Criminal Minds (13 page)

The room was small and dark. Mrs. Edels opened the curtains wide and let the sun in, then—without a word—left Reid, Rossi, and Tovar alone in the room, closing the door behind her.

The window took up most of the wall opposite the door, the bed against the wall on the right; the floor was hardwood. A desk and chair squatted beneath the window, the chair neatly pushed underneath a desk that was home to a small pile of books (novels,
Tales of the City
on top) and a laptop computer.

‘‘Reid,’’ Rossi asked, ‘‘can you get into his computer?’’

‘‘Possibly,’’ Reid said. ‘‘But I’d still feel better calling in a computer tech.’’

‘‘All right,’’ Rossi said.

Shelves on the left held a TV, a few books, a video game console and assorted games and CDs. A poster over the bed was of a pasty guy with long, unruly hair with only the words ‘‘The Cure’’ at the bottom to give Rossi the slightest clue what the poster was supposed to represent. Another poster above the shelves and TV was of another musician, this one with black hair and pale skin as well—‘‘Nine Inch Nails,’’ it was labeled. He wondered how one man could be a whole band (all nine of them?), but rock music had left Rossi behind some time ago. Around ‘‘Pleasant Valley Sunday.’’

Tovar said, ‘‘Seems normal enough.’’

‘‘We can only hope the computer gives up something,’’ Rossi said. ‘‘Or maybe his car—’’

The word was barely out of his mouth when Rossi realized they had all skipped a major potential clue. Opening the door, he went into the hallway. The Edels were standing there expectantly, father, mother, daughter, like a party waiting to be seated in a restaurant.

Rossi asked, ‘‘How did Bobby get around?’’

‘‘Well, his car,’’ Mrs. Edels said.

‘‘Which is where?’’

‘‘We wish we knew,’’ Mr. Edels said.

Rossi frowned. ‘‘How’s that?’’

‘‘It hasn’t turned up. God, it seemed like every day after he disappeared one of us thought we
saw
that car, and phoned the police. I think they finally got tired of us bothering them, but they never found it. Must be a lot like it out there.’’

‘‘What kind of car is it?’’

‘‘Ninety-five Honda Civic.’’

‘‘Navy blue,’’ Bobby’s sister added.

Rossi said, ‘‘Thanks,’’ and got out his cell phone and hit a number in the speed dial.

‘‘Hotchner.’’

‘‘It’s Rossi. We need to find Bobby Edels’s car. It went missing when he did.’’

Hotchner was ahead of him. ‘‘The local cops up there ran it when he disappeared. They came up empty.’’

‘‘Well, hell, let’s put Garcia on it. We need to know what happened to that vehicle.’’

‘‘I’d like to know myself, but we don’t gather the evidence, Dave.’’

‘‘With all due respect, Aaron, remove the stick from where you’re sitting and get real: Bobby Edels disappeared. Wherever he disappeared from, he got there in his car. That car is a clue that we need to find so we
can
interpret it.’’

‘‘Agreed,’’ Hotchner said. ‘‘I’ll get Garcia on it right away. Anything else?’’

‘‘Not yet,’’ Rossi said, ‘‘but you’ll be the first to know when there is.’’ He clicked off.

With a curious frown, Mrs. Edels asked, ‘‘If the police haven’t been able to find Bobby’s car, what makes you think you can?’’

Rossi gave her a half smile. ‘‘Because we have a secret weapon.’’

Named Penelope Garcia.

Supervisory Special Agent Derek Morgan and Detective Tate Lorenzon had spent the last three hours interviewing Fix-It Mate employees.

They started with the assistant manager and worked their way slowly through coworkers of Bobby Edels. The assistant manager, highest-ranking person on duty, had shown them security videos of the parking lot. They had watched Bobby Edels get behind the wheel of his Honda Civic and pull out of the parking lot.

Then Bobby disappeared down the road, out of sight and, seemingly, off the planet.

Even after twenty-two employee interviews, the agent and the detective knew no more than what they’d seen on that video.

They were in the employees’ break room now, where they had conducted the interviews, and Lorenzon got up to pour them what seemed like their twentieth cup of coffee. Or maybe thirtieth.

‘‘Do we know
anything
new?’’ Lorenzon asked as he returned to the table and set their cups on the table.

‘‘Sure,’’ Morgan said, sipping the coffee.

‘‘Such as?’’

‘‘We know that Fix-It Mate coffee sucks ass.’’

They both laughed. As they drank the wretched brew, young, dark-haired Stan Schultz, assistant manager, wandered into the break room. He wore a blue Fix-It Mate shirt and navy blue slacks. The slightly taller, middle-aged man who followed him in wore khaki shorts and a white Cubs T-shirt. He had brown hair, pale skin, horn-rimmed glasses and a small beer belly under the shirt.

Schultz said, ‘‘Officers, this is Alan Bellamy, our store manager—he’s come in on his day off.’’

Introductions were made and hands were shaken all around.

Then Bellamy said, ‘‘Bobby was a good employee— hell,
everybody
liked him. How can we help?’’

Lorenzon listed what they had already done at Fix-It Mate.

Bellamy’s eyebrows rose. ‘‘I don’t know what else I can add. Kinda hoped, comin’ in like this, I could do Bobby’s cause some good.’’

‘‘Maybe you still can. We’ve talked to people about how he got along with his fellow employees—how did he get along with customers?’’

Bellamy didn’t hesitate. ‘‘In the store, he was great. First-rate people skills, that kid—surprising, since he was on the quiet side, kept to himself. Far as customers go in the store, I never heard a complaint about him.’’

‘‘You said, ‘in the store’ twice,’’ Morgan said. ‘‘Does that mean there were complaints
outside
the store?’’

Bellamy shrugged. ‘‘Bobby was part of our installation staff—part of the team that does everything from layin’ carpet to building garages. He’d been doing that for us, oh, hell, ever since he graduated from high school, for maybe two . . . two and a half years? I mean, every team had complaints. Some customers are . . . hard to please.’’

‘‘Were any of these complaints in writing?’’

‘‘Sure.’’

‘‘May we see them?’’

Bellamy’s smile was a frozen thing that just hung there for a while.

Finally he said, ‘‘Normally, we keep those to ourselves. We dispose of the letters, and any phone message and such, but we do keep a list of customers who’ve said they were dissatisfied with a team’s work, with a little write-up of their specific complaint or complaints.’’

‘‘It might help, as you said, Bobby’s cause.’’

‘‘Well, if it can help you find the son of a bitch who did this thing, hell—we’re glad to help any way we can, here at Fix-It Mate.’’

That little commercial made Morgan smile, but he merely said, ‘‘Much appreciated, Mr. Bellamy.’’

Bellamy led them up to his office, printed off the list and, ten minutes later, the agent and the detective were back in the car. Lorenzon pulled out of the parking lot as Morgan snapped on his seat belt and glanced over the list of only eight names. Nothing familiar stood out.

‘‘Anything good?’’ Lorenzon asked as he wove through traffic, headed back toward the expressway.

‘‘Eight names,’’ Morgan said. ‘‘Abbott, Benavides, Denson . . ."

‘‘Wait a minute,’’ Lorenzon interrupted. ‘‘
Denson
?’’

‘‘Yeah.’’

‘‘
Jake
Denson?’’

‘‘There’s a Jacob Denson. You know him?’’

‘‘He’s the Wauconda detective who didn’t want you guys helping him. I was with Hotchner when we visited the PD up there. The guy’s a complete and utter asshole.’’

Morgan felt a chill. ‘‘He’s more than that, Tate.’’

‘‘Yeah?’’

‘‘He’s a complete and utter asshole with a connection to at least three of the victims.’’

Morgan’s first call was to Hotchner to tell the SAIC what they had learned. Hotchner ordered them to Wauconda to talk to Denson. His second call was to Garcia.

‘‘Office of Omnipotence,’’ she said.

‘‘Love of my life,’’ Morgan said, ‘‘I need some help.’’

‘‘Do I have to say you’ve come to the right place?’’

He grinned at the phone. ‘‘No. Hey, I need you to find out all you can about a Wauconda, Illinois, detective named Jake Denson.’’

‘‘Checking up on one of the good guys?’’

‘‘Checking to see if he
is
a good guy.’’

‘‘Gotcha,’’ she said.

‘‘Catch you later, sweetheart.’’

He clicked off.

Lorenzon, behind the wheel, glanced over at Morgan. ‘‘Was that intelligence you called, or your latest girl friend?’’

‘‘Best computer tech on the planet. We’re just friends. We kid around.’’

‘‘That kind of kidding around gets you written up where I come from.’’

Morgan gave him a look. ‘‘Tate, this serial killer is an aberration in your life, right? Not saying you don’t face tough stuff, day in and day out, but this is off the rails, wouldn’t you say?’’

‘‘Way off.’’

‘‘Well, that brilliant and gentle soul I was just talking to? She needs a little TLC sometimes, to take the edge off the horrific garbage we face day in and day out."

Silence.

‘‘So, then, she’s just a friend?’’ Lorenzon asked lightly.

Morgan and Lorenzon had been needling each other since they were kids.

‘‘She’s a good friend.’’

Lorenzon grinned. ‘‘Damn, if I had a nickel for every time I heard you say that over the years . . .’’

‘‘Hey, hey, I picked that up from you, baby.’’

The detective’s eyebrows shot up. ‘‘When did
I
ever tell you some woman of mine was just a friend?’’

‘‘How about . . . every woman I ever saw you with?’’

Lorenzon laughed. ‘‘You know, come to think of it? That’s right. That’s right. . . .’’

Traffic being what traffic always was in Chicago, the better part of an hour dragged by before they got to the Wauconda PD HQ.

Morgan had spent the time reading the Fix-It Mate report of the complaint Denson had made against Bobby Edels’s construction team. The complaint had no allegations against Edels per se, but Denson had claimed that the team, at his house to construct a two-car garage, had practiced shoddy workmanship and left behind a mess in his yard. Not the sort of thing that would normally draw a red flag, but in a city of over three million, one detective having ties to three of five murder victims in different jurisdictions certainly was. Flags did not come much redder. . . .

After he parked the car, Lorenzon led the way into the police department, where Morgan felt he’d stepped through some sort of time warp.

Police stations just didn’t look like this anymore. Hotch and JJ had both commented on the place as a security nightmare and were they right: no bulletproof glass, three officers within sight of the front door, making easy targets. A female officer, who had probably stood on her tiptoes to meet the height requirement, paused on the other side of the counter from them.

‘‘May I help you?’’ she asked.

Before either man could say a word, a door to their right swung open and a tall man in jeans and a blue work shirt sauntered in. He had a shaved head and dark eyes that clouded with anger when he spotted Lorenzon.

‘‘What the hell,’’ he said, his voice carrying through the nearly empty room, ‘‘are you doing back here, Lorenzon? Don’t they give you any crimes to solve in Chicago?’’ He moved through the swinging gate.

Unshaken, Lorenzon turned to Morgan. ‘‘Supervisory Special Agent Derek Morgan, meet Detective Jake Denson, Wauconda PD.’’

‘‘
Another
goddamn fed?’’ Denson asked, making no effort to shake hands as he drew closer.

Morgan grinned, refusing to rise to the bait. ‘‘Yeah, I know you must feel invaded. But we need to talk to you. . . .’’

‘‘What about?’’ Denson demanded, really putting on a show for his buddies now.

‘‘. . . in
private
.’’

Morgan removed his grin and gave Denson a hard stare.

‘‘You strut in here and tell
me
what to
do
?’’ Denson said. ‘‘Suppose I don’t feel like
talking
to you?’’

Morgan took a half step closer and dropped his voice so only the detective could hear. ‘‘That’s cool. Then I’ll have the supreme pleasure of disarming you, cuffing you, and, with the help of my friend Lorenzon here, dragging your ass out in front of all your pals, and all the way down to the FBI field office to question you there. If that’s how you want this to play out, hey, it’s your call.’’

A tense silence hung in the room as Denson’s eyes bore into him and Morgan let the detective see the calm determination that told the local boy he meant every word.

‘‘All right,’’ Denson said. He nodded behind him. ‘‘The chief’s office.’’

‘‘Lead the way.’’

Denson took off quickly, Morgan and Lorenzon keeping up. A minute later, they were behind the closed door of an office.

‘‘Where’s Chief Oliver?’’ Lorenzon asked.

‘‘Family vacation,’’ Denson said. ‘‘He won’t be back for a week. Now, what the hell are you two doing, coming on my turf and threatening me?’’

‘‘I didn’t threaten you,’’ Morgan said coolly. ‘‘I was just providing you an option.’’

‘‘Fuck you, fed! You can’t come in here and bully me like I’m your dog and I just crapped on the rug. This is
my
house. We don’t want to join your goddamn task force, so you’re wasting your time coming back around trying to bully me into it.’’

Morgan laughed, once. ‘‘That’s why you think we’re here?’’

Denson’s face turned crimson as his hands balled into fists.

Lorenzon stood close to their host. ‘‘You better dial it down a notch or two, Jake, because my friend here will break your ass in public or private, doesn’t matter to him. And you definitely want to scale back the fuck-you rhetoric.’’