Every Crooked Path

by Steven James

  “Sure.”

  “But then Misty grabbed my arm and asked if I’d heard something and I knew that it was real, that it was happening. I checked the time, 3:52 a.m. I had a Glock under the mattress, so I grabbed it, then I told Misty to stay in the room and lock the door, and I went to investigate.”

  “And you two were in the master bedroom at the end of the hallway, past Adrienne’s room?”

  “That’s right. Her room is between ours and the front door, so I checked that first, but she wasn’t there. Just a pile of blankets on her bed. Then I heard a car engine fire up out by the curb, so I rushed outside. A sedan with its lights off was pulling down the street.”

  “Plates?”

  “Too dark to see. I went back in, grabbed my car keys, and took off after it.”

  “Were you in your cruiser or your personal vehicle?”

  “My cruiser. My pickup was in the garage. And that’s when I called it in, to get a unit to my house while I was en route.”

  “So you pursued the sedan.”

  “Yes.

  “Did you have a visual on it the whole time?”

  He shook his head. “As I’m sure you noticed on your drive over here, we don’t live far from the interstate, so I lost sight of him briefly, but then I saw a sedan turning onto a side street that led to the onramp.”

  “The same car?”

  “I couldn’t tell. Not for sure. I merged onto the highway and pulled him over. The driver was male. No one else in the vehicle, not in the backseat, not in the trunk. Nothing. Adrienne wasn’t there. It was the wrong car. The guy claimed he hadn’t been to my house, that he had no idea who I was or what I was talking about. I didn’t care, though.”

  “You arrested him anyway.”

  “I detained him. Yes. Put him in the back of my cruiser. I wasn’t about to take any chances. I know what you’re probably thinking, but I can’t imagine there was time for him to switch cars or transfer her to another vehicle. I mean, it’s possible, but I’d say it’s highly unlikely. And the guy checked out when it was all over and done.”

  I considered that. “So you returned here, to the house, with him in the backseat?”

  “Yes. The whole drive I kept telling myself that this was all some sort of mistake, that Adrienne was really back at home, that I just hadn’t noticed her: she was probably just lying under that pile of sheets and blankets, or maybe she was hiding under the bed or in the closet or something. She was just scared and that’s why she hadn’t said anything—that’s what I kept repeating to myself. Over and over.”

  His gaze shifted away from me into a distance that didn’t exist down here in the basement and he started talking as if things were happening right now, right here. “She would probably be even more scared now, with all the yelling and with the police coming in, but I would take her in my arms and hold her and tell her it was okay, that everything was going to be okay, and then Misty and I would let her sleep in bed beside us, like we sometimes needed to do when she got scared of storms, or of bad dreams, or when she thought there were monsters under her bed.”

  Then he looked at me again. “I told myself those things, even though I was on the radio with dispatch the whole time. I knew she was gone. I just couldn’t accept it. A unit was already at the house and others were being sent to the neighborhood. I knew that in more than seventy-five percent of the cases when children are taken in nonfamily abductions, they’re killed within the first three hours.”

  I tried to imagine what it would have been like to be in his shoes, but I couldn’t.

  Most people don’t know the stats.

  In his case, knowing them would have only made things more difficult.

  “The three hours passed. Then three days. Three weeks. Three months. Misty spiraled off into depression. And I already told you about how a jogger found Adrienne’s body. It was almost two years to the day from when she disappeared.”

  “Where was she found?”

  “Just off a running trail in a park about five miles from here. We looked into the guy who found her. Nothing. He was clean.”

  I processed what he’d told me, thought about the distances from his bedroom to Misty’s room and then the distance from there to the front door, and then down to the curb . . . thought about the timing of how long it would take to have the brief exchange with Misty and then to check Adrienne’s bedroom, get outside, start up the cruiser . . . thought of the layout of the neighborhood, the proximity of the onramp to the side streets that I’d taken to get here . . .

  There’s a back door through the kitchen. One that leads to the backyard.

  But the front door was the one that closed. That’s what woke them up . . .

  Tobin’s pickup was in the garage. His cruiser was in the driveway.

  It was one of those details that would be easy to miss.

  “And the front door—was it unlocked?”

  “It was locked but not dead-bolted. Evidently, he picked the lock to get in. I figured that we lived in a good neighborhood, and since I was a cop and I was home, I could defend my family. I kept my cruiser parked in the driveway every night. You’d think that would be deterrent enough.”

  “Yes.” I was deep in thought. “You’d think it would be.”

  Or an invitation.

  Depending on how you look at it.

  I had an idea.

  “Come on.” I headed for the stairs.

  “Where are we going?”

  “I have a thought, but I want to walk this through.”

  48

  Upstairs in his bedroom, I scrolled to the stopwatch function on my phone. “Let’s reenact what happened. I’m going to time you. I want you to go through what you did that night from the moment you woke up. Try to do it at the same speed, or at least whatever feels right to what happened eight years ago.”

  Tobin lay on the bed.

  “Okay.” I started the stopwatch. “You wake up wondering if you really heard something. Take it from there.”

  He sat up. “I speak to Misty. She’s heard it too. I glance at the clock, then go for my gun.”

  He reached under the mattress and produced the Glock he still kept within reach.

  “Then I go to clear Adrienne’s room.”

  I followed him, keeping one eye on the time as the seconds ticked by. Studies have shown that, even though people think they have a good conception of the passage of time, they really don’t. They almost always underestimate the amount of time pleasurable activities take, and overestimate the time it takes to get through unpleasant ones.

  He checked his daughter’s room, then moved through the hallway, ran outside, came back in, and went directly to the key holder board near the door. After snatching up his key ring, he bolted out again to his cruiser and started the engine. When the door closed behind him, it didn’t sound loud enough to have woken up two people in the bedroom at the end of the hall.

  I joined him outside. “Okay. Thirty-four seconds.”

  “Alright.” He stepped out of the car.

  “It’s cutting it pretty tight.”

  “What is?”

  “The timing. For someone to get down the driveway to the sedan, get Adrienne inside it, then climb in, start up the engine and leave before you could catch them.”

  I looked around the dewy night. A neighbor’s dog barked, then another one farther down the street followed suit. “Did any dogs bark that night?”

  “Honestly, I don’t remember.”

  “Okay.”

  We went to the front door. It was recessed in a small vestibule.

  “Was the porch light on?”

  “Yes. I remember noting that later in the police report.”

  However, even now with it on, taking into account the location of the exterior light, because of the way the vestibule of the house was d
esigned, a swath of shadows would have allowed an intruder as much time as he needed to pick the lock without being visible from the street.

  “And this is the same door?”

  “Yes. Do you have something?”

  “I’m not sure yet. I want you to go through it again. I’ll pretend to be the abductor.”

  “Alright.”

  “This time I’ll actually close the front door. When you hear it, go through the steps again. Play it out until you get in your cruiser. I’ll meet you outside by your car.”

  He agreed, then disappeared into his bedroom. I went to the front door and started my watch, then sharply closed the door.

  I slipped into the kitchen and watched down the hallway as Tobin appeared and entered his daughter’s room. A few seconds passed, then he quickly traversed the hallway, passed through the living room and out the front door, burst back inside to where he kept the keys, then left the house again.

  I went out the back door and walked around the house through a row of hedges. He’d started his car, but now when he saw me, he shut off the engine. I met up with him by the driver’s door.

  “Where were you?” he asked.

  “I went out the back.”

  “What are you thinking?”

  “A couple things. First, why’d he turn it off?”

  “What?”

  “The car. Why not just let it idle? Why chance letting someone hear him start up the engine? And what about the car doors?”

  “I thought about that before. I should have heard at least one of them closing, or at least the trunk if Adrienne was put in there.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  “No.”

  “Because she wasn’t.”

  “Right.” He looked at me curiously. “What else?”

  “Why bother to close the house door behind you? It would be hard enough to do so while carrying a child and it would make no sense if you’re trying to get away without being discovered.”

  “Adrienne could have been walking.”

  “True, but that seems doubtful, wouldn’t you say?”

  “I would. So where does that leave us?”

  “I’m thinking the guy you pulled over in the sedan might not have been so innocent after all. I’m not convinced he ever got out of the vehicle in the first place. But based on the road layout and the timing, it’s likely that it was the car you saw leaving your street. Do you have a file on him?”

  “Sure. Downstairs.”

  We returned to the basement and he dug through the folders, pulled one out, flipped it open, and showed me the top page.

  “That’s him.” I hadn’t expected this, but it did fit, and it revealed a part of the rug I hadn’t even known was lying there right in front of me. “He was at Romanoff’s house. That’s the guy who was holding the knife up against Lily Keating’s neck.”

  49

  “What?” Tobin exclaimed. “The man who was shot in the head by the unknown assailant?”

  “Right.”

  According to these files, his name was Garrett Higgs. I quickly flipped through the pages, committing some of the dates, times, and locations to memory.

  “So it’s all connected.” Tobin sounded like he was deep in thought.

  “Somehow, yes.”

  “That means Adrienne’s abduction has to do with the Final Territory.”

  “It certainly looks like it.”

  This gave us more threads that were knotted together on the back of the rug. Now we just needed to see the pattern on the front.

  “How did you know it was the same guy?” he asked me.

  “I didn’t.”

  “A hunch?”

  “Not even that.”

  “Then how did you . . . ?”

  “The pieces didn’t fit. I don’t believe in random crimes. In any abduction there’s a convergence of desire, availability, and choice. People make rational decisions based on perceived risks and rewards. So if the people behind Adrienne’s abduction knew you were a cop—and the cruiser out front would have been a pretty good indicator of that—they would likely have anticipated that you would be armed.”

  “Sure, that makes sense.”

  “And what would be the best way to escape with the daughter of an armed law enforcement officer?”

  It hit him. “To draw me out of the house.”

  “Yes. Remove the primary threat first. Misdirection. And that would require more than one person.”

  “You think Adrienne might have still been in the house when I left it?” A deep tremor ran through his words. The idea that he might have been lured away while his daughter was in the home with a second abductor obviously shook him to the core.

  And knowing that he’d very likely had one of the kidnappers in his custody and then let him go must have been unbearable.

  “Closing the door loud enough to wake both you and Misty up—it seems like a mistake someone planning a crime like this wouldn’t make, unless they wanted you to wake up.”

  “But if they closed it loudly on purpose, I mean, why chance that at all?”

  “To make sure they could get you off the site. To toy with you. A power trip. I don’t know. But to pull all this off, they would’ve needed to know the inside layout of your home.”

  But how would they have found out the . . . ?

  “The open house,” I muttered.

  “The open house?”

  “You mentioned earlier that before the abduction you were thinking of moving, that you held an open house. Burglars sometimes attend open houses to scope out their marks, take note of security systems, the presence of dogs, do threat and target assessment, or plan out their entrance and exit routes. Kidnappers have been known to do the same.”

  “But the guy in the sedan, Higgs, he never came to the open house. I would have remembered him. I’m certain of it. So . . .” He considered the implications. “His partner might have come. I never kept track of who attended. It could have been anyone.”

  “Listen, I need to know something and I want to apologize beforehand for having to ask it.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Have you checked the ICSC database for images or videos that might have included Adrienne?”

  “Yes. There were no matches to her on any of their files. Thank God.”

  It was at least a small gift that photos or video of her being molested hadn’t made the rounds on the web.

  “Could the abductor have been someone who knew you from a previous case?” I asked.

  “I’ve asked myself that a thousand times over the years. I went back through every case I’d ever worked looking for any connection to this, to people who might have been trying to get back at me by striking at my family. Some names came up, but when I dug deeper there was nothing there.”

  Scanning the maps covering the walls, I studied the location of the sites where the bodies had been found, then said, “In order to reduce the risks of being caught, killers tend to leave the corpses of their victims in areas they’re familiar with. Typically, the farther a body is from a road or trail, the more prominent the role that location plays in the cognitive map or awareness space of the offender.”

  “Because he’s more confident there.”

  “Yes.”

  “But these sites, they’re strewn all over.”

  “So,” I said, “perhaps the killer wasn’t necessarily the one to dispose of the bodies.”

  “Or there was more than one killer.”

  “Or that.” I checked the time and saw to my surprise that it was already after ten. “Listen, I don’t want to take off right now, not considering where we’re at with all this—but I don’t want to get back to Christie’s too late either, so—”

  “You can sleep here, no problem.”

  “All I need is a
couch.”

  “Then I’ve got you covered.”

  I called Christie to tell her that I was going to remain here tonight, but first I asked how the conversation with Tessa had gone regarding Nebraska.

  “Not as well as I would have hoped, but about as well as I expected.”

  “So she wasn’t thrilled about the prospect of moving to Omaha.”

  “She shared her views in rather colorful and unequivocal terms. We can talk about it later.”

  “I’m sorry she was upset.”

  “She’ll be alright.”

  “Hey, something came up that’s related to the case this week and to the murder of Tobin’s daughter eight years ago. It looks like it’s all tied together. We want to take a closer look. Do you need me back tonight? Otherwise, I was thinking of staying here so we can work late.”

  “A breakthrough?”

  “A possible one.”

  “No, of course, that’s fine. You don’t need to come home.”

  The phrase struck me: “come home” rather than “come back.”

  It sounded so natural when she said it and I couldn’t help wondering what it would be like to do that, to come home to her every night. I don’t even think she noticed what she said.

  However, now was not the time to think about all that.

  Since she had church in the morning, we made plans to meet tomorrow afternoon. I could work here with Tobin beforehand and then spend some time with her before diving into preparing for Monday morning’s briefing.

  We said good-bye and good night, then I turned to Tobin and gestured toward the stack of file folders. “Alright. It looks like I have a bit of catching up to do. Let’s get started.”

  50

  Francis’s day had passed quickly.

  The three o’clock coffee with Skylar had turned into a four o’clock walk and then a five o’clock dinner at a nearby Thai place.

  “We both have to eat, right?” Francis had said.

  Skylar had agreed with that. Certainly she needed to eat. They both did. Why not do it together?