by James Carol
Models of fighter planes hung from the ceiling, handmade and hand-painted, a real labour of love. Choat had spent ages working on them. The bookcase was filled with detective and war stories, the spines cracked from use. The small desk pushed into the corner under the eaves was empty. There was a faded blue quilt on the single bed and matching faded blue drapes on the windows. What I found most interesting was what was missing from the room. There was no TV, no CD player, no music collection, no posters.
Unlike the rest of the house, this room hadn’t been cleaned recently and there was dust everywhere. My guess was that Choat had moved into his mother’s room when she died, and hadn’t been in here since. When he’d shut the door for the final time, he’d been effectively trying to close off this part of his life.
‘Come and take a look at this,’ Hannah said.
She’d got up off the floor and was standing next to the bed. She picked up a framed photograph and a box from the nightstand and handed them to me. The man in the photograph was wearing a full-dress army uniform and standing proudly to attention. There was enough of a resemblance to conclude that this was Choat’s father. The box contained a Purple Heart.
‘Anything else?’ I asked.
‘Sorry that’s it.’
I let out a long sigh.
‘Maybe he didn’t have any dark secrets, Winter. Maybe it’s exactly what it looks like. Maybe he was just a sad, lonely guy with mom issues.’
I shook my head. ‘No, there’s got to be something. Okay, here’s a scenario for you. The unsub comes here, gets Choat to write the suicide note, knocks him out, dumps him in the trunk of his car, drives him to the refinery, shoots him, arranges everything to make it look like suicide, then drives home. What’s wrong with this version of events?’
‘The Nissan. Someone had to drive it to the refinery, and it couldn’t have been the bad guy because how did he get home? You’re not going to commit a murder then hitchhike, are you?’
‘Exactly. Choat had to drive the Nissan out there, and the only reason he would have done that is if the unsub had coerced him. And before you say anything, there wasn’t a second shooter up there on the grassy knoll. This is a one-man show.’
‘Well there’s nothing here. I would have found it.’
‘I know you would have. That’s what’s so weird. I was so sure we were onto something’.
‘So what now?’
‘I don’t know,’ I admitted.
We headed outside and walked back to the car in silence, both of us thinking hard. I was still trying to figure out what would make Choat drive to the refinery. With the right leverage you could encourage anyone to do anything, you just had to work out which buttons to push. And that didn’t necessarily mean using violence. In fact, it was often better if you could avoid that.
One prop that Ted Bundy had used was an arm cast. He’d park his van at the sidewalk and pretend that he was having trouble loading something into the back. His victims would take one look at the cast and the pathetic, puppy-dog expression and actually climb into the back of the van to help him.
This unsub hadn’t used the threat of violence to get Choat to drive to the refinery. It didn’t play out. He might have been able to coerce him to go to his car, but once he got there Choat would have just driven off. The only way that would work was if the unsub had travelled in the car with him, which he couldn’t do because how did he get back from the refinery? Choat didn’t have any relatives the unsub could threaten. No lovers, either.
But there was something, some sort of leverage. There had to be. The question was what? We reached the car and I opened the door and took one last look at the house. Hannah was beside me, looking at the house, too. A sudden smile lit up her face.
‘There’s one place we didn’t look,’ she told me.
It took a second before I worked out what she was getting at. We hurried back to the house. At the top of the path we turned right instead of left. It took all of ten seconds to crack the lock on the garage.
48
The garage door opened easily. Not that I’d expected anything less. The world outside the picket fence might be a whirlwind of chaos and heading all to hell, but Dan Choat had made sure that everything on this side was running with the smooth, ordered efficiency of a Swiss watch.
For a moment we stood on the threshold. The sun was directly behind us, burning into our backs and lighting up the interior. The garage looked like it was bathed in an otherworldly glow, making the mundane and the everyday appear somehow special. There was a clear open space directly in front of us, which meant Choat had been a part of that minority group who actually kept their car in a garage. The concrete floor was whitewashed and there were no oil stains, or dirt streaks, or dust. It glowed in the sunlight, throwing off blinding reflections. Choat hadn’t just swept the floor, he’d scrubbed it until it shone.
Hannah’s expression was part bemusement, part disbelief. ‘This place is cleaner than my kitchen.’
‘Which tells us that he’s dealing with major guilt issues.’
‘And you got that from the fact that his garage is tidy? You’re good.’
‘It’s not just the garage. His mother was a religious nut who just kept piling the guilt on. It was a dynamic that existed in their relationship right from the start, but she would have gone into overdrive when her husband passed, and it would have kept going until she died. Even then Choat wasn’t free. Everywhere he looked in this house there were memories of his mother, and lurking behind the memories was all that guilt.’
I snorted a laugh and shook my head, and Hannah said, ‘What?’
‘I was just thinking how crazy this world can be at times. There’s a good chance that the unsub did the residents of Eagle Creek a massive favour when he murdered Choat. And the irony is that he doesn’t realise.’
‘How so?’
‘Choat would have maybe kept going for another year or so before the guilt and pressure got too much. Best-case scenario, he would have ended up committing suicide. Worst-case, he would have gone postal and marched into the high school and shot up a load of kids.’ I stopped, thought about this, shook my head. ‘No, not a school, a church. He’d wait for Sunday to come around and then go into the busiest church in town and shoot as many people as he could before he ran out of ammunition. He would have saved the last bullet for himself, though.’
We went inside. It was stiflingly hot and there wasn’t any oxygen. Garden tools hung on the left-hand wall. A spade, hoe, fork, all positioned level and parallel. The large workbench that stretched the length of the back wall had been there for years and the wood had darkened with age. Cupboards on the bottom level, a single line of drawers above that, and then the workbench. Tools hung neatly on the wall above, ordered by type and size, screwdrivers at one end, hammers at the other.
Hannah started at the left end of the bench, while I started at the right. The plan was to search the cupboards and drawers and meet in the middle. The first drawer I tried opened smoothly and had a tray that looked like it contained every type of screw known to man, all separated into their own little partitions. The cupboard underneath contained coils of rope of varying thickness and length.
‘I think I’ve found something,’ Hannah called out from the other end of the bench.
I went over to where she was crouched down beside one of the cupboards.
‘Now, why do you think this cupboard would have a lock when none of the others do?’ she asked.
I looked along the line of cupboards and saw she was right. A small keyhole had been cut out of the door underneath the knob. I took out my leather wrap and selected the smallest pick. The lock was small and fiddly and it took a couple of attempts to crack it. I opened the door with a flourish.
The cupboard was empty.
‘I don’t get it,’ said Hannah. ‘What’s the point in having a locked cupboard that’s empty?’
I shrugged. ‘Maybe he lost the key.’
‘In that case either
there’d be something in here that wasn’t worth breaking the door down for, or we’d be looking at a busted lock. It’s not just the fact the cupboard’s locked, Winter, it’s the fact it’s empty. You don’t lock an empty cupboard. That’s the bit that doesn’t make sense.’
I leant into the cupboard to get a better look. There was something different about this cupboard and it took a second to work out what. It was slightly smaller than the one I’d looked in at the other end of the bench. I rapped a knuckle against the bottom shelf and heard a hollow echo. I pressed the shelf at the back and the front rocked upwards. Underneath was a stash of magazines.
Hannah pulled out the top one and held it up. There were two men dressed in leather on the front cover. One of the men was on all fours, a ball gag wedged tightly into his mouth, a studded dog collar around his neck. She flicked through the magazine, shaking her head. Her expression was difficult to read. There was no disapproval on her face, but there was a kind of sadness and some anger, too. She closed the magazine and shook it at me.
‘Nobody should die because of something like this. So what if he was gay and into S&M? It was his life.’
‘Except that’s not going to be the majority view around here. That’s why the unsub was able to use it as leverage.’
Hannah turned to face me and there was only one emotion left on her face. The anger had eclipsed everything else. ‘I hate this town. The sooner I get out, the better.’
49
We put the magazine back, repositioned the false floor and locked the cupboard. I took one last look around to make sure everything was exactly as we’d found it, then we went outside, closed the garage and headed back down the path that led through Choat’s yard. I stopped at the sidewalk and put my sunglasses on, scanned the yards on the other side of the street.
‘So what have we got?’ The question was aimed as much at myself as Hannah. ‘We’ve got a spooked unsub who’s making mistakes. We’ve got a crime scene. And last night we saved someone else from getting torched. This guy’s on the ropes and he doesn’t even know it.’
‘But we still don’t know who he is.’
‘We don’t know who he is yet,’ I corrected. ‘Okay, the next thing we need to do is work out exactly how and where Choat was abducted.’
I took out my cell and called Taylor. His phone rang out and went to voicemail. I left a short message asking him to find out if Choat was on duty yesterday and, if he was, to see what shift he was working. I hung up and tapped the phone against my chin.
‘What are you thinking?’
‘With crimes like these, the abduction phase is always the riskiest because the unsub needs to come out into the open. It doesn’t matter how careful you are, as soon as you do that you run the risk of being seen, which in turn increases the chance of being caught. That’s the catch 22. You can sit at home and fantasise all you want and stay safe, but if you want to be a real player then you need to get out there and find yourself a nice warm body to have some fun with. But you’re not stupid, so you do everything possible to reduce the risks.’
‘You think Choat was abducted here.’
I was still staring at the yards on the opposite side of the street. From left to right they read: young couple with kids, working couple, retirees, working couple. ‘It makes sense. He lives alone, and you saw how easily we managed to break in.’
‘But the bad guy would still need to be out in the open, even if only briefly.’
A drape opened an inch at the retirees’ house, then quickly fell back into place.
‘Exactly.’ I started walking. Hannah had caught up by the time I reached the opposite sidewalk. ‘How are you at impersonating a police officer?’
‘Can’t say it’s something I’ve ever done.’
‘It’s easy. You just need to stand there looking as intimidating as possible. And let me do the talking.’
This yard was as neat as Choat’s, and the picket fence looked like it had been whitewashed in recent memory. We walked up the path and knocked on the door. I used the midnight cop knock. Loud and insistent and impossible to ignore. Someone knocks like this and you come running, your heart thundering in your chest because you know instinctively that there’s bad news on the way. This was a knock that interfaced directly into some primal part of our programming.
The hurried footsteps in the hall were followed by the deadbolt being unlocked, then the Yale. Any protection they offered was illusory since anyone who was halfway competent with a set of picks could be inside within a couple of minutes. And if you didn’t have two minutes, you could always go in via a window. Security on windows was generally pretty substandard. The harsh reality was that if someone wanted to break into your house badly enough, they’d find a way.
The door rattled open as far as the intruder chain allowed and a woman’s ancient face peered through the gap.
‘What do you want?’
‘Just a few minutes of your time, ma’am. We’re from the sheriff’s department.’
The woman looked at us like we’d just claimed to be aliens. I didn’t blame her. We looked nothing like cops. Neither of us had cop hair, then there were the T-shirts.
‘I’ll need to see some ID.’
I patted my pockets and made a face. ‘I must have left it back in the car.’
Her eyes narrowed to slits. ‘So I’m supposed to take you at your word?’
I stood aside and nodded to the cop car, gave her a second to take in the markings. I was wishing Taylor was here. At least, I was wishing his badge was. A badge would make this situation a whole lot easier.
‘Ma’am,’ said Hannah.
The old lady’s sharp eyes zoned in on her. They were eyes that didn’t miss a thing.
‘All due respect, missy, you look even less like a cop than he does.’
‘You heard what happened to Sam Galloway? The lawyer?’
‘Yeah, I heard.’
‘Well we’ve been brought in from Shreveport to help with the investigation. The reason we’re dressed like this is because we were working undercover. As soon as we closed that case, me and my partner came rushing over here to help out. We didn’t even have time to get changed.’
‘Yeah, but you’d still have ID.’
‘Ma’am, we were working undercover, chasing down some really bad people. If they’d found ID on us they would have killed us.’
The old woman glanced past us at the car, then the door slammed shut in our faces. A couple of seconds later there was the rattle of an intruder chain being unlatched.
‘I was supposed to be doing the talking.’ I whispered.
‘You’re welcome,’ she whispered back. I raised an eyebrow and she added, ‘If I’d left it to you, Winter, we’d still be standing here at Christmas.’
The door opened and we turned to face the old woman wearing our best smiles. In the bright sunlight, the woman didn’t look as old as I’d first thought. Late sixties, early seventies. Her cheeks were sunken because she’d lost most of her teeth, making her look older, an effect that had been compounded by the gloomy hallway. She nodded to Choat’s house.
‘You think Daniel did it, don’t you? You think it was him who burnt up that lawyer?’
‘What’s your name, ma’am?’
‘Annie Dufoe. What’s yours?’
‘I’m Detective Winter.’ I nodded to Hannah. ‘And this is my colleague, Detective Hayden.’
‘Well now we’ve got all the niceties out the way, howabouts you answer my question?’
‘Yes ma’am, he’s a suspect.’
Annie nodded like everything was clicking into place, like this all made perfect sense. ‘There was always something strange about that boy. He was so quiet and polite. It wasn’t natural. Then again, it wasn’t his fault.’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘A boy needs his father. I don’t know if you know this, but his daddy died when he was young.’
I nodded. ‘He was a war hero.’
�
�He was, but he didn’t die in no war, if that’s what you’re thinking.’ She nodded to the garage. ‘He blew his brains out in there. It happens. Some people go to war but only a part of them makes it back, and not the good part. Lord knows, I’ve got nothing against a person enjoying a drink, but some people can take it too far. They don’t know when to quit.’
I knew exactly what she meant. I was thinking about my mother and her slow dive into the darkness at the bottom of a bottle. ‘Daniel found his father’s body, didn’t he?’
Another nod. ‘Any other kid would have run out of there screaming. They’d have run a mile in the other direction, got away as quick as they could. Not Daniel. He went and got a bucket of soapy water and scrubbed that floor clean while his daddy was turning stiff less than a foot away. His poor mother found them both in there when she got back from work. She told me later that he was just sat there with the bucket between his knees, staring into space.’
‘When did you last see Daniel?’
Annie sucked in her cheeks and squashed her lips together with her thumb and forefinger. ‘Last night. It was a little before seven. I remember because I’d just finished washing up after dinner and my stories hadn’t started on the TV. My kitchen window looks out over the street.’
‘Was it unusual for him to go out at that time of night?’
A shake of the head. ‘He worked shifts so he was always coming and going at all sorts of hours.’
‘Did you notice anything suspicious happening over there last night?’
Another shake of the head. ‘I’m generally in bed by ten. Once I’m asleep nothing can wake me.’
‘Thank you for your time, Mrs Dufoe,’ I said.
‘I hope you catch him soon.’
‘Well, until we do, you make sure that door’s locked up nice and tight.’
