Джеффри Дивер - Buried (Hush collection)

Next steps? Try to steal the name from his credit card receipt? Listen carefully when the person he was meeting arrived?

Just a name, all I want is a name...

The man made a call on his mobile. He tilted his head, as one does when the callee picks up.

“Is he available, please?... Well, tell him it’s Peter Tile.”

Ah, striking gold...

After a brief conversation about some travel plans to Ohio, Tile disconnected. Fitz picked up his drink and joined him.

“Peter Tile?”

The man blinked, frowning.

Fitz showed his press credentials and explained who he was. “I know you were the witness who told the Violent Crimes Task Force about the Gravedigger’s second victim.”

This was a bluff, of course.

But when the man blurted, “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the performance fell flat.

Tile knew this himself, it seemed, and appeared dismayed. “How?”

“Talked to some people who saw you at the site of the kidnapping around the time it happened. I followed you here and heard you on the phone just now.”

The man’s lips tightened. “Look, mister, I have a family. That psycho’s still out there.”

Fitz lifted a hand. “I don’t want to cause you any trouble. I haven’t told the police or anyone else.”

“I’m not saying anything to the press. I told the cops everything I know. It was all over in ten seconds. This guy’s getting in his car and somebody comes up and hits him over the head and drags him into the bushes, then leaves a note on the windshield. There’s nothing else.”

“You’re in a hotel. You’re not from here.”

“No. I’m... I’m here on business.”

Fitz smiled at the evasion. “You know, Mr. Tile, I’ve been interviewing people for close to forty-five years. And one thing I’ve found is that there’s always something else, some little fact, a tidbit that people can remember about an incident.”

“Well, there is nothing.”

“Tell me again what happened. You’re obviously a Good Samaritan. You wanted this guy caught.”

“Yeah, right, you have my name,” he said bitterly. “You going to threaten to release it publicly if I don’t help?”

Fitz responded immediately. “I have never once revealed the name of a source who wanted to stay anonymous.”

This was true and Tile apparently sensed the sincerity. He sipped the soda and wiped his hand on a bar napkin. He seemed calmer. “God, I’m claustrophobic. I don’t even want to think what that guy’s going through. Underground. What’s his name again?”

“Jasper Coyle.” Fitz did the silence trick again.

“He was white, tall, blond hair. Jeans and a dark shirt. Sunglasses.”

“What kind?”

“Sunglasses? I don’t remember the brand or anything. Who knows anyway?”

“What did he do, exactly?”

“Coyle was walking to his car and this man steps out of the bushes and hits him over the head.”

“With what?”

Tile paused a moment. “It’s funny, you know. I didn’t think about what he used before. But I can kind of picture it now. It was dark, maybe cloth, almost like a sock. There was something in it.”

Fitz had once written about guards abusing prisoners. One of their tricks was to fill a sock with bolts or washers or coins and use that as a cudgel. It hurt like hell, but left no marks. Maybe the Gravedigger had done jail time.

Tile’s eyes were focused on a stain on the table. Then he blurted, “Oh, wait. He’s left-handed.”

Memory is such an odd creature.

“Definitely left-handed.”

Fitz took his notebook out slowly, as if approaching a dog he didn’t want to spook. He opened it and jotted down the two new facts. “Go on.”

“Then he took something out of his pocket, a plastic tube. It’d be the needle, the syringe, you know. I read he injected them with a drug.”

“That’s right. Which pocket?”

“What?”

“Of the jacket?”

“Oh. Inside.”

“What color was it?”

“The jacket? Light blue.” Then he laughed as if surprised that he hadn’t remembered earlier.

More jottings.

“Did it seem that they knew each other?”

“No.”

“Did he struggle pulling Coyle into the bushes?”

“No, not at all. Didn’t think about that either. He was really strong. Probably works out. Or has some job that keeps him in good shape.”

Another note.

Tile closed his eyes, as if he were witnessing the incident once more. Then he said, “Really that’s about it.”

“You did fine.”

Tile asked, “Why do you think he’s doing this?”

“Always the key question. Motive.” Fitz finished the bourbon. “I’ve done a few serial killer stories. I’ve never seen anybody like this one. Men kill for sex. Women for money. He doesn’t want either.”

This individual does not fall into any of the generally recognized categories of serial perpetrator...

Fitz continued: “I’ve got a theory he’s doing it for the publicity.”

“Publicity? You mean like he gets off being on the news?”

“Maybe. A kidnapping’s going to get a lot of attention in the first place. But he wants more, so he leaves clues that get the whole country focused on him. I’m going to check with some criminal psychologists, some cops. See what they think.” He closed the notebook. “I’d encourage you to talk to the police.”

“No way. You’ll tell them what I told you, that’s enough.”

“Your choice.” Fitz paid. He rose to leave and handed Tile one of his business cards.

“They might subpoena you for my name,” Tile muttered darkly.

“Then I’ll refuse.”

“You’ll be in contempt. You could go to jail.”

“Then I go to jail.”

On the way to the Examiner , Fitz called the FBI and was patched through to Special Agent Trask. He gave her the new information.

“You found the witness?” Her voice was higher than he remembered. Maybe she was surprised. She didn’t seem like a woman who reacted to the unexpected. “How?”

He explained.

“Ah, a construction worker just called our tip line. He said that he’d seen someone who looked like Ethan Hawke. You behind that?”

“I encouraged him.”

“You going to give me the witness’s name?”

“No.”

Fitz braced for a fight.

“Okay. We’ll find him.” She thanked him and hung up.

Jail was not, apparently, looming large.

Once in his office, he spread all his notes out. He began to plan a profile piece. The theme would be a serial killer (well, kidnapper, thus far) whose motive was publicity.

Odd reason to commit such terrible crimes.

But then, Fitz thought, what was normal when it came to taking a life?

He would, as he’d told Peter Tile, find some experts and get their opinions: a criminal-psychology professor, a homicide investigator in the Sheriff’s Department.

Another idea occurred. He would look over other stories about crimes around the same time and in the same place as the kidnapping; maybe the Gravedigger had made some other attempts to capture the media’s awareness, which might have failed to generate the attention he craved. But he could have been caught on security tape or seen by witnesses.

He reviewed the coverage in the local Maryland papers around the time of the Shana Evans kidnapping: domestic batteries and one parental abduction; a bystander killed in a gang-shootout cross fire; a food processing plant under investigation in a salmonella outbreak; your typical robberies; a hate crime or two; a serial killer preying on prostitutes (his MO was very different from the Gravedigger’s); a brutal assault at a rally outside the national political debates; a West Virginia businesswoman killed in a mugging outside a restaurant not far from her motel.