Sandhill’s hand froze on the knob. Philips said, “You were caught red-handed stealing from the evidence room.”
“That’s not in the file.”
The flint in Philips’s stare negated her thin smile. “Oh, I know, Mr Sandhill. It’s not in any file anywhere. As we both know, some information is too sensitive to be collected.”
Sandhill turned to the mayor, met her eyes. “Where did you get this…story?”
“Not relevant. Officially, you were brought up on Conduct Unbecoming an Officer. But one week later you quit the department. Or were fired. Or a combination. Nothing was spelled out in detail. It’s truly strange.”
“It’s ancient history, Mayor,” Sandhill said. “Leave it be.”
“Rumor has it your ego outgrew your brains. You were afraid of someone else solving the murders and stealing your thunder. By hoarding
the evidence you hoped to find something others had missed and raise your chances of making the bust. The great Conner Sandhill solves another case, his biggest yet. You’d use the brownie points to move up the ladder, make the jump to administration…”
“Administration?” Sandhill spat the word as if it were an insect in his mouth. “I’d sooner have terminal hemorrhoids. What a load of bullshit.”
“Set me straight.”
He walked to the window. The clouds had darkened and opening ticks of rain measured the glass.
“The first dead girl was Sally Harkness,” he said, watching the protesters break ranks and run for cover, umbrellas appearing like toadstools. “A prostitute. Twenty-three years old when she was beaten to death. A body blow lacerated her liver. She bled to death inside herself.”
“This was when?”
“Six years ago. Her body was dumped in an alley. The case is still unsolved.”
“What was it to you?”
“I couldn’t stop thinking about it, the brutality, the sense of vengeance. And the guy was handson, a puncher. That makes it personal. A couple months later, another young woman’s body showed up in a park. Tami Zelinger, a twenty-year-old hooker with a face beaten into putty. Again, no leads. Like with Harkness, the slim pickings of evidence were finally put into storage.”
The rain started drumming hard against the
glass. Lightning flared in the distance, thunder running three beats behind.
Sandhill said, “Another year passed and another woman was found dead. Jiliana Simpkins. She’d been attacked so savagely I knew it was related to the Harkness and Zelinger cases. Another tie was the hair. Two were natural redheads, another always worked in a bright red wig.”
Philips said, “The red-hair angle—I don’t recall it.”
“Wasn’t publicized. The media’d inevitably label them ‘The Redhead Murders’, like a Sherlock Holmes story. Plus we needed to weed out the pathetic geeks who confess to every murder of a woman.”
Philips shook her head. “Sick.”
Sandhill continued. “I went back to check the evidence, hoping to find a pattern besides the savagery and hair. Plus DNA identification had improved. Less of a sample needed. Mitochondrial advances.” Sandhill paused. “I failed. Evidence in the earlier cases was missing. I checked it against the log.”
“A bookkeeping error?”
“I knew the dicks who logged the stuff in. One, Norbert Bayle, is so anal-retentive he’d log in an ant crossing the floor; the other, Harry Nautilus, is just damn good with details, doesn’t make mistakes. Nautilus probably cross-checks his cross-checking.”
“You figured someone got to the evidence. Is that it?”
“Theft isn’t unknown in property rooms. Guns, knives, watches, jewelry. But this was clothing, hairs, a cast of a footprint. I figured someone was damaging the cases. I decided to take some of the evidence home and keep it safe.”
“But told no one. Why?”
“I trusted no one, Mayor. At that point, I couldn’t.”
“But you got nailed in the act, right?”
Sandhill snorted. “I’m a lousy thief. I thought I’d skirted all the security cameras, but missed seeing one. It didn’t miss seeing me, standing in the shelves jamming evidence bags into my pants and jacket.”
Philips pursed her lips and tapped her fingertips together. “Mr Sandhill, I can’t tell if you’re feeding me hamburgers or horseshit.”
Sandhill shrugged. “The menu doesn’t matter; given the videotape, I had no defense. I was allowed to resign without prosecution—also sans pension and benefits—the matter hushed up lest the department get a black eye.”
“No one listened to your side?”
“Several people believed me. Not the few that counted.”
“Chief Hoskins?”
“Didn’t matter. The tier below him ran the department.”
“Squill?”
“The major player. He was a deputy chief back then. We’d had dust-ups over the years, never gotten along. When he saw a chance to comb me out of his hair, he came up with all that crap about my grandstanding, sold it to a couple other tinhat fools and I was history.”
“Deputy Chief Bidwell?”
“A captain back then. I like Carl as a person, but he’s a natural doormat, hates the sound of rocking boats. He scurried off and hid from the whole ugly discussion. That left the thumb-up or thumb-down to Emperor Squill. The lions roared and I got eaten.”
“But you didn’t depart without leaving an arrow in Squill’s chest, did you?” Philips wasn’t consulting the file any more; she was running on information supplied by Tom Clay.
A wisp of smile crossed Sandhill’s face. “More like a dart. I’d discovered Squill owned a quiet interest in a security business. Part of his sales pitch was suggesting increased police patrols around businesses contracting with the firm. I made it known, and Terrence got a little shit on his britches.”
Philips nodded, understanding. “Enough that the commission gave him the temporary ‘acting’ designation when Plackett left, not the full jump to chief. Is that how I should read it?”
Sandhill nodded. “Until after the elections, when a new group might make a decision one way or
another. You know how politicians love to pass the buck.”
She ignored the barb. “One more thing, Mr Sandhill. Who do you think took the evidence?”
“That’s the sad bullshit of it. There are only ten guys working shifts in the property room, stuck away with the roaches. Guys getting old, or injured in the line of duty, who can’t stand to be anywhere but in a cop station. I’d trust most of those guys with anything I own. Or thought I could.” Sandhill looked at his watch. “I gotta get running. Things to do.”
“Like what?”
“That’s my business.”
Philips rose from her chair, put her hands on her desk, leaned forward.
“Listen, Mr Sandhill, I’m very sorry about the Charlane girl; I hope she’s found safe, and soon. But I remind you that you’re a civilian. You have to stay away from the case or face arrest for interfering with police business.”
“That was why you wanted me here? To tell me that?”
Philips studied Sandhill. “I wanted to hear about your dismissal.”
Sandhill grabbed the doorknob. “You heard. So long, Mayor.”
“Stay out of the cases, Mr Sandhill.”
Sandhill pulled the door open. Lightning exploded nearby and the lights flickered for an instant.
“Mr Sandhill, did you hear me?” Philips said.
“I know the rules, Mayor.”
Sandhill stepped into the hall and pulled the door shut behind him. Philips continued to stare at the closed door as if Sandhill’s picture were etched across it with acid.
“But will you play by them, Mr Sandhill?” she whispered.
Seconds after Sandhill left the mayor’s office, Tom Clay slipped in. He tossed the day’s mail in her inbox and took a seat.
“How’d it go, Norma?”
Philips sat at her desk drumming a pencil across her palm. “He’s an interesting man with a strange story.”
“You believe his tale?”
“Reply hazy, ask again later.”
Clay raised a thin eyebrow. “Did you tell him that a mayor can discretionarily reinstate officers pending a new hearing?”
“No, I didn’t, Tom. I want to think about that option a bit more.”
“You think he’ll stick his nose into things?”
“I’m counting on it. Maybe he’ll find something we can buy into.”
Clay raised an eyebrow. “And if he gets his ass in the blades?”
“We have no involvement; I specifically told him to keep his distance from the case.”
Clay leaned back and tented his fingers. “You’re
getting better at politics, Norma, covering your ass. How you feel about that?”
Philips flipped the pencil on to her desk. “Nauseated.”
Clay nodded somberly.
“Good,” he said.
Sandhill went to his apartment, stripped off his tie, flung it across the room, and called Marie. She reported that Nike had locked herself in her apartment and wanted to be left alone. Marie added, “The po-lice stopped one more time to ax questions. There was two of them: a guy name Duck-something and I can’t remember the other.”
“Ainsley Duckworth and Wade Meyers.”
She hesitated. Sandhill knew that Marie, in light of his former occupation, was cautious in her criticism of cops.
“Uh-huh, yeah, that’s them. They any good, Conner?”
Sandhill hated Squill’s lap Dobermans. But now was the time for truth, not grudges. “I don’t think Meyers could find his ass with a bloodhound. But Duckworth, foul and unhappy as he is, knows the ropes and somewhere underneath all that pissed-off-bubba crap is intelligence.”
“If you say so, Conner. I don’t like either of
them a wink. Specially Duck-whatever. He got cruel in his eyes, a man picks wings off bugs. Something in him ain’t right, Conner.”
“Neither is what you would call attuned to human emotions, Marie.”
“That’s your way of talking, Conner. Me, I say they a pair of grade-A cracker assholes.”
“There’s that aspect, too.”
Marie hesitated. “I got what you wanted from Nike. The uh…you know. I dropped it by the restaurant early on. You find it?”
Sandhill looked across the table at the brown 8 x 10 envelope. He hadn’t touched it and didn’t want to.
“I got it, Marie. Thanks.”
After hanging up, Sandhill’s hand lingered on the phone, wanting to call Nike, but knowing there was nothing to say. Not now. The best thing to do was what he did best: work the case, Squill be damned, Norma Philips be damned. Something in the materials was bothering him, no,
calling
to him. It was something subtle, like a soft fragrance in a distant room, touching at the edge of his senses.
But now he had to deal with the envelope. He opened it gingerly and shook it over the table. A 5 x 7 color photograph of Jacy slid out. He turned it face side down, not yet ready to look.
Next, he shuffled through photos of the other girls: Darla Dumont, eleven, gone a year; Maya Ledbetter and LaShelle Shearing, both taken within the past two weeks.
Their families had supplied several photos of each, and Sandhill selected headshots with the best lighting. He placed Darla, Maya and LaShelle before him. He turned Jacy’s picture over and saw her smiling into his eyes like she’d done a hundred times in the past six days.
The world shimmered, then swam. Sandhill stood quickly, wiping his arm across his eyes and breathing deeply. He went to the sink and splashed cold water across his face. Toweled it off roughly. He looked in the mirror and saw wet strands of hair falling into eyes puffed with lack of sleep.
When he returned, he slid Jacy’s photo into the row with the others. He studied the photos carefully, noting the large, symmetric features and bright, outgoing smiles; Sandhill felt touched by their innocence and the foreshadowing of the beauty adulthood could bring.
He walked circles around the table, studying, thinking. Three headshots. All heads slightly canted. All faces smiling. All eyes directly into the camera. All backgrounds neutral. All slightly sidelit.
“School pictures,” he whispered, knowing what had been pricking at the edges of his mind. And that it wasn’t a revelation; in fact, it probably meant exactly nothing.
Still, Sandhill was up and fumbling his tie back on. He started out the door, paused. He pulled his phone and called Carson Ryder. They spoke a few minutes, Ryder promising to check into things.
Ryder called back two hours later. “I went through the school interviews, Sandhill. No mention of a school photographer in any of them. It’s one of those things no one thinks of.”
“Damn,” Sandhill said. “You think it’s important?”
“I checked schools, just got back from the school Darla Dumont attended last year. When she disappeared.”
“And?” Sandhill’s voice was laced with expectation.
“Different photographers. Guy named Philbee was Darla’s photographer. Retired last year. A man named Desmond took the pics at the schools attended by the other girls.”
“Shit,” Sandhill grunted. “No connection.”
Ryder said, “Still, I’m heading over to Desmond Photography now, just to look at the bird. Somebody has to clear him.”
“What’s the address, Ryder? I’ll meet you there.”
“Uh, Sandhill, this is police business…”
“Of course it is,” Sandhill said. “I just need to get my passport photo re-done.”
A long pause was followed by Ryder’s weary sigh.
“I’ll pick you up in ten minutes.”
The broom made angry swooshing sounds as Truman swept dust and debris across the wooden slats of his studio floor. A dozen wrapper ends from Rose’s power bars lay in the pile; his brother
was a pig. Truman was brushing the pile toward the trash canister when the buzzer sounded. Not Rose; he’d have simply let himself in. There was no pickup scheduled. A salesman, maybe? Or sometimes people wandered in without appointments.
Three raps struck the door like hammer blows.
“Police.”
Truman closed his eyes. It was them. Finally, inevitably. He set the broom aside and walked softly to the door. He peeked through the peep-hole, seeing two men through the distortion of the fisheye lens, one close, one in the background. A badge floated a few inches from the lens.
“Police. Open up, please.”
Truman pushed the tails of his white shirt deeper in his Dockers, licked his palms, and brushed his hair back. The trick was to remain calm and professional. If he kept his cool, this was as close as they would ever get. The delivery of Maya Ledbetter had been flawless the other night; by now she’d be hidden away somewhere in Ohio. Only the Charlane girl remained. After her delivery he’d flood the hurricane shelter to wash away any evidence. Then he and Rose would go into hibernation again until another wealthy customer surfaced.
Affecting bemusement, he opened the door to a slender man about six feet tall, a white linen jacket over jeans, boat shoes. His hair looked like it had fought the comb and won. Truman allowed himself
an inner grin; the guy looked like a twit. The other man was a big guy, slouching like an ape.
“Mr Desmond?” the twit asked.
Truman continued the look of surprised concern perfected in front of the mirror. “Yes, that’s me. What can I do for you?”
“I’m Detective Carson Ryder, MPD.”
Beside the badge in the fold-open wallet was a photo ID. Desmond leaned close, smiled and shook his head.
“Something wrong?” Ryder-twit asked.
“Not a very flattering shot, Detective Ryder. Do you think I could get the photo franchise for police IDs? I promise a better result.”
The big ape gurgled and dug inside a rumpled jacket. “Lemme show you my ID. I look like I should be hanging off the Empire State Building swatting planes.”
The twit looked irritated and put his hand on the ape’s arm to stop all the scrabbling.
“Mr Desmond, this is—”
“Conner,” the ape said. He grinned, tapped his gut, and burped into his palm. Truman opened the door quickly and widely, demonstrating his willingness to be of service in any police matter. The twit seemed to be the guy in charge, which—given that the ape seemed to have the brains of a sandwich—made sense.
The twit said, “We understand you take the school pictures for the Banks and Washington schools.”
Truman widened his eyes in confusion. “All the elementaries, actually, Detective Ryder. Could I ask what this is in reference to?”
“We want to ask a few questions about the girls who were abducted. We’re interviewing everyone who’s been in their schools.”
Truman let his face droop into sadness. “What can I say? It’s a terrible thing. How can I help?”
“A few questions. A few minutes of your time.”
“There’s more room in the studio, gentlemen. Follow me.”
Truman led them through the anteroom to his worktable at the front of the studio. He snapped on a single photoflood above the table, bathing it in crisp white light. The rest of the windowless studio stayed shadowy gray. He leaned against the table, picked up his can of Mountain Dew and took a drink before slapping his forehead.
“Excuse my poor manners. Could I get you gentlemen a drink? There’s Dew and red pop and maybe some…”
The twit said, “We’re fine, Mr Desmond, thanks.”
Truman picked up a half-bag of Cheezo chips, shook it at his visitors, and was again declined. The twit cop was very polite, almost apologetic. He reached in his jacket pocket and produced four photos, spreading them on the table.
Vitriana, Kittinia, Nalique, Lorelei. Darlene, Maya, LaShelle, Jacy.
“Are these your work, Mr Desmond?” the twit asked.
“Three are. I can tell by the lighting and backdrop.”
“Which one isn’t?”
Truman studied the photo the cop was holding—a school picture, which, though he hadn’t taken it, pleased Truman with its irony. It was Darla Dumont, the girl from last year, the chance meeting that had led to Truman’s new and lucrative enterprise.
Truman had been sticking Desmond Photography handbills under car wipers at the Winn-Dixie when Darla rode up on her bicycle and asked what he was doing. She was a tawny and impressive little peach, bright, chatty, eager. Truman immediately recalled a message in one of the secret chatrooms: the poster had implied, with utmost tact and shading, an interest beyond photos, a desire for a “corporeal entity”.
Truman had looked up the word “corporeal”—
material
,
bodily
—and he knew what the man wanted. Thus commenced a delicate interchange, Truman determining the man might pay as much as a quarter-million dollars to own the correct “entity”.
Truman enlisted Darla to place handbills, all the while questioning her about school, family, places she went to be alone. He gave her twenty dollars and pledged her to secrecy.
“
Don’t tell anyone, and I’ll let you help me do this again.
”
He’d had a camera in his car and snapped several shots of Darla, posting them to his correspondent that evening. After a week of feeling one another out, a deal was sealed. He met Darla two days later, as arranged. Rose sprang from the van, and everything ticked like clockwork, the buyer retrieving his product at the Mobile docks a few days later and wiring the fee to a Caymans bank account. When the school-photography job opened, Truman had jumped, slowly and carefully building his bank of selected photos and making his offer known to his select and slender roster.
I can get you more than pictures
…
Truman tapped Darla/Vitriana. “I didn’t take this picture.” It was true.
“You sure?”
“I don’t have a backdrop like that.”
While the ape looked around like he’d never seen a photo studio before, the twit cop scribbled in a cheap notebook. “How long have you been working with the schools?” the twit asked, looking bored.
“This is my first year. I’ve specialized in family portraiture since starting in business eight years ago, plus some advertising and PR work. Weddings. Bar Mitzvahs. A few passport photos. But this year I thought I’d give school photography a shot. The paperwork’s a hassle, but next year I’m going to hire an assistant.”
“You process the photos yourself?”
Truman shook his head. “I contract with a bulk
processor. They print them on sheets, handle the orders.”
“Do you have much interaction with the students?”
Truman chuckled. “It’s an assembly line. Sit, say cheese, sit, say cheese, sit…”
The twit smiled at Truman’s wit. Dealing with these yokels was
fun.
“How about access to personal family information?” the twit asked.
“The parent or guardian fills out a form for records and billing purposes.”
“Is a home address on that form?”
Truman took a sip of soda. “Um, yes. But I never use it. It’s for the schools.”
“You keep the forms?”
Truman popped a Cheezo in his mouth, crunching as he spoke. “If I left them with the schools they’d disappear. I hang on to the info until the photos are delivered, then shred and dump it.”
“No one else works here with you?”
Truman slapped bright orange Cheezo powder from his palms. “I’m a one-man show, unfortunately.”
“Bookkeeper?”
“I keep my own books. Sure you don’t want a pop or a snack?”
“No thanks.”
An interrogator’s voice rumbled from behind Truman. “Which do you like best, Mr Desmond, little girls or little boys?”
Truman’s heart jammed in his throat. He blanked his face, and turned to the ape, shocked to see it had wandered completely across the studio and was in the far corner, standing near the removable flooring above the external drive.
Truman fought to keep his voice even. “I’m sorry, Detective Conner. What?”
The ape scratched its head, stifled a yawn, stretched like it was ready for bed. “You know, like who’s easiest to take pictures of? I figure the boys for a pain in the ass. I was.”
Desmond relaxed and offered a knowing smile. “You’re right, Detective Conner, the girls. The boys are always showing off for each other, crossing their eyes or sticking out their tongues.”
The ape made a gurgling sound Tru assumed was a giggle, and said, “Hell, I still do.”
The twit shook his head slowly, as if saying,
Look what I’m burdened with
.
There were a few more meaningless questions before the cops left, the twit in the lead, the ape slouching behind. Truman knew he should have felt secure when the door closed, but a warning light was blinking in his head. Sometime during the interview, the ape had moved away. How could it move so softly on the creaky wood floors? What had the ape been doing? Looking at?
Should I worry? Did I do something wrong?
No, because there was nothing the ape could have found. The only incriminating object in the studio was the external drive, and it was safe.
The ape’s simple-minded question about boys and girls almost made Truman fill his drawers. But he hadn’t flinched, had he? Instead, he’d delivered an Academy Award performance, sliding past the question like a greased eel.