Without Warning (17 page)

“Okay. Last question. Would you care to comment on the Frank Granderson murder and your connection to him?”

Jake was furious. Not with Matt, although he believed Matt knew better than to think he might be involved and was only using the events to liven up the story and further his career. Rather, he was upset with the information sieve that his department had become, evidenced by the fact that Matt already knew about the Granderson death and that Granderson was likely the latest victim of the capsule killer.

He extricated himself from the call, regretting that he had taken it in the first place. He had wanted to find out what Matt was going to print, although he pretty much knew it already. But he couldn’t comment, and he knew that his “no comment” in the next day’s paper would appear evasive and defensive.

But most annoying of all was the fact that he had wasted time talking to Matt. It was time that should have been spent trying to find Katie and protect other potential victims.

Katie understood nothing about what had happened to her. The list of things she was in the dark about was seemingly endless. To start, she had absolutely no idea where she was. Her surroundings appeared to be like a studio apartment, but with no windows. There was a bathroom, a desk, a sofa, and a small kitchen, stocked with canned goods and staples.

There was one door, but it was locked, apparently from the outside. There were no windows and absolutely no street noise that she could hear. Once she had fully gained consciousness and got a feeling for her surroundings, she began screaming as loud as she could, but it soon became obvious that there was no one to hear her.

Next on her list of unanswered questions was the issue of how she had gotten there. She remembered being at Jake’s house, though for the moment the exact nature of their conversation eluded her. She thought that she must have left at some point, but couldn’t say that with certainty either.

Had Jake brought her there? Why would he possibly have done that?

And how long had she been here? She could tell that she had been unconscious, and since she didn’t feel any bruises on her head, she assumed that it was the result of some kind of drug. Had she been out for hours? Days? Were there people out there looking for her? Would they have realized yet that she was missing?

Katie’s mind was still hazy, but she desperately tried to force herself to focus on the events of the last few days. She had pretty good recall of the capsule murder case, though the most recent events were hard to remember. She felt that it would come back to her as her mind cleared, but whether that would explain her circumstances was something that she could not begin to answer.

But maybe the most pressing question was also the most frightening one. Whoever had brought her here, why had they done so? What did they have in mind for her?

She tried to control her growing panic. If they were going to kill her, she reasoned, they would have done so already. Instead they put her in these relatively comfortable surroundings, with enough food and water to survive for a long time. Surely those were all positive signs.

She knew that she needed to understand everything that she possibly could about her predicament, and the first step toward doing that was to fully examine what she was already viewing as her prison. Perhaps her captor had made a mistake and inadvertently left her an outlet to escape.

So she did a systematic search of the apartment. If there was a way out, she could not find it, at least not yet. There was no phone, no computer, no way to contact the outside world. And with only one locked door and no windows, there was no escape route.

But with all the horrifying things that were going through her mind, one seemed to top all the rest. It took a while for her to notice it, yet they were out in plain sight. Recessed in the ceiling, spread out across the room, were four small devices with tiny red lights on them.

She had no doubt that they were cameras, which meant that her every move was being watched. It caused her to become almost physically ill, and she had to strain to avoid throwing up.

There was no way for her to climb up to them, so no way to cover them. She went into the kitchen and found that the only silverware there were spoons, so she took the heaviest one and tried throwing it at the recessed cameras.

And then she heard the voice. It was muffled by the sound system, but sounded vaguely familiar to her, even though she couldn’t place it.

“You’re wasting your time, Katie.”

The
Journal
story was like a bomb detonating. Actually, it was like
two bombs detonating, because there were two stories.

The featured story, upper right position on page one, was about the mysterious disappearance of Katie Sanford. It was bannered as “Breaking News,” and was basically a recitation of the known facts. It said that Katie hadn’t been seen or heard from in thirty-six hours, that those who knew her said it was completely out of character for her to disappear like this, and that the police were intensively investigating, but did not yet have any active leads.

It also related that her last known whereabouts were leaving my house the previous night, but that it seemed unlikely she had returned home. Matt wrote the story, and drily noted that friends of Katie described her and me as “seeing each other socially,” which sounded like
Harold
Novack might have put it.

The second story was far more damaging. It tied all the killings to me by noting my connections to the victims, alleging that I at least seemed to have a reason to have a grudge against each of them. It did not draw any conclusions from these facts, but simply left them out there for all to see.

Notably absent from the piece was the Granderson murder, but I was certain that was deliberately withheld for a follow-up story. Matt was going to milk this for all it was worth, and I was going to be the milk-ee.

My “no comments” were sprinkled liberally through both pieces, making me sound defensive, as I knew they would. But the only thing worse than not commenting would be commenting.

Of course, Mayor Wilson Harrick had no qualms about commenting; I could almost picture him drooling over the opportunity. He said that “I am aware of recent events and developments, and can assure everyone that I am closely monitoring the situation. But I must point out that we have always had full confidence in Chief Robbins.” They left out the unspoken remainder of his sentence, which was probably, “at least until he is shown to be a serial killer.”

My concern about the revelations remained that they would move the public’s focus from the killer to me, and therefore become a distraction. I believed that our killer was local, at least he was certainly operating mostly locally, and therefore he was known to people. I needed people to be aware and observant, not spending their time engaging in gossipy drivel about their chief of police.

We weren’t getting many phone calls that morning, which I took as a bad sign. If people had concerns about my capacity and fitness to handle the job, they mostly wouldn’t express those concerns to my face. They’d probably call the mayor, or the state police, or maybe even the governor’s office.

The mayor called me about a half hour after I got in. “Jake, I’m very troubled about the
Journal
today.”

“Me, too,” I said. “That crossword puzzle was a bitch. And some sadist must have created that Jumble.”

“You’re obviously not taking this seriously.”

“I’ve got other things to take seriously, Will. I’ve got a murderer out there, and I’ve got Katie Sanford missing.”

“Is it true you saw her last?”

“No, the asshole that abducted her saw her last. I want to see her next.”

“We can’t afford to have the public lose confidence in our police force.”

“What do you want to do, Will? You want to replace me?” There was no way he would have the guts to do that, at least not now. I had too much goodwill built up in that town for him to take that chance. We both knew it, which is why I confronted him with it.

“We’re on the same team, Will.”

“Sometimes it’s hard to tell the players without a scorecard.”

I got off the phone knowing that if it became to his political benefit to remove me from the case, if not from the office entirely, he wouldn’t hesitate to attempt to do so. He would have to get the approval of the town council, but he wouldn’t try until he was confident of success. All of which meant I had to at least attempt to manage the public relations aspect of the case, which irritated me no end.

Of course, I didn’t really have a clue how to do that. I’d never had much experience in that area; I didn’t need any. My being a “war hero” always paved the way for me, so I joked to myself that maybe I should take my medals out of my underwear drawer and start wearing them in public.

But before I could work on the public relations side, I needed to get back to what was important, so I told Hank that I was going to run the department meeting. He had been doing so, with me sitting in when possible.

I was the absolute center of the case, which could cause members of the department to tread carefully. I wanted to make sure that they didn’t, so I laid it right out for them in my opening remarks.

“This case is about me,” I said. “It has been from Day One, and Day One was more than five years ago. Someone has been planning it for all that time, yet we have very little time to figure it out. Katie Sanford is out there, and I believe she is alive. And there is the danger that the killer will strike again. And again.”

“So I don’t want you to tiptoe around my involvement, because I am dead square in the center. If we’re going to solve this case, and you can be sure as hell that we are, then it’s going to go through me. So turn my life upside down, find out every goddamn thing there is to find out about me.”

“Because that is the only way we are going to find the killer and bring Katie Sanford home alive.”

“No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy.” It’s a quote that has been repeated countless times, and accepted as wisdom. The great commanders, the theory goes, are those who can quickly and effectively adjust the plan, because adjustments will certainly be both necessary and crucial.

Not this time.

This plan had already met the enemy repeatedly, and not once had the initial plan shown the slightest flaw. The preparation had been perfect, every eventuality had been accounted for. No adjustments had been necessary.

The man who considered himself “The Predictor” had justified the name. Everybody was behaving exactly as he knew they would; it was as if he were pulling the strings. And to some degree he was; he had set things up so that there was no other way for the actors to act.

Everything had been easy so far, but that was a direct result of his practice, and his training, and his research. It took him five years to get to that point, much longer if you count in the time he had to think about it, so he let himself savor every minute of it.

Taking Katie Sanford had gone particularly easy, which was ironic because that had more chance of going wrong than almost anything else he had done so far. He had anticipated that he might feel a pang of conscience about the abduction, but that had not materialized because of her own actions. She had taken up with Jake Robbins, which both stunned and sickened him. He thought she had higher standards, but she had disappointed him.

Too bad for her.

Now things would begin to heat up, and he would be alert to problems that could arise. The Predictor was not one to become complacent, not with so much on the line.

He’d be pulling the strings just a little bit harder.

“Who would have guessed you could talk yourself to death?” I’d read that line over and over again, but could get nowhere with it. My assumption was that the killer thought I had a grudge against someone because of something they said, and was going to kill them for it.

I’m a cop, and have been one for a long time. The list of people who’ve said bad things to my face is beyond lengthy, and I’m sure the list of people who’ve said bad things about me behind my back is much longer than that.

The frustration was building, since I could see what was going to happen next. I was not going to be able to figure out who might fit the vague prediction, and then somebody was going to die. I would then beat myself up over not seeing it.

I could pretty much safely eliminate those who said negative things to my face, in a one-on-one situation. If I wrote a ticket for a guy going 105 when the speed limit was 50, and he called me a Fascist, he and I were the only ones who heard it. Therefore, he was unlikely to be the next target.

So it must have been something said in public, so that the killer would know it, and Matt Higgins and everyone else could research it and point to it.

Also, as was true with all the victims to date, the future target had to have said the offending thing before the capsule was buried. I had also noticed that the previous victims had all committed the acts that supposedly gave me a grudge against them within two years before the burial.

The exception to that was Bill Norris, but since it was the only exception, I was willing to overlook it. Bill had mentioned our bar fight in a newspaper article, which appeared within the time frame I was focusing on. So it still fit the pattern.

Unfortunately, while all of this eliminated a lot of people, there were plenty that would still be on the list. I have pissed off and irritated a lot of people in my day. And the fact that whatever was said was uttered so long ago made it that much harder to recall.

But one name did seem to stand out. Steve “Sandman” Childress was a local talk radio host, on a small station about ten miles from Wilton. Talk radio was never big in this area; people generally see themselves as liking to do stuff, rather than talk about doing stuff.

But Sandman, so named because his show ran from three to seven in the morning, had carved out something of a niche for himself. Part of his appeal was that he had no discernible political leaning; he spent all of his time attacking anyone and everything. If you were upset with your lot in life, you listed to Sandman Childress, because he told you that you were right.