Opening Moves (35 page)

“Is that what you want? Is that why you’re doing all this?”

“Yes.”

“Auditioning?”

He hadn’t thought of it exactly that way before. “Yes.”

“What you’ve been doing is child’s play—having someone leave a man in an alley? Coercing someone to drop off a corpse at a hardware store? I’m not sure you’re taking this seriously.”

How does he know? How did he find you!

“I can assure you that I am.”

“Why the hands?”

“Colleen’s?”

“Yes, why did you cut off her hands?”

“My father taught me that, except he did it after they were dead.”

“They?”

“The people he brought to the place beneath the barn. He first took me down there when I was eight. He showed me what to do.”

Joshua expected the man to ask him what’d happened there under the barn, or what exactly his father had taught him to do, or maybe, if he’d eaten Colleen’s hands. But the man did not ask any of those things. Instead he said, “What do you have planned next?”

“Something special. It involves a police officer.”

“Go on.”

Joshua was beginning to get the sense that he’d already shared too much with this man. He didn’t recognize the voice, but he wondered if it might possibly be a law enforcement officer after all. “That’s all I can tell you.”

“I need to know you’re serious.”

“I am. Quite serious.”

“When will it happen? With the officer?”

“Today at twilight.”

Sundown.

Dusk.

The gloaming.

“Four twenty-five. To be exact.”

“Four twenty-five.”

“Yes.”

“If I’m impressed, I’ll contact you and we’ll meet. If I’m not impressed, you’ll never hear from me again.”

“We’re the same,” Joshua said, sensing that the man was about to hang up. “You know that. You and I.”

“If I thought you were the same as me, I’d never agree to meet with you.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’d be afraid you were going to kill and eat me. But not necessarily in that order.”

And then the line went dead.

71

7:25 a.m.

9 hours until the gloaming

Life is paradox.

That’s what I was thinking when I woke up, sat up in bed, and stared at the phone, trying to decide if I should call Taci.

Paradox.

We want joy, but we read novels that make us cry. We’re desperate to be truly known by others; yet we go to incredible lengths to hide who we really are. We say we want truth, then rationalize it away when it gets too personal.

We want the paradoxical extremes of security and adventure, of independence and intimacy, and if we have neither, or only one or the other, we’re in psychological trouble: anyone who wants only intimacy is clingy and dependent; anyone who wants only independence is self-centered and dangerous.

We want to be free, but not too free; loved but not too tied down.

Paradox.

In essence, to be emotionally healthy, to be well-rounded, somehow we need to find a way to live in the constant tension of our desires; only people in perpetual conflict with themselves come the closest to finding peace.

Or love.

So.

Taci.

I knew her schedule for today, knew she would be leaving for the hospital at eight to work a twenty-four-hour rotation. So, she would still be home right now.

But then gone for twenty-four hours.

Call her.

No, no, no. Don’t call her.

I was caught in the middle of human nature’s greatest paradox of all: only when you love someone enough to let her walk away and not hold it against her have you finally found the truest form of love.

But then, it’s too late.

With that thought hovering around me, I didn’t call her, but left for the bathroom to shower and get dressed.

A quick recap.

I ran it through in my mind.

Griffin was dead, Mallory recovering. We hadn’t learned yet if Browning knew about Griffin’s crimes, but this morning Ralph was going to find out.

I was waiting to hear back from Ellen whether Roger Kennedy and Dane Strickland, the men responsible for dumping Dahmer’s possessions in the Fort Atkinson landfill, had known Griffin.

The person who’d killed Bruce Hendrich was still at large. We didn’t know yet if he was also the man who’d abducted Adele Westin and Colleen Hayes. Additionally, the man who’d killed the women in Ohio and Illinois was still at large. We didn’t know whether he was the same man either. One man, or two, or three, we still didn’t know.

After reviewing the notes Calvin had given me last night, as well as the last three pages of the stack he’d provided earlier, I realized I didn’t have the mathematical background to do the geographic-profiling calculations in any reasonable amount of time. I would definitely need a computer and his software to analyze this data properly.

At the pub he’d said to call him at eight, just ten minutes from now. We could set up a time to go over the numbers then.

Last night I’d stayed up late, going through the Oswald video footage and case files, and there were papers strewn all across my living room floor.

But Radar was on my mind and, instead of picking up the papers, I phoned Reverend Padilla, the police chaplain. “I think maybe you should talk with Radar.”

“About the shooting?”

“Yes. He seemed, well…I’m a little worried about how it might be affecting him.”

“I’ll give him a call.”

Then I got in touch with Thorne. He had no problem with us consulting with Calvin about the case.

“Just fill out the paperwork when you get to the department,” he told me.

“Great.”

At last I scooped up the papers and popped the video out of the VCR.

By a fluke, WISN Channel 12 News had a cameraman stationed in the area during the Oswalds’ apprehension. The station had gotten the dispatch call and sent out a camera crew since they thought it was going to be a hostage situation.

As it turned out, the cameraman had gotten live footage of the Oswalds driving through a police barricade, trying to escape, and then crashing into a tree. I remembered seeing a minute or two of the footage back in 1994 after their arrest—it was played repeatedly for the next few weeks as the daily news reports followed the story.

But last night I’d watched the complete footage, as well as parts of the news shows, and now I gathered together the notes I’d jotted down:

• Van: Blue. Stolen from 46-year-old Judy Opat. They made her drive it when they abducted her. After she jumped out, they tried to escape but within thirty seconds crashed into a tree.

• SWAT surrounded them, but they refused to throw their guns out of the van. The standoff lasted three hours (thankfully the footage didn’t).

• Earlier that morning, the Oswalds had robbed a bank in Wales at 9:30. At 9:36 a.m., the officers received a call and dispatched vehicles to apprehend the suspects.

• The chase ensued from the corner of 18 and 83.

• As they fled, they were approached by Captain James Lutz on Meadowbrook Road. They shot him six times, fatally wounding him.

• After Lutz’s murder, the chase re-ensued at the intersection of SS and G near the Rocky Point subdivision on the west side of Pewaukee Lake. The shoot-out occurred when the suspects were hemmed in by a roadblock on the corner of SS and Oak Street.

• Other injuries from the shoot-out—Judy was hit by a bullet that entered her right shoulder and exited her armpit, two other officers were shot and treated, one suffered minor abrasions. The officers, hostage, and subsequently, the suspects, were all treated at Waukesha Memorial Hospital.

After cleaning up the living room, I called Calvin and told him he was in as a consultant.

“Splendid. Then I think there are some things we should discuss this morning.”

We agreed to meet at eight forty-five at Marquette in the Criminology and Law Studies grad office where he was heading to prepare his lecture for this afternoon’s seminar. “I’ll bring my computer,” he offered. “Then we can plug in the data, try to find out where our offender might actually live.”

That gave me just under half an hour before I needed to leave.

Figuring I’d make the best of it, I set about reviewing Werjonic’s algorithms so I could at least try to understand what we would be discussing at eight forty-five.

72

8:25 a.m.

8 hours until the gloaming

An infected and barbarous heart
.

The words seemed almost audible to Joshua, who tried to tune them out, tried to bury them beneath the memory of killing Petey Schwartz last Friday, the man whose funeral he was going to attend today at noon.

You have an infected and barbarous heart.

He chose a tie and slung it around his neck.

Attending the funeral of a man you’ve killed contains a sad and tragic irony. Perhaps even a touch of sadism. But killing Petey had not been something Joshua had been planning to do at all. They both just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Still, when the moment came, when the homeless man came at him, Joshua had, without hesitation, plunged the necrotome into his belly just the way his father had taught him to do in the barn when he was a boy.

And he had moved it back and forth.

Just like his father had taught him.

Petey had looked at him strangely as Joshua hugged him closer, held him until the man had no more strength to stand on his own. Then he helped him to the ground so he could finish bleeding to death on the sidewalk.

After he had, Joshua stared at the body.

No one will even miss him.

No one will ever know.

This is the perfect time to do it.

But eating Petey Schwartz’s diseased, unbathed flesh was not something Joshua was ready to do. He’d learned long ago, when his father was still alive, that you have to use discernment. You have to exhibit self-control.

He finished with the tie.

The city paid to bury vagrants, but the West Reagan Street Mission was the one to arrange memorial services for the homeless people in the neighborhood who died.

There was no way they could afford a service at an actual funeral home and there was no practical way for the homeless people who would be attending to get there anyway, so the service would be held right there at the mission, just three blocks from the train yards.

As Joshua headed out the door, he ran through his plan for the day one last time. He would head to work for a few hours, attend Petey Schwartz’s funeral at noon, then stop by Kohl’s department store to get the box he would be sending the police officer.

Then he could pick up the children, deliver the package, and wait for the cop to die.

Finally, this evening when it was all said and done, he would meet the man who’d called him earlier this morning. The man who was going to become his partner.

73

I parked on Wells Street, walked from there, and found Calvin in the graduate office, bent over the highest-end laptop computer I’d ever seen, meticulously entering data.

He didn’t look up. “Good morning, Detective.”

I knew he was expecting me, but it could have been someone else walking in—yet there was certainty in his voice when he identified who I was.

“Everyone’s gait is distinctive,” I surmised. “You remembered mine.”

“Quite right.” He pointed at his computer screen. “I’ve taken the liberty of entering the information that you mapped out yesterday on the corkboard. First, we’ll treat the homicides from Ohio and Illinois as if they’re separate from the abduction/demand crimes here this week, and then recalculate the data as if the crimes were all linked. Agreed?”

I liked that he was diving right in. “Agreed.”

“So…” But instead of turning his attention to the computer screen, he directed me to an AAA map of the Midwest. With red Magic Marker he’d identified Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and the sites of the homicides in Champaign, Illinois, and White Oak, Ohio. “Entrance and exit routes…drive times. What do you think they would be?”

The sites formed a lopsided triangle. “I don’t know. Let’s see, from Milwaukee to White Oak … I’d say almost seven hours. From there to Champaign, four or so. From Champaign back to Milwaukee, another four hours.”

“Very good.” He traced the highways with his finger as he told me the mileage: “Three hundred seventy-seven miles. Two hundred twenty-seven. Two twenty-five. Who would drive that far to commit his crimes?”

I didn’t want to assume too much. “Ralph and Agent Parker, she’s another FBI agent on the case, they already looked into traveling salesmen, that sort of thing, before getting up here. Distribution centers for food service, trucking routes, all that—didn’t come up with anything. No companies that have routes or shipping centers in those cities or the surrounding small towns.”

He looked thoughtful for a moment. “I was not aware of that.” He eyed the map more carefully, then muttered something about awareness space and distance decay, but it was hard to hear what he was saying.

Then all at once his eyes lit up. “My boy, I think perhaps we’ve been looking at the wrong roads.”

“Which ones should we be looking at?”

“The ones you can’t see.”

“The ones you can’t see?”

He grinned and pointed at the ceiling.

“Um…” Then it hit me. “What? You mean in the air? Flying?”