“And we don’t have the evidence to charge him with anything but a passport related issue. His friends don’t believe he could be involved with the murders.”
“Everyone who knows Jason likes the guy,” Alan said. “If you ever bring him to trial, you wouldn’t want any of these people on the jury.”
I understood. I’d liked Jason and didn’t think of him as a serious suspect until we discovered the missing fax page. I asked, “Anything else new.”
“I’m not certain, but I think Will Blake heard from Sam Gilbert.”
I liked Sam. I hoped he was safe. Alan continued, “I saw Will show Billy Blake a postcard of the Colorado River. It was taken from the River Trail and showed the steep sides of the Inner Gorge. I read the card after they left the room. It had no postmark and must have been hand delivered. The card said, ’I’m doing fine after the exciting trip. Thanks.’ The postcard wasn’t signed, but Billy had a big grin after reading it.”
I told Margaret about both calls. She had a big smile when I mentioned Sam Gilbert and the unsigned postcard. She said, “Is it a crime to drop out of sight if some crazy Ukrainian Mafia man is after you?”
“Probably not. I don’t know of any law he broke.”
“Let’s have a caramel flan and some coffee to celebrate,” she said.
After we ordered, I phoned Chad at home to update him on my calls.
Chad sounded relieved when I mentioned that the rental car was found near the Interstate. He said, “Once Jason saw the flyer with his photo, he realized that the local area was too hot for him. He’s probably in California by now.”
I was frustrated. I hadn’t prevented the death of the woman from Florence, Arizona at the North Rim or the investment banker from Connecticut from whom the rental car had been taken. Those two deaths occurred after Jason became my prime suspect. If Jason McKinney had escaped to another jurisdiction, I would not be pleased. Our best bet for catching him was here in Coconino County where his crimes had been committed. Jason McKinney was one step ahead of me, and I couldn’t see how to catch up with him. I had not met many criminals who were both smart and totally without conscience. I said, “Maybe partner. Maybe he’s gone.” I didn’t believe it.
CHAPTER 37
After dinner, Margaret and I went to a movie at the Harkins in west Sedona. It was a tragic love tale that Margaret had wanted to see for several weeks. Just before the climactic and predictable scene in which the star-crossed lovers are reunited, my cell phone rang. I had forgotten to put the phone on vibrate, and I was followed by angry stares from the teary-eyed moviegoers as I went to the lobby to take the call. It was Victor White of the Sydney police.
Detective White said, “I have some news for you Detective Lieutenant Damson. We may have identified the man using Jason McKinney’s passport.”
I was anxious to hear any information that the Australians could provide, and I was also ready for a break from the sappy movie. “That’s quick work. Did you find a match for the fingerprints?”
Detective White explained, “No. Still no match for the prints, but Jason’s mum said that the man in the photo is probably Rocky Burns. Rocky lived near the McKinney family for two years about ten years ago. She hasn’t seen Burns in eight years, but he should be about twenty now. The boy was a ward of the court and assigned as a foster child to one of their neighbors. Everyone at the time thought Jason and Rocky looked enough alike to be brothers. They were not close friends, just acquaintances.”
“After eight years, Rocky Burns might have changed a lot. How confident was Mrs. McKinney?”
White replied, “The reason Mrs. McKinney thought of Rocky Burns when she saw the photo was that her son mentioned that he’d seen him at the hotel where he worked as a desk clerk. Jason commented on how much they still looked alike.”
“What have you learned about Burns?” I asked.
“He’s got no criminal record in Australia, in fact there’s almost nothing about the young man in our records since he was a child. Rocky Burns doesn’t even have a driver’s license. I’ve found no photos of him as an adult, no previous addresses, and no information about where he lived since he skipped out on his foster family at age fourteen. Most of what I learned was from the transcripts of the child abuse trial of his grandmother, Harriet Burns.”
“That’s interesting. The FBI profiler indicated that serial killers often had a background of child abuse and sexual problems.”
Victor White continued, “Your profiler really nailed the sexual abuse issue. Both Rocky’s mother and his grandmother were unwed mothers and prostitutes. They were part of the lowest tier of cheap streetwalkers. Rocky’s mother died of a heroin overdose when the boy was only five. His grandmother was never a beauty, but by the time her daughter died she was getting too old to make a decent living as a prostitute and feed her heroin addiction. The court records indicated that Harriet Burns changed from selling herself to selling young Rocky to pedophiles when the boy was only seven. It went on for more than three years before an undercover operation stopped her.”
It was worse than I could even imagine. I asked what happened after the abuse was discovered.
Detective White explained, “The case got a lot of publicity until Harriet Burns died from knife wounds from a prison fight before her trial was over. Young Rocky was put in foster care and given psychiatric help. Our records indicated that he had a difficult time adjusting to the rules and manners of a normal family. He was sexually too aware for a lad of his age and couldn’t be put in a family with other children. I can’t get his psychiatric records. They were permanently sealed by the juvenile court. After his third foster family, Rocky just disappeared. I have no records of where he went after he ran away at age fourteen.”
“Do you have a photo of Rocky’s grandmother?” I asked.
“You guessed it. She was a dead ringer for the women in the autopsy photos you faxed to us,” he said.
The crowd from the movie began to exit the theater. I thanked the Australian for the quick response and promised to report any new information from Arizona.
Margaret joined me in the lobby, her eyes slightly red from tears. I described what I’d learned from Victor White as we drove home. It was difficult for Margaret to believe that a grandmother could be as vile and despicable as Harriet Burns. I was less surprised. In my thirty years of law enforcement, I’d seen heroin addicts do many unspeakable things to get a fix.
Knowing Rocky’s history, I could understand these crimes a little better, however no matter how horrible, no difficulty in childhood could justify the murder of these innocent women. It was also clear that the man that I still thought of as Jason McKinney had killed his friend Jim Otto in cold blood to cover up his crimes. He’d probably also killed the real Jason McKinney to take his identity.
Those were the acts of a cold-blooded premeditated murderer, not a sad traumatized child who could not control his hate. Harriet Burns may have created this monster, but it was my job to stop him before he killed again.
When we reached the house, I parked in the garage, shutting the garage door before we exited the car. We had set the alarm this morning so the house was probably secure. My home phone and address were not listed in the Sedona phone directory. I’d never had a listed phone. In law enforcement, you don’t want it to be easy for your family to be located by some scumbag you’ve arrested. I noticed that Margaret had opened her big leather purse so that her bear spray was in easy reach. Maybe we were paranoid. The odds were high that Jason had hitchhiked out of the state by now. He could easily have left Arizona in the hours since he abandoned his stolen rental car near Interstate 40.
I carefully investigated the house and determined that it was secure. As Margaret was getting ready for bed, I called Sheriff Taylor at home to explain what I’d learned from Detective White. The Sheriff said that there were still no solid leads on where Jason had gone after leaving the rental car in the forest. We assumed he walked the quarter mile to the interstate
to catch a ride, but there was no proof of it. There had been seven possible sightings this afternoon, but none of them proved to be solid leads.
The sheriff was as frustrated as I was. “We still have squat on this bastard,” he said. “We have no prints on the stolen rental car or the Jeep, and Will Blake won’t file a complaint on his BMW. In fact, we’ve no proof that any of the deaths were deliberate murders except for the young man in the Colter House. In that case, there’s nothing solid to tie the murder to Jason McKinney. I can’t get the press coverage that might help find this guy with only a false passport charge. The Phoenix stations and newspapers were not interested. I’m not prepared to mention all the deaths at the Grand Canyon to the press.”
The Sheriff’s reluctance to feature the sensational aspects of this case was understandable. The potential of a serial killer at the national park had always been the most sensitive element in the case.
“Boss, I share your frustration. I know this man has killed more than a dozen people including the deaths in Sydney, but I can’t prove it yet. We may never be able to establish that the women who died at the Canyon were not the victims of accidents. The Australians have the same problem with the women who drowned at Bondi Beach.”
Sheriff Taylor had a strong dislike for the grandstanding and arrogance of the FBI. He said with annoyance, “I talked with the FBI this afternoon. They’ll send his photo to all of their offices, but they still think of it as a passport problem. Too bad the bastard is just a serial killer and not a potential terrorist. If he were Muslim, they’d be interested.”
“Their profiler has been helpful,” I said. “She was very accurate in describing his background. She thinks he may stay in Coconino County. I’ll call her first thing in the morning with the latest information from Australia to get her perspective.”
The Sheriff suggested that Chad and I drive up to Flagstaff to brief the local police and sheriff’s department employees on the case at 9:00 am tomorrow. He wanted to keep the pot boiling with anticipation that Jason was still in the area. The Sheriff understood that our best shot at catching Jason was here in Coconino County where the search was a high priority.
Margaret was already in bed when I called Chad to fill him in on the latest from Australia and the request from the Sheriff that we come to Flagstaff for a 9:00 meeting. He had an interesting question. “If this Rocky guy had such a screwed up childhood, why did everyone at the Grand Canyon like him? He should be a real weirdo with that background.”
I didn’t know. “Maybe Doctor Sherman-Jones can answer that in the morning. We’ll call her from the office before we head up to Flagstaff.”
I reset the security alarm before going to bed. It was the first time that I’d ever used its bedtime feature, which turned off the motion detector in the bedroom but left the rest of the system active. The security alarm came with the house, but we normally didn’t use it unless we were going out of town. Some of our neighbors had lived on our block for thirty years, and no one on the block could remember a burglary or other serious crime on our quiet street.
I put my pistol on the table next to the bed rather than its usual nighttime place on the dresser in the closet. I noticed that the bear spray was on Margaret’s table next to the digital clock. As I dropped off to sleep, I wondered how long the tension would last if Jason were not apprehended soon. Would we spend years wondering if Jason might show up some night? Would I use the security alarm every night from now on?
I slept poorly and woke up at 5:30 still tired, with an ache in my back, and a bad taste in my mouth. After a trip to the bathroom, I headed for the kitchen to fix some coffee. I wanted to drink my coffee in the hot tub and watch the dawn. As I walked barefoot toward the kitchen, the security alarm began shouting at me, “THERE IS AN INTRUDER IN THE HOUSE. THE POLICE HAVE BEEN CALLED. THERE IS AN INTRUDER IN THE HOUSE. THE POLICE HAVE BEEN CALLED.” I’d forgotten that I left it activated. I stubbed my toe as I stumbled into the laundry room to turn the damn thing off.
Cursing at my stupidity, I hobbled back into the kitchen only to be confronted by Margaret with the bear spray in her left hand and my Smith and Wesson in her right hand. Both had their safeties off. They were ready for use.
I was fortunate that Margaret was composed and unruffled. She took time to make certain who was stumbling into the kitchen from our laundry room at 5:30. Margaret explained that she planned to use the bear spray first and then shoot if it didn’t stop Jason. I was glad that I’d taught Margaret weapons use while we lived in LA. It gave her the self-confidence to avoid blasting me with pepper spray. Again, I wondered how long our lives would be affected by the deaths at the Grand Canyon. Would we grow relaxed again in the coming weeks, only to have Jason surprise us a month or a year from now. I needed to catch this killer so our lives could return to normal.
CHAPTER 38
Margaret and I were having a good laugh over our near panic at a false alarm when the phone rang. It was the alarm monitoring company. As I was giving them the all-clear code, the doorbell rang. That’s not normal before dawn on a quiet street in a little town in Arizona. I took my pistol from Margaret, hobbled on my sore foot to the entry hall, and carefully looked through the small window next to the front door.
I smiled again at my own jumpiness and at what this murder case was doing to our normally quiet lives. It was our next-door neighbor Graham Gibson, a retired marine colonel. He’s gray haired and about sixty-five. Graham is still ramrod straight and extremely fit. You’d guess that he was retired military within two minutes of meeting him. Graham was dressed in a white terrycloth bathrobe with a Marine Corps crest. I wondered if he’d snitched it from an officers’ club. He was carrying a pump action shotgun in a way that made certain that he knew how to use it. It was clear that he’d heard the security alarm and come over to check on us.
It was nice to have a concerned neighbor even if there’d never been a crime on the block. I put my pistol on the table next to the door and opened it saying, “Sorry for the commotion Graham. I forgot that I’d turned on the alarm when we went to bed last night.”
He looked puzzled and said, “She didn’t get in?”
I smiled and explained, “There was no burglar. I just set the alarm off by accident.”
Graham shook his head and continued to look puzzled. “Mike, you’re the expert, but that car blasted away leaving rubber like a teenager. She didn’t even use her headlights.”
I picked up my pistol and walked out to the street in front of my house. Graham pointed out two black strips on the pavement in the dim predawn light. Someone had left in a hurry when my security alarm went off. The noise of the alarm had prevented me from hearing the car.
Graham explained, “I was getting The Arizona Republic from the driveway when I saw an old gray Japanese car parked in front of your house. Someone was opening your gate and going toward the back of your place. Within three seconds, I heard the alarm, and almost immediately after that I saw the lights in your kitchen come on. The person scrambled around the house, jumped in the car, and left rubber as they sped away.”
“Was it a man or woman? What did the intruder look like?”
Graham ran his hand through his short gray hair and said, “That’s the strange part. It was a woman with long light colored hair and big cantaloupe breasts but a very small ass under her baggy blue jeans. Funny thing was that she ran just like a man as she headed for that car. I can always tell the difference you know. I figured that it was one of those transvestite cat burglars that are common in small towns hereabouts. At least that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. It will make great dinner conversation for weeks.”
My thoughts went immediately to the purchases Jason had made at the Flagstaff Wal-Mart. Abruptly, the full impact hit me. I had planned to make coffee and then relax for a few minutes in the hot tub before getting dressed. Jason had drowned many of his victims. If I’d gone out, I would have been unarmed and would have left the sliding glass door to the deck unl
ocked while Margaret was still asleep in the bedroom.
Graham could not give a good description of the vehicle. He had owned the same Ford for the past twelve years and couldn’t tell one foreign car from another. He was not even certain that it was really a gray car because of the predawn light. I called the night duty officer at the substation, the local police, and the highway patrol, but the odds of finding a midsize Japanese or European car of undetermined make, model, color, and year were slim to none.
After thanking Graham for his good neighborly actions, I explained the situation to Margaret. I suggested that it would be a good time for her to visit her cousin in San Francisco for a few days. She replied emphatically, “Mike, I’m not going to be run out of my own home. I have a job, and I can’t ask for time off right now with two other tellers on vacation. You need to catch this man and get this case over with.”
Margaret was determined. My strongest arguments would not persuade her to leave town. At one point she asked, “How did he get our address? Neither your office or the bank would have given it to anyone.”
I had thought that the unlisted phone number would make it difficult to find where we lived. It took only a second for me to realize how unrealistic that was. I’d filled in my home address on the registration when I checked into the El Tovar. Even though Jason wasn’t a suspect at the time I checked in, I was too embarrassed at my stupidity to explain how he got our address to Margaret. I said, “I’m not certain how he found our home address, but Jason was here. Let’s check into a hotel for a few days.”
Margaret looked angry. She said, “Just find him.”
I had my marching orders. Margaret and I seldom had serious arguments because in thirty years of marriage, I’ve never won one. It’s not worth the effort. Margaret fixed breakfast and insisted that we eat it on the deck like usual. She didn’t want Jason to interrupt our routine. I sat with my Smith and Wesson on the table next to the orange juice. Margaret’s bear spray was near the coffee pot. We talked of the grandkids and our son’s prospects of being transferred to Europe. Our only son and his family live in New York City on the Upper East Side. He’s an investment banker with a Swiss firm. There were rumors of reassignment to Paris or Geneva circulating in his office. Margaret and I engaged in the chitchat of people in denial of the risks they faced.
The Murders at El Tovar Page 22