Steven James - Opening Moves

“Let ’em sweep the area,” I told Ralph. “I want to get back to the train yard and make sure there aren’t any more victims.”

He pulled out his radio. “Or suspects.”

“Yeah.” I was already heading into the forest. “Or suspects.”

Joshua made it to his car, which he’d parked four blocks from the train yard. The Ford Taurus he’d left behind wasn’t his, of course. He’d stolen it a few days ago so there wouldn’t be any chance that his own vehicle would be identified at the scene of any of the crimes. It seemed like a slim possibility anyway, but it wasn’t a chance he was willing to take.

He’d planned on torching the Taurus when all of this was done, but now it looked like that wasn’t going to happen.

How did they find you?

Joshua had no idea.

Once inside the car, he snapped on the scanner and listened to the chatter back and forth between the squads.

And thought of last night.

The squads.

The sirens.

The abduction of Colleen Hayes.

Joshua was a fan of true crime books and three weeks ago he’d finished Heather Isle’s newest book about David Spanbauer, a rapist and child murderer in Wisconsin earlier in the decade. The story had intrigued him so much that he’d looked up the true crime expert the author had cited numerous times-a “collector of memorabilia,” as Isle put it, Timothy Griffin.

Eventually, that led Joshua to find out about the products Griffin offered through his direct-sales business.

Which had naturally intrigued him.

It took a little work, but Joshua tracked down the guy’s home address.

He waited until one evening when both Griffin and his young girlfriend were out, and then, just as he’d done with Dahmer’s apartment before it was destroyed, he took his camera into Griffin’s home and captured footage of the place’s interior. He even got footage of the basement and the cache of items beneath the stairwell, the collectibles without price tags on them. The ones that, apparently, were not for sale.

The special items, Joshua. You know all about those.

Checking the boxes of receipts in the bedroom closet, Joshua had found one for a pair of handcuffs from the Oswald case, which ended up being perfect for what he had in mind.

The Oswald case.

The one that mirrored, in so many dark ways, his own.

Because of his special connection with their story, he’d wanted to save their crimes for the climax. And this discovery, in a way, would help him do just that.

According to the receipt, a woman named Colleen Hayes had purchased the specific cuffs. So, rather than leave a pair of his own that might be able to be traced, he decided to let her husband use their own pair when he was forced to abduct the African-American man.

That way, it helped Joshua by turning the spotlight of the investigation onto the husband.

As Joshua’s father had taught him years ago, you always give the police what they want. And they want fingerprints, DNA, hair, semen; they want sole impressions from shoes; they want any hard physical evidence that they can hang a name onto: cuffs, Vincent. Done.

They’ll keep looking until they find what they want, but when they have it in hand, they’ll be content to formulate their theories based on their cursory findings and then work diligently to prove themselves right. More often than not, that’s a lot easier, a lot more convenient, than ruthlessly ferreting out the truth.

Because of that, Joshua was careful not to leave trace evidence that could be tied to him at the scenes, and, when possible, he tried to leave evidence that pointed to someone else.

But tonight he’d been forced to leave a veritable stockpile of evidence behind in that boxcar. From the start he’d been careful about prints, but DNA was nearly impossible not to leave. However, he’d never been arrested, so even if law enforcement did somehow manage to get his DNA, they wouldn’t have anything to compare their samples to.

Now, he checked his watch and saw that it was almost five, almost time for Carl to call with his update on what he’d done to Miriam Flandry.

Joshua clicked on his portable phone, the one that he’d made sure was untraceable.

So, things this evening had not gone as planned, but everything could still move forward as long as Carl had been obedient and done his job.

If he had, Gein’s name would rise to the forefront of the news cycle once again, the national media would start playing and replaying Carl’s and Adele’s story, and everyone would take notice.

And right now that was what mattered most.

Ralph and I found a woman, unconscious, bound to a chair, plastic ties tightly cinched around her wrists and ankles. The door to this boxcar had been chained shut and Ralph had used the pipe for the second time today to wrench off the handle.

Her pulse was weak and thready, and she didn’t respond when we called to her or slapped her cheek, but she was breathing. She was alive.

Thank God she was alive.

Ralph slipped out an automatic knife from his pocket, an Ox Forge Black Knife, and cut her free from the ropes and tape binding her to the chair. He quickly slit the plastic ties as well, then we eased her to the floor.

Blood seeped from a deep cut in her ankle, most likely from the bloody, discarded amputation saw on the floor next to the chair. I applied pressure to her bleeding ankle while Ralph supported her neck to keep her airway open.

It looked like we’d interrupted the guy just as he was getting started on her.

During our trip back here through the woods, the dispatcher had assured me that four paramedics were on their way, and now the echoing sirens told me they were close. Actually, it sounded like the emergency vehicles were probably stuck behind the locked gate. Hopefully they’d brought the bolt cutters and Jaws of Life as I’d ordered.

My attention went back to the woman.

Caucasian. Mid-twenties. Medium build. Shoulder-length, blond hair. Aquamarine eyes, no contact lenses. Smeared mascara-she’d been crying-no other makeup. Fair skin, attractive features. No visible piercings, scars, tattoos or identifying marks. When we checked for an ID, we found none. The ring finger of her left hand had been cut off, the hand carefully bandaged to stop the bleeding.

Her abductor had removed her shoes and I could see that her feet, which had been bluish from the lack of oxygenated blood when we arrived, were regaining their color now that the plastic ties were gone. Her hands were doing better as well. All good signs.

Both Ralph and I were quiet as we waited for the EMTs to get here. I didn’t know what he was thinking, but I was trying to decompress, to process what had happened this afternoon.

I couldn’t stop images of the day from whipping like cyclone winds through my mind: the visit to Griffin’s nightmarish home, the inexplicably terse conversation with Detective Browning in Waukesha, arriving at the train yards.

Wriggling under the fence.

Locating the sedan.

Finding Hendrich’s body.

Getting shot at.

Scaling the fence and chasing the shooter through the forest.

Losing him.

Ending up here, with this unidentified woman who was evidently our guy’s next intended victim.

And with the memories came a swirl of emotions: rage, confusion, grief over Hendrich’s death, hope that this woman would be able to identify her attacker.

None of this whiplash of tumultuous emotions was unusual for my job, but this afternoon had been unusually intense and I suspected it would take some time to work through all the feelings.

“What are you thinking?” Ralph asked me, drawing me back to the present.