The Husbands
Page 16
“They’re getting closer together. I think he’s got multiple projects going on at once.” She read the room. “And I’ve chosen that word because I believe it’s how he sees them — as projects. He’s got to go through multiple candidates before he finds just the right one; it takes time. But that’s okay because he likes to keep busy. Keep moving. Like he’s running out the clock, or running from something . . .”
Another agent piped up. “Let’s say he tags someone he likes — a potential family — and he follows them out of the mall. There’s — I don’t know, five, ten acres of parking lot out there — how’s he going to chase one home? He’d have to be parked in proximity, otherwise he’s gonna lose them.”
“That’s a good question. He’s not. My guess is he’s getting the license plate, going online to get the owner’s name and address on the reg.”
Dixon cut in. “You have to pay for those license plate reports with a debit or credit card — SearchQuarry dot com or any one of those sites. So that’s another way we’ll come at this — go into the sites and get the user info. We can have that on hand to cross-reference any POIs.”
She looked at Dixon. “Are we going to be able to isolate certain cameras, prioritize them? We should focus on certain areas, places that are family-oriented, places for kids to play.”
“We’re going to bring that up when we meet with Gonzalez.” He got to his feet again and told the group: “That’s head of security, he’s meeting us there later today.”
“I’d like to take point on that,” Kelly said.
Dixon showed reserve. “Agent Roth I think you’ll serve best remaining here, you can overview the—”
“Sir, we’re at the end of one of the busiest shopping weekends of the year, the weather is lousy — tens of thousands of people will be moving through this place today — I’d like to have eyes-on. It’s been years since I’ve spent any time there and going through it will help refresh me.”
“All right,” Dixon said finally. “Agent Webber goes with you.”
* * *
Webber caught up to her outside the Quonset hut. “So you know this place?”
“We’re burning time. We need to get there and get our eyes open.” A wet snow was piling up. She opened the driver’s side door and a gust of wind cranked it back on the hinges.
“I’ll ride with you?”
When they arrived at the mall — like a small city unto itself — they had to park at a faraway lot and take the skyway over which fed into the second level. A giant video screen hung in the clerestory space straight ahead, slowly swiveling while it advertised winter apparel. She hadn’t been here for almost a decade, and it had always been a busy place, but this was like Grand Central Station ten minutes before the workday started, even with some people probably still at church. The mall was massive, over two million square feet, four levels. It took a person about fifteen minutes to walk from one end to the other and to cover the whole thing amounted to three miles walking distance.
Webber stood beside her, taking it all in with a cop’s calm readiness. His voice was almost drowned out by the din. “What now?”
Cameras in the ceiling were hidden in dark glass dome enclosures. She scanned faces, noted nearby stores — Kids R Us and Old Navy — and approached a kiosk that displayed a simple schematic of the four floors, including the new third-floor wing constructed a few years before. A fifth floor, where security nested, wasn’t included on the public map.
“The Spence family purchased their son a Halloween mask from the CVS,” she said to Webber, “they also mentioned the food court. Haig said he’d been followed after leaving the food court. Let’s start there.”
“We’re not going to security? Gonzalez is supposed to meet us.”
“We’re early. I want to get a look at a few things myself first. You want to go ahead and wait for Gonzalez, be my guest.”
He ran a hand over his ginger-colored crew cut. “I’ll stick with you.”
The food court was second-level, other end, and he hustled to keep her pace. “You know — I admire you. You’re here, on your own for days, and then there are agents everywhere.”
They went around some more people, a slow-moving pair of mothers or nannies pushing huge strollers.
“More agents mean we’re getting somewhere,” she said.
Something made a loud pop. Webber tensed and Kelly saw his hand move inside his jacket and then saw the people laughing with a deflated balloon on the floor between them, a bunch of other balloons still aloft.
Webber’s hand eased away from the grip of his hidden sidearm. “I hate all this commotion. How do people stand it?”
They reached the food court, at least a thousand people sitting at tables or lining up for fast food. A good place to sit and observe people, but chaotic. She imagined the killer desiring something a bit more controlled, like waiting for the ducks to drift into the cove. They took the escalator to the next level, walking around people as the automatic stairway ascended, and had a look at the Regal Cinema section.
This time of day was slim pickings. It was too time-constrained. How long could a lone man sit watching before he drew attention? If he wanted to blend in, it wasn’t the best scenario.
Kelly moved on. “Second and third levels extend into the new addition — there’s a ropes course there.”
The mall had seen 30,000,000 visitors the previous year, averaging 80,000 a day. There were 6,000,000 people living in the primary trade area — an area that included Liverpool, Auburn and the other cities — almost the population of New York City. Dixon said they’d sweep the parking lots, but there were 9,500 free parking spaces and 2,000 enclosed parking spaces. An agent had guessed ten acres — the mall sat on twenty-five.
Family-friendly shops needed to be flagged, such as the CVS, with extra emphasis on shops with benches in proximity. Some of those benches were observed by cameras. For the ones that weren’t in view, they’d have to post a spotter.
The impressive ropes course at the far end of the level was festooned throughout a section of the addition — the largest suspended indoor ropes course in the world. Children and their parents navigated shaky bridges and climbed jittery ladders while hooked to safety cables. Kelly leaned against the railing and watched a father help his young daughter move along a ropy catwalk above. Surrounding the course were several benches, plus a section of leather chairs on the far side of the web-like climbing ropes and bridges.
He’s isolated, lonely. He people-watches in the most inconspicuous way. Sits with a shopping bag, sips a drink as he studies the people coming and going. It’s the benches.
There’re benches in Onondaga Park.
He wants to be heard . . .
The breadth of it hit her again — how many benches were there throughout the mall? One hundred? More? How long did she have to produce tangible results before they pulled the plug? A couple of weeks? Less? The killer could be targeting people from here. Or at the CVS. Or the Apple store. The Best Buy. He could be sitting outside a vintage clothing store or a jewelry shop or one with scented candles as likely as anywhere else.
Her phone vibrated against her hip. Blanchett.
“This is Agent Roth.”
“Roth,” Blanchett said, “another text just came through on Archer’s phone.”
She walked away from the ropes course and someone nearly collided with her, then went around with apologies. “Is it Sandaker?”
“Nope. This one was ID-blocked but I cracked that and got a number. Don’t have the caller yet but I’m going to link to you, standby.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
She stared at the text while people moved past her, parting like water around a rock.
Ted are you there?
Ted Archer had been blunt and used common texting abbreviations — Kelly decided to respond as if she was Ted. It seemed like the guy didn’t know that Ted had killed himself.
She hesitated, nerves jangling, then typed: Is this U?
I’m ready.
Ten seconds passed. Slowly. Webber drew closer, looking excited. Blanchett was tracking down the number and working to pinpoint the signal as it pinged off of area towers, leaving her to deal with the caller.
The phone shook. Where are U?
She thought about it some more — the suicide had been successfully kept out of the papers and off the airwaves so far but Severin could’ve told anybody, the neighbors might have talked, family members could’ve come by the house. Severin’s people were watching it but not around the clock — they didn’t have the personnel. The caller might know and be playing a new game. With her.
She typed anyway, I’m home.
She turned to Webber. “It’s him. You drive.”
They started running through the crowd, and the phone vibrated again.
Good. Have you given any thought to what we talked about?
She thought of Archer’s notes — the nature of suffering, the nature of the mind.
Was he asking about suicide? A way to end the suffering? She played it safe: I’ve thought about it.
“Get on with Agent Blanchett,” she said to Webber. “Tell me what he’s seeing.”
Webber jogged beside her as he went through the contacts on his phone and found the right number.
The cold hit her in the parking lot.
“He’s getting it,” Webber said with the phone to his ear.
They jumped in Kelly’s Mazda. Webber started the engine.
There was a new text. Good. You kill me, you will still suffer.
A moment, then a follow-up message: Or you choose to let them go, erase them from your mind.
She felt a trill of hope. It sounded more and more like he meant suicide, which meant he didn’t know Archer’s fate. She had to keep it vague, keep it rolling, but another text popped up as Webber hooked out of the parking area and got moving toward the highway: I have some things you need to look at. I’ll send the links in a minute. They’ll help get you started.
Again she tried to think like Archer, a man alone in a house, stuffing pillows into the bed where his wife once slept, not knowing the face of the man who’d taken everything from him, or why. She wrote: Will U still tell me who you are?
The phone wiggled in her hands. Yes. If you want.
Her fingers flew. I want that.
He responded with a link to a YouTube video. Followed by another.
Driving them up onto the onramp of the highway and still on the phone Webber said, “We have a location.”
“Tell Blanchett he sent me links. Two links.”
Webber relayed it and reported Blanchett’s response. “Don’t open them. Could be viruses, he says.” Webber was silent a moment, listening. “The cell signal originates in Fleming.”
She knew it — a small town just five miles south of Auburn.
The phone vibrated again. Now you know me.
Webber drove fast to Fleming. She took over talking to Blanchett. “The cellular is registered to Adam Grumett, from Fleming. Is that someone we know?” he asked.
Grumett . . . familiar, from somewhere in Orzo’s report. Or even talking to him for the first time at Island Park. “Tammy Haig’s psychology teacher? The class she was taking?”
“Right now we’ve got the signal source about half a mile away from Grumett’s address on Dublin Road . . . what’s Bogart Wesley?”
“I don’t know.”
“Dixon is on the way and Cayuga County is just getting there now.”
“To Grumett’s address or to Bogart Wesley?”
“Bogart Wesley. I’ve sent it to your phone.”
She studied the map and gave Webber further directions until he started to slow down and pointed. “Okay, there it is — it’s a church.”
The building was red brick with a steep-pitched roof attached to a belfry. Webber hit the brakes behind two Cayuga County cruisers parked in the road. They exited the vehicle with weapons drawn. They hunched down, keeping cover. Dixon arrived and got out and ran toward them.
“You call it,” she said to him. They could wait for more back up, get a whole team of FBI agents in black flak jackets and high-powered rifles, or they could take it down now, with local PD assisting.
“Let’s just everybody take a breath,” Dixon said. “I don’t see any movement.” They watched the church, which sat on the corner of route 34 and Breaker Way. There was a small building beside it, probably a rectory. Across Breaker was a cornfield. The land was flat, the trees brown and scrubbed, a few red leaves pushed along the road by a gentle breeze. The phone call had come in twenty minutes ago, maybe twenty-five.
Now you know me.
The door to the church opened. The cops tensed and aimed their weapons. Kelly raised her arm in the air. “Hold! Hold it!”
The priest flattened himself against the wall, put his hands up.
“FBI!” Dixon came around the parked vehicles and moved across the front lawn with his gun pointed down. Kelly, Orzo, and four deputies followed behind him. More cars were coming, racing down 34 with their lights blazing.
* * *
They found the phone after an hour of searching, hidden beside the pipe organ in the mezzanine. The priest knew nothing about it, had seen no one suspicious, and once Dixon got through grilling him outside, they let him go.
After the rush of everything, Kelly needed a moment to think. Dixon wandered back into the church and found her sitting in one of the pews, staring up at the giant crucifix hanging above the altar.
“You all right?” He slid in beside her.
“I’m good.”
Dixon held up his phone for her to see the screen. “Adam Grumett is sixty-three years old, Caucasian, divorced with three children. Not much of a criminal record except for resisting arrest during a protest in 1975. Drives a 2017 Honda Fit, burnt-orange color.” He flipped to another internet page. “Psychology Department at Wells College.”
In his official headshot, Grumett had gray swept-back hair, a pleasant smile. He wore glasses and dressed in a brown cardigan sweater for the picture. She took the phone from Dixon and navigated the site — Wells had a total of two professors in the department, one adjunct professor and one chair — Grumett. He taught the introductory course and advanced level courses.
Dixon retrieved his phone from her and climbed back into the aisle. “You ready?”
“Everyone needs that photo. Do they have it?”
“I mean, do we want to put it out officially?”
She jerked her head toward the church doors, indicating the deputies standing around outside, the bewildered priest talking to Detective Orzo. “Just the people who were here for now.”
“All right . . .” Dixon sounded skeptical but he took a screenshot of Grumett’s faculty profile page and sent it around. It struck her that with multiple departments and the FBI involved on a serial killer case, this was how they were operating — texting screenshots to one another. Maybe this was what it was actually like in the field, just people doing the best they could in the moment.
When Dixon was done he gave her another look, but she didn’t move. “Something’s off,” she said. She could taste it in her mouth, a kind of acid on the back of her tongue.
He arched an eyebrow. “Something’s off? He calls Archer’s phone, vindicating your theory that this guy is contacting the husbands, or at least one of them. Maybe he does it while sitting here at a midday mass, but he’s got some software on his phone indicating it’s being tracked, he dumps it and runs. Now we go pick him up.”
Dixon put his hands on his hips and looked around the church. Giant stained-glass windows, exposed beams crossing the cathedral ceiling, everything awash in a buttery sunlight, dust motes twinkling in the air.
“Let’s talk to Orzo,” she said.
Outside, Orzo spread his arms, his face crestfallen. “We looked through everything with Tammy Haig’s classmates and the faculty over ther
e at Wells College. We interviewed forty people. Grumett had a solid alibi for Tammy Haig and was able to provide phone records that showed he was on a call with one of his kids when the murder happened.”
Dixon looked at Kelly. “What do you want to do?”
“Let Cayuga County pick him up, tell him it’s routine, we got a few things bubbling and are just going over familiar territory to make sure we’ve got all our facts straight for our timeline.”
Orzo asked, “We tell him we got his phone?”
“Let’s see what he says. If he asks about it.”
Orzo checked his watch. “I’ll get the guys.” He walked off toward the deputies standing around on the front lawn of the church. There was little traffic but a van had pulled off the road and there were a couple of cars over on Breaker Street, one motorist brazenly standing outside his vehicle by the edge of the cornfield, watching.
Kelly got back in the Mazda with Webber, and they followed the caravan of police vehicles away from the church, toward Adam Grumett’s home.
* * *
Fleming was a picturesque little neighborhood with a tiny post office and a hardware store and not much else. Kelly was sitting with Webber a few blocks away from Grumett’s residence. “Not here,” Orzo said over the phone. “We’re going to try the school.”
She followed at a distance. Wells was five minutes away, a small liberal arts college. A red brick Gothic bell tower scraped the sky in the middle of campus. Grumett’s office was in a smaller building. Kelly waited in the car as Orzo went inside, his gray trench coat flapping, two deputies on his heels. Everyone was on edge. Even if someone was pulling their strings, you never knew.
Webber drummed the seat. “This is what he does — he does the texts, leaves the phone at the church, he wants us to come find him. This is all part of a game he likes to play. I mean this guy was a teacher to the first victim? He’s got a doctoral or what?”
“He does.” She showed Webber her phone. “He’s also an author. Five books, all on psychology and even one on psychopathology.”