by Shawn Ryan
Jason was stunned. Despite his religious beliefs, his father could swear like a longshoreman when truly angry, but he never used God's name in his tapestries of obscenity. Something must have truly terrified him.
"Are you all right, Dad? Is everything okay up there?" he asked.
Stephen didn't answer for a moment. When he did, his voice was almost—but not quite, Jason noticed—back to normal.
"Yeah, everything's okay," Stephen said. "Honest. Once again I guess I just overreacted. I'm just worried. I don't want you overworking yourself, getting to the point of total exhaustion. That's a dangerous place to be."
What the fuck is that supposed to mean? Jason asked himself. Out loud he said: "I'm fine. Just a little tired. And as far as the toy is concerned, I'm not even completely sure it was Claire's. I'm having that checked right now."
"Will you call me when you find out?" Stephen asked.
"Sure I will. But right now, I really need to get back to work. They'll be bringing me lab and autopsy reports any second now."
"Oh sure, I understand," Stephen said, then paused. "Jason, will you do me another favor?"
"Of course."
"If anything strange happens to you in the next few days, anything at all, you call me immediately. You understand? Call me instantly, don't wait."
"What do you mean? Strange in what way?"
"Things you don't understand, that make no sense no matter how you look at them. You'll know what I'm talking about if it happens."
For an instant, Jason flashed back to the disappearing ball trick and Badger's bizarre story. Then he swept those from his mind. Not now. Those couldn't be considered now. They were nothing more than the products of tired minds. They had nothing to do with all of this.
"I doubt it, Dad," he said. "I have no idea what you're talking about right now."
"That's fine. Just humor your old man. Talk to you later, Jason. I love you."
"Love you, too. Bye."
Holding the receiver next to his cheek, Jason sat and stared. Damn, that was bizarre, he thought. It was so unlike Dad to get worked up like that. He usually remained calm in the face of any crisis. For a brief instant, Jason was rocked with a sinking fear that his father was getting old and perhaps senile.
"Oh, don't be stupid," he said to himself. His father was only sixty-four, hardly ancient. He was in good health, still robust in his work, quick in the mind. So what if he got overly upset this time? They were, after all, talking about his granddaughter, one of the true joys of his life before she died. His father's concern was understandable.
"Chill out," he said as he placed the receiver back in the cradle. As he did so, the phone slid back an inch on the desk and bumped into something hidden behind it. With a slight clink, the object tumbled over and rolled into Jason's view.
His body went cold.
The magic trick.
How had it gotten here? It was on his nightstand the last time he saw it. Then Badger had called and he'd gone straight to the crime scene. Had he unknowingly put it in his jacket during his hurry to get dressed? He didn't remember doing it. And even if he had, he certainly didn't remember taking it out and putting it on his desk.
He held the trick in the palm of his right hand, his fingers spread wide as if it might turn into a great black spider at any moment. Slowly, he lifted off the top.
The yellow ball stared back at him. Jason felt his stomach flip-flop.
Impossible. It hadn't been there. It was gone. He knew it was gone. Yet here it was again. Same as always. The sight of it caused sweat to break out across his upper lip.
Without warning, a quick vision of shining silver eyes flashed across his mind and fear unfurled its wings in his belly.
What the hell was going on here?
Chapter 10
« ^ »
Jason felt the blood draining from his head and a wave of dizziness flowed over him.
This can't be happening, he thought. There must be a rational explanation.
What did Sherlock Holmes say?
First the ball disappeared, now the trick shows up where it's not supposed to be and the ball has returned. Couple that with the stuffed frog and Badger's story and things were just getting too strange for rational explanation.
What did Sherlock Holmes say?
Jason's mind swam through a sea of confusion, nothing solid from horizon to horizon. He put his fists to his temples and pressed hard, as if trying to squeeze out the maelstrom.
If anything strange happens to you in the next few days, anything at all, you call me immediately. You'll know what I'm talking about if it happens.
Is this what his father meant? Should he call him now? Or was he overreacting? Certainly, if anything could be called strange, this was it. Tentatively, he reached for the phone. As he lifted the receiver, the door opened.
"Autopsy or lab reports back yet?" Badger asked as he came in.
"Uh, no. No, not yet," Jason said, dropping the phone into its cradle. "I'll call about them right now."
He dialed the coroner's office first. Saunders answered.
"Buzz, this is Jason. Got anything yet?"
"We've got a name," Saunders said. "Matthew Greene. We ID'd him off fingerprint records from one of those local grocery store sign-ups.
"We also know the kid was killed by the same guy," Saunders continued. "The finger marks on his neck matched those on Amanda Benton's. The boy was strangled to death before he was decapitated, and the head was cut off with an outdoor saw. The same type used on the girl."
"Was the boy raped?" Jason asked.
"Yes."
"Same blood type?"
"Yep. Semen analysis shows AB positive."
"Parents been called?"
"Nope. I'm leaving that to you."
Jason heard Saunders take a deep drag off a cigarette and could picture the cloud of smoke surrounding the coroner's head. For a man who dealt in death all day, Saunders seemed oblivious to his own mortality.
"Okay, thanks Buzz," Jason said and hung up. He immediately dialed the forensics lab and waited while Norm was called to the phone.
"So far we don't have anything," Bibb said. "Like the last time, there weren't any fibers or hairs on the body. We're still searching the clothes and stuffed frog for prints."
Jason mentally grimaced at the mention of the toy.
"There were several smudge prints on the body and on the boy's clothes, but we lifted some solid ones, too," Bibb said. "My gut tells me they're not from the killer. More likely they're from his mother or father or friends at school. But I've got them running through CAL-ID right now just to make sure."
CAL-ID was a huge bank of computers containing the fingerprints of millions of felons around the nation. A few years ago, after police took a print off a car stolen from a strangulation victim in California, it took CAL-ID all of three minutes to come up with a suspect. The man turned out to be Richard Ramirez, the so-called Night Stalker, and he was later convicted of killing thirteen women.
"What about the note?" Jason asked.
"Typed on the same typewriter as before, but the paper was clean. My guess is that this guy wears surgical gloves from start to finish."
"So basically we've got another killing with the same bunch of nothing to go on?" Jason said. It was more a statement than a question.
"That's about the size of it," Bibb agreed.
Jason hung up quietly. He looked at Badger and shook his head.
"Just to let you know, we sent someone out to where Claire… uh, where she is…" Badger said.
"Buried," Jason said.
"Yeah, uh, anyway, the site hasn't been disturbed. No one's been there. So I guess that means the toy wasn't hers."
Jason took a deep breath. "I guess not," he said. "But I could've sworn it looked just like hers. Crooked arm and everything. What're the chances of two kids having toys like that?"
"I don't know," Badger said. "But coincidence is a crazy thing. Anything's possible."
"I suppose," Jason said. "That still doesn't rule out that the killer knows me. It might be that he got a toy just like Claire's to freak me out. And you know what? He's doing a damned good job."
Badger's whole body suddenly erupted in a gigantic shudder and he rubbed his arms vigorously as if he were freezing. Jason raised his eyebrows and Badger looked at him with his mouth set in a tight line.
"I'm feeling a little freaked myself," he said. "I just can't get rid of that horrible feeling I got when I picked up that frog back at the Civic Complex dumpster. Whenever I think about it I shake. And I can't get that voice out of my mind, either. It's fucking with me bad, Jazz. I keep trying to pass it off as some sort of hallucination, but I don't know. It seemed as real as hell when it happened."
"I understand," Jason said. "I wish I could explain it. Maybe it's just from being tired, but I'm not so sure. I trust your feelings too much to just pass it off as complete bullshit."
They sat in silence for a minute, not knowing what to say, afraid to explore the possibilities of their discussion. Finally Badger spoke.
"Do we have a name on the new kid?" he asked.
"Yeah, Matthew Greene," Jason said. He leaned back in his chair and sighed. "Looks like we get to be the ones to tell 'em. You ready for that?"
"Hell no, but let's get it over with."
Matthew Greene's parents were much the same as Amanda Benton's. Middle class, well educated, with good jobs, they lived in Bayswater Common, a well-kept subdivision with neatly trimmed lawns sitting in the northeastern corner of the county and about forty miles outside Atlanta. Rick Greene worked in management at Georgia Power and his wife, Carolyn, was the manager of the First Impressions dress boutique at Lenox Square. Besides Matthew, there were two other children, eight-year-old Barrett and three-year-old Michelle. They were at their grandparents' house when Jason and Badger arrived.
Rick Greene met them at the door. His eyes were bloodshot and glassy from too many cups of coffee and a night without sleep. like the Bentons, the Greenes started calling police the night before, when Matt didn't return from baseball practice. Unlike Joseph Benton, who was near collapse and in shock when police arrived, the Greenes still were in fits of hyperactivity.
"It's about fucking time," Greene said when Jason introduced himself and Badger.
"May we come in?" Jason asked through the screen door, almost hoping the man would refuse.
Greene pushed the door open with one hand and called to his wife.
"Carolyn, the police have finally graced us with their presence," he said. "And only twelve hours after we started calling."
Carolyn Greene, a petite, pretty woman with blond hair and hazel eyes, came rushing in from the kitchen, drying her hands on a paper towel. Her face was creased with worry and fatigue and her eyes were bleak.
"Have you heard anything?" she asked in an excited voice. "Do you know where Matt is? Is he all right?"
"Would you two care to sit?" Jason asked.
Mrs. Greene stood there trembling, her face going flat with the implications of Jason's question. She stared into his eyes and they told her what she was terrified of knowing. With a stifled cry, she collapsed on the floor in a heap.
Her husband ran to her and rolled her onto her back. He looked at Jason, silently asking the question he couldn't put into words. Jason gave a small, somber nod. Greene picked up an ashtray and flung it into the nearest wall, where it shattered, ripping a chunk out of the Sheetrock.
For five minutes, Greene ran around the house in a blind panic. He ignored his wife, leaving Badger to pick her up and lay her on the couch while Jason soaked some towels in cold water and laid them on her forehead. Greene, meanwhile, kept running into his son's room, only to emerge seconds later, gasping for air. When he wasn't doing that, he was screaming at Jason and Badger, threatening to sue, have their jobs and kick their asses. Finally he fell into his recliner and began crying.
By the time Mrs. Greene revived several minutes later, her husband was calm and going into shock. She also was having trouble grasping the situation, but between them they managed to mumble answers to a few questions.
Matt was at Little League practice from five until seven the evening before, they said. He practiced every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, with games on Saturday mornings. The ball field was only about half a mile away and Matt always walked to and from practice. All he had to do was cut through a section of woods behind the house and he was at the field within five minutes. Since it still was light at seven, his parents didn't worry about him walking home. And there usually were a couple of kids who lived in the same neighborhood walking with him.
Phone calls to friends, the team's coach, and a handful of others led to nothing, so at eight o'clock Rick Greene went looking. It was growing dark by then and he took a flashlight, cutting down the path in the woods that led to the ball field. He didn't find anything and when he returned home, he began calling the police every hour. He was told—as the Bentons had been—that children weren't considered missing until twenty-four hours went by.
"There'd already been one murder," Greene said. "Why weren't you taking missing children more seriously?"
Badger and Jason remained silent. They had no explanation.
Greene stared at the floor and shook his head from side to side. "I don't understand," he mumbled. "I just don't understand."
"Mr. and Mrs. Greene," Jason said, "I have one final question and then we'll be through. Did Matthew have a stuffed frog, a toy frog that he carried with him?"
"No," Mrs. Greene said. "He threw away all his stuffed animals a couple of years ago. He was afraid other boys would come into his room and think he was a sissy. Besides, he never had a stuffed frog at all."
Badger glanced at Jason, his eyebrows raised.
The questioning over, Badger called forensics to examine the Greene's house and the path to the ball field. Then he phoned a squad car to take the Greenes to identify the body. Jason couldn't help but imagine how it would be to identify your little boy by looking at his severed head. He stopped thinking along those lines. It made him ill.
He and Badger wandered out to the backyard, looking for the trail that cut through the woods. It was easy to spot, a gap in the azaleas at the corner of the yard. The gap opened onto a foot-wide trail that angled off between the trees. The woods, mostly a set of Southern pines and dogwoods, were hardly dense or impenetrable. From where they stood, Jason and Badger could see at least two hundred feet into the trees and could hear the roar of lawn mowers coming from the ball field.
Forensics arrived within twenty minutes. One team took the house while another fanned out along the trail. About three hundred feet into the woods, one of the technicians almost tripped over a baseball glove lying beside a dogwood. A few feet away, a Louisville Slugger baseball bat, the Dale Murphy model, was partially obscured by a pile of leaves. Ten yards farther was a spot in the undergrowth where a struggle obviously took place. Leaves were scattered about and patches of bare ground showed through. Nearer the trail, a small pool of blood was found on some leaves.
While forensics was making its discoveries, Jason and Badger were at the ball field, questioning the maintenance workers who were getting the diamonds ready for the night's games. None of them had been there yesterday afternoon; they had been at the complex in Mountain Park.
Jason and Badger drove back to headquarters and started making phone calls. The first was to the Little League's main office to get a list of the boys on Matt's team, their home phone numbers, and the schools they attended. They also called the coach, Sid North, and learned only that Matt had made it to practice. North said he left right after practice to pick up his ten-year-old daughter who was at middle school cheerleader tryouts.
Using the list of team members, Jason and Badger made the rounds between half a dozen schools. Bobby Mendagio, the first baseman on Matt's team, said he, Matt, and Orin Taylor stayed a little late after practice, talking about school, girls,
and the Atlanta Braves. The conversation lasted about thirty minutes, Bobby said, or until it started getting dark. Then everyone went home. The last thing he saw was Matt heading into the woods, his baseball glove in one hand and a bat over his right shoulder.
Six schools, five hours, and twenty-five interviews later, nothing was any clearer than when Jason and Badger began. So they headed for the Greenes' neighborhood to talk with residents there. Once again, it was the same story, second verse. People were inside. They heard nothing and saw nothing. But how could something like this happen in their neighborhood? they asked. Why weren't the police protecting them?
As the sun set, Jason and Badger crawled wearily into the squad car and drove back to the station.
"God, this is depressing," Badger said. "We've spent all day getting nowhere."
"You know the press already is having a field day with this one," he added. "And Quintard's going to do his best to brand our asses."
Jason just shrugged and looked out the window. He didn't say anything the whole way back. When they walked into their office, there was a message on Jason's desk to call forensics. He grabbed the phone and dialed hurriedly. In his haste, he misdialed the number… twice.
"Shit, fuck, sonuvabitch," he hollered until he got it right.
Bibb answered the lab's phone.
"Norm, it's Jason."
"Oh, hi Jazz," Bibb said. "Got a couple of things here for you. First of all, the blood from the woods came from our guy. AB positive. It's not the kid's because his is B negative."
"And here's something else that might help," Bibb said. "While checking around the area, my boys found a set of footprints underneath all the leaves and shit. Remember that hard rain we had about four days ago? The ground underneath all this stuff was still good and damp and made a real nice set of prints. And get this, they were Nike Airs, size ten and a half."
"Same as last time," Jason said.
"Right-o," Bibb answered. "But more important than that, these prints led away from the site and up to a nearby road. Up there we found a set of tire tracks on the shoulder. Goodyear Vectors that fit a pretty healthy-sized car—a Caprice, Riviera, Delta 88, Cadillac, or something like that. The back rear tire has a plug in it from a nail or something, plus the front one on the driver's side is worn heavily on the outside. Whoever this guy is, he needs to have his front end aligned."