They made small talk for a minute or two and then Altman nodded at a large white envelope in the author's hand. "You find some letters you think might be helpful?"
"Helpful?" Carter asked, rubbing his red eyes. "I don't know. You'll have to decide that." He handed the envelope to the detective.
Altman opened the envelope and, donning latex gloves, pulled out what must've been about two hundred or so sheets.
The detective led the men into the department conference room and spread the letters out on the table. Randall joined them.
Some of them were typed or printed out from a computer--but these were signed, offering a small sample of the correspondent's handwriting. Some were written in cursive, some in block letters. They were on many different types and sizes of paper and colors of ink or pencil. Crayons too.
For an hour the men, each wearing rubber gloves, pored over the letters. Altman could understand the author's dismay. Many of them were truly vicious. Finally he divided them into several piles. First, the emails, none of which seemed to have been written by potential killers. Second were the handwritten letters that seemed like the typical innocent opinions of readers. None of these asked for details about how he'd researched the novel or seemed in any way incriminating, though some were angry and some were disturbingly personal ("Come and see us in Sioux City if your in town and the wife and me will treat you to our special full body massege out side on the deck behind our trailer").
"Ick," said young officer Randall.
The final pile, Altman explained, "included letters that were reasonable and calm and cautious . . . Just like the Strangler. See, he's an organized offender. He's not going to give anything away by ranting. If he has any questions he's going to ask them politely and carefully--he'll want some detail but not too much; that'd arouse suspicion." Altman gathered up this stack--about ten letters--placed them in an evidence envelope and handed them to the young detective. "Over to the county lab, stat."
A man stuck his head in the door--Detective Bob Fletcher. The even-keeled sergeant introduced himself to Carter. "We never met but I spoke to you on the phone about the case," the cop said.
"I remember." They shook hands.
Fletcher nodded at Altman, smiling ruefully. "He's a better cop than me. I never thought that the killer might've tried to write you."
The sergeant, it turned out, had contacted Carter not about fan mail but to ask if the author'd based the story on any previous true crimes, thinking there might be a connection between them and the Strangler murders. It had been a good idea but Carter had explained that the plot for Two Deaths was a product of his imagination.
The sergeant's eyes took in the stacks of letters. "Any luck?" he asked.
"We'll have to see what the lab finds." Altman then nodded toward the author. "But I have to say that Mr. Carter here's been a huge help. We'd be stymied for sure, if it wasn't for him."
Appraising Carter carefully, Fletcher said, "I have to admit I never got a chance to read your book but I always wanted to meet you. An honest-to-God famous author. Don't think I've ever shook one's hand before."
Carter gave an embarrassed laugh. "Not very famous to look at my sales figures."
"Well, all I know is my girlfriend read your book and she said it was the best thriller she'd read in years."
Carter said, "I appreciate that. Is she around town? I could autograph her copy."
"Oh," Fletcher said hesitantly, "well, we're not going out anymore. She left the area. But thanks for the offer." He headed back to Robbery.
There was now nothing to do but wait for the lab results to come back, so Wallace suggested coffee at Starbucks. The men wandered down the street, ordered and sat sipping the drinks, as Wallace pumped Carter for information about breaking into fiction writing, and Altman simply enjoyed the feel of the hot sun on his face.
The men's recess ended abruptly, though, fifteen minutes later when Altman's cell phone rang.
"Detective," came the enthusiastic voice of his youthful assistant, Josh Randall, "we've got a match! The handwriting in one of Mr. Carter's fan letters matches the notes in the margins of the book. The ink's the same too."
The detective said, "Please tell me there's a name and address on the letter."
"You bet there is. Howard Desmond's his name. And his place is over in Warwick." A small town twenty minutes from the sites of both of the Greenville Strangler's attacks.
The detective told his assistant to pull together as much information on Desmond as he could. He snapped the phone shut and, grinning, announced, "We've found him. We've got our copycat."
But, as it turned out, they didn't have him at all.
At least not the flesh-and-blood suspect.
Single, forty-two-year-old Howard Desmond, a veterinary technician, had skipped town six months before, leaving in a huge hurry. One day he'd called his landlord and announced that he was moving. He'd left virtually overnight, abandoning everything in the apartment but his valuables. There was no forwarding address. Altman had hoped to go through whatever he'd left behind but the landlord explained that he'd sold everything to make up for the lost rent. What didn't sell he'd thrown out. The detective called the state public records departments to see if they had any information about him.
Altman spoke to the vet in whose clinic Desmond had worked and the doctor's report was similar to the landlord's. In April Desmond had called and quit his job, effective immediately, saying only that he was moving to Oregon to take care of his elderly grandmother. He'd never called back with a forwarding address for his last check, as he said he would.
The vet described Desmond as quiet and affectionate to the animals in his care but with little patience for people.
Altman contacted the authorities in Oregon and found no record of any Howard Desmonds in the DMV files or on the property or income tax rolls. A bit more digging revealed that all of Desmond's grandparents--his parents too--had died years before; the story about the move to Oregon was apparently a complete lie.
The few relatives the detective could track down confirmed that he'd just disappeared and they didn't know where he might be. They echoed his boss's assessment, describing the man as intelligent but a recluse, one who--significantly--loved to read and often lost himself in novels, appropriate for a killer who took his homicidal inspiration from a book.
"What'd his letter to Andy say?" Wallace asked.
With an okaying nod from Altman, Randall handed it to the reporter, who then summarized out loud. "He asks how Mr. Carter did the research for his book. What were the sources he used? How did he learn about the most efficient way a murderer would kill someone? And he's curious about the mental makeup of a killer. Why did some people find it easy to kill while others couldn't possibly hurt anyone?"
Altman shook his head. "No clue as to where he might've gone. We'll get his name into NCIC and VICAP but, hell, he could be anywhere. South America, Europe, Singapore . . ."
Since Bob Fletcher's Robbery Division would've handled the vandalism at the Greenville Library's Three Pines branch, which they now knew Desmond was responsible for, Altman sent Randall to ask the sergeant if he'd found any leads as part of the investigation that would be helpful.
The other men found themselves staring at Desmond's fan letter as if it were a corpse at a wake, silence surrounding them.
Altman's phone rang and he took the call. It was the county clerk, who explained that Desmond owned a small vacation home about sixty miles from Greenville, on the shores of Lake Muskegon, tucked into the backwater, piney wilderness.
"You think he's hiding out there?" Wallace asked.
"I say we go find out. Even if he's hightailed it out of the state, though, there could be some leads there as to where he did go. Maybe airline receipts or something, notes, phone message on an answering machine."
Wallace grabbed his jacket and his reporter's notebook. "Let's go."
"No, no, no," Quentin Altman said firmly. "You get an exclusive. Yo
u don't get to go into the line of fire."
"Nice of you to think of me," Wallace said sourly.
"Basically I just don't want to get sued by your newspaper if Desmond decides to use you for target practice."
The reporter gave a scowl and dropped down into an officer chair.
Josh Randall returned to report that Sergeant Bob Fletcher had no helpful information in the library vandalism case.
But Altman said, "Doesn't matter. We've got a better lead. Suit up, Josh."
"Where're we going?"
"For a ride in the country. What else on a nice fall day like this?"
Lake Muskegon is a large but shallow body of water bordered by willow, tall grass and ugly pine. Altman didn't know the place well. He'd brought his family here for a couple of picnics over the years and he and Bob Fletcher had come to the lake once on a halfhearted fishing expedition, of which Altman had only vague memories: gray, drizzly weather and a nearly empty creel at the end of the day.
As he and Randall drove north through the increasingly deserted landscape he briefed the young man. "Now, I'm ninety-nine percent sure Desmond's not here. But what we're going to do first is clear the house--I mean closet by closet--and then I want you stationed in the front to keep an eye out while I look for evidence. Okay?"
"Sure, boss."
They passed Desmond's overgrown driveway and pulled off the road then eased into a stand of thick forsythia.
Together, the men cautiously made their way down the weedy drive toward the "vacation house," a dignified term for the tiny, shabby cottage sitting in a three-foot-high sea of grass and brush. A path had been beaten through the foliage--somebody had been here recently--but it might not have been Desmond; Altman had been a teenager once himself and knew that nothing attracts adolescent attention like a deserted house.
They drew their weapons and Altman pounded on the door, calling, "Police. Open up."
Silence.
He hesitated a moment, adjusted the grip on his gun and kicked the door in.
Filled with cheap, dust-covered furniture, buzzing with stuporous fall flies, the place appeared deserted. They checked the four small rooms carefully and found no sign of Desmond. Outside, they glanced in the window of the garage and saw that it was empty. Then Altman sent Randall to the front of the driveway to hide in the bushes and report anybody's approach.
He then returned to the house and began to search, wondering just how hot the cold case was about to become.
Two hundred yards from the driveway that led to Howard Desmond's cottage a battered, ten-year-old Toyota pulled onto the shoulder of Route 207 and then eased into the woods, out of sight of any drivers along the road.
A man got out and, satisfied that his car was well hidden, squinted into the forest, getting his bearings. He noticed the line of the brown lake to his left and figured the vacation house was in the ten-o'clock position ahead of him. Through dense underbrush like this it would take him about fifteen minutes to get to the place, he estimated.
That'd make the time pretty tight. He'd have to move as quickly as he could and still keep the noise to a minimum.
The man started forward but then stopped suddenly and patted his pocket. He'd been in such a hurry to get to the house he couldn't remember if he'd taken what he wanted from the glove compartment. But, yes, he had it with him.
Hunched over and picking his way carefully to avoid stepping on noisy branches, Gordon Wallace continued on toward the cabin where, he hoped, Detective Altman was lost in police work and would be utterly oblivious to his furtive approach.
The search of the house revealed virtually nothing that would indicate that Desmond had been here recently--or where the man might now be. Quentin Altman found some bills and cancelled checks. But the address on them was Desmond's apartment in Warwick.
He decided to check the garage, thinking he might come across something helpful the killer had tossed out of the car and forgotten about--maybe a sheet containing directions or a map or receipt.
Altman discovered something far more interesting than evidence, though; he found Howard Desmond himself.
That is to say, his corpse.
The moment Altman opened the old-fashioned double doors of the garage he detected the smell of decaying flesh. He knew where it had to be coming from: a large coal bin in the back. Steeling himself, he flipped up the lid.
The mostly skeletal remains of a man about six feet tall were inside, lying on his back, fully clothed. He'd been dead about six months--just around the time Desmond disappeared, Altman recalled.
DNA would tell for certain if this was the vet tech but Altman discovered the man's wallet in his hip pocket and, sure enough, the driver's license inside was Desmond's. DNA or dental records would tell for certain.
The man's skull was shattered; the cause of death was probably trauma to the head by a blunt object. There was no weapon in the bin itself but after a careful examination of the garage he found a heavy mallet wrapped in a rag and hidden in the bottom of a trash-filled oil drum. There were some hairs adhering to the mallet that resembled Desmond's. Altman set the tool on a workbench, wondering what the hell was going on.
Somebody had murdered the Strangler. Who? And why? Revenge?
But then Altman did one of the things he did best--let his mind run free. Too many detectives get an idea into their heads and can't see past their initial conclusions. Altman, though, always fought against this tendency and he now asked himself: But what if Desmond wasn't the Strangler?
They knew for certain that he was the one who'd underlined the passages in the library's copy of Two Deaths in a Small Town. But what if he'd done so after the killings? The letter Desmond had written to Carter was undated. Maybe--just like the reporter Gordon Wallace himself had done--he'd read the book after the murders and been struck by the similarity. He'd started to investigate the crime himself and the Strangler had found out and murdered him.
But then who was the killer?
Just like Gordon Wallace had done . . .
Altman felt another little tap in his far-ranging mind, as fragments of facts lined up for him to consider--facts that all had to do with the reporter. For instance, Wallace was physically imposing, abrasive, temperamental. At times he could be threatening, scary. He was obsessed with crime and he knew police and forensic procedures better than most cops, which also meant that he knew how to anticipate investigators' moves. (He'd sure blustered his way right into the middle of the reopened case just the other day, Altman reflected.) Wallace owned a Motorola police scanner and would've been able to listen in on calls about the victims. His apartment was a few blocks from the college where the first victim was killed.
The detective considered: Let's say that Desmond had read the passages, become suspicious and circled them, then made a few phone calls to find out more about the case. He might've called Wallace, who, as the Tribune's crime reporter, would be a logical source for more information.
Desmond had met with the reporter, who'd then killed him and hid the body here.
Impossible . . . Why, for instance, would Gordon have brought the book to the police's attention?
Maybe to preempt suspicion?
Altman returned to the disgusting, impromptu crypt once again to search it more carefully, trying to unearth some answers.
Gordon Wallace caught a glimpse of Altman in the garage.
The reporter had crept up to a spot only thirty feet away and was hiding behind a bush. The detective wasn't paying any attention to who might be outside, apparently relying on Josh Randall to alert him to intruders. The young detective was at the head of the driveway, a good two hundred feet away, his back to the garage.
Breathing heavily in the autumn heat, the reporter started through the grass in a crouch. He stopped beside the building and glanced into the side window fast, noting that Altman was standing over a coal bin in the rear of the garage, squinting at something in his hand.
Perfect, Wallace thought and, reac
hing into his pocket, eased to the open doorway, where his aim would be completely unobstructed.
The detective had found something in Desmond's wallet and was staring at it--a business card--when he heard the snap of a twig behind him and, alarmed, turned.
A silhouette of a figure was standing in the doorway. He seemed to be holding his hands at chest level.
Blinded by the glare, Altman gasped, "Who're--?"
A huge flash filled the room.
The detective stumbled backward, groping for his pistol.
"Damn," came a voice he recognized.
Altman squinted against the back lighting. "Wallace! You goddamn son of a bitch! What the hell're you doing here?"
The reporter scowled and held up the camera in his hand, looking just as unhappy as Altman. "I was trying to get a candid of you on the job. But you turned around. You ruined it."
"I ruined it? I told you not to come. You can't--"
"I've got a First Amendment right to be here," the man snapped. "Freedom of the press."
"And I've got a right to throw your ass in jail. This's a crime scene."
"Well, that's why I want the pictures," he said petulantly. Then he frowned. "What's that smell?" The camera sagged and the reporter started to breathe in shallow gasps. He looked queasy.
"It's Desmond. Somebody murdered him. He's in the coal bin."
"Murdered him? So he's not the killer?"
Altman lifted his radio and barked to Randall, "We've got visitors back here."
"What?"
"We're in the garage."
The young officer showed up a moment later, trotting fast. A disdainful look at Wallace. "Where the hell did you come from?"
"How'd you let him get past?" Altman snapped.
"Not his fault," the reporter said, shivering at the smell. "I parked up the road. How 'bout we get some fresh air?"