“Warned him,” Radar said, concluding what I’d been finding myself inclining toward. “A sentry? A scout? Is that what you’re thinking?”
“We need to stay open to the possibility.”
“But where did he go?”
“It’s possible to get over the fence.” I held up my gloved, bandaged hands. “I improvised, but someone could have certainly planned better than I did. When our attention was focused on the shooter, the other person-if there really was another person-could’ve fled in another direction.”
This line of reasoning opened up a whole range of interesting possibilities.
Ralph must have been thinking the same thing. “Isn’t it too much of a coincidence that there were two separate crimes right here, at the same time?”
I tried to process what we had going on here. Two victims. One shooter. Even though the proximity of the crimes favored the possibility that the victims were attacked by the same offender, the MO really was completely different: the woman had been restrained in a chair just as Colleen Hayes had been last night, the man had not. He had no ligature marks and had been stabbed numerous times in his stomach, unlike any of the other victims, not even from the homicides in Illinois and Ohio. No lungs removed here. No intestines eaten. No limbs sawed off. All the other victims had been women, this guy wasn’t.
“It’s true,” I admitted. “There are a lot of things that don’t measure up here.”
“Unless we really are talking about two different offenders,” Radar offered.
“Or three.”
They looked at me curiously. “Three?” Ralph said.
“The out-of-state homicides, the kidnappings, and Hendrich’s murder.”
He shook his head. “But they’re not entirely unrelated. Griffin’s merchandise sales to Colleen Hayes, the police tape from the murder in Illinois, tie them all together.”
I said, “The two homicides in Ohio and Illinois bear no semblance to the pattern of abduction, coercion, and mutilation that we saw with the Hayes family and now, evidently, with this woman tonight. There was no ransom note in the previous deaths and the victims of the last two days were left alive, even though they could have easily been killed.”
“And here, there’s no cannibali-” Ralph caught himself short. “The hands.”
We were quiet. We didn’t know what Colleen’s abductor had done with her hands, but we could imagine, and by the looks on Ralph’s and Radar’s faces, I think we all were.
Backpedaling a little, I stated the obvious: “Hendrich was a part-time security guard here. Maybe he just came upon our guy and got taken out.”
Radar offered to dig up a list of Caucasians fitting our suspect’s description who might visit this neighborhood regularly enough to become familiar with the woods, invisible to the neighbors. “You were right, Pat. We’ve got a white guy who knows how to evaporate into a neighborhood of gangbangers of another race. I’ll look at social workers, youth coaches, parole officers, pizza delivery guys. Everyone. I don’t care. Including cops.”
Even though I didn’t like to even consider the idea that a cop could be involved, I agreed that it was worth pursuing.
Ralph said to me, “I’ll stick with you. Coordinate the searches. I’ll stay as late as I need to.”
My eyes were on the flashlight beams from the officers who were working their way through the forest. “Good to hear, Tonto.”
46
Joshua’s wife had supper waiting for him when he came through the door, but she looked at him with concern as he dropped his keys onto the counter. “What is it, hon?”
“What?”
“You look pale. Like you just saw a ghost.”
“No, it’s just…traffic. It’s nothing.” He kissed her. “I’ll be back in a sec. Let me kick off my shoes.”
As he crossed the hallway to the bedroom, he tried to piece together what had happened out there tonight.
Just before coming into the house, he’d heard through the police scanner that law enforcement had made the connection to Carl Kowalski, which explained why he hadn’t called at five-he was in custody. But at least he’d done as asked and Miriam Flandry’s skinned corpse had been found. The media would undoubtedly be jumping all over the story tonight.
Joshua put his gun away.
And of course, when law enforcement made the connection to Carl, they’d also discovered that the woman who’d been found in the train yards, the woman who was missing a finger, was Carl’s fiancee, Adele Westin.
But.
They’d also found Bruce Hendrich. He was the part-time security guard whose hours Joshua had researched so thoroughly, been so careful to avoid whenever he entered the train yard. And now he was found dead there. Stabbed. Locked in another boxcar.
Why then? Why there?
From Hendrich’s schedule, Joshua knew he hadn’t been on the docket to work today.
Questions chasing him, Joshua returned to the kitchen and helped Sylvia set the table.
“Did you have a good afternoon?” she asked him.
“Yes.” He tried to concentrate on her, to not let the events of the day come between them. “How did the house showings go?”
“Didn’t sell any, but you know what they say…” She smiled, but Joshua could see that it was a bit forced, that she wasn’t exactly optimistic but was trying hard to be. “Just live it through.”
“That’s right,” he said. “Just live it through. It’ll all work out. You’re good at what you do.”
A welcome smile. “Thank you, dear.”
He looked over the meat loaf, baked potatoes, and carrots she’d prepared. “Supper looks great.”
A pause. “Where were you all day?” she asked. “I tried calling.”
“Running errands. Taking care of a few things.”
After they’d said grace and started eating, his thoughts wandered back to the train yard.
Was it possible that it was all a coincidence?
Possible, perhaps, but how likely was that?
There was only one other explanation.
Someone knew. Someone knew he was going to be in the yard, knew he was going to have a woman there tonight.
It was unfathomable to think that, but Joshua let himself think it anyway. Because he had to.
And if that was the case, if someone knew, that might explain why law enforcement showed up when they did-the person could have contacted them, called in a tip.
But then why leave Hendrich dead? And locked in a train car?
But why?
As Sylvia ate, she told Joshua all about her day and he listened, not just because it was something a good husband should do, but because he was genuinely interested in her life. But despite that, admittedly, his attention did drift at times to what had happened tonight, to what was going to happen in the next two days.
Tonight he would watch the news, find out what he could about how it might have been that Hendrich happened to show up dead when he did at the train yard. It was important to make sure everything was set for Wednesday, for what was going to happen with the cop, so tomorrow, he would return briefly to look over the best
