by Andrew Grant
Chapter Eighty-three
Thursday. Morning.
Keith Johnson practically ran to greet the detectives when Brenda Lee called him to reception at the Board of Ed building, later that morning.
“Thank you.” Johnson grabbed Devereaux’s hand and pumped it vigorously. “Thank you so much. I read about what you did. I can’t tell you what a relief it is, knowing that the schools are safe. Anything I can ever do for you, just say the word.”
“How does five minutes of your time sound, right now?” Garretty gestured toward the stairs. “Your office?”
—
Johnson got the detectives situated, offered them water, then took his place behind his desk.
“Is this about the other day?” The smile had faded a little from Johnson’s face. “When I was late? Because if I was clocked speeding, or ran a red light or something, it was only down to me not wanting to keep you guys waiting.”
“No.” Devereaux shot Johnson a friendly smile. “It’s nothing like that. We just need a little information. There was a report of a disturbance where you live, last night. We’re looking for you to put a little meat on the bones for us. Help us figure out if we need to take a closer look at anything.”
“Last night?” Johnson took a swig of his water. “That didn’t really have anything to do with me. I don’t know much about it.”
“The report said it took place on your driveway.”
“Not on my driveway.” Johnson fiddled with the lid from the bottle. “More like, on the street near my driveway.”
“OK.” All the warmth drained out of Devereaux’s voice. “Then tell us what happened near your driveway.”
“Well, you know, it was late, and I was already asleep, and I probably can’t really add very much to what I guess the other officers will already have told you.”
“Did I ever tell you about a friend of mine?” Garretty leaned forward. “He went to college in Texas somewhere, just like you did. Only this guy was a football player. A real big prospect. Scouts came out to all his games. But one day, he didn’t show up for practice. He was a no-show the next day, as well. Now, this guy, let’s just say he preferred the company of other guys. There was a place he liked to hang out, whenever he had the time. But when the coaches started asking questions, his friends, they didn’t say anything. They were worried that the scouts might be prejudiced sons of bitches, so they kept their mouths shut, thinking they were helping their buddy. When the campus police found the guy’s body, it was too late to save him. But they said, if only they’d gotten to him a few hours sooner…”
“All right.” Johnson screwed the lid back on the bottle. “I get your point. But listen. I’m not trying to hide anything. It’s just, last night—it was all a giant misunderstanding. A couple of guys. Too much to drink. A stupid disagreement. You get the picture. It was all over real quick. Even the other officers who showed up agreed they didn’t need to write chapter and verse about it.”
“Forget those officers.” Devereaux took out his notebook. “The couple of guys who were fighting. Give them names.”
“I only know one. Tyler Shaw. He’s a neighbor. I only came out and tried to help because I recognized him. I guess the other guy was his boyfriend.”
“Which one was running around naked, raising hell?”
“The boyfriend. He was drunk out of his mind. Staggering about. Slurring his words so you couldn’t even tell what language he was speaking. Tyler was so embarrassed. Luckily the officers were able to help him bring the boyfriend home before things got completely out of hand.”
“And this Tyler. What’s his address?”
“Give me your book. I’ll write it down for you.”
“How long have you known him?”
“Ten years. Maybe eleven?”
“How many boyfriends has he had during that time?”
“I don’t honestly know.”
“How can you not know? It doesn’t sound like he’s too worried about discretion.”
“Why should he be? But that’s not the point. He was away for three or four years. He only moved back to Birmingham a couple of months ago.”
“Where had he been?”
“I don’t know. I guess he couldn’t bear to be around the house after his mom died. But he seems to be over that now.”
“He lived with his mother before he left town?”
“Right. It was through her that I got to know him. She was a nice lady. She asked me to help him when he was struggling to find work after the economy tanked, back in ’08 or ’09. The Board was still spending some money, refurbishing a few schools, so I put a word in for him with a couple of contractors. He’s an electrician, you see. And that’s why he looked me up when he got back to town. He needed a reference for a job.”
“Did he do any work at Jones Valley school, back in the day?”
“I think he might have. It had already been converted from a high school to a middle school, but the old 1960s building was no longer fit for purpose. It was a complete rebuild, that one. I remember thinking it was convenient for him, being just over the street from where he lived.”
“And the address you gave me. That was his mother’s house?”
“Right.”
“That’s good. Now, listen. One last thing. This is important. If you talk to Tyler Shaw, do not tell him about this conversation. Not a word. Are we clear?”
Chapter Eighty-four
Thursday. Morning.
Diane McKinzie hadn’t left her bedroom yet.
She hadn’t even gotten out of bed. Her phone had rung unanswered half a dozen times on her nightstand, then buzzed to announce half a dozen voicemails. They were probably all from Kelly Peterson. They were probably increasingly angry. Diane may well have been jeopardizing her job by ignoring them. But at that moment, she didn’t care. Because she was transfixed. She couldn’t tear her attention away from the three solid steel bolts, evenly spaced on the inside of her door.
Diane was going to miss her son, she knew. But she wouldn’t miss those bolts. She could remove them, now that he was gone. She could go to bed at night without having to lock herself in to feel safe. She could get to work on fixing the dents in the walls and the woodwork. Repair the broken picture frames. Replace the smashed light fixtures. Get new china. Channel her energy into her career. Take a course at the university. Travel. Read. Watch TV. Spend time without worrying about accounting for it.
She could start socializing again.
Maybe even start a relationship…
Chapter Eighty-five
Thursday. Morning.
“I remember this house.”
Devereaux rolled to a stop at the side of Dowell Avenue and turned to Garretty. Jones Valley school—still fenced off and swathed in police tape—was on their right, and the address Keith Johnson had given them was facing it from across the street. “I walked by it every day for two years, before I switched high schools. I even remember seeing a boy playing in the yard, some afternoons. I wonder if that was Shaw? He was a skinny-looking kid. Wore weird clothes. And he was always on his own. Never seemed to be any friends around. Or brothers or sisters.”
The detectives made their way up the path that divided the bungalow’s front yard, its stone slabs lifted in places by encroaching tree roots.
“I always liked this place. It was so neat and well kept. But look at it now!” Devereaux pointed to a circular flower bed, full of rocks and dried-up soil. “See that? It was always crammed full of plants. You could smell them from the street. The grass was…well, alive. The walls were sky blue, a bit like they are now, only freshly painted. Not faded and peeling. There were white shutters either side of both windows. I wonder where they went? And there was no need for security bars covering them, back then.”
Devereaux held back, shaking his head at the state of the house while Garretty took the three steps up to the front door and rang the bell. There was no reply.
“What do you think?” Garretty
turned to Devereaux. “Watch the place?”
“I don’t know.” Devereaux moved across and peered in through the front bedroom window. “Remember Irvin’s profile? A guy who had access to the school. Was from the neighborhood. Lived with a relative, but doesn’t anymore. Had gone out of circulation. Would be dangerous if he resurfaced. All on top of that weirdness with the naked boyfriend running around, and another guy reported missing? I say we should take a look inside.”
“That’s too sketchy. We’d never get a warrant.”
“We don’t need one. Listen. Can’t you hear someone calling for help? Half muffled? With a slurry foreign accent?”
“No.”
Devereaux strode back to the steps and slammed his foot into the front door, just below the handle. “Sure you do.”
Chapter Eighty-six
Thursday. Morning.
Alexandra had given her daughter the day off.
She’d made a brief attempt to pull together some exercises for Nicole to complete on her own, but her hangover had made even that much thinking impossible. She’d collapsed back onto the couch for another hour, feeling sorry for herself, then made for the kitchen to dose herself up on Advil and iced tea. She followed up the drugs with a hot shower, which took more of the edge off the discomfort. Then she went to look for distraction in the news sites on her iPad.
The first story to catch her attention was of course about how Devereaux had chased and caught Daniel McKinzie in the aftermath of the fire at Putman school. Alexandra was surprised Devereaux hadn’t shot the kid, especially after she read about him getting doused in gasoline. And she was a little shocked to discover that Daniel was Frederick McKinzie’s grandson. She remembered reading a couple of Frederick’s groundbreaking articles when she was growing up, including Kathryn Thornton’s spacewalk and the conviction of Governor Hunt, and had always cheered to hear of a guy from Birmingham cleaning up at the national journalism awards.
So in two generations it had gone from Frederick McKinzie, newspaper titan, to Daniel McKinzie, pyromaniac? How did that happen? Alexandra Googled the family. There was plenty of information about Diane McKinzie, Frederick’s daughter, including links to all kinds of articles she’d written. But nothing about Daniel’s father. He’d been out of the picture for years, it seemed. Diane had been bringing her child up on her own. Just as Alexandra had been, before Devereaux showed back up.
Would Diane have taken her husband back, if she’d had the chance? Or had she been the one behind them splitting up? Maybe she’d seen something in the guy she didn’t like. Something she’d tried in vain to keep from being passed on to her child.
Alexandra thought of the picture she’d seen of Raymond Kerr and Devereaux. She wondered if Diane had any pictures of her son and his father like that. She switched apps on her iPad and brought up a shot of Devereaux and Nicole standing outside her house. She stared at it for thirty seconds. Then went and locked her front door.
Chapter Eighty-seven
Thursday. Morning.
It took two more solid kicks before the front door completely gave way.
Devereaux went into the bungalow ahead of Garretty, and both men breathed through their mouths to save themselves from gagging on the harsh stench of antiseptic that hung in the air. The hallway was decorated with floral wallpaper, which was badly faded and starting to peel away in several places. There was an empty coatrack to the left, next to a framed photograph of a woman in her forties—presumably Tyler Shaw’s mother, the previous owner of the house—and beneath that a scuffed pair of black leather work boots.
The dark wooden floor hadn’t been polished in years, and it showed signs of water damage near one of the internal doorways. The detectives tried that one first, and found it led to the bathroom. It looked like it dated back to the 1950s, with cracked subway tile on the walls; tiny, hexagonal ones on the floor; and a heavy cast-iron bath with a newer showerhead above it. There was a small wooden table between the sink and the toilet, and a door to a closet in the far corner. The door was secured with a hefty padlock and a galvanized steel hasp, like the sort normally used on sheds or stables.
Devereaux picked up the table and used it to hammer the lock until the screws holding it in place gave way. Then he opened the door, and recoiled as the chemical stench grew even stronger. Inside the closet was a hot water cylinder, and crammed above that was an open-topped plastic barrel about four feet tall and two and a half feet in diameter. On the floor, wrapped in a grubby towel, there was a set of tools. A surgeon’s saw. Two butcher’s knives. And a pair of pliers.
“Cooper, look.” Garretty was crouching down, his face close to the floor. “Blood.” The remains of almost scrubbed away, black-brown flecks dotted the tiles. “There’s more on the grout between the tiles above the bath.” Garretty straightened up. “A bit on the shower curtain. Some on the toilet. But one area that looks clean.” He pointed with his foot to a thirty-inch gap between the toilet and the bath.
“Shaw’s definitely our guy.” Devereaux frowned. “That’ll be where he puts the barrel. The bones that Young found at the school, across the road? They’d been stripped with acid. This is how Shaw does it. He dumps the bodies in the bath. Cuts them up with those tools from the closet. Drops the pieces in the barrel and leaves them until the acid has dissolved all the flesh away. Then he pours the mush down the pan. It’s like a production line.”
“It doesn’t look very solid.” Garretty gingerly prodded the outside of the barrel. “Wouldn’t the acid eat right through, if it’s strong enough to dissolve human flesh? Wouldn’t the bath be a better place for it? Why not just lie the body down and pour the acid in on top?”
“That depends on the acid.” Devereaux pulled the top of the barrel toward him, sniffed, and immediately his eyes began to water. “There’s at least one kind where the only thing it doesn’t eat through is plastic. A crime scene guy told me about it once, swapping war stories over a couple of beers. Hydro something. Hydrofluoric, maybe? We’ll get all this stuff to the lab, pronto. They’ll tell us for sure. And think about it. A body will dissolve much quicker if you cut it up. More surface area.”
“That’s sick.” Garretty backed away, his eyes also starting to sting. “And here’s another problem. The bones at the school are old. This stuff looks like it’s been used recently. People are missing now. If Shaw’s done his thing with them, where are their skeletons?”
“I don’t know.” Devereaux shrugged. “They’ll be around here somewhere, I guess.”
“Gross.” Garretty shivered, despite the warmth in the room. “Come on. This place creeps me out. Let’s check the rest of the house. Look for signs of the boyfriend. Maybe Shaw hasn’t turned him into gravy, just yet.”
—
Devereaux and Garretty worked their way through the living room, dining room, kitchen, and back bedroom without finding anything else relevant.
“This is obviously where Shaw sleeps.” Devereaux gestured toward the heap of unmade sheets on the mattress when they reached the front bedroom. “Wait. Hold on a second.” Devereaux reached down and took hold of the cuff of a navy blue dress shirt that was almost hidden under the edge of the bed. He pulled it out, laid it on the mattress, and smoothed it down. Then he crossed to the ornate mahogany wardrobe next to the door. He took out another shirt—this one with bright cartoonish pictures of Saturn and Jupiter all over it. He brought it back to the bed. Laid it on top of the first one. And pointed to the three-inch margin of blue cotton that was visible, all the way around.
“Someone else was here,” Devereaux said. “I hope those mutts in uniform didn’t bring the poor guy back to be chopped up and flushed down the toilet.”
“Here’s something else.” Garretty had opened a wooden jewelry box inlaid with delicate turquoise flowers, which he’d found on the nightstand. He slipped on a pair of latex gloves and lifted out a stack of laminated cards. “Drivers’ licenses. They must be souvenirs of his victims.” He shuffled through them. �
��Jesus, Cooper. There are twenty-two of them.”
Garretty laid the licenses out on the bed next to the shirts and stood at Devereaux’s side, looking at them. Reading each name. Studying each face.
“Well, the victims are all Caucasian,” Garretty said after a couple of minutes. “It’s hard to tell anything about age, because we don’t know when he took them, relative to the expiration date on the licenses.”
“There looks like three groups, to me.” Devereaux started to form the licenses into separate lines. “We’ve got a bunch of older ones from Alabama. Eight of them. And one of those has been cut up and taped back together. Then eleven from out of state. They’re from all over the place, coast to coast. Then three more from Alabama. All from Birmingham, in fact. And look. This one. I recognize the name. He’s the missing professor. Diane McKinzie wrote a blog post about him when he disappeared. I remember her complaining about it. She thought blogging was beneath her. Anyway, that leaves two. My money says one’ll be the naked guy from last night.”
“Sven Erikkson.” Garretty picked up one of the more recent licenses and pointed to the large blue shirt. “Sven was six feet six. Two hundred and sixty pounds. He’ll be the guy.”
“Sven was a monster.” Devereaux took the shirt and held it out in front of him. “Hard to get the drop on a guy his size.”
Garretty pointed to a pair of whiskey tumblers that had been left on the nightstand. One had been tipped over on its side. “Maybe Shaw slipped him something in his drink. That would explain the slurred speech when he tried to get away. Assuming it was him. I’ll email a picture of his license to Keith Johnson, right now. See if he confirms the ID.”