He was particularly hopeful of what Detective Bruening in Brookings, South Dakota might be able to do. That was Braddock’s first call. The Joanie Wells disappearance was still fresh and now Bruening had a potential suspect to question witnesses about. Unfortunately, Bruening hadn’t yet called with an update.
Later in the evening they heard from the police in Macomb, Illinois. A student at Western Illinois University named Justine Colander disappeared in October ten years ago. She was last seen leaving her apartment in Macomb on a Sunday night to go over to the university to study and then had plans to go to her friend’s after. She never made it to her friend’s and her car was found in an alley downtown. Victory’s opened its third location in Illinois with a grand opening in Macomb four days prior to her disappearance. Justine had been to Victory’s twice, on Saturday to watch college football with some friends and then on Sunday to watch the Bears game. She also had a job across the street at a coffee shop.
Sam Knight, the Macomb police chief who’d investigated the case at the time went back and tracked down friends of Colander. Two people independently picked Eddie Mannion out of the photo array and remembered him being around the restaurant.
“One of her friends remembered him, this Mannion fella,” Knight reported. “She recalled he was at the restaurant, going from table to table, making sure people were having a good time. He came back to the table a few times, handing out coupons, promoting drink specials and making sure they understood that they loved having college kids at the bar. He was nice, but he was having fun too, even having a shot with people at the next table over.”
Knight had a similar conversation with another friend who’d been at the restaurant on Sunday for the Bears game. “This friend I talked to said Mannion was at the restaurant on Sunday and remembered Justine, as she’d been there on Saturday. Mannion stopped by the table a few times, bought them all a round of drinks and asked people’s names and again, wanted everyone to know how much he appreciated they were there. But,” Knight noted, “the reality is while he stopped at their table three to four times, in all they thought they probably talked to him for less than ten minutes.”
“Did he show particular interest in Colander?” Tori asked Knight.
“I asked that question,” Chief Knight replied. “This friend of hers said the guy, Mannion, was friendly and was high-fiving people, posing for pictures, handing out t-shirts, can coolers, hats and was loud and boisterous. That’s why, even after all these years, she remembered him. As to whether he showed Justine any special attention, this friend said Mannion seemed to remember Justine because she was there the day before, made a point of thanking her for coming back, but beyond that she didn’t think much of it. But this friend, she remembered Mannion.”
Over the coming days Braddock and Tori wondered if they’d get more calls of a similar nature.
“You know, the one thing these friends seem to suggest is that Eddie is friendly. The gracious and gregarious host. In other words, he might not be perceived…”
“As a threat if you saw him on the street or in a parking lot, or wherever,” Tori finished Braddock’s thought. “Genevieve Lash wouldn’t have perceived him as a threat nor, for that matter, would Katy.”
“Still trying to tie that in to all of this?” Cal asked, his eyes closed.
“Just making the point.”
Cal snorted, opening his eyes now. “I admire your tenaciousness, Victoria. I always have.” The sheriff stood up. “I’m going home to bed. You two should go to bed as well.”
“Excuse me?” Tori replied, feigning indignation.
Braddock chortled, shaking his head.
“I didn’t mean…cripes,” Cal replied, flustered, shaking his head and waving his hands. “Victoria, you should go to your hotel and Will, you should go home.”
“Oh okay,” Tori replied, shaking her head in mock disapproval.
“I didn’t mean to suggest…”
“Don’t worry about it, Cal,” Tori answered, now laughing.
Braddock chuckled as he glanced at his watch. “I do need some sleep.” He looked over to Tori. “What do you say I drop you off at the Radisson?”
“Thanks.”
Ten minutes later, Braddock and Tori had long since driven past the Radisson and were turning onto the winding road that led back to his lake house. The two of them laughed about Cal.
“You don’t think he suspects, do you?” Tori asked.
“I don’t know,” Braddock replied with a weary smile. “I think he was tired and didn’t think of what he was saying. But even if he does, so what? We’re consenting adults.”
“We’re working together.”
“That’s temporary, though,” Braddock replied. “Right?”
“Right.”
“Alright then, so he knows or if he finds out, so be it. We’ll deal with it,” Braddock answered. “You know what I really need before I go to bed?”
“What?”
“A shower. Care to join?”
Ring!…Ring!….Ring!…
Braddock’s eyes fluttered open and he turned his head to the nightstand and his phone, ringing loudly like an old-fashioned telephone. It was 4:20 a.m. “Nothing good ever happens at this time of night,” he muttered as he turned on the nightstand lamp and reached for his phone. “Braddock,” he answered.
“It’s Steak.”
“Yeah, man,” Braddock replied with a yawn. “What’s up?”
“You know that case Cal has me working?”
“Yeah, uhh, missing person. Woman from over in Aitken County or something, right?” Will answered.
Tori stirred awake. “What’s…”
Braddock put his finger to his lips and mouthed: It’s Steak.
“Yeah, that one,” Steak replied. “I found her, and I just sent you a photo. You need to see it.”
“Okay, hang on,” Will answered, rubbing his eyes to get them going before he tapped his screen to the page for his texts, clicked on the one from Steak and opened the picture.
It jolted him awake.
He instantly showed the picture to Tori.
Tori’s jaw dropped wide open in shock before looking to Braddock.
The picture was of a woman stuffed in the trunk of her car, bound and strangled. It looked exactly like their four victims. The ones they’d been discounting.
“Steak, where are you?”
“In Holmestrand, we just found the car. And one other thing.”
“What’s that?”
“She was last seen leaving The Serpent Bar in Deerwood two nights ago at closing time,” Steak reported, “with Eddie Mannion.”
CHAPTER 29
“A PATTERN OF HUNTING.”
T he victim’s name was Sarah Craig.
It was just before five a.m. when Braddock pulled to a stop behind a Holmestrand police cruiser, its light bar still flashing. A small early morning crowd had gathered across the street, taking in the scene.
He held up the crime scene tape and Tori dipped underneath and the two of them walked hurriedly a half-block up the alley to find Steak and Eggleston standing with notebooks in hand, observing two crime scene techs beginning to conduct their analysis of the vehicle. Braddock and Tori both approached and peered into the trunk of the car to see the body, bound with red ligature and bruising marks visible around her neck. Tori took four photos out of the case file and held each of them up for the two of them to compare to the body in the trunk.
“Look familiar?”
Braddock nodded.
“That’s why I called,” Steak added. “I saw those photos the other day and the similarity was…unmistakable.”
Braddock led Steak by the elbow away from the car deeper into the darkness of the alley while Tori and Eggleston followed. “Tell me about Mannion.”
Steak paused for a moment before speaking. “I just can’t believe we’re going there.”
“What do you have on him?” Will pressed.
“He left The Serpe
nt Bar with her closing time Wednesday, I guess two nights ago now,” Eggleston reported. “And she hasn’t been seen by anyone since.”
“And Mannion?”
“We haven’t spoken to him yet, we were going to do that first thing,” Steak replied. “A bartender at The Serpent said he was working and remembered Eddie and Sarah Craig being all nice and friendly and flirty-like and at closing time they left the bar together.”
“Left at the same time together or left to be together?”
“To be together,” Eggleston clarified. “That was the bartender’s impression of how they left, given their body language.”
“As the bartender said,” Steak added, “he’s seen two people leave like that a thousand times before. It always meant one thing and one thing only.”
“Except that night,” Tori answered. “That night it meant something else.”
“Detectives?” a crime scene investigator hailed from Craig’s car.
They all looked back to see that the investigator waving to them had set up two portable lights and had the rear driver side passenger door open.
“What do you have?” Braddock asked, leading the group back around the car to the open door.
The investigator was crouched down with a flashlight pointing to a dark reddish smudge on the leather seats of the car.
“Blood?” Tori asked.
“Likely,” the investigator replied with a nod, but then reached for a different light, a black light, “Now look at this.” The investigator leaned into the door, hovering the light over the back seat to reveal a tight collection of uneven spots on the seat, glowing brightly under the black light.
“Semen?” Tori blurted before turning to look to the investigator, who nodded. She turned to the rest of them. “Let’s go wake Eddie’s ass up and start asking questions,” she demanded. “Right now—roust him out of bed.”
Braddock slowly shook his head. “No, we need to talk to Cal, Backstrom and Wilson first.”
“Why?”
“One, because we said we would,” Braddock replied. “Remember? Two, nothing has changed just because of Sarah Craig, or what we just found here. Now, if that semen can be matched to Eddie?”
“Wait a minute,” Steak asked, “you two aren’t surprised by this, are you?”
Tori shook her head. “Sorry, Steak, but no. We suspect Eddie of…all of this.”
“Aw shit,” Steak replied, crestfallen. “When were you going to tell me that?”
“Sorry, man, we were under orders not to,” Braddock answered apologetically. “But now, well, you know.”
“With semen,” Tori suggested, “we might be able to…”
“Get a DNA sample,” Braddock replied, nodding. “I’ll call Backstrom.”
“Detective?” the investigator called to Braddock from the trunk. “There’s one other thing I’ve just noticed.”
“What’s that?”
The investigator pulled up the back of the victim’s blouse. On her lower back were two sets of reddish, dot-like lesions. The lesions were about an inch, maybe an inch and a half apart on each set.
“What do you think?” Tori queried, looking to Braddock.
“Could those be the markings from a stun gun?” Braddock asked the investigator.
“Maybe. I’ll have that checked.”
Will and Tori shared a knowing look and walked away.
“That’s how he does it, you know,” Tori stated. “That’s how he gets these women.”
Braddock nodded in agreement. “He approaches them. They know him and don’t sense danger. He distracts them or gets them in his car and slyly hits them with the stun gun. Then they’re all his.”
“By the time they come to…”
“It’s too late.”
First thing in the morning, Braddock and Tori briefed Cal. The three of them then made their way over to the county attorney’s office to meet with Backstrom and Wilson. Will explained that Sarah Craig was found murdered, was strangled, bound with rope and stuffed in the trunk of her car. She was last seen leaving The Serpent Bar in Deerwood with Eddie Mannion. Then Tori laid out the photos of the four women they already had and then crime scene photos of Sarah Craig. She recited the details of each of the four cases and how they compared to how Craig was found.
“What do you think?” Braddock asked.
Backstrom sourly shook his head. “I thought you two were crazy.”
“How about now?” Tori asked.
“Not so much. What do you need?”
“Search warrants for Eddie’s property, his phone and financial records and I want a DNA sample from him,” Braddock added. “If we have enough for those.”
Backstrom and Wilson took a moment to answer, flipping through the documents in front of them. They shared a look and then Backstrom shook his head.
“We’re with you on this, but you’re not there yet,” Wilson stated.
“If this were your run-of-the-mill case, yeah, we could get them. No sweat,” Backstrom added. “But we’re talking a Mannion here. The judges will be understandably cautious. They run for re-election, too.”
“Hey, now wait a…” Tori started.
“No, George is right,” Braddock stepped in, cutting her off. “We have to leave the judge no choice but to sign.”
“Right,” Backstrom agreed, nodding. “I’m with you, Agent Hunter. But lock this shit down. Get with the bartender. Confirm, be certain that Eddie Mannion left that bar with Sarah Craig. And if you can lock down more than that, so much the better.”
“We’re on it,” Braddock replied and then turned to Cal. “Until we can get all of this taken care of, I want twenty-four-hour surveillance on Eddie. With that Mannion jet sitting over at the airfield he has the means to flee. If he gets a whiff that we’re onto him...”
“Consider it done,” Cal answered.
Braddock and Tori, along with Steak and Eggleston, retraced Sarah Craig’s steps before her disappearance.
Sarah Craig was a thirty-two-year-old elementary school teacher. She taught two hours south in the Twin Cities but was summering up at her parents’ cabin on Mille Lacs Lake, just north of Garrison twenty miles to the east. Her credit card activity for the night of her disappearance showed she started at Antlers Grill in Crosby, a town five miles northwest of Deerwood before coming back east to Deerwood and The Serpent Bar.
Braddock assigned Steak and Eggleston to work Antlers Grill. He and Tori took The Serpent Bar. They were met by the owner, who showed them in and introduced them to his staff.
The bar itself had a rudimentary surveillance system that focused on the long bar running along the length of the back wall. In the owner’s office they sat down at his desk and reviewed the footage.
“I’ve been through that night ever since I got a call from your Detective Williams. On the night Sarah was in here I’ve got her on tape a few times.” The owner had jotted down the times and played them through. It was on the fourth snippet that Eddie appeared. There was a five- minute stretch from the 11:47 to 11:52 p.m. mark where the two of them were close, talking at the bar. Each whispered in the other’s ear, a little close touching, a mating ritual taking place. There was another two-minute stretch from 12:40 to 12:42 where they appeared on the footage talking. They could see Sarah’s face but only Eddie’s back. It appeared Eddie was talking and Sarah was nodding before Mannion leaned in close and whispered in her left ear, causing her to smile and then nod.
“He closed the deal right there,” Braddock stated.
“Like a pro,” Tori noted.
The owner made a copy of the footage for them to take.
The bartender had been interviewed a day ago by Steak. On his second interview, he again related his impressions of Mannion and Sarah Craig leaving together. “He’s a good-looking guy. He has the Mannion name and touch.”
“Meaning?” Tori asked.
“You know—the money, the sports car, the name. He seems nice enough, gets a little loose with his cash an
d is generous as long as he gets his way.”
“What do you mean by gets his way?”
“You serve him what he wants, when he wants it and you don’t stop serving him.”
“Clearly, he’s been in before,” Braddock commented.
“Oh sure,” the bartender answered as he rearranged liquor bottles along the rail. “He’s been in here a few times. Back in the day, I worked the White Hawk down on Bay Lake and he’d roll in there often and have a good time, especially in the summer. He doesn’t know my name, but he recognizes me when he comes in and says hey dude, good to see you again, how ya doing and whatnot. So that move with Sarah Craig at the end of the night? I’ve seen him pull that off a few times over the years.”
Sarah Craig was with two friends that night, Pam and Trish, who were staying at another cabin on Mille Lacs. Tori and Braddock traveled to see them. The interesting thing they added to the story was that it wasn’t the first time that Eddie and Sarah had met.
“We ran into him a night earlier in Holmestrand at the Bay Water. Eddie was there with a bunch of friends of his. His posse, so to speak.”
“Do you remember their names?”
Pam shook her head. “I was introduced but I can’t remember any of them, except one guy. Sharply dressed in a tie, had come from work. Said he was a lawyer.”
“Jeff Warner?” Tori asked.
“That sounds right,” Pam answered. “He was a guy very impressed with himself, that I remember.”
“Oh, that’s probably him then,” Tori replied with a knowing nod. “He’s brilliant, just ask him.”
“You met up with Eddie Mannion at Bay Water the first night and then it was Antlers the next?” Will asked.
Silenced Girls Page 34
