Stone Cold

by Dean Crawford

  Kathryn retrieved from her bag a small file marked with Griffin’s name and opened it up.

  ‘How are you coping with the aftermath of the shooting incident?’

  A long silence filled the room before Griffin replied.

  ‘You don’t beat about the bush ma’am.’

  ‘I figured that you’re probably somebody who probably appreciates straight talking.’

  Griffin raised an eyebrow, the crooked smile still touching his features.

  ‘I guess. And in answer to your question, things are fine.’

  ‘Can you define fine for me detective?’

  ‘I don’t drink any more, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘That’s what I mean,’ Kathryn agreed. ‘You’re married.’

  ‘Four years.’

  No more details. No elaboration. No mention of the wife’s name, although Kathryn already knew it of course. That could also just be straight talking, but she doubted it.

  ‘She coping okay?’

  ‘With what?’

  ‘With you.’

  ‘Should she be having a problem?’

  ‘No,’ Kathryn replied. ‘Detective, I could take this interview in all kinds of directions, but I prefer to just sound people out at a realistic level. Mind games and inferred psychology seem a waste of time to me. You’re a well–trained, upstanding officer and a patriot. If you want the bullshit version I can deal, or we can just cut to the chase and let me figure out how life really is for you and your family right now.’

  Griffin stared at her for a long moment, then leaned back as he exhaled noisily. It was like watching noxious fumes spill from a crippled body and then the first inhalation of clean air for months.

  ‘We’re working it out,’ he said finally. ‘One day at a time.’

  ‘Been having problems long?’

  Griffin stared at her again, probably wondering whether he could bullshit past her. A soft sigh as he apparently rejected the option, his eyes focused to infinity on the table top.

  ‘You don’t just walk away from a war, in any sense.’

  ‘I don’t doubt it. Post–Traumatic–Stress–Disorder takes many forms, detective. I won’t bother boring you with them as I’m sure you know by now what PTSD is. You’ve had a hell of a ride over the past few years and sometimes it can take the brain a while to process everything, get it into a context that you can handle. You just need some more time.’

  ‘And my wife?’

  ‘The same,’ Kathryn replied. ‘We’re all people, detective. What affects one person tends to rub off very easily on those close to them, and sometimes that can open wounds which take a long time to heal. Give her space, let her know that you’re trying.’

  ‘Like I said, I don’t drink now.’

  ‘Getting dry isn’t getting better all on its own,’ Kathryn pointed out. ‘You talk much?’

  Griffin shrugged, keeping that steady blue–eyed gaze on her. She felt as though she were being analysed in silence.

  ‘Try harder,’ she said, glancing down at the file to break the spell. ‘You’re young, you’ve got plenty of time to get past this and move forward.’

  ‘You don’t look old,’ Griffin observed.

  Kathryn almost laughed. ‘I’ll take that as a compliment.’

  Griffin’s smile didn’t slip as he leaned forward on the table, his eyes fixed upon hers.

  ‘That’s what it was meant to be,’ he replied. ‘You’ve been through a lot yourself but you’re looking okay for it.’

  Kathryn’s studied calm slipped and she felt saliva pooling in her throat. ‘Have we met before?’

  Griffin shook his head. ‘You sometimes wear a ring,’ he said. ‘The skin stays smooth after they’re removed ‘cause the sun doesn’t get to it so easy, so I figure you’re either recently separated or you took it off before you came in here.’

  ‘I’m happily attached, actually,’ Kathryn replied, uncertain. ‘Where are you going with this?’

  ‘You’re not the only person who can dig into a stranger’s past just by looking at them,’ Griffin replied. ‘Which means your advice is no better than that I could get from friends in a bar.’

  ‘People in bars tend to like talking about themselves more than helping others.’

  ‘You think that I need help?’

  ‘I think that you need time, and space, to process what’s happened to you.’

  Griffin watched her silently for several long seconds. ‘I need to be able to do my job.’

  ‘Which you will, just as soon as I clear you again for full duty.’

  ‘Which will be when?’

  ‘When you’re ready,’ Kathryn replied.

  ‘Can I ask you something?’

  ‘Anything.’

  ‘You’re in an unhappy relationship, no matter what you might say to hide it,’ Griffin said. ‘So you tell me: if a trained psychologist can’t pick themselves the right person to spend their life with, why should I listen to anything they say about me or what I need?’

  Kathryn managed to hold the detective’s unwavering gaze for long enough to formulate a reply.

  ‘Because I know how to stick with that relationship and make it work,’ she said, ‘not run away from it and hide behind my anger.’

  ‘That why you take the ring off?’

  Kathryn tried to make her jaw work and reply, but before she could do so a sharp knock at the door cut her off as Captain Olsen opened the door and stuck his craggy head inside.

  ‘Sorry, doc’. Griffin, you’re up.’

  ‘Can it wait?’ Kathryn asked.

  The captain shook his head. ‘It’s pretty urgent,’ he said. ‘Maietta’s caught a time–sensitive case.’

  Griffin wasted no time and virtually leaped out of his seat as he flashed Kathryn a relieved smile. ‘Nice to meet you, doc’.’

  ***

  5

  Griffin strode into the operations room. An Italian looking female detective was walking toward him, long brown hair flowing across her shoulders over a two–piece dark–grey suit. Jane Maietta’s lips were a hard, thin line, her eyes dark and her expression uncompromising.

  ‘What’s up?’ Griffin asked her.

  Maietta handed him a case file, brand new and with a name scribbled in black marker across the front. McKenzie.

  ‘You just caught a new case, lucky guy,’ she said. ‘One printed ransom note and a photograph of a missing woman.’

  ‘Seriously?’ Griffin asked.

  Ransom notes were not everyday events in the precinct, and despite America’s infatuation with guns Great Falls had a low crime–rate that had been falling for some years. Griffin read the note and looked at the photograph.

  ‘How did we get this?’ he asked. ‘The note warns against contacting local PD.’

  ‘The husband sent it,’ Maietta replied. ‘Shot some images with his cell and e–mailed them to us direct. Neat get–around.’

  ‘Okay, the husband’s a smart guy. How long do we got?’

  ‘That’s the catch,’ Maietta replied. ‘The guy’s an airline pilot who’s been away for at least forty eight hours so the time of abduction is uncertain.’

  ‘Hoax? Wife takes off, tries to disappear, fakes own suicide even?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Maietta said. ‘Hard to tell until we can figure out a way of talking to the husband, but it’s not something we can afford to take a chance on. The woman, Sheila McKenzie, hasn’t turned up and I can see the headlines already: police ignore ransom note, woman dies, police sued.’

  The female detective glanced at Kathryn Stone, who was walking out of the office behind Griffin. ‘That the shrink?’

  ‘Jane Maietta, meet Kathryn Stone. I can’t wipe my own ass unless she says I’m safe to do it.’

  Maietta flicked her eyebrows up at Kathryn in what apparently passed for a greeting in the station. Kathryn managed a tight smile in response.

  ‘Post marked Great Falls,’ Griffin murmured as he looked at the envelope. ‘The pe
rpetrator either lives here or they’re in a settlement close by. That means they’re lazy whether they’re hoaxing or not. Have we spoken to the husband at all?’

  ‘No, but we checked him out. Dale McKenzie is an upstanding pillar of the community,’ Maietta replied. ‘No priors or motive so far as we know. He’s pinned down in his home and can’t come to us without fearing a reprisal by the abductors, so we’re talking by e–mail until we can get him in here unobserved or talk to him at his place of residence.’

  ‘Any chance the abductors could be monitoring his e–mails?’

  ‘He’s using his cell,’ Maietta replied. ‘Sure, it could have been cloned, but we don’t have the luxury of time to chase that down.’

  ‘Any enemies, disgruntled ex–employees, partners?’ Griffin asked.

  ‘I’m running with it now,’ she said. ‘Dale’s a senior officer with Ventura Air out of the local airport. Flies regional.’

  ‘Alibi?’

  ‘Fairly solid. The airline confirms that he was at 35,000ft when the abduction most likely occurred.’

  ‘What about a silent partner?’ Griffin suggested.

  ‘I’m pulling what we’ve got on both the husband and the missing wife,’ Captain Olsen said as he joined them, ‘but nothing’s shouting solution at me yet.’

  ‘Which doesn’t help us one little bit,’ Griffin uttered. ‘We need means, motive and opportunity, but we’ve got no timeline on this because of the disparity between the abduction and the husband’s discovery of the note.’

  In most abduction cases, there were two well–known rules: that the first forty–eight hours were crucial because after that time frame it was considered unlikely that the victim would be found before death; and that most times the abductor was somebody the abductee knew, often a spouse or family member.

  ‘Nobody has called the husband yet?’ Griffin asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ Maietta confirmed. ‘Either they know we’re involved and are in the wind or the deadline’s not up yet.’

  ‘Where was Sheila McKenzie abducted from?’ Griffin asked.

  ‘Her home,’ Olsen replied, ‘near as we can figure. The husband said there was evidence that she’d returned home from work, but then been forcibly removed from the house. He said that he found bloodstains on the kitchen floor and some sign of a struggle.’

  Griffin read the case notes and frowned. ‘McKenzie said that he walked into his home when he got back from work.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Maietta replied, ‘and he found the ransom note on the kitchen table.’

  ‘And he had to switch off the alarm when he entered the house,’ Griffin read from a page of e–mails sent to and from McKenzie.

  Maietta nodded. ‘The abductor had to know the code and must have re–set it.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Griffin said, ‘or they coerced Sheila into revealing the code to them, or at least opening the door to them.’

  ‘The security company that fitted the system on the house said that it has two codes,’ Maietta replied. ‘One is the standard deactivation or arming code, and the other is an SOS code that still operates the alarm but also sends a signal to local police. Sheila could have alerted the police by giving her abductor the alert code.’

  Griffin nodded. ‘So there’s a strong possibility that her abductor did indeed know the correct code and input it directly. That likely puts them inside the house prior to her arrival, which would likely be, what, after work?’

  ‘They also knew enough to isolate the house a little,’ Maietta said. ‘Phone company confirms that the phone line was cut prior to the abduction.’

  ‘Professional job?’ Griffin hazarded.

  Maietta shrugged. ‘Can’t say right now, but they thought about what they were doing. I’ve got Russell County’s HIDTA Drug Task Force in the loop in case this somehow turns out to be a drug or gang related incident, and Cascade County and Teton County are with the jive in case whoever’s got Sheila are looking to jump counties. ATF, DEA and Homeland are being filled in on the details via the Bureau as we speak.’

  ‘We’ve got to assume we’ve about thirty six hours to work with,’ Olsen said as he turned away from Griffin. ‘If Sheila McKenzie was abducted after she got home from work, and her husband arrived home to find the letter the following morning, that’s forty eight hours minus twelve. See if you can’t pin down Sheila McKenzie’s last known movements, or who saw her last prior to abduction, and figure out a better time line from that.’

  ‘Find out where Sheila McKenzie works,’ Griffin said to Maietta. ‘We’ll also need to get a support team out to the husband as fast as we can, tap his phones, anything to get ready for a call if it comes in.’

  ‘Perps must have known that the husband would be away for long periods,’ Maietta said as she headed for her desk. ‘They might have anticipated a delay and be working around it.’

  ‘And find out who fitted the alarm system and who had access to those codes at the company,’ Griffin added. ‘We need to eliminate any of their staff before we go any further.’

  Kathryn watched Griffin for a long moment before speaking. ‘Are you sure you want to get involved in a case like this right now?’

  ‘Why wouldn’t I? It’s my job, and I can’t do much damage behind a damned desk.’

  ‘A missing woman,’ Kathryn replied. ‘Are you looking for redemption?’

  ‘Any reason that I shouldn’t be?’ Griffin asked as he studied the photograph.

  ‘No,’ Kathryn admitted, and then added, ‘yes. What if this case turns out to end in a shoot–out, or even failure?’

  Griffin did not move but she could see his eyes drift away from the photograph as the detective considered the possibility.

  ‘That’s bullshit,’ Maietta said as she held a phone pinned to her ear. ‘You helping here or hindering?’

  ‘I don’t start anything planning to fail,’ Griffin replied to Kathryn. ‘Do you?’

  Kathryn spoke quietly.

  ‘Nobody does, but just like last time it’s not your life that might be on the line, Scott. It’s somebody else’s, and you can’t account for everything.’

  ‘You’re advocating that I accept failure before I’ve even started? What kind of support is that?’

  ‘I’m just saying that maybe Olsen should have somebody else should lead this case, one of your colleagues, just for now.’

  Maietta chuckled bitterly in the background.

  Griffin turned to face Kathryn. ‘Sure, that’s my line. I hand over responsibility to somebody else so they’re carrying the can if it all goes south and I walk away with my hands in my pockets whistling and shrugging my shoulders. Is that what you mean?’

  ‘You know that’s not what I mean.’

  Kathryn glimpsed Griffin’s jaw clench as he struggled to maintain his composure.

  ‘Okay, this is how it’s going to go. You’re going to leave this building now and come back tomorrow for our little conversations because that’s what I have to do in order to stay in my job. And that’s all you’re going to do. I have an abduction case to concentrate on and you’re getting in my way.’

  Kathryn was about to reply when a voice called out across the office.

  ‘Griffin,’ Olsen rumbled. Griffin looked up as the captain gestured to Kathryn. ‘Meet your new shadow.’

  Griffin opened his mouth to protest. One of Olsen’s thick fingers sliced back and forth through the air in front of his face and cut him off.

  ‘It’s non–negotiable,’ Olsen said, then looked at Kathryn. ‘You want him behind a desk or on the streets, counsellor? It’s your call.’

  Kathryn looked at Griffin as though sizing him up, when in fact she knew damned well the detective needed to break free of his desk. Keeping him cooped up would do his psyche no good at all.

  ‘He needs to be involved,’ Kathryn relented. ‘Let him run the case.’

  ‘Fine,’ Olsen said, and then looked at Griffin. ‘You don’t miss a single appointment with Miss Stone. Agreed?’
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  Griffin shrugged and nodded.

  Olsen flashed them both a bright smile. ‘I’m glad we’re on the same page, detective. You’ll make a beautiful couple. Now, get on the case and find the asshole behind this abduction while there’s still time.’

  ‘I’ve got something,’ Griffin said as he looked at the photograph.

  ***

  6

  ‘Already?’ Maietta asked.

  Griffin looked down at the pictures. ‘Sheila McKenzie,’ he said. ‘The picture is grainy and doesn’t give us much, but somebody had to take it.’

  ‘It doesn’t give us the location,’ Maietta said. ‘Maybe taken on the east side, which ties in with what you said about the abductors being lazy, but we can’t figure out anything else?’

  In the picture Sheila McKenzie was walking along fairly non–descript sidewalk. Brick walls, a few parked cars, very little to identify where she was from the images alone.

  Griffin gestured to the brick wall behind Sheila McKenzie.

  ‘Look at the wall,’ he said. ‘There’s a patch of faded brickwork. That was graffiti or wall art or some such. I’m pretty sure I used to see it when driving down Division Avenue, before the council scrubbed it down. It’s the wall of a massage parlour or some such and there’s an intersection nearby, so maybe there will be traffic camera coverage?’

  ‘What will traffic cam’ footage achieve?’ Olsen asked. ‘We know who’s been abducted.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Griffin agreed, ‘and if we can use the footage to identify the person behind the camera, we’re one step closer to figuring out who’s behind the abduction.’

  ‘He’s right,’ Maietta confirmed. ‘That wall got scrubbed a few weeks ago.’

  Griffin looked down at the photograph.

  ‘Good, so we know the shot was taken within the last few weeks and we know where. That means the abduction was premeditated. Can we get traffic camera footage?’

  ‘The chances of catching the photographer are slim,’ Maietta pointed out, ‘especially if they took the shot from a moving vehicle. We won’t know which one to look for.’

  ‘There’s a camera,’ Olsen called from across the office, one hand cupped over his phone, ‘but it’s only got forty–eight hours’ of footage on permanent record. The disc gets wiped.’