The Echo Man, page 15
As she got older, she worked out the warning signs. She’s supposed to regularly check every inch of her body for cuts or bruises, any sign that something might be off. Internal bleeding is one of the biggest worries: her chest filling with blood, bursting her from the inside. She’d be dead before she realized. But she’s always been too careless about it. Too reckless.
She explains all this to Griffin. He just stares at her. He seems to be thinking.
“So how do you know you haven’t got a brain hemorrhage?” he asks.
“I don’t. The doctors would have said.”
“You might.”
“I don’t.”
There is another long pause.
“If you keel over and die, I’m just going to dump your body in the woods somewhere,” he says at last with a small smile. “Deal?”
She nods. “Deal.”
He rolls over in the bed onto his front, punches the pillow a few times, then slumps down face-first onto it. “But I meant what I said,” he mutters into the pillow. “You can’t keep doing things to yourself.”
She hears his breathing slow as he falls asleep. People have said the same things to her before, but coming from Griffin it feels different.
Her husband used to chastise her every time there was an incident with the razor. “I don’t understand why you keep on doing this,” Patrick said once. “Is it attention seeking? Are you trying to kill yourself?”
It was neither of those things, and it seems that Griffin tacitly recognizes that. Patrick never had. On their wedding day, Jess had overheard a conversation.
“She’s too good for you,” his best man had been saying. “You’re batting way above your average.”
Patrick had laughed. It was late in the day, and too much alcohol had made him glib.
“Never hurts the career to have a gorgeous woman on your arm,” he’d replied. “And you have no idea, mate.” Jess watched him do a circular movement with his finger next to the side of his head. “Mad as a hatter,” he’d laughed.
She’d felt the hurt. But she’d known he was right.
She’d never mentioned it to her husband. That day she’d resolved she would get better. But it got worse. No amount of therapy worked. Nothing changed.
Until her house burned down and her husband was murdered.
Still naked under the duvet, she moves next to Griffin. She curls her leg over his, bare skin against skin, and he mutters slightly in his sleep, draping his arm around her.
Maybe, she wonders, taking in his warmth, maybe the key isn’t getting rid of the crazy. Maybe it’s finding someone just as broken, who understands.
CHAPTER
31
HE HOLDS A knife in his hand, blade facing forward. It’s large and sharp. Slowly he carves a piece of flesh out of the apple and eats it. He relishes the thought that there’s traces of blood on the blade, that he might be consuming some remnant of his victims.
It’s cold down here. He’s strung a single light up in the corner of the room, but the bare bulb is dim, and the glow barely stretches to the bottom of the hole.
But he can see her eyes, staring up at him. Two white circles, red-rimmed, shining out of a dirty face.
Digging the pit in the basement had been hard and backbreaking, but he’d known it was necessary. It isn’t big—about eight feet deep—muddy, wet. It rained last night and the bottom filled up with about a foot of water. She’d begged him again, standing there in the mud. She’d said she was cold; she’d pleaded with him to let her go. Said she’d let him have sex with her, she’d do anything.
The thought made him angry. He would have her if he wanted to, not when she said it was okay. He’d fucked her already, when he’d first got her here. Hands tied, she’d struggled, pleaded, kicked, but her fight had only spurred him on, his punches landing square on her face, silencing her.
And the hopeful look after? She’d thought that was it. That he was going to let her go. That look soon changed when he’d dragged her down here, shoved her into the hole.
To shut her up he’d found a long plank of wood and hit her with it. Reaching down into the pit, he’d struck her, over and over again. She’d dodged him at first, but once he’d got a good blow to her head, she’d been dazed, cowered at the bottom in the mud, and he’d been able to really go at her hard.
He can see those bruises now, the scabs dirty, bleeding, and raw. He can hear the rain again, outside. The hole’s only going to get worse. He cuts another piece of the apple and puts it in his mouth.
The house is perfect. It had sat empty for years, claimed by the council after his father’s death and left to rot. Much like him, in that children’s home. Slowly the other houses were abandoned around it. Nobody wanted to live near the site of a double murder, let alone in the house where they took place. Nobody but him.
“It won’t be long now,” he says to her, and she looks at him again, eyes pleading. He throws the remainder of the apple into the pit and she goes after it, the dirty starving animal that she is, her chains rattling as she scrabbles in the water. He watches as she finds it in the mud and eats it, his lip curling in disgust.
He’ll be glad to get rid of this one. She’s no more than a piece of property to him right now, but the reality of facing this stinking, shit-filled, muddy pit every day isn’t something he’s enjoying. But maybe …
He looks at the electrical extension cord, its ends stripped bare. Perhaps he’ll enjoy this part.
He holds the insulation on the cord, just up from the bare wires, then reaches over and plugs the other end into the wall. He moves her chains closer, and she sees him—the cable in his hand—and the metal wrapped around her wrists and torso. She looks at the water around her feet.
“Please—” she starts, but the words are snatched out of her mouth as he applies the electrical current.
She screams, her body spasms and jerks, then falls into the water.
He smiles. Yes, maybe he will enjoy this part after all.
CHAPTER
32
Day 5
Friday
FRIDAY, AND EVERYTHING moves on. Everyone is back in the incident room, no hesitation. All the detectives know there’s a job that needs to be done.
Cara sits with Shenton, reviewing evidence collected from the Dahmer crime scene. Fingerprints and blood work still aren’t back, but the lab have forwarded photographs of the other exhibits collected from the apartment.
Toby slowly moves through the images on the screen, looking for anything worth following up. Cara sees Noah arrive for the day; he raises a hand in acknowledgment to her, slipping a Polo into his mouth at the same time as he starts a conversation with one of the detectives. Business as usual.
She turns her attention back to the screen. More rubbish from the trash: a wrapper from a Mars Bar, a scrap of green paper, a parking receipt.
She points. “Blow that up?”
Shenton zooms in. It’s small, barely worth mentioning, “Pay and Display” down one side, with a date and time and a set of six digits.
Toby points to the numbers. “Probably the location of the ticket machine,” he says. “What’s the chance of finding CCTV from that area?”
“Worth checking,” Cara replies.
He makes a note and moves on to the next image—a letter, some sort of spam mail, “To the resident of apartment 214,” written across the top. Then more paper, photographs of mess and rubbish.
Shenton frowns and growls quietly under his breath. Cara looks at him.
“Problem?” she asks. She knows this sort of police work is monotonous, but sometimes it’s the only way to unearth a lead.
“No, it’s just …” Shenton pauses and Cara stares at him. “Look at this mess. All this rubbish, this litter. It’s not like him.”
“Him?”
“The Echo Man.” He looks at Cara, and she notices a red blush creep its way up from his collar. He knows he shouldn’t have used the name, but she lets it go. “Look at everything else he has done,” he continues. “He takes the right tools to decapitate those bodies to the Kemper scene. But how did he get home? There must have been another car. Same with Manson. Same with Dahmer. He’s organized. He’s planned. He’s clever.”
“You have a theory, Toby?” Cara asks.
“Everything he does is deliberate, right?” Cara nods her head. “So this”—he points to the mess in the photo on the screen—“is deliberate too. There’s something here.”
Cara looks back at the photo. There’s so much stuff. So much rubbish. “Perhaps it’s just another aspect of Dahmer’s apartment. Dahmer was messy, so he has to be too?”
Toby turns back to the screen and zooms in on the photo. She sees him examining it closely.
“Shenton?” she starts, and he looks back at her. “You know about this, right? About these killers?”
“I know a bit.”
“You know more than a bit. Do us a profile.”
“Boss?”
“You know, a psychological profile of the killer? What makes him tick? Who is he?” Cara’s not sure if this is the right move, but since Marsh won’t release the budget for a proper psychologist, how can it hurt? They could ignore it, after all.
Shenton pauses. “I could …”
“So do it.” Cara nods at him, then looks up as Griffin appears at their desk.
“She’s here,” he says to Cara, and Shenton looks up eagerly.
“Can I go with DS Griffin?” he gasps with the enthusiasm of a new puppy, and Cara sees Griffin roll his eyes. He doesn’t want to do this interview with Shenton there, Cara knows that. But then a little bit of mentoring might be just the development her brother needs.
“Griffin, take Toby,” she says.
But then Shenton seems torn. “But the profile …” he stutters, looking as though he might cry.
“Go,” Cara smiles. “Your psychological insights can wait an hour or so.”
Griffin glares at Cara, then sighs, defeated. “Come on then.”
CHAPTER
33
THE WITNESS HAS a strong Southern American accent. Returned from visiting relatives, she says, the crime scene tape gave her quite the fright. Her hands flutter at her crêpey mottled neck; she seems more excited than scared.
Griffin issues the standard warnings for the voluntary interview, and she signs the paperwork. Brassy blonde hair, makeup layered on with a trowel. Her perfume fills the small room, almost making Griffin’s eyes water. He hasn’t got much hope for the interview, but she’s the last neighbor on the list, living in apartment 215.
“And you say you’ve never met the resident of 213?” Griffin asks.
Next to him Shenton is already being annoying, busy scribbling notes on a pad, seemingly trying to capture every part of their conversation despite the fact it’s all being recorded.
“Knocked on the door a few times,” she confirms. “To complain about the smell. But he never answered.” She taps her bright blue nails against the tabletop, the noise grating on Griffin’s nerves. “Good thing too—he was a depressing-looking guy.”
Griffin’s head snaps up.
“You said you’d never met him?”
She nods. “Not met. He never said hello. Just saw him the once, going into his apartment.”
“And could you describe him for us?”
The woman shrugs and Griffin suppresses his impatience. “White, black? What was he wearing? You’re sure he was male? Tall, short?”
She frowns. “Yes, a guy. Tall. Hard to say anything else. He was wearing all black—black trousers, black sweatshirt, sneakers. Hood pulled up over his face.”
Griffin stands up; he gestures for Shenton to do the same. “How tall? As tall as me or like my colleague?”
The woman stands up in front of them. She considers them both. “Like him,” she says, pointing to Shenton. “Same build as him too.”
They all sit down again.
“You’re a big bloke, aren’t you?” she adds coyly.
Griffin ignores her flirting. “But you didn’t see his face?”
She shakes her head, another gust of perfume wafting his way. “I said, ‘Hi,’ but he didn’t turn. Just went in next door.”
“I’m sorry,” Shenton says tentatively. “Next door?”
“Don’t be sorry, doll,” she twangs with an oily smile. “Not your fault.”
Griffin looks at Shenton. He’s staring at his notes, running his finger across the page.
“But you live in apartment 215?” Shenton asks. “So this guy was going into …”
“Apartment 214. Right.”
“Fuck,” Griffin mutters under his breath.
“Ma’am?” Shenton says calmly. “We need to know about the resident of apartment 213.”
“Oh.” She sits back in her seat, crossing her arms over her chest, bangles jangling. “No. Can’t help you there.”
* * *
Griffin and Shenton walk back, downhearted. Cara meets them in the corridor.
“Anything?” she asks.
Griffin shakes his head. “Thought we did for a second—she had a bit of a description of a guy going into the apartment—but it turns out it was 214.” Cara’s face falls. “You been to see Marsh?”
She nods. “Usual message: Get it sorted.”
“No pressure,” he says sarcastically.
“None.”
They walk back to the incident room together. But then Cara stops them in the doorway.
“Apartment 214?” she asks.
Griffin nods.
She drags them over to Shenton’s desk. “Toby, pull up that bit of post we had earlier.” She directs him, pointing to the photographs on the monitor. “There. The one they found in the trash can of 213.”
“214,” Griffin reads out loud. He looks at Cara. He knows that expression. “What are you thinking?”
“Toby, who lives there? Pull up council tax records.”
He does as she asks, expertly navigating the system.
“DeAngelo,” Shenton says excitedly, gesturing at the screen. “Joseph DeAngelo.”
Griffin looks from Cara to Shenton and back again. They’re smiling. Cara raises her hand and Toby slaps it with a high-five.
Griffin knows that name. Until recently, an unknown. Ex-Navy. An ex-cop. And now?
“Joseph DeAngelo,” Shenton repeats. “The Golden State Killer.”
Cara picks up the phone. “We’ve got to get into that apartment.”
CHAPTER
34
“WELL, I DON’T know …”
Cara stands outside the block of apartments with Griffin, the same block of apartments as the day before. The white scientific services vans are still parked outside; Cara knows the SOCOs will be there for days yet, piles of evidence to log and take away. The landlord stands next to them, nervously wringing his hands.
“He’s potentially killed eleven men,” Cara says.
“Not Joe. Joe’s a good guy.”
“You’ve met him?”
“No, not actually met him. But …”
He glances upward. Cara follows his gaze. The window of apartment 214 seems to be covered with something; they can’t see any blinds or curtains.
“How did you come to rent him the apartment? How does he pay?” Griffin asks.
“He put a note through my door about a year ago when I advertised. Cash every month, right on time.” The landlord’s gabbling now.
“And you took identification?”
“No, he … er …” He stops, looks down. “He paid me double to keep quiet. Ignore the usual paperwork.” Cara and Griffin both glare at him. Chastened, the landlord holds out the spare key. “I’m sorry. How was I to know he’d be a serial killer?”
Cara takes the key and they walk toward the main door.
“How do you want to play this?” Griffin asks. “Call in armed response?”
Cara frowns. “That could take hours.” She looks at Nate. “There’s no way he’s there, right? I mean, still staying at the apartment while the place crawls with crime scene officers and cops?”
“Seems unlikely.”
“So let’s just go and look around. What’s the worst that could happen?”
Griffin stays silent. They walk toward the door of the block of apartments where Cara remembers vomiting in the flower bed just forty-eight hours before. She’s glad Nate didn’t reply. She knows the answer. More bodies. A serial killer with a gun.
But they can’t waste any more time.
They pass the open door of apartment 213, blue and white tape across the entrance. Cara picks up two new white crime scene suits from the pile and hands one to Nate. They both put them on, along with the shoes and gloves. They keep their hoods down, masks in hand.
She pauses outside 214.
“Ready?” she says to Griffin. He nods. She feels reassured knowing her six-foot brother is there with her.
She knocks.
There’s no answer, so she puts the key in the door. Her hand is shaking; it takes two attempts, then she turns it, pushing it open.
Inside it’s dark.
The apartment feels cold, the air enclosed and stale, but she doesn’t detect the same intense smell of decay as they had from the apartment next door. Even so, she puts the mask on and pulls the hood up. Next to her, Griffin does the same.
The wooden boards creak under their feet as they go into the first room. It seems to be a bedroom, although it’s completely empty. No carpet, nothing on the walls except a patch of damp in the corner of the ceiling. The single window is covered by newspaper, gray light shining through. She’s disappointed, then registers the absurdity of the feeling. No dead bodies are a good thing, surely.
Cara turns around to Nate, narrowing her eyes. He shrugs and points to the next door. Neither of them speaks.
A bathroom this time. Avocado-green sink and bath, white toilet. Gray grime coats every surface, curling linoleum on the floor. But nothing.
