by Andrew Grant
To think she’d actually encouraged her son to follow in her footsteps! Diane rolled her chair back from her desk. She must have been crazy. Thank goodness he’d had the sense to find his own direction. She just hoped that he wouldn’t have to put up with this kind of nonsense if he could make it as a scientist. She hoped his work would be appreciated, at least.
Her father would have hated pretty much everything about the industry these days. The management-by-spreadsheet approach. The increased commercialization. The technological changes. Diane hated these things, too. They made it hard for true quality to shine through. For going the extra mile to be noticed, let alone appreciated. And given those difficulties, Daniel’s little incident couldn’t have come at a worse time. Maybe that was the reason she’d been demoted to the blog? It made sense. And it could be fixed. All she’d have to do was find a way to explain the circumstances to Kelly. To make her understand that what she’d seen wasn’t Daniel’s usual mode of behavior. It was only the stress talking. School was hard for him. And he’d just been disqualified from an important science competition because his entry was too advanced for the idiot teachers to comprehend…
Chapter Twenty-eight
Monday. Afternoon.
“We’re looking for Aaron White.”
A balding, heavyset guy in his mid-thirties peered at Devereaux from around the side of a long, shiny, chrome-plated cappuccino machine, then went back to polishing it with the corner of his apron. “Sorry. Whitey’s not here.”
“I just called.” The café was the first place Devereaux had tried after Irvin gave him White’s name and employment details. “I was told he was around today.”
“He was.” The guy wouldn’t meet Devereaux’s eye. “But he went out.”
“When will he be back?” Devereaux leaned on the counter, planting his hands between display boxes of cookies and cake bars.
“I don’t know.” The guy shrugged.
“Let me tell you about a guy I once met.” Garretty stepped up alongside Devereaux. “He was very unhelpful. Wouldn’t give straight answers to even the simplest of questions. Thought he was really clever. Then, one day he cracked wise with the wrong two people. And you know what? He took the ass-kicking of his short and worthless life that very afternoon.”
“I’m being honest with you here.” The guy stopped his polishing. “It’s impossible to say when Whitey’ll come back.”
“Any reason to believe he won’t be coming back?” Devereaux leaned farther forward. “Did he say anything to you?”
“No. I swear.”
“Where did he go?”
“If I was forced to guess, I’d say the clinic.”
“Which clinic?”
“It’s a little embarrassing for him. Whitey has this problem, you see, with his—”
“Hey, jackass!” Another man emerged through the swing door at the back of the serving area, also wearing a black apron. He was a little older but thinner, and he had a broad smile on his face. “Knock it off.” He gave the first guy a playful smack across the back of the head, then turned to Devereaux and Garretty. “Don’t listen to him. I’m Aaron White. How can I help you gentlemen?”
Devereaux showed White his badge, then gestured to an empty table at the rear of the café. “Let’s sit and talk for a minute. You can have your hilarious buddy bring us some coffee. On the house.”
—
Devereaux waited until the three of them were settled then got straight down to business. “Mr. White. A question. Where were you yesterday?”
“That’s easy.” White smiled. “Here. I was working.”
“All day?” Devereaux frowned.
“No.” White loosened his apron strings. “Three to eleven. I don’t mind working Sundays, but I hate early mornings. I slept till around noon, hung out at home, then came here. Arrived maybe ten minutes early. Why? What’s this about?”
“What time did you leave?”
“I don’t know. Eleven-fifteen? Eleven-twenty? It doesn’t take long to close up.”
“I mean earlier in the day. When you took your dinner break.”
“Oh, no. I had dinner here. In the back. I can eat for free that way. And the food’s pretty good. Why would I go out?”
“So you didn’t leave until your shift was done? Not even for a minute?”
“No. I stayed until the last cup was clean and the last square inch of floor was mopped. Maybe if you told me what this is all about—”
“Can anyone vouch for you being here, uninterrupted, until after eleven?”
“Of course. It was busy yesterday. Not everywhere’s open on a Sunday. It was a mob scene. We had a ton of customers. They’d all have seen me. And then there’s Beth. Beth Renaldi. My co-worker.”
“Where’s this Beth now?”
“At her other job, I guess. Something at the university. She only works here weekends.”
“Write down her address and phone number.” Devereaux slid his notebook across the table, open at a blank page.
“I can’t.” The smile on White’s face faded a little. “I don’t know it. Our boss will, though. Want me to write her details instead?”
“Can’t hurt.”
“What about Saturday?” Garretty gestured to the guy at the counter to hurry up with their drinks. “What were you doing then?”
“The same thing.” White finished writing and passed the book to Devereaux. “Another three to eleven. But guys, listen. You’re making me nervous, not telling me what this is about. Can you clue me in? Or let me get back to work?”
“We’ll let you go in a second.” Devereaux slipped the book back into his pocket. “Just one more question. I want you to cast your mind back a little. OK, quite a lot. To when you were a kid. At school. You were at Jones Valley for a while. Then you transferred. Finished seventh and eighth grades at Inglewood. Why was that?”
“My dad’s job moved.” White’s face fell further when he saw a customer drop a five-dollar bill by the register, which went straight into the first guy’s pocket. “Can I go now?”
“Where did his job move to?”
“The airport.”
“That’s hardly the other side of the world. You could have stayed at Jones Valley if you’d wanted to.”
“I guess. But it was a hassle, the extra travel time.”
“That was the only reason? Nothing bad happened to you at Jones Valley? Nothing that made you want to leave?”
“You can tell us in confidence.” Garretty leaned in and lowered his voice. “Or we could go somewhere more private to talk?”
“I don’t know what you guys are driving at. Jones Valley was fine. Inglewood was fine. They were both just schools. What do you want from me?”
“Do you remember the principal at Jones Valley?” Devereaux waved the first guy away as he finally tried to deliver their coffee. “Joseph Oliver?”
White half closed his eyes for a moment, then shook his head. “Nope. Can’t say I do. Why? Should I?”
“No. Actually, I’m glad you don’t.” Devereaux gave White a business card then got to his feet. “You can get back to work now. And if that other guy doesn’t give you half the tips from while we were talking, call me. I’ll see to it he gets fired.”
Chapter Twenty-nine
Monday. Afternoon.
Alexandra had never been so distracted. Not when she was waiting to see if she’d gotten into Notre Dame, for her undergrad. Or Duke, for law school. Or waiting for the jury to return in her first trial. Or while she was nursing her sick mother. Even when she was waiting to see if she really had gotten pregnant by a cop who’d just shot a fourteen-year-old boy. But as Nicole rocked rhythmically back and forth on her creaky wooden chair, reciting her irregular French verbs, Alexandra simply could not concentrate.
“All right, then, Pumpkin.” Alexandra felt light-headed. “That’s enough French for today. Time for our break. Do you want to play in the yard for a little while?”
“No thanks, Mom
my.” Nicole hopped down from the chair and headed toward the hallway. “Not today. I want to draw.”
Alexandra waited until she heard her daughter’s footsteps reach the top of the stairs, then made her way to the living room. She crossed to the desk and unlocked the bottom drawer on the left. Took out the thick white envelope. Flicked a few stray pieces of potpourri out of her way and sank down until she was sitting with her back to the wall. Took out the papers. And started to leaf through the stack.
She could hardly bring herself to look at most of the images, but she didn’t have to focus on them too closely. There was one in particular she wanted to find, and it had a very distinctive format. It was a color photocopy of an old Polaroid photograph, with its pastel, three-inch-square image all at sea in the surrounding expanse of plain paper.
The photo’s composition was simple. It showed a man standing outside a plain brick house with his arm around a little boy. Alexandra recognized both people. The caption—written in a shaky, hesitant hand on what would have been the lower border of the original picture—read Daddy and Cooper (age 4). But something was wrong. Something that had been gnawing at Alexandra’s subconscious since she’d worked her way through the pages this morning.
The man in the photograph wasn’t Cooper’s father. He was the man who’d killed Cooper’s father. Raymond Kerr. One of the most notorious murderers in the history of Birmingham. What could the two of them have been doing together? And who could have been stupid enough to mislabel the picture that way?
Chapter Thirty
Monday. Afternoon.
Captain Emrich strode into the conference room and flung a folded newspaper onto the table, sending it skidding the length of the battered and pockmarked surface. “Have you all seen this?”
“Seen it.” Devereaux picked up the paper and started to leaf through it. “Haven’t read it yet.”
“It’s a disgrace.” Emrich stalked around to the head of the table, staring in turn at Hale, Irvin, and Garretty. “We look very bad. And there’s worse online, in their blog.” He almost spat the word out. “Patrol’s up to its ass in petty complaints, with so many kids roaming around while their parents keep them out of school. The switchboard’s jammed with callers. Half the businesses in the city aren’t happy because employees with young children aren’t showing up to work. And we’re being painted as the bad guys. Which needs to stop. Immediately.”
And in other news, water is wet, Devereaux thought.
“We need to catch this arsonist.” Emrich emphasized his point by chopping the air with the side of his hand. “We need more effort. Maximum effort. I want everyone giving a hundred and ten percent, until we get this job done. Is that clear?”
Devereaux wondered which buttons Russell had pushed after the meeting, to get Emrich so riled up. And whether maybe Russell wasn’t such a bad guy, after all, if he could have such an effect.
“We all understand, sir.” The frustration was plain in Hale’s voice. “I briefed you on progress this morning, and since then, in concert with the Bureau, we’ve followed another line of inquiry.”
“Where did this line of inquiry lead?” Emrich’s chopping hand had balled itself into a fist. “To an arrest? A credible one this time?”
Hale took a deep breath. “It’s only a matter of time, sir.”
“Time is the one thing we don’t have.” Emrich banged the table. “I want more effort. More ideas. Come on, people. Think!”
Hale and her detectives had seen the captain in this kind of mood before, so they kept their heads below the parapet.
“Honestly, Captain?” It was Irvin who finally broke the silence. “Unless we get something from the interviews, which is doubtful as we’re more than halfway through and the list was carefully prioritized, we don’t have many options left. We may have to wait for him to strike again, and hope he makes a mistake this time.”
“And hope that no one dies in the process?” Emrich banged the table, harder. “Unacceptable!”
“Will he strike again?” Devereaux pushed the newspaper to the side. “If this is about revenge, and the guy had a grudge against these two specific schools, then maybe he’s done?”
“It’s impossible to be sure.” Irvin frowned. “But I doubt it. If he’d stopped after one school, then maybe. But hitting two suggests he has a broader grudge. Plus he’s shown he’s good at it. He knows he can get away with it now. He’s probably enjoying it. And here’s the key. Each fire might give him temporary satisfaction. But if it doesn’t deal with his fundamental, underlying anger, he’ll keep going until we stop him. He may even escalate, and start targeting inhabited buildings at some stage.”
“You keep saying he.” Hale frowned. “Do we know it’s a man setting these fires? Couldn’t a woman do it?”
“I say he because statistically arson is overwhelmingly a male crime.” Irvin looked at Hale. “But you’re right, Lieutenant. It’s possible we’re dealing with a female perpetrator. And if we’re right about the motive being a lack of professional recognition or respect, that tips the scale back a little in the female direction, because women, as we know, are far more likely to be underappreciated in the workplace.”
“We’re going off-point here.” Emrich clapped his hands. “Male or female, I don’t care. I just want the asshole stopped before someone dies. And I’m not prepared to wait for him—or her, Lieutenant—to destroy another school. So. Come on. Ideas, people. We need a game-changer here.”
“I actually agree that it’s better not to wait.” Irvin placed her hands flat on the table. “If we wait, we leave the odds stacked in the arsonist’s favor. We put all the power in his hands. We let him decide where to attack, when, and so on. And there are a lot of schools in Birmingham for him to pick from. Even with the extra uniforms you’ve got on patrol and all the security guards the Board of Ed’s paying for, we can’t watch every inch of every one, twenty-four/seven. But we do have another option. Something we haven’t talked about yet. A way to take back the initiative, and hopefully catch the guy in the act. It’s something that at the Bureau we call a proactive strategy.”
“Proactive.” Emrich nodded. “I like that. Tell me more. What? How? Where? When?”
“There are two stages.” Irvin gripped the index finger on her left hand. “First, we select the school we want the arsonist to target next, and we harden it. We exclude all civilians, mount the necessary surveillance, and flood the area with police and Bureau personnel.” She gripped a second finger. “Second, we draw the perpetrator into the open, and arrest him when he attempts to make his attack.”
“How do you know you can pull the guy’s strings that way?” Hale spread her hands. “How do you know he won’t just do his own thing, regardless?”
“We know because we use his own psychology against him.” Irvin spoke slowly. “He’s trying to show the schools, the Board of Education, the city, the world at large, that they were wrong to undervalue him. He’s doing it in an impersonal, but very public way. In other words, he didn’t go to his old boss’s house when no witnesses were around and punch him in the stomach. Instead, he set fires that people for miles around could see. Which means the public exposure angle is crucial to him. He’ll be hanging on every word, online, and in the press. So what we do is plant a story of our own. We disparage his efforts to date. And we include what amounts to a dare to attack the school we’ve already selected.”
“That could work, I guess.” Emrich scratched his temple. “If it’s worded carefully enough.”
“We have plenty of precedent to guide us. The Bureau’s used this technique many, many times. We’ve always had a successful outcome, so we’re not breaking new ground here. We’re not crossing our fingers and hoping.” Irvin cleared her throat. “We could start by saying that the arsonist’s performance isn’t very impressive. That he or she got lucky at Jones Valley, stumbling by chance on one of only two schools in the whole city without upgraded sprinklers. And that the failure to cause any serious d
amage at the second school, Inglenook, demonstrated a ridiculous lack of technical prowess and basic research skills. We’ll put in a quote from a suitable city official to subtly point to the school we want to use as a target, saying it’s under renovation and so will soon have a new style sprinkler system fitted. Then we’ll close by saying the police think that having been so comprehensively thwarted by technology and his own incompetence, the arsonist wouldn’t dare try again.”
“I’m not convinced.” Garretty narrowed his eyes for a moment. “I had a girlfriend once, when I was fresh out of college. A health freak. From New York. She took it into her head that I ate too much ’cue. She wanted me to switch to salad and that kind of crap. So she left all kinds of magazines lying around, open on pages with articles about how awful slaughterhouses are and the like. Do you know what I did, every time I saw one? I headed straight down to Johnny Ray’s.”
“I’m guessing the relationship didn’t last long.” Devereaux winked at his partner.
“So your behavior was totally consistent and predictable?” Irvin smiled, then turned back to Captain Emrich. “Now, obviously the wording can be tweaked until everyone’s happy with it. And the Bureau’s a little more sophisticated than Tommy’s ex-girlfriend. I’m not pulling this stuff out of the air. The approach is tried and tested. I could give you five examples off the top of my head where this technique has worked. Take one from the Chicago office. It’s a famous case. A guy was tampering with pharmaceuticals. People were getting killed by them. The perp was running around the city at will, hitting whichever drugstores took his fancy. Until the agent on the case planted an article in the local paper, just like the one we’re talking about, goading the guy and guiding him without his realizing it to a particular store. It was full of agents, naturally, and the guy was caught that same day.”