Believe No One (19 page)

He held his breath, but there was no sound. Maybe they went without him, but he heard the rhythmic creak of the bed in her room. There was a new loaf in the bread box; he took a couple of slices and slathered them with peanut butter, then hooked a cold Sprite from the fridge, intending to take it to his own room and listen to his radio. He clamped the sandwich in his teeth to free up his hands so he could rummage through his schoolbag for his pocket Sony. He stuffed it into his jacket, hid his backpack behind a chair and took a bite out of the sandwich. Dang, that bread was good!

He got as far as the living-room divider, but heard a sound that made his blood freeze. A squeal. Not even human-sounding, more like the tormented scream of a snared rabbit.

His heart thumping, he called, ‘Mom?'

No answer.

He left the sandwich and soda on the arm of a chair and tiptoed back to the kitchen, slid a knife from the block on the counter and crept to his momma's bedroom. The door was unlocked. He lifted the handle from the recess and turned it slow and careful, easing the door open as quiet as he could, to take a peek inside.

The room was in darkness and his momma lay on the bed, but he could not make heads or tails of what he saw.

‘Mom?'

He took a step inside and she screamed something, but her words didn't come out right and he could not make out what she was saying.

What's wrong with her face?

She tried to get up and for a second he thought she would fly at him, but something held her back. He could not make sense of it.

‘Momma?'

To his left something moved – a deeper patch of shadow near the bedroom closet. He swivelled his head and the shadow seemed to grow solid.

His mouth dried and every hair on his neck stood on end; he felt his heart hammering in his throat, beating in time with the words in his head:
Boogeyman, Boogeyman, Boogeyman, Boogeyman!

St Louis, Missouri

Detectives Ellis and Valance got to the Art Deco-style building of the St Louis PD Fourth District just after 8 p.m. Royston, the beat cop who had tracked down Henry Connor, was there to greet them.

‘I was on foot patrol when I heard the BOLO,' he said. ‘Checked his mugshot first chance I got. Knew him straight away – I rousted this guy sleeping rough under Tucker Boulevard five nights ago, took him to the Housing Resource Centre on North Tucker.' He led them past security, down a corridor. His electronic pass key gave them entry to the interview rooms. ‘The centre said they sent him to the New Life Evangelistic Centre on Locust Street. They found him a place at an emergency shelter, but he only stuck around for one night. He could've been anywhere.'

Ellis maintained a bored silence. He wasn't the type to be interested in how Connor was found, only in talking to him now that he
had
been found. Valance could tell by the stiff way his partner held himself that he was on a short fuse. Ellis wanted the patrol cop to take them to Connor and get lost.

‘So, where'd you find him?' Valance asked.

‘He bounced back to Tucker Boulevard.' Royston opened a door into a meeting room. A 42-inch monitor was fixed to the wall, a buff folder lay on a chair below it, and a conference phone crouched in the centre of the table like a squashed bug.

‘I don't see Connor,' Ellis said, mounting irritation in his voice.

‘We have a video link to Interrogation in here,' Royston explained. ‘When I said he was sleeping rough under Tucker Boulevard, I mean
right under
– in the sewers. I thought you might want to prepare yourselves.' He picked up a remote-control handset from one of the chairs and pointed it at the monitor.

The man in the interview room wore a trench coat that appeared to have been through trench warfare. His hair was hidden under a greasy cap, but if his beard was anything to go by, it would be long, dirty and matted. The skin of his face was heavily grimed. As they watched, Connor pulled the lapel of the gabardine aside and worked two filthy fingers inside a stained undershirt to scratch his chest hair. You could almost see the fleas jumping.

‘This is it?' Ellis jabbed a finger towards the screen. ‘This is what I came all this way to see?'

The uniform cop bristled. ‘What's with him?'

Valance turned his back on Ellis; there was no talking to him when he was like this.

‘He's just cranky.' He grinned. ‘He'll be fine when he's had coffee and a doughnut.' Valance held out his hand. ‘Thanks, Officer Royston, you went above and beyond. I'll make sure that goes in my report. Sorry it took up so much of your time.'

The cop kept his thumbs hooked in his pockets a moment longer, checking to see he was sincere. Valance held his gaze and finally Royston puffed air between his lips and extended his own hand.

‘I pulled Connor's file off the system,' he said, picking up the folder from the chair under the monitor. He handed it to Valance. ‘Everything you need is in there.'

Ellis waited until the patrolman was out the door before he said, ‘Gee, Valance, that was nice.'

Valance rounded on him. ‘What the hell's the matter with you? Connor bounced from shelter to shelter, all over town, but that cop stuck on the trail like a bloodhound. He stayed on duty after hours to meet us, set up an interview room
and
made sure Connor was ready and waiting for us when we got here. I wasn't being
nice,
Ellis, I just wasn't being an asshole.'

Ellis stared hard at him for a long time. He had earned his gold shield before Valance was even born, and the young cop was in awe of him in a lot of ways. But he
was
being an asshole, and Valance was damned if he would back down.

Ellis jerked his chin towards the video link. Connor was picking his nose and wiping his fingers on his pants. ‘You see this guy charming Rita Gaigan into his car? Do you think this guy ever even
owned
a car?'

‘We asked for Henry Connor, we got him,' Valance said. ‘His DNA is on the postcard Trey Gaigan sent to his aunt,' Valance said. ‘Come on, Ellis – we won't know if we wasted our time until we speak to the guy.'

‘Well, all right.' Ellis stared at the monitor. ‘But if I knew I was coming six hundred miles to sit down with a
biological hazard,
I'd've made you come alone.' He headed for the door.

‘Were are you going?' Valance asked.

‘Didn't you say something about coffee and doughnuts?' Ellis said.

Valance read Connor's file over coffee while Ellis refuelled with a burger and two doughnuts coated with enough sugar icing to induce a diabetic coma.

The Aggravated Assault was at Connor's ex-wife's home: Connor claimed she had unlawfully kept possession of some of his belongings after she kicked him out; she called the cops when he broke the back door window with a golf club to gain entry – she was cut by flying glass, which earned him a year in the county jail. The mugshot from that arrest showed him clean-shaven, his hair cut short; he even wore a shirt and tie. But his eyes were red-rimmed and he looked wild and desperate.

By the time he was arrested for the juvenile assault, Connor had become the man they saw today. He was arrested for swatting a kid who tried to steal his hat, which contained fifteen dollars and forty-six cents – his morning's takings from street sketching down by the Arch on the riverfront. Henry Connor was an art teacher before he lost everything to drink.

When they entered the interview room, Valance took the chair behind the desk and, as they had agreed, Ellis sat in the chair opposite Connor, their knees almost touching.

Connor reeked of old urine and a whole battalion of unwashed feet; this combined with a miasma of last night's liquor oozing out of his pores made short work of the Vick's VapoRub the two men had dabbed under their noses to mask the stink.

Valance placed the file on the desk and tapped it with one finger. Ellis snuffed air through his nose and said, ‘You want to tell us about the postcard?'

He stared at them blankly, told them he had no clue what they were talking about. Valance showed him a photocopy of the card, told him the date on the postmark.

‘February,' Valance said. ‘Two years back. This postcard.' He turned it over to show the image of the Arch, down on the riverfront.

Connor nodded slowly. ‘Oh,
I
remember that. I made double what I earned all morning on a five-minute errand. Guy paid me twenty-five dollars cash, and a quart of Jack Daniel's to address the card and go into a post office to put a stamp on it. I told him I would if he gave me his coat as well.' He frowned, remembering. ‘That was a terrible winter.'

‘Is that the coat?' Valance said, dreading the thought that they might have to seize the darn thing as evidence.

‘No, not
this
coat – this is a summer coat.' Connor tugged the lapels of his raincoat, wafting noxious fumes from the folds of his gabardine. ‘He gave me a good winter coat. Wouldn't give me his baseball cap, though. Said he needed it.'

‘What kind of baseball cap was it?' Valance asked.

‘Maroon,' he said. ‘With a gold decal.'

Oklahoma Sooners.

‘That coat saw me through two winters.'

‘Okay, can we get back to the card?' Ellis said.

‘Card?'

‘The postcard.'

He looked blank, and Valance tapped the photocopy on the table in front of him. ‘Which post office?'

Connor scratched his head, then ran one fingernail under the other, dropping scurf onto the greasy fabric of his gabardine.

‘Must've been downtown. I would be street sketching down by the Arch.'

‘You remember that?'

He shrugged. ‘It's what I do.'

Meaning that's what he did every day.

‘Where was he while you went into the post office?'

‘How would I know?'

‘Come on,' Valance said. ‘Try. He gave you the cash and the whiskey—'

‘No,' Connor said. ‘He kept the booze. He waited down the street. Said he wanted to see me put it in the box before he gave me the quart of Jack.' He nodded. ‘That's right – he waited down the street – I remember, now.'

Ellis and Valance adjourned to the conference room.

‘He sent Connor in to avoid the security cameras,' Valance said. All US post offices have CCTV in the lobby as well as at side and main entrances. ‘The baseball cap was a precaution, in case there was a camera he hadn't noticed.'

‘Or Connor's lying,' Ellis said.

Valance raised his eyebrows. ‘Changed your mind about him?'

Ellis shrugged. ‘The file says he wasn't always a bum,' he admitted. ‘And I guess they would've cleaned him up in prison.'

Valance opened the file and they sat side by side to sift through it. ‘Okay … Until three years ago, Connor was still teaching. We thought the perp chose to take the victims during school vacations so fewer people would notice they were gone, but what if it was because that was when Connor happened to be on vacation?'

Ellis nodded, approving the theory. ‘We need to check with his ex-wife what he was doing when the earlier victims disappeared.'

‘The Agg-Assault on the ex-wife was two and a half years ago – he'd lost his job by then. It was just before Rita Gaigan disappeared. He was serving a one-year sentence in the county jail. Only did … four months.'

It happened, when the jails got jammed up and they needed to make room.

‘Was he out when Rita's boy disappeared?'

Valance checked. ‘Nope. When Trey Gaigan went missing, Connor was still in jail. And the second arrest, for the assault on the juvenile, was June last year, which rules him out for Kyra Pender. He's not our guy.'

They returned to the interview room and asked Connor to describe the man who had paid him in cash and liquor to put a stamp on a postcard and mail it.

He was average height, Connor told them. Not fat or thin, just average. Mousy hair. Maybe. He had a beard, he remembered that. Then he didn't. Then he thought maybe he did after all. A goatee. Then he swore he wore a Zapata moustache.

‘You do remember that bottle of Jack, though, dontcha, Connor?' Ellis said.

‘I'm trying my best here,' Connor growled, glaring at Ellis. He had blue eyes, rimmed with a pale waxy deposit you'd normally only see in the very old. The whites of his eyes were yellow, as if his liver had started to leak gall into them.

‘What'd he sound like?' Valance said.

‘Sound like?'

‘How did he talk? Was he from round here, or …?' He let the question hang while the man tried to think through a fog of drink and alcohol-pickled brain cells.

After the longest time, he said, ‘Midwest.'

‘Okay, that's good,' Valance said. ‘So was it a strong accent – real country, maybe?'

‘No.' He shook his head, doubtful. ‘Not strong, exactly … some of the vowel sounds were off.'

‘Off, how?' Ellis asked.

‘I don't know. Kind of flat, I guess. Asked me if I would do him a “fayvarr”, it didn't sit right with the drawl.'

The two detectives exchanged a look.

He mistook it for scepticism and said, ‘What can I tell you? I'm more the visual type.'

Valance had a sudden inspiration. ‘You think you could maybe sketch the guy?'

‘I guess.'

Connor couldn't hold a pencil – the tremor in his hands was too severe. Valance asked for a flip chart and some marker pens.

As soon as he took the pen in his hand, Connor's tremors stopped. He picked the chart up from the table and flung it to the floor, dropping to his knees after it. The two detectives shoved the table back against the wall to give him room.

They watched Connor sketch, beginning with the eyes, moving to the chin, the hair, sketching in a shirt collar, moving back to the face, adding a line, some shading, thick brows. Three swift lines for the lips. He added a tie, a blur of shadow under the eyes. They held their breath as a face emerged from the broad pen-strokes.