“On the divider? Not the side of the road?”
“On the divider. Is that significant?”
“Curious, anyway. The divider is on the driver’s side of the car, in the passing lane. I know the Merritt Parkway; there’s no way you could pull over and stop on the divider without drawing an awful lot of attention to yourself.”
“Which means?”
“Which means either he stopped on the right-hand shoulder, which is not uncommon and wouldn’t attract too much attention-but then he’d have to carry the body across the highway to the divider. Or he pushed the body out of the driver’s side while driving, which makes him both very strong and very adroit. The boy was how old?”
“Nine.”
“While driving he had to lift a corpse weighing what? Sixty? Sixty-five? Seventy pounds? This one was in a garbage bag, too?”
“The manufacturer calls them leaf bags. You can buy them in any grocery store by the dozen.”
“So he had to manipulate a seventy-pound bag, even tougher because there’s nothing to grab on to, no arms or legs for leverage.”
“Christ. Becker.”
“You want me to stop?”
“I don’t like the image of this monster grabbing a nine-year-old boy by the arm and tossing him out the window.”
“The boy was already dead.”
“I’m not sure that makes it any easier to take.”
“He was already dead, wasn’t he?”
“Forensics said he’d been dead about three hours before he was thrown onto the divider.”
“He was thrown then?”
“At some time after death, anyway. There was vast post-mortem trauma.”
“Was the bag torn?”
“I don’t know. But they’re made not to tear.”
“Find out.”
Karen nodded.
“So either we have this guy performing a considerable feat of strength while driving a car at some speed, or else we have him dashing across the highway with a body bag in his arms. Either way he’s taking a considerable risk. Why?”
“I don’t know. Why?”
“Only one reason I can think of offhand. Were the others found on the side of the road?”
“Yes.”
“So why is this one in the middle? What is there about the middle of the road that is different from the side-where it would be a lot easier and safer to put the body?”
“Don’t play Socrates with me, John. If you know, tell me.”
“If the body is on the middle divider, you can’t tell which way the car was going when the body was dropped. If the body is on the right-hand side, you might as well place an arrow saying ‘car going this way.’ But if it’s in the middle, the car could have been going in either direction.”
“Which tells us the bastard is concerned about being followed. He knows, or thinks he knows, that we’re after him.”
“Maybe,” Becker said.
“Which means he’s left a pattern and is aware of it and thinks we are, too.”
“Although you’re not,” Becker said.
“Yet,” said Karen. “Which means he knows we’re after him in the first place. Now, how would he know that? We weren’t posting rewards, there was no publicity suggesting a connection between these cases.”
“But the Bureau had, in fact, already linked these deaths?”
“I’ve been working on it since Ricky Stine in Newburgh. The computer alerted us to the similarities.”
“You’ve been on the case for a year?”
“Seven months.”
“Two kids killed in seven months’ time?”
“Six months. We found the latest a month ago.”
“He’s accelerating very rapidly.”
“That’s part of the reason I’m here, John. This guy has started to need them so frequently he’s practically in free-fall. If he knows we’re on to him, it hasn’t slowed him down, it’s only made him cagier.”
“So how does he know you’re on to him? Does he have a spy in the Bureau?”
“I’m not that paranoid.”
“Maybe he knows someone has been asking questions.”
“How?”
“Maybe he knew someone who was interrogated?” Becker left it hanging for her.
“Or maybe we interrogated him? Christ, Becker, do you think we might have talked to this guy and let him go?”
“I don’t know. He didn’t change his pattern until after the fifth one was snatched-and before you knew he was dead. I’d go back over the interviews at Stamford; maybe you’ll catch something you missed the first time.”
Karen’s face had turned grim, her jaw clenched.
“If he’s in the interviews. I’ll find him.” she said. “There’s another possibility for covering his tracks in Stamford, of course, that might not have anything to do with his knowing about your investigation. It might just be a special place for him. Maybe he’s from Stamford originally. Maybe someone who knows him is there. Maybe there’s a clue of some kind there that he knows about but can’t change. Just an awareness of his increased vulnerability could cause him to act differently.”
“Still another reason to go back to Stamford.”
“I’d say so. It can’t hurt to go over the ground again. And there’s one other thing the body on the divider can tell us.”
“Why do I have to ask?”
“I’m thinking it through. It’s really a pretty clumsy way to put your pursuers off the track. A far better way would be to dump the body somewhere far away from the highway so there’s no clue as to direction at all. Or better yet, hide the body completely, give yourself months to get away. Or simply drop the body on the right-hand side of the road, turn around and go the other way. He didn’t do any of those things, and my guess is that the reason was he was in too much of a hurry. He’d been seen with the kid or something else happened to panic him and drive him off, fast. Check the incident reports with the Stamford police to see if anything unusual happened within a few hours of the estimated time of death. If he left fast, what did he leave behind? Did he leave owing rent, a mortgage? Most likely not, since he seems to be moving around so much. He’s probably a transient. In a motel, not a hotel; you wouldn’t want to walk through a lobby with a kidnapped child. Check all the motels in the area, see who left that day, particularly anyone who left without paying or ahead of time…”
Becker paused and smiled at her.
“You’ve done all of this already, haven’t you?” he asked.
“Most of it,” she said. “But you’re right, it wouldn’t hurt to check again.”
“It’s not what you need me for.”
“In part. You’re very good at it. I hadn’t considered I might actually have interviewed the son of a bitch and let him go. I can’t tell you how that makes me feel.”
“You conducted the interviews, Karen?”
“Some of them.”
“The second in command of Kidnapping is in the field doing interviews in person?”
Karen shifted uncomfortably.
“I haven’t forgotten how. I’m pretty good at it.”
