by John Philpin
This trip one of the feds was a pantsuit—nicely wrapped. But I couldn’t help thinking that a night in the sack with her would be like fucking my accountant. And I’d have to pay taxes on it.
Lane and Ms. Agent were side by side, with Lane towering about six inches above her federal friend. What the little woman didn’t know was that all the power dressing and power lunches in the world wouldn’t do her any good when dealing with my favorite Amazon. I waved to Lane.
“Hang on,” she said to the agent, and came over by the door where I was standing. “You’re alive.”
“I’m doing,” I said. “Look, I’ve got a lot to run by you.”
“We have a briefing with the feds in about ten minutes. The woman is Special Agent Walker. There are a couple more of her colleagues around. I don’t know how long it’s going to take. Maybe after that.”
“Who brought them in? Hanson?”
“They brought themselves in. They’ve been working three unsolved cases up in the Albany area. Same MO as our two.”
“Weren’t you running some checks, too?”
“There were nineteen sheets on my desk when I got in this morning. I haven’t had a chance to look at them yet. That’s not counting our two and the Bureau’s three. We’re looking at five states.”
Five states—maybe two dozen victims. I wondered what the hell we were dealing with.
“You and I aren’t going to have any time to talk,” I complained.
“Maybe after the briefing—”
“I’m not going to any briefing, and I won’t be around later.”
“Hanson says—”
“Fuck Hanson. I met Alan Chadwick.”
Lane’s eyes opened wide. I knew I had her attention.
“He’s a pathologist at Boston City Hospital. Early forties, but he looks sixty. Pathetic kind of guy, but I liked him. Our Chadwick was an imposter—managed to get his hands on this guy’s credentials. The diploma, the transcript, the residency, everything.”
The room was starting to fill with detectives. Hanson and Willoughby moved toward the portable podium at the front.
“Our Chadwick didn’t die in the explosion,” Lane said.
“I didn’t think so.”
“ATF pulled a fairly intact finger from the debris, but it didn’t match up with the Chadwick prints on file with the state. We’re still checking out who the dead guy might be. I had a fax from the Hasty Hills PD saying they have two possible missing persons—their medical examiner, who’s the guy they know as Chadwick, and a handyman at the Municipal Building who hasn’t shown up at work all week.”
“What do you have on the guy who calls himself Chadwick?”
“He owned a piece of land north of Hasty Hills. State cops found some mounds out there, also some sinkholes in the soil. Could be a burial site. They’re up there doing methane probes right now. He also signed a death certificate on your guy over in Landgrove.”
“My guy?”
Hanson was clearing his throat, rapping his knuckles on the table, while Willoughby looked with barely concealed disgust at the coffee urn and two trays of dunkers Hanson’s secretary had set out for our guests.
“I have to get out of here,” I said. “I’ve got some calls to make.”
Landgrove rang a bell, but I had to leave before Lane could try to talk me into staying. Hanson loves to throw parties about as much as he likes to see himself on the six o’clock news. He’d be pissed that I didn’t attend his affair, but I figured Lane would cover for me. Technically, I wasn’t on duty anyway.
The Paul Wolf angle couldn’t be more than a bizarre coincidence. It sounded as if everybody but the doc agreed that Chadwick’s girlfriend had jumped to her death. Besides, our Wolf’s first name was John. But I couldn’t leave it alone. It’s the kind of thing that would nag at me if I didn’t check it out.
I went back to my cubicle and got on the phone. Directory assistance had a number at Harvard for an office dealing with student affairs. I tried that one first. Judy Newton at that office gave me Helen Trammell’s number at alumni. Paul Wolf hadn’t graduated. Helen directed me back to Judy. Judy connected me to a dean named Harvey Hesselman. Harvey educated me about confidentiality, court orders, and lack of jurisdictional standing. I placed another call to my friend Judy.
“Harvey doesn’t understand me,” I told her.
She laughed. “I don’t want to get in any trouble. I could lose my job.”
“I don’t want that to happen,” I said, “but I think you can help me without putting yourself in a bad position. If you can get a look at this guy’s file, just memorize what you can out of it. Don’t try to write anything down. If all you can get is his date of birth, that would help. And call me.”
I gave her the number at my desk, and my home phone.
“I can’t promise anything,” she said.
“I wouldn’t ask you to. I appreciate anything you can do, Judy.”
I had a feeling that Judy wouldn’t let me down. Regardless, the legal affairs people would have to start the wheels turning to obtain a court order. Even Harvard isn’t immune.
I wandered over to the desk that Lane shares with two other investigators when they’re not off sick or on disability. Her nineteen victims had become twenty-one. I read the top one. Rebecca Holbrook, twenty-eight, separated, mother of two, climbed into her Volkswagen one morning three and a half years ago. She dropped the kids at day care, then went off to her job at a bottling plant. Rebecca never got there. She vanished—disappeared from the face of the earth. Her car was found on a bus route almost midway between the day care center and the plant. There were no suspects.
I wondered if Rebecca Holbrook was residing just north of Hasty Hills.
The second sheet was more recent. Ten months ago, Susan Cullen, twenty, was a cashier at a convenience store in a town of 15,000 in Connecticut. She was supposed to work until 11:00, then close the store. Shortly after 9:00 a regular customer came in for his newspaper and six-pack. The place was empty. Susan’s body was found floating in a river a week later. The cause of death was ligature strangulation—a leather thong was still in place, knotted so tightly around her throat that it had disappeared into her skin.
The number of cases involving strangers killing strangers is skyrocketing. Almost a quarter of all homicides in this country are of that variety, and most of them are committed by serial killers. But the numbers don’t impress me. The names and the details do.
Silvia Chambers, thirty-six, strangled. Lydia Hall, thirty-one, bludgeoned. Ann Waters, twenty-one, strangled. Miriam Spender, twenty-five, stabbed. Connie Snow, twenty-nine, missing, foul play suspected. Some of the cases went back to the 1970s. Most were of more recent vintage.
Not all these cases were related. They couldn’t be. But I was starting to think that a sizable number were—and, once we sorted it all out, we’d discover that this case spanned a lot of years and a lot of communities, bringing horror to a lot of families.
How could Sarah have been so comfortable, so relaxed with this guy? She could be a little spacey. There were times when she was an absolute flake. But at the end, she was like a young girl falling in love for the first time. It wasn’t that Sarah was that bad a judge of people. It was that this guy was so good—sexy, suave, a smooth talker. My name’s this. No, my name’s that. And she bought it.
Wallingford. Sarah said that he was from Landgrove. What the hell did that mean? Lane said Chadwick had signed a death certificate in Landgrove. “My guy,” she said. If Wolf said he was Wallingford, and Wolf turned out to be Chadwick, maybe he’d signed his own fucking death certificate. Jesus. I needed a drink.
The fax machine started cranking. I reached for the sheet. Make it number twenty-two. Catherine MacKenzie, thirty-eight, found with her neck broken in a stall in a men’s room at the airport. Possible suspect: white male, graying brown hair, blue eyes, six foot, educated, tried to pass himself off as a bank official. Said he had a delivery for Ms. MacKenzie, and m
anaged to get into her apartment building. But she had called the bank, knew he was a fraud, so the place was crawling with cops. He smelled them and ran—all the way to the airport, where MacKenzie had a flight booked to Heathrow the following morning. Sounded like the brass balls of an Alan Carver to me.
I added the sheet to the pile and went back to my cubicle. After sending off a formal request for information on the suicide and the homicide my Chadwick had told me about, I gave him a call. He was between patients, he said—one on the table to his right, and one on the left. I was starting to like this guy.
“What else can you tell me about Paul Wolf?” I asked him.
“It’s been so long,” he said. “And no one was ever interested. I remember I wrote down things about him. I kept a notebook, but I haven’t seen that in years. I don’t even know if I still have it. I know he enjoyed inflicting pain. Oh, I provoked him. I stalked him—I guess that’s the word they use now. I asked for what he did to me. But I know he enjoyed doing it. I felt like he wanted me to keep coming after him, so he’d have an excuse to do something else to me.”
“Do you remember where he was from?”
“I want to say up north somewhere, but I’m not sure. My girlfriend was from Vermont. That may be why I want to say that.”
“What about other people who knew him?”
“He was a loner. If he had friends, I never knew it. He was premed but, like I said, he wasn’t much of a student. I don’t remember who told me that. He played games of chess in his head. No board. No pieces. Complete games. He’d tell people he could do this and get them to bet that he couldn’t. Sixty or seventy moves sometimes.”
“Did he have a job?”
“Not that I know of. He had a scholarship to begin with, but lost it.”
Again I thanked Chadwick and told him to call if he thought of anything else. He said he would.
Lane showed up just as I got off the phone. “Feel briefed?” I asked her.
“They’re going to do some of their magic down in Virginia and report back later. There’s a chance of this and a chance of that, but we can’t be sure of anything.”
“Well, they’re real busy making movies,” I said. “Got to sell the product.”
“We’re supposed to maintain an upbeat posture with the press. Put pressure on the killer. Make him think we’re getting close to him.”
“Lane, he knows we haven’t got shit. This guy is surreal. How many fucking identities does he have?”
“Willoughby wants us to start rating our leads,” she said, “using some kind of numerical system that’ll go into the computer easy.”
“Well, this guy does gobble ’em up like Pac-Man. Besides, we need a good computer game around here to break the monotony.”
“What about the Harvard Chadwick? You said you had more.”
“Lane, I’m gonna tell you something. But I don’t want to hear one word about my paranoia.”
Before I had a chance to tell her about Paul Wolf, Hanson and Dexter Willoughby walked up.
Right away, Hanson began giving Lane the bad news. “Detective Frank,” he said, “since the Bureau will be working these cases, we won’t be using any outside consultation. I told the lieutenant to send a fax up to your father to let him know we appreciate his assistance and to explain the situation. The Bureau has a suspect in the Albany cases. We’ll be working that angle, too.”
While Hanson was running his mouth to Lane, I had a chance to size up Dexter W. The dude was wearing hotshot shoes—real leather, with all those little curlicues punched in it. And they were small because his feet were small. Actually, everything about him was—well, not small, really, but dainty. He was neat in an undersized sort of way, like a miniature. And he was perfect. There wasn’t a single wrinkle in his suit or on his little pink face.
But on closer examination, I saw that Dexter Willoughby did have a flaw after all. His briefcase was too big. It looked like what I’d use for a weekend trip to the NCAA basketball championship. I figured he lugged his procedure manuals around in it.
“You have a suspect in the Albany cases?” Lane asked, but the two men ignored her.
Hanson finished saying his piece, then Dexter spoke up. Even his voice was dainty. “This is a complicated matter,” he said, in what seemed to be a signal for Willoughby and the captain to walk away.
Once they were out of earshot, I said, “Fucking profound. Somebody write that down.”
“What suspect?” Lane said, though not necessarily to me. “If we’re supposed to work this case, it’d be nice to know who he is.”
“It’s a complicated matter,” I reminded her.
“I have to fax Dad.”
I turned back to my desk and stared at it. A single sheet of yellow, lined paper contained all the sense I was able to make out of the case so far. The rest of it was a question mark, and I had just started to ponder that when my intercom buzzed.
“Sinclair.”
“The methane probes were positive,” Lane said. “Looks like he had his own graveyard.”
“But he didn’t bury them all there,” I said. “Why?”
“Sounds like a question for Special Agent Dexter Willoughby.”
“He’s got his own suspect,” I told her, and clicked off.
And that’s why cases don’t get made. Nobody tells anybody shit, especially not when the feds are flocking around like vultures at a leper colony. Investigations have lives of their own. They’re reactive. You do all the shit the manual says—check this, cross-check that. Then some dude calls in and says he saw the boyfriend carrying a gun, leaving the crime scene two minutes after the shooting. So you react. You put all your resources into that lead. Turns out it wasn’t the boyfriend; it was a plumber. He wasn’t carrying a gun; it was his pipe wrench. It wasn’t two minutes after the shooting; it was two weeks before. And you’ve pissed away all that time and effort, but you do it again, with the next call.
Kojak solved them all. Even though Joe Friday talked like a computerized voice mail, he cleared ’em in half an hour. Always by the fucking book. It was a joke. TV was killing us. At least on Homicide some of them get left hanging, and the assholes who don’t like the show complain because it’s too realistic.
I felt bad for Lane. It was her first case as lead and here I was doing as little communicating as anyone else around the shop. She’d set all the right stuff in motion—analysis of physical evidence, neighborhood door-to-door, background information, a list of the latest wackos released from mental hospitals and the prisons upstate—but none of it would mean shit until something flew in from left field.
The feds just made matters worse. Their presence pisses off the drones, puffs up the brass with self-importance, and shuts mouths. Willoughby had his own suspect. I doubted if he or Hanson would ever get around to briefing any of us who were doing the legwork. But hey, who gives a shit? They’ve probably got the wrong sucker anyway.
Lane
As soon as I arrived at the precinct on Friday, Hanson motioned for me to come into his office, reminding me that he wanted us to have a talk.
“Let me grab a cup of coffee first,” I said—but he told me no, there wasn’t time. The feds were due any minute for a briefing on the Sinclair/Harris cases, et al., and I was to be the lead presenter.
“Have a seat,” Hanson said, closing the door behind me.
I settled onto the wooden chair farthest from his desk.
“There’s a delicate matter we need to clear up, Lane,” he began. “In a situation like this it’s standard practice. You know that. I have to ask you where you were from three o’clock Sunday afternoon until you reported to the murder scene Monday morning.”
“This is about Robert and me, isn’t it?”
“You and the deceased weren’t exactly friends.”
“You think I killed her. Is that it?”
“I just want to get your story on the record.”
“My story? Captain, you know where I was. I was on
call from Friday night till Monday morning.”
“Dispatch doesn’t show you out on any calls all weekend, until the one Monday.”
I wanted to walk out, but I knew that Hanson would call it a female thing if I did. “There weren’t any calls,” I said.
“The problem is, Lane, the log doesn’t even show you dispatched to the Sinclair scene.”
“I called in when I got there.”
“But how did you get there? Who notified you?”
“You know who notified me. Robert did—when he found her.”
“We need to clear that up for the record. The polygraph will take care of it, and then we can put all this behind us.”
Hanson stood up, smiling—as if he thought we were the best of friends—and gestured toward the door. It was time for the meeting with the feds.
I walked out into the hall. I was a suspect. Someone was playing with my head. Robert was doing his own thing. And this case was going nowhere.
There was one bright spot in my morning. A fax from Pop was waiting in my in box. Once again he mentioned Robert. All I could do was hope that nobody else in the department had read it.
TO: Found Out
FROM: Pop
Ever since you were a child I’ve told you that I know more than everything. You’ve never believed me. I’ve known about your dalliance with Robert Sinclair since before it happened. Parents are like that.
I hope that one of the lessons you’ve learned is that you can’t take care of Robert. He has to wrestle with his own demons—the ghosts of his ex-wife, his child, and the ones that rise up with the fumes from his various bottles. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it say no to a fifth of Wild Turkey.
Your man with the gun and all the identities (possibly/probably including that of county ME; Lt. Swartz did mention Chadwick, the explosion, etc.): You will find more identities. He wasn’t concerned about leaving his prints around because he knows they won’t ever lead anyone to him. He destroyed the house because it would reveal too much about him. He has studied those of us who study people like him. I’m sure he’s read all the books, and probably attended a few seminars. Some of us may have even met him (those of us who bother to attend those god-awful things).