Jayne and Steelie - 01 - Freezing (29 page)

Tripper pulled up the roller door and surveyed the storage unit in the sunlight slanting in around the corner of the concrete and steel building. He looked up and down the access lane he was in; no one. He'd chosen this particular unit when he'd signed the contract with an alias because it was at the farthest corner of the storage center. Most people didn't want to drag their belongings any further than they had to once they were in the front gate, so his comings and goings were usually unobserved.

He walked in, turned on the light, and pulled the roller door down behind him, slotting into place a temporary lock. The items he'd left inside looked undisturbed: select pieces of his mother's faded slip-covered furniture, the pile of old curtains with their hooks still attached, the aquarium whose ferns now resembled miniature ocotillo, and, right at the back, the motorcycle. He went to the motorcycle first.

He prized off a spoke and inserted it into the left exhaust pipe to retrieve a plastic bag. Out of the bag, he brought a knife and went to the sofa. He pulled off its slip-cover and began cutting through the stitching on its back. He worked without concern about any noise he was creating or with hiding the destruction. As soon as he'd opened a foot-long section, he dug within the stuffing and retrieved two more small plastic bags as well as a much larger padded one.

He pulled on the edges of the padded bag until it formed a box. He attached this to the motorcycle's rear rack, ensuring its label faced out:
Joey's Pizza – We Deliver!
He put the smaller bags in the false bottom inside the pizza delivery box.

He moved on to the slip-covers on the two easy chairs and repeated his actions, retrieving scalpels, tweezers, surgical gloves, telephone wire, twine, and duct tape. From the bottom of the aquarium, he pulled out bags holding the false driver's license and insurance cards, license plates for the motorcycle, the cell phone pack, and the one grenade. Then he cut the lining off the curtains and peeled out a change of clothes, several Tyvek suits still in their plastic covers, and his motorcycle leathers.

Tripper changed clothes, stuffing the remainder of the cheap cop costume into the back of the sofa before putting the slip-covers back on all the furniture. He put on the leathers and turned on the cell phone to check its charge. The manufacturers had been good to their word; it had held its charge since he'd last been at the unit. He typed in a text message and pressed
Send
. When he saw it had gone through, he smiled and put on his helmet. He lifted the door and began to wheel out the motorcycle.

TWENTY-SIX

M
ark Wilson plugged the flashdrive into the computer. He spoke as he tapped keys. ‘I just got off the phone with Gerrit Leuven. I think I know where King got his inspiration for the killings. Check this out.'

The projection screen at the end of the room switched to an image of a streambed bordered by tall reeds whose color was washed out to a pale yellow by bright sunlight. The clear sky above them looked almost white. Amongst the reeds was a black photo board. It looked out of place. Beyond it on the ground, a fluorescent orange plastic arrow pointed toward a plastic letter N.

Mark looked at Jayne and Steelie. ‘After you two left Kigali in 'ninety-six, Gerrit and King were called in by the Civilian Police to assist on a homicide investigation. At first, CivPol had thought it was related to the genocide but then they realized it couldn't be because the body was fresh. So then they thought it was a retribution killing; like, a witness for the Tribunal killed so she couldn't testify about the genocide. That was when CivPol called in Gerrit and he in turn asked King to photodocument. All right, look at this. Here's the overall scene and the photo board's right near the body parts.'

‘Parts?' Scott asked.

‘She was dismembered.'

Scott muttered something but Mark continued: ‘Hang on. Look at this. I'm putting it on slide show.' He pressed a button and the slide dissolved and was replaced by another, which stayed on the screen for a time before dissolving and being replaced. Each photo brought them closer to the reeds, but in the third shot, a body part was slightly visible. In the subsequent photographs, someone was holding back the reeds with a flat tool, exposing the body parts like eggs in a nest. Two feet, the brown skin mottled by decomposition and the soil beneath them darkened with dried blood. Two hands, each finger separated from the palm. Then a single body part that it took Jayne a moment to recognize as a neck.

Mark came to sit by Scott. ‘Remind you of anything?'

‘Yeah, the first body parts we found on the outskirts of Atlanta. The neck especially.'

‘And I don't think it's a coincidence. I think that when King was called in to photo these BP's, it gave him ideas.'

Scott sounded doubtful. ‘But if he worked in the Bureau Lab, he'd have seen all kinds of stuff during his career. Why this particular case? Did they ID the body? Did they find the head?'

‘No, never. And they only made a probable ID – turns out there aren't that many new missing persons in Rwanda. Most cases date to the spring of 'ninety-four when the genocide broke out. So the list of new mispers was small and most of the women on it were sex workers – and most of them weren't even Rwandan. They came from elsewhere to cater to the peacekeepers and internationals. For this body, they liked a young woman from the Ivory Coast. She'd only been in Kigali for a short time but was already known to pick up Johns at a club called . . .' He consulted his notes. ‘The Cadillac.' He looked up interrogatively at Steelie and Jayne. ‘Heard of it?'

Steelie addressed Jayne. ‘Um, maybe now would be a good time to tell them.'

Scott held up an index finger as his cell phone rang.

Jayne could tell he was talking to Eric and the news wasn't good. She looked back at the screen, where the slide show was progressing automatically. As she watched, she began to think,
Something's here . . .what is it?
She went closer, pulled by that familiar professional curiosity again, which was quickly displacing the self-doubt that had put her on the back foot earlier. She only gave part of her attention to Scott as he relayed Eric's news that the shelters used code words for clients and, therefore, Patterson's name and photograph wasn't getting them anywhere.

Scott concluded by asking Steelie, ‘Now, what is it you were going to tell us?'

Jayne spoke without turning from the screen. ‘Hang on a sec. Mark, can you run the slides back and pause the show?'

He got up and punched a few keys at the computer. ‘How far back do you want to go?'

‘Go back two.'

The photo she was interested in was a close-up of a foot but it hadn't been taken
in situ
at the streambed. It had been taken on a table covered with a green surgical drape. Lighting had been used to illuminate the cut portion of the ankle. A ruler was placed in the photograph for scale, along with a label that read
UNCP #7-0193
.

Steelie got up to join Jayne at the screen. ‘Can we see the others in this section? Did Gerrit say where they took these shots?'

Mark replied, ‘He said that all the material came back to UN HQ and they did the detail shots there, at your guys' temporary morgue.'

They looked at the photographs; separate ones of each dismembered finger, then the group placed in rough anatomical position to the palm. There were images of all surfaces of the hand and each shot was lit perfectly to show the cross-section of the cuts.

Jayne reached up, pointed at one of the cuts, and looked at Steelie, who nodded. They communicated silently like this two more times before Scott said, ‘Thirty-two One, there are other people in the room. What are you seeing?'

Jayne replied, ‘Gene wasn't inspired by these cuts.'

Scott threw up his hands in exasperation. ‘You can't rule out that he photographed them, came back here and copied them.'

She shook her head. ‘No, I mean . . . or at least, I think I mean that he wasn't inspired by them. He made them.'

Both agents stared at her and she looked to Steelie for back-up.

Steelie elaborated, ‘We've seen these cuts before. We saw cuts just like this at Critter Central. Patterson's arms. Same going between the joints, same careful approach toward not nicking bone. Dismemberment with hand tools – fine tools – not just going in with a bone saw.' She drew breath to say more but Scott interrupted.

‘Are you seriously telling me that King
killed
this woman in Rwanda and then photographed her for the investigation?'

Steelie appeared to be choosing her words carefully, sounding more like a lawyer than ever. ‘All we're saying is that there's a strong possibility that the same person who was responsible for cutting off Patterson's arms also dismembered this woman in Kigali. We don't know who that person is and it could be that it's actually two killers . . . though they'd be two peas in a pod.'

‘What, the woman was killed by some other perp King met over there, who then taught him how to do this kind of dismemberment?'

Steelie shrugged.

Mark had been flipping through his notes. ‘This is making sense. Listen to this: Gerrit knew that the cuts were precise, particularly compared to trauma inflicted during the genocide with a machete or scythe. He said he later developed some suspicions about people with access to the UN HQ because when they went to open a new supply kit for the morgue, about half the blades for the scalpels were missing, plus a few handles. Let's see.'

He scanned a page and then pointed at it. ‘Yeah, here. He said he questioned the Logistics guys but they confirmed that the supplies had arrived from the European Union boxed up on a pallet.' Mark looked up at Scott. ‘But Gerrit stressed that his suspicion that someone had stolen from their supplies was just a personal opinion and he didn't have any proof.'

Scott questioned Jayne. ‘Could King have accessed a pallet?'

‘Easily. If you were UN personnel, you could get access to almost anything that would be legitimate. Of course, we had to sign in and out and list how much of whatever item we took.'

‘Was someone guarding the pallets or controlling the sign-in sheet?'

‘The Logs guys had way too much to deal with to be able to guard anything. The sign-in sheet hung on a clipboard at the edge of the supply area.'

Scott swung his chair toward Mark, putting his back to the women, and lowered his voice. ‘What do you think?'

‘I think we gotta get them over to King's house ASAP, Houston. They can see things we can't.' He gestured at the slide on the screen.

Jayne called out: ‘What's the problem with taking us to the house? That's why you flew us out here.'

Scott swung around again. ‘The problem is that now, we know that
you
know the suspect. We need to make sure our case isn't screwed by taking you to his house.'

‘Oh.'

‘Mark, check on whether it's going to be a conflict to have them over there. And if you find a conflict, make it go away.'

TWENTY-SEVEN

E
ric felt like he was being garrotted by his seatbelt as Angie brought the Crown Victoria to a lurching halt in front of a building in a suburb of Athens. He glanced at her and saw her grin as she put the car into park.

‘Soft brakes,' she said, mock-defensively. ‘Gotta stamp on 'em like that or they don't work.'

He released his seatbelt and twisted to lower its anchor point on the car's frame. ‘I don't remember you doing any “stamping” earlier.'

‘And I don't remember asking you to comment on my driving.' She leaned forward to look out of his window. ‘Looks like this one has a security system at the door.'

Eric turned to look and saw that the only feature differentiating the façade of the brick row house from its neighbors was the discreet metal panel encompassing a doorbell and keypad alongside holes for a speaker and microphone. He got out of the car and looked up at the building, noticing the small camera mounted above the door but beneath the windows of the second story. Railings painted a glossy black flanked a staircase that led up to the front door and down to a basement. The brick on the building looked clean, as though recently sandblasted.

They mounted the stairs together and Angie pressed the bell. A woman's voice came through the speaker.

‘Yes?'

Eric instinctively looked up at the camera above them and Angie held her badge open toward it.

‘Special Agents Nicks and Ramos, Federal Bureau of Investigation. May we come in?'

‘Just a moment.'

They heard the lock turn and a person who reminded Eric of the nuns who had run his elementary school opened the door. This woman wasn't wearing any religious adornment but there was something familiar in the cut of her grey dress and her air of friendly rigidity. As she inspected their badges and identity cards, he noticed a streak of white hair just to the left of the midline of an otherwise very dark brown bob. When she looked up from their badges, he saw brown eyes that were neither impressed nor curious about why they were there.

‘Come in.' She held the door open, then closed it after them.

Eric knew that the front door of most row houses would let into a hallway that would run to the back of the house, but this one had been remodeled to put them into a reception room that prevented further entry. There was a window to an office-like room that could be reached through another door flanked by its own access panel.

The woman in grey said, ‘I'm Aviva Goldsmith, co-director of Sanctuary House. How may I help you?'

Angie spoke. ‘We're trying to ascertain whether you, at any time, have had a resident or visitor by the name of Eleanor Patterson. She would have come to you from Oregon.'

Aviva Goldsmith shook her head. ‘You may not be aware that at Sanctuary House we don't know the names of the women who seek shelter. This is done for everyone's protection so that if their abusive partner comes here looking for them, we can protect them without deceit.'