by Ronald Malfi
“I can’t get any more info than that.”
“Well, maybe this is something, maybe it isn’t. I can’t really say. This might be FBI territory. Whatever it is, it’s well beyond my pay grade.”
“There was a woman in West Virginia who was approached by someone who tried to get her to come with him in his car,” I said, not willing to be dissuaded. “This was the same night Holly Renfrow was killed three counties away. This woman was a little older than his other victims, but she looked the part. Maybe he saw an opportunity with her. Maybe he was frustrated when Holly got away and fell into the river before he could… well, before he could do to her what he’d set out to do…”
“She get a look at the guy?” Sloane interjected.
“Well, no, not exactly. It was too dark. She didn’t see his face.”
“How do you know it’s the same guy?”
“Because the witness described his car. A dark-colored sedan with a floodlight on the door, like an unmarked police car. In fact, the guy told her he was a police officer. ‘Policeman,’ was what he said. The night Holly was killed, some kids she was friends with saw a similar car parked at the overlook where I think Holly’s killer took her, where she fell into the river.”
I couldn’t decipher the look that was now on Peter Sloane’s face.
“Also,” I said, “it was what Allison believed. For the most part, I’m just following her lead here.” I slid the yearbook with the green elk’s head on the cover from my satchel and set it on the table between us. “Allison also had a suspect. Someone she believed was in this yearbook and had gone to high school with her and Carol.”
Sloane shook his head. “No,” he said flatly. “Come on, Aaron. How do you know that?”
I told him how you had wanted Denise Lenchantin to identify someone’s photo from the yearbook.
“But I have no idea who it is,” I said. “And now, given your story about James de Campo, I’m not sure what to think. He obviously didn’t attend high school with them.”
Sloane stared at the yearbook and didn’t say anything. I wondered if I had just soured our discourse with what must have sounded like wild suppositions. He was probably thinking I was nuts.
“I feel like the little silver ball in a pinball machine,” I confessed to him.
Without a word, Sloane opened the yearbook and began turning the pages. When he arrived at a specific page, he paused with it half-turned and scrutinized it. Then he turned the book around so that I could view the page right-side up.
It was a black-and-white photograph of a group of school custodians. Sloane pointed to the man standing at the front of the group, a bleary-eyed shit-kicker in his late forties with a scrim of beard stubble, hoops in his ears and his long hair greased back from his face. He was not smiling in the photo as much as he was smirking, like he knew some terrible secret of which no one else was aware. It bothered me just looking at him, as if something about him was radioactive.
“That,” said Peter Sloane, “is James de Campo.”
3
“Now keep in mind,” Sloane was saying, as I continued to stare down at the yearbook photograph, “this isn’t proof of anything. That your wife was seeking confirmation from some witness doesn’t mean de Campo killed anyone. You understand that, right?”
I looked up at him. “What do you mean?”
“I mean your wife was bringing her personal experiences into what may be a completely unrelated event. Or series of events. If she believed that James de Campo killed her sister back in 2004, then every time a similar murder happened somewhere, she was looking for clues, for evidence, for anything that confirmed her pre-existing belief. And now that’s what you’ve been following—your wife’s beliefs, not hard evidence.”
“The waitress and the yearbook photo—” I began.
“Your wife wanting to show this waitress woman de Campo’s photo in this yearbook isn’t proof of his involvement in any of these murders; it only speaks to the fact that your wife wanted corroboration of her own belief. Do you see the difference?”
Yes, I did see. Peter Sloane was right—this was not unwavering proof that James de Campo was guilty of anything, except being in the forefront of your mind, Allison. Yet even knowing that, I could not shake the sudden jolt of certainty that zapped like electricity between the synapses of my brain. I could almost raise one hand and see sparks of current arcing between my fingers like some super villain.
“‘Gas Head will make you dead,’” Sloane said.
I looked up at him. “What?”
He was holding the crinkled sheet of legal paper with that phrase written over and over again on it. He tossed it down on top of the yearbook.
“Do you know what that means?” I asked him.
“Yeah. It’s an old ghost story. Every town’s got one, right? If you were a naughty little kid in Woodvine, Pennsylvania, Gas Head would get you.”
“That’s it? Some stupid urban legend?”
“Far as I know,” Sloane said.
“What about this drawing? These six rectangles?”
“Beats me,” Sloane said.
I sat back against the cushioned seat. “A ghost story,” I muttered, half thinking aloud. “What’s it have to do with these murders?”
“You wallow in dark stuff, Aaron, and monsters tend to float to the surface. Maybe that old legend came back to her the more she dug around in this stuff.”
“I guess,” I said, staring down at that phrase. How stark and angry those words looked…
Peter Sloane redirected his gaze from me and out across the barroom floor. I felt a fresh set of eyes pressing upon me, boring into the panel of flesh between my shoulder blades. When I looked across the bar, I saw Dottie Sloane seated there, gazing at us from overtop a pair of bifocals and tapping a clipboard against one knee. She didn’t look very pleased that I was still here talking with her husband. When she saw she had my attention, she tapped her wristwatch. It seemed my twenty minutes were done.
“Don’t let that stink-eye intimidate you,” Sloane muttered conspiratorially. “She won’t turn you to stone.”
“No, but her eyes are burning a hole in the side of my face,” I confessed.
“Listen,” Sloane said, rising up from the table. “Take your time, finish your beer. Hang around for a bit and watch the game. In the meantime, if it’s okay with you, I’d like to photocopy some of these news articles. I’ve got a Xerox machine in the back, won’t take me five minutes. I’ll see what I can do about loosening some lips regarding some of the older murders with these other police departments.”
“That would be excellent.”
He gathered up the articles from the table and then ambled away. I watched him tuck the news articles in the rear pocket of his pants as he went over to his wife and proceeded to rub her shoulders. She said something to him while keeping her gaze trained on me. He responded with joviality, smiling and still rubbing her shoulders as he said something in response. Whatever it was, she wasn’t buying a word of it.
I gathered up the remainder of your papers and stuffed them back in the accordion file, then dumped the whole thing back into my satchel. On the riser at the front of the bar, the guitarist was strumming the chords to a familiar song, although I couldn’t name it. When I closed my eyes, the yearbook photo of James de Campo resonated in my brain like the afterimage of a flashbulb explosion. It was still right there in front of me on the table, and I found I was helplessly drawn to it. Those features, dark and brooding. His refusal to take a polygraph. Had you known with certainty that it was de Campo fifteen years ago or just suspected it, Allison? Had you spent the past fifteen years trying to prove your suspicion or had something only recently brought James de Campo back into your consciousness? If so, what had it been? What was I missing?
Peter Sloane’s voice, like the flutter of a paper streamer in my head: Keep in mind this isn’t proof of anything.
In my excitement, I never stopped to wonder why, given the dep
th of your research and all your copious notes, James de Campo’s name never once appeared anywhere in your file.
4
There was nothing but a clump of white foam at the bottom of the beer pitcher by the time Peter Sloane returned to the table.
“It’s kismet. Turns out he’s less than an hour away,” he said, sliding a manila folder across the table like some secret dossier.
I looked at the folder then up at him. “What’s this?”
“It’s called a TLO report. I had a friend in the department do a rush job and send it to me. It’s got de Campo’s last known address.”
“No shit,” I said, opening the file. The newspaper articles he’d borrowed were on top. Beneath them was a printout that looked imposingly official.
“Also, I had him run a quick criminal history,” Sloane said. “Pretty much what you’d expect—assaults, drunk and disorderly, one case of assault on an officer.”
“Has he spent any time in prison?”
“Not prison, no, but some county jail time up and down the coast. But that doesn’t mean he’s a pussycat. Guys like de Campo have an uncanny ability to avoid getting hemmed up. Sometimes I think God favors drunks and bastards. Anyway, burn that stuff when you’re done with it. I never gave you anything. Understand?”
“Yes.”
He put his hands on his hips. “So, what are you going to do when you find him?”
“I don’t know yet. I’m making this up as I go.”
“What would your wife have done?”
“I’m not sure. I’m learning she was maybe not the person I thought she was.”
“I’m not so sure that’s true,” Sloane said.
“Maybe you’re right.”
“Listen,” he said, digging a cell phone from the breast pocket of his western-style shirt. “Let’s exchange numbers. I’ll let you know if I have any luck calling those other departments. Meanwhile, you keep me posted on how things turn out with Jimmy.”
“You think it’s him, don’t you? Despite what you said about not having any proof of anything.”
“You don’t have proof. There’s nothing there. I’ll reserve judgment. I’m cautious that way.” The smile that came to his face was weary, melancholic. “After all this time, I’d just like to see Carol Thompson get some justice.”
I stared down at the documents Sloane had given me. “He’s not just going to admit anything to me, even if he did do it,” I said. “Would it be proof enough if we were able to show that he traveled to the places where these other girls were murdered? If he was, say, in Furnace, West Virginia, at the time Holly Renfrow was killed, then that would be something, right? And in Newburg in 2016 when Gabby was murdered? All of those places over the years.”
“If you could prove it,” Sloane said, “then maybe that would be something. But it’ll be hard to do.”
“And if he’s driving the same type of car that Lenchantin saw and that the kids at the overlook saw that same night,” I added. “That would at least be something, right?”
He shrugged. “Maybe.”
“Just maybe?”
“An old sedan with a spotlight on the door? Hell, I still drive one. It’s not as uncommon as you’d think. It’s not like you have a license plate number.”
“He’s not going to want to talk to me, is he?”
“Just watch yourself, Decker,” he said, clapping a hand on my shoulder. Then he left, ambling toward the shadows at the back of the bar.
I looked back down at the paperwork Sloane had given me. Three arrests for assault and battery, one against a police officer. There was a burglary charge that was nearly a decade old. Some jail time on the books, just as Sloane had said, although I couldn’t tell from the printout just how long he’d spent behind bars. An arrest and nol pros for drunk and disorderly. And, of course, that old standby, the DUI.
James de Campo had bounced around a lot, too. The burglary arrest was in Delaware. Two of the assault charges were in Pennsylvania and the third took place in New Jersey. Without comparing the timeline of arrests to your notes, I didn’t know just how close he was to the places where the girls had been killed in those approximate areas, nor if the timeline of his arrest would preclude him from being the killer, but just reading the guy’s rap sheet caused a widening bubble of exhilaration to buoy up through my body.
There was a photograph of de Campo included in the packet, too—either a mug shot or a driver’s license photo, I couldn’t be sure which. Absent was the grimy smirk from the yearbook photo, having replaced it with a dour, sullen downturn of his mouth. His hair was still long and shellacked back in a greasy curtain. De Campo’s eyes looked like two black buttons someone had pressed into the pale, weather-worn fabric of his face.
I flipped to the rear of the packet. Peter Sloane had highlighted James de Campo’s last known address in bright yellow marker. According to this, he was currently living in Pennsauken Township, New Jersey.
I shoved the manila folder into my satchel, along with all your papers, anxious to get on the road. The waitress returned and told me the meal and drinks were on the house. I tried to argue but she wouldn’t listen. I thanked her, left a chunk of cash for her tip on the table, gathered my stuff, and was about to head out of the tavern when something above the bar caught my attention. One of the TVs had switched from the sporting event that was still on all the other sets to a black-and-white, slightly pixilated image—the grainy, wavering footage of a security camera. As I walked closer to the television, I saw that the image on the screen was of the interior of the Exxon station in Furnace, West Virginia, the place where Holly Renfrow had last been seen alive. The impossibility of what I was looking at rendered me instantly motionless: I froze right there in the middle of the restaurant, my body suddenly cold, my extremities quaking. I could not remove my eyes from the screen. A figure came in through the convenience store’s door, a woman in a tilted beret and houndstooth topcoat. You, Allison. You paused just in the entrance of the store, glancing around, just as you had on the video footage I had watched back in that cramped, stuffy storage room in West Virginia. Yet here you were. I watched as you looked directly at the camera, your face a pale white mime-face beneath the dark cant of your beret. Yet unlike on the actual video footage, this camera zoomed in, closer, closer, until your face filled the screen. Your countenance was comprised of tiny digital squares, glowing with ghostly illumination, each individual square as potent and majestic as an entire solar system.
You stared out at me and I stared back. Opened your mouth, spoke, but there was no sound. You brought up one hand, palm splayed. Had I been closer, I would have reached out and placed my hand against yours.
“Sir,” said the waitress with the purple crest of hair, as she tapped me on my shoulder. “You dropped something.”
I looked down and saw that your yearbook had slipped out from beneath my arm; it lay with its covers splayed on the sticky linoleum floor like something that had been shot out of the sky. I looked back at the TV and saw that the sporting event was back on the screen.
“You okay?” the waitress asked.
“I am, yeah. Sorry. Thank you.”
I bent down and gathered up your yearbook. When I stood, I saw that Dottie Sloane was studying me from the opposite end of the bar. There was a witchlike quality about her that caused me to instinctually take a step backward. But then her features softened and something like pity flashed across her face. This did not make me feel any more put-together.
I raised a hand at her, then headed for the door, my joints feelings loose, stripped, and on the verge of disassembling.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
1
The Delaware River is just under 400 miles long and boasts a shoreline that runs through five states—New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware, and Pennsylvania. In the summer of 2011, a sixteen-year-old girl named Lauren Chastain vanished from her home in Vineland, New Jersey. After a week-long search, a couple of hikers discovered her body washed
up along the muddy reeds of the Union Lake reservoir, which was fed by the Maurice River, one of the tributaries of the Delaware. Much like Gabrielle Colson-Howe, Lauren Chastain’s body was severely decomposed, and she was ultimately identified through her dental records. According to the information you had collected, Allison, the cause of Chastain’s death was a crushed windpipe due to strangulation. None of the news articles mentioned anything about Lauren Chastain’s wrists having been bound, but of course I had my own thoughts on that subject, as I know you did, too. I hoped Peter Sloane might yield more definitive intel from his police department contacts.
According to the paperwork Sloane had provided, James de Campo had been living in Pennsauken in 2011, at the time of Lauren Chastain’s murder. My GPS claimed it was about forty miles from his residence in Pennsauken to Vineland, New Jersey, where Chastain had lived and had gone missing. It was another fifteen minutes from Vineland to Millville, New Jersey, which was where the river emptied into the Union Lake reservoir, where Chastain’s body had been found. There was a map of the Maurice River and the Union Lake reservoir among your notes about Lauren Chastain’s murder, the New Jersey Division of Fish and Wildlife emblem in the lower right-hand corner of the map. I could only surmise that the red cross you’d printed on the map where the tributary enters the reservoir was where Chastain’s body was found. The whole round trip could have taken de Campo approximately two hours.
It fit perfectly.
Where things grew hazy was trying to factor James de Campo into the other murders. What had brought him to Norfolk, Virginia, to murder Margot Idelson in 2006? What had sent him all the way to Bishop, North Carolina, to then kill Shelby Davenport two years later? Was he deliberately spreading out his hunting ground (as Peter Sloane referred to it) in an effort to thwart police and to remain undetected? How was he finding these girls? Based on their photographs, they all looked somewhat similar—sleight of frame, blonde hair, delicate features—which, I surmised, gave de Campo a victim type. But how was he able to locate girls who all looked fairly similar over such a vast area? Had he been stalking them over the Internet? Whatever the answers to these questions were, I was becoming increasingly certain that the man who had killed your sister and all those other girls was now less than an hour from me.