Opening Moves

A swarm of questions buzzed through my mind.

How many people did he bring here? Just these two victims, or have there been more? If this is the same guy who was committing the cannibalistic homicides elsewhere in the Midwest, is this his base of operation? If so, why is it so far from the other two locations?

And why are there two different styles of locks?

Two different offenders?

I heard someone outside mention that the CSIU had arrived in the parking lot.

Just a couple more minutes.

I knew that the crime scene unit would search for DNA and prints and would compare the blood samples to find out whatever they could about the offender. They had the instruments and materials for all that, Ralph and I didn’t. But DNA and prints help you only if you have something to compare them to. If the guy wasn’t in the system, his name wasn’t going to pop up.

Tonight the CSIU had a lot of evidence to process: the Taurus, two boxcars and their contents, the locks and chains, the fence material around that opening, the gate…and I had a sense that this guy was smart. Careful. That he wasn’t going to leave behind anything that he didn’t want to.

I’m no expert on blood spatter analysis, but when I scrutinized the stains on the wooden floor, I could tell that some were darker, had seeped in more. The fresh blood from the woman tonight had sprayed across the floor when her left ankle was cut. The other stains were just below where Colleen’s wrists would have been if she’d been sitting in the chair.

I bent beside it. “Ralph, look at the blood spatter on the floor here: the pattern of the darker stains.”

He studied them with me. “Dried. Soaked in more. From Colleen.”

“So it would seem.”

He could tell I was looking at something else. “What is it?”

“Well, at first it sprayed a little, you can see that, but then it stops abruptly.” I pointed. “Almost in a straight line.”

“So, the blood hit him. His arm maybe. Or his leg.”

“Yeah, I’m not sure, but…”

Ralph saw me glance toward the plastic bags. “Ah. He learned his lesson. Bagged up a set of clothes tonight.”

“He didn’t have a bag of clothes with him when he fled, so he might have stashed one somewhere or slipped a pair of clothes back on.” I pointed to the bags. “If he did stick some clothes in there, even momentarily, he might have inadvertently left us a little present.”

“His DNA. From his clothes.”

“Yes.” The CSIU would have undoubtedly checked the outside of the bags for prints; the inside was another story, something they might easily have missed.

“Nice.”

I finished looking at the blood spatter while Ralph examined the amputation saw. “There’s a date engraved on the handle-1864.”

Often, killers will choose a very specific and unique weapon that holds some sort of special meaning to them. But that’s not smart. The more unique your weapon, the easier it is to trace. An amputation saw that old had to be rare. There are experts in just about every obscure field, and I expected we could find someone who specialized in Civil War-era surgical instruments. He or she would be able to tell us more about the saw, maybe where our guy might have purchased it, or even who he might be.

“That’s good,” I said. “That’ll help.”

“You think our guy got it from Griffin?”

“It’s worth checking out. Did you hear if the search warrant went through?”

“No, actually. Let me go call Ellen.” He stepped away to radio Agent Parker.

As I moved on to analysis, I played out in my mind the way I would put things in my report later tonight:

We searched the train yards, saw no one. I discovered the Ford Taurus inside the gate near the parking lot on the west side. After I found Hendrich’s body in one of the boxcars, I located a man fleeing along the fence line. The suspect engaged me with his firearm, I returned fire but did not hit him. He fled. A chase ensued. He was able to avoid apprehension.

Okay, yes. But how did he know when to leave?

That really was the question.

If the shooter was in the boxcar with the woman, why did he leave when he did, right as he was getting started with her?

He had to have known that you and Ralph were in the train yard.

So did he have the door open? Possibly, but that didn’t really make sense, not if he was torturing a woman inside the car and not if he trusted the mattresses to absorb her screams. Did he hear us? Maybe, but how? We weren’t making any noise except speaking quietly into our radios. So, if he were-

I heard someone climbing into the boxcar behind me. I figured it would be one of the CSIU members, but when I turned around, I saw it was Radar instead.

42

“Hey,” he exclaimed, “I just heard-the doctors are saying they’re hopeful about saving her hands and feet. The circulation had been cut off for a while, but you two did good. The cut on her ankle is pretty deep, but they expect she’ll walk again too. Oh, and it’s not Hendrich’s car.”

“It’s not?”

“No. It’s stolen. Reported a couple days ago by a guy named Norman Darr. Lives in Pewaukee. The VIN number led us to him, but the plates on the Taurus are from a second car that was in the same parking lot. That’s why it took a while to figure out what we were looking at. Our guy switched the plates with it before driving off.”

“To avoid being tracked down by an APB. Clever.”

This was the first time I’d seen Radar since our morning briefing. Thorne had mentioned earlier that he’d gone to look into the names of one of the felons he’d been investigating and I asked him if he’d found anything.

He shook his head.

Back on topic: “The car is one thing,” I said, “but we really need to find out who this woman is.”

“Well, based on what I heard, either she’s married or engaged. That’s something to start with.”

I looked at him quizzically. “Where’d you hear that?”

“I mean, I didn’t hear it exactly, but-the missing finger. Think about it-why would he remove her ring finger? That specific one?” This was classic Radar-inferences, hunches, intuition, gut instincts.

Yeah, but they almost always end up being right on the money.

“Could be symbolic.” I didn’t really believe that, but for some reason I felt obliged to play devil’s advocate. “He sees himself as marrying her? Having some sort of relationship with her?”

Radar shook his head. “I doubt it. Think about it-escalation, Pat. He left it behind to prove to her husband or fiance that he had her and that he was serious about carrying out whatever threat he’d made in his note. He didn’t leave Colleen’s finger for Vincent last night. He might have thought he needed something a little more persuasive this time around to make sure his demands were carried out.”

“But they were carried out last night.”

Yeah, except you caught Vincent.

I tried to work all this through in my head, see where it might be leading.

Even though it wasn’t verifiable yet, what Radar was saying made sense. I accepted it for now, and moved on. “So…if you’re right, he made a demand of the woman’s lover. And that would be persuasive. I mean, finding my