“Unless,” I said, “you’re able to take your victim’s car and your own vehicle at the same time.”
“How’s that done?”
“Tandem killers, like the ones Kippy talked about. One drives away with the abductee and the other drives away in the abductee’s car.” I laughed though it wasn’t funny. “If our guy had whatever kind of unholy alliance he had going with Nicky Champine and his kid, maybe there’s another one in the weeds.”
“But, remember, Champine had only one nighttime visitor. Not two. And there was only one shooter at Gomsrud Park. If there were two, you’d be dead,” Wabiszewski said. “The only way this works that isn’t retarded is if the fucker’s using a tow truck.”
“No one would question a tow truck at a rest stop—those guys are roadside helpers.” Kippy looked at her partner. “We deal with those guys every day.”
“Or how about a tow bar on a motorhome?” I said. “Campers tow cars all the time.”
Kippy asked me, “Aren’t campers supposed to go in and park on the truck side?”
“The huge ones, but no one would care if a little camper or medium-sized RV was on the auto side. And no one would think twice about a guy hooking a car to the back of his camper or motorhome.”
“He needs to get them—instantaneously—into his camper or van or truck, or to the floor or trunk of his victim’s car.” Kippy asked, “How do you think he subdues them?”
“A choke or sleeper hold,” Wabiszewski said. “Or a disabling blow—maybe a sucker punch to the solar plexus or right hook to the jaw.”
“Remember, he used some kind of pepper spray on Vira,” I said. “He could use that or maybe chloroform.”
“Unlike on TV, it takes about five minutes for chloroform to work as an anesthetic.”
“Five minutes is a shitload of time,” Wabiszewski said. “I pull into a rest stop and there’s a guy between two cars holding a rag over someone’s mouth, I’ll kind of get the drift of where he’s heading and put a stop to it.”
“What about a Taser gun,” Kippy asked. “You own someone for a couple minutes with a Taser.”
CHAPTER 44
Everyman’s new ID was in the wall.
Literally.
The birth certificate, passport, and driver’s license—albeit lapsed—were in a waterproof-fireproof box behind the lavender painted drywall in Everyman’s rec room. The police would have to rip his house apart piece-by-piece, screw-by-nail before they happened upon the little metal box containing his next life. Bring on the sniffer dogs. No explosives or accelerants for the bomb-sniffers, no illegal narcotics—not even a forgotten pack of cigarettes—for the drug-sniffers, and, best of all, not a dead body or rotted carcass for Mason Reid’s cadaver dogs.
All would strike out.
Everyman’s house was clean.
Everyman’s garage was clean.
Even Everyman’s backyard shed was clean.
The Pond, of course, was a completely different matter.
The Pond was anything but clean.
Everyman had been glib in his early years in Chicago, flippant, and had originally named the pond Chateau Vue sur L’eau—Castle Water View. Sure, it did boast an irrefutable irony, but as he registered more and more of his selective guests into Chateau Vue sur L’eau, Everyman became less playful … and felt the title made a mockery of all the great things he’d achieved.
Ever since he’d gone back to basics and simply referred to it as The Pond.
And The Pond would not be mocked.
It was at the point in time of the name change that Everyman began thinking of The Pond as having its own presence, its own evolved consciousness … of becoming a sentient being. And considering what Everyman had been feeding The Pond throughout his years in Chicago—what The Pond had unconditionally swallowed up—and considering what time and again happened along The Pond’s shoreline … why shouldn’t it?
The breeze through the trees and the bushes and across the water sounded like a rasping breath, the unexplained ripples and splashes were signals … The Pond was letting Everyman know—The Pond was letting him know it knew.
And that it didn’t care.
The Pond—more a miniature lake—covered nearly five acres and was shrouded by 120 more of bog and dirt. The land was owned by the county, had been deemed a wetland … and soon forgotten. There’d be no development there any time in the foreseeable future. And in the center of The Pond, where Everyman registered his check-ins, it was nearly sixteen feet deep. In theory, the sunlight was able to penetrate the bottom, but Everyman wasn’t so sure.
He’d never once donned a wet suit and dived in to check it out.
Except for the inevitable splashing, Everyman avoided the water as much as possible; he disdained even touching it. He knew the things that lay below.
There were water lilies, frogs, and the occasional turtle, but he left all that alone as well.
Also of value to Everyman, the land surrounding The Pond was too far out from town, too thick with mosquitoes, ticks, prickly pods, thistles, and mire for shit kids to slog in and do their shit-kid things—smoke pot and play doctor.
Therefore The Pond suffered no witnesses.
Having such terrain so very close had been the deciding factor in Everyman’s decision to purchase the aged home. And though The Pond wasn’t on his property, Everyman had made a trail, actually it was a strip of flattened grass and weeds, just big enough to cart a wheelbarrow the third of a mile necessary to reach the southern shore, in order to reach the ramshackle rowboat that lay upturned.
Underneath the rowboat sat a couple of oars.
And behind the rowboat sat a pile of thirty-seven-pound retaining wall caps.
CHAPTER 45
The throbbing in my left side kept me awake—no pain, no gain the doc clichéd yesterday when I called to ask if this was normal—so Vira and I jumped into the pickup and worked our way from the safe house in Park Forest to I-90 heading west. I had to keep moving—like our friend the shark—even if it were inconsequential, like lobbing a Wiffle ball against the broad side of a barn.
The powers that be knew about my upcoming field trip to IDOT, but I’d not even known about my predawn outing to Egg River until well into my third hour of insomnia, when I could no longer toss and turn and pretend to be falling back asleep. It was too early for me to make any phone calls asking for permission, and I didn’t want to hear any corresponding squeaks or squeals. And the patrol car that passed the safe house on the hour, every hour, would assume I was tucked inside and sound asleep with the F-150 parked in the two-car garage.
Best to risk a tongue-lashing after the fact.
We pulled into the Egg River rest facility as the sun was peeking its noggin over the horizon. The only sign of life was a single Peterbilt with a king-sized cabover sleeper in the truck lot. Since I’d been unable to catch any z’s, Evil Mason Reid wanted to pull into that section, drive up alongside the eighteen-wheeler, and lay on the horn—blast the poor SOB into consciousness—but angelic Mason Reid said no. Normal Mace agreed, especially since I’d have to floor the F-150 and burn rubber the hell out of there lest I risk an ass-kicking by an irate trucker.
I let Vira come into the facility’s lobby with me, remembered IDOT’s presentation on rest stop security, and almost waved at what I assumed to be one of their hidden cameras mounted in the ceiling. I doubted anyone was watching on the other end or, if they were, that they’d take the bother of sending a state police car over to tell me to get my dog the hell out of their building. In between the double entrance doors stood a couple of vending machines hawking an assortment of pop, chips, and candy at airport-like fees. Inside, there was a map with a You Are Here sticker taking up real estate on the atrium’s far wall; four benches sat diagonally in each corner—facing inward—for impatient travelers to sit and feign serenity while waiting for their significant others to hurry up, scrub their hands, and get the hell back out here so they could return to the road. A Main
tenance door stood locked in a cubby just beyond the entry doors, likely containing mops and cleansers and toilet paper. Finally, a stainless-steel drinking fountain sat between the lavatories beckoning to those suffering sticker shock from the vending prices.
I left Vira to patrol the lobby, went into the men’s room, took a quick leak, went to a sink and dispensed foam soap onto my hands. Although there were no cameras in the facility’s restrooms, if the Peterbilt driver was psychic and had become enraged over Evil Mason’s notion of a premature wake-up call and charged into the bathroom, smashed my head against the sink or bashed it into the mirror repeatedly, the next person to use the john would find what remained of my face, call 911, and IDOT would get a video of the truck driver having entered and left the lavatory around the time of my death as well as the plate number off his rig … and the theoretical case would quickly be closed.
Same outcome if something occurred to Christine Dack and/or Denise Nieland while they were in the women’s room.
Vira and I worked our way back outside where I spotted a sign pointing in the direction of a nature walk that wound its way through the wooded area about the facility. I normally use the restroom and let the team water the grass before hopping back in the F-150, keeping any rest stops to five minutes or less, but I suppose if you’re on a long haul a nature hike would be a great way to stretch the legs and run the antsiness out of the little ones. And if there weren’t any cameras on the nature trail—and if very few travelers ever used the footpath to begin with—it would be a perfect spot to lay in wait or, better yet, follow someone in.
I wondered if Christine Dack or Denise Nieland had taken the Egg River nature hike.
Vira and I headed in the direction the sign pointed. About ten yards into our trek it dawned on me that the trail was wide enough for a vehicle to make it in, and it would certainly be no problem if you had four-wheel drive. Hell, that’s probably what the landscapers or horticulturists or whomever is in charge of maintaining these rest stop nature trails used. And that would make perfect sense. If Christine Dack and/or Denise Nieland were attacked on these wooded trails, the perp could have dragged their bodies off the footpath, hid them behind some bushes, and then returned for them in either their own cars or his vehicle as opposed to carrying a lifeless or unconscious body out from the footpath in front of potential witnesses who would no doubt have a variety of questions and concerns.
There were multiple ways it could be done.
Vira’s head popped up. I thought she’d caught hold of a scent out of the air, but then she cut off the mulch and dirt pathway and sniffed at the soil between some plants. She spun around—three-sixty—looking much like I do when I walk into a room searching for something and then immediately forget what I was looking for. Vira came to a stop and looked up at me.
“What is it, girl?”
I figured some indistinct scent had fallen on the ground—something with hardly a trace—and Vira was trying to noodle it out. If Christine Dack and/or Denise Nieland had been stabbed to death out here on the nature trail, there would have been a lot of blood, and—unless the killer bulldozed out the murder site and replaced it with fresh dirt—Vira would lead me to where it had occurred. But if Christine Dack and/or Denise Nieland had been strangled or knocked in the head … there wouldn’t be much for Vira to go on. Cuts to the forehead can bleed quite a bit but a stunning blow, like those thrown in a boxing match, don’t necessarily draw blood. And the killer would be crazy to dig a grave, however shallow, out here as that would take time and leave him exposed and vulnerable, and whatever horticulturist maintenance crew would notice the mound of dirt the next time they came out to spray or weed or drop mulch.
And in Christine Dack’s case, it had been over a year since her disappearance with rain and winter and spring to cover up the tiniest of evidence.
Vira didn’t sit and she didn’t pat the surface. Instead, she stared back up at me, not willing to commit.
When we exited the nature trail on the opposite side of the facility, the truck driver was now up and performing stretching exercises, perhaps some yoga moves, in front of his eighteen-wheeler. I gave him a quick nod as we cut across to our side of the parking lot.
None the wiser on what—if anything—had occurred at the Egg River rest stop, Vira and I hopped into the pickup and headed back to Chicago.
CHAPTER 46
I got lost in IDOT’s cube farm.
After a minute of walking in squares I asked a young guy who was farting around on an iPhone app if he could point me in the direction of Senior Director Bernt Landvik’s office. He acted all put upon, as though I were ripping him out of a bathroom stall, and said, “Big office by the coffee station.”
“Where’s the coffee station?”
This earned me a heavy sigh and a finger point toward the far corner of the floor.
All this while he never left his chair.
Fucking Millennials.
I hooked a left at the edge of another square and there, at the end of the hallway—lo and behold—stood Bernt Landvik. And sure enough, on Landvik’s left, the fabled coffee station. The senior director stared at me a second, and then raised a hand in greeting. Suddenly I got a feeling of déjà vu, as though I’d been in this IDOT office before, possibly stemming from my decision a few years back that I could never live such a life—I could never be a nine-to-five cube drone.
“I’m sorry,” Landvik said, likely grateful he wouldn’t have to form a search party. “I should have met you at reception.”
“No worries,” I said. “The guy paid to surf Facebook was very helpful.”
Landvik shook my hand. “Looks like Tommy B. and I will be having another chat.”
“Give him my best.” Maybe I’m getting early onset asshole disease, but it had been a hell of a week. I’d started going sling-less and my armpit felt as though I’d lost to an irate bull in Pamplona. I popped acetaminophen like Chiclets but got the feeling placebos would work better. And I’d just spent a painful hour navigating through downtown Chicago traffic.
Then I met Tommy B.
Landvik offered me coffee, so I sorted through the community bin, grabbed a Vanilla Bean Crème Brulee pod, and stuck it in the Keurig. After it brewed, the IDOT director ushered me into his office. I sat in one of two chairs in front of one of those rectangular straight desks that seem to be the trend. It took up much space just to house his laptop, a Dr Pepper, and my coffee. I glanced about—modestly furnished, closet, big windows, lots of natural light.
“Corner office,” I said. “Nicely done.”
“I’m not sure it counts if it’s on the first floor. When I look outside, guys driving in traffic look back,” Landvik said. “Some give me the finger.”
“It is Chicago.”
Landvik smiled but I got the sense that playtime was over. “So you’re working with the detectives on this?” he asked.
I nodded rather than plead the fifth. This was off-the-books—something Kippy, Wabiszewski, and I were pursuing—unless IDOT made a positive ID on Denise Nieland or her Kia Sorento. In which case it would immediately become on-the-books and handed over to Detectives Hanson and Marr. Senior Director Landvik seemed like a nice enough guy, but if I bored him with details regarding some kind of half-assed tacit agreement we have with the Bureau of Detectives, it might awaken his inner bureaucrat.
“Officer Gimm called and said you’d be dropping off a file on the missing girl.”
“Yes,” I said. “Denise Nieland was reported missing on the seventh of last month. Ms. Nieland was driving home from a birthday party for her sister, so driving from Madison back to Chicago would have put her on I-90 the day she left—on the sixth of last month.”
“Got it,” Landvik said. “Falls within the sixty-day retention limit.”
“Exactly. Ms. Nieland’s sister said she left at nine-thirty to miss the morning rush. She’d gassed up the night before and hoped to get home by one, or maybe two due to any construction zones.
” Unfortunately, as is my lot in life, I’d made a poor selection. The crème brulee turned the coffee into some kind of sugary treat you’d buy at a Dairy Queen. “But Denise Nieland was never seen again and her SUV showed up abandoned in Rockford a week later.”
“Not good.”
“Not good at all.” I set the cup of crème brulee on the corner of his desk. Perhaps I’d drop it in the bin in Tommy B.’s cube on my way out. “Anyway, Kippy did the math and Ms. Nieland could have hit the Egg River rest area off I-90 at eleven o’clock at the soonest, so if you could check the digital recording between eleven and, say, four p.m., that would be more than thorough.”
“No way did road construction push her three hours out but I’ll go till four.” Landvik shuffled through Kippy’s folder. “Okay, you got me her recent driver’s license photo, her height and weight, and the plate number on her Kia Sorento.” He looked up at me. “If Denise Nieland was at Egg River, I’ll let you know. We’ll have her on digital.”
“Is there a time I should call?”
Kippy had been clear. She wanted this front burner. It was the reason she wanted one of us to come here in person. Kippy didn’t want it processed at a glacial pace by bureaucrats in the bureaucracy.
“I’d start now, but I’ve got a snorer at the Thompson Center all afternoon.” Landvik looked at me. “I promise I’ll check the Egg River digital this evening. I can set time lapse per vehicle arrivals. I may have to finish up in the morning, but would this time tomorrow be good?”
“That’d be great.” We still had two weeks left in the retention cycle. “Thanks.”
“You train the K-nines for the police, right?”
“I’ve done some of that for CPD, but I specialize in HRD dogs—human remains detection dogs.”
The Finders Page 18
