So it was more than possible the killer was watching them right now. An unnerving feeling, but also an exciting one. A real enemy that it was Matt’s sworn duty to bring down.
He glanced at the clearing, just with his eyes, making no body movements that would betray what he was doing. Snyder noticed, of course, and nodded.
“Yes,” he said casually. Matt had to admire his cool. They could be talking about anything. “He very well could be.”
Matt stood in the desolate area and something in him shivered. A horrible place to die. A horrific way to die. The fog seemed to be a manifestation of the psychic pall over it all.
Two killers, intersecting…
His eyes rested on the riverbank, the discarded trash, and something jogged his memory.
Snyder spoke beside him. “What are you thinking?”
“Given all the publicity the Green River killings got up here, in Ridgeway’s own hunting ground, it’s reasonable to think that the Street Hunter picked up some methods from him.”
It may have been Matt’s imagination, but it seemed to him that Snyder became more still. “Like what, for example?” the older agent asked neutrally.
“If this killer went so far as to move the body, maybe he’s taking more than location from Ridgeway’s playbook. Ridgeway contaminated his dump scenes with trash from other scenes: used condoms, hair, cigarettes. Effectively planting ‘evidence’ that contained other people’s DNA samples and would point away from him.”
Snyder nodded. “Yes. It’s easy enough to do, for someone who follows documentaries on forensics and crime scene methodology. Lucky for us most rapists and killers aren’t rocket scientists. Most don’t have the attention span. The ones who do, they present their own problems. But sometimes planted evidence itself reveals a truth.”
Matt felt a prickle of anticipation. “What do you think the Street Hunter planted?”
“I don’t know if it was planted. But every other Street Hunter victim was stripped of identifying items: IDs, handbags, jewelry. By contrast, Young John Doe was wearing a plastic wristband, like the ones you get proving you paid admission to a concert or club. A wristband with the emblem of the club imprinted on it. And I wonder why a killer who was so careful not to remove other identifiers would have left that wristband…”
Matt finished, “Unless he planted it himself.”
Chapter 42
Portland - 2009
Matt and Snyder
The agents had stopped for dinner on the way back in to the city and so were returning some time after dark, late enough in the evening to visit the club called Church. The name on the wristband Young John Doe had been wearing.
As Snyder drove, Matt looked out through the passenger window at a dismal procession of cheap motels, fast food joints, strip clubs with names like Sugar Dance, Peekaboo Models.
And kids. Dozens and dozens of kids on the sidewalk, in micro minis and high heels, some in regular street clothes, but with no other reason to be out on this street.
Snyder spoke from behind the wheel. “This is 82nd Avenue. There are plenty of other pickup spots, but this is the track. The biggest prostitution stroll in the Portland area.”
The street walkers were painfully young. Matt felt his face tightening with outrage as Snyder continued. “Portland has been a sex trafficking hub for a long time. It’s part of the Pacific circuit. Pimps move the kids from Seattle, through Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Vegas—and back up through the stops to Seattle. Every few weeks a different city. That way they can’t form any bonds with anyone who could help them escape the life.”
Three years as a cop in San Francisco had opened Matt’s eyes to the real dynamics of the street life. Hollywood and the media were glib and reactionary about prostitution, often portraying it as a choice by lazy women who wanted an easy living, or a glamorous way for pretty girls to put themselves through college. Nothing could be further from the truth. In most cases it was systematic enslavement of children and young teens that had started with sexual abuse in the home or foster home. By the average age of thirteen, vulnerable girls from wretched domestic situations were targeted by sex traffickers, and groomed into addiction and submission, in some cases virtually kidnapped into the life.
Matt felt a burning in his gut. This is what it was all for. All the training, all the courses, all the police work. To get him ready for to fight exactly this.
Snyder stared out the windshield. “The financial crisis has turned a lot more kids out on the street. Domestic abuse rises during economic downturns and the runway population has skyrocketed in the last two years, not just here, but nationwide. The youth and homeless services in Seattle and Portland and the very active music culture here draws a lot of young people. That draws the pimps, the rapists—and the serial rapists who graduate to serial murder. And this is part of the difficulty of the Street Hunter case. The fact that the circuit keeps these kids moving makes it very difficult to determine who is actually missing.”
Snyder slowed the SUV and pulled into a parking space in front of a large gothic structure. Not a cathedral, but an impressive sanctuary nonetheless. It hadn’t occurred to Matt that the club would be in an actual church.
Snyder turned off the engine and turned to Matt. “We have two jobs here. First, if possible, to pinpoint the date Young John Doe was in the club and if anyone can identify him. And second, to make contacts in the street scene who will talk to us about ‘sick tricks.’ If the Street Hunter is a Portland resident, or former resident, he may be known on the street.”
The agents entered at the side of the building, through a street level door, and went down a short set of stairs, which opened into a dark space with a ticket booth that Matt recognized from his altar boy days as a confessional. He stood by as Snyder showed the ticket vendor his Bureau credentials. The vendor made a call, then directed the agents up a spiral set of stone stairs. They followed pulsing music to the top, and stepped through a heavy curtain.
Matt looked around him, taking it in.
The venue had once been an actual functioning chapel. The original layout had been preserved, although the pews were long gone except for a few lining the walls for atmosphere. The dais had been converted to a stage, the choir loft was a balcony of tables, the stained-glass windows were atmospherically lit and glowing psychedelically.
The place was packed, and overwhelmingly young. Matt was twenty-five, but he felt ages older than these kids. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been to a club like this, even though there were plenty of them in San Francisco, even in his own neighborhood.
Onstage, a band of young musicians played what Matt figured was the next iteration of the grunge that had gotten him through some angst-ridden nights in high school. The music was dark and brooding, rough, cynical vocals with driving melodic instrumentation.
A manager a few years older than Matt met the agents and took them into an upstairs office, where Snyder showed him a photo of the wristband that Young John Doe had been wearing.
“Yeah, looks like one of ours,” the manager said. He showed the agents several rolls of similar ribbon-like bands.
Matt noted the different colors and styles. “You cycle through different styles of wristbands to denote different nights, correct?” he asked.
“Right.”
“Is there any way of telling from the color or graphics what dates these wristbands were being used?”
“Nah, man—there’s no dates. We got ten different styles and the only rule is you don’t use the same color two nights in a row.”
It was as Matt had suspected would be the case. So there was no way to pinpoint the date that Young John Doe—or the killer—had gotten that particular wristband from the club.
But if—if—the killer had placed the band on the boy’s wrist to confuse the crime scene, he would have to have taken an intact wristband out of the club, which meant in all likelihood he’d actually been inside.
As the manage
r took a phone call, Snyder pulled Matt aside. “I’ll stay here and talk to staff. I’m likely to put a damper on any conversation downstairs, so best I stay out of sight. You go back down and circulate. Try not to look too much like a Fed.”
Matt walked back down the spiral staircase, wondering just how much he already did look like a Fed. Probably too much, he concluded. He made a mental note to add a couple of battered concert T-shirts to his trunk wardrobe. He glanced around the club to get a sense of the fashion.
And maybe a flannel shirt.
And a filthy knit cap.
And I guess I’d better get started on a beard.
He went to the bar for a prop drink.
As he waited for the bartender, he felt someone watching him, and turned… to catch the gaze of a slim, dreadlocked musician type at the other end of the bar. Matt recognized him as the singer of the band that had been playing onstage when he and Snyder had first come into the club. The singer didn’t drop his eyes. At first Matt assumed sexual interest, but when he looked harder the vibe he got was straight.
The singer set his drink down without finishing and wove through the crowd straight to Matt. He stopped in front of him, and leaned in to shout over the frenetic music of the band that had taken over the stage.
“Are you here working the Street Hunter case?”
Matt tried not to react. I guess that settles the “looking like a Fed” question.
The young man gave him a brief, ironic smile, and leaned in to shout again. “Took about two minutes for everyone in the club to hear there was FBI here.”
“I’m Special Agent Roarke.” Matt felt self-conscious using his title. He was used to identifying himself as “Officer.” Special Agent felt like a whole different level.
“Jamie Kennedy,” the young man returned, and then got right to the point. “This is the same guy as in Seattle, right?”
Matt shouted back at him. “Where can we talk?”
Kennedy nodded, and then gestured toward a door.
Matt picked up his Coke and Kennedy led the way outside to a far quieter patio and garden area with tables, booths, nooks, a fountain. Above them, colored lights from electric strings woven through trees and awnings glowed, hazy in the mist.
Kennedy chose a deserted corner table, and they sat. The noise of the club was still ringing in Matt’s ears as he asked, “So you’ve been following this case?”
“It’s all over the papers. It’s all anyone can talk about,” Kennedy said. “A lot of the street kids hang here. As soon as that girl’s body was found, we started asking people to check in.” He added flatly, “People are scared.”
“Who’s ‘we’?”
Kennedy looked thrown.
“You said, ‘We’ started asking people to check in.”
“Oh. Well… my band. Other bands. On our website, on flyers. Asking club kids to just—let other people know they were okay. Trying to get people living on the street to crash together with people they knew.” His eyes darkened. “But when you guys found that second kid… well, now the whole street is freaked.”
While Matt didn’t want to divulge details, he knew he had an opportunity, here, a direct line to helpful witnesses. At the same time, he was wary, remembering the wrist band may have been deliberately left to obfuscate the case. Kennedy seemed sincere but Matt wasn’t about to trust a gift horse.
“Do you know anyone who’s felt specifically threatened, or stalked, or afraid?”
There was a flash of anger on Kennedy’s face. “That’s street life, man. It happens every day. Beatings, rapes, abductions, hostage situations—you name it.”
Matt knew that was precisely true.
Kennedy visibly controlled himself. “So you think the killer’s a trick?” he asked.
Matt kept his tone neutral. “It’s possible. We’re looking for someone who may have been around the scene a lot. Someone who probably has a history of assault on sex workers. If you know people who’d be willing to help us identify some of these guys, it would be a huge help.”
He waited while Kennedy seemed to wrestle with himself. “I can try to set that up. I can’t promise anything.”
Matt reached for his credentials wallet, fished out one of his brand-new Bureau cards. “Anything you could do to point us in a possible direction...” He wrote his own cell phone number beneath the office number, extended it to Kennedy and looked at him straight on. “This is going to happen again, unless we move fast.”
Kennedy didn’t look away. “I get it. Nobody wants that.”
“Then I hope I hear from you soon.”
Kennedy nodded, and took the card.
Chapter 43
Portland - present
Singh and Snyder
A log in the fireplace snaps with a small explosion of sparks, startling Snyder into silence.
The fire is the only light left in the study; the sky outside has gone completely black.
It takes Singh a moment to fully return to the present, to take in her surroundings, so caught up she has been in his story. And the implication of it.
The Wolf. A second killer, with some tie to an active present-day case.
She speaks aloud. “Agent Snyder, the other killer, the one you called the Wolf? I have never heard of any murders from the time by a killer with that name.”
“No. No, the Wolf was just a theory…” he trails off, looking into the fire.
“But you are thinking that the Idaho murder you were consulting on in January may be tied to the Street Hunter case?”
He looks at her, his face gaunt in the firelight. There is irritation in his voice. “No, Matthew. You’re not listening to me.”
Singh is confused. “I’m sorry, Agent Snyder?”
“Matthew,” he says again, and she experiences a moment of alarm before he finishes, “I was trying to tell him in January, but he wouldn’t listen.”
He looks pale, fragile. Concern for him brings her fully to consciousness. Singh stands. “I can barely keep my eyes open. I am afraid I need sleep. Would you mind very much if we were to continue tomorrow?”
He nods, vaguely. “Of course. Of course.”
“Rest well, Agent Snyder.”
She has the impulse to hug him, which surprises her, and which she of course resists.
Outside, a thick mist drifts in the trees.
As she drives back toward the highway and her hotel, she has to use her high beams to see the curves of the road. Her thoughts swirl like the fog.
She has not yet heard the whole story. But one thing is very clear already. Snyder and Roarke were pursuing a theory that there was a second killer, apart from the Street Hunter. That that killer may have brought a victim of his own to the Street Hunter’s Portland dumping ground to conceal his tracks.
And she strongly suspects Snyder may believe that second killer, the one he had briefly referred to as “The Wolf,”is still at large. Not only at large, but…
Is it possible?
…. has broken in to Agent Snyder’s home to obtain case files.
She shivers at the thought.
Inside the house.
She will hear more from Agent Snyder tomorrow. But she is in no mood to rest.
She uses her GPS to find the exit with the name of the street that Snyder has been talking about. 82nd Avenue. Portland’s track, and drives the strip, staring out the windshield at young people dressed in bedraggled provocation, huddled in doorways to keep warm.
Nothing changes.
The wave of fury she feels is not unlike what Lindstrom must feel.
She has not had much time to explore Portland. But she knows that the nearby Aurora Arts District is a big hangout for musicians, with many of what Portland calls DIY clubs in the area.
She uses her GPS to navigate to the district, and cruises until she finds a well-lit strip where numerous young partiers are clustered outside bars and clubs. It seems walkable, and she has had no dinner, so she finds a parking space and leaves her ve
hicle to walk in the misty night.
She cannot get her mind off Snyder’s story: the Street Hunter, the Wolf amongst these lambs. Roarke working this case that was the very embodiment of evil: abused and forgotten children slaughtered by a monster…
A perfect storm of what would draw Cara.
Could Cara and Roarke’s paths have crossed in Portland?
She is so immersed in her thoughts that she is only now aware that a car has slowed on the street beside her, following her.
A male driver leans toward the open passenger window making slurping noises. “Hey mama. How much for a suck and fuck? C’mere, mama.”
She reaches in her coat pocket for her credentials and walks straight for the car, arm extended straight, holding the wallet out and shouting, “FBI. You are under arrest.”
The car takes off in a squeal of tires.
She steps back on the sidewalk, shaking with disgust and anger.
Then she turns and keeps walking.
A neon sign appears in the mist beside a looming building with arched buttresses. When she sees the name, she realizes why she is here.
She approaches, marveling that it still exists. She can feel the pulse of music under the soles of her feet.
She stops under the neon sign that reads CHURCH, and walks down a set of dark stairs. But she hesitates in the dark entrance.
Her aim is to find Jamie Kennedy, Roarke’s young musician contact. She feels Agent Snyder would not have mentioned him so prominently if he were not going to play a pivotal role in the tale.
She knows this is hardly the way to go about finding a witness. It would take her no time to go through the usual channels to find Kennedy. Simply Googling him might well be more productive than anything she can do in this club. But she has the strong urge to see the place, to feel it. To immerse herself in the story Snyder has been telling.
She pays the cover charge at a booth which surely once was a confessional, and receives a wristband with perhaps the same emblem that was on the wristband Young John Doe wore. Then she shows her credentials to the pierced and tattooed young man in the booth. “I am looking for a musician who used to play here. His name is Jamie Kennedy. Does he ever come in?”
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