No problem.
Moments later we were inside.
I paused. Studied the mounds of garbage around me.
We were in an area filled with discarded appliances-dishwashers, refrigerators, dryers, washing machines, ovens. Based on the number of units here compared to the population of Fort Atkinson, it was clear that this place had been the town’s landfill for a long time.
The rusted appliances jutted up at odd angles from the piles of trash all around us, some half buried in garbage, some jumbled awkwardly on top of each other in precarious stacks. The area looked like an alien, garbage-strewn, metal-encrusted planet.
Simply put, if Griffin was here, he could be almost anywhere.
“What are you thinking, Pat?”
“I’m thinking I hear a bulldozer.” I pointed across a mound of garbage to our right.
A man was driving a dated bulldozer into the landfill, aiming it toward a giant mountain of garbage bags. I couldn’t make out the face of the driver, but from here his build looked too big for him to be Griffin.
“You think that’s him?”
I shook my head. “No. But go see if he’s noticed anyone. Then, get him out of here. I don’t want any civilians in the area. I’m going to have a look around here.”
“Be careful.”
“You too.”
Gun out, Radar took off, picking his way over the garbage and carefully surveying the rotting landscape as he went.
Occasional telephone poles rose at random intervals along the fence that Radar and I had just scaled. The poles had vapor lights, now off, and I imagined that they served to illuminate the perimeter of the dump at night to keep out scavengers that would undoubtedly be drawn here from the nearby forest looking for food-rats, skunks, raccoons, wild dogs that might dig under the fence, maybe even bears, rooting through the garbage.
Around me, deep tread marks furrowed the ground from the bulldozers and earth movers that had pushed the remnants of people’s daily lives into the hills of refuse. Throughout the landfill were sporadic fires, and plumes of nascent gases were escaping through gaps in the mountains of trash.
“Griffin!” I called. The word sounded thick, almost liquid. It was a strange effect and I wasn’t sure what caused it, but it was eerie and unsettling. “We’ve got this area surrounded.”
It was partly true.
That farmhouse was definitely surrounded.
I proceeded through the cemetery of hulking appliances. Saw no movement. “We found that box under your steps. Thanks for selling the nursery rhyme book. That was helpful.”
Does he know? Does he know it was you who found Mindy’s body?
It was possible he might’ve found out I’d worked Jenna’s disappearance-he could have easily researched things after I’d visited him yesterday with Ralph, but I doubted he would have known that I was the one who’d found Mindy.
The cuffs. The Oswald connection…
“Did you consult with Isle-Seagirt-on the Oswald true crime book?”
No answer.
“Why do you call Mallory ‘baby,’ Timothy?” It took a little work to make sure my voice carried, but I made sure it did. “Is she the one you did all this for?”
No reply. Just the faint sounds of garbage settling, the rumble of the bulldozer’s engine shutting down as Radar spoke with the operator.
I came to a refrigerator. Held my gun steady. “How’d you get the jacket, Griffin?” I stepped quickly around it, leveling my weapon as I did. No one. “Did you know someone at the station? In the evidence room?”
Snow started to fall. Lonely, rogue flakes wandering aimlessly through the stagnant air.
As I was about to call out again, I heard a mound of garbage shift behind me and I spun to see what it was, but I was a fraction of a second too slow.
Griffin had appeared from behind a chest freezer that was tilted on end. With his unmistakably scarred neck, his twisted grin, and a primal fire in his eyes, he looked like a rabid animal.
He had a tire iron in his hands, had just cocked it back, and was swinging it violently toward my head.
63
I threw up my arm to take the brunt of the blow.
He was strong for someone his size and the force of the impact against my forearm threw me off balance. I tumbled backward, tripped over an overstuffed garbage bag that lay behind me, and landed on the ground, but I was able to keep my gun directed at Griffin’s chest. “Drop the tire iron!”
To my surprise, he did, then stood still, leering at me.
“Hands up!”
Again he obeyed, and I was kind of wishing he hadn’t, that he would have rushed me instead. I could have ended this whole thing on the spot.
“The jacket,” he said. “I knew it was you.”
“It was me, what?” Without taking the gun off him, I stood up.
“With Mindy. You found her.” He grinned, and as he spoke, every word seemed to drip with venom. “Did you like seeing her like that? The way I left her? She was special to me. She was my first.”
Hot anger coursed through me, tightening everything. “How did you know?”
“Your name was in the papers. You think I didn’t keep clippings of the girls? And just a kid yourself, huh? Sixteen? How’s that been for you over the years? Detective?”
I felt my finger pressing against the cool steel of the trigger. Just a little more pressure, just one twitch and he would be dead.
Keep the demons at bay.
“On your knees.” He was less than three meters away and didn’t move.
“On your knees.” He didn’t comply.
I was about to order him again, but I suddenly realized that I kind of hoped he would go for a weapon and give me an excuse to squeeze the trigger.
“Were there others?” I kept my finger on the trigger. “Besides Jenna and Mindy?”
“There are always others. You should know that, Detective.”
“Who?”
“I’m afraid that’s my little secret.”
“Who is Slate Seagirt?”
He smiled, but on him it wasn’t really a smile. “Oh, you’re gonna have a load of fun when you find that out.”
“Who’s the Maneater of the Midwest?”
“Now there’s a man who knows how to acquire what he wants. Does it for a living.”
“Who is he?”
He glanced to his left and then lowered his hands.
“Hands up!”
But he didn’t raise them. Instead, he flicked his right hand toward his jacket pocket and simultaneously his chest blossomed open like a grisly, bloody flower as the sound of three gunshots ricocheted through the air. He swayed limply forward and dropped face-first onto the garbage-strewn ground.
Heart hammering, I looked over and saw Radar standing twenty-five meters away, his weapon still level, his eyes still drawing a bead on where Griffin had stood only a moment earlier. We were virtually aiming our guns at each other. He’d managed to fire even before I could. We simultaneously lowered our weapons.
“You okay, Pat?”
“Yeah.”
He’d hit Griffin center mass, just like we were taught at the academy. Textbook. And the shots did what they were supposed to do. They took the subject down.
I didn’t think there was any way Griffin was alive, but I held my gun on him even as I bent, cuffed his hands behind him, felt for a pulse.
“I had to fire.” Radar was on his way toward me. “He was reaching for a weapon.”
“Yeah.” I wished Griffin had been able to tell me the Maneater’s identity-if he even knew it-but I doubted that he would have told us, even if Radar hadn’t fired.
No pulse. Griffin was gone. I searched the pocket he’d been reaching for, but I found only his car keys. No weapon.
I hesitated.
“What is it?” Radar knelt beside me.
“Hang on.”
I checked his other jacket pockets, found nothing. Felt for a holster; he wasn’t wearing one.
“Oh.” Radar caught on. “You’re not telling me…”