Steven James - Opening Moves

Just thinking about the letter made my stomach turn.

Fish, who was put to death in New York back in 1936, was perhaps the most depraved sadomasochistic pedophile and cannibal ever captured in the U.S. The authorities never found out how many people he killed, but he claimed to “have had children in every state.” Whether that meant molesting them or killing them was never established, but from what I’d read about the case, it wouldn’t have surprised me if it were both. In 1928 he abducted a ten-year-old girl named Grace Budd, murdered her, cooked her, and then ate her. Six years later he wrote a letter to her parents about how much he’d enjoyed it.

That was the letter advertised in Griffin’s catalog.

Sickening.

We reached the parking garage level. Exited the elevator.

“How would you ever verify that the stuff’s legit?” Ralph, who’d been looking at the pages with me, asked Thorne. “I mean the signed letters, okay, I get that. Those might be available from relatives. But Gacy’s clown makeup? Couldn’t you buy makeup like that at dozens of stores here in Wisconsin alone? Just claim it was Gacy’s?”

Gacy.

A man responsible for one of the biggest body counts of any serial killer in U.S. history.

Remembering what all these guys had done was somewhat overwhelming. It was hard not to find myself just getting numb to it all.

Gacy, of course, was the civic leader in the Chicago area who was convicted of killing thirty-three young men back in the 1970s. He dressed up as a clown and volunteered on weekends cheering up children in local hospitals. Three times he was named the local Jaycees chapter’s Man of the Year and had been personally congratulated for his public service and contributions to the causes of the Democratic party by First Lady Rosalynn Carter. The police found a photo of her standing beside him when they were removing more than two dozen corpses buried in the crawl space beneath his house.

He claimed he’d been set up for the crimes.

Thorne shrugged. “You got me, but look at the price tags-people are shelling out big bucks for that garbage. Somebody believes it’s authentic.”

“And he knows about the lungs,” I said. “Griffin does, that they were eaten. He calls the guy a ‘maneater,’ not just a killer. That information hasn’t been released to the press.”

Thorne nodded thoughtfully. “True.”

Ralph let out a few choice words about what he thought of Griffin and his little business enterprise. Even though I was used to the rough language of cops, Ralph managed to phrase things in ways I’d never even heard before, but I found myself agreeing with the sentiment of everything he said.

I was glad to follow up on this, but Fort Atkinson was an hour away. I asked Thorne, “If Griffin lives in Fort Atkinson, will that be a jurisdictional problem?”

He deferred to Ralph who gave a knowing half grin. “That’s one of the advantages of having me here, bro. If Griffin’s selling crime scene tape from a homicide in Illinois, we have an interstate connection. And that means it’s under my jurisdiction.”

He might have been stretching things a bit, but it worked for me.

In the garage we found out that Radar had taken our cruiser, but Thorne signed off for Ralph and me to use an undercover sedan that was typically used on drug busts. Ralph asked him, “Has this guy Griffin ever surfaced before? Any priors?”

“No. Thompson checked his record right off the bat. Apparently, he’s a celebrity in his own right in certain circles, though. An author named Heather Isle-she writes those true crime books-anyway, she uses him as one of her ‘expert’ sources.” Thorne turned to me. “You know her, right? The true crime writer?”

“No, Saundra Weathers. A novelist. Writes mysteries. She lived in my hometown, back when we were kids.”

“It was…” I could see him struggling to find the right words. “The Weathers’ tree house, right? Where you found-”

“Not theirs, exactly. No. But it was next to their property.”

Thorne knew this was a touchy subject for me and he let it go at that. “Well, go have a talk with Griffin. See what he can tell us about the police tape and how he knows it was from the scene of a ‘maneater.’”

We briefly discussed the observations Ralph and I had come up with while we were at the restaurant and at my desk a few minutes ago. Thorne promised to assign the projects to the task force and contact us if they came up with anything, then he left, and Ralph and I climbed into the UC car. I called in to check Griffin’s DMV records and got his address.

“So I’m curious,” Ralph said when I got off the radio. “What did you find in the tree house?”

“I’ll tell you on the way.”

Plainfield, Wisconsin

Joshua caught hold of Adele Westin as she swayed, then supported her as she lost consciousness and drifted into his arms.

He lowered her gently to the kitchen’s linoleum floor.

The drugs he’d used on her were powerful and she didn’t wake up, not even when he brought out the pruning shears to get the item he’d decided to leave behind for her fiance to show him how serious he was about his demands.

He left the note detailing what needed to happen before five o’clock, and after placing the proof in the refrigerator that he had Adele, Joshua carried her to the Ford Taurus and laid her in the trunk.

Then left for Milwaukee.

For the train yards.

Being mid-November in Wisconsin, it was starting to get dark early. Based on the drive time, he figured he’d be able to get started on her right when he needed to, just before the gloaming.

As I recount to Ralph the events surrounding the discovery in the tree house, it’s as if I’m reliving them all over again, so I do my best to detach myself from the emotions, to view the memories from another person’s point of view entirely…

You’re a junior in high school.

Leaves, dead and brown, swirl on the ground, then skitter around you and across the mountain bike trail in front of you, caught up in little whirlwinds of air. Tiny tornadoes of late fall.

You pedal hard to try to outrun the impending storm.

The trail skirts along the edge of the vast marsh outside of town. You’re on your way home after football practice and can’t help but think of what happened yesterday afternoon.

You jump a root. Pick up speed.

Everyone has been talking about the girl all day. Nothing like this has ever happened in your hometown. No one knows what to do.

They haven’t said much on the news, just that Mindy Wells had been last seen leaving her school at about three p.m. Her home was six blocks away. She never made it. The police were checking out a lead on a blue van that had been seen nearby. That was all.

At first, her mom thought that Mindy’s father had picked her up. Then, when he came home alone, they thought maybe her grandmother had her. The family was new to the area and there weren’t many other choices. But, no, when they checked, the grandmother didn’t have Mindy either.

The police were called in and the rumors quickly spread that they were waiting for a ransom note, but from the beginning that hadn’t seemed right to you. The family wasn’t rich, and without a ransom demand, there aren’t too many reasons to kidnap a child.

The water on the marsh becomes restless and choppy in anticipation of the coming storm. The angry wind scratches at your cheeks and gray steely clouds begin to drip rain onto your back.

You head for the old county road along the edge of the marsh where it’ll be faster to get home.

She’s an eleven-year-old girl. If you wanted to take her someplace where you could be alone with her, where would you go? A basement? An old barn? A shed? Somewhere that no one knew about, out here by the marsh?