by Rich Foster
Twenty minutes later Harry was back at the airport. Barton sat in the lounge with his feet up and a coke in his hand.
“Got ourselves a passenger for the ride home!”
“To Red Lake?”
“Yep. Shawna has some time off and is coming up to the lake. We’ll get a cabin down by the water.”
“And who’s Shawna?”
“Woman at the flight services desk. She went home to pack a few things.”
Harry just shook his head. He was accustomed to Dirk’s way with women.
“The Golden Bear Cabins are nice. They’re on the lake and only a couple blocks from Marie’s. Or you can take the boat.”
“Now you’re talking.”
Harry owned two watercraft, an 18’ runabout he docked at the cabin and a 35’ houseboat, named, ‘Lost Forever’ which he kept at Cody Marine.
“If this boat’s a rocking don’t bother knocking” Barton said with a chuckle and a leer.
Harry poured himself a cup of coffee.
“So, what happened in town?”
Harry let air out between his lips.
“That bad, huh?”
“I have to look for the evidence, but I think we have a serial killer that goes back forty years.”
“You sure? That sounds like a bad crime novel.”
“The old Sheriff framed a guy he was sure was guilty.”
“I’ve known a few cops like that. It happens.”
Barton accepted it as easily as the fact the sun will rise and set.
“I want to do something about it.”
“Won’t do the women any good.”
“Might save someone.”
“Maybe, if you knew who you were looking for. Do you?”
“Not a clue.” Harry slouched deeper in the chair sensing defeat.
*
Two thousand feet below him the highway was now clear and mid-afternoon traffic snaked along. Shawna talked animatedly with Dirk. She was vivacious, a bit short for Harry’s taste, her hair dark and tightly curled. In every way she was Paula’s opposite.
Thinking of her, Harry called to say he was on his way home. He added as an afterthought, “Barton’s staying on the boat so we only need two places for dinner.”
Paula made an encouraging purr of delight into the phone.
“Something came up. I need to go see the Sheriff before I get home.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
Harry smiled, thinking, It's not so bad being domesticated.
*
Harry dropped Barton and Shawna got at Cody Marine.
“Don’t forget the blowers in the bilge and make sure the head is on the holding tank if you disconnect from the dockside service.”
“Yes’um boss.”
Harry took the hint. “Sorry Dirk. You know what you’re doing. If something comes up, I’ll call.”
“If something comes up, don’t! I’m on vacation.”
Harry saw them in his rear view mirror trundling down the floating dock, another happy couple. While they went off to play he turned to grimmer tasks.
*
“I need to talk to the sheriff and Detective Egan, Jimmy,” Harry said to the deputy behind the desk. During the summer Jimmy Hughes ran the sheriff’s patrol boat on the lake, so they were on a first name basis.
Gaines’s office was empty but his voice carried down the hall from another room. Hughes buzzed Egan’s office.
“Harry Grim is here. He wants to see you and the Sheriff.”
It was five minutes before they came. Harry waited patiently. Gaines was not one to play games, he would come when he was able. Shorly, he appeared in the hall and nodded to his office.
“Come on in, Harry.”
Harry took the empty chair opposite the Sheriff’s desk.
“Pat will be here in a minute. What do you have?”
“I talked to Todd Whittier today.”
Gaines’s lips pursed non-noncommittally. “How’s he doing?”
“He’s old and crotchety.”
“I heard his memory is gone.”
“Some of it. He’s confused about the present but he seems pretty sharp about the past.”
Gaines stroked his mustache. “I don’t suppose this is going any place good, is it?”
Harry shook his head, “No.”
Gaines waited silently.
“Whittier framed Martin Hoffman.”
“You sure?”
He nodded his head, “Yes. He described it as, ‘Helping justice along’.
Gaines spread his hands, palms up. “That’s ancient history. What’s the problem?”
“I want to look at the files from the Hoffman case. I think they might tie in to the 1990’s murders and the Kershaw kidnapping.”
“You’re covering a lot of history there.”
“Forty years.”
“And what has the killer been doing in the intervening years?”
Harry shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe he was doing time for another offense.”
Just then Egan entered. The sheriff looked up, “Pat go pull the files on the Hoffman case”
Egan seemed perplexed. “What case is that?”
“Sorry, it was before your time. Besides, the case was closed; everything will be at the warehouse. Call over and have the record’s clerk pull the file. It would be 1966 or 1967. Then run over and bring it back.”
“What’s this about?
“A possible serial killer. We’ll talk when you get back.”
Egan left.
“Pretty good memory, Sheriff,” Harry said.
“Small town. I was young, my early twenties at the time. The murder trial was big news. I can’t place the year but it was before the moon landing.”
“Both are before my time, Sheriff.”
The sheriff buzzed the front counter. “Jimmy bring a couple sodas in here from the office refrigerator.”
He clicked off. “I guess we wait.”
“I’d like to see the files on the 1990 victims and Kerri Kershaw.
Gaines left the room. In a minute, he returned with the folders from Pat Egan's office. He opened them. Harry laid the photos alongside each other. “You remember what the girls in the1960’s killings looked like?”
“Naw. We’ll have to see when Egan gets back.”
“It looks like he preferred blondes.”
“Or she?”
“True.”
Harry sifted through the morgue photos. Alison Albright belonged in a museum of Egyptology. Her skin was dark, tanned leather, wrinkled and shrunken tight to the skull, her lips drawn back to reveal a death rictus.
Judy Stanton’s remains spoke only to the domain of an anthropologist or archeologist. Her partial skeleton lay anatomically arranged on the pathologists stainless steel table, however her arms and legs were missing.
Only the Jane Doe resembled living flesh. The cadaver was discovered quickly, the night had been cool and the animals did not get to it. In the morgue snapshot she almost looked asleep if one overlooked the autopsy incision that ran from her belly button up between her small breasts. The sutures that closed her up were big and far between. This was pathology not cosmetic surgery.
He thumbed through the other file photos. The ditch where the body was found, tire tracks in the dirt, and a close-up of the knotted rope that held her wrist together.
“Didn’t the pathologist say Alison Albright was restrained?”
“He said there was evidence of abrasion and one wrist was cracked.”
“Any sign of what was used to bind her?”
Gaines shook his head to the negative, then said, “However, the Kershaw girl was handcuffed.”
“That’s a different M.O. than Jane Doe.” Harry ran his fingers through his tousled hair. Wearily he said, “Maybe I’m wrong about this serial killer hypothesis.”
“Or, handcuffs could be a convenient way to restrain her until he got to the ritualistic stuff.”
“The what?”
“These psychos seem to have little fetishes they go through. A lot of them suffer from an obsessive-compulsive disorder. Ritual cuts, or means of restraint, signature marks in either notes or the way they deface or display their victims. That’s what usually brings them down.”
“Other than their appearance, it's hard to find similarities given the state of the bodies.”
“We’ll see what is in the old files when Pat comes back.”
They drank their sodas.
“It's been a month and a half since the Kershaw incident. You think he’ll strike again?”
“I hope not,” Gaines said, “but if it’s a serial killer, Yeah he’ll be back for another bite of the apple.”
“Might be worth telling her to dye her hair brown.”
“You think the guy will go after the same victim twice?”
Harry shrugged, “She looks a lot like the other women. I doubt it is a coincidence.”
“And the van was parked waiting for her, so the guy knew her route.”
“Notice how we keep saying ‘He’?”
“Kerri felt it was a guy. Most of the victims are female. I’m okay with assuming the killer or killers are male.”
Their conversation drifted off into sports, and then to fishing. Gaines complained he was too busy to get out on the lake and Harry complained about tourist season.
“We should go together sometime,” Harry said.
“Might do that,” said Gaines. “Is your buddy still around?”
“For a bit.”
“I have to say, Harry, he makes me nervous. You sort of make up your own rules, but on the whole I know how you deal. Dirk is a wild card.”
“He’s got rules. All mercenaries do.”
“Perhaps, but I’m not sure he’s sufficiently domesticated for urban living.”
“That may be true, Sheriff.”
Egan returned with a stack of folders. He set them on the corner of the sheriff's desk. He pulled them off one at a time.
“Lucy Reese,1965,” he handed it to the sheriff. “Cheryl Williams, killed in 1966,” that one he handed Harry, “and Connie Colfax died 1967.” He took the third folder and the last chair in the room.
“That binder is the file on Martin Hoffman that Whittier sent over to the District Attorney’s office.”
Harry and Gaines were looking through the folders. At almost the same time they pulled out envelopes that contained black and white photos.
“What do you have?” Gaines asked.
“Cheryl Williams was a blonde, twenty, and probably pretty before he strangled her.” Harry laid the crime scene shot on the desk. The victim's face was puffy and the tongue protruding from her mouth was dark.
Gaines set his next to it. “Lucy Reese looks similar to the other girls.” In the photo her eyes stared wide and lifeless at the camera lens as though startled to find herself dead.
They figured the third victim would be the same, but the crime scene shot of Connie Colfax looked very little like a face. She was found under a house. Small animals got to her during the winter, and come spring, the heat. But she did have blond, shoulder-length hair.
“Look for any pictures of the girl's wrists or a report of them having been bound or otherwise restrained.”
A moment later, Harry laid a close-up of the girl’s wrists. The clarity of the work was excellent, the lay of the rope was neatly in focus. The rope looked like 3/8” white braided anchor line. The fingernails were painted dark. Probably red in the late sixties, Harry thought. There was a similar shot in the other files, all the girls were bound with rope, though one was three-strand, and another appeared to be clothesline.
“Similar but not conclusive,” the sheriff said.
“Nothing unique about tying someone up with rope,” observed Egan.
“Maybe he ran out of duct tape?” Harry suggested as he picked up the photos and studied them more carefully. Something troubled him, but he could not put his finger on it.
“You have a length of rope or cord?”
“Probably. Hey Jimmy!” Gaines called out. Hughes' head popped in the doorway. “Look in the storeroom for some rope.”
“What do you see, Harry?” Egan said looking over his shoulder.
“I don’t know.”
He passed the photos over to Egan who studied them and passed them on to Gaines. Meanwhile Jimmy Hughes returned with a length of ¼ Dacron line.
“Put your hands behind your back Pat,” Harry said. He quickly ran the line around Egan’s wrists and tied a square knot. He held the picture up next to it and then shook his head.
“It’s a thief’s knot.” Harry picked up the other two pictures and looked at them anew.
“A what?” Egan asked as he tried to look back over his shoulders with his hands bound.
Gaines leaned forward. “What’s a thief’s knot?”
“On the old sailing ships, the cooks tied off the food sacks with a reverse of the square or reef knot. See how the two ends come out on opposite sides? Now, look at Egan's wrists. The bitter ends both come out on top. If someone opened the ditty bags they would invariably tie a regular reef knot and the cook would know someone pilfered food.”
“Wouldn’t they just practice to cover their tracks?”
“I suppose some did, but habits die hard. If you were in a hurry, you would do it the way you did it twenty times a day.”
Egan tried to twist around but that only moved his hands away from the sheriff.
“Hold still, Pat!” Gaines studied the photos and the knots.
“It’s not a great knot, far more likely to come loose,” Harry said as he worked his own knot loose and retied the line as a thief’s knot on the detective’s wrists. “Try to get out of that, Pat.”
Egan wiggled and pulled, worked his arms and soon the knot came loose.
“He must have tied it after he killed them,” Harry said. “I think this is our killer's trademark.”
Harry loosely tied the knot for Egan’s benefit. He looked at it.
“Guess we better look at that Jane Doe’s hands,” Gaines said, voicing what was in the back of all their minds.
The photographic work was inferior to the others. Whoever took these had less pride in their work, but the knots were the same.
Gaines leaned back in his chair. “Damn!” he said.
They were all thinking the same thing, that Martin Hoffman died innocent.
They silently thumbed through the files not saying much.
“Sorta kicks a lot of your suspects loose, doesn’t it?”
“”You mean the kids at the party twenty years ago?”
“Yep. They weren’t even alive when these other killings went down.”
Harry thought about this for a few minutes. “It could be a copy cat.”
Gaines grimaced. “Then it would have to be a cop or somebody who saw these pictures, noticed the similarity, kept their mouth shut, and waited twenty years to do it again.”
Egan interrupted. “Why don’t we put this out and see if there are other matches around the country? Maybe our guy came and went over the years.”
“Good idea, Pat.”
“But it still doesn’t clear up the Albright case because she wasn’t bound. It could be but it is not a sure thing.”
“Aw look at the similarity, they must be tied together,” Egan argued.
The sheriff fell silent and stroked his mustache, Harry played with the rope, and Pat Egan kept skimming the files. Suddenly Harry spoke out,
“Danby cut it off!”
“What?” the other two chorused.
“Frank Danby took his letter jacket off Alison’s body. He probably cut the rope to get the coat off her arms.”
Egan shook his head, “That’s a sick thought!”
“Necessity is the motivator of intervention.”
Gaines eyes developed a glimmer of hope. “Call the warehouse and have them look in the evidence box from the Kershaw assault.”
“
What are they looking for?”
“The girl had a cloth ditty bag over her head. Paula said she cut the rope because it was wet and fairly dark. I want to know what sort of knot was used.”
Pat reached for the phone.
“And for god’s sake tell him not to undo it but see if the standing parts are on opposite sides.
They waited nervously. Fifteen minutes later the phone rang. Gaines took the call. His face darkened. When he hung up he grimly said, “Gentleman, we have a serial killer living among us!”
Harry went home. The investigation was over for him. Travis Parks had paid him off. Gaines would use the resources of law enforcement to search for similar killings in the national database. From that he might develop a lead.
He meaning Gaines, not as in, me Harry. I’m out of it, he thought wistfully. There was always a melancholy at the end of the chase. The sort of feeling he suspected he might have seeing the fox after the dogs got through with it after the hunt.
His house was open. Out beyond the dock a lone swimmer moved. Paula, slipped through the water with grace and steady speed. He found the last beer in the fridge and settled into his deck chair. After a few sips he closed his eyes and systematically emptied his mind, slowly discarding images of dead women, blood splattered walls, and people with evil suspicions or sick consciences, mentally burning the dross that collected over the past days and weeks. He began to dream.
It was dense fog. His headlights barely penetrated the dark. Faintly he made out the red glow of a pair of taillights. Then the shape of a van stopped in the middle of the road. The wipers slapped at the mist that fell on his windshield. A face appeared in the rear window of the van. He struggled to make it out, but it was diffuse and morphed into a half dozen images until it settled into a single visage. Alison Albright stared at him, plaintively, and one lone tear ran down her cheek. He got out and walked toward her, he felt the rain on his face.
Harry jerked awake. Paula was beside him toweling her hair. An occasional drop escaped and landed on him. There was no fog nor rain. He ran one hand over his face and felt a last frisson pass through him from the dream.
“Sorry, I woke you.”
Harry shrugged. “Just as well, things weren’t going well in la-la land.”
