by Jeff Miller
Dagny walked to the window and pushed up the shade. “That one?” Dagny asked, pointing to a big garbage bin in the alley. Melissa nodded. It was suddenly clear why Fabee had sent her to interview Melissa. “Was it in a trash bag when you tossed it?”
“No,” Melissa said. “It was just at the bottom of a plastic trash can. I threw the whole thing away. Can and all. Replaced it with another just like it,” she said, glancing at the trash can by her desk.
It was frustrating. Melissa had seen him, heard him, touched him, smelled him. But another hour of questions yielded nothing. Dagny offered Melissa a hug and invited her to call at any time, even if she just wanted to talk to someone.
As Dagny reached for the door handle, Melissa stopped her. “Hey, I want to apologize.”
“For what?”
“I should have called sooner. I guess I thought maybe you’d catch him, but then he killed that family.”
“You have nothing to apologize for,” Dagny said. “There’s only one person at fault in all this, and I’m going to kill him.”
Melissa jumped back, startled by Dagny’s promise.
“Catch him, I mean. I’m going to catch him,” Dagny said.
Melissa smiled, most likely her first smile in a long time. “Killing him would be fine, too.”
Victor was leaning against the car, dressed in one of his increasingly right-sized Brooks Brothers suits. He lowered the business section of The Columbus Dispatch as Dagny approached. “Well?”
Dagny had bottled up her rage when she was talking to Melissa, but it was time to vent. “What kind of maniac thinks a rape is smaller than a bank robbery?”
“A homicidal maniac,” Victor offered.
She led Victor around to the alley behind the dorm. “You’re not going to like this,” she said, eyeing the Dumpster.
It only took him a moment to guess what was coming next. “You can’t be serious.”
“I am.”
“Aren’t there people to do that sort of thing?”
“What people?” Dagny said, looking around. “It’s just us. Sorry, we can’t outsource the investigation.”
“And what are we looking for?”
“A tiny, crumpled, bloody card.”
“From two months ago?”
Dagny nodded. Somewhere, she was sure, Fabee was laughing.
She dialed the Ohio State Facilities Operations and Development department and arranged for a clean bin to be placed next to the one they would search. They borrowed jumpsuits and gloves from the city’s hazardous materials unit and bought masks from Home Depot. Once outfitted, Dagny climbed up on the side of the Dumpster and surveyed the contents.
Victor winced as he joined her. “I will never forgive you for this, Dagny.”
Almost any Dumpster would have been better than one behind a college dorm. Little of the garbage was bagged—most of it was loose: pizza boxes, soiled clothes, used condoms, chicken bones, and the like. Dagny stepped carefully onto a rail along the inside of the Dumpster and began to pick up pieces of the garbage, inspect them, and then toss them into the clean bin. By dusk, they had sifted through only half of the contents. They sealed the Dumpster and retired for the night.
After they checked into a motel, Dagny showered until the hot water was gone. She was getting ready for a run when Victor rapped at her door.
“Let’s get some dinner.”
“I’m good.”
“Actually, I don’t think you’re good. C’mon. Let’s go eat.”
“I’m not hungry, Victor.” She started to close the door, but he stuck his foot in the doorway.
“At this point, it doesn’t matter if you’re hungry. I think you need to be eating.”
She was used to conversations like this. Everyone was always trying to get her to eat when she didn’t want to. There were more important things than her diet right now. “I don’t want to talk about this.”
“This isn’t over, Dagny.”
Dagny sighed. “It never is.” She closed the door. Too tired and worn to run, she climbed into bed instead.
If anything, the smell was worse in the morning, having festered in a sealed space overnight. There were literally hundreds of pieces of gum stuck to the bottom of the Dumpster, but none stuck to the back of a card. If the crime gum was still there, at least part of the card would still be stuck to it. Still, they collected every piece of gum and placed them in separate bags, marking the time and place found with a Sharpie.
If Dagny had learned anything at the Bureau, it was this: sometimes unlikely leads pay off, but usually you’re just sifting through garbage.
They finished as evening settled, changed out of their jumpsuits, and headed back to the motel. As Victor drove, Dagny checked her phone for messages. She skipped several from Julia and her mother. The Professor had left one: “Still waiting for the fingerprint results from the book—Fabee’s holding it up, I’m sure. Also, your mother tracked me down. She wants you to return her calls.” Her last voice mail was from Chesley Waxton. Dagny dialed his number.
“I found it. I just wanted to let you know that I had one of the girls scan it and e-mail it to you.”
“You found what, Mr. Waxton?”
“The security proposal you wanted.”
“From J. C. Adams?” She already had the copy from Adams.
“Yeah, that one, too, but I forgot about another guy who came through and gave us advice. Name was Roberto Altamont.”
CHAPTER 33
April 8—Cincinnati, Ohio
“Maybe he was tall.”
“Can you give me something besides his height?” She’d asked him this twelve times. They had spent nearly an hour enduring digressions, bizarre non sequiturs, and occasional, inexplicable racist asides. The room was spinning, and Dagny just wanted to lie down.
Victor leaned forward and spoke softly. “Mr. Waxton, this man—Mr. Altamont—may have killed six people, and if so, he’s going to kill even more in less than a week, so you can see why it’s so important that we figure out who he is.”
“He either had a mustache or didn’t. I can’t remember. It was one way or the other.”
“Was he Hispanic? Latino?” Victor asked, since the unsub had used the name Roberto.
Waxton folded his hands together and closed his eyes. “He may have had a dark complexion, but I don’t think he was a wetback, if that’s what you’re getting at.”
“Did he speak with any accent?”
“No. He sounded normal.”
“How did Altamont contact you?” Victor asked.
“He called me on the phone. I had one of our girls show me the website, and it looked good.”
Slowly, the pieces started to come together. Using the name Roberto Altamont, the unsub, it seemed, had created an elaborate and impressive website for his fake security company. (The site was now gone, but Dagny and Victor found a cache of it at archive.org.) When Altamont offered a free security consultation, Waxton jumped at the offer. “Never turn down anything that’s free,” Waxton counseled, though Altamont’s consultation turned out to be rather costly in the end.
Altamont had apparently met briefly with Waxton, who must have told him about J. C. Adams’s previous proposal. This would have given Altamont the idea to frame Adams. Dagny guessed that Altamont had planted a magnetic strip somewhere that Adams was likely to touch—on the handrail leading to his front door, perhaps—and then attached it to the misleading tape measure. On a follow-up visit to inspect the premises, Altamont had placed the tape measure with the magnetic strip containing Adams’s fingerprints along the doorway.
“Next day, he sends me the report. Everything he recommended was overkill, even more stuff than J. C. recommended, so I ignored it.”
“Is there anything else you remember about him? What was his hair like? How did he dress?”
“He had a full head of hair, cut real short, like that actor from around here—you know, his daddy anchored the news.” Waxton rapped his fingers on
his desk. “Clooney! That’s it. Dressed very well. Nicely tailored suit. Slick. Hey, you guys don’t think that Clooney kid is the guy, do you?”
“No, Mr. Waxton. We don’t think that George Clooney is the murderer,” Dagny said.
“Nevertheless, could you search Clooney’s house? See if you can find my baseball,” he implored.
“Yes, Mr. Waxton. Of course we will,” Dagny replied, starting to stand. They thanked him for his time and wandered out to the lobby. Dagny called Lieutenant Beamer and requested that a sketch artist meet with Mr. Waxton. Dagny didn’t have high hopes for the sketch, but sometimes people remember a face more clearly when they see it take shape.
As they left the bank, Victor asked, “We’re not really going to search George Clooney’s house, are we? Because that would be—”
Dagny fell to the ground. Her right knee hit the concrete first, then the left. She braced her fall with her hands, scraping her palms but protecting her head. Dagny sat up and looked back to see what had tripped her. There was nothing. She felt tired and weak, and a little dizzy. Her hands weren’t bleeding, but they were sore, and small chips of asphalt were embedded in her skin. Victor extended his hand and helped her up.
“Give me the key,” he said. “I’m driving.”
“I’m fine.” She dug through her bag and found the car keys. Victor grabbed them from her hand.
“I’m driving,” he repeated.
Dagny climbed into the passenger seat. She could barely keep her eyes open. Maybe she was sick. Dagny felt her forehead, but she wasn’t warm. Just tired. She hadn’t been running in the past few days. Maybe the lack of exercise had left her feeling depleted. There wasn’t time to feel sorry for herself. “Let’s head back to Washington and talk to the Professor. Figure out where we are, where we need to go. Maybe he’s got a return on the prints.”
“Okay,” Victor whispered, but it felt like he wasn’t listening.
They approached the highway, but Victor passed the on-ramp. “You should have turned,” Dagny said, but Victor ignored her. She closed her eyes again and felt the car gliding across the road, riding the hills, taking turns. When Victor stopped the car, they were in front of a Target.
“C’mon,” he said, opening his door.
“I’ll wait in here.” She was too tired to move.
Victor walked around the car, opened the passenger door, and gently took her hand, helping her up from the seat. “C’mon,” he said and put her arm around his shoulder to steady her.
“You want a candy bar or something?” she said. She didn’t feel like walking.
“Just follow me.” He led her into the store, past the clothing section and home furnishings, all the way to the bathroom section, and then ducked into one of the aisles and scanned the shelves. Dagny leaned against a pole, watching as Victor grabbed a box from the shelf, opened it, and set a bathroom scale on the floor in front of Dagny. “Step on this.”
“No,” Dagny said. “Not this. Not here.”
“Step on this, Dagny.”
“I’m not getting on that, Victor.”
“Why not?”
“Weight is a very private thing.”
“You’re my partner, Dagny.” He said it with affection, as if he were talking to a member of his family. “Please.”
“Not partner. Not yet, kiddo.” She hadn’t stepped on a scale since Mike was killed. What would it read? Maybe 115. Maybe less. Okay, almost certainly less. But was it a pound or two? Or something more? She had no idea what it would read, and that scared her. “Victor, I don’t want to,” she mumbled. It was the first time she’d been weak in front of him. She hoped that he understood how hard that was.
“Dag, you have to. You need to see it.” He walked behind her and put his hands under her arms, then whispered in her ear, “I’m with you on this, okay. No matter what, I’m with you.” He lifted her in the air and set her down gently on the scale. As he released her, the dial spun upward, flittering back and forth, before finally settling on a number.
Ninety-eight.
Ninety-eight pounds. She had dropped twenty-eight pounds in three and a half weeks. That wasn’t possible. “The scale is wrong,” Dagny protested.
“It’s not wrong, Dagny.” Victor grabbed another box from the shelf—a round tempered-glass scale with a digital display. He opened the box and placed the scale on the floor. “Try it.” Dagny stepped onto the scale. She waited for the red numerals to settle the way a defendant waits on a jury.
Ninety-nine pounds. Just one pound more than the other.
“It’s not right, Victor.” But this time she knew it was.
He grabbed another scale from the shelves and placed it on the ground. Dagny stepped on it. The dial flittered upward and settled quickly. It registered 100 pounds. One more pound than the last one. “See,” she laughed through her tears, “just twenty-six more scales and I’ll be back at my old weight.” She was joking, but Victor still took a fourth scale from a box and placed it before Dagny. She stepped onto it. Ninety-nine pounds.
Victor lifted Dagny off the scale, turned her around, and embraced her. “Let’s get you back on track so we can catch this guy, Dag. Okay? We can only catch him if we get you back on track. But you’re going to have to let me help you.”
Dagny had been through interventions before. They’d only worked when she’d let them. And it was hard to let them.
Victor put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed gently. “I’ve been reading up on this, and I’ve got it all figured out. We’ll buy one of these scales and take it around with us. Heck, I need it, too,” he said, patting his belly. “We’ll use the scale every day, just to make sure we’re on track. You and me both. What do you say?”
She nodded. “Okay.” She’d do this for Mike. Not for herself. “About the scale—”
“Yeah?”
“Let’s get the one that said one hundred pounds.”
Confrontation number one. In twelve years of schooling, Dagny had never been called to the principal’s office. She couldn’t imagine why she was being summoned now, with three days left in her senior year. She worried that her mother must have been killed in some horrible accident, but her mother was sitting across from Principal Weathers, tending to her fingernails with an emery board.
“Please sit down,” Weathers said. Her familiar smile seemed forced.
Dagny sat in the chair next to her mother. “Is something wrong?”
The principal leaned forward, resting her elbows on her desk. “You were told that you would be valedictorian the other day?”
“Yes.” Oh, God, they were taking it away.
“Traditionally, the valedictorian makes a speech at graduation. This year, we’ve decided...” The principal’s gaze moved to the ceiling. “We have decided not to have a valedictory speech at graduation this year.”
“Why?” Dagny demanded, nearly jumping from her chair. “I don’t understand.” She had already written a first draft.
“I could lie to you and say that we want to shorten the ceremony, or that we want more time for the guest speaker.” Weathers sighed, then returned her gaze to Dagny. “In light of your health, we don’t feel it would send a positive message if we let you speak.”
“What are you talking about?” Dagny asked, her voice settling between reasoned discourse and a scream.
“I am referring to your anorexia, Dagny.”
The word felt like a slap. Where had this come from? Rumors, whispers, the unkind gossip of jealous classmates? Dagny’s mother continued to file her nails and spoke without lifting her eyes. “My daughter is not an anorexic, Mrs. Weathers. I would know. I am her mother.”
“How much do you weigh, Dagny?”
How dare this woman ask such a personal question. “One hundred and five.” It was a lie, but maybe the sweatshirt would fool her.
“I think it’s probably less than that. Someone your height should weigh at least one twenty, don’t you think?”
“Everyone i
s different,” her mother said, working on her cuticles. “There is no ideal weight across the board. It depends on the particulars of the body. Dagny has small bones. Of course she’s going to weigh less. She’s lucky.”
She wasn’t lucky, of course.
Two. “I’m calling your mother,” Lindsay announced, standing over Dagny. Her head blocked the overhead light, giving her face an angelic glow. Dagny pulled the covers over her eyes and didn’t respond. Lindsay had threatened to call her mother a number of times throughout the semester. This was the first time that Dagny didn’t object.
Her first year at Rice had gone well. She’d bulked up to 110 pounds and had held that weight through most of the year. But this year she’d slipped into old habits, and a few new ones—an apple for breakfast, a slather of peanut butter on a piece of low-fat bread for lunch, some lettuce and a tomato for dinner. For the last two months, she’d subsisted on little more than carrots, Diet Coke, and sugar-free mints. It had taken a toll on her body. She hadn’t had her period since November. She fell a lot—her knees would buckle on steps and hills. Her skin grew paler, whiter—like a ghost.
And she’d started to grow fur.
April in Houston is like July in St. Louis, but it felt like the Arctic to Dagny. When her body wasn’t able to generate enough heat from the few calories she ingested, she began to grow lanugo—a soft, downy fur—on her chest and arms. Lanugo grows on fetuses and the malnourished. The fetuses shed the lanugo before birth.
During all of this, Dagny maintained near-perfect grades. She was president of the debate team. She edited the opinion page of the Thresher, served on the school’s honor council, and won the state’s collegiate mock trial tournament. She pursued all of the varied interests of her life with the same passion that fueled her anorexia, and she was just as successful in these endeavors as she was at starving herself. To be anorexic requires discipline and determination. It was a point of pride for Dagny—though not one she dared voice aloud—that she had never binged and purged. Bulimia was for the weak. Anorexia was for the strong.