08-A Thousand Bones, page 17
She nodded. She finished off the last of her wine. Rafsky picked up the bottle with an arch of the eyebrow. When she nodded, he poured her a fresh glass.
“Leach was the one who really made me think about being a cop,” Joe said.
Rafsky nodded. “He told me you were a student in his criminology class,” he said. “He said you were an art student at the time.”
“Yeah, that’s what I went up to Northern for. But then my stepdad died, and the money ran out, and I had to drop out.”
“So you were an artist?”
“A bad one.”
“The art world’s loss. Law enforcement’s gain.”
She took a bite of spaghetti, not trusting herself to look directly into the face of another compliment.
“Leach said you did well in the academy,” he said.
“I worked hard.”
“Couldn’t have been easy.”
“I survived.”
She was smiling. He saw it, and his fork stopped its twisting in the pasta. “What’s so funny?”
“I was thinking about the two-hundred-fifty-pound man in the alley,” she said.
“Ah, yes,” he said, smiling. “He’s put on weight. He used to be two hundred.”
She laughed. The guy in the alley was part of cop lore, the symbol of what female officers faced in terms of prejudice from the public and their male counterparts. The alley was the testing ground, and the man was the faceless beast, the ultimate symbol of your vulnerability. The question was always there: What are you going to do when you find yourself alone, squared off against the big crazy fucker in that dark alley?
“It used to bug me, the alley thing,” Joe said. “But then I realized something. Women have always walked around with the threat of physical harm, from rapists, molesters, abusive husbands. That alley has always been there for us. But when I became a cop, that changed. I felt…”
Rafsky was listening, waiting.
“I don’t know, I felt empowered,” she went on. “Now I have a radio, a gun, skills, backup, the power to arrest someone. Now if I meet some guy in the alley, he has to watch out for me.” She couldn’t read his expression in the flickering light of the candle. “You said before you started out working in Saginaw?” Joe asked, partly to deflect the intensity of his eyes.
“I was a patrolman there before I got with the state,” he said, nodding. “Never met the two-hundred-pound guy in the alley and didn’t want to. I always wanted to be an investigator, so I applied to the state, did my time as a trooper, and worked my way up to investigator. Been in homicide a few years.”
“Have you dealt with many?” Joe asked.
“Mostly I help small towns deal with theirs,” he said. “I seem to have a way with the chiefs and sheriffs.”
Joe thought back to the way Rafsky had handled himself in Leach’s station and in the Inkster PD. He had honored the local authority but had still managed to convey who was really in control. She was thinking, too, about how different Rafsky was from Leach—smoother and more commanding. And she was thinking about how differently Rafsky treated her. There was none of Leach’s paternalism in Rafsky’s attitude, no attempt to rein her in. Mike popped into her head, and the comparisons went on. Mike so lackadaisical about his job, so disinterested in the bones case. And Rafsky…
“So you’re close to your mom?” Rafsky asked.
The change of subject caught her off-guard.
“I heard something in your voice when you mentioned her,” he added.
“She drives me crazy sometimes. What mother doesn’t?” Joe smiled. “But yeah, we’re close.”
“Anyone else?”
“I have an older brother, Dennis. He’s up in Alaska somewhere laying oil pipe. Next year, he’ll be somewhere else. That’s Dennis. Always on the move.”
“And your mother is—”
“Back in Cleveland.”
Joe took a final bite of the spaghetti and pushed the plate away. She needed to call her mother when she got home.
And Brad…
She had called home as soon as they checked into the motel, but there had been no answer.
Rafsky was looking at his watch. “I should call home,” he said.
Joe heard a softening in his voice. Her eyes dropped to the gold band on his left hand. “There’s a pay phone out front,” she said.
He shook his head. “I’ll wait until I get back to the room.”
She wanted to ask, but before she did, he went on. “Gina and I live in Gaylord, but my son, Ryan, is in private school down near Lansing.”
“How old is he?” she asked.
“Twelve. I know what you’re thinking, what’s a little guy doing away from his home?” Rafsky’s blue eyes warmed. “I get transferred a lot. Gina doesn’t mind it, she’s great about it, in fact, but kids…they need to stay put. So we enrolled him in a private school near his grandparents.”
“You get to see him often?”
“Not often enough.” His smile was rueful, tinged with guilt. “You want to see his picture?”
He had gone for his wallet before Joe could even nod. He flipped open the plastic holders and held it out, tipping it to the candle.
Ryan was a small replica of his father, right down to the spiky, sandy hair. Rafsky flipped the plastic sleeves back but not before Joe caught a glimpse of a dark-haired woman. The waitress came by and slipped the check under Rafsky’s plate. Joe watched him as he pulled out two twenties to pay.
The two other couples had left. The owner had finished washing up and was hunched over the bar, slowing turning the pages of the Free Press sports section. In the silence, Joe could hear every word Sinatra sang: “Look at yourself. Do you still believe the rumor that romance is simply grand?”
She watched Rafsky’s hands as he carefully folded the receipt and put it in his wallet. Long fingers, no motion wasted, and a glint of gold in the candlelight.
It hit her hard, coming out of nowhere. She was attracted to this man.
She stood up. “We have an early day tomorrow,” she said. “We’d better get going.”
They walked across the parking lot. The small motel was dark, except for the two rooms on the end. Numbers seven and eight.
He stayed with her all the way to her door, waiting while she dug the key from her pocket. She flashed to a memory from high school. Her mother, helping her get ready for her first date.
Make sure they come to the door to pick you up and wait for you to get safely inside when they drop you off. That’s what gentlemen do.
Joe looked up at Rafsky, feeling as if she should thank him again for including her on the trip. Or at least for dinner. But when she met his eyes, she had no words. And neither did he.
She looked away, slipping the key in the door. “Good night, Rafsky.”
“Good night, Frye.”
24
The first thing Rafsky did was open the drapes. The morning sunshine lit up Ken Snider’s living room in all its dusty glory.
Joe stayed just inside the door, and two Inkster officers disappeared down the hall. Mumsley and another detective wandered to the kitchen. A fifth uniformed officer stood outside on the porch.
Ken Snider was frozen on the green shag carpet, sleep impressions on his face and confusion in his eyes. He was barefoot, wearing only a pair of old blue jeans. The search warrant hung limply in his hand.
“What are you looking for here?” he asked.
“Evidence of a homicide,” Rafsky said.
“Who’s dead?” Snider asked.
Rafsky looked to Joe, making a motion toward his shirt pocket, and she knew he wanted her to take notes. She snatched her notebook from her jacket and pulled the cap off her pen with her teeth.
Rafsky was holding a file folder, and he opened it, slipping a copy of Ronnie Langford’s yearbook photo from inside. He held it up to Snider. “Know this girl?”
Snider’s eyes widened. “That’s Ronnie. She’s dead?”
Rafsky produced a photo of the charm bracelet. “This look familiar?”
Snider stared at it, barely managing a nod. “That was hers. Is Ronnie dead or not?”
“We think you already know the answer to that, Mr. Snider,” Rafsky said.
“I haven’t seen Ronnie in ten years,” Snider said, glancing down the hall as the sounds of drawers opening and closing drifted to him. “She left me. She went off with Mitch…in a truck. I never heard from her again. What’s going on here? Why are the cops in my bedroom?”
Joe watched Snider, trying to hear something in his denials that would tell her if he really was the monster they thought he was. And she flashed on the killer John Norman Collins, and how his clean-cut good looks and good manners had allowed him to move through college campuses without suspicion.
Ken Snider didn’t look like a killer, either. He was a blue-collar guy with no criminal record, living alone in the house he probably grew up in. By all accounts, a decent human being. Not a man anyone thought could kill young women, string them up, and maybe cannibalize them.
Rafsky moved across the room as he talked. “Echo Bay mean anything to you, Mr. Snider?” he asked.
“What?”
“Leelanau County,” Rafsky said.
“I’ve been there,” Snider said. “My dad used to…” He shut his mouth suddenly.
“Your dad used to what?” Joe asked.
Snider didn’t even look at her. He glanced down the hall to his bedroom. When he came back to them, he had a flush of red up his neck. The warrant was crushed in his hand.
“I’m done talking to you,” he said.
“You could help yourself by answering some questions,” Rafsky said, still walking circles around Snider, forcing Snider to turn with him.
“Does the name Annabelle Chapel mean anything to you?” Rafsky asked.
“Who?”
“Annabelle Chapel,” Rafsky repeated. “What about Natalie Newton?”
Snider stared at Rafsky. Joe could tell by the expression on Snider’s face that knew he the names being thrown at him must be other victims, but he couldn’t find an answer. Or even a strong denial.
“When was the last time you were in Leelanau County?” Rafsky asked.
“I don’t remember,” he said. “I was…I was…”
“You were what?”
Snider shook his head, opening the warrant to reread it. Joe knew it specified any evidence possibly connected to a homicide and/or the whereabouts of Veronica Langford. It also allowed them to take any weapons and any evidence that Snider had traveled up north in the last ten years.
“When were you last up north?” Rafsky asked. “Anywhere up north. Echo Bay, Petoskey, anywhere.”
Snider finally faced him, feet planted. “Stop asking me questions,” he said. “I want a lawyer.”
“We don’t have to give you a lawyer until you’re under arrest,” Rafsky said. “You want one, call one.”
Snider threw Rafsky a glare, then dropped into a chair, eyes on the floor. Then he shut them and put his face in his hands.
“Detective Rafsky,” a voice called from the bedroom.
Rafsky walked to the hallway and met a uniformed officer as he came into the living room. The officer was holding something in the palm of his gloved hand. Joe stepped over to him quickly. He had found a heart-shaped charm, the engraving on it clear. ronnie.
Rafsky looked back at Snider. He had risen from the chair but had not ventured over to them. He knew what they were looking at.
“Why do you have this?” Rafsky asked.
“She…she…I don’t know.”
“Of course you know,” Rafsky said. “Why is it here in your bedroom instead of on her bracelet?”
“She gave it back to me,” he said.
“Why?”
“She…she was…leaving with Mitch. She—”
“And I bet that really pissed you off,” Rafsky said.
“No,” Snider said. “No…”
Snider started to pace, edging to the door, and the officer on the porch stepped in to block the way. Snider stared at him for a moment, then spun back, his movements jerky. He opened his mouth to say something to Rafsky, then clamped it shut. He walked stiffly to the kitchen and snatched the phone receiver off the wall. A few minutes later, he hung up and came back to the living room.
“I’m not saying anything else.”
Rafsky gave him a shrug and looked to Joe, motioning to the basement stairs.
Joe went down first, hitting the switch. A single bare bulb offered thin shadowy light. She stopped at the bottom of the steps, looking around for another switch, but saw none. A flashlight clicked on behind her. Detective Mumsley. She stepped aside to let him pass.
Rafsky tapped her shoulder and held out a pair of latex gloves. She tugged them on, feeling slightly embarrassed she had not thought to keep a pair with her. But she couldn’t remember a time in Echo Bay when she even needed them.
Mumsley went to the footlocker under the stairs. Joe stayed near the steps, her eyes moving over the basement, the damp stench filling her nose.
“Go on,” Rafsky said.
She wasn’t sure what he meant at first, but then she felt his hand press gently against her back. She was going to be allowed to search, and she took a step, wondering where to go first. Her eyes moved over the wall of shelves that held paint and lawn tools. Over the old wringer washer, the crumbled boxes in the corner, the monstrous furnace, and the dark cubbyholes behind it. Finally, she focused on the workbench.
She walked to the workbench and took a long look at the hammers and screwdrivers hanging on the pegboard. She grabbed a breath to focus and plucked a routerlike tool from its hook.
“He could have used something like this to carve the symbols in the trees,” she said.
Rafsky was behind her, and he leaned closer. “We don’t have that link yet,” he said.
Joe nodded, letting her gaze drift over the workbench, looking for old bloodstains on the wood. But the wood was clean. She picked up the leather carpenter belt and removed the tools one by one, examining their edges. They were clean and well cared for, some brand new.
She dropped to one knee to look beneath the bench and saw two large plastic paint buckets. She pulled one out. It was stuffed with rusted tools. She wiggled the first tool loose from the tangle of claws and prongs. It was a hacksaw. When she went to set it down, Rafsky held out a few sheets of newspaper.
“Start two separate piles,” he said. “One for the things you want to keep for the lab and one for the others.”
She spread out two sheets of newspaper and set the hacksaw down. As she reached in for the next tool, she could hear Rafsky trying to work open a basement window behind her. A few seconds later, the basement was washed with new light. And a fresh, cold breeze.
A tack hammer. Clean.
A wrench. Oily. She set that one on the other newspaper.
A Phillips head screwdriver. Muddy. She set it next to the wrench.
A metal ruler. Clean. She laid it next to the tack hammer.
The process went on, and by the time she got to the second bucket, she had four sheets of newspaper spread out on the floor. Under the stairs, Mumsley was gathering the old shotguns, and she could hear him saying something about blood. She looked over her shoulder. Mumsley was holding up a knife—the deer-gutting knife she and Rafsky had seen on their first trip.
“Looks like blood to me,” Mumsley said.
“Bag it,” Rafsky said.
Mumsley called the other detective over, and they dropped the knife into an evidence bag. Joe noticed Mumsley had tagged the shotguns, too. Mumsley started to unroll the sleeping bags.
She turned back to the bucket, reaching for another tool. She got a strong whiff of soap, and she looked up to see Rafsky standing over her. He was holding three small books, turning them so she could read the spines.
The Birchbark Canoe.
Running Deer’s Adventures.
The Winter of the Windigo.
She took the last book from him and looked at the cover illustration. It showed a full moon against a navy-blue sky with silhouettes of pine trees. And in the center, a teeth-baring creature with ragged blue fur.
“Open it,” Rafsky said.
She opened the book to the first page. The inscription read: “To Kenny from Mommie.”
He bagged the books, and she went back to her bucket, but her head was still inside the Windigo book. She wondered what kind of story it told and how someone could write a children’s story about flesh-eating monsters. She shook away the thoughts and focused on her tools.
One left. Long, with a wooden handle. She drew it out. In the thin light, it looked like a clawhammer, but as she turned it, she could see it wasn’t. It had a hammerhead on one side, but the other side was shaped more like a small hatchet, as if the tool were used to chop at something. The rusty edge of the hatchet part was black and crusty, but there was something else on it, too. She stood up, taking the tool to the window. Backlit by the sun, five or six tiny hairs were clearly visible.
“Rafsky,” she called.
He crossed the basement quickly and peered up at the hammer. For several seconds, they were both quiet, then Rafsky looked down at her.
“We got him,” he said softly.
He called to someone upstairs, and an officer appeared with a camera. They took photos of the tool lying flat against a ruler and others with Joe holding it up against the light. Then more pictures of the bucket and the workbench. When they were finished, Rafsky held out an evidence bag to her. She set the tool inside the bag and took a step back, glad finally to get it out of her hands.
Rafsky laid the bag on the workbench, sealed it with orange evidence tape, and reached into his shirt pocket for a pen to fill in the required information on the strip of tape. Then he turned, holding his pen out to Joe. He motioned to the bag.
“Tag your evidence, Deputy Frye,” he said.
25
Joe stood at the pay phone in the hallway near the men’s room. Behind her, three Inkster PD uniformed officers were talking about the arrest of Ken Snider. Rafsky had disappeared, along with Mumsley and a local prosecutor, but not before telling her to join them in the conference room when she was finished with her phone call.
