Son of a Gun (A David and Martin Yerxa Thriller - Book 2)

by Ed Markham

  “That figures,” Martin said. “His attorney will make plenty of noise for him, but that’s not our problem. Did we get a blood sample from Ganther yet?”

  “Sure did,” Omar said. “But it’ll take a day or two before we’ll know if there’s a match with the DNA we have from the Stephenson murder.”

  “Let’s make sure it’s the former,” Martin said.

  Omar nodded. “It will be.”

  “What about Matt Crawford?” David asked him.

  “He should be here any minute. The lineup’s ready for him now.”

  David thanked him and said, “Let me know when he gets here.”

  When Omar had left the room, David retrieved his laptop from his briefcase. He opened the electronic file on Ian Ganther, and then closed the door to the office.

  “I’m going to try Ganther’s son,” he said.

  Martin flashed him a waist-high thumbs up and began to pace along one side of the room, looking on as his son dialed the FBI’s switchboard.

  “I need a secure call to the following number,” David said into his cell. He read Ian Ganther’s number to the Bureau’s operator. The line rang a few times, and eventually his call was transferred to voicemail. An electronic voice read back the number he’d dialed and asked for him to please leave a message. He identified himself and asked for a call back, giving the number for the Quantico switchboard. If Ian called back, he would be forwarded to David’s cell.

  “No answer,” Davis said to his father.

  “We going to send some people over there?” Martin asked.

  He thought for a moment. “Not yet. No reason to unless he doesn’t get back to us. If we don’t hear from him tonight, we’ll go looking for him.”

  David heard a knock on the office door, and Omar leaned in.

  “The kid’s here,” he said.

  David and Martin followed him down the fourth floor corridor to a reception room. There, Matt Crawford stood with his father’s hands on his shoulders, looking wide-eyed and wired.

  “Mr. Crawford,” David said, extending a hand to the boy’s father. “And Matt,” he said, shaking the boy’s hand. “I’m David Yerxa, and this is my father, Martin Yerxa. We spoke on the phone.” When Ryan nodded, he added, “We’re running the Bureau side of this investigation. Thanks for coming in.”

  The boy shuffled his feet and looked from David to Martin. “So you, like, work with your dad? Like a team?”

  “That’s right,” David said. He glanced at Ryan Crawford and added, “Sounds pretty terrible, huh?”

  Matt suppressed a smile and looked up at his own father, who smiled back at him.

  “So,” Ryan Crawford said, gripping his son’s shoulders. “How does this work? If Matt can identify this man you have in custody, will he have to testify in court? Because I talked with my wife, and that’s really not okay with either of us. We want to help in any way we can, but we’re not willing to put our son’s safety at risk.”

  “I understand where you’re coming from, and the answer is no,” David said, shaking his head. “We’ll have a legal record of Matt’s statements and lineup report. That’s all we should need. His name won’t ever be part of any public record, and he won’t be identified in court, should this result in a trial.”

  Ryan Crawford’s features relaxed, and he patted his son’s shoulders. “That’s a relief.”

  David took a seat in one of the reception room’s chairs and motioned for Matt and his father to sit down across from him.

  “Let me explain how this works,” he said. “Matt, you’ve seen a police lineup in the movies, right?”

  The boy nodded. “Yeah. The Usual Suspects.”

  “Exactly. Good movie. But things are a little different these days. We still call it a lineup, but you won’t see a bunch of people file into a room. You’re going to go sit at a computer with a woman who works for my team at the FBI. She’s going to show you some pictures of different people. I want you to look at each one of those people really carefully. Take your time, there’s no rush at all. If one of them is the person you saw in the woods, you tell her about it. If not, that’s fine too. We need you to be really sure, okay?”

  Matt nodded his head.

  David wished he could tell the boy that Ganther wouldn’t have a beard, but he wasn’t allowed to provide that type of information.

  He turned to Matt’s father. “Unfortunately, we can’t let you sit with your son while he looks at the photographs.”

  “That’s fine,” Crawford said. He looked at Matt and smiled reassuringly, and then his eyes moved to the corridor on the other side of the reception room.

  David turned and looked with him. He saw a man and a woman standing alongside Omar. He recognized them as the Pennsylvania State Police detectives he’d met upon his arrival at the holding facility. They were the local law enforcement agents assigned to investigate the disappearance of Joshua Grow—the missing Rosemont boy whose parents, the real estate agents, David and Martin had met with the previous morning.

  Omar nodded to David. “We’re all set whenever Matt’s ready.”

  David turned to the boy. “What do you think, Matt? You ready?”

  He nodded. “Totally.”

  David smiled at him. “Then let’s go.”

  Chapter 37

  THE WOMAN WHO shook Matt’s hand was African American and very tall.

  Taller than my dad, Matt thought as she introduced herself to him.

  “Hi, Matt. I’m Cressa Sparks.”

  She wore slate-gray slacks and a red blouse, and Matt thought her perfume smelled a little like cinnamon.

  She smiled, and Matt smiled back at her. He liked her immediately.

  Cressa nodded over his head at the investigators, and they left Matt alone with her in the small office room.

  Despite Cressa’s height, Matt felt calmer now that he was alone with her and not with the FBI agents, his father, and the other detectives.

  The room was compact and carpeted, and held a single desk and two chairs. There was a large computer monitor on the desk, along with a keyboard, a mouse, and a microphone. On either side of the desk, two video cameras were perched on top of tripods.

  When Cressa closed the office door, the voices down the hall immediately fell silent, as though the room were soundproof.

  “Want to sit down over here with me?” she asked.

  Matt nodded and took a seat at the desk. She sat down next to him and logged into the computer.

  “How’re you doing?” she said, turning to smile at him again. “You ready for this?”

  He nodded.

  She delivered the instructions slowly and purposefully, making sure he was following her as she went. “In a minute I’m going to show you a series of photographs of different people. I want you to look at each one of these photographs very carefully. We can go through them as quickly or as slowly as you’d like. When you’re done looking at a photograph and you want to move on to the next one, just say, next, or, keep going. You can also say go back. We can go through them as many times as you want to. Do you understand?”

  Matt nodded again.

  “As you look at the photographs, I want you to tell me anything about them that comes to mind. Anything at all.” She smiled and added, “I’m not allowed to say one word to you while you look at the pictures, Matt. Not one word. I can’t even nod or smile because that could interfere with the way you feel about the photographs. But I’ll be paying real close attention the whole time. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” Matt said. “Are we being video taped?”

  “Yes we are,” she said. She pointed at the cameras on the tripods. “This way the agents and detectives will have a record of everything you tell me about the photographs.”

  “Okay,” Matt said.

  “You all ready to go?”

  “Uh huh.”

  Cressa smiled reassuringly and turned to the computer screen. She manipulated the mouse, and suddenly a man’s face appear
ed on a slate-blue background.

  Matt looked at the picture carefully. The man’s hair was dark and he was beardless, and Matt had never seen him before in his life. Still, he took some time to examine the man’s features—his nose and eyes and ears—just to be sure.

  “I haven’t seen this guy before,” Matt said. “I’m sure this isn’t him.”

  He looked at the photograph for another few seconds before realizing Cressa was waiting for him to say next. “Oh, sorry,” he said. “Next one please.”

  She pressed a button on the keyboard and the picture changed.

  Matt saw the next picture was of the same man, but this time his face was turned slightly to one side.

  “Next,” he said again.

  Now the face was different; this man had lighter hair and a short-cropped beard. He also looked a little younger than the first man.

  After looking at the photo for a few seconds, Matt said, “Next.”

  They moved through three more pictures before he saw something familiar. “Wait,” he said, even though he knew Cressa wouldn’t keep going until he said “Next.”

  The man who stared back at him had blonde hair and dark eyes buried in the middle of his face. He didn’t have a beard, but he looked like someone Matt had seen.

  The boy leaned forward in his chair, looking at the man’s face and trying to compare it in his mind to the man he’d seen in the woods. In his head, the faces started to slip together and merge. He closed his eyes, trying to keep them separate.

  “Next,” he said, and opened his eyes. He wanted to see another picture of the man.

  A new photograph appeared showing the same person in profile. Matt looked at the photo for a long time, then he said, “Go back.” He rested his head in his hands as he looked at the picture of James Ganther.

  “This looks like the guy I saw in the woods, but I don’t think it’s him,” he said to Cressa. “They just look a lot alike. The man I saw had a beard, but even if this guy had a beard it wouldn’t be him. This guy looks older, and something about his face isn’t right.”

  Matt tried to picture the eyes of the man in the photograph smiling at him the way the eyes of the man carrying Carson Affeldt in the woods had smiled. He felt a shudder roll up his back.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “This could be him I guess, but I don’t think it is. I’m sorry. I could be wrong.”

  He was quiet again for a few seconds.

  “It’s really close, but I don’t think this is the right guy.”

  Chapter 38

  STANDING ALONGSIDE HIS father and the two Pennsylvania State Police detectives, David watched as Matt Crawford reviewed the photographs of James Ganther.

  The room was very quiet apart from the labored inhalations and exhalations of the male PSP detective, whose breath sounded as though it had to fight its way out of his large body. The man was hulking and red-faced, and he’d smiled at David’s informal attire as he’d introduced himself as “Detective Kerrigan.”

  His colleague from the PSP, Gina Carr, was stocky and middle-aged, and looked at her partner as though he was a mischievous child she had to keep tabs on.

  When Matt said, “This could be him I guess, but I don’t think it is,” Kerrigan shattered the silence in the room with a large groan. “Oh come on, kid, what the fuck is that?”

  David tried to ignore him. He kept his eyes on Matt, still listening.

  He knew the doubt the boy had expressed had instantly wiped out most of his usefulness as a witness—at least in any legal sense. But since Ganther had shaved his beard, whichever federal prosecutor the DOJ assigned to the case could argue that Ganther’s change in appearance had thrown the boy off.

  At least, that’s what David was thinking when Matt said, “I don’t think that’s the right guy.”

  “Beautiful,” Kerrigan said. “Fucking beautiful.”

  Carr turned to her partner. “Would you shut up, Brian.”

  Martin said, “That doesn’t prove Ganther’s not involved.”

  David stepped back from the viewing monitor. He settled his hands on his waist as he looked out of the window at the surrounding buildings.

  “That’s true,” Carr said. “It’s possible the kid just didn’t recognize him without the beard.”

  “Where’d you dig up Ganther anyway?” Kerrigan asked, loudly. He spoke like a man who’d just turned away from a crowded bar with a beer in his hand. “I mean, how’d he turn up on our radar for this?”

  “Seventies cold case,” Martin said. “Similar MO and victim profile. Same geography.”

  “You’re shitting me?” Kerrigan said, his expression growing skeptical. “How many back then?”

  “Four.”

  Kerrigan opened his mouth to ask more questions, but David cut him off.

  “Any updates on the Grows?” he asked, speaking to Gina Carr.

  She nodded. “We had Rosemont Police conduct interviews with other families in the neighborhood. A woman down the street, Avery Robens, said her son was pretty adamant he’d walked home with Joshua Grow the evening he disappeared. The Robens boy, Evan, said he bumped into Josh on his way home from soccer practice and was with him until he walked up his driveway and into his back yard. Evan can’t confirm whether Josh made it inside.”

  “How can the Robens kid be so sure about the date?” Martin asked.

  Carr said, “I wondered that myself. Avery Robens told us her son is usually home much earlier, but he had some kind of after-school recital practice on that Tuesday—the day Josh disappeared.”

  David looked at his father, and Martin said, “Grow’s parents told us they were home and had dinner ready by six-thirty, so they couldn’t have missed him if he made it inside.” He paused. “That doesn’t mean Joshua didn’t double back for some reason after he split up with Robens, or decide to just keep walking into the woods behind his house.”

  “Who knows?” Carr said. “He could’ve heard his parents arguing and decided to stay away for awhile. There are lots of ways to explain it.”

  David asked her, “You’re still searching the properties the Grows were trying to sell around that time?”

  Carr began to answer, but Kerrigan interjected. “Yeah, and thanks for that fucking chore, by the way. You know how much paperwork we’ve had to do to get search warrants for all those places? We’re talking like thirty houses. And we don’t even have a solid lead—just your guess work.”

  “Jesus, stop whining, Brian,” Carr said. She scowled at him before turning to David. “We’re about half-way through our list. We started with the vacant lots, like you requested. We have a few more of those to check out.”

  “Thank you,” David said to her, not looking at Kerrigan. “I know it’s a lot of work, but the impression the parents gave us when we spoke to them was pretty unsettling.”

  Carr nodded. “I know what you mean. It wasn’t so apparent right after the boy’s disappearance. But speaking to them now, their reactions definitely seem off.”

  “Off?” Kerrigan said, almost chortling. “They’re fucking nut bars. Whack jobs. I’d bet my pension they know where their kid is.”

  Martin glared at him. “So why are you bitching about these searches?”

  Kerrigan’s smile faded, and he pursed his lips. “Just busting your chops a little. That’s all.”

  Still ignoring Kerrigan, David said to Carr, “Tread lightly with the Grows until you find something concrete. I’m sure you’ve been at this long enough to know things don’t always turn out the way you expect.”

  “Yeah, okay,” Kerrigan said, shaking his head.

  Carr nodded to David. “We’ll be tactful.”

  As she spoke, Omar appeared in the doorway to the monitoring room. “Crawford’s back with his dad. Can we cut them loose?”

  “Yes. I’ll come out and thank them,” David said.

  “All right,” Omar said. “Also, it’s 5:15. You can question Ganther anytime now.”

  Chapter 39


  CARSON AFFELDT STOOD at one end of the air hockey table, felt-bottomed paddle in hand, and slammed the plastic puck down the “ice.” It ricocheted off the boards and then off the unmanned paddle blocking the opposing goal. It drifted back to him and he shot again, purposely trying to miss the open goal on either side of the paddle.

  He was alone. He had been alone all day.

  At his back, the movie Finding Nemo was playing on the television. Carson normally wouldn’t have been caught dead watching animated kids stuff like that. But his sense of loneliness had grown overwhelming, and he’d wanted to watch something colorful and lighthearted—something familiar, in every sense of the word. He’d watched the movie a dozen times with his parents when he was younger, and he’d loved it. He still loved it, if he was honest about it. And for a while he’d felt a little better watching the silly fish he knew so well. But then he’d seen the lobsters his father got a kick out of, and he’d wondered whether he’d ever hear his dad laugh again. He’d wandered over to the air hockey table, feeling even more alone than he had before.

  Now he slapped at the air hockey puck, wishing Josh were around to play with. The kid was weird; there was no doubt about that. But right now Carson would have given almost anything to see the other boy, weird or not.

  Thinking of Josh reminded Carson of the writing on the two-by-four in the bathroom—Mark Stephenson’s scrawled statement about not trusting the other boy. Again, Carson wished he could talk to Mark Stephenson just so he would know how the other boy got out of this stupid basement—how it all turned out.

  He’d returned to the bathroom several times to look for hidden messages or some other sign of the boy he didn’t know but felt was his brother in misery. He’d found none. He’d also looked for a way out of the basement.

  He knew his own house had window wells around its foundation that peered down into the cellar. And so—after working up the courage—he’d quietly taken all of the books and comics out of the bookshelf and had carried it around so he could climb it and poke the top of his head and his eyes above the foam ceiling panels, looking for window light. He’d gone around the entire room, but he’d been rewarded with nothing but visions of blackness, dirt, and cobwebs. Eventually he’d put the bookcase back and carefully replaced all of its contents, not wanting to risk the man upstairs finding out about what he’d done.