Opening Moves

by Steven James

  I stood.

  Part of me wished that Griffin hadn’t died so quickly, that he would have been injured instead and lain there suffering and begging and sputtering for breath. It wouldn’t have made up for what he did to those girls, but it would have at least been a step in the right direction.

  Radar was quiet. “Thank you.”

  “No. Thank you.”

  My nightmare from Sunday night came to mind again, but now there was an added moment in the dream where the man who was shoveling dirt into the shallow grave on top of the crying girl sealed in the sleeping bag looked at me. I saw his face, and it was Griffin. That grin, that uneven, self-satisfied grin.

  I could only imagine what special place in hell was reserved for guys like him.

  And actually, I have to admit, that thought did bring me a degree of satisfaction.

  Griffin lay dead in a pool of his own blood, facedown in the trash, the knife by his side, a small price tag dangling from the handle. And we left him like that, Radar and I did, as we walked back toward the house.

  64

  Mallory was okay.

  Griffin had hit her on the side of the head with the tire iron. I only had a bruised arm from where he’d smacked me, but the blow he’d delivered to her had knocked the girl out. Apparently, he’d left her unconscious in the house to make his escape. He must have assaulted her just before we arrived at the farmhouse, maybe when he saw our cars approaching.

  A Grade III concussion, but she would be alright.

  An ambulance had arrived at the scene while Radar and I were busy in the landfill looking for Griffin. The EMTs had already placed Mallory on a gurney and now they were wheeling her toward the ambulance. She was crying tiny childlike tears, and I didn’t know if it was because of grief over Timothy’s death or relief that he was finally out of her life for good.

  I said to the paramedics, “I need to speak with her for a moment.”

  At first they were resistant, but then Carver saw what was going on and waved for them to let me through. I would’ve gone anyway, but I appreciated his support.

  I leaned over Mallory, spoke as gently as I could. “Do you remember me? I was at your house yesterday, I’m Detective Bowers.”

  She nodded.

  “Did they tell you what happened to Timothy out here today?”

  She nodded again and this time sniffed back a tear, but I still couldn’t tell what emotion or state of mind was causing her to cry.

  “Mallory, do you know who Timothy got the police tape from? The tape from the murder in Illinois?”

  “The Maneater. He said the Maneater got it for him.”

  So Griffin did have information about his identity after all.

  “Do you know who that is? The Maneater?”

  She shook her head.

  I wasn’t sure how to put this, but finally just said it plainly: “Do you know what Timothy did to the girls?” She looked at me with a curious expression that was somehow also devoid of emotion. “He killed some little girls, Mallory.”

  She nodded slowly. Didn’t seem surprised.

  “Did you know that? Did you know anything about that?”

  She shook her head and I believed she was telling the truth.

  The EMTs looked at me impatiently. I held up a hand: just a few more seconds.

  Griffin had said there were more. That there are always more.

  “Mallory, can I ask you, when Agent Hawkins and I were at your house, Timothy touched a photograph on the wall. A picture of a woman. Do you remember that?”

  She gazed at me for a moment, then looked away as she nodded.

  “Who is that woman? Do you know her?”

  Mallory stopped crying. There was a long pause and it came to the point where I thought she might not answer at all. Finally, she said softly, “She was my mother. She was his wife.”

  And then she brushed off the last remaining tear and stared into space as they wheeled her into the ambulance.

  Mallory was not just Griffin’s lover.

  She was also his daughter.

  It was very possible that he had called her “baby” for more than one reason after all.

  I took a look in the farmhouse.

  Though the walls were charred and half of the roof was missing, there was still furniture inside. I’d seen photos of the interior of Dahmer’s apartment and I could tell where the furniture in this house had come from: these were the very things that were supposed to have been destroyed and dumped in an undisclosed landfill.

  Come to think of it, they may very well have been delivered as scheduled, only to be retrieved by Griffin and brought to this farmhouse down the road.

  It wasn’t just furniture. Griffin had set up the entire place to look as much as possible like the inside of Dahmer’s apartment, even down to the detail of having an altar with a skull and candles around it in the closet, just like the one Dahmer had built.

  And in the kitchen was the refrigerator where Jeffrey Dahmer had kept his meals.

  The coup de grâce for any demented collector of serial killer memorabilia.

  It was dusk before Radar and I were finally able to take off.

  He’d been involved in a lethal shooting in another jurisdiction, and it took several hours for us to fill out the paperwork and finish our debriefing with the chief of police and district attorney. However, honestly, no one was giving Radar a hard time. On the contrary, by the pats on the back and nods of encouragement from the other officers, it was clear they were glad he’d taken Griffin out.

  “Sergeant Walker fired just before you could?” the DA asked me in our interview.

  “Yes.”

  “And he had that knife with him, Griffin did?”

  “Yes. If Walker hadn’t taken the shot…” I let my voice trail off.

  “Griffin might have come at you with that knife.”

  “Yes.”

  “And your firearm? You had it unholstered? You were covering the suspect?”

  “That’s right, but Sergeant Walker responded before I was able to.”

  “It’s a good thing he was here, then.”

  “Yes. It is.”

  I showed him where I was standing when Griffin died, he noted it on his form and that was that.

  When I gazed again at the place Radar had been when he fired, I still couldn’t tell if the angle would have been right for him to see Griffin reaching for his pocket. Truthfully, I just couldn’t tell.

  At first, I thought I might ask him about it.

  But then, after a moment, I decided I would not.

  Finally, we left and jumped onto I-94 toward Milwaukee.

  There were still a number of things on my mind to take care of tonight: (1) find out if the other task force members had made any progress on the case of the man who’d fled the boxcar; (2) send someone to interview the city workers, Roger Kennedy and Dane Strickland, and find out if they were connected in any way to Griffin; (3) get an update from Dr. Werjonic on Slate Seagirt and what the true crime writer might know about the murder of Mindy Wells.

  65

  I drove.

  Radar sat beside me. Quiet. Reflective. I wondered what it was like for him right now. Lethal shootings by cops are much rarer than people think and I knew he’d never been involved with one before. I wondered if dropping that knife by the body should’ve bothered me more than it did.

  It was a hard question to answer.

  Since we’d rushed out of the department this morning right after my meeting with Dr. Werjonic, and then driven straight to Griffin’s place—and from there to the farmhouse by the landfill—Radar and I had both missed lunch. In fact, the only thing I’d eaten all day were the muffins and bananas I’d had at breakfast when Taci broke up with me.

  Not a memory I wanted to be carrying with me right now.

  I hadn’t even had any of Thompson’s cherry turnovers.

  My stomach could definitely tell.

  We stopped at a gas station that had a Subw
ay. I filled up the car while Radar grabbed us some foot-longs.

  We’d gone about another five miles before it occurred to me that I’d once again missed Dr. Werjonic’s afternoon seminar. This time, though, I figured I could get copies of the notes easily enough when I connected with him about Slate Seagirt.

  “So, how are you doing, Radar?”

  “Good.”

  I was no counselor by any stretch of the imagination, but it seemed like I should at least offer whatever help I could. “If you want to talk about…”

  “I’m good.”

  I drove for a bit. “You remember when Lyrie was involved in that shooting last year? The gang kid? He—”

  “I don’t need to talk to Padilla, Pat. I’m good.”

  I didn’t have to mention a name. Radar knew right away I’d been talking about our police chaplain.

  A pause. “Right.”

  We continued down the highway as darkness spread across the countryside. It was almost ten minutes before Radar spoke again. “Do you believe in hell, Pat?”

  “Hell?”

  “Yeah. For people like Griffin.”

  “You know, when we were back there, I was thinking to myself that there’s gotta be a place set aside down there for guys like him. I’m not sure if I believe in a literal fire and brimstone hell, but for people like Griffin I sure hope one exists. What about you?”

  “I believe there’ll be a reckoning.”

  “A reckoning? You mean like Judgment Day?”

  “I guess so.” He didn’t go on right away. “I guess because I believe that both love is real, and so is justice.”

  I thought I could see where he was going with this. “You’re saying justice doesn’t always happen in this life. People get away with rape, murder, whatever, so—”

  “Yeah. So if there’s no hell, there’s no final justice in the universe, not really. It’d mean those people just commit their crimes and then die like everyone else. If justice exists, if it’s more than just wishful thinking—”

  “There must be a hell.”

  “Yeah, or a reckoning, or whatever, and if there’s no heaven, there’s no hope, no victory; we would all just die and be gone. Love wouldn’t win in the end.”

  I’d never thought of it quite like that, but what he said rang true to me. “So you think, Griffin, he went there? To hell?”

  “I think he deserved to.” It wasn’t quite a direct answer. I thought maybe he would go on, but he left it at that and, though his words made me curious, so did I.

  Then he was silent and I was silent and we drove toward police headquarters so he could pick up his car and go home to his wife and kids. And I could get back to work.

  66

  The only other person Joshua had ever heard speak of the Vaniad, the blood oath of the Teutonic Warrior, was James Oswald, a man who reminded him so much of his own father.

  Joshua didn’t know what the oath was exactly, his father had mentioned it but never shared it with him. Perhaps he would have gotten around to it if Joshua had not buried him alive.

  However, Joshua did know that breaking the oath was tantamount to treason to those who’d taken it. His father had made that much clear to him. And in a press conference after his arrest, James Oswald vilified his son, Ted, for supposedly breaking the oath.

  The mention of the Vaniad by James Oswald back in 1994 was what had first interested Joshua in his case. Heather Isle’s book about Ted and James had been helpful in his research too. The more he found out about the relationship of the father and son, the more his interest was piqued. That was why he’d chosen to end this week’s saga at the bank in Wales where they’d committed their final robbery.

  Earlier today when he’d gone by the bank, he’d almost been able to picture where SWAT would set up their command center, where the media vans would position themselves to do their remotes.

  After leaving the bank, he’d rented the moving truck and had it delivered to the department store parking lot, where it was waiting for him.

  Now, Joshua thought about tomorrow.

  He had the funeral to attend at noon and then he could swing by the department store for the item he would be delivering to police headquarters. Then he would go to the school to pick up the children.

  After he’d gotten them out of the school, he would deliver the package—something that would certainly be enough to convince the officer he had in mind to do as he was told.

  And finally, at dusk, everything would culminate with Joshua’s final ransom demand being met, live on national TV.

  With traffic, the trip to headquarters was slower than it should have been and it was 5:42 p.m. before I finally pulled into my parking spot in the underground garage.

  “Hey, listen,” I said to Radar, “I think I’m going to meet up with Ralph later tonight, have a couple beers, process things. You’re welcome to join us.”

  “Yeah, I think I’ll pass. I just need to get home.”

  “Right, well, listen, you did good out there.”

  He opened his door to leave, but then stopped short and looked at me, his eyes intense, searching. “Would you have done it?”

  “Done it?”

  “Fired. If you were standing where I was. If you saw what I did.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that; I didn’t know what he’d seen. “Of course.”

  “Thanks.”

  “For?”

  “Finding that knife on his belt.”

  Again I wasn’t sure how to respond. “Yeah.”

  Then he exited the car and walked silently across the parking garage toward his Jeep.

  When I reached my desk, I found a voice message from Dr. Werjonic that he was hoping we might be able to meet for dinner. Ralph had also left me a note asking me to call him so he could take me out for that beer he’d promised me this morning.

  I was still digesting the sub, but my hunger wasn’t completely satiated and I figured I could manage eating again in an hour or so. Make up for that missed lunch.

  Ralph left a number. I called it and found out it was the Overnite Motel, one of the cheapest motels on this side of the city. A federal employee who was actually saving taxpayers’ money. Imagine that.

  He wasn’t there, but I left a message with the front desk for him to call me. Then I dialed Dr. Werjonic, who picked up immediately. Before we could get to discussing any dinner plans, I asked him about his meeting with Slate.

  “Oh, it was quite interesting as a matter of fact. I’m anxious to tell you about it. But over dinner. Yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m afraid, however, that I’m not too familiar with your city. Everywhere I turn, I see another bar serving beer, burgers, and bratwurst. Unfortunately, that’s not exactly my cuisine of choice.”

  “I know just the place to go—Tanner’s Pub. It has one of the largest selections of single malt whiskey outside of Britain.”

  “You don’t say?”

  “And fish and chips like you wouldn’t believe. It used to be a speakeasy.”

  “Hmm…like the Safe House?”

  The Safe House is a famous restaurant in downtown Milwaukee, situated halfway down a dingy alley across the street from the Pabst Theater. You have to know where it is because there’s a secret entrance and you need to tell them the password to get in. The place is themed around spy memorabilia. If it has anything to do with espionage, it’ll be on the walls of the Safe House.

  “Atmosphere is completely different,” I told Calvin. “Instead of a 007 motif, Tanner’s is more like…well, I guess, more like a corner pub in London.”

  “Brilliant.”

  I was telling him the location when Ralph returned my call on the other line. “Hang on a second, Calvin.”

  A little phone shuffling and it was all set up—the three of us would meet at Tanner’s. They’d get together in thirty minutes and, since I’d been gone most of the day and needed to catch up a little here at my desk, I’d join them as soon as I could,
hopefully within the hour.

  When we spoke, Ralph told me to check his workspace, that there was a pile of manila folders there. “The Oswald case files you wanted from Detective Browning over at the Waukesha county sheriff’s department. And you’re not gonna believe this: they were hand delivered by Browning himself.”

  Well, that was unexpected.

  “There’s a video too,” he went on, “of footage from archived news coverage of the case. Some interesting stuff in there. We’ll talk.”

  On my desk, Thorne had left me a copy of Heather Isle’s (or Slate Seagirt’s, as the case might’ve been) true crime book about the Oswalds, entitled The Spawn.

  I hung up the phone, and, after calling Ellen to ask her to find the sanitation workers Dane Strickland and Roger Kennedy and ask them about their relationship with Timothy Griffin, I found the files Ralph had told me about, flipped open the top folder, and began to read.

  67

  During the day the Maneater had been busy with other obligations at work and hadn’t been able to spend time with Celeste, but now at last he returned to her.

  She was still alive.

  That pleased him.

  Last night, before any of this, as they walked through the door to her apartment, she’d offered to give him, as she put it, “Perfumed whispers and sweet laughter, a night wrapped in melodies and dreams and fantasies finally coming true.”

  “It’s from a poem,” she explained with a half-inebriated smile. “I learned it for this one class in college and never forgot it. Not even once.”

  “That’s impressive,” he’d told her.

  As it turned out, fantasies really had come true last night. And now, as he took her to the pen where the cattle used to be slaughtered back when Brantner Meats was still in business, he was confident they were about to come true all over again.

  But not with perfumed whispers and sweet laughter.

  No. Other sounds altogether.

  68