Opening Moves (33 page)

“Good.”

I was no counselor by any stretch of the imagination, but it seemed like I should at least offer whatever help I could. “If you want to talk about…”

“I’m good.”

I drove for a bit. “You remember when Lyrie was involved in that shooting last year? The gang kid? He—”

“I don’t need to talk to Padilla, Pat. I’m good.”

I didn’t have to mention a name. Radar knew right away I’d been talking about our police chaplain.

A pause. “Right.”

We continued down the highway as darkness spread across the countryside. It was almost ten minutes before Radar spoke again. “Do you believe in hell, Pat?”

“Hell?”

“Yeah. For people like Griffin.”

“You know, when we were back there, I was thinking to myself that there’s gotta be a place set aside down there for guys like him. I’m not sure if I believe in a literal fire and brimstone hell, but for people like Griffin I sure hope one exists. What about you?”

“I believe there’ll be a reckoning.”

“A reckoning? You mean like Judgment Day?”

“I guess so.” He didn’t go on right away. “I guess because I believe that both love is real, and so is justice.”

I thought I could see where he was going with this. “You’re saying justice doesn’t always happen in this life. People get away with rape, murder, whatever, so—”

“Yeah. So if there’s no hell, there’s no final justice in the universe, not really. It’d mean those people just commit their crimes and then die like everyone else. If justice exists, if it’s more than just wishful thinking—”

“There must be a hell.”

“Yeah, or a reckoning, or whatever, and if there’s no heaven, there’s no hope, no victory; we would all just die and be gone. Love wouldn’t win in the end.”

I’d never thought of it quite like that, but what he said rang true to me. “So you think, Griffin, he went there? To hell?”

“I think he deserved to.” It wasn’t quite a direct answer. I thought maybe he would go on, but he left it at that and, though his words made me curious, so did I.

Then he was silent and I was silent and we drove toward police headquarters so he could pick up his car and go home to his wife and kids. And I could get back to work.

66

The only other person Joshua had ever heard speak of the Vaniad, the blood oath of the Teutonic Warrior, was James Oswald, a man who reminded him so much of his own father.

Joshua didn’t know what the oath was exactly, his father had mentioned it but never shared it with him. Perhaps he would have gotten around to it if Joshua had not buried him alive.

However, Joshua did know that breaking the oath was tantamount to treason to those who’d taken it. His father had made that much clear to him. And in a press conference after his arrest, James Oswald vilified his son, Ted, for supposedly breaking the oath.

The mention of the Vaniad by James Oswald back in 1994 was what had first interested Joshua in his case. Heather Isle’s book about Ted and James had been helpful in his research too. The more he found out about the relationship of the father and son, the more his interest was piqued. That was why he’d chosen to end this week’s saga at the bank in Wales where they’d committed their final robbery.

Earlier today when he’d gone by the bank, he’d almost been able to picture where SWAT would set up their command center, where the media vans would position themselves to do their remotes.

After leaving the bank, he’d rented the moving truck and had it delivered to the department store parking lot, where it was waiting for him.

Now, Joshua thought about tomorrow.

He had the funeral to attend at noon and then he could swing by the department store for the item he would be delivering to police headquarters. Then he would go to the school to pick up the children.

After he’d gotten them out of the school, he would deliver the package—something that would certainly be enough to convince the officer he had in mind to do as he was told.

And finally, at dusk, everything would culminate with Joshua’s final ransom demand being met, live on national TV.

With traffic, the trip to headquarters was slower than it should have been and it was 5:42 p.m. before I finally pulled into my parking spot in the underground garage.

“Hey, listen,” I said to Radar, “I think I’m going to meet up with Ralph later tonight, have a couple beers, process things. You’re welcome to join us.”

“Yeah, I think I’ll pass. I just need to get home.”

“Right, well, listen, you did good out there.”

He opened his door to leave, but then stopped short and looked at me, his eyes intense, searching. “Would you have done it?”

“Done it?”

“Fired. If you were standing where I was. If you saw what I did.”

I didn’t know what to say to that; I didn’t know what he’d seen. “Of course.”

“Thanks.”

“For?”

“Finding that knife on his belt.”

Again I wasn’t sure how to respond. “Yeah.”

Then he exited the car and walked silently across the parking garage toward his Jeep.

When I reached my desk, I found a voice message from Dr. Werjonic that he was hoping we might be able to meet for dinner. Ralph had also left me a note asking me to call him so he could take me out for that beer he’d promised me this morning.

I was still digesting the sub, but my hunger wasn’t completely satiated and I figured I could manage eating again in an hour or so. Make up for that missed lunch.

Ralph left a number. I called it and found out it was the Overnite Motel, one of the cheapest motels on this side of the city. A federal employee who was actually saving taxpayers’ money. Imagine that.

He wasn’t there, but I left a message with the front desk for him to call me. Then I dialed Dr. Werjonic, who picked up immediately. Before we could get to discussing any dinner plans, I asked him about his meeting with Slate.

“Oh, it was quite interesting as a matter of fact. I’m anxious to tell you about it. But over dinner. Yes?”

“Yes.”

“I’m afraid, however, that I’m not too familiar with your city. Everywhere I turn, I see another bar serving beer, burgers, and bratwurst. Unfortunately, that’s not exactly my cuisine of choice.”

“I know just the place to go—Tanner’s Pub. It has one of the largest selections of single malt whiskey outside of Britain.”

“You don’t say?”

“And fish and chips like you wouldn’t believe. It used to be a speakeasy.”

“Hmm…like the Safe House?”

The Safe House is a famous restaurant in downtown Milwaukee, situated halfway down a dingy alley across the street from the Pabst Theater. You have to know where it is because there’s a secret entrance and you need to tell them the password to get in. The place is themed around spy memorabilia. If it has anything to do with espionage, it’ll be on the walls of the Safe House.

“Atmosphere is completely different,” I told Calvin. “Instead of a 007 motif, Tanner’s is more like…well, I guess, more like a corner pub in London.”

“Brilliant.”

I was telling him the location when Ralph returned my call on the other line. “Hang on a second, Calvin.”

A little phone shuffling and it was all set up—the three of us would meet at Tanner’s. They’d get together in thirty minutes and, since I’d been gone most of the day and needed to catch up a little here at my desk, I’d join them as soon as I could, hopefully within the hour.

When we spoke, Ralph told me to check his workspace, that there was a pile of manila folders there. “The Oswald case files you wanted from Detective Browning over at the Waukesha county sheriff’s department. And you’re not gonna believe this: they were hand delivered by Browning himself.”

Well, that was unexpected.

“There’s a video too,” he went on, “of footage from archived news coverage of the case. Some interesting stuff in there. We’ll talk.”

On my desk, Thorne had left me a copy of Heather Isle’s (or Slate Seagirt’s, as the case might’ve been) true crime book about the Oswalds, entitled
The Spawn
.

I hung up the phone, and, after calling Ellen to ask her to find the sanitation workers Dane Strickland and Roger Kennedy and ask them about their relationship with Timothy Griffin, I found the files Ralph had told me about, flipped open the top folder, and began to read.

67

During the day the Maneater had been busy with other obligations at work and hadn’t been able to spend time with Celeste, but now at last he returned to her.

She was still alive.

That pleased him.

Last night, before any of this, as they walked through the door to her apartment, she’d offered to give him, as she put it, “Perfumed whispers and sweet laughter, a night wrapped in melodies and dreams and fantasies finally coming true.”

“It’s from a poem,” she explained with a half-inebriated smile. “I learned it for this one class in college and never forgot it. Not even
once
.”

“That’s impressive,” he’d told her.

As it turned out, fantasies really had come true last night. And now, as he took her to the pen where the cattle used to be slaughtered back when Brantner Meats was still in business, he was confident they were about to come true all over again.

But not with perfumed whispers and sweet laughter.

No. Other sounds altogether.

68

Bizarre.

That was the best way to describe the Oswalds’ crimes.

From an early age James had indoctrinated Ted to kill.

During the trial, Ted’s defense attorney pointed out that James Oswald would often threaten to shoot his son, sometimes aiming a rifle at his head. When Ted was five years old, his father apparently killed puppies in front of him and mocked him if he showed any form of emotional response.

The files contained transcripts of the trial proceedings between Ted and the prosecuting attorney:

OSWALD
: I thought the only way I could say no to him was to prepare to fight to the end. He didn’t say “I will kill you.” It was the implication.

BENEDICT:
What made you actually believe it?

OSWALD
: His details, the expression on his face. He’d show papers with lists of people he was going to kill. I can give you an example.

BENEDICT
: Please do.

OSWALD
: My physics teacher. I had gotten an A first semester, a B+ second semester. He [James Oswald] was irate. He described how he was going to have me get this guy. He was going to have me build a silencer in front of him and then shoot him in the belly and watch him barf…He [James Oswald] would as easily do it to me as to anyone else.

I scanned the next few lines of testimony and came to Ted’s account of the one time he’d actually attempted to leave: “The dark side became a reality in the barn. Once you entered, there was no going back. The only way out was death. I couldn’t go to the refrigerator and get a glass of milk, go to the bathroom, go outside, pick up a pencil, watch TV without asking permission. I packed my clothes in a bag, attempted to go through the glass door. He caught me and stripped me down to my underwear. He had me kneel down, basically recite that he was the commander of the barn, the only way out was through him.”

One piece of information I already knew: Eventually the father and son were tied to a string of bank robberies spread throughout southeastern Wisconsin. Each time they would arrive heavily armed, wearing clear plastic masks, and threaten the lives of bank employees if they called the police.

After they were caught, it took the officers all day to go through the Oswalds’ Dodge County farm. Law enforcement had been told the barn was rigged to explode, and the bomb squad spent hours searching the area around the barn and the house with metal detectors looking for traps, before they actually entered and found the Oswalds’ extensive arsenal of ammunition and weapons, including .50 caliber rifles. In the end, no bombs or booby traps were found.

In one news conference, it was brought out that the FBI had obtained a photograph of James standing next to Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City Bomber. When the reporters asked James what he thought of the Oklahoma City bombing, he said simply, “I think it was the wrong target.”

The case files Browning had dropped off were comprehensive and, in some cases, inexplicably so. Not only did they include Ted Oswald’s Waukesha County criminal court records (case #1994CF000227), the records of the civil suit filed by Diane Lutz, the widow of the officer they’d killed (#1995CV001632), but also strangely enough, Ted’s Watertown Public Library card (number WT 50934), his USA wrestling competitor’s membership card from 1990 to 1991, and the freshman picture from his high school yearbook (page 116).