Steven James - Opening Moves

Ralph saw me glance toward the plastic bags. “Ah. He learned his lesson. Bagged up a set of clothes tonight.”

“He didn’t have a bag of clothes with him when he fled, so he might have stashed one somewhere or slipped a pair of clothes back on.” I pointed to the bags. “If he did stick some clothes in there, even momentarily, he might have inadvertently left us a little present.”

“His DNA. From his clothes.”

“Yes.” The CSIU would have undoubtedly checked the outside of the bags for prints; the inside was another story, something they might easily have missed.

“Nice.”

I finished looking at the blood spatter while Ralph examined the amputation saw. “There’s a date engraved on the handle-1864.”

Often, killers will choose a very specific and unique weapon that holds some sort of special meaning to them. But that’s not smart. The more unique your weapon, the easier it is to trace. An amputation saw that old had to be rare. There are experts in just about every obscure field, and I expected we could find someone who specialized in Civil War-era surgical instruments. He or she would be able to tell us more about the saw, maybe where our guy might have purchased it, or even who he might be.

“That’s good,” I said. “That’ll help.”

“You think our guy got it from Griffin?”

“It’s worth checking out. Did you hear if the search warrant went through?”

“No, actually. Let me go call Ellen.” He stepped away to radio Agent Parker.

As I moved on to analysis, I played out in my mind the way I would put things in my report later tonight:

We searched the train yards, saw no one. I discovered the Ford Taurus inside the gate near the parking lot on the west side. After I found Hendrich’s body in one of the boxcars, I located a man fleeing along the fence line. The suspect engaged me with his firearm, I returned fire but did not hit him. He fled. A chase ensued. He was able to avoid apprehension.

Okay, yes. But how did he know when to leave?

That really was the question.

If the shooter was in the boxcar with the woman, why did he leave when he did, right as he was getting started with her?

He had to have known that you and Ralph were in the train yard.

So did he have the door open? Possibly, but that didn’t really make sense, not if he was torturing a woman inside the car and not if he trusted the mattresses to absorb her screams. Did he hear us? Maybe, but how? We weren’t making any noise except speaking quietly into our radios. So, if he were-

I heard someone climbing into the boxcar behind me. I figured it would be one of the CSIU members, but when I turned around, I saw it was Radar instead.

“Hey,” he exclaimed, “I just heard-the doctors are saying they’re hopeful about saving her hands and feet. The circulation had been cut off for a while, but you two did good. The cut on her ankle is pretty deep, but they expect she’ll walk again too. Oh, and it’s not Hendrich’s car.”

“It’s not?”

“No. It’s stolen. Reported a couple days ago by a guy named Norman Darr. Lives in Pewaukee. The VIN number led us to him, but the plates on the Taurus are from a second car that was in the same parking lot. That’s why it took a while to figure out what we were looking at. Our guy switched the plates with it before driving off.”

“To avoid being tracked down by an APB. Clever.”

This was the first time I’d seen Radar since our morning briefing. Thorne had mentioned earlier that he’d gone to look into the names of one of the felons he’d been investigating and I asked him if he’d found anything.

He shook his head.

Back on topic: “The car is one thing,” I said, “but we really need to find out who this woman is.”

“Well, based on what I heard, either she’s married or engaged. That’s something to start with.”

I looked at him quizzically. “Where’d you hear that?”

“I mean, I didn’t hear it exactly , but-the missing finger. Think about it-why would he remove her ring finger? That specific one?” This was classic Radar-inferences, hunches, intuition, gut instincts.

Yeah, but they almost always end up being right on the money.

“Could be symbolic.” I didn’t really believe that, but for some reason I felt obliged to play devil’s advocate. “He sees himself as marrying her? Having some sort of relationship with her?”

Radar shook his head. “I doubt it. Think about it-escalation, Pat. He left it behind to prove to her husband or fiance that he had her and that he was serious about carrying out whatever threat he’d made in his note. He didn’t leave Colleen’s finger for Vincent last night. He might have thought he needed something a little more persuasive this time around to make sure his demands were carried out.”

“But they were carried out last night.”

Yeah, except you caught Vincent.

I tried to work all this through in my head, see where it might be leading.

Even though it wasn’t verifiable yet, what Radar was saying made sense. I accepted it for now, and moved on. “So…if you’re right, he made a demand of the woman’s lover. And that would be persuasive. I mean, finding my fiancee’s or wife’s finger would certainly be enough to convince me that a kidnapper was deadly serious.”

Over the past few months, Taci and I had discussed getting married and when I mentioned wives and fiancees, my thoughts naturally jumped to her. I glanced at my watch and saw that it was nearly six. Undoubtedly I’d need to stick around here for at least a couple hours. I was never going to make it back home in time to cook dinner for her by seven.

Earlier, she’d mentioned that she had something she wanted to talk with me about privately and I hadn’t gotten the best vibe from her when she said that. I knew something was up, and I had the sense that canceling might not be the best idea.

Meet her later for dessert. That should work.

Radar eyed me. “You okay?”

“Yeah. Sorry.” Wrap this up in here, thenfind a phone and call her.

“Anyway,” he said, “I’m thinking the guy might not have gone to the police. As you said, he knew the kidnapper was deadly serious.”

“Right.”

Just thinking about what sort of demand the suspect might have made of the woman’s lover was disturbing-especially if he was escalating as it appeared he was.

“Alright,” I said, “we need to get word out about this woman. I want to make sure we stop her husband or fiance or whoever from doing whatever her abductor demanded. We can release word about her condition to the media, about the severed finger, emphasizing that she’s okay, safe, and under police protection.”

Calculating when Colleen had been found at the pier this morning and the time of a round-trip drive during the day, I said, “The warm hood on the Taurus…There might be more than one missing woman within a six-hour drive of here, but I doubt there’d be more than one whose left ring finger was left behind.”

“I thought you don’t like working with the media?”

“Well, right now time is what matters most. Stopping the woman’s spouse or lover from carrying out the kidnapper’s demands, whatever those might be, and maybe getting us something we can use to actually find this woman’s attacker trumps everything. Get a physical description of her out now and as soon as she regains consciousness, release her photo to the press.”

“I’ll call it in.”

He left and I quickly moved on in my mind to step five: evaluation.

Everyone is tempted to prove what he believes, and that affects not only conscious decision-making but the way our minds subconsciously process information. There’s even a name for it: confirmation bias. Most of the time we’re not even aware of it happening. Naturally, no one likes to be wrong, but the best investigators step back and actually try to find holes in their own theories. This moves you toward objectivity, and that always brings you closer to the truth.