Many of Jason’s personal effects were still in his room, but his passport and a small box where he kept his money were missing. A roommate explained that Jason didn’t use a bank. He always cashed his paychecks and hid the extra money in the box under his clothing. We collected all of Jason’s personal effects for examination by our crime scene technician. The technician would look for bloodstains from either Jim Otto or Helga Günter. I was certain that Jason was too smart to have kept the clothing he wore during the crimes, but occasionally, smart criminals make stupid mistakes.
Chad had his own car at the Canyon. He headed for the Sedona office as quickly as possible on the two lane roads. Chad is good with computers and understood how to crop the photos for distribution. He said there would be a hundred copies of the wanted man on my desk by the time I got there tomorrow morning. Chad would also e-mail the photos to all of the other Sheriff’s substations and police departments in northern Arizona and southern Utah.
It was nearly 10:00 when I called Margaret to let her know that I’d be home sometime after midnight. As I drove back toward Flagstaff, I updated her on all the new information about the case. She was saddened to learn that another woman had been killed. She also understood that I’d take the new death very hard.
We talked about the case for nearly an hour. After hearing all the details, Margaret said, “Mike, I never met Jason. Please bring one of those photos to me tomorrow at work. I don’t like the idea that he might come to Sedona and I wouldn’t recognize him. I’m sure the branch manager will let us post a photo on the front door of the branch. You could probably spread photos of the wanted man in stores all over town.”
The odds were high that Jason was trapped somewhere north of the Grand Canyon in the Arizona Strip, however there was still a small chance that Jason crossed the Navajo Bridge before the roadblock was set up. There was not enough time to have made it past the Fredonia or Stone House Road roadblocks. The Sheriff had responded immediately to the news of a new death.
“Please set the alarm and put the bear spray next to the bed.” We’d bought the pepper spray for a backpacking trip in Montana a few years ago. The spray was so potent that it was supposed to scare away a grizzly bear. The bear spray was much safer to have for self-defense next to our bed than a loaded pistol. Loaded pistols are responsible for a hundred times more accidental deaths than deaths of criminals breaking into bedrooms.
When I reached Flagstaff, I stopped by the Sheriff’s office with the personal effects that I’d collected in Jason’s room. I wanted to make certain that the fingerprints were sent to Australia as soon as possible. I found the Sheriff in his office working the phones, calling all of the nearby jurisdictions to tell them about our fugitive. He explained, “Amy Ziegler called a few minutes ago. The rangers have found a family from California at the Cottonwood Campground. They're doing a four-day cross canyon hike. The family left their red Jeep Liberty for friends to pick up and drive to the South Rim for them. They hid the keys on the top of a rear tire. The family started their hike about fifteen minutes after Florence Simmons was killed. That car is missing, and I am calling every law enforcement agency in the area to assist with the search.
The implication was concerning. If Jason got access to a car that quickly after Ms. Simmons’ death, he had a better chance of escaping before our Navajo Bridge roadblock was set. The Sheriff was concentrating our efforts to find the Jeep in the area of Page, Arizona and on the Navajo Reservation. They were the areas of Arizona nearest the North Rim of the Grand Canyon where we might find Jason if he had escaped our trap. The Sheriff was also contacting all of the counties in southern Utah.
I found someone in the Flagstaff office who knew how to transfer Jason’s fingerprints from the articles I’d brought to the computer. I e-mailed the digital version of the fingerprints to the authorities in Australia. They would only find a match if the man who took Jason McKinney’s identity had a criminal record. If they identified a suspect, the fingerprints might be matched to a personal article left behind in Australia.
While I was in the office, the photos of Jason that Chad had processed arrived by e-mail. I printed a copy of the best one. It was an excellent likeness. The Sheriff’s administrative assistant began to forward it to other jurisdictions in the area. The importance of this case was highlighted by the fact that she was still here at 11:00. She’s normally an eight to five person. We expected every law enforcement officer in the region to have a copy by morning. I personally had a busy morning ahead. I planned to brief every law enforcement officer in Sedona about Jason McKinney. I was going to plant the photos all over town. I wanted the citizens of Sedona to recognize the Australian on sight.
About midnight, I drove down to Sedona to get some sleep before continuing the search tomorrow. I kept my eye out for a red Jeep Liberty as I drove down 89A through Oak Creek Canyon toward my hometown. The comments of the profiler had raised concerns regarding Jason wanting to challenge me personally. If he moved to a distant state, we might not catch him. However, if Jason thought he could stay in Coconino County, Arizona, we’d catch this murderer.
Margaret was asleep when I went to bed about 1:00. The bear spray was resting on the bedside table next to Margaret’s lovely sleeping face. As I drifted off to sleep, I was certain that we’d catch this bastard. God, I hoped it was before he killed again.
CHAPTER 34
Margaret woke me at 6:30, bringing me a steaming cup of coffee to get my brain working. I could smell bacon cooking as I got dressed. It smelled wonderful, but I knew Margaret was worried about the Jason McKinney case. She only cooked a heavy bacon and egg breakfast when she thought I needed the extra energy.
I called the Sheriff’s office in Flagstaff for the latest news on Jason McKinney. The duty officer explained, “The Sheriff went home at about 3:00. There have been no sightings of Jason McKinney or the stolen red Jeep Liberty. The photos of our suspect have been distributed. Every law enforcement officer in the area should have one when he reports to work this morning. The National Park Service, the Forest Service, and the Sheriff’s Office will begin a systematic search of the North Kaibab Forest by helicopter and on horseback at 8:00.” The duty officer said she would call my cell phone if there were any news.
Margaret and I talked about the case as we ate breakfast on the deck. A beautiful sunrise highlighted the red and tan rocks of Wilson Mountain and Capital Butte. Hummingbirds crowded around the feeders on the juniper next to the table. We always ate our breakfast outside, weather permitting. In Sedona, that was about three hundred days a year.
I told Margaret about the search strategy in the forest north of the Grand Canyon, and she said, “Mike, there are always lots of people camping in that beautiful forest. I can’t believe that Jason would take off on foot. His best bet would be to get away by car. Wouldn’t he try and switch cars again?”
“Even in another vehicle, I don’t think he could get through our roadblocks. There’s a risk that he’ll try driving the primitive jeep roads of the Arizona Strip, but once he leaves the forest, it should be easy for the helicopters to spot his vehicle. They’ll stop every car or truck they see. There’s no evidence that Jason is armed. I think he’ll surrender peacefully if he’s cornered. He knows that we don’t have enough evidence to indict him for murder. Our strongest case will be for auto theft if we catch him in the stolen vehicle or tie him to the theft by fingerprints.”
“You aren’t certain he’s still in the area?”
“No. He could be anywhere,” I said. “It was bad news that the Liberty was taken so quickly. If Jason made it across the Navajo Bridge, he’s had twelve hours of drive time. He could be seven or eight hundred miles away in LA, San Diego, Las Vegas, or even Mexico.”
Margaret looked up from her breakfast at the spectacular view in front of us. She said, “But you think he’ll come here to Sedona?”
Unfortunately, I thought the risk was high that Jason was in Coconino County. “The FBI profiler seemed to thi
nk it was possible. If he comes here, we’ll catch him.”
In discussing the case with Margaret, I hadn’t stressed the profiler’s comments that Jason might regard this as a personal contest between us. However, I wanted Margaret to be careful. I said, “I’d feel more comfortable if you’d keep the bear spray with you until we catch this guy.”
Margaret agreed but said, “I’d be in trouble with our branch manager if she found out I was carrying pepper spray. Having any kind of weapon, unless you’re a security guard, is against the bank’s rules. I’ll take that big leather purse. It’ll hold it without showing, and it’s easy to get into.”
Margaret never violated any of the bank’s rules. The ease of her agreement left me wondering if she had an intuition of danger. “I have a couple of extra pistols in the gun safe. Maybe you should take the Smith and Wesson.”
Margaret looked directly at me with the expression that mothers use with naughty children. “Are you not telling me something Mike?”
“Jason made the arrangements for our room at El Tovar. He knew my wife was joining me for the weekend. You didn’t meet him, but he might have seen us together. Margaret, he’s a very dangerous man who knows that I’m after him.”
“I’d get fired for sure taking a pistol into the branch. I might talk my way out of the bear spray, claiming I didn’t know it was against the rules.”
I thought of an alternative. “I need to take your car in for a thirty-thousand mile service. I’ll drive you to and from work while it’s in the shop this week.”
I suspect that Margaret realized that her car only had twenty-seven thousand miles, but she agreed. The car dealer we used is in Cottonwood, about twenty minutes away. She said, “We’d better get moving or I’ll be late for work.”
After our short trip to Cottonwood, I dropped Margaret at the Chase branch and drove to my office. The Coconino County Sheriff’s Sedona Substation is located in a small strip shopping center off the main road. The location was probably selected because of the cheap rent. It shows.
Rose Rios, our administrative assistant, greeted me and handed me a printed version of an e-mail from Sydney. I am not very good with computers, but I actually can read and print my own e-mail even if Rose thinks I don’t know how to turn my computer on. She’s trying to be helpful, but printing my e-mails also lets her know everything that’s happening in the office. This e-mail confirmed the receipt of the fingerprints and said they would have a match by tomorrow if the man’s prints were in their computer.
I poured myself a cup of the strangely flavored coffee that Rose liked to brew and went to my small office. Chad had left a stack of the Jason McKinney photos on my desk. He’d printed them so that they looked somewhat like a wanted poster from the old west. The photo was clear, a very good representation of the Australian. Below it was instructions to call the Coconino County Sheriff’s Office if he was spotted. The Sedona office’s phone number was listed.
I had scheduled a meeting with the Sedona Sheriff’s Department staff for 8:30. I would then go to the local police station for their regular 9:00 meeting to brief the Sedona police on Jason McKinney. Next, I planned to visit the publisher of the Sedona Red Rock News. He’s very civic minded. I hoped I could persuade him to run the photo on the front page above the fold in the Wednesday edition. That would put the photo where most locals and a lot of tourists would see it. After that meeting, I planned to canvass the uptown tourist area asking the local business people to display the photos.
My cell phone rang when I was briefing the Sedona Police. I let it go to voice mail. I explained to law enforcement officers that Jason McKinney was a suspected serial killer, even though we didn’t have the evidence to charge him with murder yet. Officially he was wanted for passport fraud and car theft. After distributing the photos, I checked my voice mail. It was Sheriff Taylor asking me to call.
I talked to Sheriff Taylor as I drove to the newspaper’s office in Uptown Sedona. “It’s bad news Mike. Our helicopter was flying to the Page airport to refuel. They spotted a red SUV parked on a gravel turnout next to Marble Canyon a couple of miles south of Page. They landed and verified that it’s the Jeep Liberty missing from the North Rim. Jason McKinney made it out of our containment area.”
Page is in the northern edge of the county, almost at the border of Utah. The town began as a settlement for the construction workers who built the Glenn Canyon Dam. The five hundred foot high concrete dam impounds the waters of the Colorado creating Lake Powell, the second largest reservoir in the US. Dramatic sandstone rock formations rise from the crystal blue waters, and a hundred side canyons form a blue water maze in the high red desert lands of southern Utah. The extremely deep lake is a favorite place for houseboats, water skiers, and fishermen. Most of the enormous lake is in Utah, but the Glenn Canyon Dam is actually in Coconino County, Arizona. Page is a major tourist destination for people wanting to enjoy Lake Powell. It fit the profiler’s description of a location with a lot of tourists. Jason’s Australian victims were drowned. This was a location with both a five hundred foot deep canyon and a huge lake. A place where Jason might find middle aged tourists traveling alone to fit his crime profile. Maybe Sedona was not his next target.
The Sheriff explained the details of the renewed search, which concentrated efforts in southern Utah and on the Navajo reservation south and east of Page. The North Kaibab Forest search was cancelled. The Jeep Liberty had been found near enough to Page to walk into town, or Jason might have hitchhiked on the nearby highway. It was possible that Jason took another car at the Marble Canyon overlook. If so, it didn’t look good for the occupants. Driving an unidentified vehicle outside of our containment area, the odds were high that Jason had gotten away.
The Sheriff continued, “They’re bringing the Jeep Liberty to Flagstaff for forensic examination, but the local detectives dusted for prints and found none. The driver’s area and doors had been wiped clean with some kind of ammonia cleaning liquid. They can still smell it inside the vehicle.”
“Jason must have bought that cleaner somewhere between the North Kaibab parking lot and the Marble Canyon overlook. Surely, he wouldn’t want to be seen in Page,” I said.
“We’ll check at the small store at Jacob’s Lake and the one near Marble Canyon. There’re no towns on that route. If someone at one of the stores can identify him from the photo, it’ll help tie him to the auto theft,” the sheriff said.
It was disconcerting to think we might not even have the evidence to indict Jason for stealing the Jeep. Will Blake had loaned Jason his car. If we couldn’t provide solid evidence of a connection to the stolen Jeep, we might only be able to deport Jason on the passport violation.
The newspaper was willing to print Jason’s photo on the front page, and many Uptown merchants agreed to display the photo on their windows. The Uptown area merchants cater to the needs of tourists, and most people who visit Sedona spend some time in that area of town. The Sedona police took copies of the photo to merchants in west Sedona, the area of town where the local Sedona residents do most of their shopping. The police got a favorable reception from several high traffic grocery stores and gas stations. They also delivered copies of the photo to the Village of Oak Creek and other nearby towns. I was fairly confident that Jason would be recognized if he came to town.
When I returned to my office, Chad and I decided to call Dr. Laura Sherman-Jones and discuss the latest developments. We explained that Jason was outside of our roadblocks. We wanted a guess as to where Jason might go next. We described the Page area and Lake Powell to Dr. Sherman-Jones.
“This is a smart man. Taking a car from a trailhead where people might be gone for days is an example of how shrewd he is. Is there a similar source of cars in Page?” she asked.
“People often rent houseboats for a week or more. They leave their cars in the Marina parking lot on the west side of the dam,” I said.
“He was very lucky to have seen someone hide their keys at the trailhead. He
can’t count on that luck again. If he doesn’t know how to start a car without the keys, it’s an even more dangerous situation. Killing has become easy for him. He’ll take a car and leave no witnesses.”
Even though the towns are in the same county, Page is a three and a half-hour drive from Sedona. There wasn’t much Chad or I could do about the manhunt up there. I called Sheriff Taylor with the profiler’s information. After the call, I drove to the Chase branch, taking the photo of Jason McKinney to Margaret. I also wanted to take her to lunch. I had a powerful feeling of foreboding, and I needed to be close to her until Jason was in custody.
CHAPTER 35
Margaret was pleased that I wanted to take her to lunch at the Secret Garden Cafe in Tlaquepaque. We both loved their soup and sandwich combos. The small family-run restaurant in our little tourist town was an odd place to discuss a serial killer who might have killed more than twenty people when the death toll at Bondi Beach was added to the deaths at the Grand Canyon. It was my habit to share all the information about my cases, but I felt any detailed discussion could wait for tonight. I did mention that Jason’s car had been found near Page.
“He’ll kill to get a fresh car if he needs one,” she said. The profiler had also warned me of that. It was strange how Margaret had that natural ability to predict how a criminal might behave.
She was right, but every law enforcement officer in the area was looking for him. They all had good photos and Jason talked with a noticeable Australian accent. We knew the area and he did not. The odds were high that we’d capture him in the Page area before the day was over. I said, “Someone will see him and report it. That’s all we need, a chance to narrow our search. He’ll be in custody soon unless he’s left the area.”
The Murders at El Tovar Page 20