Just One Bite

by Jack Heath

  “Well, we just got probable cause,” Thistle says. “Hang on.”

  She pulls out her phone and makes a call to a judge. It takes her a few minutes to explain what we know, leaving out the part about the photos in Luxford’s desk. But the remaining facts sound persuasive: Luxford’s boss is missing, and Luxford ran from investigators even before the boss’s daughter accused him of rape. Thistle glosses over the fact that no agents were present when the accusation was made.

  Eventually she hangs up.

  “He go for it?” I ask.

  “He’s deliberating. Let’s go to Luxford’s house. I’m thinking the search warrant will arrive before we do.”

  I nod. Thistle takes West Forty-third Street, and soon we’re speeding along Clay Road.

  “I don’t suppose Hope saw any giant women come by while she was under house arrest?” Thistle asks.

  “I asked. She says no visitors of any kind. But whatever Biggs was doing, he would have done it somewhere else.”

  We drive in silence for a minute. The radio burbles quietly over the humming of tires on blacktop.

  “How did it go with the local cops who worked the other disappearances?” I ask.

  “Mixed. Some of them went straight into ass-covering mode—they should have connected these disappearances earlier. Others didn’t want an FBI agent and an algorithm telling them how to do their jobs. A few were openly hostile. All of them shared their case files in the end, so we have a lot to work with. But I’m not convinced any of it will be useful.”

  “Because the cops didn’t seem competent?”

  “Because it’s a serial killer. The files mostly looked at suspects the victims knew well, and their potential motives. Serial killers often target strangers, and their motives can be incoherent.” She honks at a slow-moving BMW in front of us. “Fortunately for us, they also tend to have low IQ.”

  This is a misleading statistic. Psychologists only test the ones who get caught. I watch snowflakes land on the windshield and get swept away by the wipers.

  “What did you say?” Thistle asks.

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  “Something about a misleading statistic?”

  I hadn’t realized I was talking aloud. How often do I do that?

  “They only test the ones they catch,” I say. “The world could be full of serial killers who are too smart to get arrested.”

  “Yeah, well, let’s hope it’s not. Hypothesis—Biggs found out Luxford had raped his daughter. He confronted Luxford, who killed him to keep the secret.”

  “Why wouldn’t Biggs just go to the cops?”

  “If my dad found out that I’d been raped, he wouldn’t have gone to the cops. He would’ve just shot the motherfucker. Hell, he sometimes threatened to do that even when I consented.”

  I remember Bob, the big man who nearly adopted me. The landscaper.

  “Your dad wasn’t a math professor,” I say.

  “You think math professors don’t shoot people?”

  “Statistically, violent criminals don’t have that level of education.”

  “Well, look who’s pro-college all of a sudden,” Thistle says. “And remember what you said a minute ago about serial killers. Anyway, maybe he didn’t go to the cops for the same reason his daughter didn’t. No proof. Fear of humiliating her.”

  I nod slowly. “Possible,” I say. “Like I said, Luxford’s a sociopath. He wouldn’t think twice about killing Biggs to save his own skin.”

  “He could have been blackmailing Biggs at the same time,” Thistle says. “Hence the cash Biggs took out of the ATM.”

  “Why kill him, then?”

  Thistle chews her lip. I try not to remember how good those lips tasted. We kissed four times, and I remember them all vividly.

  “Okay,” she says finally. “Let’s say Luxford tried to blackmail Biggs. Biggs pretended he was gonna pay. He even withdrew the cash. But actually he was planning to kill Luxford.”

  “Two-sixty isn’t blackmail money. And his gun was still in the safe.”

  “Maybe there was another gun. A knife. A car. For all we know, Biggs was a black belt in karate. Or thought he was.”

  I think of Biggs’s muscles. Soft, fatty. Not accustomed to exercise. “Go on.”

  “But it goes wrong somehow,” Thistle continues. “Luxford overpowers him, or brings a gun of his own. Then he buries the body somewhere, leaves Biggs’s car and phone at the dump and then goes home.”

  I chew my nails for a bit. “Not bad,” I say. “How did he access the dump, and get the car into the crusher?”

  “He might know someone there. Maybe the same guy who ran away from us.”

  Her theory covers everything. Except how Biggs’s body ended up naked in the forest. The part she doesn’t know about.

  She glances over. “You’re supposed to ask how his hand ended up back on campus.”

  Whoops. Keep it together, Timothy. “That’s him trying to lead us off base, right?” I say. “We already know he didn’t leave the state.”

  Thistle’s phone rings. She answers. “Yeah?”

  After a pause, she says, “Thank you, Your Honor.” She ends the call. “Our warrant just came through.”

  * * *

  It isn’t hard to figure out which car belongs to the plainclothes surveillance agents. It’s parked facing Luxford’s house, close enough for a clear line of sight to the front door, but far enough away that it’s unlikely to be noticed. There’s a frozen puddle under a nearby tree, and given the topography of the land, that only makes sense if someone has pissed on it. The driver, a black woman in her forties with army-short hair, is sitting there with her hands in her lap, like she’s texting—except her gaze stays on the house. The passenger seat is tilted all the way back, like someone is asleep in it. Probably a man, judging by the piss puddle.

  The house itself looks surprisingly upmarket for a TA. Two stories, brick veneer, big windows covered by drawn curtains. And Westbranch is a good neighborhood. Maybe Luxford shares it with somebody. Or maybe he inherited some money.

  We walk up to the car, and Thistle raps on the passenger side window. A fifty-something white man with a mustache sits up, rubs his eyes and wipes some drool off his chin. He looks around, sees Thistle. I watch him take note of my clothes and Thistle’s race. “Get lost,” he says, his voice muffled by the glass.

  His partner nudges him.

  Thistle flashes her badge. Embarrassed, the man fumbles with his window for a bit. Eventually it buzzes down.

  “Sorry, Agents,” he says. “What can we do for you?”

  I wait for Thistle to tell him I’m not a real agent. She doesn’t.

  “Anyone in or out?” she asks.

  The other cop speaks up. “No, ma’am. And no lights on or off during the night. If Luxford’s in there, he’s keeping his head down.”

  “Someone else around the back?”

  “It backs onto a big fence. No gate. You’d have to be Spider-Man to get over it. And we’d see him from here when he reached the top.”

  I notice an open garbage bag on the backseat, half-full of coffee cups and Chinese takeaway boxes. These guys have been here at least twelve hours.

  “Well, we’re about to find out,” Thistle is saying. “Our search warrant just came through. You ready?”

  “You bet,” the woman says.

  The man nods. “Yep. Hey, you’re Thistle, right?”

  “That’s me,” Thistle says. “This is Blake.”

  “I’m Terracini,” the man says. “She’s Albrecht. Are you carrying?”

  “I am,” Thistle says. She draws back her jacket to reveal the Beretta on her hip. “Blake isn’t.”

  “If Luxford pulls a gun, are you willing to shoot?”

  Sounds like Terracini has heard about Thistle’s lawsuit.<
br />
  Thistle’s eyes narrow. “I am.”

  “I’ll go in first,” I say. “Luxford might panic if he sees a gun.”

  I’m trying to relax Terracini by showing that I trust Thistle. Doesn’t look like it’s working.

  “No,” Thistle says. “I’ll go first, then you. Albrecht and Terracini will cover us. Are we good?”

  Terracini and Albrecht exchange a glance.

  “That works,” Albrecht says.

  “Okay. Let’s do it.”

  We all walk up the path to the front door. The windows are dark, curtains closed, the corners cobwebbed. A sign above the doorbell says No Door-to-Door Sales. Thistle rings the bell.

  No answer.

  After a long, tense moment, Thistle nods to Albrecht.

  With three sharp taps from a hammer and chisel, Albrecht separates the security mesh from the metal frame. Then she reaches through the gap and disengages the dead bolt.

  The wooden door behind isn’t locked. Gun raised, Thistle enters the house, as fast and precise as a wary school of fish. I follow.

  We clear the hall quickly, then move on to the main living area. Thick carpet deadens most of the sound, and the windows are double-glazed, so there’s no traffic noise. The house is smaller than it looked from outside, and more modern. My guess is it was built fifty years ago, and the interior has been substantially renovated in the last five. The white-blue paint still looks fresh. There’s a big TV, a surround-sound system and a coffee table with too many remotes lined up on it. When we get to the kitchen, there are signs that the renovators stopped here. Faded linoleum floor, lacy curtains on the windows, an oven with coil-shaped hot plates on top.

  There’s a study, with a desktop computer. Two monitors. The whole setup looks pretty new—not many cables to the back. Power only. Must do everything through Wi-Fi. A string of thirteen seemingly random letters that could be a password is written on a Post-it note.

  “Ground floor clear,” Thistle whispers. Then she heads for the stairs.

  I follow her. The staircase slows us down, and it’s narrow. No room to dodge. If anyone was planning an ambush, this would be the place.

  We reach the top unharmed. There are two bedrooms and one bathroom. No renovations up here. The bathroom has old-fashioned curved fixtures, and a little mold in the corners of the ceiling. Not uncommon in Houston, where the winters can be as brutal as the summers. People shut their doors and windows, closing off the outside world. Bad things grow in the resulting stillness.

  One bedroom is being used for storage. Boxes of summer clothes, crates of sports gear, a stepladder. The sort of thing Luxford would probably keep in his basement, if he had one.

  Thistle checks the wardrobe. “Clear,” she says. I wonder why he leaves all this junk on the floor when his wardrobe is empty. No clothes, even.

  The other bedroom has a large bed with a thick mattress. Winter clothes hang on hooks in the closet. Neat rows of nonfiction line the shelves.

  “Upstairs clear,” Thistle says. Then, when there’s no response, she yells, “Upstairs all clear!”

  Albrecht’s voice seems to come from a long way away. “Roger that.”

  I start flicking through Luxford’s books, looking for notes tucked between the pages. Nothing. A modern trade-off. These days, if you have a suspect’s phone, you know basically everything about him. But without it, you know nothing.

  In his bedside table, I find a Taser.

  I go through the pockets of his clothes. The Blu-rays on his shelves. I can hear an air conditioner running somewhere. I walk around until I find it, a large unit with pipes disappearing into the ceiling and the walls. I open the unit and check the inside. But there’s no journal, no gun, no secret hard drive.

  In the ceiling of the closet of the storage room there’s a trapdoor. I use the stepladder to push it up, and then push my head through.

  It’s a fairly roomy crawl space. Nothing up here, not even insulation. No indication that Luxford has ever been up here.

  When I climb back down, Thistle is waiting. “Anything?”

  I shake my head. “Maybe Vasquez can get something off his computer. But he has a lot of cryptography books, so maybe not.”

  “I’m starting to wonder if he was telling the truth about Biggs having cryptography as a hobby,” Thistle says. “I think it was his.”

  “Why lie about that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I look around. I feel like there’s something here I’m not seeing. But staring at it won’t make it obvious. Like Vasquez’s algorithm, I need more data, so I know what to exclude.

  “Let’s check out his parents’ house,” I say.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  What gets wetter the more it dries?

  “He’s a good boy,” Joseph Luxford insists.

  Joseph looks a lot like his son. Square jaw, cobalt eyes. His hair has remained black, but it’s thinning at the front. His nose has gone blotchy in a way that might suggest alcoholism.

  “What were his grades like at school?” Thistle asks.

  She already knows that they were good. Shannon got A’s in math, science, gym and shop, B’s in everything else. Thistle is trying to get Joseph off defense, talking about something he’s comfortable with. Hoping to get a clue about whether or not Shannon is hiding here.

  But Joseph glances at his wife. He doesn’t know the answer.

  “His grades were good,” Francine Luxford says quietly. She’s younger than her husband, with a neat bun of hair that would probably be gray if not for an expensive blond dye job. She sits down carefully, as though she once had an abdominal injury and relearned how to move.

  “Right,” Joseph says, turning back to us. “They were good. This girl you’re talking about—she might have changed her mind afterward. That doesn’t give her the right to tarnish my son’s reputation.”

  “Girls,” I say. My turn to play bad cop. “There were several.”

  But Joseph just tilts his head, too dismissive even to shrug. “He’s a good-looking boy.”

  An old dog trots over and sniffs my shoes. It can probably smell my neighbor’s dog—or meat.

  “Max, back,” Joseph says.

  The dog slinks away and sits next to the La-Z-Boy, looking guilty.

  The living room has a big TV, several framed photographs of Joseph and Shannon. None of Francine, who I guess was usually holding the camera. A potted plant is withering in the corner. No books. An old reverse-cycle air conditioner dominates one wall.

  The kitchen and dining area are immaculate. I’m looking for dirty dishes, or other signs that Shannon is secretly living here. But I haven’t found anything so far.

  “Anyway, they might be making the whole thing up for the attention,” Joseph says. He talks mostly to me, even though Thistle is the one in charge. “Don’t pretend that doesn’t happen.”

  “When was the last time you saw your son?” I ask.

  “On Sunday, at church,” Joseph says, holding my gaze.

  “How about you, Mrs. Luxford?” Thistle asks.

  Francine looks at her husband, and then says, “Monday. He dropped off some laundry here.”

  “Was there anything unusual among the clothing?” I ask.

  “Like what?” Joseph asks.

  “Condoms. Blood. Drugs.”

  Thistle winces.

  “Of course not,” Joseph says. He doesn’t bother to check with his wife.

  “We’re sorry,” Thistle says. “We have to ask these questions in a missing-persons case—we want to find your son before any more harm comes to him or his reputation.”

  Joseph looks at her, reassessing. Like a GPS working out the new best route after a missed exit.

  “What kind of harm?” he asks.

  “We do everything we can to keep these cas
es quiet,” Thistle says. “But the longer the investigation goes on, the more time the witnesses have to talk, potentially to the media. The sooner we can get Shannon’s side of the story, the sooner we can shut this whole thing down. The last thing we want is for Shannon to become a target, or to hurt himself.”

  Joseph nods slowly.

  “Can we see his bedroom?” Thistle asks. “Sometimes it helps to get a sense of the missing person.”

  Francine sends an anxious glance in Joseph’s direction.

  “I guess that would be okay,” he says. “Follow me.”

  He leads Thistle and me up the stairs. The dog follows like a junior agent. Francine stays in the living room.

  The top floor of the house is dark and claustrophobic. A narrow corridor leads to three bedrooms and one bathroom.

  “Does Shannon have siblings?” I ask.

  “No,” Joseph says. “I wanted him to have plenty of individual attention.”

  “And IVF can be expensive,” I say.

  He and Thistle both look at me, shocked.

  “Indeed,” Joseph says finally, reluctant to admit that he can’t work out how I know. “But we could afford it.”

  “You didn’t think about adopting?” Thistle asks. There’s a dark edge to her voice. I wonder if she, like me, is thinking of the group home. Getting all dressed up, being polite to strange adults, heartbroken when they didn’t want us.

  “It seemed risky,” Joseph says, opening the door to one of the bedrooms. “You never know what you’re going to get, raising someone else’s kid.”

  The words would once have stung. We were all so desperate for someone to adopt us, especially someone rich enough to get us out of the dirt. When we were kids, IVF was already available to the wealthy. Why take someone else’s rejects, when you could buy a kid that was genetically your own?

  It’s hard to be angry now, though. Joseph is right; you never know what you’re going to get. Adopt the wrong kid, and you might find yourself raising a cannibal. Not that Joseph’s own flesh and blood turned out much better.

  The bedroom is large, with a good view of the neatly trimmed grass in the backyard. The shelves are lined with trophies, and the walls hold several framed posters of football stars from ten years ago. Again, no books. The bed is a queen-size. I wonder if Shannon brought girls home here when he was in high school.