision her father tracking through the wilds in pursuit of a fugitive.
It took him and Owen a combined three minutes to calm her down, and convince her that their involvement extended no further than thinking and sharing those thoughts with the sheriff.
Now that Owen was a part of the conversation, and once she accepted that he didn’t mean to get her father murdered by a serial killer, she thanked him for all he’d done so far. Then she warned him to be careful of Tanney. “He still likes to act like he’s twenty-five.”
“Bollocks. I was a dumbass at twenty-five. More like thirty-five.”
He was grinning. Owen couldn’t see Jenny’s face, but it was clear she wasn’t smiling about the business. “Don’t worry, Ms. Tanney,” he said. “We’re haunting the local coffee shop and diner. That’s it.” He decided to leave out the barfight, for obvious reasons.
She thanked him again and told him she appreciated his assistance. Then Owen went back a third time to his armchair, and left Tanney to his conversation in peace.
The old man explained that he didn’t know when his vehicle would be out of the shop. That depended on when all the parts came in. “But they figure it won’t be long now. Just a few days.”
He explained that his plan hadn’t changed. He’d still head up to the cabin. Yes, he would let her know. Fine, fine, he’d think about getting a cellphone. But only one of those pay as you go things in case of emergencies. He didn’t want to be tied to a piece of technology like people were nowadays.
He asked about her day, and how the kids were. He offered a lot of unsolicited advice when she answered, which struck Owen as ironic in a way. The one thing he dreaded about all his children was the one thing he did so freely in turn. The apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree…
He had ideas about how to make the boys behave. He thought she was too permissive. He almost blew a gasket when he found out Noah had hit his sister, much less that a timeout had been the only response.
The boy shouldn’t be allowed television, he said. Not after his tantrum. He was flabbergasted to find out she meant to let them have dessert too.
He wanted to know what Chris, Jenny’s husband, thought about all this, and where he was while his sons were running roughshod over the house and beating up
their little sister.
On the other hand, he laughed out loud when he heard Emma had hit her brother back.
“It’s not funny, Dad. He looks like he’s got a blackeye coming in.”
“Well, that’ll teach him to hit girls, won’t it?”
Then he wanted to talk to the kids. She solicited a promise first that he wouldn’t yell at Noah. “He already got his punishment.”
Tanney harrumphed and declared it no punishment at all. But he made the promise all the same. The kids were apparently all in the living room, and Jenny brought the phone to them.
Tanney spoke to them all at once. He asked how their day had gone so far. He told them he was staying at a hotel, and that it had a swimming pool. He told them his car had been damaged by a deer, but that he was fine.
“Which is more than you can say for the deer.”
“What happened to the deer, Grandpa?” a little girl – Emma, presumably – asked.
“Took his head clean off his shoulders. I got a picture.”
“Can we see?” a little boy, either Noah or Adrian, said.
“Absolutely not,” Jenny said.
“Sure can,” Tanney said. “Once I get home and upload the pictures from my camera.”
The conversation ended awhile after that. The kids had to go eat dinner. Jenny told her father to be careful. She said she loved him, and she looked forward to seeing him again. The grandkids said they loved him.
Then Tanney stared at the screen, settled on the red button, and stabbed it with a forefinger. The call ended, and he smiled in triumph. “There we go. Not so hard, once you get the hang of it.”
Owen collected the phone, told the old guy goodnight in turn, and headed to his own room. He’d checked in days later, so he was down the hall a few doors.
Their conversation had given him food for thought. The whole night had given him food for thought. And now that he had some peace and quiet, he set to work thinking.
There was the incident with Ted and his posse, for starters. Ted was a friend of Marsha’s, he knew: Marsha’s or the judge’s. Maybe a family friend. So he probably felt some protectiveness or personal sense of injury. He figured the other guys had some similar connection.
But what had ever got them thinking he had a hand in it? Was it really nothing more complicated than showing up to talk to Marsha?
