“This is official state police business,” Susan replied, trying to hide a smile. “I’m sure there’s enough in the budget for two separate rooms at a crappy motel. Why make things awkward when they don’t have to be? Let’s write our own movie.”
Liam’s shoulders relaxed, and he opened his door. “You’re the director,” he said. “I’m just a stagehand. Lead the way.”
They got two rooms next to one another but worked in Susan’s. The sun had gone down, and the neon lights from the motel’s sign in the parking lot cast everything in a pink hue. Remnants of Chinese takeout were scattered across the small round table near the bathroom. The case files had been spread out on Susan’s bed and on top of the dresser.
“These two kids, Marcus and Bonnie, were taken from really small towns, both at the end of an after-school sports program,” Susan said, tapping Bonnie’s file with the pen she was holding. “I’d say that could be a pattern. A kind of MO.”
Liam nodded. “Agreed. Taking the kids from a small town was both clever and risky. Risky because towns that small know when a stranger rolls in, so they would be easy to identify after the fact. All the local folks would point to the person who didn’t belong, and that would be the primary suspect. But it was also clever because towns as small as Hawley and Shintown don’t have the manpower or infrastructure from a law enforcement standpoint to carry out an investigation like that. By the time they realized the kids weren’t lost or didn’t run away or weren’t at a friend’s house, the kidnapper would be long gone.”
“And back in the eighties, law enforcement didn’t have the kind of computer systems that could match an abduction with a similar one across the state or detect some kind of a pattern. Different departments had no idea who was working on what. They were all concentrating on their own jurisdictions.”
“Exactly.” Liam got up from the bed and paged through Marcus’s file, which was on the dresser. “And as far as the after-school activities, that might’ve just been an easier opportunity. James was a teacher. He knew the deal. He knew they’d be walking home from school hours after most of the kids had been dismissed, which would make it easier for him to grab them and run. Less of a crowd milling around the streets.”
Susan stuck the pen in her mouth and paced the small room as she spoke. “But other than the after-school thing, these two abductions don’t really fit a pattern. One’s a boy, and one’s a girl. Marcus was twelve, and Bonnie was fifteen. Bonnie was Caucasian with red hair. Marcus was African American with black hair. Nothing matches. Seems totally random except for the fact that they were both coming home from an after-school practice. We know it’s not random because James Darville has their teeth. And he knew Noreen Garland, who had a job crossing the state twice a year. We know James traveled with her sometimes because Elizabeth Bernstein recognized him as the man being with her.”
“Yeah, but the Ruleys didn’t recognize him. Neither did Ben Pillsman. He just knew Noreen.”
“Maybe James was out scouting for victims while Noreen was having lunch with her clientele.”
Liam stared at the picture of each kid, flipping between them. “They both have brown eyes. That could be something.”
“Maybe.”
Liam closed the files. “Noreen running interference for Darville could be why he was able to get away with abductions in a small town. Noreen wasn’t a stranger, as far as those folks were concerned. They knew her, and if James went with her often enough, they knew him too. No one would suspect either of them. They come and go twice a year with their catalogs and get to talking to townspeople and grab some lunch or dinner or whatever. They were part of each town they visited. Hiding in plain sight.”
Susan grabbed her phone from the nightstand. “If they traveled together, there’s no way Noreen could be in the dark about the abductions. You can’t hide a kid in the trunk of a car you’re sharing and dispose of the body without the person you’re riding with knowing. Wouldn’t make sense. She was part of it.”
“Like a Bonnie and Clyde type. Roll into a town and roll out with a victim.”
“But why?”
“No idea.”
She began dialing. “I’m wondering how many times they’ve done this. We happened to find two teeth, and they both connect to unsolved missing persons cases. How many unsolved abductions are still out there that we didn’t find? What else was in that floor that we didn’t get to see?”
“Who you calling?” Liam asked.
“The barracks back home. Got some assignments for them. Before we left, I called the three schools James Darville taught at to try and get his employment records. They all told me I’d need a warrant, so that’s what I’m going to get. If we can match vacation days or sick time with the schedule Noreen kept for her catalog deliveries, we might really have something. And I’m going to need old records from Sears too. Plus, we need to find out where Noreen Garland is living these days. If she’s part of this, the people who took Darville might be after her too. We need to find her. And fast.”
55
James woke up and looked around the empty basement, unsure of where he was until tiny slivers of memory began to break through the fog. He was in his wheelchair, sitting in front of the television with The Birds on again. The television remote was on his lap. He turned the movie off and wheeled himself to the bottom of the stairs, stopping to listen for anyone walking around upstairs. He hadn’t seen the woman in a while, or perhaps he had and just couldn’t remember. The humming of silence filled his ears. No murmured voices or muffled conversations. It appeared as if he was alone, yet at the same time, he couldn’t help but feel as if someone was watching.
An empty plate of crumbs sat on the coffee table next to an empty mug of coffee, and a memory came. The man had fed him after his shower. He’d pissed himself. He’d woken up in a pool of his own urine, and the man had come down to help him out of the bed and into the shower. James checked his pajamas and saw that they were the same ones he always wore, so the man must’ve washed them. He held his arm up and smelled the fabric. Yes, it smelled like fresh linen. The man had washed his clothes.
And the sheets. What about the sheets?
James wheeled himself into the bedroom area. The bedpan was on the bed where it always was, clean and ready. The sheets and comforter were pulled up, and the bed had been made. He reached out and pulled a fistful of blanket toward him, sticking it up to his face and inhaling as deeply as his lungs would allow. The fresh scent of cotton and cleanliness filled his senses. He did the same thing with the sheets. The man had washed everything.
A small piece of paper slipped from behind his pillow when he pulled on the comforter. He watched it as it rocked gently to the floor, landing next to his wheelchair. It might as well have been ten miles away. There was no way he could reach it from the chair. He couldn’t bend that far with the way his legs were extended out in front of him.
The paper landed facedown. He couldn’t see what was written on it. It could’ve been junk or a tag or a piece of doodle he didn’t remember drawing, but something told him it was important. Important enough to keep under his pillow, apparently. He wondered if the man had seen what he’d written, and if that was a good thing or not.
James looked around the room, searching for something he could reach the paper with. A pile of cleaning materials sat in the far corner by the electrical panel. He could see a bucket, a mop, a stack of rags, a dustpan and brush, and a broom. The broom would work.
He wheeled himself toward the supplies, turning and snatching the broom all in one motion, aware that the light wasn’t as strong in the back corner and the ghosts were always waiting in the shadows. He laid the broom across his lap and closed his eyes into slits until he was back in the bedroom area and under the safety of the wall sconces.
The top edge of the paper was curled up a bit. James took a steady breath and eased the broom handle beneath it. He flicked his wrist, and the paper flew up for a moment, then came to rest again, facedow
n.
“Damn.”
He tried it again, and this time he flicked the broom handle a little harder. The paper shot into the air, toppling end over end several times before coming to rest on the floor again next to the wheelchair.
James bent over the chair and looked. The paper had fallen message up. As he read the words, he could remember what the man had instructed him to do. He needed to challenge things. Ask the right questions. He needed to find the truth. And some of that truth had been written on the paper that was lying on the floor.
James read the message over and over again. He knew what it meant. There was no sense of confusion this time. He knew. It told him what to do. What he could do. It was the truth among so many lies he couldn’t remember them telling him.
WALK
56
Susan made her way onto the investigators’ floor just as Crosby was exiting his office. She yawned and waved, fighting the urge to stretch her sore back. “I was just coming to see you,” she said. “I was hoping you were still here.”
“Wasn’t going home before you and I debriefed. We got some information today while you were gone. Come in and talk.”
She followed him into his office, her stomach rumbling with hunger. They’d left Pennsylvania just after lunch, and she’d come straight to the barracks. It wasn’t quite dinnertime yet, but she hadn’t eaten anything other than a blueberry muffin and a coffee. She popped a handful of Tic Tacs she kept in her bag to keep her satisfied for the time being.
Crosby sat down behind his desk and pulled a large binder from atop his printer. “So I’m told we’re looking for a Noreen Garland now?”
“That’s right,” Susan replied. “I got an updated warrant list to the DA’s office that added James Darville’s employment files from the schools he was teaching at back in West Finley and Beaverdale. I also have some of our guys talking to the Sears headquarters in Illinois to see if they could come up with some old schedules Noreen might’ve kept from her distribution routes. It’s a long shot, but I have two witnesses that put Noreen in their town, and one witness who puts James Darville with Noreen. Elizabeth Bernstein ID’d James and Noreen. A pharmacist Noreen used to deliver to back in Shintown also confirmed her ID but didn’t know James. I checked back with the mayor in Hawley, and he dug through some old records and confirmed the town was on the Sears distribution route. He couldn’t find anything to confirm whether it was Noreen who was making the deliveries, though. I need to put these loose ends together.”
“Sounds like the trip was worth it.”
“I’m hoping to look at Darville’s work records to track the vacation days or sick time he took from his school and match them with the schedule Noreen kept for her catalog deliveries. If we have matches, we can start to tell a story about his past, and if we can do that, maybe we can connect the past and present and find both Darville and the people who killed the trooper. In the meantime, we need to locate Noreen so we can start working from the other end too.”
Crosby waited for her to sit. “Start a search in areas surrounding West Finley. If Noreen Garland knew Darville, she probably lived somewhere nearby. We checked, and there’s a bunch of Noreen Garlands on social media, but none currently in West Finley. Same with a Google search. Too many to count, but none in West Finley. We can’t check for warrants or outstanding tickets or IRS tax filings or social security payments until we know which Noreen Garland we’re looking for.”
“Darville could even be with her right now.”
“Okay, stay on it.” Crosby opened the binder. “In the meantime, I have an update for you. We ID’d the Jane Doe from the nurse’s trunk. Her name was Kimberly Stokes, but everyone knew her on the street as Kim Kitten. She was a prostitute from the Bronx. Worked Saint Anne’s Avenue between 143rd Street and 149th, just outside Saint Mary’s Park. Got her file from the NYPD after she showed up during our NCIC search. Arrested a bunch of times for soliciting and petty theft, but nothing major. I want you to go down there and ask around. See what you can find out about her. Try and figure out what she was doing up in Verplanck that got her in the trunk of that nurse’s car.”
Susan took the file, then paged through it, skimming the information. “Yes, sir.”
“We also got Rebecca Hill’s cell phone records back.”
“Anything stick out?”
“Maybe. There’s a number that comes up a bunch of times in the last eight weeks. Pennsylvania area code.”
Susan’s eyes widened. “Noreen Garland?”
“No idea,” Crosby replied. “We called it, and it rolled to a voice mail that has a standard message, and the voice mail is full. Forensics tried tracing the signal, but couldn’t get anything. The phone is either off or in a place where there are no cell towers in the vicinity. We’re backtracking the number to get to the owner. Just a matter of working with a new warrant and the cell phone company.”
“That could be the break we need.”
“Let’s hope so.” He handed her the cell records.
“Anything else?” Susan asked, putting the records with Kim Kitten’s file.
Crosby shook his head. “That’s it for now. Go home. See your kids. I want you in the Bronx with Triston. I already gave him the heads-up. See what you can find on Ms. Kitten. Hopefully that’ll bear some fruit.”
Susan got up from her seat. “We’re on it.”
“How was your trip otherwise?”
“Long.”
“And your boyfriend?”
“I’m not even going there.”
“Boy toy?”
“Good night, LT.”
He was still chuckling to himself when she walked out of his office. She couldn’t help but smile herself. There weren’t a lot of men who could bust her chops like Crosby could, and even fewer she’d allow to get away with it, but he was like a father to her, and their relationship was so much deeper than supervisor and subordinate. She trusted him and he trusted her, implicitly. It was the kind of bond that made her want to do right by him and his department each and every time she could. If she made one promise to herself, it would be to serve that man to her fullest capacity.
That meant solving her case and clearing it.
57
Susan went home and caught the twins right before they were turning in for the night. A silent house was suddenly filled with running and jumping and laughter and excited little kid conversation. Casey and Tim showered their mother with butterfly kisses, and Susan returned the love with giant hugs and tickles all around. It felt good to be home, but she knew the stay would be short lived. If the twins hadn’t been expecting her and calling every half hour for an update on when she’d be arriving, she would’ve slept at the barracks and saved the commute back and forth for what was going to be a short turnaround. Susan read the kids a book, tucked them in, took a shower, and caught a quick few hours of sleep before she was back up and on the road. You didn’t get to talk to ladies of the street during everyone else’s regular working hours. If you wanted information from real sources, you needed to be up and out and among those real sources. That was the deal. There was no other way around it.
Triston was in the passenger’s seat, half-asleep, his head leaning on the side window. She’d picked him up at the barracks at two thirty in the morning, and they’d taken the Taconic Parkway to the Sprain Parkway, then Interstate 87 into the Bronx. At that hour, traffic was light. They were rolling toward Saint Mary’s Park by three.
“I shouldn’t be up this early,” Triston moaned, his eyes more closed than open. “I’ve worked hard over the years. I’ve earned seniority so I don’t have to be driving around the boroughs at three o’clock in the morning.”
“Pretend you’re going fishing,” Susan replied. “You need to get up early for that, right?”
“You need a partner.”
She smiled in the darkness and patted him on the thigh. “You are my partner.”
“I mean a real partner. Someone who can keep these crazy hours
with you while you’re on a case. I’m an old man. A sergeant whose job it is to oversee my troopers and delegate assignments. Maybe sometimes I get pulled to a scene, but not at this hour. I work the day shift. That’s my gig. This is temporary. One and done. Understand?”
“I’m going to put in a commendation for you when this is closed out. And I’m going to talk to Crosby about promoting you to investigator so you can be my partner full-time.”
Triston huffed. “I got two more years hanging out with you knuckleheads, and then it’s sunny Florida for me. I just want to ride out my time and stay out of trouble. After this, you leave me alone.”
Susan pulled off of Saint Anne’s Avenue and onto 143rd Street. Saint Mary’s Park was on her right. As soon as she turned, her headlights caught a small group of women huddled against the perimeter fence of the park. They looked young, but it was hard to tell their exact ages with all the makeup caked on their faces and the bulky fake furs that kept them warm. They started to walk out toward her, then saw the car was a Ford Taurus—synonymous with unmarked police cruisers—and immediately split in different directions.
“Damn, I should’ve taken my mom’s car,” Susan mumbled as she focused on one girl and hit the accelerator. “Might as well have bar lights and decals. I’m not fooling anybody in this thing.”
Triston sat up and pointed. “Climb the curb and cut her off up ahead. She’ll have nowhere to go if you pin her in the corner.”
Susan hit the gas and sped past the girl, who was trying to make it to the entrance of the park, hobbling on heels that were too high for her. Susan turned the car right and hopped the curb just before the entrance, instantly blocking the entire sidewalk.
Triston was out of the car before she could react. He waited until the girl’s momentum carried her past him, and then he stepped in behind her, his gun still in its holster, his hand on its butt.
Don't Ever Forget (Adler and Dwyer) Page 21