Most of the cars in the yard had gang-related graffiti spray-painted on the sides and nearly all of them were ravaged with rust. The boxcars had large sliding doors, many of which were padlocked shut, a few were left open, some were missing entirely.
He went to a light gray Soo Line boxcar with a chained-shut door, slipped a key into the lock, which he’d made sure was the same kind he’d used on the front gate, and clicked it open.
Gloves still on, he cranked the door open, peered inside.
His materials were all there waiting for Adele. The rope and duct tape. The chair. The plastic bags, butcher paper, and heavy-duty plastic ties. The battery-operated light on the wall to the left. And the Civil War-era Gemrig amputation saw that he had used to cut through Colleen Hayes’s wrists last night.
He already had the necrotome with him in a sheath on his belt. The word meant “cutting instrument of the dead” and it was an Egyptian knife popular between 1500 and 1000 BC.
Necrotomes are, of course, extremely rare, but he’d managed to get this one at an auction in San Francisco five years ago. It was one of the actual knives used by the priests of ancient Egypt to slit open the abdomens of the people they were about to mummify in order to remove their inner organs. They did so by hand, pulling out all the organs except for the heart. Then they stored those organs in jars-all of them except for the brain, which they considered useless, and simply discarded.
Joshua kept the necrotome with him at all times.
He’d used it last Friday on Petey Schwartz when the homeless man followed him, then grabbed his jacket collar. Joshua had met Petey before, knew him in an informal way, and knew that he had violent tendencies. In an instant he’d whipped out the necrotome and buried it into Petey’s stomach, just as his father had taught him to do with that hunting knife in the special place beneath the barn.
It’d all happened so fast that it was hard to differentiate one action from the next. It’d been impulse, pure and simple. Instinct. And now a man was dead.
He knew the verse, knew what killing would mean: “No murderer hath eternal life abiding in him.” First John, chapter three, verse fifteen.
No eternal life.
But yet he desired eternal life. Believed in grace, in forgiveness, in atonement.
His life was a throbbing contradiction. Just like St. Paul, who wrote in Romans, chapter seven, “What I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I. For to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not. For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do.”
The evil which I would not.
That I do.
I do.
After making sure the coast was clear, Joshua returned to the car to retrieve the unconscious woman from the trunk.
27
The afternoon was stretching thin.
As I drove, Ralph scribbled notes on his pad and collected his thoughts. “So, Griffin could have known that the Hayes couple had their own cuffs. That puts him on our short list.”
“Yes, but according to Colleen’s description, her abductor was a large man; Griffin has a slight build.”
He processed that. “True.”
“Also, when I brought up Hayes’s name, Griffin didn’t seem familiar with it.”
Ralph certainly knew, as I did, that killers are often accomplished liars, but even for them, first impressions are hard to fake. Often, our faces betray us before our minds can start coming up with ways to hide what our bodies have already subconsciously expressed.
“But, Pat, he has to be related to this somehow. He might not be at the center of it, but his connection with the crime scene tape and the cuffs is too much of a coincidence. They tie him to both the murder in Illinois and Colleen’s abduction last night. Besides, he called Hendrich ‘a source,’ and mentioned he’d shipped ‘stuff’ to him. Is that how you’d phrase things if you’d only worked with the guy once?”
“I see what you mean,” I admitted, “but both the cuffs and police tape could have come from a cop-there’s no saying the police tape came from the killer.”
“We need to find out more about Hendrich.”
“Yes, we do,” I said. “And cross-reference the names on the evidence room forms and the chain of custody list against the officers who worked the case in Illinois. An officer may have moved from-”
“Waukesha to Champaign.”
“Yes.”
While we’d been driving, Thorne had sent Lyrie to Hendrich’s home address, but we hadn’t heard from him yet whether he’d found out anything from him.
I said to Ralph, “It looks like we have a few things to follow up on.” I ticked them off on my fingers as I exited the highway to get to HQ: “Check that police tape for prints, locate Bruce Hendrich, look into the people at the Waukesha sheriff’s department who had access to the Oswald handcuffs, and find out how Colleen Hayes came to contact Timothy Griffin in the first place. Oh yeah, it’d be good to check the nearest video store to see if Timothy and Mallory rented The Fugitive and When Harry Met Sally.”
“You think they made that up?”
“Those two videos weren’t among the twelve in their living room, not by the TV or on the shelves. That points to renting them. People like to save time, money, and effort, so they most often shop, get gas, and rent videos from the grocery stores, service stations, and video stores closest to their homes. We should start there, see if they’re customers.”
“Good call.”
“I think we have enough to get a warrant to look through Griffin’s receipts, see what else Hendrich might have sold him.”
“Or bought from him.”
I nodded. “Also, we should get the warrant to cover Griffin’s subscription list so we can cross-check the people who get his catalog against our suspect list and tip list.”
“Nice.” He jotted a few more notes.
I gave him an inventory of the items that were in the living room and included the photo that had a price tag on it in the bedroom. “Have them compare that list to the items on the receipts that he hasn’t sold yet. And to the catalog.”
“Did you write down that stuff when you were in the bedroom?”
“No.”
“You just listed like four dozen different things. You’re saying you remembered them?”
“Yes.”
“All of them?”
“Yes. Why?”
He blinked. “Just checking.”
I felt the juices flowing. Admittedly, we still had more questions than answers, but a slowly emerging web of interrelationships was beginning to form. I mentally unwound and then rewound them, exploring the possibilities, evaluating the implications. Even though I couldn’t pin down anything solid yet, it felt good to have enough facts to be able to start sorting through them, searching for a pattern.
“How many do you think are women?” Ralph said, drawing me out of my thoughts.
“Who?”
“The people who buy that stuff from Griffin, you know, like Colleen. I mean, on the one hand you’ve got the revulsion most women feel toward violence, but on the other hand some ladies get off on that kind of stuff, on killers, you know, the lost boys-want to be their pen pals in prison, marry them when they get out, that sort of thing.”
Since males are generally more interested in crime and, in fact, much more inclined to commit violent acts than women, I expected that most of Griffin’s customers would be men. After all, ninety-five percent of the people in the prisons of the world are men-closer to ninety-eight percent if you look just at violent acts. Blame it on genetics, trace it back to upbringing, whatever it is, there’s no arguing that men corner the market on crime, especially cruel and brutal ones. “It’ll be interesting to see how it breaks down,” I acknowledged.