frozen pizzas and an empty ice tray. I checked in and under the dresser. Empty. I looked under the bed and between the mattress and box spring. There was nothing. Even the trash cans were empty.
“Let’s go,” Rachel said.
I looked up from checking under the bed and saw she was already to the door. Under her arm she was carrying the box that Mizzou had just dropped off. I remembered seeing the flash drives in there. Maybe the drives would hold information we needed. I hurried after her, but when I went through the open door, she was not at the car. I turned and caught a glimpse of her rounding the corner of the building and entering the alley.
“Hey!”
I trotted over to the alley and made the turn. She was walking with purpose down the center of the alley.
“Rachel, where are you going?”
“There were three trash cans in there,” she called back over her shoulder. “All of them were empty.”
It was then that I realized she was heading toward the first of two industrial-size Dumpsters that were pushed into alcoves on opposite sides of the alley. Just as I caught up with her she handed me Freddy Stone’s box.
“Hold this.”
She flung the heavy steel lid up and it banged loudly against the wall behind it. I glanced down into Freddy’s box and saw that somebody, probably Mizzou, had taken his cigarettes. I doubted he would miss them.
“You checked the kitchen cabinets, right?” Rachel asked.
“Yeah.”
“Were there any trash can liners?”
It took me a moment to understand.
“Uh, yeah, yeah, a box under the sink.”
“Black or white?”
“Uh…”
I closed my eyes to try to visualize what I had seen in the cabinet under the sink.
“… black. Black with the red drawstring.”
“Good. That narrows it down.”
She was reaching into the Dumpster, moving things around. It was half full and smelled awful. Most of the detritus was not in bags but had been dumped in directly from waste containers. Most of it was construction debris from a repair or renovation project. The rest was rotting garbage.
“Let’s try the other.”
We crossed the alley to the other alcove. I put the box down on the ground and threw open the heavy lid of the Dumpster. The odor was even more stunning and at first I thought we had found Freddy Stone. I stepped back and turned away, blowing air through my mouth and nose to keep the stench away.
“Don’t worry, it’s not him,” Rachel said.
“How do you know?”
“Because I know what a rotting body smells like, and it’s worse.”
I moved back to the Dumpster. There were several plastic trash bags in this container, many of them black and many of them torn and spilling putrid garbage.
“Your arms are longer,” Rachel said. “Pull out the black bags.”
“I just bought this shirt,” I said in protest as I reached in.
I pulled out every black bag that wasn’t already torn and revealing its contents and dropped them on the ground. Rachel started opening them by tearing the plastic in such a way that the contents stayed in place inside. Like performing an autopsy on a garbage bag.
“Do it like this and don’t mix contents from different bags,” she said.
“Got it. What are we looking for? We don’t even know if this stuff is from Stone’s place.”
“I know but we have to look. Maybe something will make sense.”
The first bag I opened mostly contained the confetti of shredded documents.
“I’ve got shreddings here.”
Rachel looked over.
“That could be his. There was a shredder by the workstation. Put that one aside.”
I did as I was told and opened the next bag. This one contained what looked like basic household trash. I immediately recognized one of the empty food boxes.
“This is him. He had the same brand of microwave pizza in the freezer.”
Rachel looked over.
“Good. Look for anything of a personal nature.”
She didn’t have to tell me that but I didn’t object. I carefully moved my hands through the refuse in the torn bag. I could tell it had all come from the kitchen area. Food boxes, cans, rotting banana peels and apple cores. I realized it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. There was only a microwave in the warehouse loft. It made the choices narrow and the food came in nice clean containers that could be hermetically sealed before being tossed.
At the bottom of the bag was a newspaper. I carefully pulled it out, thinking the date of the edition might help us narrow down when the bag had been tossed into the Dumpster. It was folded into quarters in the way a traveler might carry it. It was the previous Wednesday’s edition of the
I unfolded it and noticed the face of a man in a photograph on the front page had been doodled on in black marker. Someone had awarded the man sunglasses and a set of devil’s horns and the requisite pointy beard. There was also a coffee ring on the photo. The ring partially obscured a name written with the same marker.
“I’ve got a Vegas paper with a name written here.”
Rachel looked up immediately from the bag she had her hands in.
“What name?”
“It’s blurred by a coffee ring. It’s Georgette something. Begins with a B and ends M-A-N.”
I held the paper up and angled it so she could see the front page. She studied it for a second and I saw recognition fire in her eyes. She stood up.
“This is it. You found it.”
“Found what?”
“He’s our guy. Remember, I told you about the e-mail to the prison in Ely that got Oglevy put in lockdown? It was from the warden’s secretary to the warden.”
“Yeah.”
“Her name is Georgette Brockman.”
Still crouched on my haunches next to the open bag, I stared up at Rachel as I put it all together. There was only one reason Freddy Stone would have that name written on a Las Vegas newspaper in his warehouse. He had trailed me to Vegas and knew I was going up to Ely to talk to Oglevy. He was the one who wanted to isolate me in the middle of nowhere. He was Sideburns. He was the Unsub.
Rachel took the newspaper from me. Her conclusions were the same as mine.
“He was in Nevada trailing you. He got her name and wrote it down while he was hacking the prison system’s database. This is the link, Jack. You did it!”
I got up and approached her.
“
She lowered the paper to her side and I saw a sad realization play on her face.
“I don’t think we should be touching anything else here. We need to back off and call in the bureau. They have to take it from here.”
Equipmentwise, the FBI always seemed ready for anything. Within an hour of Rachel’s calling the local field office, we were placed in separate interrogation rooms in a nondescript vehicle the size of a bus. It was parked outside the warehouse where Freddy Stone had lived. We were being questioned by agents inside while other agents on the outside were in the warehouse and the nearby alley, looking for further signs of Stone’s involvement in the trunk murders as well as his current whereabouts.
Of course, the FBI didn’t call them interrogation rooms and would have objected to my calling the converted mobile home the
