by Steven James
“So, I’ll see you about ten, then?” Colleen had said. Then, “Love you too. Bye.”
Just knowing that he was there alone with Colleen was, admittedly, exhilarating. There was no longer any urgency to move on her.
Joshua had decided to wait and watch her and take her at nine.
His day job called for him to have a police scanner, so last night after he had Colleen, he’d used it to listen to the chatter regarding the chase for Vincent. Amidst the confusion, an officer had reported that he had the suspect in custody, but not long after that he announced that he was still at large.
So then, when Joshua’s portable phone rang, he hadn’t been sure if the person on the other end who was assuring him that he’d left a black man in the alley was Vincent or not. With all the sirens and all the chatter on the dispatch radio, he’d suspected it might be a cop.
Today he wasn’t going to take any chances. He was going to get started on Adele before five, before Carl was scheduled to make the call.
He lifted her, still unconscious, from the trunk, then nudged the hatch closed with his elbow.
Last night, Colleen Hayes.
Tonight, Adele Westin.
And it was going to be even better than it had been with Colleen.
Trudging across the gravel, he carried his captive toward the boxcar.
29
We were almost to HQ when we heard from Corsica that Bruce Hendrich worked a couple days a week as a security guard in the abandoned train yards just off I-94 near the Domes.
I thought of the location of the yards. I’d driven past them dozens of times, but they were encircled with razor wire fence and I’d never entered them. The surrounding neighborhoods were infested with gangs, drug dealers, and junkies. You’d have to be either pretty bold or pretty stupid to work a part-time security job in that part of town.
Unless you just wanted a place where you could take people in the dark and not arouse suspicion.
I mentally reviewed the most likely travel routes from the Hayes residence to the yards. Unless the kidnapper took an unusually circuitous route, he would have had to pass by Miller Brewery to get there, which could explain the yeast smell that Colleen remembered.
My thoughts slipped back to the account of the tree house I’d given to Ralph earlier: If someone knew the area, he would know where to take a girl. A place he could be alone with her.
Different killers, same need: seclusion. The tree house made sense and so did the train yards.
There weren’t any trains running through there these days, so it made sense that Colleen wouldn’t have heard one pass by. The location was isolated enough so that, if her abductor had taken her to one of the freight cars or boxcars, no one would’ve heard her scream. Colleen had mentioned that it was cold, as though he might have taken her to a garage or something. A boxcar fit that too.
If he took her to the train yards, he would have plenty of privacy to do just about anything he wanted with her. And even if, by some chance, someone did happen to hear her scream, the yards weren’t in a part of town where people were particularly inclined to call the authorities.
Before she ended the transmission, Corsica mentioned that Hendrich hadn’t been home when Lyrie arrived to speak with him and it’d taken him a while to find out from a neighbor where Hendrich worked. Apparently, he was new to the area and wasn’t that well-known by his neighbors. She mentioned that the team was looking more carefully into his background.
I resaddled the radio. “Ralph, let’s stop by the train yards. Have a look around before it gets dark.”
“Now you’re talking my language.”
To cover our bases, we called in to have Lyrie remain parked at Hendrich’s house in case he returned home, then I turned our car around.
Sundown was almost here and I felt as if I were stepping into the zone again, the thing I live for, and I admit I didn’t quite observe the speed limit as I drove toward the train yards.
Joshua slid the unconscious woman into the boxcar, then promptly clicked on the battery-operated light, shut the door, and locked it from the inside.
He tied Adele to the chair.
Blond hair, a sea green sweater, black jeans. He decided to leave her clothes on while he worked on her. That way, when they found her without her hands or feet, the blood-drenched clothes would add to the dramatic effect. Increase the shock value.
Or maybe not. Maybe leaving her nude would shock them more.
Well, that was certainly something to consider.
Earlier he’d propped ten mattresses against the walls of the boxcar to absorb the sounds. Now, every time he took a step, there was only a tiny muffled echo from the wooden floorboards, an echo that was quickly devoured by the improvised baffling.
Adele was beginning to stir, but it would still take her a few minutes to wake up.
Next order of business, his clothes.
He knew it would be shockingly cold if he were to stand here naked himself, but he’d found out last night with Colleen Hayes that, even with the plastic ties around her wrists, there was still a lot of blood. Tonight he didn’t want any of it getting on his clothes, so after one more moment of mental preparation, he removed his shoes, stripped off his clothes and placed them in one of the plastic bags, then tucked the bag in the corner of the boxcar.
Actually, he thought the chilled air might add to the excitement of what he was doing. Sharpen his awareness. Heighten the experience.
Adele was blindfolded and that was important to Joshua. No woman other than his wife had ever seen him naked and he didn’t want that to change tonight.
Barefoot now, and unclothed, he walked to the mattress he’d left the amputation saw on top of yesterday. Caught up in his thoughts, he absentmindedly stroked the blade for a moment. Yes, he was anxious to get started, but he wanted Adele to be fully awake and aware, like Colleen had been last night, before he cut off any of her extremities.
At last, leaving the saw there for the moment, he faced Adele, and naked, apart from the latex gloves he wore on his hands, he watched her as she slowly began to awaken.
30
I parked beside the train yard.
Somewhere nearby there was supposed to be an access road to the yard’s parking lot, but I wasn’t familiar with the labyrinthine roads in this neighborhood, nor was I in the mood to drive around trying to figure out where to go. I decided Ralph and I could find a quicker way past the fence.
Looking at the rusted condition of most of the train cars, I was struck by a thought: this wasn’t just a train yard, it was a train graveyard.
I put that thought out of my mind: “graveyard” was not a term I wanted bouncing around inside my head at the moment.
The sun had dipped to the skyline, leaving the whole yard draped in one long sweeping shadow. Though the snow had stopped, the wind was picking up and scraped at my face as we exited the undercover car. I zipped up my leather jacket.
Ralph stood beside me, scrutinizing the area. The wind caught hold of his jacket and pressed it against his hulking chest, making it look like a dark, rippling second skin.
“How do you want to do this?” he asked me.
“How about I take the south side, you take the north?”
“So,” he said, “besides Hendrich, what exactly are we looking for again?”
“Bad guys. Bodies. Clues.”
“The usual.”
“Right.”
I dug through the contents of the sedan’s trunk and came up with a hefty, heavy-duty Maglite flashlight. If I needed to take a closer look inside any of the train cars, this puppy would definitely do the trick.
Ralph eyed it. “You think that thing’s big enough?”
I passed it from hand to hand, gauged the weight. “It can double as a club if I need it to.”
“It could double as a baseball bat,” he muttered, “if you cut a few inches off the end.”
Actually, I kind of liked it. “It’s not that bad.”
&n
bsp; He showed me his Mini Maglite, not much larger than a Magic Marker. “You gotta get one of these Bad Boys.”
“That’s not exactly what I would call a ‘Bad Boy.’”
He grunted slightly, then studied the razor wire fence that enclosed the train yard. “So how do we get in?”
When I took a closer look at the formidable security fence, I realized that was actually a pretty good question.
We could walk along the fence that skirted a field on the side of the yard and eventually get to the parking area, but it was likely that the gate was locked and there wasn’t any less razor wire there than there was on the rest of the fence. It wasn’t going to be easy to climb over that no matter where we went.
It seemed that, with all the graffiti on the train cars, there must be an easier way in, somewhere local gang members would use to access the yard to mark their territory.
Quickly, I evaluated what I knew of the neighborhood, then pointed. “The woods. It’s relatively close to the Crips’ territory.” I was about to tell him who the Crips were but then realized he’d already be familiar with the gang from his NCAVC work. “Sections of it wouldn’t be visible from the road.”
“It’d help hide the access point.”
“Right. If there’s a hole in the fence, I’m guessing it would be over there somewhere. That’s where they’d come through. The kids who spray-paint all the train cars.”
He nodded and, flashlights in hand, we crossed the road to look for a way in.
Carl arrived at Main Street.
Plainfield hadn’t grown much since the 1950s when Ed Gein lived here-it still had fewer than a thousand residents, and the street still consisted of only a small family-owned diner, an antique shop, two taverns, a church, and, of course, the hardware store. It was like an idyllic little midwestern Mayberry with a nightmare hiding in its closet.
Carl parked his van just down the street from Magnus’s Hardware Store.
Even though he wanted to get that body out of his van, he still had a little time before he needed to make the call to the kidnapper and he wanted to stick as close as he could to the time frame the note had laid out for him.
Down the block, a few people stepped out of Schroeder’s Diner. He recognized them all and he wondered what they would think of him if they knew what he’d just done, what he had in the back of his van.
But in the end, truthfully, none of that really mattered. He would be linked to all of this anyway and his friends would think what they would think. He had no control over that. Maybe they’d understand, maybe not, but what mattered right now was making sure his fiancee was safe.
Go. Get this over with. Drop off Miriam’s body, call the number, get Adele back home, deal with the consequences later.
After one more moment of consideration, he drove to the tiny parking lot behind the hardware store, exited the van, walked around back, and removed his grandmother’s skinless remains.
31
Adele was almost awake.
Joshua adjusted the light he’d attached to the wall so that it shone directly at her face. Of course she was still blindfolded, but this way it would give him the light he needed.
The temperature was dropping, sending waves of shivers through his body. But the touch of the crisp air, along with his adrenaline and the tightening expectancy turned the shivers into rivers of secret, deep thrills. He’d never used drugs, but he felt like he was experiencing some sort of high right now.
It was still a little while before he expected the call from Carl that the skinned corpse had been left at the hardware store in Plainfield, but, just as with Colleen last night, Joshua had something in mind for the woman in front of him that had nothing to do with the message he’d written in the note he left behind.
No, with both Carl and Vincent, Joshua hadn’t been entirely forthright and honest about his intentions regarding the women they loved. But he justified the slight misrepresentation, the deceit, if you will, as necessary. Yesterday his goal had been to get the police and the news media thinking about Dahmer.
Today, Gein.
Tomorrow he would let the news sink in, and then on Wednesday, build to the final climax with the Oswalds.
Within forty-eight hours he would have the attention of everyone who mattered, and once that happened, he would finally take his place alongside the man he’d grown to so ardently admire.
Griffin would be the key to all of this. He’d be able to get him in touch with the Maneater-when the time was right. After all, he got the police tape from the homicide in Illinois. He had a source close to the crime.
Adele moaned weakly and Joshua’s heartbeat quickened. This was really what it was all about, wasn’t it? This feeling, this urge, this anticipation of the moment before it all begins.
Before.
It all.
Begins.
He fingered the four plastic ties and waited anxiously, anxiously, anxiously for her to be aware enough for the evening’s proceedings to get under way.
I found what I was looking for beside one of the metal posts supporting the chain-link fence.
A small section of the flexible fence material had been pulled loose. A drainage ditch ran alongside the fence here, and Ralph and I needed to scramble down to get to the makeshift opening, but after we did, I bent the loose section of fencing back to provide enough room for him to squeeze through.
It was a tight fit, but after he made it, I knew I could too. I lay on my back, he tugged the edge of the fence up from his side, and I squirmed through to join him.
Ralph motioned toward his radio. “I’ll keep this on. Talk to me if you find anything.”
“Ditto.”
We split up. He lumbered north toward the coal cars, I headed in the direction of the parking lot.
Considering the location of Hendrich’s residence, he wouldn’t have walked here from home. And taking into account the sparse public transportation routes in this part of town, I figured that if Bruce were here, he would have driven.
I hadn’t seen any vehicles in the parking lot, but there might be one hidden here in the yard, behind some train cars. Given the orientation of the tracks, the best place for someone to hide one was near a string of tanker cars not far from the parking lot.
Keeping an eye out for anyone else already in the yard, I made my way toward the tankers to see if Hendrich’s car might just be here.
32
Other than the low hum of late-afternoon traffic on I-94 and the crunch of the gravel underfoot, the train yard was quiet.
I saw no tire tracks or sole impressions on the uneven scrubbing of snow, although some stretches of the yard had only enough snow to fill in the space between the gravel, so it wouldn’t have been possible to track prints very far anyway.
I was nearly to the tankers. I still hadn’t seen a vehicle.
When I looked beneath the train cars, hoping to catch sight of a car’s tires somewhere beyond them, the view was too obscured by a stretch of tall leaning grass on the other side to see much of anything.
Just as I was starting to think that this search for a vehicle might be a waste of time, I glimpsed what I was looking for. Only the hood at first, but as I proceeded, the rest of the sedan came into view.
A Ford Taurus.
I hustled toward it, felt the hood.
Still warm.
In this weather, that meant that whoever had driven it here had to have arrived recently and the engine must have been running for quite a while to get the hood that warm.
I didn’t know if it was Hendrich’s car or not, but in either case, unless there was a way out of the yard that Ralph and I didn’t know about, someone else was in here with us.
I radioed in the plates as I jogged over and inspected the gate. The keyed padlock and chain were shiny and new.
Scrutinizing the train yard, I still saw no movement.
Even though a dusting of snow was kicked up around the car, there wasn’t enough for me to determine which d
irection the driver might have gone after exiting the vehicle.
Mainly it was the snow behind the car that was trampled.
Last night Colleen’s abductor transported her in the trunk of a sedan.
My heartbeat quickened.
He has someone, Pat. He’s here.
I radioed Ralph and told him what I’d found.
Anticipating that whoever had left the car wouldn’t have walked back toward the parking lot, but would’ve likely headed toward a boxcar or freight car where he could work unseen, I followed the path toward the string of boxcars, then kept going past the place where Ralph and I had entered beneath the fence.
Just to my left were the hulking, abandoned freight and boxcars. To my right, the ditch sloped down toward the perimeter fence and the darkening woods that spread out of sight.
Glancing around, I could tell that I’d been correct earlier when I guessed that this area was well hidden from view.
Yeah, this would definitely be the place to bring someone.
I knelt and scanned the tracks again, looking for movement, for signs of anyone walking on the other side of the rusted and long-abandoned boxcars beside me.
Still nothing.
If someone exchanged that lock at the main gate, he might have exchanged others as well. Especially the one to the train car he’s using. Look for new locks, Pat. New chains.
There were a lot of cars to check and I needed to inspect the sliding doors on both sides, but new locks narrowed things down. It was a place to start.
Ralph’s voice came through my radio again: “Anything?”
“No. You?”
“Not yet. Where are you?”
“Near the fence,” I told him, “a hundred meters east of the parking lot. I’m checking the boxcars.”
“Roger that. Keep me posted.”
“Ten-four.”
Then I went back to work looking for bad guys. Bodies. Clues. The usual.
Or in this case, anything that might be unusual.