Prime Witness (13 page)

“So much for special weapons and tactics,” she says. She is looking up at me, leaning on one of the metal tables in her stainless steel kingdom where we meet this morning. Sellig is commenting on the curious circumstances surrounding the capture of Andre Iganovich.

I am anxious to hear what she has to say, but I am in a hurry. “I’m on my way to the airport,” I tell her, “with a flight in less than two hours.”

“Vancouver?” she says.

I nod.

I am booked with Dusalt to fly to British Columbia. It seems that Claude’s strategy, the full-court press on the Russian’s finances, has spun gold. Iganovich was picked up by Canadian authorities yesterday afternoon, after an altercation with, of all things, two department store security guards. He was detained by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police after some suspicious conduct involving a scarf in a Hudson Bay Company store. While no shop theft charges were brought, the officers discovered the outstanding American warrant for murder. He now sits in a detention facility in Vancouver.

“Then I guess we can say that at least we’ve got one of them.” Sellig deadpans this as she gives me the news.

“A copycat?” I say.

She nods.

I cannot say that I am surprised. It was something I had seen that day, outside Iganovich’s apartment door, as police searched inside.

I’m wiping sleep from my eyes. I have been on the phone with the State Department in Washington since six this morning, being briefed on the U.S.-Canadian extradition treaty. Iganovich is making noises of a legal battle to come. He is refusing to waive extradition.

“I wanted to break the news to you first,” she says. “I haven’t told any of the investigators yet. I can’t stand crying.”

She is right. Emil and company have been busy for the last twenty-four hours, spreading the official line to every reporter who will listen, that citizens in Davenport, undergraduates at the university, are again safe, that from all appearances they have caught their killer. They are telling community leaders that they can now get back to what they do best, business.

“You’re sure about this?” I say.

“No conclusive evidence,” she says, “nothing I could give to a court. But the discrepancies, they keep piling up. If you’re asking me my opinion, the answer is yes. Someone is mimicking our killer. And I’m not alone in this feeling. Have you talked to Lloyd Tolar, the medical examiner?”

I shake my head.

“You should,” she says.

“How would a copycat have the details, the folded clothes, the kind of rope, the stakes?” I say. It is an axiom in the business of serial crime that police will withhold certain details from the press and public, a means of testing the compulsive confessors, the small and elite legion of crazies who plague every sensational case.

“In this case he could have gotten enough from news photos,” she says. “God knows we’ve gotten the coverage.”

She is right. There have been a dozen pictures, two in national news magazines that showed the victims tied to the ground, a little editorial taste to blank-out the faces and genitals. There were closeup window shots of the stakes, and the rope, and the clothes folded in an arc like a halo over the victims’ heads.

Sellig moves to one of the other stainless steel tables. The surface is divided into three separate sections, each containing several pieces of cord and some metal tent stakes, shiny and new. The cord is the kind my mother used when I was a child to hang clothes on the line in our yard, bundled pieces of thread wrapped in a white plastic sheathing.

She picks out four of the stakes and moves these to another nearby table. They look like the others, except these have been taken down on a grinder to a needle-like sharpness. They resemble nothing so much as the point on a dagger.

“These,” she says, “were used to kill the first four victims, the college kids.”

There are two remaining stakes in this group, like the others store-bought, but with more rounded points. These have not been modified.

“The two here,” she says, “were used to kill the Scofield victims.” She raises an eyebrow and moves on, to the other end of the table, where assorted pieces of rope are assembled in plastic trays.

“Garden variety clothesline,” she says. “You can buy it in ten thousand stores, across the country. Except that,” she says, “these pieces”—she’s sweeping her hand over the first two trays, the rope from the student killings—“these pieces each came from the same length of rope, each cut in sequence. It matches the stuff found in Iganovich’s van. It also matches the rope used in Oregon and Orange County. From what I can see, Iganovich did ’em all.”

I remember her discourse on the subject, the affidavit used to search the Russian’s apartment.

“The extrusion marks from the thread filaments on the inside of the plastic sheathing, they all match,” she says.

She moves to the last tray, the cord used to tie Abbott and Karen Scofield to the ground.

“Here we have a different kind of rope,” she says. “A hundred and twenty-seven plastic filaments and different chemical composition. Produced by a different manufacturer.”

She waits for a moment, a pause for effect, to let this settle in.

“It was only what he couldn’t see from the photos, the buried points on the stakes, and the composition of the cord, where he went wrong.”

I say nothing. I just listen. It is not what I want to hear. I am thinking maybe this guy just bought another rope, maybe his grinder broke down.

But she is dashing my hopes. “Too many other discrepancies,” she says. “The fact that victim identifications, driver’s licenses, wallets or purses weren’t found on any of the kids. Yet Karen Scofield’s purse was left in plain view, with her wallet and complete ID inside. Abbott Scofield’s wallet and driver’s license were found in the pocket of his pants.”

Police haven’t found any of the victims’ personal effects in Iganovich’s apartment. It was one of the first things they looked for, an evidentiary linchpin. They are checking now to see if he rented any other property, a storage facility, maybe the key to a bus locker.

“Nothing fits,” she says. “The age of the Scofields, the location of their bodies, close to a county road.” At first Sellig thought maybe it was a case of the man becoming more daring. Now she’s not so sure.

And there is more. Sellig is troubled by the profile. “It fits Iganovich to a tee,” she says, “every item. But if it’s consistent, the killer didn’t know any of his victims. The pattern is he never took familiar game,” she says. She looks at me, a single index finger to pursed lips. “But if this is true why the mutilation of Karen Scofield, why did he take her eye?” She has checked with the psychiatrists on this one. They are all in accord. They believe the killer mutilated the body and removed the eye because he knew this victim, and she knew him. It is the only explanation they have for this deviation.

“There’s something more,” I tell her.

She looks at me.

“The newspapers outside of Iganovich’s apartment door, the day the police searched.”

I had noticed them when I entered the apartment, the rolled and unread pile of local papers against the door. Two of these daily editions had predated the Scofield killings. To me it seemed strange, that unless Iganovich was staying somewhere else in the Davenport area during this period, that he should leave these papers on the floor in the hallway. I tell Sellig this.

I have asked Claude to gather the Russian’s telephone records for my review. There was something strange here. Again it is not conclusive, but it points in a definite direction. It seems the telephone call made from the phone in Iganovich’s apartment to Air Canada was placed two days before Karen and Abbott Scofield were murdered.

“Either the man believes in long-term planning,” she says, “or he was already gone, before the last two victims were killed.”

“I’ll need a copy of your report on this,” I tell her. “As soon as possible.”

“I’ll fax it to your office this afternoon,” she says.

“I will read it in detail when I get back from Canada. Until then we should keep this to ourselves.” We both agree on this point. The press would have a field day, and without leads on the second killer we would again find ourselves behind the eight ball.

There’s a moment of cold silence in this room before she speaks again. Then she says it in a clear emphatic tone. “I need your help, to convince the sheriff, the local authorities. We should be looking for a second killer,” she says.

Chapter Eleven

V
ancouver is a city of bright blue skies, vast inlets from the sea and stately old homes on winding tree-shaded streets. I had been here once before, with my parents, as a child, and I remembered the place for its broad green parkways like mowed velvet, and the patina-coppered roofs of some of its older, more imposing buildings.

It is a warm day and a brown haze, halfway between fog and something more sinister, drifts above the shimmering waters of the Burrard Inlet.

“How long could this take?” he says. Claude and I are in a taxi from the airport, caught in the thickening traffic of downtown.

“Extradition is not something I’ve done before,” I tell him. “Maybe when reality sets in, Iganovich will waive extradition.”

Claude looks at me and smiles, the kind of grin adults reserve for a child’s fairy tale.

I have taken Claude into my confidence during our plane ride regarding the theory of a second killer, but have asked him not to discuss it with Emil, at least not yet. He has assured me that he will not. Given the sheriff’s misplaced adventures in victim land, I think Claude will honor this.

The cab comes to a stop, double-parked in front of an imposing building, a concrete obelisk that reaches forty stories into the sky.

Once in the building, we head for the twenty-fourth floor where there is a tiny woman seated behind the glass partition, her chin barely rising above the counter on her side.

“Mr. Madriani and Mr. Dusalt here to see Mr. Jacoby. He’s expecting us,” I say.

“One moment.” She reaches for the phone.

Herb Jacoby is Crown Counsel and director of the regional office of the Department of Justice in this province. Fortunately for them, our northern brothers do not get many multiple killers on the lam from the U.S. Because of the high profile of this case, Jacoby has related to me by phone that he has standing instructions from Ottawa to handle this extradition himself.

“Mr. Jacoby will be right with you,” she says. “You can wait in here.” We kill a couple of minutes taking in the surroundings, then a voice from behind me.

“Gentlemen.”

I turn to see a tall, slender man, a head of balding gray wheeling toward us at full pace from around a corner, his hand extended in greeting.

“Mr. Jacoby. Paul Madriani.” I shake his hand.

“Oh please, call me Herb,” he says. It is an accent one might mistake for British, the words correct and clipped off.

I introduce Claude. The three of us stand there exchanging a few pleasantries.

“You must be tired,” he says. “Let’s go to my office. We can talk and the two of you can sit down and relax.”

Jacoby leads us down a corridor flanked by little offices, the Canadian version of good enough for government service. The furniture is classic institutional, mostly imitation wood. I see the craft of inmates’ hands in this stuff.

But the views from these little cubicles are something Lenore Goya might kill for. A panorama of the busy harbor kaleidoscopes before me as I pass each open door.

A large corner office belongs to Jacoby, one of the perks of position.

“How’s our man doing?” says Claude. “Have you questioned him?”

“He’s doing just fine. We’ve restrained ourselves, with regard to questioning,” says Jacoby. “But your suspect is very nervous. He blurted a few statements immediately after the arrest, some gibberish,” he says. “Meant nothing to us. We made some notes.”

Jacoby has our undivided attention now.

“I’d have to look at the arrest report,” he says, “to get the specifics.”

Claude gives me a look, like maybe we’ve hit some paydirt.

“He meets with his attorneys daily, and seems to be manageable,” says Jacoby. He’s talking about Iganovich. “He’s said nothing to us since his lawyers got hold of him.” Canadian law parallels our own and the British model. Arrests are followed by admonitions to the suspects that any statement they make may be used against them in a court of law.

According to Jacoby, Iganovich blurted whatever was said immediately after his detention, to the security guards who held him, before local police could be summoned and before he could be warned about loose talk.

“He has appointed counsel?” I ask.

“Legal aid,” he says.

I make a face. This does not fit my image of the people who defend indigent renters in unlawful detainer actions back home.

Jacoby looks at me. “Ours is a little different than your system,” he tells me. “Though he does have an American lawyer as well.”

I look at him round-eyed, a question mark sitting across the table.

“Oh yes. The fellow flew in this morning. Says he was hired by the family.”

Claude and I look at each other, searching expressions.

“Who is he,” I say. “The American lawyer?”

Jacoby shakes his head. “I haven’t met him yet. We may have that pleasure this afternoon. As long as you’ve come all this way, I would like you to meet my counterpart, Iganovich’s Canadian barrister, Mr. Lloyd Benson-Harrington. We’ll go over to the jail later and you can talk to them there. They’re meeting with their client. Maybe we can sneak a peek at the defendant as well.”

Claude likes this. His first look at the man in the flesh.

Jacoby paws through a few more pages in his file.

“Here it is,” he says. “The police report.” He’s reading, following the pencil-written line, big hand-printed words for legibility, with one forefinger. “It’s not a confession,” he says. “Don’t know the facts of your case, but it could be an admission. Made no sense to us.”

“What did he say?” asks Claude.

“Immediately after being taken by store security, he resisted,” says Jacoby. “It took two of them to wrestle him to the ground.” He’s tracing with his fingers again. “They picked him up, cuffed him and . . .” He’s looking for it. “Here it is. After they pick him up off the floor he says: ‘You got my van. I haven’t driven it in more than a week. I loaned it to somebody else. They used it, not me.’ That’s it,” says Jacoby. “As I told you it’s pretty much gibberish.”