Opening Moves

by Steven James

  There was always the possibility that Griffin had been at a neighbor’s house or something, saw the squads arrive, and just didn’t come home.

  No, his car is missing from the driveway.

  Okay. How to do this and not end up accusing one of them of warning Griffin…

  “Do any of you know Griffin?”

  All four men shook their heads.

  I glanced at Radar, who was eyeing them, one after another. “Officer Webb,” he said to a stout young officer with short bristly hair and pale blue eyes. “You knew him, didn’t you?”

  “No.”

  “But you’ve seen him, right? It’s a small town. You see people around.”

  “I don’t know, I—”

  He looked rattled and Radar didn’t let up. “Officer Webb, did you call him? Tell him you were on the way over here?”

  “No, of course not!” But he didn’t look Radar in the eye, and when he said the words he was tapping the forefinger and thumb of his right hand rapidly together.

  I was about to push the issue, but Radar spoke up first. “You know something and you’re holding out. Right now you need to tell us what it is. We have—”

  Surprisingly, that’s all it took. Webb held up a hand in quick surrender. “Listen, listen, all I did was call my sister. That’s it. That’s all. I just told her Griffin might be involved in something.”

  “Your sister?” I said. “Why your sister?”

  “She’s friends with Mallory. Cuts her hair. I was, you know, worried Griffin might…well, do something to her if he got scared. Desperate.”

  Carver was glaring at his man, obviously ticked, but if Webb was telling the truth, I could at least understand where he was coming from. “How did she warn Mallory?” I asked him. “Where were they when your sister called her?”

  “I don’t even know if she called her. I just—”

  “Listen to me,” Radar interrupted him. “Do you have any idea where they might have gone?”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t know they might—”

  “Can you think of anywhere at all Griffin might have taken her?” Radar repeated, even more emphatically.

  Webb was visibly shaken, but I could tell he was really thinking about it. “Okay, there’s this place, a couple miles outside of town. I don’t know, maybe…My sister went there with them a couple times to party. It’s near the dump. This abandoned farmhouse. No one lives out there, but it’s—”

  I cut him off. “You say it’s near the landfill?”

  “Yeah.”

  An unsettling set of dark possibilities wound its way, like a snake slithering from a forgotten hole, into my thoughts. In 1996, Dahmer’s belongings had been taken to an undisclosed landfill. According to what Radar had read me earlier, Griffin worked for three years as a garbage collector in Milwaukee. The timing didn’t fit for him to have been one of the people who drove the dump truck to dispose of Dahmer’s possessions, but he might easily know the person who did.

  But the Fort Atkinson landfill?

  Yeah, just far enough from Milwaukee to discourage souvenir hounds.

  Griffin moved to Fort Atkinson in June 1996—the same month the city of Milwaukee disposed of Dahmer’s things.

  I don’t believe in coincidences.

  I started for the stairs, gestured toward Radar, and said to Webb, “You’re riding with us. We’re going to that farmhouse.”

  61

  On the way to the house we radioed the dispatcher here in Fort Atkinson and told him to call Lieutenant Thorne to find out the name of the two city workers who’d delivered Dahmer’s possessions to the landfill. “And we need to know if the landfill they used was the one here in Fort Atkinson.”

  We also called for backup to be sent to the farmhouse—an ambulance too. I didn’t say so, but I wanted it there because I knew if I was left alone with Griffin, he would be needing it.

  The town of Fort Atkinson didn’t have a SWAT team, but Webb told us they’d call in the one for Jefferson County.

  We were only two or three minutes from the landfill. “How long till they get here?”

  “Twenty minutes. Fifteen maybe—but I’d say that’s pushing it.”

  Not what I wanted to hear.

  Standing around waiting for people to show up to do what I was prepared to do right now wasn’t what I had in mind for this afternoon. I wanted to go and get Griffin the minute we arrived.

  If he’s even there.

  That was true. It was also true that I wasn’t in my jurisdiction. Admittedly, that did put a few wrinkles in things.

  I could work through a few wrinkles.

  When we were about half a mile from the farmhouse, the dispatcher radioed back, relaying the message from Thorne: yes, the landfill was the one in Fort Atkinson; the names of the two city workers were Roger Kennedy and Dane Strickland. I hadn’t heard of either of the two men before, but I knew we were going to have a talk with them before everything involving this case was said and done.

  Just as we were finishing up the transmission, we arrived at the farmhouse.

  It was a small, ranch-style home, half burned down. The roof on the east side was caved in, the walls were blackened, the windows broken.

  Griffin’s car was parked out front.

  But why would he come here to flee?

  Officer Webb, Radar, and I exited the car and unholstered our weapons. Radar immediately took position behind a nearby tree that gave him a clear line on the front door. Webb crouched behind the car, using the hood to steady his shooting arm.

  I kept my door open, eased behind it, and eyed the farmhouse for movement. Saw none.

  The sky was pregnant with snow. Clouds hung down like heavy, dark scabs.

  The wind was dead. The day, still.

  I really wanted to go into that house right now, but it wasn’t smart for any number of reasons—not the least of which: we had a possible hostage situation and storming the place without finding out where Mallory was could put her life in danger.

  The air reeked of damp rot and dank smoke from the landfill that lay only a hundred meters beyond the house, surrounded by an eight-foot-tall wooden fence.

  With the air smelling like this and the house in the shape it was, I couldn’t imagine anyone coming out here to party, as Webb had mentioned, but then I remembered we were talking about two people who lived in a home filled with memorabilia of serial killers and pedophiles. Who on earth knew why they did what they did.

  Carver pulled up, parked, got out and we consulted for a moment. I was anxious to use the mic on his cruiser’s PA system to try to call Griffin out of the house, Carver was bent on waiting for the Jefferson County SWAT team.

  “With all due respect, Detective,” he said at last, “this is our jurisdiction; this is our case. Since it was a federal search warrant at the house and you’re working with the Feds, I had no problem with your involvement there, but out here, this is our turf. He’s our guy to bring in.”

  He had a point and if I were in his place I might’ve been saying the same things. “Sergeant, I couldn’t care less about who gets the credit for bringing this guy in. And I want that girl, Mallory, safe, just like you do, but…” I thought of what to say next, changed my tune a bit, and gestured toward Radar. “How about Sergeant Walker and I take the back of the house. Cover it until the tactical unit gets here.”

  “Good. Thanks.” He nodded, and Radar and I circled around in case Griffin tried to leave the house and flee through the landfill.

  I wasn’t sure exactly how everything was going to play out, but I did know that if I found out Mallory was in danger, from back here it’d be a lot easier to move on the house without any of Carver’s guys getting in the way.

  62

  Over the next few minutes more officers arrived and took position around the farmhouse.

  SWAT was still five minutes out.

  Carver called through his car’s mic numerous times, trying to get anyone who might be in the house to acknowl
edge that they were there, but no one answered.

  From the radio transmissions among the team members, I knew that no one had seen any movement and I was getting more and more antsy to find out if Griffin was actually in the house, or if we were wasting our time out here.

  His car is out front.

  Yes, but if Griffin really was guilty, he’d been shrewd enough to avoid suspicion in at least two homicides stretching back almost a decade, even while he marketed in the kind of merchandise he did. The car could easily be a ploy to distract us while he fled in another vehicle.

  “Radar, I can’t just sit around here doing nothing. I want to have a look around that landfill. You with me?”

  “You bet.”

  I radioed Carver; he agreed it would be good to cover the landfill and sent two other officers to take our place behind the house. They were more than happy to man our positions rather than accept the job of trekking across a reeking dump.

  “Okay,” I said to Radar. “Get ready for the smell.”

  “It’s been too late for that since we got here.”

  We started for the fence. Wooden. Eight feet tall. No razor wire on top.

  No problem.

  Moments later we were inside.

  I paused. Studied the mounds of garbage around me.

  We were in an area filled with discarded appliances—dishwashers, refrigerators, dryers, washing machines, ovens. Based on the number of units here compared to the population of Fort Atkinson, it was clear that this place had been the town’s landfill for a long time.

  The rusted appliances jutted up at odd angles from the piles of trash all around us, some half buried in garbage, some jumbled awkwardly on top of each other in precarious stacks. The area looked like an alien, garbage-strewn, metal-encrusted planet.

  Simply put, if Griffin was here, he could be almost anywhere.

  “What are you thinking, Pat?”

  “I’m thinking I hear a bulldozer.” I pointed across a mound of garbage to our right.

  A man was driving a dated bulldozer into the landfill, aiming it toward a giant mountain of garbage bags. I couldn’t make out the face of the driver, but from here his build looked too big for him to be Griffin.

  “You think that’s him?”

  I shook my head. “No. But go see if he’s noticed anyone. Then, get him out of here. I don’t want any civilians in the area. I’m going to have a look around here.”

  “Be careful.”

  “You too.”

  Gun out, Radar took off, picking his way over the garbage and carefully surveying the rotting landscape as he went.

  Occasional telephone poles rose at random intervals along the fence that Radar and I had just scaled. The poles had vapor lights, now off, and I imagined that they served to illuminate the perimeter of the dump at night to keep out scavengers that would undoubtedly be drawn here from the nearby forest looking for food—rats, skunks, raccoons, wild dogs that might dig under the fence, maybe even bears, rooting through the garbage.

  Around me, deep tread marks furrowed the ground from the bulldozers and earth movers that had pushed the remnants of people’s daily lives into the hills of refuse. Throughout the landfill were sporadic fires, and plumes of nascent gases were escaping through gaps in the mountains of trash.

  “Griffin!” I called. The word sounded thick, almost liquid. It was a strange effect and I wasn’t sure what caused it, but it was eerie and unsettling. “We’ve got this area surrounded.”

  It was partly true.

  That farmhouse was definitely surrounded.

  I proceeded through the cemetery of hulking appliances. Saw no movement. “We found that box under your steps. Thanks for selling the nursery rhyme book. That was helpful.”

  Does he know? Does he know it was you who found Mindy’s body?

  It was possible he might’ve found out I’d worked Jenna’s disappearance—he could have easily researched things after I’d visited him yesterday with Ralph, but I doubted he would have known that I was the one who’d found Mindy.

  The cuffs. The Oswald connection…

  “Did you consult with Isle—Seagirt—on the Oswald true crime book?”

  No answer.

  “Why do you call Mallory ‘baby,’ Timothy?” It took a little work to make sure my voice carried, but I made sure it did. “Is she the one you did all this for?”

  No reply. Just the faint sounds of garbage settling, the rumble of the bulldozer’s engine shutting down as Radar spoke with the operator.

  I came to a refrigerator. Held my gun steady. “How’d you get the jacket, Griffin?” I stepped quickly around it, leveling my weapon as I did. No one. “Did you know someone at the station? In the evidence room?”

  Snow started to fall. Lonely, rogue flakes wandering aimlessly through the stagnant air.

  As I was about to call out again, I heard a mound of garbage shift behind me and I spun to see what it was, but I was a fraction of a second too slow.

  Griffin had appeared from behind a chest freezer that was tilted on end. With his unmistakably scarred neck, his twisted grin, and a primal fire in his eyes, he looked like a rabid animal.

  He had a tire iron in his hands, had just cocked it back, and was swinging it violently toward my head.

  63

  I threw up my arm to take the brunt of the blow.

  He was strong for someone his size and the force of the impact against my forearm threw me off balance. I tumbled backward, tripped over an overstuffed garbage bag that lay behind me, and landed on the ground, but I was able to keep my gun directed at Griffin’s chest. “Drop the tire iron!”

  To my surprise, he did, then stood still, leering at me.

  “Hands up!”

  Again he obeyed, and I was kind of wishing he hadn’t, that he would have rushed me instead. I could have ended this whole thing on the spot.

  “The jacket,” he said. “I knew it was you.”

  “It was me, what?” Without taking the gun off him, I stood up.

  “With Mindy. You found her.” He grinned, and as he spoke, every word seemed to drip with venom. “Did you like seeing her like that? The way I left her? She was special to me. She was my first.”

  Hot anger coursed through me, tightening everything. “How did you know?”

  “Your name was in the papers. You think I didn’t keep clippings of the girls? And just a kid yourself, huh? Sixteen? How’s that been for you over the years? Detective?”

  I felt my finger pressing against the cool steel of the trigger. Just a little more pressure, just one twitch and he would be dead.

  Keep the demons at bay.

  “On your knees.” He was less than three meters away and didn’t move.

  “On your knees.” He didn’t comply.

  I was about to order him again, but I suddenly realized that I kind of hoped he would go for a weapon and give me an excuse to squeeze the trigger.

  “Were there others?” I kept my finger on the trigger. “Besides Jenna and Mindy?”

  “There are always others. You should know that, Detective.”

  “Who?”

  “I’m afraid that’s my little secret.”

  “Who is Slate Seagirt?”

  He smiled, but on him it wasn’t really a smile. “Oh, you’re gonna have a load of fun when you find that out.”

  “Who’s the Maneater of the Midwest?”

  “Now there’s a man who knows how to acquire what he wants. Does it for a living.”

  “Who is he?”

  He glanced to his left and then lowered his hands.

  “Hands up!”

  But he didn’t raise them. Instead, he flicked his right hand toward his jacket pocket and simultaneously his chest blossomed open like a grisly, bloody flower as the sound of three gunshots ricocheted through the air. He swayed limply forward and dropped face-first onto the garbage-strewn ground.

  Heart hammering, I looked over and saw Radar standing twenty-five meters away, his weap
on still level, his eyes still drawing a bead on where Griffin had stood only a moment earlier. We were virtually aiming our guns at each other. He’d managed to fire even before I could. We simultaneously lowered our weapons.

  “You okay, Pat?”

  “Yeah.”

  He’d hit Griffin center mass, just like we were taught at the academy. Textbook. And the shots did what they were supposed to do. They took the subject down.

  I didn’t think there was any way Griffin was alive, but I held my gun on him even as I bent, cuffed his hands behind him, felt for a pulse.

  “I had to fire.” Radar was on his way toward me. “He was reaching for a weapon.”

  “Yeah.” I wished Griffin had been able to tell me the Maneater’s identity—if he even knew it—but I doubted that he would have told us, even if Radar hadn’t fired.

  No pulse. Griffin was gone. I searched the pocket he’d been reaching for, but I found only his car keys. No weapon.

  I hesitated.

  “What is it?” Radar knelt beside me.

  “Hang on.”

  I checked his other jacket pockets, found nothing. Felt for a holster; he wasn’t wearing one.

  “Oh.” Radar caught on. “You’re not telling me…”

  “Wait.” At last, on the back of his belt, I found a sheath. Gloves on, I snapped it open and it yielded a serious-looking hunting knife.

  “He might have been going for this,” I said.

  But even as I spoke, a question rose inside me: from where Radar had been standing, could he have seen Griffin reaching for his pocket?

  Radar was quiet for a moment. “I got two kids, Pat. I can’t…I can’t, you know…”

  “Yeah.”

  The decision was easy. I wrapped Griffin’s fingers around the knife’s handle, then dropped it beside his body. “It’s a good thing you fired when you did, Radar.”

  He watched me silently.

  “He could have killed me if he got to me with that blade,” I said honestly.

  “Yeah, he could have.”

  It’s hard to say what justice really is. If it’s balancing the scales, then it’s a lot rarer than we like to think. Sometimes they can’t be balanced. Even by killing a person who deserves to die.