“Got bad news, Ron,” Nick said, holding the photo in his hands, facing away from Swartley. “About your brother.”
“Ray? What about him?”
Hank leaned forward. “Somebody decided he’d look better with a hole in him.”
“What?” Ron looked from Hank to Nick to the back of the photo. “This some kind of cop mind game?”
“No game,” Nick said and slapped the photo down on the table between them.
It took a stunned moment for Ron to register what he was staring at, that the lifeless eyes, the bloodless face, and the ruptured and distorted throat belonged to his brother.
Woging, Ron jerked backward, reflexively trying to escape. His handcuff chain snapped taut against the metal bar, trapping him within view of the photo. He sagged back in his chair, as far as the handcuffs and the bar would allow, staring off to the side rather than confronting the evidence of his brother’s grisly death.
“Turns out you were the lucky brother,” Nick said. “Getting caught.”
“Good or bad,” Hank said. “Luck runs out eventually.”
“Tell us who did this to Ray,” Nick advised, “and we’ll talk to the district attorney. See that you’re protected.”
Ron sat still, not speaking or reacting.
“You don’t want to end up like Ray,” Hank said with a little nod toward the photo Ron continued to studiously ignore. “Shot dead in a dark alley, rats nibbling on your face.”
“Nasty way to go,” Nick commented.
“I don’t know who they are,” Ron said quietly, almost too low for them to hear, “or where they are.”
“Tell us what you do know,” Nick said.
“You know what I know,” Ron said. “People died. The bodies were dumped in the lot.”
“Bones,” Hank said. “Not bodies.”
“Same difference,” Ron said. “Dead is dead.”
“Who shot your brother?”
“How should I know?” Ron said angrily, rattling his chain. “I been locked up in here the whole time. But when I get out, I’ll find the bastard and kill him myself.”
The last statement reeked of false bravado. Pale and trembling, Ron seemed afraid, very afraid of what he’d become involved in and the enforcer who had snuffed out the life of his brother. Shock had been replaced by naked fear. Ron realized he was in over his head and he was withdrawing.
“Last chance, Ron,” Nick said. “You’re going down for the illegal narcotics, assault and battery. You don’t talk, we can’t help you.”
“Nobody can help me but me,” Ron said quietly, in the manner of a new personal mantra. “Got nothing else to say.”
True to his word, Ron sat in silence until they left.
The detectives returned to their desks, checking for any updates or messages. Nick had a message from Juliette, wondering how much longer he’d be at the precinct. They updated Captain Renard on Ray’s execution and Ron’s silence. With no leads to go on, pressing or otherwise, they decided to call it a night.
* * *
Ellen Crawford sat in the dark, on the wing chair that faced the hall leading to the front door. Waiting. Only after the African American detective called her with additional questions had she noticed Kurt’s absence. She’d thought he’d retreated in grief to his bedroom. But she should have known better. She should have remembered the steely determination in his eyes, the Leeren Stuhl flyers clenched in his hand.
After she hung up on the detective, she’d called up to Kurt’s room, to have her son go into the attic, gather the Rio photos along with Lamar’s journal about his feasting holiday, and burn all the evidence before the police showed up with a search warrant. That’s when she discovered that Kurt had slipped out without telling her, leaving her to burn the box of Rio evidence in the fireplace herself—and worry about him. Because she knew instantly where he had gone—without planning or preparation.
She’d set certain wheels in motion, but her plan required patience. Kurt had reacted impulsively, running off to the feast. First she’d lost her husband because of the Silver Plate Society and now she had to wait, helplessly, hoping that they wouldn’t kill Kurt on sight. All she could do was wait, and worry.
Anxious hours passed…
Finally, the deadbolt clicked, the doorknob turned and the door eased slowly open, as if Kurt were merely sneaking in after breaking curfew. He slipped into the foyer and closed the door gently behind him, locking it before continuing down the hall.
“Where have you been, young man?”
Her stern voice had the desired effect. He flinched, stopping in his tracks as his eyes adjusted to the darkness.
“Mother,” Kurt said, and walked toward her.
Once he entered the living room, the ambient light spilling down from the moon and stars in the clear night sky bathed his excited features in a wan glow.
“Mother,” Kurt said again, kneeling before her and taking her hands in his, “they want to meet you.”
* * *
As he approached his house, Hank sighed.
Finally, another long, frustrating day over.
Not for everyone, though. He shook his head in sympathy as he passed the Riveras’ place—a few doors down from his home—and noticed the plumber’s van at the curb. Sign on the side panel read BUSTED FLUSH PLUMBING.
On top of everything else, please spare me plumbing emergency hassles.
Hank parked his Volkswagen CC, struggled out of the driver’s seat, hopping on one good foot until he reached through the open window and retrieved his crutches, once again regaining his three-legged balance.
Surprised the guys aren’t calling me Tripod.
Getting from the car to his doorstep, unlocking the front door, working his way into the house and relocking the door behind him was almost the end to his daily struggle navigating the world on crutches.
By the end of the day, his underarms ached, his neck and shoulders were stiff and his hands were cramped and sore. He’d taken to sleeping downstairs rather than ascend a flight of stairs as one extra challenge to bookend his day. Meanwhile, he counted the days until the cast came off, grateful to be in the home stretch.
Standing in the foyer of the dark house, he whipped off his lanyard and badge and placed them on the table near the front door. Next, he unclipped his holstered sidearm and placed it on the table, along with his cell phone and house keys. His thoughts preoccupied with the day’s events, culminating in the discovery of Ray’s body and Ron’s refusal to give up any information about the killer or any of the conspirators, Hank absently reached for the light switch by the door and flicked it up—
Nothing happened.
He flipped the switch down and up again. Still dark.
Must have blown a damn fuse, he thought, already visualizing the hazards he’d encounter on his way to the circuit breaker panel in the dark, on crutches, hoping he didn’t break his neck in the attempt.
“Son of a bitch,” he whispered in the darkness and sighed audibly.
As he turned on his good heel and prepared to swing forward on the crutches, he noticed a rustle of movement in the darkness, a darker shape with weight and substance moving through the open space toward him. Alarmed, he reached back for his gun—
—a jolt of pain struck his chest.
His jaw clenched violently and he lost control of his limbs.
A brief feeling of vertigo seized him. He slipped sideways, the crutches flopping out from under him as 50,000 volts convulsed his body. He struck the floor but had only a disconnected sensation of the impact.
Before the shock and disorientation of the Taser attack had completely passed, a figure loomed over him, gun in hand.
“You’re the last one,” he said. “A place of honor at the table.”
When the man kneeled down beside him, Hank recognized his face.
His mouth needed a few seconds to relearn how to speak. And he gulped air like a fish out of water before croaking out a single word.
&nb
sp; “You!”
The man’s hand was a blur of motion, the butt of his gun racing toward Hank’s head—
* * *
His aching head greeted his return to consciousness.
He squeezed his eyes shut against the throbbing pain, willing the discomfort away, as if it had the nebulous tenacity of a bad dream. Alternately, he hoped unconsciousness would reclaim him. But the longer he waited, the worse his head hurt and the less likely sleep or stupor would claim him. Instead, he sat up—
—and heard the rattle of chains. He felt the pull of their weight on his wrists. He opened his eyes, or tried to, and experienced a new throb of pain, along with a fresh surge of nausea, which he forced down as he became aware of the gag in his mouth. With his good heel, he pushed himself back against the wall and, finally, felt the iron collar bolted around his neck. Grimacing, he forced his eyes open to take in his surroundings.
A long dim room, cloaked in shadows, housing a dozen other huddled figures, male and female, chained to the walls, occasionally readjusting their awkward positions with listless movements. Starved, dehydrated or drugged, he guessed.
As he listened to their distraught whimpering and moans, another possibility occurred to him: hopelessness.
They’re resigned to their fate.
He tried to recall what had happened to him, how he had wound up in what appeared to be an underground room chained to a wall with other prisoners. He remembered Ron, refusing to talk, driving home, the Busted Flush Plumbing van, fumbling for his keys at his own door then… everything after that was a blur. Had he opened his door and gone inside? Had someone crept up behind him?
A Taser! He remembered someone attacking him with a Taser. A mild concussion could explain the memory loss. But knowing what happened wouldn’t free him of the chains tethering his neck, wrists and ankles, or the gag stuffed in his mouth.
After a few minutes and despite his pounding headache, his eyes adjusted to the relative darkness. Some of the prisoners closest to him stared, but even those who had shed their gags said nothing to him. As he worked on pushing the gag from his mouth, to ask them what they knew about their captor or captors, he realized that he recognized some of the faces silently watching him.
For a moment, he wondered how that was possible. Then it came to him in a flash. The missing person folders. Some of the missing people were very much alive, down here, with him, waiting to be eaten by cannibal Wesen.
And now Hank himself was among the missing.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Dominik Koertig arrived at Portland International Airport at 10:10 AM on American Airlines Flight 2027 out of Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. Barrel-chested, he sported a meticulously trimmed beard and wore a tailored overcoat. He had passed the entire flight in complete silence, preparing himself for his upcoming ordeal. If any of his fellow passengers had considered lobbing a conversational gambit his way, one glance at his dour demeanor squelched the idea.
He took his aluminum briefcase from the overhead storage bin and—since he had no baggage to claim—proceeded directly through Concourse D and caught a taxi into the city of Portland, a thirty-five-dollar fare to the Pearl District, plus a five-dollar tip when the cabbie dropped him off at the entrance to the Paragon Hotel.
He stopped at the concierge desk to pick up his reserved room key and took the elevator to the fifteenth floor. Unoccupied, Room 1502 had been reserved for him the prior day and had received a maid’s attention. When he crossed the room to a businessman’s table, he spotted the stack of flyers printed on faux parchment paper, as expected. Beneath the four flyers, he found a folded map of the city.
Koertig sat down in the nearest of two padded chairs and reached under the table. His fingertips skimmed across the table’s underside until he found the loaded 9mm automatic taped there. Beside the gun, he found three extra magazines, similarly secured. He ripped the tape free, opened his briefcase and placed the gun and extra ammunition in the padded interior. From the briefcase, he took a pen and legal pad and wrote down the four addresses. Then he opened the map and noted the location of each address.
Checking his wristwatch, he calculated how much time he had before the festivities began. Of course, given the exact location, he wouldn’t need to wait long hours to crash the party, but he required a full house to complete his task, so he would go the Leeren Stuhl route.
He took out his cell phone and called his local contact. Since he had time to kill, he would gather as much information about the participants as possible. Knowledge of the players might prove crucial before the night was over.
When his contact answered the call, he skipped pleasantries and said simply, “Tell me everything you know.”
* * *
After his late night at the precinct, Nick spent the morning alone reviewing the missing person case files in the precinct conference room. A few more sets of human remains had been identified, mostly through dental records, and the pattern continued to hold.
The second site featured the remains of tourists—with Alex Chu, Chinese male, early thirties, traveling up the West Coast on a road trip—while the Claremont Park site had been the final resting place for two other missing locals—Nakamura Reika, Japanese female, twenty-two, employee at a Pearl District bridal shop, and Esperanza Rios, Mexican female, thirty-six, school cafeteria employee—reinforcing the notion that the killer had stopped scouting tourists in recent weeks and had instead chosen locals, possibly based on their ethnicity and age.
Nick made a few calls to relatives, informing them that the remains of their loved ones had been found, giving them closure, if nothing else. He would have liked to tell them he had their killer in custody and that person would never see the light of a free day again. Instead, he had to tell them the PPD was pursuing all lines of inquiry and was hopeful of an arrest soon. The meaningless words stuck in his throat.
After a few hours with his head either buried in case folders or pressed to a telephone receiver, Sergeant Wu arrived with an update from the computer techs.
“They found a bunch of commercial and residential rental properties on Crawford’s computer along with fishy leasing agreements.”
“Fishy?”
“The names on the contracts appear fake, either aliases or stolen identities. Almost seems like insurance fraud, but there aren’t any claims. I checked with Crawford’s carrier.”
“Residential addresses?” Nick asked. “I thought Crawford dealt strictly with business leases.”
“That’s another part of the fishiness,” Wu said. “The addresses don’t exist.”
“What?”
“Techs think they might be in code.”
“Fake names and fake addresses?”
“That’s what they tell me,” Wu said. “I took a sample, to check. All phony as a three-dollar bill. Are two-dollar bills phony again? Or still legal? You never see them in circulation anymore. Hey, where’s Hank?”
Nick looked across the conference room table at the empty chair. Hank hadn’t stopped in for as long as Nick had been there.
“He’s not at his desk?”
“Passed it on the way in,” Wu said. “Unoccupied.”
“He hasn’t called in,” Nick said.
He took out his cell phone and called Hank. After ringing several times, the call went to voicemail.
“Hank, it’s Nick. Give me a call when you get this.” He looked at Wu and shook his head, perturbed. “Let me try his home phone.” He dialed again and this time the call was directed to an answering machine. He left a similar message and disconnected. “This is not like him.”
“He’s on crutches,” Wu said, considering. “Maybe he had an accident.”
Nick started to imagine Hank climbing stairs on crutches, a nasty fall. Hank could have called an ambulance, or might still be lying in pain in his house, unable to reach a phone. Or could he have followed up a lead on his own and run into trouble…?
Rather than continuing to speculate about what mig
ht have happened, Nick said, “Have a uniform swing by his place.”
With concern for his partner’s safety placed on low boil until he had more information, Nick attempted to turn his attention back to the missing person case files, but soon gave up on that avenue of investigation. He had to assume the abductions happened without the presence of a witness and that the victims were chosen for what they were, not who or for any other traditional motive.
What he really needed to figure out was the location of the month-long feast.
He spread out the four different flyers on the desk, glancing from one innocuous address to the next. Then he went in search of a map of Portland and pinned it up on the Claremont board, which required less space for victims. One by one, he drew an X over the address on each flyer. Of the four locations, the community center might function as a meeting place for the Silver Plate Society. He supposed the time had come to stake out the location, to wait and see if any unusual meetings took place there. Figuring out what constituted an unusual meeting without attending each and every one on the premises was the problem.
And time, the lack of it, was a major problem.
As he stood there, slapping the barrel of a ballpoint pen against his palm, he said, “Residential properties.”
And then he remembered another case, a body washed up in a tidal pool. The body of Sheila Jenkins, an employee at a property management company, head and hands removed to thwart identification. At the time, the case hadn’t fit the profile of the bare bones murders. But, since then, the bare bones case had included a suicide cover-up and an execution. What if Sheila Jenkins had been a loose end? The bare bones killer had buried the bodies in shallow graves to buy time until the feasting month ended. What if the same stalling tactic applied to Sheila’s execution? Keep her role unknown or at least obscured until it was too late to matter.
Nick hurried to his desk and grabbed the Sheila Jenkins file, picked up the phone and dialed the extension for the computer forensics department.
Grimm: The Chopping Block Page 21