Now, this morning, he didn’t find it difficult at all to get the person he’d decided to abduct into his car. She was a petite woman and he was strong for his size.
He carried her into the slaughterhouse and set her in one of the walk-in freezers that was now without power, but quite soundproof and secure. She was still unconscious when he locked the freezer door.
He would come back and visit her later, then take her to the place in the building where he’d taken Celeste last night.
A test? Maybe. You could call it that. But the Maneater wanted to know how serious Joshua really was about all of this.
If he did carry out something memorable at dusk, as he claimed he was going to do, they would meet up tonight and the Maneater would reward him with this woman.
And they would share their first meal together.
75
10:25 a.m.
6 hours until the gloaming
In light of our current projects, the ten o’clock meeting had been cancelled. It seemed more prudent to pursue our leads than to sit around a table talking about them.
While we were working, Ellen showed up and told us she’d interviewed the two waste management workers who drove the truck of Dahmer’s things. Both claimed they didn’t know Griffin or anything about him, but Strickland did know Detective Browning and went deer hunting with him.
It was a link.
Links form a chain.
Chains form a case.
She went on. “When I asked him if he might have mentioned to Browning where Dahmer’s possessions had been deposited, his memory seemed to become a bit fuzzy.”
Yes, so information could’ve easily been passed from Strickland to Browning to Griffin, if the links were connected.
As she was finishing up, Radar walked in and informed us that he’d just spoken with Colleen Hayes downstairs. “She was brought over here to see Vincent-he’s still in custody. Anyway, I thought we could finally get some answers from her about those cuffs. I pressed her about why she’d purchased a pair that had been used in the Oswalds’ arrest. It took some prodding, but she told me that a guy at work had thrown out a catalog. She saw it in the trash, flipped through it, saw the cuffs. She thought it would be…well, discreet to order them through there.”
That was a little disappointing. “So she didn’t ask specifically for the ones involved in the Oswalds’ arrest?” I said.
“It didn’t sound like it, no.”
So, the killer could have found out about the cuffs from Griffin’s records and chosen Colleen that way. The connection between Adele and Colleen might not be the breakthrough clue we were hoping it would be after all.
“Does she know who threw out the catalog?”
He shook his head. “No, and she said she didn’t know who the guy was she ordered them from either, that it was all done through a post office box. The cuffs were shipped to her house.”
Another corner of the labyrinth closed off, moving us inexorably in another direction.
As far as the rest of our progress, Miriam Flandry’s stroke hadn’t seemed in any way suspicious and no autopsy had been done. The search for consulting firms had come up dry, but Lyrie had found that four people on the suspect list and tip list did live in the Franklin Heights area.
I turned to Thompson who’d arrived during our recap and had, as promised, brought plenty of chocolate cream-filled and glazed doughnuts for everyone. “Don’t you go to church in that area?” I asked him. “Over near Franklin Heights?”
“Yeah.”
“Why don’t you follow up on those names. See what you can dig up.”
“Right.” He grabbed three doughnuts and left again. Didn’t even get a chance to sit down.
The rest of us went back to work.
It took a little while, but all three airlines that flew out of General Mitchell Airport and serviced the cities we were looking at faxed us the flight manifests we’d requested and we took our time inspecting them. In the end, however, we didn’t come up with any names that matched.
It was possible this whole airline idea was off base.
Come on, Pat, you’re missing something here!
I rubbed my head, then studied the maps on the corkboard again, thought about what Calvin had said about consulting firms, businesses that do businesses with other businesses.
Roads you can’t see…
Notice the obvious, Pat…The truth isn’t as obscure as it appears…Our preconceptions blind us to-
“Hang on,” I said. “Chartered flights. Private jets. And let’s take a closer look not just at consulting firms but at any businesses that have satellite offices in those cities.”
Agreement from the team.
We pulled out phone books and began to make some calls.
76
11:25 a.m.
5 hours until the gloaming
Ellen struck gold.
She found one company, High Profile Charter Service, based out of Milwaukee, that made regular chartered stops in Cincinnati and Champaign and had even done so two days before their respective murders, then returned to Milwaukee the day after them. They’d also sent a flight to Green Bay two days prior to the disappearance of a woman from nearby Appleton.
There weren’t any flights to Rockford or Madison, but again, those cities weren’t too far from Milwaukee and it made sense that the killer could have driven to them easily enough.
When we checked which company had chartered the flights in question, we found that they were all hired by Hathaway amp; Erikson, LLC, one of the biggest acquisition firms in the Greater Milwaukee area.
A business that did business with other businesses.
I remembered what Griffin had said right before he was killed, when I asked him about the Maneater: “Now there’s a man who knows how to acquire what he wants. Does it for a living.”
A man who knows how to acquire what he wants.
Does it for a living.
A guy who works at an acquisitions firm? A double entendre from the man who called Mallory “baby”?
I wouldn’t put it past him.
Oh yeah, things were popping.
High Profile Charter Service didn’t have flight manifests, but they did have a record that nine people had been on the flight to Cincinnati, seven to Champaign, and five to Green Bay.
“If we get those names from the acquisition firm,” Corsica said, “and the same name appears on all the lists-”
“We have our guy,” Radar exclaimed.
I didn’t think we could go quite that far, but I had the sense that it would certainly be one circumstantial link to the crimes that would be hard to discount.
As it turned out, only Corsica was able to leave the department with me at the moment, but I didn’t care. I was willing to work with just about anyone if it meant moving things forward.
We grabbed our things and left to pay a visit to Hathaway amp; Erikson, LLC.
77
A crowd of fifteen people had gathered in the West Reagan Street Mission’s cafeteria to remember Petey Schwartz.
The small congregation sat behind folding tables with Styrofoam cups of coffee in front of them.
All of the people, besides Joshua, worked for the mission or were transients who’d known Petey. And yet, because of his past involvement with the center, Joshua did not stand out.
The question that seemed so hard to answer gnawed at him: “What kind of a God could ever forgive someone who’s done the things you’ve done?”
And the answer he tried to cling to: “What kind of a God would he be if he couldn’t?”
The Reverend Hezekiah Tate, the African-American preacher who’d started this shelter for the homeless more than thirty years ago, walked slowly to the front of the cafeteria, greeted those who’d come, unfolded his weathered Bible and laid it on the antique lectern he always preached from.