[Martin Rhodes 01.0] Close Your Eyes

by Thomas Fincham

  A minivan was parked in the driveway.

  Someone’s home, Jo thought as she got out of the car.

  Crowder was with her. “When was the last time you pulled out your weapon?” Jo asked him.

  He shrugged. “I can’t remember.”

  Jo was not pleased by his response. Crowder probably had not fired his weapon in years. She would have to be even more vigilant as they approached the house.

  They went up the steps and rang the bell. Jo kept her hand on her weapon. Crowder did the same, but she could tell he was just doing it because of her.

  The door opened and a woman poked her head out. “Can I help you?”

  “Is this James Salley’s house?” Jo asked.

  “Yes, it is,” the woman replied.

  “Is Mr. Salley home?”

  “He’s on the back porch.”

  Jo flashed her credentials. Crowder fumbled for his badge.

  “Is Jim in trouble?” the woman asked. “I’m his wife.”

  “No, we would just like to ask him a few questions.”

  “Give me a minute.” She disappeared into the house and then returned and said, “You can go around to the back. The side door is open.”

  Jo and Crowder went through a narrow path and found James Salley seated on a lawn chair with a beer bottle in his hand. He had a buzz-cut hairstyle and was clean shaven. He wore a large sweatshirt, white khaki pants, and black military boots.

  “James Salley?” Jo asked.

  “That’s me,” he replied. He did not get up to greet them. “My wife just told me you guys wanted to ask me some questions. What is this about?”

  Jo pulled out two photos and showed them to him. “Do you know them?”

  Salley squinted at them. “No. Should I?”

  “They worked at the Bridgeton Mental Care Institute when you were a patient there.”

  A smile crossed Salley’s face. “Is this about the bodies on the train?”

  Jo glanced at Crowder. They locked eyes for a brief moment. She then turned back to Salley. “So you’re familiar with the case?”

  “Only what I see on the news.”

  “Did you know them?” Jo asked.

  He sighed. “I may have seen them when I was at the institute, but I can’t be sure. I was on some serious medication.”

  “Why were you at BMCI?”

  “After my tour ended in Iraq, I had a mental breakdown. I was diagnosed with severe PTSD. I thought the government would take care of me, but they did shit-all. They referred me to some group that helped veterans up in Montana. I spoke to them a few times on the phone, but I was too messed up to make the trip. My wife—she was my girlfriend at the time—paid for my visit to BMCI. She saved my life. Once I started feeling better, I proposed to her right away. We now have two beautiful kids.”

  Jo said, “Can someone confirm your whereabouts for the past couple of days?”

  He frowned. “I guess so. I went to work and I came home. You talk to my supervisor, and my wife will vouch for me.”

  “Do you use the subway?”

  “I drive,” Salley replied. “I drop the kids off at school and take the minivan to work. My wife takes the bus. But no, I don’t take the train.”

  “Can you give us your supervisor’s number?” Jo asked.

  “I have his card in the house. Let me go get it.”

  He stood up quickly.

  Jo and Crowder reached for their guns. Salley raised his hands. “Whoa, take it easy. I’m not armed.” He slowly put the beer bottle down.

  Jo relaxed. “Sorry, force of habit.”

  He walked to the door with a slight limp.

  “What’s wrong with your leg?” Crowder asked.

  He pulled up his pant leg, revealing a prosthetic. “Why do you think I was taking medication? After I lost my leg, I thought I was incomplete. It took a lot of therapy and my wife’s love to make me realize that losing a limb didn’t define who I was.”

  The killer does not walk with a limp, Jo thought.

  Salley was not the one they were looking for.

  “We’re sorry to take your time, Mr. Salley,” Jo said.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  Rhodes was in a small office in the back of the pizza shop. Next to him was the owner: a short, balding, heavyset man.

  When Rhodes had come in with the kid, the owner denied having anything to do with him. Hearing this, the kid started to cry. He must have realized he was on his own and that he would be going to jail.

  The kid begged to be let go. He wanted to go home to his mother. Rhodes felt sorry for him. He was still a teenager, after all.

  The owner, on the other hand, did not budge. He kept saying he had nothing to with the kid.

  Rhodes found himself in a difficult position. He offered the owner an alternative. “Okay, if you give me access to your shop’s security footage, I will forget what just happened. The kid can go on dealing, and I won’t show my face at this establishment again.”

  The owner had quickly nodded.

  “How far back do you want to go?” one of the owner’s employees asked.

  Rhodes gave him the date Reed’s phone had sent its last signal.

  “I don’t know if we can go back that far.”

  “Go check,” the owner said.

  The employee left.

  The owner smiled at Rhodes, exposing a gold tooth. “I’m sure we have what you’re looking for.”

  “I hope so,” Rhodes replied.

  “We will, we will. I never throw videos out,” the owner assured him. “The people I deal with can’t be trusted.” Rhodes knew he was referring to other drug dealers and drug addicts. “If any of them got any bright ideas, or try to steal from me, then I have them on tape. You know what I’m saying, right?”

  Rhodes nodded.

  “And if I give you the video you want, you will forget about our misunderstanding, right?”

  “Yes,” Rhodes replied.

  The owner turned to the kid. “No hard feelings, okay? This is business, you know.”

  The kid did not say anything. Rhodes could tell he was thinking about how quickly the owner was willing to throw him under the bus. Rhodes hoped the kid had learned a lesson and would change his career path.

  The employee returned. He was sweating and out of breath. He held a VHS tape in one hand. “I found it,” he said.

  The owner turned and gave Rhodes a smile. “I told you we had it.”

  The employee popped the tape in a player and let it run. The security system was vintage 1990s. All VHS, no DVD. The employee had to fast-forward the tape through hours of footage until he reached the section Rhodes was interested in viewing.

  Rhodes glanced at his watch.

  The owner said, “You’re not a police officer, right?”

  Rhodes shook his head.

  “You should think about becoming one. You have the look of a police officer.”

  “I’ll think about it,” Rhodes replied dryly.

  The employee stopped the tape and played it at normal speed.

  Rhodes saw the front of the shop. There were several people lounging by the windows, but one stood out. He was wearing a long T-shirt and baggy jeans. His hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and he wore a heavy gold chain around his neck. A phone was in his hand, and he looked agitated as he paced back and forth.

  The last signal from Reed’s phone had come from the pizza shop. The punk had to be the one Rhodes was looking for.

  He disappeared from view, returning a short time later. He then went inside for a few minutes and reemerged, holding a slice of pizza and a can of pop. He took a bite and left.

  “Rewind it,” Rhodes said.

  The punk reversed back into the shop, came out empty handed, disappeared, and then reappeared a few seconds later by the front windows.

  “Play it,” Rhodes ordered.

  Rhodes watched the footage again in normal speed.

  “Stop it right there,” he said.

 
; Rhodes shoved his hand in his coat pocket. The owner and his employee jumped in their seats. They let out a sigh of relief when Rhodes pulled out a piece of paper. He checked something on it and then focused on the TV monitor.

  There was a running clock at the bottom of the screen. The time the punk had gone to order pizza was around the same time Reed’s phone had lost its signal, give or take one minute.

  The punk had just disposed of the phone. Rhodes was now most likely staring at the man who had killed Reed Yates.

  FORTY-EIGHT

  Rhodes walked out of the pizza shop with not only a photo of the suspect but also his name. Alfonso Guzman was a small-time drug dealer who sometimes bought his supplies from the pizza owner.

  Guzman owned a barbershop at the other end of the city, which was way out of the pizza shop’s distribution zone, but the pizza owner did not mind wholesaling drugs to a competitor. All he cared about was the almighty dollar.

  Now Rhodes was stuck in a dilemma. If he gave the name and photo to Tim Yates or Detective Crowder, they would want to know how he got it. This meant he would have to tell them about the pizza shop. Rhodes had given his word to the owner that he would not mention the shop in exchange for the information he just received.

  Rhodes detested having to make deals with drug dealers. But I did it to capture a murderer, he told himself. The police had had no breaks and Rhodes was no longer working within the confines of the law. He did not have to follow policies or procedures. He was a consultant, as Tim Yates had called him. He was hired to do a job, and that was to find who was responsible for Reed’s murder.

  It was not Rhodes’s job to arrest the killer, nor did he have any authority to do so. It was his job to point the police or his employer, Yates, in the right direction, and right now it was pointing to Alfonso Guzman.

  There was another problem that prevented Rhodes from going to either Yates or the police. He did not have any substantial evidence linking Guzman to Reed’s murder. He had him at the location but nothing more. Even if Crowder brought Guzman in for questioning, he could deny any involvement in the crime.

  What if it was not Reed’s phone in Guzman’s hand? What if the real killer had disposed of the phone and Guzman found it? What if Guzman had bought the phone on the black market, not knowing who it had belonged to? There were too many what-ifs.

  When Rhodes returned to the Malibu, Tess said, “Did you find what you were looking for?”

  “I did and I didn’t,” he replied, sticking the key in the ignition.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I have the information, but I don’t know if I can use it.”

  “Okay, so are we, like, back to square one?”

  “Not exactly.”

  He put the car in gear.

  “Where are we going?”

  “I want to check out something.”

  FORTY-NINE

  When Jo and Crowder returned to the office, they found Tarik and Irina waiting for them.

  “How’d it go?” Tarik asked.

  “Nothing,” Jo replied. “James Salley was a dead-end. Did you find anything on Joshua Havelen?”

  “We did, but you’re not going to like it,” Tarik replied. “After Havelen left BMCI, there is no record of him, at least not in the U.S. We were able to find a nine-year-old police report from the Mexican authorities that a car belonging to Havelen was found in the Mexican state of Chihuahua, across the border from Texas.”

  Irina said, “I then spoke to US Customs and Border Protection, and they confirmed there is a record of Havelen crossing through the border at Fort Hancock, Texas and into El Porvenir, Chihuahua, but they have no record anywhere of Havelen returning to the U.S.”

  Jo frowned. “So he might still be in Mexico.”

  “Looks like it,” Tarik said.

  “This means he might not be our suspect,” Jo said.

  “That’s why I said you won’t like what we found.”

  Jo sat down at her desk and rubbed her temples.

  “We did, however, speak to Ken Lieberman,” Tarik said.

  Jo looked up. “Who?”

  “The patient who was close to three-hundred pounds.”

  “And?”

  “Lieberman is divorced and single. In fact, I think he was lonely. He was more than willing to speak to us. We asked him about Silvio Tarconi and Natasha Wedham. Lieberman said he remembered them. They were never mean or abusive to him, but they were mean to Mathias Lotta.”

  “He was the one in the car accident, right?” Jo asked.

  “Yep. According to Lieberman, Lotta was a nice kid. He wasn’t sure why he ended up at the institute in the first place. He was so young. He kept to himself and he only ever spoke to Havelen. I guess they both were teenagers, so they hit it off.”

  “I’m not sure how this helps us.” Jo felt a headache coming on. “One is dead and the other has disappeared to Mexico.”

  FIFTY

  The camera was pointed at Ellen as the male talk show host asked his next question. “Ellen, why do you think the Train Killer chose to contact you?”

  Ever since Ellen had discovered the second victim, she had sort of become a celebrity in Bridgeton. Her producer, Miles, was not happy she had kept her conversation with the killer from him. But he knew reprimanding her would not be a smart move. For one thing, more people were now tuning into her segments. Naturally, Dan Ferguson was quickly pushed aside, but it was not Miles’s decision. It was his boss’s. She now wanted to make Ellen the face of the evening news.

  Ellen paused, giving her best smile for the camera, and said, “I don’t know why, really. I hope it’s because I am truthful in my reporting.”

  The talk show was on the same network, so her superiors thought it would be a boost to ratings if they had her do the rounds on all their affiliate programs. Ellen knew they were using her. But what they did not realize was that she was using them too. She was getting her name out.

  Before the Train Killings, only a small portion of Bridgeton knew who she was or what she did. Now they knew her by only one name: Ellen. She hoped to one day have her own show, where she and other reporters investigated hard-hitting topics. She wanted to be taken seriously, and nothing was more serious than covering a serial killer.

  The host said, “When do you think the killer will contact you next?”

  She wished she had an answer. So far, the killer had used her as a puppet to get his sick and twisted message across. She did not mind being a mouthpiece, but she wanted to have some control over the message.

  She paused again, as if she was contemplating the question, and said, “I hope the killer never contacts me.” This was a lie. She was praying for the call every day. “This means that there won’t be any more victims,” she continued.

  The truth was that viewers wanted more dead bodies. The more sensational the crime, the more people craved it. This was not her fault. Society was depraved. She just reported what was happening around her.

  “I also hope that the police are able to capture this evil person,” she said.

  The killer had been a Godsend. Without him, she would still be fighting for stories.

  Plus, she was now more popular than Janie Fernandez. This was more satisfying than anything else.

  The show ended. Ellen quickly moved away from the stage. She had no interest in chit-chatting with the host.

  Her cell phone buzzed.

  The number was blocked.

  She answered the call. “Ellen Sheehan.”

  “I enjoyed your interview,” the voice on the other end said.

  Ellen’s back arched. It was the same deep voice of the killer. He must have been watching the show, she thought.

  “Why are you calling me?” she said, but then realized it might have come across as too harsh.

  “I’m calling to tell you there will be another dead body.”

  “I’m not interested in playing your games,” she said.

  There was silence. Then the vo
ice said, “I hope you realize there are others who would kill to be in your position right now. In fact, you should be grateful to me for what I’ve done for your career.”

  “You want me to thank you, is that it?” she asked. “You called me because you knew I would go above and beyond to get your message across, and I’ve done it. Now I need you to do something for me.”

  There was silence. Ellen hoped she did not overplay her hand. She could not afford to lose this.

  “Okay, what do you want?”

  “I want to meet you.”

  “You know that’s not possible.”

  “There won’t be any police. You have my word.”

  “As much as I would like to, I just don’t trust you.”

  “Then you tell me when and where.”

  He was silent a moment.

  “I’ll call you to set up a time and place.”

  The line went dead.

  FIFTY-ONE

  The neighborhood was the opposite of affluent. There were boarded-up shops with signs still hanging above the windows. There was a pawn shop, a cash-back outlet, and even an employment center. The latter seemed just for show. If the center was able to assist the locals with jobs, the impoverished area would look far different.

  Rhodes pulled into a plaza, and after driving around the parking lot, he spotted the barbershop. There were several people inside, and one was standing by the door, smoking a cigarette.

  Rhodes did not dare go near it. He did not want to blow his cover yet.

  He drove around and parked in front of a used clothing store.

  “What’re we doing here?” Tess asked.

  “We’re interested in that.” Rhodes nodded in the direction of the barbershop.

  “You need a haircut?”

  Rhodes was about to say something when an idea formed.

  “Actually, I do need a haircut,” he said, looking in the review mirror. Ever since he got out of prison, he had only gotten his hair trimmed once. There were now long strands of hair that he had to constantly pull behind his ears.