The Devil's Cinema (8 page)

They finally reached a quiet street with a row of trailers on one side and located the address. Just as they were walking up to the front door of the trailer, a young woman in a car pulled in and parked in the back. Seeing them waiting on the doorstep, she hurried to a back door, walked through the trailer, and opened the front door. Two little dogs came racing up with her, barking and nipping at the feet of both detectives. Over the noise Johnson told her they were police officers and he asked for her name.

Stunned by the sudden presence of detectives on her steps, the woman meekly replied, “I'm Traci Higgins.”

Johnson shot a look at his colleague, recalling one of the Post-It notes Twitchell had left in his car, thinking things were suddenly getting interesting.

“Do you know Mark Twitchell?” Johnson asked.

“Yes, I do … He was my boyfriend and we went to university together.”

She invited them in.

The three of them sat at a small wood table near Traci's kitchen, about halfway down the trailer. Traci had glasses, her brown hair with blond
highlights touching the edges of her frames before her bangs fell down the sides of her face, curling to an end just under her chin. She seemed taken aback from having police officers in her home but listened carefully. The detectives told her they were investigating a missing persons case and Twitchell's name had come up. Johnson asked her broad questions before slowly moving into her history with Mark Twitchell and when she last saw him.

“Yeah, I've seen him. I've seen him recently.” Traci began clarifying before they could even respond. “But it was all platonic. It was nothing sexual. He's married and I'm going through a divorce.” She stopped for a second, then launched in again. “We're not
those
type of people.”

Johnson pressed her on that point. “Can I ask why he would then write this?” He pulled out a copy of the sticky note from his binder and showed her what was written on it:
Fuck Traci senseless
.

“Oh.” Her lips tightened as she huddled closer to the table. “Uh, I have no idea. Maybe that's just his weird sense of humour or something.”

She remembered going to the movies with Twitchell, meeting him at a theatre in Edmonton one or two weeks ago. “But he's never been to my house,” she added. “We've always met up in the city.”

“Then why did he have a map from his house to your house?”

“Well, I had my address on Facebook for a while. He must've got it off there.”

Johnson was skeptical but didn't pursue it. He was more worried about her safety. If she was telling the truth, then what were Twitchell's intentions with this woman? What did it mean to have her address, a map, and a plan written down to have his way with her? As they got up to leave, he asked Traci if she felt safe. He offered to notify the local police about the investigation so officers could be nearby if she felt she was in danger.

“No, no. That's not a problem,” said Traci, trying to reassure them. “I'm fine.”

The two detectives drove back to Edmonton, but before returning to headquarters, they took a detour to the South Edmonton Common movie theatres. After a few hours they found what they were looking for: security camera footage of Mark Twitchell and Traci Higgins. The time matched the movie stub receipt found in Twitchell's car. They had footage of Twitchell
buying tickets to a film and leading Traci into the theatre. It was a matinee showing on Friday, October 10. The movie had ended around 5:15 p.m. – less than two hours before the time period when detectives believed Johnny had died in Twitchell's garage.

T
HE SURVEILLANCE TEAM HAD
spent more than a day trying to find Twitchell – an eternity when a suspect is considered to be a potential threat to the community. He hadn't been spotted since he left police headquarters at dawn on Monday. The team had followed his wife to a Wal-Mart, watched his sister buy groceries, but saw nothing of the suspect.

Twitchell was gone.

By late evening on Tuesday, October 21, with Twitchell unaccounted for over the past thirty-nine hours, a worry began to fester within the investigation. Clark thought Twitchell could have gone to his parents' place. In the darkness, approaching 9:30 p.m., Clark decided to get the confirmation the team needed. He strolled up the sidewalk to a house in north Edmonton and knocked on the door. It was a single-storey modest home, overlooking a park.

A man whom Clark assumed to be Twitchell's father answered. The mood was bright until Clark told him who he was. That tended to sour any atmosphere of cheer.

“Is Mark here?” Clark asked. “I'd like to talk to him.”

A woman came rushing up to the door to join them. Clark thought it was likely Twitchell's mother. “I know where he is, but I'm not telling you,” she snapped.

Clark expected this reaction. He was the bad guy, going after their son. Any parent would behave the same way. “Listen, a couple things are happening here,” he explained. “I am going to come back and arrest your son. It's just a matter of time. I believe he's involved up to his neck in this thing.” Clark had four boys of his own, so he tried to engage them as parents. “But if this was
my
kid,” he stressed, “I would sit him down and
talk
to him, find out what's going on … That would only make sense. You'll know as a parent if he's lying.”

Clark saw Twitchell's father start to nod while his mother still looked suspicious.

“Well, he can't talk,” she said. “He's been told by his lawyer that he can't talk.”

“And doesn't that seem a little odd to you?” Clark figured by now that Twitchell was probably inside and maybe listening to their conversation from the staircase. Just in case he was there, Clark spoke loud enough to make sure he heard too. “He is a suspect in the disappearance and possible murder of a male. He was found in possession of the missing man's car.… But I'll give him a chance to turn himself in.” He paused and tried again. “Will you tell me where he is?”

“I know where he is,” his mother repeated. “But I'm not going to say.”

Clark and Twitchell's father kept talking as his mother walked away. “Look, if he gets charged with this, you're the ones he's going to come to for the legal bill. So let me give you a piece of advice: I wouldn't be paying for no lawyer bill if I thought my son did something bad. If there's a grey area,
maybe
you would … I bet you this house is paid for?”

Twitchell's dad nodded. His mom walked back up to the door and began glaring at Clark.

“So they'll come to you because your son has no money. But he can get legal aid so you don't have to worry. But they're gonna try to get you to mortgage your house, and I'll tell ya, I wouldn't be standing here right now if I didn't think your son did this. I take my job seriously. When you have homicide detectives come knocking on your door, there's some serious –”

Twitchell's mother cut him off. “Enough talking to him,” she said. She turned to Clark. “I want you to leave our house.” She pointed behind him.

Clark got the message. “Okay, okay,” he said, throwing his hands up in the air. “I'm gone.”

T
HE HOWL OF A
late autumn breeze had ripped away the yellow leaf canopy from the city's trees, exposing the naked bark beneath like a network of veins. The grass was turning brown. The October sky faded to a light blue as the sun reached midday. Wednesday, October 22, was a suitable day to begin the search of Twitchell's residence. Police activity would draw far less attention during the afternoon, when neighbours had deserted their homes for work in the city, far away from this quaint St. Albert crescent. The last thing the detectives wanted was the media to start sniffing around the investigation.

Pulling up and parking, forensic team members Randy Topp, Nancy Allen, and Gary Short arrived at the Twitchell home to begin their usual routines of documenting and gathering evidence as the chilly air warmed with a rising sun. It had been two days since Jess had fled her home. The team would have been here earlier, but they were caught off guard by the scale of work in searching Twitchell's vehicle.

Topp opened the front door and slowly climbed the stairs. As the videographer for the team, he entered first to document the undisturbed state of the property before the rest of the team walked in and started moving things around. The home was quiet and the air inside had turned stale. The only sounds now were Topp's breathing and his soft footsteps as he wandered through the rooms with a video camera, barely uttering a word.

He passed a baby gate and a vacuum on the landing leading toward the living room. On the messy coffee table were an empty baby bottle, a diaper, and a few Cheerios piled in a mound on a tissue. A big flat-screen T
V
hung in the corner, hooked up to a PlayStation 2. The kitchen counters were littered with empty glass bottles. A half-eaten chocolate chip cookie had been left near a stack of dirty plates on the stove.

Topp moved deeper into the residence, descending the stairs to Twitchell's basement office. There was a second bedroom and bathroom
down there. Twitchell's clothes were crumpled up near the bed. A shaving kit rested on the bathroom sink. In the furnace room, Topp found a medieval sword hidden behind paint cans and, later that day, a black samurai sword.

Twitchell's desk was cluttered with empty cans of energy drinks and juice bottles. A half-eaten bowl of noodles sat by the keyboard. Topp spotted an external hard drive and the tower for Twitchell's home computer. Both would have to be seized and examined. The computer monitor was still on, flickering under the harsh glow of fluorescent lights. Above the monitor he noted stacks of DVDs and an unusual possession: a single handcuff key. Among Twitchell's computer desk shelves were burned copies of all twelve episodes of the second season of
Dexter
.

His desk stretched out along the basement wall to an adjoining sewing table that was partially buried by a collection of fabrics, string, and costumes. A
Star Wars
alien mask with three eyes watched Topp from a corner. Next to a black “JEDI” baseball cap, he noticed a street hockey mask. It had been painted black with three stripes of gold shaped to form a vicious animal claw. Topp moved his video camera closer. The bottom of the mask had been cut away. Underneath the sewing table he found an air pistol handgun in a cardboard box.

As Topp circled each room, it became evident how two very different lives had come together in this marriage. All one had to do was examine the living room bookshelf. On the top shelf, Twitchell's love of fantasy had merged with the practical realities of Jess and the baby. Women's magazines, baby books, and a photo of Chloe seemed jarring beside
Power vs. Force
, a text that analyzed human behaviour, and
Troy: Shield of Thunder
by British fantasy writer David Gemmell. The shelf below was stacked high with hardcover editions:
Dexter in the Dark
, another Dexter Morgan serial killer novel, and
Sweetheart
, a novel by Chelsea Cain about an icy-eyed female serial killer. There were
Star Wars
books, an IKEA catalogue, books on what to expect as a new parent, and DVDs of violent movies and video games like
Kill Bill
and
Grand Theft Auto
. One of the lower shelves contained several travel guides, notably a 2007 Frommer's travel guide to Costa Rica. A stack of blank postcards from Costa Rica was found as well.

With Topp done filming, Allen and Short walked in for a detailed search and uncovered two more samurai swords tucked into the front entrance closet. Other items the team noted were a book titled
The Crime Scene: How Forensic Science Works
and a stash of DVDs and VHS tapes, many violent or horror-themed like
Fight Club
and
Predator
. There were a few home videos too.

Later on, when Allen examined the hockey mask they had found, she noticed two spots on the bridge of the nose that looked like bloodstains. She circled them with a white marker. A more detailed sweep of the home over the following hours also uncovered a pair of men's faded jeans with a single red spot just below the knee. The pockets on both sides were covered with what also looked like bloodstains. It appeared as if someone had been rubbing their hands on their thighs. Allen made a note of it.

Another odd discovery in the home, however, prompted a call for a special police expert. In the basement laundry room, the forensics team had found a strange stain in the interior bowl of the washer. It wasn't dark red in colour, which was of course expected if it was blood. Instead, the stain was more of a soft pink and stretched out in a long streak like a comet, circling the glossy white universe inside.

B
ACK AT HEADQUARTERS
, C
LARK
began packing up his things scattered across his desk in a cascade of papers and trinkets. Clark liked to keep knickknacks under his computer monitor, whether it be a stuffed crab or a little kitten statue, which contrasted with police reports detailing brutal acts of violence.

It was half-past five on October 22. After a couple of long days and late-night interviews, Clark was getting ready to head home when one of the steel doors to homicide creaked open.

Anstey walked in with a huge grin. Behind him was Jeff Kerr, another detective on the Twitchell investigation. Clark took his eyes off his desk as the two of them approached. Anstey was beaming. “Bill, you won't believe what we've just found.”

“What?” His ears perked up.

Kerr had a stack of paper in his hands. He lowered them briefly so Clark could read the top of the first page he was holding: