Steven James - Opening Moves

I said to the paramedics, “I need to speak with her for a moment.”

At first they were resistant, but then Carver saw what was going on and waved for them to let me through. I would’ve gone anyway, but I appreciated his support.

I leaned over Mallory, spoke as gently as I could. “Do you remember me? I was at your house yesterday, I’m Detective Bowers.”

She nodded.

“Did they tell you what happened to Timothy out here today?”

She nodded again and this time sniffed back a tear, but I still couldn’t tell what emotion or state of mind was causing her to cry.

“Mallory, do you know who Timothy got the police tape from? The tape from the murder in Illinois?”

“The Maneater. He said the Maneater got it for him.”

So Griffin did have information about his identity after all.

“Do you know who that is? The Maneater?”

She shook her head.

I wasn’t sure how to put this, but finally just said it plainly: “Do you know what Timothy did to the girls?” She looked at me with a curious expression that was somehow also devoid of emotion. “He killed some little girls, Mallory.”

She nodded slowly. Didn’t seem surprised.

“Did you know that? Did you know anything about that?”

She shook her head and I believed she was telling the truth.

The EMTs looked at me impatiently. I held up a hand: just a few more seconds.

Griffin had said there were more. That there are always more.

“Mallory, can I ask you, when Agent Hawkins and I were at your house, Timothy touched a photograph on the wall. A picture of a woman. Do you remember that?”

She gazed at me for a moment, then looked away as she nodded.

“Who is that woman? Do you know her?”

Mallory stopped crying. There was a long pause and it came to the point where I thought she might not answer at all. Finally, she said softly, “She was my mother. She was his wife.”

And then she brushed off the last remaining tear and stared into space as they wheeled her into the ambulance.

Mallory was not just Griffin’s lover.

She was also his daughter.

It was very possible that he had called her “baby” for more than one reason after all.

I took a look in the farmhouse.

Though the walls were charred and half of the roof was missing, there was still furniture inside. I’d seen photos of the interior of Dahmer’s apartment and I could tell where the furniture in this house had come from: these were the very things that were supposed to have been destroyed and dumped in an undisclosed landfill.

Come to think of it, they may very well have been delivered as scheduled, only to be retrieved by Griffin and brought to this farmhouse down the road.

It wasn’t just furniture. Griffin had set up the entire place to look as much as possible like the inside of Dahmer’s apartment, even down to the detail of having an altar with a skull and candles around it in the closet, just like the one Dahmer had built.

And in the kitchen was the refrigerator where Jeffrey Dahmer had kept his meals.

The coup de grace for any demented collector of serial killer memorabilia.

It was dusk before Radar and I were finally able to take off.

He’d been involved in a lethal shooting in another jurisdiction, and it took several hours for us to fill out the paperwork and finish our debriefing with the chief of police and district attorney. However, honestly, no one was giving Radar a hard time. On the contrary, by the pats on the back and nods of encouragement from the other officers, it was clear they were glad he’d taken Griffin out.

“Sergeant Walker fired just before you could?” the DA asked me in our interview.

“Yes.”

“And he had that knife with him, Griffin did?”

“Yes. If Walker hadn’t taken the shot…” I let my voice trail off.

“Griffin might have come at you with that knife.”

“Yes.”

“And your firearm? You had it unholstered? You were covering the suspect?”

“That’s right, but Sergeant Walker responded before I was able to.”

“It’s a good thing he was here, then.”

“Yes. It is.”

I showed him where I was standing when Griffin died, he noted it on his form and that was that.

When I gazed again at the place Radar had been when he fired, I still couldn’t tell if the angle would have been right for him to see Griffin reaching for his pocket. Truthfully, I just couldn’t tell.

At first, I thought I might ask him about it.

But then, after a moment, I decided I would not.

Finally, we left and jumped onto I-94 toward Milwaukee.

There were still a number of things on my mind to take care of tonight: (1) find out if the other task force members had made any progress on the case of the man who’d fled the boxcar; (2) send someone to interview the city workers, Roger Kennedy and Dane Strickland, and find out if they were connected in any way to Griffin; (3) get an update from Dr. Werjonic on Slate Seagirt and what the true crime writer might know about the murder of Mindy Wells.

I drove.

Radar sat beside me. Quiet. Reflective. I wondered what it was like for him right now. Lethal shootings by cops are much rarer than people think and I knew he’d never been involved with one before. I wondered if dropping that knife by the body should’ve bothered me more than it did.

It was a hard question to answer.

Since we’d rushed out of the department this morning right after my meeting with Dr. Werjonic, and then driven straight to Griffin’s place-and from there to the farmhouse by the landfill-Radar and I had both missed lunch. In fact, the only thing I’d eaten all day were the muffins and bananas I’d had at breakfast when Taci broke up with me.

Not a memory I wanted to be carrying with me right now.

I hadn’t even had any of Thompson’s cherry turnovers.

My stomach could definitely tell.

We stopped at a gas station that had a Subway. I filled up the car while Radar grabbed us some foot-longs.

We’d gone about another five miles before it occurred to me that I’d once again missed Dr. Werjonic’s afternoon seminar. This time, though, I figured I could get copies of the notes easily enough when I connected with him about Slate Seagirt.

“So, how are you doing, Radar?”

“Good.”

I was no counselor by any stretch of the imagination, but it seemed like I should at least offer whatever help I could. “If you want to talk about…”

“I’m good.”

I drove for a bit. “You remember when Lyrie was involved in that shooting last year? The gang kid? He-”

“I don’t need to talk to Padilla, Pat. I’m good.”

I didn’t have to mention a name. Radar knew right away I’d been talking about our police chaplain.

A pause. “Right.”

We continued down the highway as darkness spread across the countryside. It was almost ten minutes before Radar spoke again. “Do you believe in hell, Pat?”

“Hell?”

“Yeah. For people like Griffin.”

“You know, when we were back there, I was thinking to myself that there’s gotta be a place set aside down there for guys like him. I’m not sure if I believe in a literal fire and brimstone hell, but for people like Griffin I sure hope one exists. What about you?”

“I believe there’ll be a reckoning.”

“A reckoning? You mean like Judgment Day?”

“I guess so.” He didn’t go on right away. “I guess because I believe that both love is real, and so is justice.”

I thought I could see where he was going with this. “You’re saying justice doesn’t always happen in this life. People get away with rape, murder, whatever, so-”

“Yeah. So if there’s no hell, there’s no final justice in the universe, not really. It’d mean those people just commit their crimes and then die like everyone else. If justice exists, if it’s more than just wishful thinking-”