“Your sister?” I said. “Why your sister?”
“She’s friends with Mallory. Cuts her hair. I was, you know, worried Griffin might…well, do something to her if he got scared. Desperate.”
Carver was glaring at his man, obviously ticked, but if Webb was telling the truth, I could at least understand where he was coming from. “How did she warn Mallory?” I asked him. “Where were they when your sister called her?”
“I don’t even know if she called her. I just-”
“Listen to me,” Radar interrupted him. “Do you have any idea where they might have gone?”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know they might-”
“Can you think of anywhere at all Griffin might have taken her?” Radar repeated, even more emphatically.
Webb was visibly shaken, but I could tell he was really thinking about it. “Okay, there’s this place, a couple miles outside of town. I don’t know, maybe…My sister went there with them a couple times to party. It’s near the dump. This abandoned farmhouse. No one lives out there, but it’s-”
I cut him off. “You say it’s near the landfill?”
“Yeah.”
An unsettling set of dark possibilities wound its way, like a snake slithering from a forgotten hole, into my thoughts. In 1996, Dahmer’s belongings had been taken to an undisclosed landfill. According to what Radar had read me earlier, Griffin worked for three years as a garbage collector in Milwaukee. The timing didn’t fit for him to have been one of the people who drove the dump truck to dispose of Dahmer’s possessions, but he might easily know the person who did.
But the Fort Atkinson landfill?
Yeah, just far enough from Milwaukee to discourage souvenir hounds.
Griffin moved to Fort Atkinson in June 1996-the same month the city of Milwaukee disposed of Dahmer’s things.
I don’t believe in coincidences.
I started for the stairs, gestured toward Radar, and said to Webb, “You’re riding with us. We’re going to that farmhouse.”
61
On the way to the house we radioed the dispatcher here in Fort Atkinson and told him to call Lieutenant Thorne to find out the name of the two city workers who’d delivered Dahmer’s possessions to the landfill. “And we need to know if the landfill they used was the one here in Fort Atkinson.”
We also called for backup to be sent to the farmhouse-an ambulance too. I didn’t say so, but I wanted it there because I knew if I was left alone with Griffin, he would be needing it.
The town of Fort Atkinson didn’t have a SWAT team, but Webb told us they’d call in the one for Jefferson County.
We were only two or three minutes from the landfill. “How long till they get here?”
“Twenty minutes. Fifteen maybe-but I’d say that’s pushing it.”
Not what I wanted to hear.
Standing around waiting for people to show up to do what I was prepared to do right now wasn’t what I had in mind for this afternoon. I wanted to go and get Griffin the minute we arrived.
If he’s even there.
That was true. It was also true that I wasn’t in my jurisdiction. Admittedly, that did put a few wrinkles in things.
I could work through a few wrinkles.
When we were about half a mile from the farmhouse, the dispatcher radioed back, relaying the message from Thorne: yes, the landfill was the one in Fort Atkinson; the names of the two city workers were Roger Kennedy and Dane Strickland. I hadn’t heard of either of the two men before, but I knew we were going to have a talk with them before everything involving this case was said and done.
Just as we were finishing up the transmission, we arrived at the farmhouse.
It was a small, ranch-style home, half burned down. The roof on the east side was caved in, the walls were blackened, the windows broken.
Griffin’s car was parked out front.
But why would he come here to flee?
Officer Webb, Radar, and I exited the car and unholstered our weapons. Radar immediately took position behind a nearby tree that gave him a clear line on the front door. Webb crouched behind the car, using the hood to steady his shooting arm.
I kept my door open, eased behind it, and eyed the farmhouse for movement. Saw none.
The sky was pregnant with snow. Clouds hung down like heavy, dark scabs.
The wind was dead. The day, still.
I really wanted to go into that house right now, but it wasn’t smart for any number of reasons-not the least of which: we had a possible hostage situation and storming the place without finding out where Mallory was could put her life in danger.
The air reeked of damp rot and dank smoke from the landfill that lay only a hundred meters beyond the house, surrounded by an eight-foot-tall wooden fence.
With the air smelling like this and the house in the shape it was, I couldn’t imagine anyone coming out here to party, as Webb had mentioned, but then I remembered we were talking about two people who lived in a home filled with memorabilia of serial killers and pedophiles. Who on earth knew why they did what they did.
Carver pulled up, parked, got out and we consulted for a moment. I was anxious to use the mic on his cruiser’s PA system to try to call Griffin out of the house, Carver was bent on waiting for the Jefferson County SWAT team.
“With all due respect, Detective,” he said at last, “this is our jurisdiction; this is our case. Since it was a federal search warrant at the house and you’re working with the Feds, I had no problem with your involvement there, but out here, this is our turf. He’s our guy to bring in.”
He had a point and if I were in his place I might’ve been saying the same things. “Sergeant, I couldn’t care less about who gets the credit for bringing this guy in. And I want that girl, Mallory, safe, just like you do, but…” I thought of what to say next, changed my tune a bit, and gestured toward Radar. “How about Sergeant Walker and I take the back of the house. Cover it until the tactical unit gets here.”
“Good. Thanks.” He nodded, and Radar and I circled around in case Griffin tried to leave the house and flee through the landfill.
I wasn’t sure exactly how everything was going to play out, but I did know that if I found out Mallory was in danger, from back here it’d be a lot easier to move on the house without any of Carver’s guys getting in the way.
62
Over the next few minutes more officers arrived and took position around the farmhouse.
SWAT was still five minutes out.
Carver called through his car’s mic numerous times, trying to get anyone who might be in the house to acknowledge that they were there, but no one answered.
From the radio transmissions among the team members, I knew that no one had seen any movement and I was getting more and more antsy to find out if Griffin was actually in the house, or if we were wasting our time out here.
His car is out front.
Yes, but if Griffin really was guilty, he’d been shrewd enough to avoid suspicion in at least two homicides stretching back almost a decade, even while he marketed in the kind of merchandise he did. The car could easily be a ploy to distract us while he fled in another vehicle.
“Radar, I can’t just sit around here doing nothing. I want to have a look around that landfill. You with me?”
“You bet.”
I radioed Carver; he agreed it would be good to cover the landfill and sent two other officers to take our place behind the house. They were more than happy to man our positions rather than accept the job of trekking across a reeking dump.
“Okay,” I said to Radar. “Get ready for the smell.”
“It’s been too late for that since we got here.”
We started for the fence. Wooden. Eight feet tall. No razor wire on top.