Opening Moves pbf-6

by Steven James

  Instinct took over and I made my choice.

  36

  I didn’t fire.

  I couldn’t, not if I wasn’t able to tell for certain that he had a weapon. Instead of firing, I dropped to one knee so that if he did have a gun he wouldn’t have a clear shot, then hollered, “Hands up!” I sighted down the barrel of my SIG. “Now!”

  But he did have a weapon and before I’d even finished shouting, he’d squeezed the trigger.

  The bullet clanged off the side of the boxcar and I returned fire, but in the fraction of a second it’d taken me to respond, he’d dropped down into the gully.

  Go, Pat!

  Now!

  I rolled to the edge of the boxcar, half slid, half leapt down the ladder, and found Ralph with his back to the car, gun out, aimed in the direction of the shooter. “Where?”

  “The fence. Eleven o’clock. Forty meters.”

  He signaled to me that he was going first, and before I could out-alpha-male him for the honor, he bolted toward the fence yelling, “Cover me.”

  I rounded the corner of the train car and leveled my weapon at the place where I’d last seen the shooter, but only seconds after Ralph left for the opening in the fence, I realized that the suspect had already made it through the hole. He appeared only as a dark blur of movement in the forest.

  “Ralph! The woods!”

  I had no shot. Not from here. Not with these trees, not at this distance.

  Sirens told me that backup was on its way, but they weren’t close enough to do any good right now.

  The forest stretched about the length of a football field and ended at an empty parking lot in a low-income neighborhood full of crack houses, dark alleys, and abandoned buildings. If the shooter made it that far, there’d be a hundred places to hide. The guy was really moving and I could tell that if I took the time to run to the opening in the fence, he’d make it to the neighborhood and be gone for good.

  Only one other option.

  “West Reagan Street,” I yelled to Ralph as I sprinted toward the fence. “Call it in!”

  I holstered my gun and tugged off my jacket.

  Don’t do this, Pat. You’re going to regret it.

  Yeah, maybe, but I was gonna do it anyway.

  As soon as I reached the fence, I flipped the coat up across the razor wire above me and, without giving myself time for second guesses, I climbed. At the top, using the jacket to pad my hands from the curling, bladed wire, I pulled myself up, but even through the fabric, the metal barbs slivered into my hands. My palms screamed at me and, hastily, trying to keep from toppling backward, I scrunched up the leather beneath my hands and managed-barely-to hold on.

  I scrambled my legs up, collected myself for what was to come, then brought them to the top, doing my best to keep my balance and not let the razor wire catch on my pants legs. But as I was bridging the fence, the fabric by my heel caught on the wire, and when I tugged to get it free, I lost my balance and the momentum pitched me forward, over to the other side. I hit the frozen ground hard and off balance, rolled, came up with my gun in my hand. The Maglite had dropped out of my belt, though, on the far side of the fence.

  You really do need a smaller flash-

  Go!

  Leaving the jacket behind, I raced after the suspect through the shadow-riddled forest.

  37

  Branches flicked past my face. There was hardly enough light to see where the suspect was going, but I was just able to make out his outline moving swiftly through the woods on the fringe of the night.

  I leapt over a fallen log, rushed past a pile of garbage and a rusted shopping cart that’d somehow found its way in here.

  Just past the tree line, streetlights had blinked on. The shooter emerged from the trees, dashed through the circle of light cast down by one of them, and disappeared somewhere beyond it.

  A sprawling, boarded-up building squatted on the other side of the street and blocked a direct path through the neighborhood. I couldn’t tell which direction the runner had gone to avoid it-right or left.

  I bolted forward, ducked to miss another branch, and, a handful of seconds later, burst through the edge of the trees and stood by the curb.

  No sign of the man I was chasing.

  Right or left?

  No idea.

  He held his gun in his right hand.

  Hurry!

  I made a choice.

  Right.

  All things being equal, if he fired with his right hand, he’d be right-handed. I recalled Dr. Werjonic’s research, his writings on cognitive maps and fleeing suspects: “Right-handed people typically turn right upon entering a novel environment.”

  I dashed toward a row of cramped low-income apartments.

  When I came to the intersection, I saw no sign of the shooter.

  I ran forward, checked an alley, then gazed down the block.

  Nothing.

  No cars were moving. No pedestrians. Admittedly, this wasn’t the kind of neighborhood where people typically take casual strolls in the twilight, but tonight the streets seemed uncharacteristically deserted.

  Another hurried search through another alley and I came up empty again. In frustration I let my foot find a nearby trash can. If it hadn’t been chained to a telephone pole, it would have cleared the street. As it was, I left a sizable dent in the side that I might have been proud of any other time.

  Immediately, curtains in the nearest apartment building fluttered open and in the porch light I saw a young African-American boy, maybe four or five years old, peering out at me. I was already hurrying back toward the streetlight where the suspect had disappeared, but I didn’t want to frighten the boy, so I hid my gun, continued on casually, and then the curtain closed, and he slipped from view and was gone once again.

  When I got to the spot where the suspect had exited the woods, I heard Ralph hurtling through the darkness toward me, the light from his flashlight marking his path. “Anything?” he called as he burst through the edge of the forest.

  “No.”

  He cursed loudly.

  Just as we started scouring the street in the other direction, a patrol car came peeling around the corner.

  “Let ’em sweep the area,” I told Ralph. “I want to get back to the train yard and make sure there aren’t any more victims.”

  He pulled out his radio. “Or suspects.”

  “Yeah.” I was already heading into the forest. “Or suspects.”

  38

  Joshua made it to his car, which he’d parked four blocks from the train yard. The Ford Taurus he’d left behind wasn’t his, of course. He’d stolen it a few days ago so there wouldn’t be any chance that his own vehicle would be identified at the scene of any of the crimes. It seemed like a slim possibility anyway, but it wasn’t a chance he was willing to take.

  He’d planned on torching the Taurus when all of this was done, but now it looked like that wasn’t going to happen.

  How did they find you?

  Joshua had no idea.

  Once inside the car, he snapped on the scanner and listened to the chatter back and forth between the squads.

  And thought of last night.

  The squads.

  The sirens.

  The abduction of Colleen Hayes.

  Joshua was a fan of true crime books and three weeks ago he’d finished Heather Isle’s newest book about David Spanbauer, a rapist and child murderer in Wisconsin earlier in the decade. The story had intrigued him so much that he’d looked up the true crime expert the author had cited numerous times-a “collector of memorabilia,” as Isle put it, Timothy Griffin.

  Eventually, that led Joshua to find out about the products Griffin offered through his direct-sales business.

  Which had naturally intrigued him.

  It took a little work, but Joshua tracked down the guy’s home address.

  He waited until one evening when both Griffin and his young girlfriend were out, and then, just as he’d done with Dahme
r’s apartment before it was destroyed, he took his camera into Griffin’s home and captured footage of the place’s interior. He even got footage of the basement and the cache of items beneath the stairwell, the collectibles without price tags on them. The ones that, apparently, were not for sale.

  The special items, Joshua. You know all about those.

  Checking the boxes of receipts in the bedroom closet, Joshua had found one for a pair of handcuffs from the Oswald case, which ended up being perfect for what he had in mind.

  The Oswald case.

  The one that mirrored, in so many dark ways, his own.

  Because of his special connection with their story, he’d wanted to save their crimes for the climax. And this discovery, in a way, would help him do just that.

  According to the receipt, a woman named Colleen Hayes had purchased the specific cuffs. So, rather than leave a pair of his own that might be able to be traced, he decided to let her husband use their own pair when he was forced to abduct the African-American man.

  That way, it helped Joshua by turning the spotlight of the investigation onto the husband.

  As Joshua’s father had taught him years ago, you always give the police what they want. And they want fingerprints, DNA, hair, semen; they want sole impressions from shoes; they want any hard physical evidence that they can hang a name onto: cuffs, Vincent. Done.

  They’ll keep looking until they find what they want, but when they have it in hand, they’ll be content to formulate their theories based on their cursory findings and then work diligently to prove themselves right. More often than not, that’s a lot easier, a lot more convenient, than ruthlessly ferreting out the truth.

  Because of that, Joshua was careful not to leave trace evidence that could be tied to him at the scenes, and, when possible, he tried to leave evidence that pointed to someone else.

  But tonight he’d been forced to leave a veritable stockpile of evidence behind in that boxcar. From the start he’d been careful about prints, but DNA was nearly impossible not to leave. However, he’d never been arrested, so even if law enforcement did somehow manage to get his DNA, they wouldn’t have anything to compare their samples to.

  Now, he checked his watch and saw that it was almost five, almost time for Carl to call with his update on what he’d done to Miriam Flandry.

  Joshua clicked on his portable phone, the one that he’d made sure was untraceable.

  So, things this evening had not gone as planned, but everything could still move forward as long as Carl had been obedient and done his job.

  If he had, Gein’s name would rise to the forefront of the news cycle once again, the national media would start playing and replaying Carl’s and Adele’s story, and everyone would take notice.

  And right now that was what mattered most.

  39

  Ralph and I found a woman, unconscious, bound to a chair, plastic ties tightly cinched around her wrists and ankles. The door to this boxcar had been chained shut and Ralph had used the pipe for the second time today to wrench off the handle.

  Her pulse was weak and thready, and she didn’t respond when we called to her or slapped her cheek, but she was breathing. She was alive.

  Thank God she was alive.

  Ralph slipped out an automatic knife from his pocket, an Ox Forge Black Knife, and cut her free from the ropes and tape binding her to the chair. He quickly slit the plastic ties as well, then we eased her to the floor.

  Blood seeped from a deep cut in her ankle, most likely from the bloody, discarded amputation saw on the floor next to the chair. I applied pressure to her bleeding ankle while Ralph supported her neck to keep her airway open.

  It looked like we’d interrupted the guy just as he was getting started on her.

  During our trip back here through the woods, the dispatcher had assured me that four paramedics were on their way, and now the echoing sirens told me they were close. Actually, it sounded like the emergency vehicles were probably stuck behind the locked gate. Hopefully they’d brought the bolt cutters and Jaws of Life as I’d ordered.

  My attention went back to the woman.

  Caucasian. Mid-twenties. Medium build. Shoulder-length, blond hair. Aquamarine eyes, no contact lenses. Smeared mascara-she’d been crying-no other makeup. Fair skin, attractive features. No visible piercings, scars, tattoos or identifying marks. When we checked for an ID, we found none. The ring finger of her left hand had been cut off, the hand carefully bandaged to stop the bleeding.

  Her abductor had removed her shoes and I could see that her feet, which had been bluish from the lack of oxygenated blood when we arrived, were regaining their color now that the plastic ties were gone. Her hands were doing better as well. All good signs.

  Both Ralph and I were quiet as we waited for the EMTs to get here. I didn’t know what he was thinking, but I was trying to decompress, to process what had happened this afternoon.

  I couldn’t stop images of the day from whipping like cyclone winds through my mind: the visit to Griffin’s nightmarish home, the inexplicably terse conversation with Detective Browning in Waukesha, arriving at the train yards.

  Wriggling under the fence.

  Locating the sedan.

  Finding Hendrich’s body.

  Getting shot at.

  Scaling the fence and chasing the shooter through the forest.

  Losing him.

  Ending up here, with this unidentified woman who was evidently our guy’s next intended victim.

  And with the memories came a swirl of emotions: rage, confusion, grief over Hendrich’s death, hope that this woman would be able to identify her attacker.

  None of this whiplash of tumultuous emotions was unusual for my job, but this afternoon had been unusually intense and I suspected it would take some time to work through all the feelings.

  “What are you thinking?” Ralph asked me, drawing me back to the present.

  “A lot of things, I guess.” I indicated toward the woman. “Mostly, that I’m thankful we got here when we did for her, but I’m angry we didn’t get here-”

  “Soon enough to save Hendrich.”

  “Yeah.”

  “His body was still warm,” Ralph said. “I’m not sure how long he might have been dead. Hopefully the forensics guys can figure all that out, but we didn’t see anyone else leave the train yard, so I have to think he was killed right before we got here, right before the suspect fled.”

  “Unless the killer didn’t escape at all.”

  “You think he’s still here? A second guy?”

  “It’s possible.” Thankfully, the sirens had drawn closer, and I could tell by the sound that they’d made it past the parking lot gate. I was anxious to scour the train yards more carefully, but we would need a team of people to do that thoroughly, and they were going to be here any moment. “I’ll get some more officers out there searching in a sec.”

  Considering the number of train cars and tracks, the EMTs probably wouldn’t be able to drive all the way to this boxcar, but I imagined they should at least be able to make it as far as the Ford Taurus. Rolling a gurney from there might pose a bit of a problem, but carrying a stretcher would be manageable.

  We radioed in our exact position and a bevy of officers beat the paramedics to our car. I had one of them take my place beside the woman and then directed the others where to look in the train yard and woods for other victims, suspects, accomplices or witnesses.

  While I was giving instructions, the paramedics came jogging up carrying a stretcher.

  No drugs were visible in the boxcar, but I told the EMTs to start with the working assumption that the woman had been given Propotol, the same pharmaceutical that’d been left at the Hayes house last night for Vincent to knock out the African-American man he’d been directed to abduct.

  Three more officers showed up and I sent them to help the others.

  With impressive speed and proficiency the paramedics got the woman ready, and I helped them carry the stretcher to
one of the two waiting ambulances.

  As they loaded her, one of the EMTs saw the cuts on my hands from grabbing the razor wire through the inadequate protection of my jacket. She offered to treat them, but I decided that bandaging my hands in gauze would slow me down too much; however, in the end, I let her clean the wounds and wrap some first aid tape around them so I could work without leaving my blood everywhere.

  The night wind was biting and cold, so on my way back to the train car where we’d found the woman, I retrieved the flashlight, and then my jacket, which was still snagged on the top of the fence. It was sliced up some, but overall it was in reasonably good shape.

  I didn’t even want to think about how my hands would have looked if the jacket hadn’t been there to protect them.

  When the officer who’d brought the bolt cutters arrived, Ralph took them from him and the three of us left to search the other boxcars for more victims. Ralph made short work of the rusted chains on the remaining cars, but we didn’t find anyone else in the yard. Neither did any of the other officers.

  No victims.

  No suspects.

  No witnesses.

  Except that little boy you saw through the window, out past the woods.

  No, he’d only looked out when I kicked the garbage can.

  It’s possible he might have seen something before you got there and that’s why he was at the window in the first place.

  I sent an officer to go and talk with him. Other officers were already canvassing the neighborhood. Before sending them out, I’d noted that our guy was Caucasian and knew where to go to disappear in this nearly one hundred percent African-American neighborhood. “See if anyone saw a white guy running through here, someone who didn’t belong.”

  By the time Ralph and I returned to the boxcar where we’d found the woman, Officer Gabriele Holdren had arrived and now informed us that the crime scene investigative unit, or CSIU, was on its way.

  “ETA?” I asked her.

  “Should be here in the next four or five minutes.”