under my jurisdiction.”
He might have been stretching things a bit, but it worked for me.
In the garage we found out that Radar had taken our cruiser, but Thorne signed off for Ralph and me to use an undercover sedan that was typically used on drug busts. Ralph asked him, “Has this guy Griffin ever surfaced before? Any priors?”
“No. Thompson checked his record right off the bat. Apparently, he’s a celebrity in his own right in certain circles, though. An author named Heather Isle-she writes those true crime books-anyway, she uses him as one of her ‘expert’ sources.” Thorne turned to me. “You know her, right? The true crime writer?”
“No, Saundra Weathers. A novelist. Writes mysteries. She lived in my hometown, back when we were kids.”
“It was…” I could see him struggling to find the right words. “The Weathers’ tree house, right? Where you found-”
“Not theirs, exactly. No. But it was next to their property.”
Thorne knew this was a touchy subject for me and he let it go at that. “Well, go have a talk with Griffin. See what he can tell us about the police tape and how he knows it was from the scene of a ‘maneater.’”
We briefly discussed the observations Ralph and I had come up with while we were at the restaurant and at my desk a few minutes ago. Thorne promised to assign the projects to the task force and contact us if they came up with anything, then he left, and Ralph and I climbed into the UC car. I called in to check Griffin’s DMV records and got his address.
“So I’m curious,” Ralph said when I got off the radio. “What did you find in the tree house?”
“I’ll tell you on the way.”
Plainfield, Wisconsin
Joshua caught hold of Adele Westin as she swayed, then supported her as she lost consciousness and drifted into his arms.
He lowered her gently to the kitchen’s linoleum floor.
The drugs he’d used on her were powerful and she didn’t wake up, not even when he brought out the pruning shears to get the item he’d decided to leave behind for her fiance to show him how serious he was about his demands.
He left the note detailing what needed to happen before five o’clock, and after placing the proof in the refrigerator that he had Adele, Joshua carried her to the Ford Taurus and laid her in the trunk.
Then left for Milwaukee.
For the train yards.
Being mid-November in Wisconsin, it was starting to get dark early. Based on the drive time, he figured he’d be able to get started on her right when he needed to, just before the gloaming.
20
As I recount to Ralph the events surrounding the discovery in the tree house, it’s as if I’m reliving them all over again, so I do my best to detach myself from the emotions, to view the memories from another person’s point of view entirely…
You’re a junior in high school.
Leaves, dead and brown, swirl on the ground, then skitter around you and across the mountain bike trail in front of you, caught up in little whirlwinds of air. Tiny tornadoes of late fall.
You pedal hard to try to outrun the impending storm.
The trail skirts along the edge of the vast marsh outside of town. You’re on your way home after football practice and can’t help but think of what happened yesterday afternoon.
You jump a root. Pick up speed.
Everyone has been talking about the girl all day. Nothing like this has ever happened in your hometown. No one knows what to do.
They haven’t said much on the news, just that Mindy Wells had been last seen leaving her school at about three p.m. Her home was six blocks away. She never made it. The police were checking out a lead on a blue van that had been seen nearby. That was all.
At first, her mom thought that Mindy’s father had picked her up. Then, when he came home alone, they thought maybe her grandmother had her. The family was new to the area and there weren’t many other choices. But, no, when they checked, the grandmother didn’t have Mindy either.
The police were called in and the rumors quickly spread that they were waiting for a ransom note, but from the beginning that hadn’t seemed right to you. The family wasn’t rich, and without a ransom demand, there aren’t too many reasons to kidnap a child.
The water on the marsh becomes restless and choppy in anticipation of the coming storm. The angry wind scratches at your cheeks and gray steely clouds begin to drip rain onto your back.
You head for the old county road along the edge of the marsh where it’ll be faster to get home.
She’s an eleven-year-old girl. If you wanted to take her someplace where you could be alone with her, where would you go? A basement? An old barn? A shed? Somewhere that no one knew about, out here by the marsh?
You think these things.
You cannot help but think them.
The sky is crisscrossed by the stark Vs of Canada geese heading south, or in some cases, settling for a few hours to rest on the brackish waters of the marsh. Even with the rain picking up, even above the sound of your wheels whisking across the damp leaves on the trail, you hear the geese honking.
The police checked the neighborhood carefully but didn’t find anything. They brought one of the neighbors in for questioning but nothing came of that and they let him go almost immediately.
Someone could have just driven up and forced the girl into a car and then taken off, that’s what people said. It could have been that easy. It could have been anything.
But it wasn’t just anything that happened, it was something very specific that happened at that time on that street to that girl. To Mindy Wells. Something that had never happened before, not in that place, not in that way.
You duck to avoid a branch. The tires of your mountain bike skid across a smear of mud, almost sending you off the trail. It rained yesterday afternoon, leaving the ground soggy. Most of the water has drained into the marsh, but it’ll take a few days for the ground to dry out completely. Now, however, with the rain picking up, it didn’t look like that was going to happen.
You picture the street that leads from the school to Mindy’s house. You know it well, you’ve been on it any number of times, and as you think about it, you realize there’s one spot where a thick row of hedges would have hidden the view of the street from all of the neighbors’ homes.
One spot. Four blocks from the school.
A blind spot, and that term makes you think of football, of throwing downfield to your receivers. You have to know how to read the defense, how to pick your way past the cornerbacks, linebackers, and safeties, find their blind spots. It’s all about location and timing. Getting the ball to the right place on the field at exactly the right time to catch the defense off guard.
The trail evens out, bending toward the dirt road you’ll use to take the shortcut home. It’s not far.
If the person who took her had parked right there he could have forced her into his car and no one would
