Opening Moves pbf-6

by Steven James

  Crossing the room, I opened the closet door and tugged the string hanging from the ceiling to turn on the overhead bulb.

  On the right, eleven shirts hung from wire hangers. Griffin was into flannel. Based on the size of the shirts, I anticipated that he would be small-framed, shorter than I was, maybe five feet six to five feet eight. No dress shirts or slacks. Nothing stylish. A blaze orange jacket for rifle season, a camo one for bow season.

  On the left side of the closet, Mallory’s four dresses looked like hand-me-downs or thrift store ware. Just four dresses. That was it. No shirts. No skirts. No dress pants.

  I had no idea what Griffin’s profit margin was on his merchandise, but taking into account the price tags of some of the items, I couldn’t help but wonder where all the money was going. Definitely not into his or Mallory’s wardrobe or home improvements. Maybe that ring.

  Six pairs of shoes on the floor-four of his, two of hers. I checked. He was size nine. She was size six and a half.

  Next to the shoes was a stack of three shoeboxes. I opened the top one and found that it was filled with sales receipts. Hundreds of them. I checked the other two boxes and found more of the same, some of them dating back eighteen years.

  As I shuffled through the receipts, I found that they were carefully categorized, not by the date of sale, but by the first letter of the last name of the person who’d purchased the merchandise.

  To make it easier to keep track of repeat customers?

  Possibly.

  I processed what we knew, the gossamer threads of facts and clues, the disquieting questions before us.

  Vincent Hayes. The timing of his wife’s abduction.

  The homicide in Illinois and the police tape.

  Griffin’s catalog.

  The handcuffs.

  The abductor knew they owned a pair.

  Everything in this case was somehow woven together.

  Griffin referred to the guy as a Maneater.

  Someone had provided this guy with the police tape from the crime in Illinois.

  Someone is-

  There’s no such thing as a coincidence.

  I had a thought and flipped to the H’s.

  And found what I was looking for.

  The name on the receipt: Hayes.

  The merchandise: a pair of handcuffs.

  But it wasn’t Vincent Hayes’s name on the top of the receipt. It was his wife, Colleen’s.

  23

  I stared at the receipt.

  Colleen Hayes had bought the handcuffs two months ago and, according to the receipt, they were the ones used on Ted Oswald when he and his father were arrested back in April 1994.

  Ted, who was eighteen at the time, and his father, James, were responsible for a string of bank robberies in southeastern Wisconsin. When they were confronted by James Lutz, a Waukesha police captain, they killed him, took a hostage, and after a shoot-out with authorities during which the hostage managed to escape, they tried to flee by motor vehicle but were pursued by the Waukesha County Sheriff Department deputies. After crashing into a tree, they were apprehended, tried, found guilty.

  During the trial, details emerged about their conspiratorial plans to kill law enforcement officers and initiate some sort of private war against the authorities. Ever since Ted had been five years old, his mentally disturbed father, who called him his “spawn,” had threatened to kill him if he didn’t do exactly as he said. During the trial, Ted claimed he’d committed the crimes only because he was afraid for his life, but the jury didn’t go for it. Currently both men were serving two life sentences plus more than four hundred fifty years.

  Jeffrey Dahmer tried for the insanity defense, didn’t convince the jury.

  Ted Oswald pled coercion, didn’t convince the jury.

  I processed that. Even if it was only tangential, both of those killers had a connection to this case. Both had admitted to their crimes during their respective trials but had claimed mitigating circumstances-Dahmer, mental instability; Oswald, fear for his life.

  Neither had been successful.

  Insanity is a legal term, not a medical one, and I knew that if it can be determined that you could understand the difference between right and wrong at the time of your crime, legally, you can’t be found to be insane.

  This was actually why Dahmer lost his case-he took an action to cover up his crimes; namely, he lied to the police when they brought Konerak Sinthasomphone back to his apartment. The jury believed that this showed Dahmer knew he’d acted in ways that needed to be concealed.

  Strange as it may seem, if he would’ve led the police right up to the body on his bed he might have been found insane and never gone to prison at all.

  Still, I couldn’t help but wonder what, if any, circumstances remove your responsibility for criminal behavior. At what point are you so mentally ill that you’re no longer responsible for your actions? Are you ever justified in committing murder to avoid being murdered yourself, as Ted Oswald claimed he’d been? Are you vindicated of kidnapping someone in order to save your wife, as Vincent Hayes had evidently done?

  All pertinent questions, but I didn’t have a lot of time here to contemplate them.

  Address them later.

  On the receipt, I noticed that Griffin had acquired the cuffs from an unnamed source; however, if they were legit, only someone from the Waukesha County Sheriff Department would’ve had access to them.

  Definitely worth checking out.

  This was the only purchase made by Colleen or Vincent Hayes.

  Down the hall, I heard the front door bang open and a high-pitched nasally voice calling out, “Whose car is that out-” He cut himself off in the middle. He must have seen Ralph. “Who are you? What are you doing in my house!”

  I memorized the information on the receipt and replaced it in the shoebox.

  “Ralph Hawkins. I’m with the FBI. Are you Timothy Griffin?”

  Taking the catalog with me, I returned to the living room.

  Griffin was just shy of five feet eight. Caucasian with some Latino heritage. He had slate gray eyes and a harsh scar on his neck that tightened the skin of his face, tugging the left side of his lip down into a rather imposing sneer. He was holding a handful of mail.

  “FBI?” he said. “What’s going on?”

  “I’m Detective Bowers,” I told Griffin, before he could ask. “We have a couple questions we’d like to ask you.”

  24

  Griffin licked his lips, then said with fake gentility, “Well, are you here on business…” His gaze landed on the Manson Bible. Now I saw that after picking it up earlier I hadn’t placed it in exactly the same position on the coffee table and he seemed to notice that as well. “Or pleasure? Here to make a few purchases? I get a lot of cops as customers.”

  I held up the catalog, back cover toward him, and pointed to the sticker. “We’re here concerning this.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “The crime scene tape. I’d like to see it,” Ralph said.

  Griffin looked like he might object to that, but then walked into the kitchen and returned with a roll of yellow caution tape. Without a word he handed it to Ralph. “Three hundred fifty dollars. Like it says in the catalog.”

  “‘The Maneater of the Midwest,’” Ralph said. “That a description you came up with?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Helps with sales, does it? Using a name like that?”

  “Actually, yes, it does.” He paused. “Even though it’s only women so far. I’m using ‘Maneater’ in the general sense of the word. You understand.” He gave us a contemptuous grin and I was tempted to smack it off his face.

  Mallory left soundlessly to return Ralph’s empty coffee cup to the kitchen, leaving the three of us alone. After a moment I heard the soft clink of dishes in the sink.

  “What makes you think this killer eats human flesh?” I asked Griffin.

  “The woman’s lungs were gone.”

  “And?”

 
; He scoffed lightly. “Let’s just say I’ve been in this business long enough to make an educated guess. Certain types of killers have certain types of…well, tastes.”

  “The description says, ‘soon to be a collector’s item.’ Why is that?”

  “Oh, I don’t think he’s done. Not a guy like this. He’s just getting started.”

  Ralph worked his jaw back and forth roughly. “Where did you get this police tape, Mr. Griffin?”

  “Don’t worry, it’s authentic.” He looked from Ralph to me. “I can cut you a deal if you want.”

  “That won’t be necessary.” Ralph pocketed the tape and it was clear he wasn’t about to pay three hundred fifty dollars for it, wasn’t about to cut a deal of any kind. “As I was saying, where did you get the crime scene tape?”

  “I have a source.”

  “Who?”

  “I think he would be averse to having me pass along his name.” When he said the phrase “averse to,” it seemed way too literary and refined to be coming from his mouth.

  We waited.

  He said nothing more.

  From my experience, it’s better not to hammer away at the person you’re interviewing. That tends to make him defensive, but circling back around often catches him off guard.

  “How do you know a woman named Colleen Hayes?” I asked Griffin.

  He shook his head. “Hayes?” But then he appeared to piece things together. “You mean from the news? From last night?” Honestly, it didn’t look like he realized this was the same Hayes family he’d done business with.

  That was two months ago, Pat. Would he really remember? Unless-

  “That’s right,” Ralph said. “From last night.”

  A shadow of unease was edging across Griffin’s face. “What is this about, anyway? I haven’t done anything wrong.”

  Ralph pressed him: “Where were you last night, Timothy? From, say, seven o’clock to midnight?”

  “Here, watching movies.”

  “Were you alone?”

  Griffin called to the kitchen, “Mallory!” His tone was brash and spiteful, and I got the sense that it was the typical way he addressed his live-in girlfriend, the one who was thirty years younger than he was.

  She came around the corner, clutching a damp hand towel, eyes wide.

  “Last night we were here watching movies, weren’t we?” He paused. “Baby?”

  “Yes.” Her gaze never left him, never wandered our way, a sign that she was taking her cues from him.

  Timothy gave us a satisfied smile. “See?”

  “What movies did you watch?” Ralph directed the question at Mallory.

  Griffin spoke up: “The Fugitive and-”

  “I was asking the young lady,” Ralph told him firmly.

  “The Fugitive,” she answered.

  “And?”

  She looked a bit lost. “And…When Harry Met Sally.” She stared at Griffin as if she was looking for approval from him.

  “That’s right, baby.” Then he turned one hand palm up, as if to signify that she’d just cleared up everything, and when he spoke he addressed Ralph and me: “Well, then, there you go.” He wavered the envelopes in the air with his other hand. “Now, if you gentlemen don’t mind. Orders to fill. I’m sure you understand. Keep the tape. It’s the least I can do. My civic duty.”

  I didn’t think we were going to get much more out of him at the moment, but I didn’t want to leave without the name of the person he’d gotten that crime scene tape from.

  Ralph didn’t move. Obviously he wasn’t ready to leave yet either. “How do you do this, anyway?”

  “This?”

  “Sell this crap.” He swept his hand through the air. “Make a living like this?”

  With a slight dramatic flair, Griffin walked to the wall and put his palm against one of the photos, then slowly stroked the face and then the body of the woman in the picture. The hairstyle and clothes made me think it was taken in the late seventies. I didn’t know who she was, but I memorized her face, and wondered what Mallory, who was still in the doorway, thought of the provocative way he let his fingers address the body of the photographed woman.

  “Think about the news, Agent Hawkins. TV networks sell time to advertisers, then air footage of the most sensational crimes they can. You know it’s true: If it bleeds, it leads. Like with Hayes last night. Advertisers buy that airtime, knowing full well what they’re doing-playing off people’s fixation with violence, evil, death. I just pass along my reminders to individuals rather than to the public at large.”

  People have a right to be informed about our world, and it is a brutal one, but it bothered me that Griffin actually had a point. News shows really are packaged to play to their viewers’ morbid fascination with death.

  Ralph said, “Mr. Griffin, what’s the name of the person who sold you the crime scene tape?”

  “I told you he-”

  But Ralph strode toward him, invaded his personal space big-time. The air in the room seemed to tighten. “The name, Mr. Griffin.” I thought Ralph might growl the words menacingly in order to be more intimidating, but he didn’t. He just said them calmly, resolutely, and that seemed to be more effective because Griffin gulped almost imperceptibly, then tapped his tongue to the side of his lips.

  “His name is Hendrich. Okay? Bruce Hendrich. I don’t know if that’s his real name or not. That’s the one he gave me. In this business people aren’t always as forthcoming and honest as they should be. I’m sure you know what I mean.”

  Ralph reached over and straightened Griffin’s collar. “How do you reach him? This Mr. Hendrich?”

  Having Ralph’s huge hands so close to his throat seemed to make Griffin even more willing to share information, because he rather promptly told us a phone number and address from memory. The address was in Milwaukee, not Fort Atkinson.

  “I just ship stuff there. I’ve never been there.”

  Ralph patted him on the shoulder. “Thank you, Timothy.” Then he handed him one of his business cards. “If anyone tries to buy or sell any Dahmer items, let us know. And we’re going to want the name of anyone who goes after that police tape.”

  “My records are confidential.”

  “Of course they are. But your address isn’t. Wait till we notify the family members of victims about your little business venture here. I wonder how many of them might want to pay you a visit. Express how excited they are about you passing along your little ‘reminders.’”

  He turned to me. “We could give ’em some privacy, couldn’t we, Detective? Make arrangements to make sure no officers interfere with the little block party?”

  “That shouldn’t be a problem.” Since Griffin’s business was run out of a post office box, releasing his residential address really might cause a bit of a stir with the neighbors and victims’ family members.

  When Griffin didn’t reply, Ralph reflectively patted the top of one of the overstuffed chairs. “I may show up too. Bring the mini-weenies. I always like a good party.”

  “Okay,” Timothy grumbled. “Alright. I’ll call you if I hear anything.”

  “I appreciate that very much, Mr. Griffin.”

  Ralph nodded toward Mallory. “Good day, ma’am.”

  Once we were back in the car I said to Ralph, “Mini-weenies?”

  “They’re good with mustard and ranch dressing. What did you see in the hall?”

  “The Albert Fish letter, but it’s what I found in the bedroom that really caught my attention.”

  “And that was?”

  I started the car. “Griffin sold Hayes the handcuffs. Colleen Hayes.”

  “Colleen?”

  “Yes.”

  “Interesting. And how do we know that?”

  I told him about the receipts. Ralph wasn’t familiar with the Oswald case. I filled him in on what I knew.

  Then, since there wasn’t a car phone in this vehicle, I radioed the local dispatcher and asked her to put a call through to my adviser at Marqu
ette and let him know I wouldn’t be at the lecture this afternoon and to see if he could request that Dr. Werjonic leave a photocopy of his lecture notes in the Criminology and Law Studies graduate office. I could pick them up later this evening and hopefully carve out some time to review them before tomorrow’s class. I gave her the number.

  When I got off the radio I had an idea. “Ralph, the Waukesha County Sheriff Department is just a couple miles off the interstate. What do you say we swing by and see who the arresting officers were in the Oswald case?”

  “Yeah, and maybe check the chain of custody for the evidence. Whoever had access to the Oswald evidence might have had access to the cuffs.”

  I aimed the car for the highway. “I like the way you think, Agent Hawkins. For a fed, that is.”

  “You’re doing alright yourself, for a detective. At least so far.”

  “So far?”

  “Yeah, but just don’t get in my way.”

  It sounded like he was joking, I knew he was joking, but when I glanced at him, I realized I couldn’t quite tell. Not for sure.

  25

  Plainfield, Wisconsin

  It wasn’t even a choice for Carl Kowalski. Not after finding that note in his kitchen. Not after seeing the horrible, horrible thing that Adele’s kidnapper had left for him in the refrigerator.

  At first when he walked through the front door and saw the note on the table, he’d thought it might be some kind of sick joke from one of his poker buddies.

  But then he’d done what the note told him to do and looked in the refrigerator’s meat/cheese drawer and found Adele’s ring finger with the engagement ring he’d given her four months earlier still encircling the base of it. No. This was not a joke. Not by any stretch of the imagination.

  Now he carefully positioned his van on the cemetery’s access road to hide his activity from people who might happen to drive past on the nearby but infrequently used county highway. Then, shielded from view, he removed the shovel from the back of the vehicle.