Opening Moves pbf-6

by Steven James

  He would take the boy, exit through another door, and leave the girl here.

  We filled Calvin in as comprehensively and yet as quickly as we could on the different aspects of the case.

  He reflected on what we’d said. “And the mattresses? Nothing in that part of the city?”

  Gabriele shook her head.

  “Maybe you don’t need to look at places that sell mattresses, but places that use them, that use mismatched ones. From what I’ve heard, the West Reagan Street neighborhood is low income, has a high population of vagrants. Are there any homeless shelters in the area?”

  “I’ll find out.” I grabbed a phone book and it took only a moment to look it up. “West Reagan Street Mission is only three blocks from the train yards. The ad here says they have beds available, free job training, medical care and meals.”

  “Try them,” Calvin said. “See if they might’ve perhaps received a recent donation to purchase new mattresses and, if so, who donated the money or picked up the old ones. Even if we don’t get a name, that’ll give us a date to work with.”

  I tracked with him. “Then we can check moving truck rentals that week.”

  “It’s always about timing and location,” he noted contemplatively.

  I nodded for Gabriele to make the call even as Radar, who’d been working down the hall, came hurrying toward us. “I came up with someone who might be the next pastiche. David Spanbauer. He was a serial rapist, killed three people. Very disturbed, and Isle did one of her true crime books on him.”

  Yes, that was a good thought. “He was caught up in Appleton, wasn’t he?” I said.

  “Yeah. I’m not sure about the exact address.”

  “Find out. Call the Appleton PD. Have them send a car over to stake out the location.”

  Two cases.

  The homicides. The abductions.

  Related? Unrelated?

  I still couldn’t tell.

  Somehow, unimaginably, they seemed to be both.

  “Let’s not forget the Oswalds.” I was thinking this through, processing it aloud. “We need to get a car to…” I ran through the pertinent locations in my mind: The intersection of Highways 18 and 83 where they first encountered the police…Meadowbrook Road where they shot Captain Lutz…the residence where they abducted Judy Opat…the bank they robbed in Wales…the corner of SS and Oak Street where they ran the roadblock.

  Which one?

  Which one?

  Screw it.

  All of ’em.

  I gave the word, the squads were dispatched.

  Gabriele, who’d been on the line with someone from the West Reagan Street Mission, hung up. “They got a donation to purchase new mattresses a week ago.”

  “Who was it from?” Calvin asked.

  “Anonymous.”

  Of course.

  “Who picked up the old mattresses?”

  “The guy I spoke with didn’t know.”

  Thompson used to patrol that neighborhood and would have been the guy to send, but he was out checking on leads in the Franklin Heights area. I said to Lyrie, “Get to the mission. Talk to the other staff, the homeless guys. Somebody knows who took those old mattresses.”

  He nodded, then left.

  Gabriele offered to contact moving companies and see if she could get names of people who’d rented out a truck one week ago.

  “Perfect.”

  Calvin was busy at his computer, plugging in information. I sat down beside him and told him all the sites the team had pulled up regarding Basque’s known activity nodes.

  I wanted to see if his geographic profiling approach could come up with an anchor point for the Maneater, and if it did, if Basque’s home would be anywhere near it.

  83

  2:25 p.m.

  2 hours until the gloaming

  Sergeant Brandon Walker, or Radar as he preferred to be called by his friends, was at his desk making calls to Basque’s work associates at Hathaway amp; Erikson, trying to find out if anyone knew where he’d gone this afternoon, when one of the officers who worked the front lobby walked up to his desk carrying a package the size of a shoebox.

  “This came for you. It was left in the lobby. No idea who it’s from.” He shook the box a little and there was a soft, dull thud as whatever was inside it bumped against the sides of the box. “You want me to trash it?”

  “No. I’ll take it.”

  Radar accepted the package and the other officer returned downstairs.

  Radar studied it.

  The box was wrapped in what appeared to be the same type of butcher paper that was left in the boxcar where Adele Westin was found. Words on the top: “Attn. Sergeant Walker. Open at once.” No return address.

  He flipped it over.

  Another note, written neatly in black Magic Marker: “This is from the person on the phone.”

  Radar blinked, looked around the room.

  A moment later his desk phone rang. He stared at it unbelievingly, then at the words on the package.

  The phone rang again.

  He picked up. “Yes?”

  “Did it arrive yet?”

  “Did what arrive?”

  “The evidence.”

  “Evidence of what?”

  “How serious I am.” The voice was muffled but somehow familiar. Radar tried his hardest but couldn’t identify it.

  “Who is this?”

  “I’m the one who sent you the box. Open it up.”

  “First tell me who I’m speaking to.”

  “Open the box, Radar.”

  Radar?

  He called you Radar.

  He knows you!

  Radar waved for Ralph Hawkins, who was seated at a nearby desk, to trace the call. He knew it’d take him a little while to get down to the tech room and put that into play, and he wasn’t at all sure he’d be able to keep this guy on the line long enough, but it was worth a try.

  “Open the box,” the man repeated.

  Ralph left, walking briskly down the hallway.

  “What’s in it?”

  “Something from your son.”

  Radar felt a deep tremor ripple through him.

  Thoughts, too many thoughts, raced through his mind. Thoughts of the case and what the abductor of the two women had done-he kidnaps family members, makes a demand of a loved one, amputates extremities of his captives.

  A finger.

  Hands.

  He was about to cut off both Adele’s hands and feet when Pat and Ralph arrived at the train yard.

  Radar stared at the box, then felt the edges of it for a clue as to what might be inside.

  Yeah, he could tell. It was a shoebox alright.

  He felt himself go weak as he positioned himself in his chair and placed the phone receiver between his shoulder and his ear. He flicked out the blade of the pocketknife from his drawer, then slipped it through the butcher paper, careful not to push it in too far.

  This can’t be happening. This cannot be what it seems.

  He slid the blade along the edge of the box’s lid.

  Heart hammering, mind spinning.

  A moment later he finished. The lid was free.

  He stared at the box. All he had to do was open it up.

  He set down the knife. Cradled the box gently on his lap. The man on the other end of the line was quiet, waiting for his reaction.

  Radar felt a small sweep of nausea as he reached for the lid.

  And opened the shoebox.

  84

  Inside was one of his son’s shoes. One of Tod’s shoes.

  Just the shoe.

  Only the shoe. That was all.

  Oh, thank God, thank God, thank God.

  But then, immediately, the stark and terrifying truth hit him hard. He has Tod. He took him.

  “If you do as I say,” the man declared, “I promise I won’t harm him.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “You’ll have to believe me. Or you won’t like what’s going to
happen to your son.”

  Radar steeled his voice and tried not to sound shaken. “Let me talk to him.”

  The line went silent for a moment; then Tod’s voice came on. “Daddy?”

  “Tod, are you okay? Did he-”

  “I’m okay.”

  “Did he touch you? Did he hurt you?”

  “No. But I wanna go home.”

  The more you love someone, the angrier you’ll be when he’s threatened or attacked.

  Well, Radar couldn’t think of a time when he’d been angrier than this.

  Before he could ask his son any more questions, there was a shuffling sound as the man took the phone back from Tod.

  All Radar could think of was the rest of his family-his wife, Gayle, his daughter, Angie. “What about my wife and daughter?”

  “I don’t have them.”

  He wanted to lash out at this man, curse him, threaten him, but from investigating the previous crimes, he knew how brutal and ruthless the guy was and he couldn’t bear to think of what might happen to Tod if he ticked him off. He managed to hold back for his son’s sake.

  The man went on. “I don’t like the idea of hurting a child and I have no intention of doing so. You can either trust me or not, but if you choose not to do as I ask, I swear I will slice him apart one finger, one toe, one limb, at a time.” Radar realized he was saying this with Tod right there by his side and he felt a fresh gust of anger. “You know I’m serious,” the man said. “Do not test me.”

  Rage. Yes. It was there, but there was also a shroud of fear.

  Radar reminded himself that none of the other demands had been anything that put anyone in real danger-not digging up the corpse, not even abducting Lionel. The goal hadn’t been to hurt anyone, just to draw attention to another criminal’s previous crimes.

  It’ll be alright.

  Just do it. Do what he says. For Tod’s sake.

  “What is it? What do you want me to do?”

  Then the man told Radar his demands.

  85

  Radar’s heart seemed to freeze in midbeat inside his chest.

  Stall-you don’t have to really carry it out. Just stall. Go to the bank, deal with things when you get there.

  “And if this is not done on time,” the man told him, “I will kill Tod. I hope you’re taking me as seriously as you need to.”

  “I hear you.”

  Stay on the line, stay on the line. Maybe the trace will go through-

  “I’m going to give you four phone numbers. Write them down.”

  Radar got out a pen. “Whose numbers are they?”

  “Cable news networks. Once you’re in the bank, I want you to call them and tell them where you are and that they need to be there, filming by four twenty-five. I want them recording it live when it happens. I’ll call you again when you’re at the bank.”

  The man hung up.

  Calvin cancelled his lecture for this afternoon so he could help us, a gesture that, as much as I appreciated it, definitely took me by surprise. I’d left him alone a few minutes ago so he could focus on his algorithms and now, as I headed to my desk, I saw Radar lowering his phone’s receiver. He was breathing heavily, staring at a shoebox on his lap. He looked shaken.

  “Hey, you alright?”

  He looked my way. “Sure.”

  But he didn’t look sure. “Something up?”

  He shook his head, then covered the box carefully with the lid. Stood. “Just Gayle. I need to step out for a bit. If I get any calls, take a message and have the dispatcher pass it along to me.”

  “So everything’s okay?”

  He nodded. “Yeah, it’s just, something came up with one of the kids. Tod.”

  “Get sick at school?”

  Radar looked distracted.

  “I mean school’s not out yet. Did he get sick? I just didn’t know if-”

  “Yeah, no. He’s at home. He’s safe.”

  He picked up his keys. “I’ll be on the radio, okay? Call me if anything comes up.”

  “Okay.”

  He started for the hall.

  “Hey, Radar.”

  He turned and looked at me.

  “Why did you put it that way?”

  “What way?”

  “You said, ‘He’s safe.’ Why didn’t you just say, ‘He’s okay’?”

  “He is,” he assured me. “He’s okay. I’ll talk to you in a minute.”

  And then, with the box tucked under his arm, he left for the stairs.

  86

  Ralph came tromping up to my desk. “Where’s Radar?”

  “He stepped out a minute ago.” I could already feel a rising tide of sharp concern. “What’s up?”

  “He stepped out?”

  “Yeah. What’s going on?”

  “He wanted me to trace a call he just got, but we couldn’t get a line on it. Where did he go?”

  I stood. “He said his wife called, that something was going on with his son.”

  Ralph looked confused. “Why would he ask me to trace a call if it was his wife on the other end of the line?”

  I was already on my way to the elevator bay. “I don’t know, but I’m going to find out.”

  Radar had flown down the stairs, made it to the parking garage, and left the building as quickly as he could.

  He could tell that Pat knew something was up, that much was obvious. Even though he’d wanted to wait until he heard from Ralph about the trace, he’d thought that if he hung around the station, there would’ve been all sorts of questions and it would have eaten up time-and that would have gotten in the way of what needed to happen right now: protecting Tod by following his abductor’s instructions.

  Still, once Radar was on the road, he radioed dispatch to relay the message to Ralph to get a car out if he’d been able to trace the call.

  Then he turned off his radio and headed toward Wales.

  I didn’t catch Radar.

  I tried radioing him.

  He didn’t answer.

  A dark thought plagued me, something I didn’t want to admit could possibly be true.

  But then I had to admit it very well might be.

  He’d told me that his son was home, that he was “safe,” not that he was “okay.”

  That was easy enough to check on.

  Back at my desk, I called Radar’s house. No one picked up. I tried radioing him again, but he didn’t answer.

  Okay, so call the school where his kids attend.

  The principal answered and told me the secretary had gone to the central office. “Before she left she mentioned that a man had come to speak with the Walker children regarding a car accident their father had been in.”

  “Who was he? The man who came by?”

  “If he was the fellow I saw at the reception desk, I’ve never seen him before. Hang on.” A moment passed, then she said, “Mrs. Unger didn’t write down his name.”

  “So, he left through the front doors again?”

  “I haven’t seen anyone walk past my office.”

  “When? When did he come in?”

  “About one thirty, I think.”

  That was too long ago, way too long. “Page Tod Walker and have someone check his classroom for him. Also, see if you can reach Mrs. Unger. We need to know who that man was.”

  I handed the phone to Ralph. “Find out what you can. See if you can get a description of the guy. Something’s happened to Radar’s son. I think someone took him.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to find Radar.”

  Joshua wanted to see if his wife could record the news for him this afternoon. He tried the home number, but she wasn’t there. He gave her a ring at the real estate office. They told him she’d stepped out earlier, but that they were expecting her back any time and would give her the message.

  Okay, if she didn’t get back to him, watching it live would have to be enough.

  He drove the boy, who was safely tucked in the back of
the moving truck, toward the bank in Wales.

  87

  3:25 p.m.

  1 hour until the gloaming

  I went to grab my things. Ralph called over to me and told me that neither Tod’s teacher nor the principal could give us anything on the man except that he was “big and white.” No one had been able to locate Mrs. Unger.

  I tried Radar on the radio one last time.

  Still nothing.

  Tod was missing and all I could think of was that box Radar had been holding, and of the finger the kidnapper had left behind in Carl Kowalski’s refrigerator and what he’d done to Colleen and Adele.

  He abducts. He makes demands. He mutilates his captives. And he’s escalating.

  What? What would he have asked Radar to do?

  Honestly, I had no clue.

  When Radar left, he’d implied that he was going to his house, so I decided to try there first. From here I could get there just as quickly as if we dispatched a car. And he was my partner. I wanted to be the one there if something bad really was going down. I asked Ralph to stay on top of things here and to call me if we heard from Radar.

  Calvin saw me getting ready to go and when I mentioned vaguely that I was following up on a lead, he surprised me and offered to come with me.

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Actually, my boy, you can, as long as I’m not in the front seat.”

  I wished he didn’t know so much about law enforcement.

  “I’m sorry, I-”

  “You drive,” he said, as if that were a choice. “I’ll bring my computer. With the information your team pulled up on Basque’s activity nodes, I’m close to formulating a crude model of his cognitive map.”

  “You can work on that here.”

  “But you can’t get my results in real time.”

  “Can you find him? Can you predict where he might’ve gone?”

  “No. But I might be able to find his anchor point.”

  I rubbed my head and tried to think things through.

  It was possible that Basque had something to do with what was going on with Radar and Tod. I wasn’t sure how, but I was willing to do whatever it took to find them, especially if, as I feared, something bad had happened to Tod.