Misery Bay (24 page)

It was Maven who called me. Lieutenant Haggerty had been killed by a single gunshot, sometime between 3:00 and 4:00. The trooper did not hear the gunshot, although there was some question as to how well he’d hear a gunshot a good one hundred yards away, through snow-covered trees, with his windows shut and the engine running.

My first thought was obvious. Yes, he’s done it. The killer has struck again. My second thought was, if only Haggerty had let the trooper stay closer to his house. My third thought was, I’m glad I’m not that particular trooper right now.

“The agents are meeting at seven o’clock,” Maven said.

“I’ll be there.”

“This is going to get ugly today.”

“I know.”

*   *   *

I pulled into the Soo post parking lot at 6:45. The sun hadn’t come up yet. It was ten degrees and the air smelled like snow. I walked inside and I could feel the unnatural silence in the place right away. The interview room was empty. I went in and sat down. A trooper I didn’t know walked by and gave me a quick look. It wasn’t friendly.

Maven came in a few minutes later. He nodded to me as he took his coat off. Then he went back out into the office to get a cup of coffee. Actually, he brought back two cups. He put one down in front of me and sat down.

“Thanks,” I said.

He nodded again. He still hadn’t said a word. I wasn’t about to make him talk until he was ready.

Seven o’clock came and went. Then 7:15. It was almost 7:30 when the agents finally showed up. They came in shivering, each of them carrying folders thick with paper. It took them another minute to take their coats off and get settled with their own cups of coffee. They both looked tired as hell.

“First priority,” Agent Long said. “Chief Maven, if we truly understand what’s going on here, you could be next on the list. Or rather, your daughter could be.”

“I know that.”

“We need to ensure her safety.”

“She’s in Amsterdam, staying with a friend. My wife is over there, too. They’ll stay there until it’s safe to come home.”

“Okay, good,” Agent Long said, nodding. “But until we know who this person is … I mean, we don’t know what kind of resources he may have. For all we know, he could go all the way to Amsterdam to find her.”

“He wouldn’t know how to find her. She’s staying in a private residence there, and there are only four people in the world who know about it. My daughter and her friend, my wife and myself.”

“I’m just saying, if we wanted to contact the authorities in the Netherlands, we could arrange to—”

“You brought up the possibility that it might have been an ex-cop doing this.”

“You mean Fraser? But we established that he’s dead.”

“It’s still something to be aware of,” Maven said. “Think about it. What if it was another cop? An old trooper even, somebody we used to work with?”

“Don’t let those guys outside hear you saying that,” Agent Fleury said.

“My point is, I don’t want anybody to know where she is. Even you guys. As soon as you tell somebody else, you don’t have any control over it.”

“This is the FBI you’re talking about,” Fleury said. “If there’s one thing we’re good at—”

“That’s debatable.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Guys,” Agent Long said. “Can we stay on the same team here?”

“There is another avenue we might want to think about,” Fleury said. “If Maven’s daughter did come home and was willing to help us set a trap for this guy…”

“Agent, let me stop you right there and ask you a question,” Maven said. “Do you have a daughter?”

“No, I don’t.”

“I didn’t think so.”

“I’m talking hypothetically,” Fleury said. “It would be a very carefully controlled situation.”

“Next topic.”

Fleury held his gaze for a long moment. Then he shook his head and opened the folder in front of him.

“Actually, before we get to this,” he said, “there’s one more thing we have to talk about. We have some other agents on their way up here right now. If the weather stays clear, they should be here by noon. Special Agent Kozak will be among them. He’ll be taking over the lead on this investigation, and we’ll probably be moving to another location.”

“Why would you do that?” Maven said. “This is where all of the records are.”

“As long as we have access to the computer, we can get to them from anywhere. The real problem is just a matter of space. We’re going to have a half dozen people working on this until we have a resolution.”

“Okay. Whatever.”

“What this also means,” Fleury said, looking at me now, “is that our arrangements are going to have to change. Special Agent Kozak is fully aware of the assistance you’ve been giving us, Mr. McKnight, but when he gets here I’m quite sure he won’t understand why you’re still sitting in on our meetings.”

“If he doesn’t understand,” Maven said, “then I’ll just have to explain it to him.”

I put a hand up to stop him. I looked at Agent Long for confirmation.

“I’m afraid it’s true,” she said. “That’s the third thing he’s going to do when he gets here. The first is kick Agent Fleury’s ass, the second is kick
my
ass. Then the third will be asking us what your official capacity is in this case.”

“Nobody’s happy right now,” Agent Fleury said. “Fair or not, the FBI is mad at the state police for not protecting one of their own. The state police are mad at the FBI for not involving them in this sooner. This is going to end up being a rough day for everyone, Mr. McKnight. I just don’t see how they’re going to let you stick around.”

“All right,” I said. “I get it.”

“I don’t,” Maven said. “If they think they can just—”

“Chief, come on. The man’s right. This day’s going to be bad enough.”

“We really do appreciate everything you’ve done,” Agent Long said. “I don’t think we’d even have a case without you.”

“Just do me one favor,” I said. “As long as the big boys aren’t here yet, tell me exactly what happened.”

Fleury hesitated for a moment. Then he started pulling out papers from his folder.

“All right. As you’ve probably already heard, Lieutenant Haggerty was killed between three o’clock and four o’clock this morning. One single gunshot to the forehead, at fairly close range judging from the powder burns. He was apparently sitting in a chair in the kitchen. There were no marks on his hands to indicate any attempt to defend himself.”

I pictured him sitting there, waiting for exactly this event to happen.

“Or it’s possible that he was asleep in the chair,” Fleury went on. “We’re not sure about that yet. We’ll have some forensics later today, but right now it appears to be a .45 caliber round similar to the rounds used to kill Sergeant Steele and Ms. Krimer.”

“That was Steele’s service weapon,” Maven said. “Did he keep it to use again?”

“That’s quite possible. We’ll know for sure later on. Right now, the one interesting thing we do have is a few fiberglass fibers close to the entry wound. This would suggest some kind of homemade suppressor.”

“A homemade suppressor? Are you kidding me?”

“It’s possible to make a pretty effective suppressor if you want one bad enough. I’m not talking about the old bleach bottle on the end of the gun thing. I’m talking about a carefully made suppressor, with a PVC pipe and fiberglass matting inside. If you do a good enough job, you can contain the gases very well, and you can even use a wipe barrier to slow down the bullet to subsonic speed. Your accuracy would be compromised, of course, but at such close range…”

“How would this guy know how to make something like that?”

“I could find it for you on the Internet in two minutes,” Fleury said. “You just need the materials, available at any good hardware store.”

“If he knows guns well enough to make a suppressor,” I said, “then he probably knows that we’ll be able to trace that slug back to Steele’s weapon, assuming that’s what it was.”

“Probably, yes.”

“So he’ll know that
we’ll
know there was a connection between the two shootings. There won’t be any pretense of unrelated deaths anymore.”

“That’s true,” Fleury said. “Although he probably already figured out that something was up when he saw that trooper’s car at the head of the driveway. The one question is, does he realize we’ve connected the suicides, as well?”

“I don’t see why he wouldn’t assume that, too.”

“Only one way to know for sure,” Agent Long said. “When we catch him, we’ll have to ask him.”

She opened her own folder and grimaced at what she saw.

“Are those the photos?” I said.

“Yes. Not pretty.”

“May I see them?”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“I’ve seen crime scene photos before. Come on, let me see them before I get kicked out of here.”

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

She slid the folder across the table to me. Maven inched his chair closer so he could see, as well. The first photo showed Lieutenant Haggerty lying on his back, both arms stretched out on the floor as if he were caught in the middle of making a snow angel. The shot was taken from directly above him, a clean hole centered perfectly in his forehead. The blood had drained out through the exit wound and was pooled all around him.

There were several other pictures taken from different angles. Close up, farther away, his legs draped over the upended chair. Shots of the room. The back door slightly ajar. The new snow on the back porch.

“As you can see, the killer came through the back door,” Fleury said. “The exterior light was on, and the door was unlocked. There’s another road about a mile back, through the woods. Our man probably parked there and walked.”

“How would he know how to get there?”

“Again, the Internet. You can bring up a map of just about anywhere and see every little road, every driveway even.”

“Why wasn’t there another trooper watching from that back road?”

“There was yet another road about two miles to the east,” Fleury said. “He might have come from there instead. How many troopers can you put out there every single night, all night long?”

“They should have been in the house,” Maven said. “I don’t care if he didn’t want them.”

“Yeah, well, they’re probably telling themselves the same thing right now.”

“You have other photos there,” I said, nodding at the remaining pile of folders. “Are those the other crime scenes?”

“Yes.”

“Even the suicides?”

“Alex,” Agent Long said, “I’m serious now. You really don’t want to see these.”

“Yes, I do. It’s the last thing I’ll ask.”

She let out a long sigh, then pushed the folders over to me one by one. There was one set of photographs for each crime scene, starting with the double homicide of Sergeant Steele and his girlfriend, Donna Krimer—the scene Maven and I had stumbled upon. At the time, we hadn’t done much more than peek inside the doorway. Here was the whole thing in living color.

Sergeant Steele was laid out spread eagle on the floor, his arms stretched out like Lieutenant Haggerty’s, but in this case, Steele was facedown. There was an obvious entrance wound in the center of his back. The bullet probably passed right through his heart and killed him instantly. Instead of the bright red blood that had surrounded Lieutenant Haggerty’s body, the blood here was a different color—darker, duller, almost rust colored. This is what happens to blood when it lies on the floor for two days.

Donna Krimer lay five or six feet away from Steele, in her own pool of dark blood. She was on her side with both arms extended in front of her. You couldn’t even see her face. It almost looked like she was doing a dramatic death scene on a stage, every limb arranged just so. Except of course she would never stand up for her curtain call.

The next folder I didn’t even need to look at, but I did anyway. It was Charles Razniewski Sr., sprawled out on Chief Maven’s kitchen floor, his throat cut wide open, the blood painting everything around him. Chief Maven looked away from the photos, gripping his coffee cup so tightly I was surprised it didn’t shatter.

I looked at Razniewski’s open eyes one more time before I closed that folder. Photograph or no photograph, I knew I’d be seeing those eyes forever.

“It’s like we’re going back in time here,” I said. “Am I right? We sort of lost sight of that because we found out about everything out of order. But the three apparent suicides actually happened before the three obvious homicides.”

“That’s right,” Agent Long said. “If you think about it … the three children, then the three fathers. Maybe it was just those three after all. Maybe this guy’s done.”

“Or maybe that’s the way the opportunities came up for him,” Maven said. “My daughter’s been out of the country for almost five months.”

“I agree we have to act like you’re still on the list,” Agent Long said. “I’m just saying, it’s possible he considers his work to be completed.”

“What if Raz hadn’t come up here?” I said. “Our killer would have to travel a lot farther to find him. Maybe he’d still be alive now and it would be
him
next on the list.”