Unspeakable (29 page)

He decided it wasn't worth asking Ian about his suspension from the police force or his fictitious kid brother. Collin didn't plan on seeing him again. He'd made that pretty damn clear in the email. He clicked on the SEND icon.

Sitting back in his desk chair, he gazed out at the bay again. He really missed those nights he used to keep an eye out for skinny-dippers.

From his computer, he heard a click, and saw the
NEW MAIL
icon was highlighted. He wondered if Ian had gotten back to him already. Collin brought up his email, and looked at the line along the top of the list:

Collin didn't recognize the sender, but he clicked on the
Read
icon anyway:

“Jesus,” Collin muttered. Flustered, he clicked on the REPLY icon. His fingers raced over the keyboard:

He quickly clicked on
SEND.

Gnawing at a fingernail, he waited for the response he knew would come. Sure enough, Collin heard a click signifying a new email. He checked the line on the top of the list and frowned:

“Who the hell are you?” he whispered.

But he knew he was talking to no one.

T
heir logo was a silhouette of a tall man, wearing a hat and trench coat. It stood six feet tall on the marquee above the entry to Caffe Ladro on Fifteenth Avenue. The coffeehouse was on the corner, along a strip of old neighborhood stores and restaurants at the top of Capitol Hill. Olivia had a date there.

With the microfiche machines temporarily out of order at the library's downtown branch, she'd tried in vain to get more information about the World's Fair murders from the Internet. But the old articles weren't archived, and nothing had been written in the last twenty years about the murders—except that hopelessly incomplete piece with the Century 21 Exposition timeline.

Still, Olivia had the
Seattle Times
feature from 1964 that linked Wade Grinnell to three mass murders and two deadly hotel fires. She searched Google for an update on the author of the 1964 article. He was Orin Carney, a
Seattle Times
correspondent since 1961. Later, he'd become an editor. Four years ago, he'd celebrated his seventieth birthday, picked up an award from the city, and retired. There was an article about it online.

It took Olivia a while to track down his Capitol Hill address and a phone number. But once she'd gotten him on the phone and asked about Wade Grinnell, it had only taken a minute to set up a time to meet for coffee. She figured anything he could tell her would be useful. The more information she had, the better to handle Collin Cox—and his second personality—during their appointment this afternoon.

Olivia passed under the marquee with its trench-coat-man logo and stepped into the cafe. The coffee smell—along with a hint of chocolate—filled the air. There were about twenty customers, sitting at the tables or on the stools along the window counter. The walls were deep red with artwork on display. Cookies, scones, croissants, and other baked goods filled the glass case by the counter.

A tall, handsome silver-haired man in an argyle sweater and khakis rose from one of the window tables. He took off his sunglasses and smiled at her. “Olivia?” he asked.

They shook hands. At the counter with her, Orin Carney insisted he pay for her coffee and scone. “It's been a long time since I've had a rendezvous with a beautiful young woman,” he told her, cramming two dollars inside the tip jar. “Allow me to treat you.”

As they sat down at the table with their orders, Olivia wondered if he was just being sweet. Or did he really consider this a date? Sitting across from him, with the light coming through the window, she could now see that his full head of silver hair was a toupee.

“I'm really grateful for your help on my thesis,” she said, over her coffee cup. “Except for your article, I couldn't find much out there on Wade Grinnell.”

“And you won't,” Orin said. “He's a well-kept, dirty little secret here. After our talk last night, I got out my scrapbook and read that old article again. That piece landed me in some hot water back in sixty-four. The people running this city then weren't happy with me. They'd pretty much swept the whole Rockabye Killer business under the carpet. During the fair, they were worried news of these hotel slayings would hurt the tourist trade—and believe me, Seattle had poured a ton of money into the World's Fair. The future of this city depended on it. After the fair, they still didn't want to talk about the murders. They didn't want it to seem like they weren't warning people of the danger. The truth is—they weren't. Like lambs to the slaughter, these families were checking into these hotels, and they had no idea that someone was out there, preying on them. Maybe some of the victims would have been a bit more vigilant about locking their rooms. I mean, if you're staying in a hotel and step out for ice, you might leave your door open a crack. Or if someone knocks on the door and says they're with the hotel to check the plumbing or the air conditioner, you might not think twice about opening up for them. These tourists in town for the fair didn't think they had a reason to be extra-cautious.”

“Is that how he got into the rooms?” Olivia asked.

“It's an educated guess from police investigators at the time,” he said over his coffee. “Calling the desk clerk away for a spell so he could steal a hotel room key was another ploy.”

“Your article pointed out that some of the families had teenage daughters,” Olivia said. “You made it seem like Wade might have tried to pick them up at the fair. . . .”

Orin nodded. “That's right. There's no way of knowing for sure, but I think he might have scoped out his victims early—either at the fair or the hotels. From Brandey and Bronson Faurot, who were friends with the Holleran family, we know that Wade tried to pick up Rebecca Holleran at the fair's Science Pavilion. And in police interviews after the fire at the Hotel Aurora Vista, Irene Pollack said that her teenage niece, Loretta, was approached by a young man at the fair's amusement park.” He picked up his croissant. “You know, I tried to interview Irene Pollack for that piece, but she didn't want to participate. I guess I can't blame her.”

“Do you know if she's still alive?” Olivia asked.

“I'm not sure.”

“What about Wade's sister, Sheri?”

Orin sighed. “I seem to recall that she got married shortly after I wrote that article. But I never got in touch with her again. So I don't know if Sheri's still alive.”

Olivia picked at her scone. “Why do you think he killed all those families?”

“Well, the detectives I interviewed believed it had to do with the first murders—at the Gilbert Arms Hotel. Wade and Sheri had lived at the Gilbert Arms for three years. They were among the hundreds of tenants forced to move from their apartments before the fair. You see, a lot of landlords hoped to cash in on the tourist trade by turning their apartment houses into hotels. So they gouged prices and evicted tenants
en masse
. For a while, the city council allowed it, too. They even let the landlords collect their rents in shorter terms. In some buildings, rents went from eighty-five dollars a month to one hundred a
week.
A lot of people became homeless. And a lot of people were angry. One of those people was Wade Grinnell.”

Olivia pushed her half-eaten scone away and sat back. “These hotels where the murders and fires occurred, were all of them former apartment buildings?”

He shook his head. “No, just the Gilbert Arms and the King's View. The others were new hotels, built for the fair. But he probably blamed the tourists as much as he did the landlords for displacing him. My theory is it wasn't just revenge. No landlords were murdered, just hotel guests. They were all seemingly happy families, and believe me—with his history of abuse—Wade had no idea what a happy family was. I think he was jealous and angry. Unlike most serial killers, who stick to one method of murder, Wade switched back and forth. So there were the mass ‘Rockabye' killings—and the fires, which were just as lethal. For a while there, the police didn't connect the two.”

He crumpled up his napkin and set it on the table. “Some serial killers really enjoy the notoriety. They almost want to get caught—for the recognition. The cops questioning Wade said he seemed very full of himself and almost gleeful during the interrogation. But until they're caught, a lot of these murderers get off on reading about their crimes and seeing the news reports on TV. Imagine how frustrating it must have been for Wade to see his murders relegated to page two or three of the local papers and have the fires he set deemed as accidents. I think he might have been testing which methodology of murder got more attention.”

Orin shrugged. “Of course, back in sixty-two, we didn't even have the term ‘serial killer.' That came later—and so did the research into the minds of these murderers. I was going to do a follow-up article in 1966, but there was already way too much killing in the news that year—the University of Texas shootings and that creep who murdered the nurses in Chicago. Plus I wasn't getting any cooperation from the police or the city. So—I dropped the idea. . . .”

He leaned forward. “Say, I just remembered, I tracked down Wade's sister for that follow-up piece I never wrote. She'd gotten married and had a new last name. I'm pretty sure I wrote it down. It's probably in my Wade Grinnell file.”

“You have a whole file on him?” Olivia murmured.

“Oh, yes, I kept files on all my stories. Each article has a file full of documents, research notes, receipts, you name it. It'll take me a little while to find it. But I have it at my house, three blocks away. Did you want to see Wade's file?”

 

 

The old-world charmer of a Craftsman house had a covered front porch. Inside, there were built-in china cabinets, leaded glass windows, and dark hardwood floors. As she followed Orin Carney to the kitchen, Olivia noticed the place was slightly messy with furniture that could have used some re-covering or re-varnishing. Dirty dishes were piled in the kitchen sink. The cabinets were eighties oak, and all the appliances were avocado green. Orin stopped to toss out a Coke can that had been left on the counter. Then he put away a box of Corn Chex in the cabinet. “Sorry about the way the place looks,” he said. “This is what happens when a twenty-six-year-old moves back in with his widower dad.”

“I can sort of relate,” Olivia said quietly.

“My son's at work. I would have cleaned up if I'd known I'd be taking home a pretty young lady today.” He opened the basement door. “Are you married?”

She hesitated. “Not for very much longer.”

“Well, his loss.” Orin switched on the basement light. “All my files are stored down here. It's pretty much of a mess. I apologize in advance.”

Olivia glanced at the dirty gray plank stairs that led down to the unfinished cellar. He took a few steps down, and the floorboards creaked. She stood by the kitchen door, staring down at the hairpiece on top of his head. She knew he was just trying to be nice, but she wished he hadn't given her that
pretty young lady
routine and then asked if she was married. It made following him down into his gloomy basement all the more forebidding.

“I have an office on the second floor where I used to do my writing.” He stopped in the middle of the staircase to gaze back up at her. “I keep my scrapbooks of clippings there. But I've covered several murder cases, and never wanted the kids poking into all the unpublished photos and data. There's some pretty nasty stuff in those folders. So—I kept it all locked in my storeroom down here. Are you still game? You look a little apprehensive.”

Olivia quickly shook her head. “No, I'm fine. I—I really appreciate this, Mr. Carney.”

“Oh, call me Orin. You've seen my dirty dishes. We can drop the formalities.” He continued down the stairs.

Olivia took a deep breath and followed him down to the cluttered, dismal basement. It smelled musty. Piles of clothes were heaped on top of the washer and dryer, near the bottom of the stairs. There was a series of rooms off a poorly lit hallway. All the doors were open. Some of the rooms remained dark while others seemed to be on the same light circuit as the hallway.

“Welcome to the Carney dungeon,” Orin said cheerfully.

Olivia managed a weak chuckle.

“I don't know why I even bothered to lock my file room for so many years,” he said, heading to a shadowy annex at the end of the corridor. “The kids were terrified to come down here on their own until they were teenagers.”

Olivia understood their trepidation.

Orin turned a corner and disappeared into the alcove.

She heard the squeaking sound of a door opening on rusty hinges. Then a light went on. But it was hardly reassuring. The bulb must have been dangling from a cord on the ceiling, because the light threw off shadows that crazily swayed back and forth along the cellar walls.

Olivia inched toward the alcove and saw the open chain-link door to the little room. It was more like a gate. The lightbulb, with a pull-string by the socket, was still swinging on the cord. Four tan metal file cabinets along one wall took up half the room. Stacks of folders were piled on top of the cabinets. More folders covered the card table in the corner of the room. It also held an aqua-colored radio, a relic from the sixties that was plugged into a socket on the wall. There was an old tilt-back desk chair by the table. The seat padding was ripped and losing its stuffing. On the cellar wall was a poster of Steve McQueen on a motorcycle. Olivia recognized the still from one of her dad's favorite movies,
The Great Escape.
Somehow, it made her feel better. She realized that Orin Carney must have put the poster up in an effort to make this dingy little room more habitable while he'd been working down there.

She stood in the alcove, watching him search through the file cabinet. She thought she heard something upstairs. It sounded like a few footsteps, and then, nothing.

“Is—is someone else home?” she asked.

“Nope, just us,” he said, his nose in the file cabinet.

“I thought I heard somebody upstairs.”

“Probably just the house,” he said, thumbing through the files. “Built in 1911, and it's still settling. Jesus please us, I can't believe the Wade Grinnell file isn't in here.” He nodded toward the stack of folders on the card table in the corner of the tiny room. “You want to try there? I hope it's not too dusty. It's been ages since I've been down here.”

Olivia hesitated in the doorway. She didn't want to walk into that little storage closet, where he could slam the gate and lock her in.

“Ah, wait a second, here it is!” he said. He pulled out the folder and tossed it on the card table. He had a thin, square box in his other hand. “And I think you might be interested in this, too.” He nodded toward the card table again, and then brushed past her as he stepped out of the room. He took the slim box with him. “Have a look there. I need to check something. . . .”