Opening Moves

by Steven James

  He’d planned on torching the Taurus when all of this was done, but now it looked like that wasn’t going to happen.

  How did they find you?

  Joshua had no idea.

  Once inside the car, he snapped on the scanner and listened to the chatter back and forth between the squads.

  And thought of last night.

  The squads.

  The sirens.

  The abduction of Colleen Hayes.

  Joshua was a fan of true crime books and three weeks ago he’d finished Heather Isle’s newest book about David Spanbauer, a rapist and child murderer in Wisconsin earlier in the decade. The story had intrigued him so much that he’d looked up the true crime expert the author had cited numerous times—a “collector of memorabilia,” as Isle put it, Timothy Griffin.

  Eventually, that led Joshua to find out about the products Griffin offered through his direct-sales business.

  Which had naturally intrigued him.

  It took a little work, but Joshua tracked down the guy’s home address.

  He waited until one evening when both Griffin and his young girlfriend were out, and then, just as he’d done with Dahmer’s apartment before it was destroyed, he took his camera into Griffin’s home and captured footage of the place’s interior. He even got footage of the basement and the cache of items beneath the stairwell, the collectibles without price tags on them. The ones that, apparently, were not for sale.

  The special items, Joshua. You know all about those.

  Checking the boxes of receipts in the bedroom closet, Joshua had found one for a pair of handcuffs from the Oswald case, which ended up being perfect for what he had in mind.

  The Oswald case.

  The one that mirrored, in so many dark ways, his own.

  Because of his special connection with their story, he’d wanted to save their crimes for the climax. And this discovery, in a way, would help him do just that.

  According to the receipt, a woman named Colleen Hayes had purchased the specific cuffs. So, rather than leave a pair of his own that might be able to be traced, he decided to let her husband use their own pair when he was forced to abduct the African-American man.

  That way, it helped Joshua by turning the spotlight of the investigation onto the husband.

  As Joshua’s father had taught him years ago, you always give the police what they want. And they want fingerprints, DNA, hair, semen; they want sole impressions from shoes; they want any hard physical evidence that they can hang a name onto: cuffs, Vincent. Done.

  They’ll keep looking until they find what they want, but when they have it in hand, they’ll be content to formulate their theories based on their cursory findings and then work diligently to prove themselves right. More often than not, that’s a lot easier, a lot more convenient, than ruthlessly ferreting out the truth.

  Because of that, Joshua was careful not to leave trace evidence that could be tied to him at the scenes, and, when possible, he tried to leave evidence that pointed to someone else.

  But tonight he’d been forced to leave a veritable stockpile of evidence behind in that boxcar. From the start he’d been careful about prints, but DNA was nearly impossible not to leave. However, he’d never been arrested, so even if law enforcement did somehow manage to get his DNA, they wouldn’t have anything to compare their samples to.

  Now, he checked his watch and saw that it was almost five, almost time for Carl to call with his update on what he’d done to Miriam Flandry.

  Joshua clicked on his portable phone, the one that he’d made sure was untraceable.

  So, things this evening had not gone as planned, but everything could still move forward as long as Carl had been obedient and done his job.

  If he had, Gein’s name would rise to the forefront of the news cycle once again, the national media would start playing and replaying Carl’s and Adele’s story, and everyone would take notice.

  And right now that was what mattered most.

  39

  Ralph and I found a woman, unconscious, bound to a chair, plastic ties tightly cinched around her wrists and ankles. The door to this boxcar had been chained shut and Ralph had used the pipe for the second time today to wrench off the handle.

  Her pulse was weak and thready, and she didn’t respond when we called to her or slapped her cheek, but she was breathing. She was alive.

  Thank God she was alive.

  Ralph slipped out an automatic knife from his pocket, an Ox Forge Black Knife, and cut her free from the ropes and tape binding her to the chair. He quickly slit the plastic ties as well, then we eased her to the floor.

  Blood seeped from a deep cut in her ankle, most likely from the bloody, discarded amputation saw on the floor next to the chair. I applied pressure to her bleeding ankle while Ralph supported her neck to keep her airway open.

  It looked like we’d interrupted the guy just as he was getting started on her.

  During our trip back here through the woods, the dispatcher had assured me that four paramedics were on their way, and now the echoing sirens told me they were close. Actually, it sounded like the emergency vehicles were probably stuck behind the locked gate. Hopefully they’d brought the bolt cutters and Jaws of Life as I’d ordered.

  My attention went back to the woman.

  Caucasian. Mid-twenties. Medium build. Shoulder-length, blond hair. Aquamarine eyes, no contact lenses. Smeared mascara—she’d been crying—no other makeup. Fair skin, attractive features. No visible piercings, scars, tattoos or identifying marks. When we checked for an ID, we found none. The ring finger of her left hand had been cut off, the hand carefully bandaged to stop the bleeding.

  Her abductor had removed her shoes and I could see that her feet, which had been bluish from the lack of oxygenated blood when we arrived, were regaining their color now that the plastic ties were gone. Her hands were doing better as well. All good signs.

  Both Ralph and I were quiet as we waited for the EMTs to get here. I didn’t know what he was thinking, but I was trying to decompress, to process what had happened this afternoon.

  I couldn’t stop images of the day from whipping like cyclone winds through my mind: the visit to Griffin’s nightmarish home, the inexplicably terse conversation with Detective Browning in Waukesha, arriving at the train yards.

  Wriggling under the fence.

  Locating the sedan.

  Finding Hendrich’s body.

  Getting shot at.

  Scaling the fence and chasing the shooter through the forest.

  Losing him.

  Ending up here, with this unidentified woman who was evidently our guy’s next intended victim.

  And with the memories came a swirl of emotions: rage, confusion, grief over Hendrich’s death, hope that this woman would be able to identify her attacker.

  None of this whiplash of tumultuous emotions was unusual for my job, but this afternoon had been unusually intense and I suspected it would take some time to work through all the feelings.

  “What are you thinking?” Ralph asked me, drawing me back to the present.

  “A lot of things, I guess.” I indicated toward the woman. “Mostly, that I’m thankful we got here when we did for her, but I’m angry we didn’t get here—”

  “Soon enough to save Hendrich.”

  “Yeah.”

  “His body was still warm,” Ralph said. “I’m not sure how long he might have been dead. Hopefully the forensics guys can figure all that out, but we didn’t see anyone else leave the train yard, so I have to think he was killed right before we got here, right before the suspect fled.”

  “Unless the killer didn’t escape at all.”

  “You think he’s still here? A second guy?”

  “It’s possible.” Thankfully, the sirens had drawn closer, and I could tell by the sound that they’d made it past the parking lot gate. I was anxious to scour the train yards more carefully, but we would need a team of people to do that thoroughly, and they were going to be her
e any moment. “I’ll get some more officers out there searching in a sec.”

  Considering the number of train cars and tracks, the EMTs probably wouldn’t be able to drive all the way to this boxcar, but I imagined they should at least be able to make it as far as the Ford Taurus. Rolling a gurney from there might pose a bit of a problem, but carrying a stretcher would be manageable.

  We radioed in our exact position and a bevy of officers beat the paramedics to our car. I had one of them take my place beside the woman and then directed the others where to look in the train yard and woods for other victims, suspects, accomplices or witnesses.

  While I was giving instructions, the paramedics came jogging up carrying a stretcher.

  No drugs were visible in the boxcar, but I told the EMTs to start with the working assumption that the woman had been given Propotol, the same pharmaceutical that’d been left at the Hayes house last night for Vincent to knock out the African-American man he’d been directed to abduct.

  Three more officers showed up and I sent them to help the others.

  With impressive speed and proficiency the paramedics got the woman ready, and I helped them carry the stretcher to one of the two waiting ambulances.

  As they loaded her, one of the EMTs saw the cuts on my hands from grabbing the razor wire through the inadequate protection of my jacket. She offered to treat them, but I decided that bandaging my hands in gauze would slow me down too much; however, in the end, I let her clean the wounds and wrap some first aid tape around them so I could work without leaving my blood everywhere.

  The night wind was biting and cold, so on my way back to the train car where we’d found the woman, I retrieved the flashlight, and then my jacket, which was still snagged on the top of the fence. It was sliced up some, but overall it was in reasonably good shape.

  I didn’t even want to think about how my hands would have looked if the jacket hadn’t been there to protect them.

  When the officer who’d brought the bolt cutters arrived, Ralph took them from him and the three of us left to search the other boxcars for more victims. Ralph made short work of the rusted chains on the remaining cars, but we didn’t find anyone else in the yard. Neither did any of the other officers.

  No victims.

  No suspects.

  No witnesses.

  Except that little boy you saw through the window, out past the woods.

  No, he’d only looked out when I kicked the garbage can.

  It’s possible he might have seen something before you got there and that’s why he was at the window in the first place.

  I sent an officer to go and talk with him. Other officers were already canvassing the neighborhood. Before sending them out, I’d noted that our guy was Caucasian and knew where to go to disappear in this nearly one hundred percent African-American neighborhood. “See if anyone saw a white guy running through here, someone who didn’t belong.”

  By the time Ralph and I returned to the boxcar where we’d found the woman, Officer Gabriele Holdren had arrived and now informed us that the crime scene investigative unit, or CSIU, was on its way.

  “ETA?” I asked her.

  “Should be here in the next four or five minutes.”

  I’m not the biggest fan of our force’s CSIU. Captain Domyslawski didn’t budget nearly enough money to purchase the kind of resources or attract the kind of personnel he should’ve, and it showed through all too often in the form of lost or mislabeled evidence, contaminated crime scenes, and inadequate case documentation.

  Four or five minutes, huh?

  Well, at least that gave me a little time to look around before they started in.

  I’ll take what I can get.

  I asked Gabriele to wait outside, then climbed into the boxcar. “Ralph, I want your eyes in here.”

  He heaved himself up and stood beside me.

  Both of us had our flashlights on and they illuminated, in a somewhat eerie fashion, the macabre contents of the boxcar.

  “Alright, Mr. I-Notice-Things,” Ralph said bluntly, but softly enough for only me to hear, “you’re on.”

  I snapped on a pair of latex gloves over my taped-up hands. “Yes, I am.”

  Carefully, I began to study the contents of the boxcar.

  40

  A private little torture chamber.

  That’s what our guy had constructed.

  Ten mattresses lined the walls, evidently to serve as makeshift baffles to absorb the sound of his victims’ screams.

  I recalled that the kidnapper hadn’t gagged Colleen last night when he maimed her, so he must have trusted that the mattresses really did do their job.

  There was a half-used roll of duct tape on the floor next to a length of leftover rope. Beside them lay the antique-looking amputation saw I’d noticed when we first came in. Blood stained the floor beneath the sturdy chair in the middle of the boxcar, probably from Colleen last night, as well as from the injuries of the woman we’d found here just a few minutes ago.

  Maybe from others too.

  True. Considering the brutality of these crimes and the setup the guy had in here, there was no compelling reason to think that the two women were the only ones he had ever brought to this boxcar.

  The only other things I noticed were a light—now turned off—on the wall, the shredded ropes, tape, the plastic ties left from when Ralph had cut the woman free, some sheets of butcher paper, and two plastic garbage bags in the northeast corner, one neatly folded up, the other crumpled on top of it.

  When you process a crime scene, you follow a pretty well-established set of five procedures: orientation, observation, examination, analysis, and evaluation. I quickly, almost instinctively, ran through what needed to be done:

  1. Orientation: look at the big picture, including the place and timing of the crime, whether it’s indoors or outdoors, what the location might tell you about the offender’s familiarity with the area, if the crime appeared to be related to other crimes, and so on.

  2. Observation: note both the unusual and the obvious, remembering that the obvious is often the easiest thing to miss.

  3. Examination: collect and scrutinize physical evidence, such as fingerprints, DNA, hair samples, and so on—the things that come to mind for most people when they hear about police officers processing a crime scene.

  4. Analysis: take into account everything you know and probe deeper into the pertinence each fact or clue might have to the case. This should happen at the scene while everything is fresh in your mind, as well as later during a briefing when you recap the investigation.

  5. Evaluation: form a working hypothesis that you don’t try to prove, but rather try to disprove. Too many times initial hypotheses aren’t correct and trying to find ways to make the facts fit them only throws a monkey wrench into the works. This was the main problem I see with too many of the officers I work with, including, perhaps especially, Detective Corsica.

  Five steps.

  So, right now, number one—orientation.

  The big picture.

  I spoke my thoughts aloud to Ralph. “Track with me here. Last night Colleen is abducted and an unusual and disturbing ransom demand is left behind for her husband. Then, even though Vincent does as he was told, the kidnapper saws off her hands.”

  “And it looks like he was about to do that again here tonight, but this time to cut off both her hands and her feet.”

  I nodded. “Escalation.”

  “So,” he said, tracking with me, “we have another ‘ransom’ demand tonight?”

  “Very likely. Yes.”

  Another pastiche?

  “Ralph, we need to get a car over to the alley where Radar and I found Lionel last night—and one to the pier where the guy left Colleen.” I thought about it, then added, “And let’s get someone to the bar too, where Vincent abducted Lionel.”

  He called it in while I studied the inside of the boxcar and compared it to what Colleen had told me this morning about the place her abductor
had taken her.

  When Ralph got off the radio I said, “This boxcar fits the description Colleen gave us. I think we should proceed with the theory that she was brought here too.”

  “Agreed.”

  I took a minute to mentally review the Dahmer connection, the locations, the information we had about the previous homicides, then noted the obvious: “The Taurus was inside the gate, so whoever drove it in there—whether that was Hendrich or someone else—must have had access to a key to that gate.”

  And keys to the two boxcars.

  It struck me that we still hadn’t heard back from the station about the sedan’s plates and whether the car was registered to Hendrich. When I mentioned that, Gabriele, who was lingering near the entrance to the boxcar and had apparently been listening in on our conversation, offered to follow up on it.

  “Good,” I told her. She left to make the call, I turned to Ralph. “Chaining the gate shut, parking in that particular place, choosing this line of boxcars, once again speaks to our guy’s familiarity with the area. With the forest paralleling the tracks, he would have been hidden from view from every nearby road, and from where the car is parked, he would have had to carry the victim, or lead her, more than sixty meters to the boxcar…”

  “By the way, what’s with you and the metric system? You never heard of yards before?”

  “Science, medicine, forensics, they all use the metric system,” I defended myself. “That’s why they measure things in milliliters, millimeters, and so on. Metric is the measuring system of the world. Even track and field events use the metric system.”

  “Yeah, well football doesn’t. It’s a game of inches, not centimeters. It doesn’t even sound American to talk like that. From now on, convert so I know what you’re talking about.”

  “Um…a meter is just a little longer than a—”

  “Yard. Yeah, I know that one. Everyone knows that one. But everything else—how many millimeters are in a foot? How many kilometers are in a mile? I don’t know that stuff. No more of this metric nonsense. It’s too European—reminds me of France.”