The Quiet Man

by James Carol

  ‘That’s pretty extreme.’

  ‘So is strapping a homemade bomb to someone’s chest.’

  The fourth door opened on to the bathroom. There was a single towel on the rail and one toothbrush in the holder. This room told them as little as the preceding ones. Which, in its own strange way was telling. Anderton turned to face him.

  ‘Okay, so what have we learned?’ She mulled the question over for a second. ‘We know that he’s single. And judging by this place, that’s his default setting.’

  ‘And what else?’

  She shook her head and shrugged. ‘Other than the fact that he prefers chinos to jeans, not much.’

  ‘So, where’s Gifford?’

  48

  ‘Gifford could be anywhere,’ Anderton replied.

  Winter shook his head. ‘I’m not talking about where he is in space and time. We’ll get to that one in a minute. I’m talking about where he is in this house. Someone’s personality gets stamped on to the place they live. Even if they only use it as a flophouse you’d expect to see something more than what we’re seeing here. So where is he?’

  ‘There was evidence of him in the room he was using as an office.’

  ‘But not much. That was nothing more than a glorified storeroom.’

  ‘What about the computer?’ Anderton asked. ‘There’s got to be something on there. We know that he stalks his victims online, and that he’s been watching the husbands. Maybe he’s one of those loners who spends all his time online.’

  ‘There’s probably going to be something on there, but not the good stuff.’

  Anderton frowned. ‘How do you work that out?’

  ‘Because he left in a hurry, and he has no intention of coming back,’ Winter said. ‘If there had been anything important on the computer he would have taken it with him. Did you see the size of the screen? And it was a high-resolution model, too. That computer was primarily for work.’

  ‘So he has another computer for stalking his victims and watching the husbands. And that will probably be a laptop, because everyone has laptops these days. Which is portable. All he had to do was grab it on his way out the door.’ Anderton frowned. ‘And how can you be so sure that he’s not coming back?’

  ‘You’re kidding, right? Did you see the state of his bed?’

  ‘I saw that it hadn’t been made,’ Anderton replied ‘I wouldn’t say that it was in a state, though. My bed looks the same most of the time.’

  ‘No, it doesn’t. I’ve seen your car, and your apartment. Your bed gets made every morning without fail. The sheet gets pulled tight, the quilt gets straightened, the pillows plumped. I’d hazard that Gifford does the same.’

  ‘Okay, but my point still stands. Just because his bed is a little messy, it doesn’t mean that he’s not coming back. You can’t make that leap.’

  ‘I can, and for that exact reason. Did you see how neatly the packets of ham were lined up in the refrigerator? The noodle pots were the same. Chicken and mushroom on the left, beef and tomato in the middle, curry on the right. Then there’s the fact that he left in a hurry.’

  Anderton fired off a sceptical look. ‘And what are you basing that on?’

  ‘I’m basing it on the fact that he didn’t take any underwear with him. Your other clothes can be worn for a few days without too much of a problem, but not underwear. That starts to get a bit grim. There were five pairs of boxer shorts, five pairs of socks, five shirts and five pairs of tan chinos. There was also one of each item in the laundry basket. Presumably he’s wearing some now, which implies that he’s on a weekly wash cycle. Something got Gifford spooked and he left in a hurry.’

  ‘Eric Kirchner’s laptop?’

  ‘That’s my guess. It was switched on when I arrived at his apartment. Maybe Gifford had tuned in to watch The Eric Kirchner Show and saw me instead. He’d know who I was from the interview with Delaney. If he thought we were closing in, that would be enough to make him run.’

  ‘Which leads us to the question of where he is in time and space. Any ideas?’

  Winter shrugged and shook his head. ‘Okay, let’s try a slightly different approach. If you were still in charge of the investigation, what would your next move be?’

  ‘I’d run Gifford’s name and see if he had a connection to any other properties. I’d also be checking hotels and guesthouses.’

  ‘All of which is labour-intensive.’

  ‘So we need to call Freeman. He’s got the manpower to chase down any paper trails. We don’t.’

  ‘You’re right. But I’d hold off on calling him for a moment.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because we’re here now. We should dig deeper. It’s about playing to our respective strengths. Freeman’s strength is manpower. Ours is the experience we’ve got investigating crime scenes. As soon as you call Freeman he’s going to tell you to get the hell out. How can we investigate the crime scene if we’re standing out on the sidewalk?’

  ‘Okay, I’ll hold off on calling him.’

  ‘You know, I don’t think this house was always so bare. There are marks on the walls made by picture hooks. Lots of them. Someone filled in the holes and painted over them, and I’m betting that someone was Gifford. Also, don’t you think that the house is a little big for one person living on their own?’

  ‘So, what? You think he might have lived here with someone?’ She mulled this over, then nodded to herself. ‘I guess it’s possible that he had a wife or a girlfriend. The old woman we passed who was working in her garden would be able to confirm that.’

  Winter nodded. ‘She’ll know, for sure.’

  ‘So we should go talk to her.’

  ‘Not quite yet.’

  Before Anderton could say anything else Winter walked out of the bathroom and headed downstairs. She stopped him as he was coming out of Gifford’s office carrying the small stepladder.

  ‘Should I ask?’

  ‘We can walk and talk,’ he said.

  She stood aside to let him through and they went back toward the stairs.

  ‘Hypothetically speaking, let’s say Gifford was in a relationship, and the relationship went south. His wife-slash-girlfriend moves out, taking her stuff with her. Except she doesn’t take everything because you never do. There’s always going to be something left behind. So what does Gifford do with that stuff? He can dump it in the trash or donate it to Goodwill, which doesn’t really help us because it means it’s lost forever. Option number two, he can put it in the garage, but that doesn’t work here because there is no garage.’

  ‘Or he could store it in the attic,’ Anderton said.

  ‘Bingo.’

  The attic hatch was halfway along the second-floor landing. Winter stopped beneath it and unfolded the ladder. It was made from aluminium and four feet high. Plenty big enough for shooting pictures over a crowd. He climbed up to the second step from the top and pushed against the hatch. It was hinged on one edge and opened like a trap door. Anderton grabbed the ladder to steady it and he moved up to the top step, still pushing. The hatch passed the vertical point, then gravity took over and it clattered all the way open. A retractable ladder was attached to one side. Winter gave it a tug and it tipped up on its hinge and started to telescope open. He climbed back down to the ground, pulling the ladder with him. It opened with a rattle and a clank.

  He found his brass Zippo in the front pocket of his jeans. It was battered, scratched and ancient, but still worked as well as the day it was made. He climbed the ladder into the darkness and sparked the lighter to life. The breath caught in his lungs and he let out a low whistle.

  ‘Is everything okay?’ Anderton called out from below.

  ‘I think we’ve just found Gifford,’ Winter called back. He looked down from the hatch and locked eyes. ‘And I’m not talking about where he’s disappeared to. This is where he exists in this house. Come on up. You’ve got to see this.’

  49

  There was a light switch near the hatch entra
nce. Winter hit it and the darkness disappeared. He clicked the Zippo closed and shoved it back into his pocket. Someone had spent time and money converting the attic into a useable space. Sheetrock had been screwed into the rafters to create two new walls. Chipboard had been screwed into the ceiling joists to create a floor. Two striplights had been fixed to the apex of the roof to create light. The floor space matched the footprint of the house, making this the largest room in it.

  The ladder clattered and Anderton came through the hatch. She stopped with her body half in and half out. Her gaze started at one end of the attic and kept going until she got to the other end. She didn’t say a word. There was a wondrous expression on her face, like she’d just stepped into an Egyptian tomb that had lain undisturbed and undiscovered for the last five millennia. Winter knew where she was coming from. There wasn’t much you could say to something like this. He held out his hand to help her. She took it and climbed the last three steps.

  Most attics were black holes for junk. Not this one. There were no boxes and no junk. Whatever had happened to the wife-slash-girlfriend’s stuff, it hadn’t ended up here. At one end of the attic a work bench stretched the width of the house. At the other end was an actor’s make-up table. There might not have been any pictures in the rest of the house, but there were plenty up here. The walls were covered with ten-by-eight prints. They’d been arranged in pairs and held in place with staples, one in each corner, the long sides of the staples running exactly parallel with the tops and bottoms of the photographs.

  Winter moved in closer to get a better look. Eric Kirchner was on the left side of the pair that had caught his eye. His face was all screwed up and he was crying. Fat tears ran down both cheeks. It was an intensely personal moment that had been captured without his knowledge or permission. The picture had originated from a webcam. It had been cropped and manipulated and enhanced. Quality-wise it was nowhere near as good as the pictures on Gifford’s website, but it was still excellent work. Gifford’s talent lay in his ability to capture those unique moments. That was his trademark, and that’s what was evident here.

  Winter had never seen the man in the right-hand photograph before, but it had to be Gifford. He slightly resembled the photo composite. At the same time he looked nothing like it. There were tears on Gifford’s cheeks too. His expression was almost identical to Kirchner’s. Winter moved to the next pair of photographs. Again, they’d been set out with Kirchner on the left and Gifford on the right. There were no tears but Kirchner’s face was still masked with misery. Gifford was trying to copy the expression.

  David Hammond was in the next pair of pictures. He might have run to the other side of the country to escape the past, but the past wasn’t quite done with him. That was the beauty of the internet. You could reach out and touch anyone, anywhere in the world. There were no borders or limits to how far you could reach. It didn’t matter how far someone ran, or how hard, you could still find them. Hammond was desperately trying to hold back his grief. This was one of the hardest things he’d ever done. This was the face of someone who missed their wife every single day. Every single minute. This was the face of someone who would never forget.

  And there was Gifford in the next photograph, doing his damnedest to copy the expression.

  Anderton was moving along the wall, her gaze flitting from one pair of photographs to the next. She glanced over her shoulder and met his eye. ‘I’ve seen some things in my time, Winter, but this is something else. This is about as weird as anything I’ve come across.’

  ‘No argument there.’

  Anderton moved across to the opposite wall and started examining the pictures that had been stapled to it. Winter carried on examining those on his side, moving slowly along the wall from left to right.

  ‘Take a look at this,’ she called over.

  He walked across to where she was standing. This grouping of photographs was different. To start with, they hadn’t been separated into pairs. There were a hundred of them in total, arranged in a ten-by-ten formation. Gifford and the husbands weren’t in these. Instead, there was a woman that Winter had never seen before. These ones had also been taken without the woman’s knowledge or permission.

  ‘Gifford’s wife-slash-girlfriend?’ Anderton suggested.

  ‘That would be my guess.’ Winter pointed to a picture on the left side of the arrangement. ‘This one was taken downstairs in the living room. I recognise the sofa.’

  ‘What’s the chance that she’s still alive?’

  Winter glanced at the pictures again. ‘I’d say it’s pretty unlikely.’

  ‘What do you make of these?’

  Anderton was pointing to a three-by-three grid of photographs. Some of the pictures had been taken at weddings, while others had been taken during the house calls Gifford had made to create those everlasting memories. The picture of Cody belonged to this latter group. He was ginning his goofy grin, oblivious to the fact that the person behind the camera would end up murdering his mom. The pictures of David Hammond and Eric Kirchner had been taken at weddings, cropped from crowd shots to isolate their faces. Sobek was there as well. Gifford had cropped the head-and-shoulders shot from the website so that his face filled the entire frame. Winter didn’t know the people in the other five photos, but they were still familiar. Three of them could have been related to Sobek. The other two could have been Cody’s brothers.

  ‘This is how Gifford chooses his victims,’ Winter said. ‘He gets called in to do a job and if he sees someone who meets his criteria their picture goes up here. Sobek he saw at his office, Kirchner and Hammond were wedding guests, Cody ended up here because his mom wanted a nice photograph to remember him by. One of the pictures from this session was on the wall of their living room.’

  ‘Approaching him in the park was a huge risk. What if Cody had recognised him?’

  ‘Judging by what I’m seeing here, I’d say the picture was taken a couple of years ago. Do you remember everyone you met two years ago?’

  ‘Even so.’

  ‘We also need to take into account the fact that he’s got away with this three times already.’

  ‘You think that he’s getting overconfident?’

  ‘They always do.’

  Anderton looked at the grid of pictures again. ‘The five faces we don’t recognise must be possible victims for the future. He’s spotted them while he’s been working, decided that they tick the boxes, and so they’ve ended up on this wall.’

  Winter nodded. ‘Exactly. He’s working on a year-long cycle. For the moment the latest murder will be meeting his needs but somewhere along the line he’s going to start thinking about next August 5. When that happens he’s got options.’

  ‘How long do you think he stalks his victims for?’

  ‘You’re looking at months rather than weeks, maybe as many as six or seven. Gifford likes to move slowly and carefully. By the time he arrives on his victim’s doorstep with a bomb he’s going to know them as well as they know themselves. That’s the beauty of watching them on a webcam. He gets to see his victims with their masks off.’

  Anderton was nodding to herself. ‘This is the intersection point that I’ve been looking for. It’s like you said, he wasn’t planning on stopping any time soon.’ She paused. ‘These people actually let Gifford into their lives. The really scary thing is that none of them had a clue what sort of monster he was.’

  Winter turned his attention back to the photos of Gifford’s wife-slash-girlfriend. He honed in on one of the pictures on the bottom row. The woman’s eyes were red from crying and she was trying to pull herself together. Her face wasn’t distorted from an overload of emotion, so he was able to get a better idea of what she actually looked like. She was in her late twenties. Black shoulder-length hair, brown eyes. She had the sort of face that you wouldn’t look at twice. Back at high school, she would have been one of the last girls to get asked to the prom. That said, she would definitely have got a date.

  He glanced over
at Anderton. She’d moved further along the wall and was completely absorbed by what she was seeing. Winter grabbed the photograph, folded it in two and stuffed it into the back pocket of his jeans. A second later, she turned to face him. There was no suspicion in the look, just wide-eyed curiosity. She stared for a second longer then shook her head and returned her attention to the photographs.

  Winter took one last look at the pictures of Gifford’s wife-slash-girlfriend then walked across to the workbench. A tool board was attached to the gable wall. All the tools were neatly arranged and within easy reach. There was a pair of magnifying glasses for the fiddly work and a bench-mounted clamp to hold things still. There was enough evidence scattered across the surface to put Gifford away for life. Anderton coughed at his shoulder. A pair of latex gloves was dangling between her thumb and forefinger. He took them and put them on. Anderton was already wearing hers.

  Dozens of fireworks were piled up on the left side of the bench. The packaging was bright and garish and they had names like Krakatoa and Dragon’s Breath. The fireworks had been bought over the counter and, in most respects, were no different from the fireworks that were sold in their millions every Fourth of July. But these fireworks weren’t about fun and celebrations. They were about death, destruction, carnage and suffering. There were two sealed plastic tubs next to them. One for the gunpowder, one for the coloured flash powder.

  A little further along was a box of matches and a small plastic tub that held the Christmas-tree light bulbs. A second tub contained three finished detonators. Winter picked one up. The glass part of the bulb had been wrapped with insulating tape to contain the sulphur scrapings from the match heads. The two wires coming out of it had a quarter-inch of exposed copper at each end. It felt so light and harmless, but it wasn’t. Touch the exposed wires to the terminals of a nine volt battery and it would flare to life. So simple, yet potentially deadly. Winter put the detonator back into the tub and moved along to the end of the bench. There was a finished bomb here. He picked it up and Anderton took a sharp intake of breath.