A Bustle in the Hedgerow (CASMIRC Book 1)

by Ben Miller

  “OK. Cheers, then,” Caleb signed off.

  “Yeah, cheers,” Jack echoed reluctantly. He disliked using the popular British phrase “cheers” to close a conversation; to him it seemed a bit pretentious when used by Americans. Somehow, though, Caleb Goodnight could make it sound sincere.

  As the rain began to ease up, traffic thankfully moved a little more quickly. Jack did not have any pressing business awaiting him at the office, yet he still felt anxious to get there.

  He reminded himself how quickly news travels, especially in the era of online newspapers, text messages, etc. He appreciated Caleb’s— and, to a lesser extent, his mother’s—call, but it unnerved him a little that so many people now knew about such a personal matter. He made a mental note to call Corinne O’Loughlin later, but he wanted to gather his thoughts first. His main question remained why a crime reporter decided to write about a political topic. It seemed a little outside her purview, and it seemed a little personal.

  He arrived at work a short while later, went through the main secure entrance, and up to the third floor. No sooner had he gotten to his desk when his Blackberry began vibrating on his belt. He looked at the display: Melissa Hollows.

  Melissa? he thought. He assumed she was calling to comment on this morning’s article as well, but still it struck him as odd. He had not spoken to her in eight or nine months. Perhaps she wanted to plead with him to reconsider this pending career change, due to his involvement in solving her daughter’s murder. Or, perhaps the opposite: to congratulate him on catapulting himself onto the political stage. But deep down he knew these weren’t correct. Regardless, he didn’t want to speak with her right now. He didn’t feel like talking to anyone about this topic anymore, especially not Melissa Hollows.

  He let it go to voicemail and holstered his phone back on his hip. He decided he would listen to the voicemail later; he had other work to do now and didn’t want to get distracted.

  Weeks, months, and even years later, Jack would wonder how the trajectory of his life—and the lives of countless others— might have differed if he had taken that call.

  33

  Lamaya Hollows went missing on Monday, April 30, 2012. The NFL Draft had been held the weekend before, so she didn’t see much of her father. He spent Thursday night, Friday night, and all day Saturday with his teammates, watching to see who their Redskins would claim from the ranks of college hopefuls for the upcoming season. Therefore Lamaya spent most of the weekend with her mother, which didn’t bother her one bit. They had gone shopping all the way downtown at Georgetown Park, her mother’s favorite place to shop. Lamaya found it more appropriate for grown-ups than kids—they didn’t even have a good toy store!—but she enjoyed it nevertheless because her mother had enjoyed it so much. Plus she got some new summer clothes, which was pretty awesome.

  Monday morning she went to school as usual. Her mother dropped her off, with her father scheduled to pick her up at the end of the day. After school she called him to ask if she could walk home. She and her friend Jennifer, who lived six houses down from them, wanted to enjoy the warm spring day. Besides, it was one of the few days that they didn’t have field hockey practice, so she hoped to get some exercise. As added pressure, Lamaya shared that Jennifer’s parents had already agreed to the idea.

  Lamond Hollows considered this reasoning. They lived just a little over a mile-and-a-half from Washington Country Day School, and all the connecting neighborhoods seemed very safe. She had walked home a few dozen times before, so Lamond didn’t feel that he needed to give it much thought. He said sure, and the girls began their walk.

  Jennifer arrived home safely at 3:43 in the afternoon. Her mother greeted her at the door and waved at Lamaya, who waved back as she continued walking down the sidewalk. The two of them were the last two people to see Lamaya Hollows that day. She never showed up at her home.

  At 4:21 pm, Lamond Hollows called Jennifer Horowitz’s house and spoke to her mother, who informed him of Jennifer’s uneventful, safe return from school, and of having seen Lamaya trek past on her seemingly uneventful way home. Though they lived in an upper-class suburb with large estates, surely it shouldn’t take her over half-an-hour to walk six houses. Five minutes later, Melissa Hollows returned home from the grocery store. Lamond met her in the garage and shared the news of their daughter’s late return. At the end of his discourse, both immediately and instinctively turned their eyes to the back of the garage; her bicycle stood in its usual spot, leaning on its kickstand. Without unloading the groceries, she set out in her Escalade and he in his Mercedes to troll the neighborhood looking for their child.

  With a speed limit of 20 miles per hour, it took approximately twelve minutes to drive through every loop, street, and cul-de-sac in their subdivision. They each drove the circuit twice, going slower than the posted limit as they called out to their daughter, scanned the sidewalks, driveways, gardens, and bushes. They returned home within a minute of each other. Melissa decided that she would call 9-1-1 and stay at home, in case Lamaya returned. Lamond would go out on foot into the neighborhood. Both retained a calm exterior, but inside they each filled with dread.

  The call came into the 9-1-1 operator at 4:59 pm. By 5:12 pm the state police posted the reflexive Amber Alert, and at 5:14 the first police officers arrived at the Hollows’ home. Detective Greta Wegener from the Missing Persons Division in Montgomery County arrived at the home shortly before half-past five. With only about two hours of daylight remaining, she quickly organized a search of the entire neighborhood, all surrounding neighborhoods, and the spaces in between. All teams were equipped with police-grade flashlights, so the search continued into the evening, and then into the night. At 11:30 pm, Detective Wegener halted the search until daybreak. She had seen group exhaustion set in before, so she didn’t want to risk even one search party member losing focus; this could be the difference between finding crucial clues and walking right past them.

  Greta Wegener knew well that about half of all kidnapping cases are perpetrated by family members. Therefore, shortly after the area search commenced, she and her partner John Min questioned Mr. and Mrs. Hollows for almost ninety minutes. Lamond had not left the house all afternoon. Though alone at home, he spent most of the last hour before calling the Horowitz home on the phone with his agent. Both the agent and cell phone records would later corroborate this. Melissa had been to the grocery store after getting her weekly manicure and pedicure. Her manicurist, her pedicurist—two different people working in the same salon—the grocery store clerk, and grocery store video surveillance would later corroborate this. Wegener and Min then interviewed Mr. and Mrs. Hollows separately, and neither parent suspected that the other had anything to do with their daughter’s disappearance. Their individual descriptions of their relationship matched nearly verbatim: Not a perfect marriage, but certainly better than most. They loved each other, and they both loved their daughter.

  Initially, neither parent could think of anyone who would want to do harm to their family. They had no known enemies and no significant debts. Of course, Lamond’s career as a professional athlete and their combined celebrity status served as a wild card in this initial investigation. Wegener, however, went with her instinct at the onset to treat this as a typical missing child case; if this yielded little to nothing, she would deal with the possible obsessed-celebrity-fanatic angle secondarily.

  Detective Min continued with the Hollows while Wegener went to talk to the Horowitz family. They, and the dozens of neighbors interviewed later that evening and in the following days, shed no new light onto the case. They did not see anyone or anything suspicious. They confirmed the timeline established by the Hollows’ story. They all found Lamaya Hollows and her parents to be perfectly well-meaning people and pleasant neighborhood citizens (though two separate interviewees did complain briefly about Lamond’s holding penalty in the Wild Card round of the playoffs two years ago, which negated a 46-yard touchdown run and, in their eyes, resulted in the Reds
kins’ loss).

  Miraculously, though the Amber Alert became a topic in the 11 o-clock news that night, the significance that it was Lamond Hollows’ child who had gone missing did not hit the local news until the 12 pm news broadcast the following day. One neighbor had called ESPN the night before to spread the word of Hollows’ daughter’s disappearance, but, with Lamond Hollows and his agent not answering calls and the Redskins’ office refusing to comment, the cable giant did not run the story until it could be confirmed the following day.

  By that next evening, a media frenzy had begun. The story ran on regular news shows, (CNN, Headline News, etc.), sports news (ESPN, NFL Network, etc.), and entertainment news (Inside Edition, Entertainment Tonight, etc.). Various speculations came from a variety of sources, most of which the investigative team could quickly dismiss. One theory from FoxSports.com implicated one of Lamond Hollows’ teammates, DeJuan Masters. Masters, the Redskins’ starting Pro Bowl center, had recently been accused of domestic violence against his girlfriend, a 19-year-old high school dropout. Given the alleged history of violence against women, this assertion had to be investigated fully, which Wegener herself completed quickly: Masters had an airtight alibi (with his 19-year-old girlfriend, no less, who had found it in her heart to forgive him and had previously dropped the charges). It was later discovered that this theory had originated from a FoxSports staffer who was a rabid New York Giants fan, trying to bring ruination to the Redskins. The network promptly fired him.

  Due to the high-profile nature of the case, and the quick decline in incoming information, Wegener enlisted the assistance of the FBI by contacting CASMIRC. Jackson Byrne arrived with his team the following morning, 64 hours after Lamaya Hollows had gone missing. Officially the investigation still bore the label of a Missing Persons case, but most involved felt that, at this point, they were most likely looking for a body. Nearly ninety per cent of missing persons not found in the first 48 hours were never found alive.

  Shortly after 11 am on the morning of Thursday, May 3, Lamond and Melissa Hollows held a press conference to beg for the safe return of their daughter. Her school photo was shown for what had to be the hundredth time on national TV. The phone number of a toll-free hotline scrolled across the bottom of the screen repeatedly.

  That afternoon they received a phone call from the kidnapper, demanding a ransom of $65,000. They traced the call to a home in southern New Jersey. Local FBI agents raided the home less than two hours after the call, and found a 43-year-old schizophrenic who had compiled $55,000 of gambling debts. He later claimed the extra $10,000 he asked for would serve as his “nest egg,” declining to further elucidate the meaning behind this.

  FBI agents and local police questioned every registered sex offender in the area without garnering any compelling suspects. Given that the disappearance occurred during the end of a traditional work day, the majority of them had easily confirmed alibis. Those offenders without alibis complied with cursory searches of their homes without any suspicious findings.

  Each member of the Washington Redskins organization agreed to an interview. All felt awful about the Hollows’ situation. Daniel Snyder, the outspoken owner of the NFL franchise, offered a $250,000 reward for any information that led to the safe return of Lamaya Hollows and/or the arrest and conviction of the perpetrators of this crime. As expected, this brought in thousands of tips, none of which served useful.

  The following week, while investigators resumed their questioning of all of the employees and parents associated with Lamaya’s school, a call came into the local 9-1-1 center from a local waste removal employee named Eugene Kermichael. He phoned from the penultimate stop on their route, a dumpster behind a recently constructed strip mall— still only half occupied by retail stores— located less than five miles from the Hollows’ home. He and his co-worker had found a body lying on the hillside behind the strip mall. Wrapped in a white sheet, the figure on the knoll resembled a childhood notion of an Egyptian mummy. Kermichael guessed it contained a child, based on the size and shape. His curiosity drove him to pull back the first layer of the cotton sheet, which confirmed his suspicion. Having watched the news—and having been a lifelong Redskins’ fan—he knew the case of the missing Hollows girl well and quickly recognized her face.

  As such, as silently but inevitably expected by many, on the afternoon of Monday, May 14, 2012, the Lamaya Hollows Missing Persons case turned into the Lamaya Hollows Abduction/Homicide.

  34

  Dylan Harringer had assembled his team in the conference room to discuss the Cottrell and McBurney murders. Normally these meetings took place at the end of the day, but, with the weekend coming up and Corinne O’Loughlin’s piece in the paper that morning, Harringer wanted to get a jump on things. He stood in the front right corner of the room, the chair beside him angled so that, when seated, Harringer could see all his agents in the chairs to his left as well as the dry-erase board in the front. Heath Reilly stood at the ready beside the board, with a black marker in his right hand.

  Reilly had taken the reins of this investigation so far. Though Harringer had not yet officially named anyone Lead Investigator, Reilly led the meeting yesterday when they discussed what information they wanted to leak to the media. Harringer had decided he would give Reilly a trial run at Lead over the next few days, but he silently reserved the right to name someone else if Reilly proved himself inefficient, or, more likely, a pain in the ass.

  “I think we’ve had ample time to review the facts of the cases so far, so I wanted to spend some time delving into our un-sub. I want to generate some ideas about our killer and try to answer some questions that might help us see where to go next,” Harringer said to commence the meeting. He sat down and opened a hand to Reilly at the front of the room. “Reilly…”

  “Thanks, sir,” Reilly began. “As you all know based on our meeting yesterday, we have developed a strategy for dealing with our un-sub through the media. One component of our strategy is to keep him feeling as anonymous as possible, hoping he will become offended and make a gesture, big or small, that might reveal his identity. That being said…” He turned his back to the group to face the board. In large letters he wrote across the top:

  THE PLAYGROUND PREDATOR

  “Corinne O’Loughlin from The Post mentioned this as the name she was going to use to refer to our un-sub, and I like it.”

  Harringer interrupted, with his bulky arms folded across his chest. “I think you all know how I feel about nicknames, but for those of you who don’t…” He looked up, shooting daggers directly into Reilly’s eyes. “I hate them.”

  Strike one, Harringer noted to himself.

  “But,” he continued, “since the cat’s out of the bag and many of you will use this nickname informally anyway, I just want to remind you that this will strictly be for internal use only. I do not want to see this name showing up in the news media anywhere.”

  Camilla asked the obvious, “It came from O’Loughlin. How do we know she won’t use it?”

  “Pretty sure she won’t,” Reilly answered. “That’s part of our deal for giving her exclusive quotes and a small amount of inside info. Only if it serves our purpose, that is. If she breaks her promise, we are done with her.”

  “OK,” Camilla conceded.

  Reilly had asked Harringer before the meeting if he could use the informal moniker during the investigation. Harringer had conceded, but he had an ulterior motive. He still had some fresh agents in his ranks, not to mention Terry Friesz from linguistics. His first SAC Ronald Van Wyk had taught him this trick early in his days with the Bureau: give innocuous yet “classified” terminology or information early in the investigation to see if anything leaked. If not, he could trust his people. If so, he would have issues.

  “Our first topic is motive,” Reilly said, as he wrote “1. MOTIVE” at the top left of the board under the title. “Based on the killer’s communication so far, through the notes in the pockets, we are working under the assumption t
hat infamy serves as his main motivation right now. Are there other thoughts?”

  As expected, Camilla had already formed some theories of her own. “Hatred of women, or little girls,” she postulated.

  “OK.” Reilly jotted this down on the board under “INFAMY.” “Other thoughts?” He waited several seconds in silence before turning back to the board. “All righty then.” Though in the past couple of years he had mustered the restraint to not say this phrase with Jim Carrey’s Ace Ventura inflection, he couldn’t help continuing to use the phrase. “The next thing to discuss is the notes themselves.” He gave this topic its own title on the dry-erase board before turning back to face his audience. “Before we discuss content, let’s ask about the languages. Why? Why does he use foreign languages?”

  After a brief contemplative moment, Camilla asked, “So far we have Thai and Serbian, right?”

  “Right,” Reilly confirmed.

  Camilla turned in her seat to look at Friesz, who, as per usual, sat in the second row. “Terry, do you give any significance to the use of those two languages?”

  Friesz scratched his right temple as he pondered the question. “Not that I can think of. They are very dissimilar languages. They do not share common roots. Obviously Serbia has been notorious for civil war and much political unrest, but the same cannot be said of Thailand.”

  Amanda Lundquist spoke up from her spot in the far left of the front row. “Can we assume that our un-sub has a background in linguistics?”

  Reilly nodded and turned to write this on the board.

  “I doubt it,” Friesz said, stopping Reilly before he wrote on the board. Reilly turned back around to face Friesz, as did everyone else in the room. However, Friesz offered nothing more.

  Camilla remembered how much Friesz enjoyed the spotlight, as he waited for others to extract the information from him. It may have functioned as a successful teaching technique in his days as a professor, but, in The Bureau, it became tiresome quickly. She refrained from rolling her eyes, but she did throw a hint of sarcasm into her question. “Why, Professor?”