Opening Moves pbf-6

by Steven James

  Clarity.

  Just like when you’re on the football field, when everything slows down and you see it all without seeing, when you know where your receiver is going to be without consciously thinking about it. Time slows and you seem to slip through its seams, respond between the moments, pausing between the beats of your heart. Then you thread the needle. Move the ball down the field. Timing and location.

  Clarity.

  You’re a girl, new to the area, walking home from school…There’s a man grabbing you…forcing you into his blue van…driving you out here…where no one will disturb him…

  No, you don’t know if what you see in your mind really happened, but if it did, if-

  You pass an old fire pit that’s been here for years, one that’s always littered with discarded beer cans and charred logs. Today glass shards from several broken Jack Daniel’s bottles lie strewn across the leaves at the base of a log the kids sit on by the fire.

  Nearby, you notice that the leaves are matted down from yesterday’s rain, but the ones on the trail are kicked up. Maybe from someone walking through here-

  Or from the girl, from being dragged through the woods, struggling, kicking, trying to get free…

  Your heart somehow both tenses and races at the same time.

  Through the bare forest you see the tree house ahead of you. It’s perched on the muscular branches of an aging oak and you think of “The Monkey’s Paw,” the short story by W. W. Jacobs that you had to read for English lit. last year. The branches of the oak curl around the tree house like a gnarled hand clutching a talisman.

  “Hello?” you call.

  Silence.

  The tree house is forty feet away.

  “Mindy?”

  Nothing. No reply.

  You gaze around again at the empty, lonely forest, then use your hand to shield your eyes from the slanting rain, and walk to the base of the tree.

  There’s no ladder per se, just horizontal boards nailed to the trunk to form the rungs that lead to the platform that encircles the tree house. There’s a narrow west-facing window that an occasional hunter will slide his shotgun barrel through when he uses this tree house as an impromptu blind to try to take down the geese settling onto the marsh.

  Around to the other side is the opening you’ll have to crawl through to access the tree house.

  As you climb, you catch yourself wondering if it would be possible to carry a girl up these rungs.

  If she were draped over your shoulders. If you were strong. If she were unconscious.

  Getting her off your shoulders at the top and then sliding her onto the platform would certainly be difficult, but you decide that, yes, it would be possible.

  You reach the top rung, ease onto the landing, then glance back. From this height you have a clear view of both the road and the marsh.

  If someone came here last night he would’ve seen headlights coming this way long before they reached the trailhead. It would have given him plenty of time to slip away.

  Your heart is hammering as you traverse the narrow platform, round the corner, and come to the opening that leads into the tree house itself.

  It’s a dark, square mouth two feet high and two feet wide. You’ll need to get on your hands and knees to crawl inside.

  But then you’ll see. Then you’ll know. Then you’ll see that there’s nothing here, and the police will do their job and find Mindy Wells at a friend’s house or something, and then everything will get back to normal and you’ll be able to focus on football again, on the state semifinals coming up this weekend. Everyone will be able to take a deep breath and forget that any of this misunderstanding ever happened.

  You hear the rain splattering and tip-tapping on the roof of the tree house. Hollow. Indistinct. A rapid wet drumbeat.

  And so.

  You kneel.

  And look into the room.

  What little light has slipped in is shrouded by the cloudy, rainy day, but you immediately see that the tree house is not empty. Leaning with her back against the far wall, staring blankly at you, clothes missing, her legs tucked beneath her on the bare wooden planks, her hands on her lap, her wrists tightly bound with rough cord, is the girl.

  Mindy Wells.

  A terrible, terrible shiver runs through you. Your throat tightens. “Mindy?”

  She doesn’t move. Doesn’t respond.

  Only the sound of rain drumming above you.

  You know how to check for a pulse-last spring your track coach had you monitor your heart rate when you did wind sprints. And even though you know it’s too late, you know it is, it must be, you realize you have to find out. You can’t leave without knowing for sure. You need to see if she is still alive.

  As you crawl into the tree house, your heart seems to have knotted up solid inside your chest.

  When you reach Mindy, it takes you a few seconds to work up the nerve, but then you press two fingers against her neck. Her skin has a damp, doughy feel.

  There’s no pulse and the coolness of the flesh makes the fact that she’s dead seem all the more real.

  You’re careful not to disturb anything so it won’t throw off the police when they investigate things, but for some reason covering her nakedness seems like the right thing to do, the least you can do for her, so before you leave, you take off your jacket and drape it gently over her chest and lap. She’s not a large girl and your coat is big enough to at least offer her a small degree of modesty.

  Her name was Mindy Wells.

  She was eleven years old when she was raped and killed in your hometown and left in that tree house by the marsh.

  They never found her killer.

  But you’re the one who found her body on that rainy day the week of the state football semifinals back when you were a junior in high school.

  I finished telling Ralph the story and he said nothing, just sat beside me in the car in stony silence.

  Initially, I thought he might do what others had done over the years and jump to the conclusion that finding Mindy was what’d led me on the path to eventually enter law enforcement. But he didn’t. Instead, he just leveled a hard gaze out the window and remained quiet.

  It was another five miles before he spoke, his voice brusque and unyielding. “Kids are the worst.”

  “Yeah, they are.”

  “And you were only sixteen when you found her?”

  “Yes.”

  He looked at me then. “That must have been terrible.”

  “It was.”

  It still is.

  “And they never caught the scumbag who did it?”

  I shook my head and then we were silent again. I didn’t tell him that the guy had also killed at least one other young girl, Jenna Natara, the one whose death had invaded my dreams last night. It didn’t seem like the right time to get into all that.

  Once again he watched the bleak, brown countryside that was brushed with light snow pass by the window. Glancing toward him, I saw him brush a finger beneath his right eye and I wondered how many times he’d been called in on cases with children as the victims.

  A few minutes later I parked beside the curb in front of Timothy Griffin’s home, a ramshackle place in desperate need of paint and repair on the edge of town.

  Ralph and I got out of the car.

  “I saw you looking at me back there a minute ago,” he said.

  “I’m sorry, I was-”

  “I just had something in my eye.”

  I paused. “Yeah, I know.”

  Catalog in hand, I followed him up the porch steps and stood by his side while he knocked on Griffin’s door.

  21

  A waif of a woman answered, stared blankly at us. Out of high school, but not by much.

  “Yes?” She had circles under her eyes and wore a tattered housecoat that drooped sadly over her stick-thin frame. It was as if she’d materialized out of thin air.

  “Good afternoon, ma’am.” I held up my badge. “I’m Detective Bowers, with
the police department.” I left out the fact that I was from Milwaukee and not Fort Atkinson. “This is Agent Hawkins with the FBI. Is Timothy Griffin here?”

  “No.” She offered nothing more. Her eyes remained vacuous.

  “Do you know when he’ll be back?”

  “No.”

  Ralph indicated toward the living room. “Can we come in? Wait for him?”

  “I’m not sure Timothy would want that.” Even her voice sounded frail and tenuous, as if it might disintegrate if any other sounds invaded the air.

  Though she didn’t move, I got the sense that she might fade back into the house at any moment. “And how do you know Timothy?”

  “I’m his girlfriend.” She couldn’t have been older than nineteen or twenty. From his DMV records, I knew that Timothy Griffin was forty-nine.

  Ralph spoke up. “Ma’am, what’s your name?”

  “Mallory.”

  We waited, but she didn’t give us a last name.

  “Mallory, why wouldn’t Timothy want us to come in and wait for him?”

  “Timothy is a private person.”

  Ralph didn’t give up. “This is concerning something quite important. If we find out later that you were hindering our investigation in any way, that would be an unfortunate thing. For you and for Timothy. And it could put innocent people at risk.”

  He was obviously banking on the fact that she wouldn’t be clear about her right to refuse us entry. However, if she did let us in as we’d requested, evidence we found inside the home would be admissible in court. He was banking on her not knowing that too.

  His bet paid off.

  After a slight hesitation, Mallory stepped aside.

  We joined her in the living room.

  A drab, greenish carpet covered the floor. Two mismatched reclining chairs were positioned beside the heavily curtained windows. At the far end of the room, cheap Formica shelves held a cluttered array of knickknacks. A variety of photos surrounded us on the walls. A TV faced the plaid couch; a VCR and twelve videos sat on top of it.

  A nondescript, typical-looking living room, but immediately I noticed something that really disturbed me, I mean really disturbed me, but I thought it’d be better to bring it up when Ralph and I were alone, so for the moment I kept it to myself.

  The air in the house was languid and stale, as if none of the windows or doors had been opened in months.

  Mallory didn’t seem like the hospitable type, so I was surprised when she offered us coffee, which Ralph accepted, even though he’d downed three cups at lunch-not to mention the two-liter bottle of Mountain Dew earlier in the morning. This man really did think caffeine was a beautiful thing. I declined, but thanked her.

  “It might be cold,” Mallory said to Ralph, referring to the coffee. She didn’t sound apologetic, just explanatory. Everything she said was blank and devoid of emotion.

  “No problem.”

  “Cream? Sugar?”

  “Sure.”

  She stepped into the kitchen and when she was gone, Ralph spoke softly to me: “So, where do you think he keeps all the stuff he sells?”

  “Everywhere.”

  He looked at me curiously. “What do you mean?”

  I walked to one of the chairs and flipped forward the price tag that was attached to the top of it with a small piece of string.

  “Oh, you gotta be kidding me.”

  I moved around the room, noting the price tags on the furniture, the novelty items and curios, the framed photos. Each tag included the date Griffin had acquired the item, the name of the celebrity killer or pedophile it was from, the catalog number, and his asking price. Nearly everything in the living room had a price tag.

  At first I was a little confused by the photos on the walls, but then I recognized the father of a homicide victim from Madison last July and it hit me: the family photographs weren’t pictures of Griffin and his relatives, but rather they were the family photos of victims of the killers and rapists he was profiteering from.

  I tried to imagine what it would be like living in a house like this, sitting on that couch watching television as if nothing were any different about this living room from any other one on the block, but all the while you were surrounded by mementos and personal items and memorabilia of the country’s vilest and most deranged murderers.

  Being here troubled me as much as being at any of the crime scenes I’ve worked. And I’ve worked some bad ones. I had no idea what Mallory’s personality had been like before she landed here with Timothy, but I couldn’t imagine anyone remaining joyful and lighthearted living in a place like this.

  A Bible was sitting next to a small ceramic bird without a price tag on a coffee table beside the couch and I recognized the Bible from the catalog: the one Charles Manson had owned. Checking the inside flap, I found that it did indeed contain his signature, but there was no telling if it was authentic or not.

  I set it back down.

  A framed letter hung on the wall in the hallway just off the living room.

  “I’ll be back in a sec,” I told Ralph, then walked over to take a closer look.

  It was the letter Albert Fish had sent to Grace Budd’s parents and, based on the wrinkled, aged appearance of the paper, it certainly did look like it might be the original.

  In the living room behind me, Mallory returned with Ralph’s coffee and while he inquired how long she’d known Griffin, I read the letter:

  Dear Mrs. Budd.

  In 1894 a friend of mine shipped as a deck hand on the Steamer

  Tacoma,

  Capt. John Walker. They sailed from San Francisco for Hong Kong, China. On arriving there he and two others went ashore and got drunk. When they returned the boat was gone. At that time there was famine in China. Meat of any kind was from $1–3 per pound. So great was the suffering among the very poor that all children under 12 were sold for food in order to keep others from starving.

  A boy or girl under 14 was not safe in the street. You could go in any shop and ask for steak-chops-or stew meat. Part of the naked body of a boy or girl would be brought out and just what you wanted cut from it. A boy or girl’s behind which is the sweetest part of the body and sold as veal cutlet brought the highest price. John staid there so long he acquired a taste for human flesh. On his return to N.Y. he stole two boys, one 7 and one 11. Took them to his home stripped them naked tied them in a closet. Then burned everything they had on.

  Several times every day and night he spanked them-tortured them-to make their meat good and tender. First he killed the 11 year old boy, because he had the most meat. Every part of his body was cooked and eaten except the head-bones and guts. He was roasted in the oven, boiled, broiled, fried and stewed. The little boy was next, went the same way. At that time, I was living at 409 E 100 St. near-right side. He told me so often how good human flesh was I made up my mind to taste it.

  On Sunday June the 3, 1928 I called on you at 406 W 15 St. Brought you pot cheese-strawberries. We had lunch. Grace sat in my lap and kissed me. I made up my mind to eat her. On the pretense of taking her to a party. You said yes she could go. I took her to an empty house in Westchester I had already picked out.

  When we got there, I told her to remain outside. She picked wildflowers. I went upstairs and stripped all my clothes off. I knew if I did not I would get her blood on them. When all was ready I went to the window and called her. Then I hid in a closet until she was in the room. When she saw me all naked she began to cry and tried to run down the stairs. I grabbed her and she said she would tell her mamma.

  First I stripped her naked. How she did kick-bite and scratch. I choked her to death, then cut her in small pieces so I could take my meat to my rooms. Cook and eat it. It took me 9 days to eat her entire body.

  I couldn’t read any further. I’d come across a copy of this letter once while doing an assignment on the ethics of the death penalty for a law class at Marquette, and I knew that Fish went on to describe how he could’ve had sex with Grace if he�
�d wished, but he had refrained, and that she’d died a virgin.

  I felt a palpable sweep of nausea.

  A $1,250 price tag hung from the corner of the plaque. I seriously doubted that Griffin would set the price that high unless he thought he could actually get that much for it.

  Supply and demand.

  I turned away, closed my eyes.

  Brutality.

  Evil.

  Man’s inhumanity to man.

  People actually spend their hard-earned cash on this stuff, actually surround themselves on purpose with these keepsakes of men who raped and killed innocent people.

  A girl buried alive: Jenna Natara.

  A body in a tree house: Mindy Wells.

  A child slaughtered and eaten by a psychopath: Grace Budd.

  I took a moment to collect myself, to try filtering out the disgust. Finally, I opened my eyes, but the disquieting residue of anger and nausea hadn’t gone away.

  Turning from the framed letter, I saw that a bedroom lay at the end of the hall.

  I heard Ralph ask Mallory as politely as he could where Timothy had gone this afternoon as I walked to the master bedroom and slipped inside.

  22

  Crumpled, raggy blankets were sprawled across the bed; a small nightstand sat nearby, holding a lamp and a used condom that looked like it was still sticky wet. There was a tragically torn, stuffed dog placed beside one of the pillows. I recalled Mallory’s young age again and felt a renewed surge of revulsion and anger.

  A mound of dirty laundry lay between the two dressers, one of which had a jewelry box on it, the other, a photo of a man, a woman, and a curly-haired little girl at Disney World, a price tag hanging from the corner. A small, surprisingly ornate handheld mirror rested on the dresser next to the jewelry box. A musky, rangy scent permeated the room.

  The closet was beside the window.

  I left the catalog on the bed for the moment, glanced beneath it, peeked in the drawers, and then in the jewelry box, where I found nothing particularly unusual, except an enigmatic diamond ring that, based on the condition of the house, I could hardly believe they could afford to own.