by Jim O'Shea
“You can do this,” Aisha said. “I want to hear what happens. I’ll be out of touch for a couple of hours in a meeting but call me when you’re home and safe.”
Libby ended the call as she stepped back out on the sidewalk, doubtful she would be truly safe anytime soon. By the time she returned to the bakery, her tremors had diminished, but not subsided completely. She wrapped the trench coat tighter around her waist, pulled the stocking cap on her head, and made sure her long red hair was tucked neatly inside.
Libby crossed Main Street and approached the bank carefully, re-checking her reflection in its large windows. She pushed the revolving door, followed the semi-circle route through, and entered the open area between a row of old-fashioned teller windows and modern, glass-walled offices lining opposite walls. Within seconds, a man behind one of the office desks looked up and smiled at her.
What was he seeing? A returning customer? A potential new customer in a tan overcoat? A ghost?
The man jumped up from his desk and hurried toward Libby still wearing the smile. He was a bull of a man, well over six feet tall, and barrel-chested. His round face was accented by a white handlebar mustache that drooped down from the corners of red lips like icicles clinging to a rusty gutter. He extended his hand. “Forget something, Ms. Wiggs?”
Libby cringed.
Wiggs.
Libby took the man’s hand firmly, struggling to not shudder at the sound of her mother’s maiden name. “Uh-huh,” she said in a weak voice.
Handlebar didn’t hesitate, immediately pulling a key ring from his coat pocket. “Not a problem,” he said smiling. “Guess I don’t have to check your ID again, huh?”
The big man chuckled as he led Libby past the teller windows, down a narrow spiral staircase, and into the bank’s vault in the basement of the building. It was lined with safety deposit boxes and, after doing a visual scan of the east wall, he went straight to a panel of boxes. “Your key?” He held out a hand.
Libby stared blankly. She patted her pockets, dug through her purse, and looked back up at him, hoping her expression showed chagrin.
“Never mind.” He flipped through a set of keys, popped one in the top keyhole, put another key in the bottom keyhole, pulled a long rectangular box out of the wall, and set it on a metal table in the middle of the room. “We don’t tell people, but we keep a master key for security purposes. Take all the time you need, Ms. Wiggs,” he said. “We don’t close for another hour.”
Libby maintained a faux smile until the big man closed the vault’s door. She slumped on the cold metal tabletop and tried to keep from hyperventilating. She had no way to open the box without a key, but that was secondary. The man had recognized her, to the point he had given her access to the safety deposit box without question.
She pulled her phone out to take a photo of the box, and almost dropped it on the concrete floor when it rang. The area code told her the call originated from Salt Lake City, and Libby debated accepting the unknown number for four rings before pressing the green CALL button on the screen.
She recognized the man’s deep voice right away, and something about his tone alone caused an inexplicable shiver to run the length of her body. She squeezed the phone against her ear and held her breath, as Detective Troy Hunter’s words fell on her like a physical weight.
23
Hunter rolled a pencil around in his fingers and pretended to focus on the notebook in his lap, wondering why it was still a blank page with so many unanswered questions. He let out a deep sigh and forced the image of Libby Meeker’s face from his mind’s eye. When a cop got distracted, he missed things, and when things were missed, someone could get killed.
He shoved the notebook in his coat pocket, turned off the car’s engine, and trudged slowly up the stone steps leading to 9463 Stansberry Lane. A hand pushed the glass door open as he approached. Libby stood just inside wearing a wool cardigan and black jeans, her arms wrapped tightly around her chest.
He studied her face more closely than he did the first time. Her eyes were quite green and possessed a piercing intensity. If only he knew what was going on behind them.
“Who was it this time?” she asked, her voice low.
Hunter instinctively reached inside his coat pocket, but stopped. He didn’t need his notes. “Meghan Maria Becker,” he said. “Thirty-one years old, five feet—”
“I know Meghan. She lives…” Libby swallowed hard. “She lived over by the old coal plant south of town.”
Hunter nodded. “I just came from the scene. Appears to have been the same guy.”
“How do you know it was—” Libby closed her eyes and held the palm of her hand in front of her face. “Never mind. I don’t want to know.”
Hunter started to reach out and stopped. “I’m sorry,” he said softly.
Libby opened her eyes and, instead of avoiding eye contact, seemed to be studying his face. “There’s more,” she said after a few seconds of silence. “Isn’t there?”
Hunter nodded, and knowing he was in a very thin place between the repulsiveness of the case and her legitimate need-to-know, tried to pick gentle words. “We discovered something very disturbing at the Becker murder scene.” A tense silence settled in the room, until Hunter cleared his throat. “The medical examiner found something in the victim’s mouth.”
Libby took a tiny step back.
“There’s no point in sugar coating this,” Hunter said. “It was a piece to a jigsaw puzzle.”
Libby put her hand to her mouth and let out a gasp. The pain on her face was hard to look at, and the glue that had been holding her together up to this point appeared to be losing its grip.
Hunter pulled out his phone, brought up a photo of the puzzle piece from the Becker crime scene, and turned it toward Libby.
She took the phone from his hands and stared at the screen for a few seconds before rushing up the stairs without saying a word.
Hunter took his time, but eventually caught up with her in the spare bedroom. What he found was a faded copy of Libby Meeker, sitting on one of the twin beds in the spare bedroom holding Hunter’s phone in her lap. The wicker basket had been pulled out from underneath the nightstand and a few pieces of the puzzle lay scattered over the table’s glass surface. She set the phone on the table and slumped backward on the bed. He sat down on the bed opposite her and leaned forward with his elbows resting on his knees.
“I assume it was a match?”
She nodded.
“I’d like to reassemble the puzzle to see if the piece we found actually fits, Libby.”
When she mumbled what sounded like acknowledgment, Hunter dumped the remaining puzzle pieces from the basket onto the table top, forming a pile on its left side. He made a mental note that several pieces had black lines scrawled across their backs before separating the ones with ninety-degree corners or smooth edges. It didn’t take long to assemble the original outside border of the puzzle on the table’s right side.
He hadn’t noticed Libby leaving, but could hear her in the adjacent room on what sounded like a computer keyboard, followed by the sound of a printer humming. He located the five pieces that made up the brightly colored balloon wallpaper background and, from memory, added them to the upper left-hand corner. He then placed the two pieces featuring green eyes to the right of the unfinished puzzle. The assembled pieces looked exactly like the ones he’d seen during his first visit, and he was pulling up the photo of the new puzzle piece on his phone when Libby reentered the room.
She sat down on the bed opposite Hunter, as her gaze shifted back and forth between the partially assembled puzzle and twenty or so loose pieces heaped in a pile on the left side of the nightstand. “Please don’t tell me those were in the basket.”
“You haven’t seen them before?”
As Libby shook her head, the color in her face began to fade even more. He pocketed his phone and left to get her a drink of water, but the room was empty when he returned. He eventually located her prone
on her own bed, forearm draped over her eyes.
She declined the water and asked for a few minutes of privacy, so he set the glass on the nightstand and returned to the spare bedroom. He spent the next twenty minutes assembling the pile of new pieces and when he was finished, almost three quarters of the mysterious puzzle was complete. The left half was now entirely filled-in, with one of the two eyes pieces completing baby Libby’s face.
The puzzle image was, as suspected, the photo of the two newborn Meeker girls taken in the Tooele hospital’s maternity ward thirty years ago, with Libby to the left of Melissa according to the labels on the front of the metal bassinets. The bright balloon wallpaper occupied the upper left-hand corner, and what looked like the right half of an empty bassinet was on the left border.
The right side of the puzzle was now over half complete, but missing most of baby Melissa’s face. An analog clock was clearly visible high on the wall in the upper right-hand corner, and the beginnings of another empty bassinet made up the right border. The analog clock read 1:36.
Hunter pulled up the photo on his phone again, and it was immediately obvious that Libby was right—the piece found inside Meghan Becker’s mouth was physically consistent with the rest of the jigsaw puzzle. When he resized the photo on his screen and held it over an open slot on the puzzle, it appeared as thought it would fit perfectly in an open slot on the lower right side.
The resulting silence was the loudest Hunter had ever heard, punctuated only by the distant howl of a coyote outside the bedroom window. When he looked up from the puzzle, Libby was staring at him.
Their gazes locked and a silent message passed between them.
He let out a deep breath.
“He’s been in my house,” she said.
Not only was the conclusion inescapable, there was also no point in sugar-coating anything at this point. “If he wanted you dead, you’d be dead, Ms. Meeker,” Hunter said. “The guy’s proven to be pretty good at that. You’re alive because he hasn’t finished the game yet, and my instinct tells me you’re safe until then.” Hunter looked up from his notebook but Libby was turned away, her eyes focused on the ceiling. Something in his gut roiled.
“You’re not telling me something, Libby.”
She reached across the table, picked up the loose eye piece, and examined its back. “Who would do something like this?” she asked. “Why did he pick me?”
Hunter couldn’t explain what he himself didn’t yet understand, so he turned his attention back to the new riddle until an obvious question materialized in his brain. “Who besides you has a key to your office or credenza?”
“No one.” She focused her gaze on the ceiling again.
Hunter waited.
“I suppose my boss might have a copy. Maybe his boss. I’m not sure.”
“Names?”
“My boss’s name is Florich. Ryan Florich. His boss’s name is Brad McCauley. He’s one of two partners in the firm.”
Hunter added a new entry in his notebook and circled it. When he looked up Libby’s face had changed slightly. Her lips were thinner from being pressed together and her eyes appeared unfocused.
“Would you mind if I reached out to them?”
Libby nodded an affirmative. “I’m already on thin ice at work. Can you just call Ryan for now?”
Hunter assured her he would. For now.
She turned her attention to the puzzle and pointed at the left edge. “Dad must’ve cropped the original photo before he posted it on social media.” Libby crossed the narrow gap between the beds, sat next to Hunter, and placed a piece of paper in his lap. It was a printed copy of the puzzle image, most of it, and her skin touched his when she reached down to point at it. She seemed to notice it too and shifted away cautiously. “This photo is the one I told you about, the one Dad posted.”
Hunter looked it over carefully. It was identical to the puzzle image, except for the far left and right edges. The empty bassinets from the original had obviously been cropped from the photo before her father had posted it.
“So, we now know for sure the perp did not use the on-line photo.”
Libby shook her head but didn’t speak right away. Her face was another shade whiter.
“Which means he got access to the original.”
Hunter paused when Libby lowered her head and her chest began to move in and out rapidly. He waited until she seemed steady. “Who might have had access to it?”
“There were only three copies to my knowledge,” she said. “Mom and Dad had the original, Melissa and I had the two copies. I was in my parents’ house a few days ago, way after all this started, and I saw theirs on the bookshelf.”
Hunter kept his focus on her eyes. Although they didn’t waver, the twin green orbs did twitch.
“Melissa took hers to Italy, and I know for a fact it wasn’t in the box of items the Navy returned to Mom and Dad after her death. I’m assuming that one doesn’t exist anymore.” She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply.
“May I see your copy?”
Libby covered a cough with her hand and nodded. A minute later, she returned with a photo and proceeded to remove the back panel from a metal frame.
“Allow me,” Hunter said, as he pulled two latex gloves from his coat pocket. After donning the gloves and sliding the photo from its home, Hunter placed it next to the puzzle and bent over to study the two images. Identical, except for the missing pieces. He didn't realize Libby was slumped over and crying softly until he leaned back. “You’re tough, Ms. Meeker.” He touched her on the arm gently. “Most people would be curled up in the fetal position by now, so cut yourself some slack.”
When she lifted her head, there was something unsettling in her eyes, as if she wanted to tell him something but couldn’t bring herself to.
“Do you have a flashlight?”
Libby gave him an odd look.
“Probably nothing, but I noticed black lines on the back of some of the pieces.”
The look of confusion turned into one of acknowledgement. “I noticed the piece from my office had a black line on it.”
“It’s probably just information they put on from the factory for shipping or whatever, but I want to make sure.”
Libby hurried off and returned a few minutes later empty handed. “I couldn’t find one.”
Hunter considered going out to the car for his but elected not to. He also decided against crawling under the nightstand with his bad back, and instead put his phone’s camera on flash and took several photos by reaching under the table. He sat back down on the edge of the bed next to Libby and touched his phone’s screen.
The first photo was blurry but the second was clear, despite the fact it was taken through the table’s glass top. Hunter studied the scrawling black lines as he held it up for Libby to see. The strange alpha-numeric sequence made no sense to Hunter, and by the look on Libby’s face, she wasn’t certain what it meant, either.
“Mean anything to you?”
She took the phone from Hunter’s hand and studied the single letter and three numbers for a few seconds before handing it back. “My guess is something from the factory as you said. Maybe an order number or something like that?”
Hunter took the phone back and studied it further. Her thoughts were consistent with his, since the back of the puzzle would be the only place to add any kind of identifying information. He added the information to his notebook and the photo to the ‘GK’ file on his phone. “How would you feel about some police protection for the short term?”
At first, Libby looked at him as if he’d asked her to explain Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, but after a few seconds, her face softened. “That might be a good idea.”
Hunter hadn’t cleared the strategy with his captain or the Tooele sheriff, but considering the new information, felt confident it would be approved. In the meantime, he assured Libby he’d handle the special security coverage himself. Hunter excused himself after promising Libby he’d return before eig
ht o’clock and he hurried to the front door. He was halfway down the stone steps when he stopped and returned to the porch.
Libby was standing behind the glass storm door and pushed it open a few inches.
“Would you consider leaving Tooele for a little while until this blows over?”
Libby stared at him. “Do you mean like to my parents’ house in Stockton?”
“No. I was thinking more like Timbuktu.”
24
Nearly every person living west of the Rocky Mountains had heard of the Ginger Killer by now, and what had been a collection of concerned neighbors and a single Salt Lake City news van surrounding the Becker murder scene one day, was now a huge crowd of onlookers surrounding a media circus the next. Of course, a second body at the scene in less than twenty-four hours had a lot to do with that.
Hunter sucked down the last few ounces of a lemon-flavored energy drink and tossed the can on the passenger side floor of his car. The heavy doses of sugar and caffeine had enabled him to stay awake most of the night on Libby Meeker’s living room sofa, but now were rapidly losing their effectiveness. He would need sleep soon.
He kept his head down as he walked toward the crime scene. Multiple Salt Lake and national stations were setting up equipment in front of the Becker home, all jockeying for the best positions behind yellow police tape still up from the previous day. They left the driveway clear, where a Tooele County ambulance sat parked with the engine running.
Hunter shook his head. Their dramatic coverage would certainly attract viewers across the country, but not probe the depths of the pain and anguish the violence caused. The reporters had most likely never been held at gunpoint, never given comfort to a victim’s loved ones, or even begun to understand the atrocities man could inflict upon man.