Stone Cold

by Dean Crawford

  She could not stay in the apartment any longer, that much she knew, even though Stephen was gone now. Too many bad memories. The place would always haunt her. At least she had somewhere else to go now. The thought of that warmed her soul a little as she worked. She was almost finished when she heard a knock at the door. She limped across and opened the door. Detective Griffin stood outside waiting for her.

  His stood with one hand in his pocket, and for the first time since she’d met him he was wearing casual clothes, jeans and T–shirt and a dark leather jacket. She waved him in and he closed the door behind him. He kept the one hand in his pocket, trying to be casual. Pride anchor.

  ‘You look different,’ she said as he followed her into the room.

  Griffin shrugged. ‘New day, new dawn and all that.’

  Kathryn smiled. ‘Angela.’

  A tiny smile curled from one corner of Griffin’s lips. ‘She’s come round to my way of thinking.’

  ‘You mean you grovelled and apologised until you were blue in the face.’

  ‘Yeah, pretty much.’

  ‘And she was happy about that?’

  ‘Several times.’

  Kathryn blushed and stuffed the rest of her things into her handbag. ‘That was more than I needed to know.’

  ‘You been discharged?’

  Kathryn closed her handbag and lifted it onto her shoulder. ‘An hour ago, doctor says I’ll be fine. I heard you got your man?’

  ‘Well, we know it was Dale McKenzie who abducted his wife if that’s what you mean,’ Griffin said.

  ‘Make you feel better, to have closed another case?’

  ‘Sure it does,’ Griffin chuckled over his shoulder as he grabbed Kathryn’s bulging bag off the mattress and carried it to the door for her. ‘But it makes me feel on top of the world to know I’ve closed four.’

  ‘Four?’ Kathryn asked as she passed through the doorway. ‘The earlier victims?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Griffin followed her out to a corridor, nurses bustling to and fro as they walked. ‘Turns out he was some kind of serial killer with four unsolved murders to his name. Maietta fill you in on all of that?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Kathryn said as she limped down the steps outside the hospital and walked toward the taxi ranks. ‘I had no idea.’

  ‘He did it before his career took off,’ Griffin quipped. ‘The money he took them for paid for his flight training.’

  Kathryn reached the taxi rank, a driver spotting her walking stick and climbing out to help her. Griffin opened the taxi’s trunk and carefully lowered her suitcase into it.

  ‘You think you’ll be okay now, detective?’ she asked him.

  Griffin shrugged. ‘Maybe. It’s you I’m worried about.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Yeah, you,’ Griffin said as he slammed the trunk shut. ‘You were recently abducted, witnessed an attempted homicide, beaten and nearly drowned. That’s gotta take some kind of toll, right?’

  Kathryn sighed and jangled her keys thoughtfully in one hand. ‘A lot has taken its toll recently, detective. Right now I’m just glad to be moving on with my life and not stuck in that apartment, rotting with Stephen.’

  ‘Dale.’

  ‘Whatever his name is,’ Kathryn replied. ‘He won’t get off, will he?’

  ‘Of this?!’ Griffin laughed out loud. ‘Mankind will be living on the moon by the time Dale McKenzie gets out. There’s no way the finest prosecution team in all the land could unhook him. Best chance he’s got is avoiding the electric chair, and that’ll be an achievement.’

  Kathryn nodded. ‘So I can sleep with the light off?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Griffin smiled. ‘You’ll be fine. I owe you one, though.’

  Kathryn smiled. ‘You don’t owe me anything, detective, it’s my job.’

  ‘I wanted to thank you for putting me onto McKenzie’s tail,’ Griffin said. ‘All your talk about how important family was, it kind of got me thinking about the creep, you know? Where was his family? Where was his history? He targeted orphans, you know?’

  ‘I didn’t know that,’ Kathryn said. ‘All I know for sure is that’s he’s a world–class bastard.’

  ‘Yeah, he is,’ Griffin said. ‘There ain’t nothing people like him won’t do because they don’t have any family. They don’t have anybody to embarrass, nobody to keep them on the straight and narrow, nobody to betray or apologise to. The McKenzie’s of this world owe nobody anything but themselves.’

  Kathryn looked at Griffin for a long moment.

  ‘I’ve e–mailed Captain Olsen that, provided he agrees, you should be returned to full duties and your firearm returned to you,’ she said finally.

  ‘I appreciate that.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean you’re fully recovered yet,’ she cautioned him. ‘But it does mean that you’re on the mend and you’re thinking straight. The rest will be up to you and your wife.’

  ‘I think we’ve got it covered,’ Griffin said. ‘What about you? Where will you stay?’

  ‘I’ve already arranged something,’ Kathryn replied. ‘I’ll tell Olsen on Monday that your case is officially closed, detective.’

  Kathryn offered Griffin her hand. The detective shook it firmly, and then to Kathryn’s surprise he threw his other arm about her shoulders and pulled her close to him, the soft scent of her perfume wafting across his face.

  ‘Take it easy,’ he said.

  Griffin noticed that the skin at the nape of her neck was flushed red, and her green eyes had lost a little of their hard edge.

  ***

  50

  ‘Well aren’t you the damned hero?’

  Olsen leaned back in his chair as he looked at Griffin, who was standing resolutely to attention before the captain.

  ‘Nothing more than my job, captain,’ Griffin replied.

  ‘For Christ’s sake, relax will you? Take the stick out of your ass and sit down.’

  Griffin sighed. He pulled a chair out from beneath the captain’s desk and slid into it, the morning sunlight streaming through the blinds across the office window and painting the room in alternating shades of gold and black.

  The events of Friday night were still fresh in Griffin’s mind, but after a weekend spent entirely at home they seemed to have occurred a decade ago.

  ‘You heard from the hospital yet?’ he asked.

  ‘Sheila McKenzie’s fine,’ Olsen replied. ‘She’s already confirmed that she’ll testify against her husband. How about you?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ Griffin replied. ‘Just glad I got to her in time is all.’

  Olsen let out a blast of air from beneath his moustache. ‘Yeah, well, you’ve made me look a damned idiot in public. The media, not to mention the commissioner’s office, will have a field day dragging my name through the mud once this all gets out.’

  ‘You did what you had to do.’

  ‘So did you. The difference is, you were right and I was wrong.’

  ‘There is no right or wrong: my hunch just turned out better than yours.’

  ‘Mighty noble of you to say so,’ Olsen replied without humour, ‘though I doubt the mayor will share your sentiments. A state–wide, decade long search for a serial killer is nearly derailed by a small town captain who is then put right by a rookie detective who saves the day in a dramatic rescue, right after said captain has suspended him. My career is over, thanks to you.’

  Olsen opened a draw and hefted something out of it.

  Griffin stared at Olsen for a long beat. ‘Is that a gun in your hand?’

  ‘If I were going to kill you Griffin, believe me I’d be using my bare hands, not this gun.’ Olsen stood up from his desk. ‘The simple fact is that heads will have to roll and as I’m on the verge of retirement, I’ll get to bow out in disgrace after a blemish–free thirty five years on the force. You, detective, will be riding high after just five years. There is no fucking justice, as they say.’

  ‘I won’t let you be hung out to dry, captain,’ Griffin promised, feeling s
uddenly guilty. ‘I’ll tell the mayor that you were…’

  Olsen raised a hand to silence Griffin and shook his great craggy head. ‘Save the sunshine Griffin, ready for when you’ll need to blow it up the mayor’s ass. Truth be told I can’t stand the self–serving son of a bitch so I don’t give much of a damn. Marjorie wants to move anyway, somewhere new. Sick of the winters so she says: too damned cold. I could do with a change of scenery and being retired from the force isn’t going to affect my pension any. So, frankly, detective, I’d like to shake your hand.’

  Griffin blinked as he stood. ‘That so?’

  ‘That’s so,’ Olsen agreed as he shook Griffin’s hand. ‘You did a damned fine job son, no two ways about it.’

  In his other hand, Olsen held Griffin’s service pistol. He held the weapon out to Griffin, who looked down at it for a long moment before he reached out and took it.

  ‘Good,’ Olsen said. ‘If you’d refused to take it back I would have turned you round and shoved it up your ass.’

  Griffin hefted the weapon thoughtfully in his hand. ‘McKenzie?’

  ‘In custody,’ Olsen said. ‘He’s been charged and the District Attorney is handling the case personally, probably to advance her own damned career. I think it’s safe to say McKenzie won’t feel the soft caress of sunshine on his face for many a decade.’

  ‘Why did he marry Sheila McKenzie? Why change his MO?’

  ‘It looks like his marriage to Sheila McKenzie was a keeper and that he’d settled down. It’s only when the money looked like it was going to run out that he decided to make some changes. Fucking tragic, eh? If he’d just stayed low we’d probably never have caught him.’

  ‘Where did Kathryn fit in to all of that?’

  ‘A get out of jail free card,’ Olsen replied. ‘An entire life, far removed from that of his career as a pilot and professional lunatic. If things got too dicey he could just vanish into his other life and start over, or alternatively kill Kathryn and launder her life insurance policy. We haven’t even begun to dig out just how many lives that guy might have forged over the past decade or so using his dead twin’s name, but most of what we do have is all down to Kathryn Stone requesting her assignment to you.’

  Griffin glanced up at the captain. ‘She requested me as an assignment?’

  ‘Sure she did,’ Olsen replied. ‘Picked you out of a line–up of potential new cases over at the clinic she works for. I figured she must have a thing for ex–soldiers in need or something. Lots of women get wet over uniforms and shit like that.’

  Griffin gazed out of the windows into the bright strips of sunlight. ‘McKenzie swore that he didn’t abduct his wife.’

  ‘He’s as guilty as they come,’ Olsen said with a shrug of his shoulders. ‘Forensics already found gunpowder residue on his clothes, and Kathryn’s testimony to where they would find it and what he did in that lock–up fits perfectly with what they’re uncovering at the scene. Blood screen on Kathryn has revealed traces of Pancuronium bromide, just as she claimed, proving that he drugged her and then forced her to hold the pistol that shot Sheila McKenzie.’

  ‘I know all of that,’ Griffin said. ‘But why would he keep denying involvement in the abduction of his wife?’

  ‘Who cares? He’s come up with some bullshit story and says that he found Sheila at the same time as Kathryn, having followed her.’

  Griffin stared into the middle distance for a long beat.

  ‘You checked traffic camera footage of the area around the lock–ups, see who turned up first?’

  ‘We didn’t need to,’ Olsen said. ‘But as it happens the cameras were all down. Kathryn’s story adds up, it’s all sealed and delivered.’

  Griffin’s mind raced with words, scenes, pieces of evidence and fleeting hunches that competed for his attention in a flurry of dawning realisations.

  ‘Yeah,’ he agreed, ‘all except one.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Kathryn was working here at the station when we were e–mailed the picture of Sheila McKenzie with the abduction note.’

  Olsen stared at Griffin for a long moment. ‘Okay, I get what you’re hinting at but she said she didn’t see her close up …’

  ‘She admitted to Maietta she knew where they lived,’ Griffin said. ‘Did Dale McKenzie’s computer have the house alarm code on it anywhere?’

  Olsen’s jaw hung open. ‘Yeah, saved in a file, but how would she have accessed it?’

  Griffin didn’t reply. He heard Maietta’s words drifting through his mind from days before: It’s the dip of their eyes, to the right and down, that betrays the liars. They have to think about what they’re saying. It’s like a poker player’s tell. And then Kathryn’s words, later just before he had blown up in her face. You know how to spot a liar detective, and so do I. And then the words written on Dale’s lap–top.

  “You’re not as clever as you think you are.”

  Like an old movie playing on a flickering black and white screen in his mind Griffin saw a succession of images flash through the field of his awareness. Revelations hit him like mental body blows as he saw Kathryn in his mind’s eye, back on the first day she arrived in the station.

  Requested assignment to Griffin personally.

  Her unhappiness. The removed ring on her finger.

  The ransom note. The photograph, taken on a street.

  Kathryn followed Dale and Sheila, knew where they lived.

  I made copies of all of his keys.

  Dale McKenzie’s access to Sheila’s personal wealth.

  Sheila McKenzie smelling her husband’s scent while a captive.

  Ally Robinson buying aftershave on Kathryn’s behalf.

  The lock–up, paid for with Stephen Hollister’s credit card, which Kathryn had access to.

  I was raised in Nevada.

  The realisation hit Griffin like a sledgehammer. ‘Where is Kathryn right now?’

  ‘She’s probably on another case by now.’

  ‘Did she and Stephen share a bank account?’

  ‘Yeah, she cleaned it out, why?’

  ‘Call her cell,’ Griffin said as he whirled from the office. ‘Send officers to wherever she is as fast as you can! And freeze Dale McKenzie’s accounts and cards!’

  ‘What the hell for? What’s going on?’

  ‘Do it!’

  ***

  51

  Griffin drove hard toward Kathryn’s apartment, the hazard lights on his car blazing as his siren was joined by two more patrol cars that swerved into line behind him.

  ‘Jesus Griffin, ease up!’ Olsen shouted. ‘She’s not the anti–Christ!’

  The three vehicles streamed into the apartment complex, and Griffin saw a further two cars already there. He pulled into the lot to the sound of screeching rubber and leaped out of his vehicle as Maietta appeared and waved him down.

  ‘We’ve already gained access to the apartment,’ she said. ‘She’s gone.’

  Griffin ran up the steps to the apartment door, a uniformed officer standing back against the wall as Griffin rushed past.

  The living room of the apartment appeared unremarkable to Griffin, the home of a couple who did not have much money. Pictures of Stephen and Kathryn adorned the walls, taken at bars or social gatherings, the couple smiling for the camera. Griffin felt rage surge through him, knowing how false those smiles were.

  ‘You got anything from in here?’ he yelled back down the hall at Maietta.

  ‘Nothing out of the ordinary,’ came the reply. ‘The bed’s not been slept in though.’

  Griffin did a brief calculation. Kathryn was questioned by Maietta at the hospital while Griffin took the Friday night off on Olsen’s orders. He had visited her on the Saturday morning.

  I’ve already arranged something.

  Griffin closed his eyes and cursed. She could have been on a plane within a couple of hours.

  ‘You find any ticket stubs? Flight or holiday brochures, stuff like that?’

  ‘Yeah,’
Maietta said. ‘Holiday brochures, two or three of them, all resorts in Mexico.’

  Griffin looked around at the apartment, seeking some clue. Captain Olsen strode inside.

  ‘You may want to cancel your retirement,’ Griffin said. ‘You weren’t quite as far off the mark as you thought.’

  Olsen’s moustache twitched.

  ‘Both Dale and Stephen McKenzie’s bank accounts are empty, cleared right out,’ the captain replied. ‘We’re tracing the money right now but I don’t hold out much hope that we’ll find it.’

  ‘How much?’ Griffin asked.

  ‘Stephen Hollister’s accounts, not much,’ Olsen replied. ‘Dale McKenzie’s accounts, significant sums, six figures at least, all tucked away over the years.’

  Griffin gritted his teeth and thumped one fist on the back of an aged sofa. ‘Damn it, what the hell did we miss?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Olsen said. ‘We weren’t looking in the right places, and had no reason to do so. We just did a check of flights out of the regional airport and found a connecting flight to an international hub booked under the name Kathryn Stone. It departed Saturday afternoon. Neither Kathryn nor Dale McKenzie purchased any airline tickets that we were aware of, so they must have been bought with cash well in advance.’

  Griffin chuckled bitterly. ‘Robinson, her friend must have picked up the tickets for her.’

  ‘Kathryn took off?’ Maietta asked. ‘She won’t make her testimony against McKenzie. It doesn’t make any sense. She wanted to nail that bastard.’

  ‘She will,’ Griffin replied. ‘She already has. Sheila McKenzie’s testimony and the forensic evidence is more than enough to sink Dale. Kathryn doesn’t need to help them.’

  Maietta glanced at Olsen. ‘She did it?’

  Griffin let out a long, weary breath of air as he hung his head for a moment. ‘She set the whole damned thing up.’ Griffin straightened, looked around at the apartment for a moment. ‘She finds out that Stephen is already married to another woman,’ he said out loud. ‘She follows him, checks him out, sees them together. She gets upset about it, decides she’s going to do something to make him regret going behind her back.’