Wayne wiped sweat from his upper lip.
‘Where’s the rest of Mrs Patterson, huh, Spicer? I’m sure her family would like to know. Where’d you put the rest of them, the other girls?’
Wayne looked panicked for a moment, then used the hem of his shirt to wipe his face all over. ‘Uh . . . I need a break.’
Scott rolled his eyes toward the ceiling.
‘I need a break,’ repeated Wayne. ‘I need to go to the bathroom.’ He tried to smile. ‘Can I get something to eat, too?’
‘OK,’ replied Eric.
Wayne looked up at him gratefully.
‘Someone will bring you lunch and take you to use the head.’
The agents left the room and ushered in the police officer through the doorway.
‘You rattled him,’ said Eric.
‘Let’s get on to the ME; see if she’s got a hit off of those teeth yet. If the woman in his freezer is from Georgia, this case will have a bow on it.’
But Scott’s call to Dr Bodell was re-routed as soon as he identified himself. She had directed the receptionist to put the agent through to Cliff Lockwood, one of three medical investigators in the Medical Examiner’s Office. Scott already knew that two of them were former detectives and one was a forensic anthropologist turned investigator. They went to scenes of all unattended deaths, tracked down identifying material on every Jane and John Doe in Maricopa County, and notified next-of-kin for any body processed where the family was not already aware of death.
Cliff Lockwood was one of the former detectives and had been at the ME’s Office since – according to Dr Bodell – the year dot. When he came on the line, his voice was as gravelly as that of a life-long smoker.
‘Yeah, we got an ID on your girl already.’ Lockwood broke off to cough and brought up a loogie that Scott could hear being spat out somewhere.
‘I’m ready,’ he replied impatiently, raising his voice over Lockwood’s hacking.
‘You’ve got a Katherine Ruth Alston. That’s Alpha, Lima, Sierra, Tango, Oscar, November.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Date of birth: one niner of ’seventy-nine. Caucasian. Five-six, one-twenty-five. Brown and brown. Missing from Los Angeles, California on five-twelve of ’ninety-nine.’
Scott immediately started calculating. Her disappearance pre-dated the cases of the missing prostitutes in Atlanta. Had she been Spicer’s first kill and he had kept her body as a prize? ‘NCIC number?’
‘Mike-one-niner-seven-seven-three-one-niner-five-three.’
‘What were her circs?’
‘Suspicious missing – abduction. She was an adult, car found on a freeway, no sign of a struggle. A student reported missing by her parents. I’ll be making contact today.’
‘Which freeway?’
‘Says the One-oh-one. One more thing, Houston. We ID’d her through dental records on NCIC and there’s a note on the file that they didn’t come direct from a doc. Some shop out your way was involved. An Agency Thirty- two One. You know it?’
‘You could say that.’
‘What the hell do they do?’
‘Forensic profiles of mispers.’
Lockwood let out a low whistle and said, ‘Leave it to you Californians to find a niche market. They been around long?’
‘No, but you’ll see their stuff on NCIC, usually related to cold cases. I’ll bet your ME’s have heard of them.’
As soon as Scott was off the call, he picked up another voicemail message from Jayne. He first relayed the Alston identification details to Eric and then Jayne’s description of the results of Jeppsen’s search of the Agency 32/1 offices.
‘Do they have any idea what the bug’s about?’ Eric asked.
‘I don’t know. But it’s gotta be one of their own cases.’
‘Didn’t you give Jayne the Patterson ID on the Agency’s landline?’
‘Yeah but I’m not concerned about someone overhearing that. It wouldn’t mean anything to an outsider.’
‘We can take a minute for you to call her now.’
‘No.’ Scott looked at his partner. ‘What I want is to get in there with our new ammunition against Spicer.’
‘Fine. Let’s wrap him up.’
EIGHTEEN
Eric had resumed his position near the door inside the interrogation room. Scott sat across the table from Wayne, who appeared to have perked up after eating. His hands were clasped loosely on the table as though he was about to close a business deal and he was smiling childishly, like he had a secret.
Scott opened the thin manila folder he had brought into the room. It held a single typed sheet of paper, the font small and all in capitals, difficult to read upside down. From Wayne’s position, it could look like a printout of a police document. From Scott’s side of the table, it looked like a printout of turn-by-turn driving directions from the Mission Hotel to the Maricopa County Medical Examiner’s Office. Scott looked down at the sheet of paper and spoke.
‘We know where you picked her up, Spicer. The girl in your freezer.’
Wayne’s smile faltered.
Scott looked at him. ‘The One-oh-one a favorite of yours?’
Wayne jerked his arms off the table, putting his hands out of sight.
Scott looked at the sheet of directions again, then stared at Wayne. ‘She must have been different from the other ones.’ He watched a bead of sweat develop on Wayne’s upper lip. ‘We figured she was different because you didn’t cut her up.’
Wayne suddenly bared clenched teeth and pounded his fist on the table. ‘Stop saying that word!’
‘But once you had her in the van—’
‘It wasn’t a van!’ Wayne almost yelled. Then he spoke more softly. ‘It was a car.’
Scott remained silent.
Eric spoke quietly from his position by the door. ‘Your car, Wayne? You have a car as well as a van?’
Wayne smiled at Eric’s gentle tone, and directed his reply to him, ignoring Scott who was now leaning back in his chair. ‘No, I
‘When did you get the van?’
‘A little while ago.’ Wayne’s eyes looked beyond Eric, towards the door. A smile played on his lips. ‘I was going to go away in it. With Katie.’
‘Who sold you the van?’
‘I don’t know his name.’
‘What’d you pay for it?’
‘It was a trade. I traded him my car for his van.’
‘That’s pretty unusual, Wayne. Most people like cash. Sounds like you’re making this up. It’s always been your van.’
‘No, I told you, it was a trade. That nosy hag across the street will tell you. She saw the whole thing.’
Scott tensed. If Wayne had a witness, then this was a different ballgame. He waited impatiently for Eric’s next question.
‘When?’
‘Like I said, a little while ago.’
The answer was vague but Scott’s mind was already running with the implications of this. If Wayne Spicer
