Straw Man

by Patrick Logan

  I kinda wish Suzan had killed her, he thought.

  “Yeah—yeah, what?”

  “Like the sutures, the mannequins are from years ago. I traced the serial number on one of them to a company that sold this model in the mid- to late-nineties, but they’ve been out of business for more than a decade. No records of who might have purchased them.”

  “Send any information you’ve got, and I’ll see if my guy can dig up anything else. Is that all?”

  “That’s everything I have for now.”

  “Thanks.”

  Drake hung up the phone and walked over to Screech.

  “Wilson… Wilson… I recognize that name,” Leroy muttered.

  It was also familiar to Drake, but he couldn’t place it either.

  Screech who was annoyed at not being able to find a hit on Marjorie Wilson suddenly snapped his fingers.

  “The fucking art gallery!”

  “What?” Drake and Leroy asked in unison.

  “Wilson, from the art gallery,” Screech said, sitting up straight. Instead of offering additional clarification, he leaned into his computer. Only this time, Screech didn’t search the Internet. Instead, he brought up an image of a handwritten sheet of paper that appeared to be mainly a list of names.

  Drake squinted at it, and then read the header out loud.

  “La Nuit des Femmes.”

  Drake couldn’t read any more on account of Screech’s furious scrolling but thankfully the man stopped three-quarters of the way down and highlighted two names, one on top of the other.

  “You have to be shitting me,” Drake said. “Tim and Stephanie Wilson—they were guests at the exhibit?”

  Hanna surprised everyone by suddenly appearing behind them.

  “It’s their daughter,” she said, with a flatness to her voice that gave Drake chills. “One of the skins belongs to Tim and Stephanie Wilson’s daughter.”

  Chapter 57

  “No way,” Drake muttered under his breath. He repeated the sentiment, louder this time. “No fucking way.”

  “Yes way,” Screech countered. “It’s gotta be her.”

  The more evidence they uncovered, the more confident Drake became that the trail would lead back to the Fairchilds. Norm and Lisa were destined to receive another visit, and there was nothing Burt Lancaster Esq. could do about it.

  The only question left to answer is whether they were victims or culprits.

  “Screech, did Marjorie’s name show up on the list of missing people the NYPD provided?”

  “Nope. I’ve had literally zero time to look into any of the names on the list, but the first thing I did was search for anyone related to the art gallery. Nothing popped.”

  Drake scratched the back of his head.

  “That makes no sense.”

  Screech spun around and addressed his computer.

  “Let me do something here…”

  Drake watched as the man logged into the NYPD database using Dunbar’s credentials. At this point, he didn’t even question it. A few seconds later, Screech looked over his shoulder at him.

  “Nope—just like I thought. No report of a Marjorie Wilson going missing.”

  “What the hell is going on here?” Leroy asked.

  Drake bit his lip as he thought about the question for a moment before asking one of his own.

  “How old is Marjorie?”

  “Seventeen—no, wait, just turned eighteen two months ago,” Screech replied.

  “Well, then I’m guessing the reason she was never reported missing was that either her parents don’t speak to her on a daily basis or this thing—whatever the fuck it is—is happening much faster than we thought.”

  “You think the Straw Man is picking these girls up and killing them right away?” Leroy said, raising an eyebrow.

  Drake grimaced at the use of the media label.

  “Could be our unsub’s MO.” He cast a glance at Hanna as he said this, remembering her story. She’d told them that the man in the apron had kept her locked up for days and had starved her. This new revelation, if it were true, put a wrench in the idea that this was related to Hanna’s past, something that Drake was already doubtful of. Most killers escalated, but in the opposite direction: the first kill is messy and quick, as the fear of getting caught is overwhelming. The killer takes his time with their subsequent victims and often becomes more sadistic as they chase the high of their first kill.

  While the time between murders typically shrinks, the time with each victim before death increases.

  This is the opposite of what Hanna was suggesting.

  “Or maybe the Wilsons are like the Fairchilds.” Drake was surprised that Hanna had spoken and turned to look at her. She was still pale but looked stable. As stable as Hanna ever was, that is.

  “Meaning what?” Screech asked.

  “Meaning that they’re so worried about their reputation that they’d rather just forget about their little girl than face the embarrassment and public shame of reporting her missing.”

  It was an unduly harsh assessment, but Drake couldn’t deny the possibility.

  He sighed heavily, knowing, and resenting, what needed to be done next.

  “Only one way to find out.” Drake cursed under his breath and then added, “We’re going to have to break the news to Tim and Stephanie Wilson.”

  Once again, the air in the room felt heavy.

  “Alone?” Screech asked.

  Drake was about to instinctively answer in the affirmative but then changed his mind.

  “It’s probably best if we get someone in the NYPD to come with us.”

  “Dunbar?”

  “I was thinking Yasiv.”

  It was no secret that breaking terrible news to loved ones was almost universally considered the worst part of a police officer’s job. Drake had hated it back when he was a detective and now, seeing as he was no longer in the NYPD, he could easily pass the responsibility off entirely to Yasiv.

  But he wouldn’t do that. This was his case, and it had been ever since he’d signed that fake contract. But after what Hanna had told him, it would be his case even if the sergeant fired him.

  Or threw him in jail.

  Drake would never stop until he found whoever had taken her, taken them.

  Sensing his discomfort, Leroy said, “I’ll come with you.”

  Drake declined the offer.

  “No, you guys stay here. I want you to focus on looking deeper into Norm and Lisa Fairchild.”

  “As suspects or victims?” Screech asked.

  The question was a valid one.

  As was Drake’s response.

  “Both.”

  With that, he turned his back on his team and called Sergeant Yasiv.

  “Have you heard the news?” Drake asked, not bothering with preamble.

  “Yeah.” Yasiv sounded tired. “Just got a memo from the ME. The DA is going to lose his shit.”

  “Hmm.” Drake left it at that, there was no need to keep repeating that he didn’t care what the DA did or how the man felt. Everyone knew his position by now. “I’m going to speak to Marjorie’s parents, and I thought it best if the NYPD joined me.”

  “Of course,” Yasiv said, his tone returning to one of clipped professionalism.

  “Any update on Robert?”

  “He’s been cooperative. I’ve asked him for a DNA sample to compare to the fourth signature that the ME found, and he’s agreed.”

  This surprised Drake. He didn’t think that the NYPD had enough to keep Robert more than a few hours, which made it even more telling that the man was willing to give up his DNA. Even with the district attorney threatening to give a press conference, a public defender would have Robert out on the streets before nightfall.

  “Be ready in ten,” Drake said. “I’ll pick you up.”

  Chapter 58

  After all these years, he was back.

  Hanna had never referred to the man who had grabbed her, stripped her, and thrown her i
n a cage next to her friend as the Straw Man. She hadn’t given him a name at all, as that would lend itself to her remembering. And most of what Hanna had done since the day she’d escaped was to try to forget.

  And to survive.

  To this end, she’d become a chameleon, designing and redesigning herself into something that others wanted, as this was the fastest way to attain what she desired.

  Hanna’s goals weren’t elaborate and didn’t revolve around any sort of financial gain.

  All she wanted was a new life: a new past, a new present, and a new future.

  This was why she couldn’t be Robin. Robin had been abducted and Robin had seen and done horrible things.

  Hanna was different, though, because she no longer existed.

  Yet, despite her best efforts to forget, once a year, usually around the anniversary of her escape, Hanna would do whatever she had to in order to gain access to police and medical records. She needed to know if he’d returned.

  But there was never anything that fit his MO.

  No girls reported being locked in a cage inside a musty, dirt basement, no nude man in a black apron torturing them.

  No girls stripped of their skins.

  Until now.

  Drake had once told her that there were only two reasons violent criminals ceased fulfilling their needs for mayhem: they were either incarcerated, or they were dead.

  But Hanna knew better.

  In a different life, she’d completed a Master’s degree in human psychology, which gave her insight into a third motivation. Even if she had no education, however, Hanna would have known this other reason because she was intimately familiar with it: a killer could stop killing if they became someone else.

  It had happened before.

  The East Area Rapist terrorized California for nearly a decade, raping and murdering dozens in the late seventies through the mid-eighties. And then, all of a sudden, he stopped, as if becoming the perfect citizen overnight. He never struck again.

  Everyone assumed the East Area Rapist was either dead or in prison, but neither was the case. Decades later, a distant relative sent their DNA to be analyzed to build an ancestral tree or to determine if they should stop eating dairy or gluten.

  This signature was then linked to the rapist, which eventually led to the arrest of an octogenarian living in the suburbs.

  When asked to provide a reason for why he stopped his killing spree, the man said simply that he had a child of his own.

  He had started living a new life, he had become someone else.

  Someone who didn’t kill.

  Just like the Straw Man. Only, the man in the black apron didn’t get arrested or die.

  He had returned.

  This time, Hanna was determined not to run or reinvent herself. Now, she had people who cared about her, and she cared about them.

  She liked this life and wasn’t going to let the Straw Man take it from her.

  Tell me you love me.

  Hanna shuddered and rose from the couch. Her first few steps were awkward, as if her leg muscles were fatigued from a long run, but this eventually dissipated.

  “Where you headed?” Screech asked, leaning away from his computer.

  Hanna was nearly at the door when she turned back to look at him.

  “Out,” she said simply.

  “But Drake said—” Leroy began, but Hanna shot him a look that immediately made him stop speaking.

  She knew that Drake meant well and that he was looking out for her. But she didn’t need his help. She also knew that Drake was in charge of this case, but that was just a technicality. The cat caper and everything related to Ken Smith was Drake’s domain.

  The Straw Man was hers.

  “I’ll be back,” she said, and then left.

  In her car, she dialed Detective Dunbar’s number.

  “Hanna? Are you with Drake?”

  “No, he’s meeting Yasiv—I’m alone. Dunbar, I have a favor to ask.”

  The man sighed heavily into the receiver.

  “Yeah, Hanna, it’s really busy here, what with the DA and…” the detective let his sentence trail off.

  “I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t really important.”

  “Related to the case?”

  Hanna said nothing and the detective sighed again.

  “Okay, I might be able to help you out. What do you need?”

  “Access to some cold case files.”

  “How old?”

  “Fifteen years, give or take.”

  “Those will be in storage. If you want, I can get someone to go down there for you maybe tomorrow morning. If you give me something more specific, I can—wait, are you driving right now?”

  “Yep.”

  “Hanna, it’s crazy here. It’s a fucking zoo at the station. You can’t—”

  “I can, and I am. I’ll be there in fifteen, Dunbar. If you don’t want me to make a scene, you should probably consider meeting me at the door.”

  Chapter 59

  “Is the DA gonna hold off on the presser at least until Robert’s DNA results come in?” Drake asked as he pulled up outside the massive two-story Brownstone.

  “He wouldn’t say,” Yasiv replied. There was still tension between the two of them, but Drake refused to let his emotions cloud the case. “Hopefully, we get the results back tonight and then the DA can decide whether or not to go ahead with it. We secured a search warrant for Robert’s house but came up empty aside from some weed and a small amount of cocaine. Not enough to charge him, but enough to hold him.”

  That answers that, Drake thought.

  “Wait—what do you mean if you get the results back, the DA will decide then? If it’s not a match, he is going to back off, right?”

  Yasiv screwed up his face.

  “I fucking hope so.”

  Drake couldn’t imagine putting Robert on the cross if his DNA didn’t match the sample that Dr. Nordmeyer pulled from the suture, but he wasn’t Mark Trumbo. The DA had already proven that he was only out for one person: himself. And with the election upcoming, the DA was better off putting Robert up on charges, even if a grand jury failed to issue an indictment. By the time the square wheels of justice started to move, the election would be over, and Trumbo would have secured his victory. Then he could resume the search for the actual killer.

  The problem with this scenario was that in the interim, the real killer would still be out there, hunting.

  Killing.

  Skinning.

  Drake got out of his car and stretched his back. While he loved his Crown Vic and was grateful for his team who somehow found and returned it to him, it lacked any sort of lower back support.

  And he was thirty-eight going on seventy.

  “How do you want to do this?” Yasiv asked, once again deferring to Drake.

  “I’ll take the lead.”

  Like the Fairchilds’, the walkway to the Wilson house was blocked by a wrought iron gate. Drake walked up to the intercom embedded in the brick adjacent to the gate and pressed the button.

  “I’m sorry, Detective, but I’ve been instructed by my lawyer not to speak to you without him being present,” the voice in the box informed him.

  Drake assumed that this was Tim Wilson and decided against correcting him on the use of the term ‘detective’.

  “I understand, but this isn’t about—” Drake hesitated. He was about to say that his visit wasn’t about the art gallery, but that would have been a lie. It was about the art gallery, just not in the way that Tim Wilson thought. “It’s about your daughter.”

  Unlike when Drake had first spoken into the intercom, Tim hesitated this time around.

  “My daughter? Marjorie? What about her?”

  Drake felt his frustration at talking through a plastic box rising but he forced himself to remain calm. While these people might be assholes, they were about to receive the worst news that a parent could ever get, and it would do none of them any good if Drake was pissed off wh
ile he delivered it.

  Thankfully, Yasiv detected the change in Drake, and he pushed his way forward.

  “Mr. Wilson, this is Sergeant Henry Yasiv of 62nd precinct. We have some news about your daughter that you’re going to want to hear in person.”

  There was a short pause before the lock on the gate disengaged. Drake and Yasiv wasted no time hurrying up the walk and when they were halfway to the door it opened. Stephanie Wilson stood in front of Tim, a phone pressed to her ear, a concerned look on her face.

  As Drake neared, she lowered the phone and then said to her husband, “She’s not answering. Tim, she’s not answering.”

  Tim Wilson was a diminutive man, about five foot six if Drake had to guess, with a five o’clock shadow and dark, squinting eyes.

  “Detectives, if this is some sort of trick—”

  “It’s not,” Drake said so sternly that the man immediately stopped speaking and took a step back. “May we come in?”

  “Did something happen? Did something happen to Marjorie?” Stephanie asked.

  Yasiv repeated Drake’s question.

  “May we come in, please?”

  Stephanie had looked concerned as they’d approached, but now she looked downright terrified. She brushed a strand of blonde hair from her face and opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out. Tim put a hand on her back and said, “Yes—yes, come in.”

  The man guided his wife backward, giving them space to enter. The entrance and foyer were grandiose, made of polished tile, and accented with glittering lights. It seemed that every rich person in this part of New York had the same interior designer.

  “Did Marjorie get herself into trouble again?” Stephanie asked, finding her voice. “I swear to God, that girl—”

  “We should sit,” Drake said flatly.

  Both Tim and Stephanie swallowed hard and the former quickly led them to an adjacent room. Drake and Yasiv stood while the Wilsons sat beside each other on a leather couch.

  Based on his experience, Drake knew that the best thing to do in uncomfortable situations such as this one was just get to the point.

  “There really is no good way to tell you this, but—”

  Before he could even finish the sentence, something inside Stephanie Wilson broke. She shrieked and tried to rise to her feet. Tim held her down and attempted to comfort the woman, but the shrieking, while it decreased in intensity, didn’t stop. This wasn’t a case of an estranged daughter, someone that the Wilsons regretted, perhaps, and wanted to forget.