by James Carol
‘A janitor would have easy access to a police uniform.’
‘And a cop car?’ Taylor shook his head. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘You took an exam and did an interview before they let you in. The reason they do that is because there are some people who shouldn’t be cops. Psychos and people with anger management issues, for example. A lot of people who fail the entrance exams want to be cops so badly they end up taking jobs as security guards or private investigators, anything where they get to play cop. Some even take on menial roles in police departments. Like janitorial positions.’
‘And what about the cop car?’
‘You can get hold of one of those second hand, no problems whatsoever. That’s what the internet’s for.’
24
The first name that went up on the whiteboard was Taylor’s. Second on the list was Sheriff Peter Fortier, then Captain Tony Shepherd, then Romero and finally Barker. No forenames or ranks for the two investigators because Shepherd hadn’t told me what they were, and no forename for Taylor because that was an on-going investigation.
The names took up a small corner of the board, leaving plenty of space for more suspects. I stepped back, looked at the five names, then swapped the black marker for a red one and put a line through Taylor.
A second line went through Fortier and a third through Shepherd. Both were too old, and both were preoccupied with other things. Fortier was looking for a way to vacate the sheriff’s office, and Shepherd was looking for a way to jam his foot in the door.
I put question marks after Romero and Barker. They were in the right racial and age groups, but Barker was too small and Romero was too fat. I’d be surprised if either was our unsub, but wasn’t ready to rule them out just yet.
I lit a cigarette and settled down on the bed with a glass of that thirty-year-old Glenmorangie. The whisky was everything I’d hoped for, and more. My laptop was showing the countdown, those white numbers moving inexorably towards zero, a steady stream of stick figures biting the dust.
04:03:32.
In a little over four hours another person was going to die. I still held on to the slender hope that we might be able to stop this guy, but that sliver was getting thinner with every passing second. Maybe the police would find the place Sam Galloway was murdered, and maybe I’d be able to take one look and work out who the killer was, and maybe we’d be able to hunt this unsub down before he killed again. But that was a whole lot of maybes, more than I was comfortable with.
It wasn’t that far-fetched, though. Every once in a while you caught an eleventh-hour break, but those occasions were the exception rather than the rule.
The reality was that you couldn’t save them all. I’d struggled with this when I was with the FBI, and it was a reality I was struggling with now. The countdown was going to hit zero on the stroke of midnight and someone else would die. I’d battle this one to the wire, but it wasn’t looking good.
I phoned Hannah and asked her to bring up some coffee. A couple of minutes later I heard footsteps in the corridor, the rattle of dishes on a tray, a knock.
‘Come on in,’ I called out.
The door opened and Hannah entered. She was dressed in jeans and still wearing the baggy Gutterpigs T-shirt she’d had on earlier. I nodded to the whisky bottle on the nightstand. ‘Like a drink?’
Hannah hesitated for all of a second, then dragged the chair over and poured herself a glass. She sat down and took a sip.
‘Not bad.’
‘Better than not bad.’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘Shouldn’t you be working or something?’
I tapped the side of my head. ‘I am working. We’re open for business twenty-four/seven, three sixty-five. Don’t let my apparent lack of activity fool you.’
Hannah laughed. ‘Well, from here it looks like you’re getting paid to sit around on your ass, drinking whisky and smoking. Nice work if you can get it.’
It was my turn to laugh. ‘I could say the same thing about you.’
‘Except I’m not smoking.’
I crushed my cigarette into the ashtray and offered the pack to Hannah. She shook her head, said no thanks. I waited until she’d got settled, waited until she was nice and comfortable, then I clicked the laptop’s keypad a couple of times to get the video running.
Hannah’s coffee was good, but the film was the real reason she was here. I turned the computer around so she could see the screen better. Her eyes widened as she realised what she was looking at. A slight tremor appeared in the hand that held the whisky glass.
‘Nanny cam.’ I nodded to the teddy bear on the dresser. ‘Six months ago a maid tried to steal some of my cigarettes. There were a dozen packs in my suitcase, she didn’t think I’d miss one. She was wrong.’
Even in low-res black and white there was no mistaking the woman who’d just come into the room. That short spiky DIY haircut was unmistakable. On screen, Hannah walked around, picking things up and putting them down again. She picked up the bear and her face became huge and distorted. A shake of the head, a puzzled frown, then she put it down. The picture jumped a little while she repositioned the bear to make sure it was exactly how I’d left it.
Next she unzipped my case and started going through it, carefully removing each item and putting it in a tidy pile. Then she put everything back exactly where she’d found it. She took one last look around then left the room.
‘You didn’t take anything. I’m not sure whether to be insulted or not.’
‘I’m not a thief.’
‘So what was that all about?’
Hannah ignored the question and said, ‘What happened to the maid who stole your cigarettes? Did she get fired?’
‘The question’s irrelevant. Nobody’s going to fire you because you’re the boss around here. So, what happened to your mother?’
‘Who said anything’s happened to my mother?’
‘If nothing had happened to your mother, you would have said that nothing had happened to your mother. Instead you answered my question with a question.’
‘Nothing happened to my mother.’
I shook my head. ‘Not buying. You’re what? Twenty-two? Twenty-three? If your mother had you young she’d be in her forties. If she had you late then she’d maybe be in her sixties. Either way, statistically there’s a high probability she’s still alive. You’re more than comfortable setting your own room prices. And I’m guessing Mom doesn’t get a cut of that hundred bucks I gave you when I checked in. Or the hundred you conned from me. You’re running the show around here.’
Hannah grinned, but only for a second. She grabbed my cigarettes and Zippo from the bedside table and lit one. ‘My mother’s got Parkinson’s. She still deals with the admin, but that’s about all she can manage these days. All of the physical stuff is down to me. And you’re right. I’d sell this place in a heartbeat.’
I studied her carefully, unconvinced. There was some sort of tragedy here, but it wasn’t Parkinson’s. I could call her on the lie, but even then I didn’t think I’d get to the truth. Instead I decided to let it go. For now.
‘Let’s go back to my earlier question. Since you obviously weren’t planning on stealing from me, what the hell were you doing in my room?’
Hannah flicked the dead ash from her cigarette, then walked over and picked up the teddy bear. She studied it closely, looking for the camera. Smiled when she found it. ‘I’ve got to admit that I did wonder about this. It didn’t make sense. I thought it might have been a gift from an old girlfriend, but that explanation didn’t sit well. Have you got a girlfriend?’
‘Single and happy, and I’m the one asking the questions.’
Hannah smiled. ‘It’s a way of relieving the boredom and getting a bit of a buzz. That’s one reason. The second reason is that I like to try and work out who the guests are, what makes them tick. Call it extreme people watching.’
I laughed. ‘So what makes me tick?’
‘If I didn’t know better I�
��d say you were a serial killer.’
Hannah laughed because she’d meant it as a joke, and I laughed right along with her because I didn’t want her to know what I was really thinking.
We’re the same.
‘What makes you say that?’
‘Six pairs of underpants, all neatly folded and all identical. Six pairs of socks, all neatly balled up and all identical. Six T-shirts that indicate a dubious taste in old-guy music, two identical pairs of Levis and two hoodies, one black, one grey. When you get dressed in the morning the only choice you need to make is which T-shirt and hoodie to wear, and since it’s summer, you don’t even have to worry about the hoodie, which reduces the choices you need to make to one.’
‘Maybe I’m just pragmatic.’
‘And one person’s pragmatic is another person’s weird. You’ve got to admit, it’s a little bit OCD.’
I reached for my cigarette pack and lit a fresh one. ‘I want you to come work for me. You’re just the sort of person the new Dayton Parish Sheriff’s Department is looking for.’
Hannah gave me the look. ‘Two sentences filled with words I understand, but put them all together and they make no sense whatsoever.’
I navigated through the laptop’s files until I found the right one, then hit play. Dirt-streaked concrete, and Sam Galloway hog-tied and panicked.
‘Take a look, and tell me what you see.’
25
When Taylor turned up ten minutes later, Hannah was watching the film for the third time. ‘Gross’ was her considered opinion the first time she watched it, which was accurate, and understandable, but not particularly helpful. The second time I asked her to watch more closely for anything that might help to identify the place Sam had been murdered. There wasn’t, but that was to be expected since my question redefined the whole concept of the long shot.
Taylor came in without knocking and froze in the doorway when he saw us sitting shoulder to shoulder on the bed. Hannah had the computer resting on her lap, eyes glued to the screen, concentrating hard.
‘What’s going on, Winter?’
‘Taylor, meet your new investigator. Hannah, meet your new boss. Taylor heads up our Criminal Investigation Division,’ I whispered to her sotto voce. ‘His first order of business was to requisition some investigators, so here you are.’
Hannah snorted a little half-laugh. Her eyes remained glued to the screen. ‘My boss. Yeah, right.’
I rolled my eyes and made a face. ‘Careful what you wish for, Taylor. So have you got that list of names?’
‘No problem.’
Taylor held up a sheet of paper. All I could see was a black blur of print on a white background, but I was happy to take his word on this one.
‘What’s the mood like back at the station house?’
‘Tense, frustrated. Everyone’s watching the clock and counting down the seconds. And should she be watching that, Winter? I mean, it is evidence.’
‘I figured that another perspective wouldn’t hurt.’
‘But she’s not a cop.’
‘Hannah, raise your right hand.’
Eyes glued to the screen, Hannah raised her hand.
‘Do you swear to blah, blah, blah. Et cetera, et cetera.’
‘I do,’ she replied.
‘There, suitably deputised.’
‘She’s not a cop, Winter.’
‘Guys,’ Hannah called out. ‘I might have something here.’
I looked over at the laptop screen. Hannah had paused the film at a point where the picture was dominated by the firestarter’s bottom half, everything below the waist. Taylor came over and crouched down so he could see.
‘Notice anything unusual?’ she asked.
I looked for a second, saw what she was getting at, smiled to myself. ‘Got it.’
‘What?’ said Taylor.
‘Look at the shoes,’ Hannah told him.
Taylor didn’t say anything for a second. He was staring at the screen, hating the fact that we knew something he didn’t. His face suddenly brightened and he grinned. ‘They don’t match.’
‘Exactly. They’re both black, which was why you might have missed it, but when you look more closely you can clearly see that they’re a different design.’
‘And who would go around wearing shoes that don’t match?’ I said. ‘Please don’t all shout at once.’
‘A homeless person,’ answered Hannah.
‘Which means our unsub is smaller than we thought. Originally, I said he’d be around the six-foot mark because it’s difficult to control two people, but those shoes change all that. A soft lawyer and a homeless guy who’s so far down that he doesn’t even have matching shoes, a grandmother could control those two.’ I leant around Hannah so I could see Taylor. ‘Still think this is a bad idea? You know, if you’re not careful your tenure as the head of the Criminal Investigation Division could be the shortest in the whole history of Dayton.’
‘Okay,’ Taylor said. ‘We know something new, but it’s not necessarily a good thing, is it?’
‘Why not?’ asked Hannah.
‘Because what Captain Taylor is getting at is that we’re now looking for someone between five-seven and five-eleven. The average height for an American male is five feet nine point two inches. That’s the median, the exact midpoint. Half of American males are taller and half are smaller. The further you get from the median, the fewer people you’re going to find, until you find just one, and then none. It’s a big deal being the world’s tallest or smallest person. You get a certificate, and your picture and name ends up in the record books.’ I nodded to the sheet of paper Taylor was holding. ‘Our guy is going to measure in somewhere between five-seven and five-eleven, which, statistically speaking, covers most of the males on Taylor’s list.’
I walked over to the whiteboard and scrubbed out the red question marks next to Barker’s and Romero’s names. Looked like they were back in play. Taylor and Hannah followed me over. I plucked the list from Taylor’s fingers and glanced at it. Names, dates of birth, addresses. I passed it back to Taylor.
‘Okay, transfer the list to the whiteboard. Stick to white males aged between thirty and forty. Whoever’s neatest can do the writing. By my reckoning we’ve got seventeen new suspects. Give me a shout when you’re done.’
The coffee was lukewarm, but lukewarm coffee has as much caffeine in it as the freshly brewed stuff, and right now it was caffeine I was after. I pulled the laptop across and replayed the silent movie of Sam Galloway’s murder. Different shoes. I should have spotted that one. It made me wonder what else I might have missed. That was the problem when an investigation ran slow. The doubts began to creep in.
I finished my coffee and called Shepherd. He answered on the fifth ring, which meant his cellphone was closer to hand this time. Maybe even in the same room. He sounded excited to hear from me, until he realised I didn’t have anything new. I heard a sigh and imagined him stroking his moustache even more furiously than usual.
They still hadn’t located the crime scene.
There were two possible reasons, both of which could be contributing factors. One, they were looking for a needle in a haystack. Eagle Creek covered an area of twelve square miles, and Dayton was over six hundred square miles. That was a big old chunk of land. A lot of garages and barns and warehouses.
The second reason was that the unsub didn’t want the crime scene to be found yet and was subtly steering the investigation away from it. The upside of this was that when we did find the crime scene, it could help to identify the unsub. I told Shepherd we’d be there soon and hung up.
‘Seventeen new names exactly,’ Hannah called over.
I walked over to the whiteboard and stared at the names. Two neat columns, eleven names in each. Taylor, Fortier and Shepherd were out of play, but that still left nineteen suspects. Hannah was tapping the black marker pen against her leg, and studying the names on the board. Taylor was quietly staring, his face creased with fierce concentrati
on.
‘Any names jump out at you?’ I asked him.
‘Darrell Hodginson. But that’s because he’s an asshole, not because I think he’s the unsub.’
‘What about you, Hannah?’
She shook her head. ‘Most of these people I don’t know. I went to school with Dan Choat, but I can’t see him being involved in something like this.’
‘Why not?’
‘He was popular, bright, polite. That’s the main thing I remember about him. How polite he was. Whenever he spoke to the teachers he always called them ma’am or sir.’
‘And you’ve just described Ted Bundy.’
Hannah’s mouth made the shape of an O.
‘Right now we have nineteen suspects. Our unsub is an expert at hiding in plain sight. He knows how cops think because he is one. He knows how investigations are run because he’s been involved with so many. He knows about forensics and profiling. And he’ll be doing everything possible to lead us in the wrong direction.’
26
The sun had gone down, the temperature too. The evening was still warm, but it was a pleasant warm rather than Death Valley warm. My leather jacket was hooked on my finger and hanging over my shoulder for when it got cold later. Morrow Street was completely deserted. We were the only living souls. It was twenty to nine. In three hours and twenty minutes there was a very high likelihood that someone else was going to be burnt alive.
Hannah was back in the guesthouse because she had chores to do, which worked well since I’m pretty sure that Shepherd wouldn’t be too impressed if we turned up with a sarcastic, spiky-haired ball of attitude wearing a Gutterpigs T-shirt. I made a mental note to Google Gutterpigs when this case was over. In my experience an interesting name didn’t necessarily mean interesting music, but it was worth checking out.
‘Keys,’ I held out a hand and made gimme, gimme gestures with my fingers. We were standing on the sidewalk beside the police cruiser. Taylor shook his head.
‘Keys, please.’
