Mind you, my only goal tonight was to enjoy a burger and a ball game while on the road to my next project. I had no designs on Luther or Tammy or anyone else in this bar. But a good quarterback calls an audible when the opportunity presents itself. When the cornerbacks are creeping up and there’s no deep safety, the quarterback calls a fly pattern and goes for the touchdown, does he not?
Of course he does. And Luther and Tammy may be too good for me to pass up. Luther, because he won’t shut the hell up about stuff he doesn’t understand nearly as well as he thinks he does, and he has nice big kneecaps that are probably very sensitive to the touch. And Tammy, because underneath those red locks, she has a nice round head. And she has a big, throaty voice that is going to sound nothing short of delicious when she starts begging.
Yes, an audible, then.
Gotta run, folks. Time to be sociable.
[END]
32
THE KITCHEN in which I’m sitting in Aurora, Illinois, is so quiet you can hear the refrigerator humming, the water dripping from the sink. Gretchen Swanson is a petite woman, with a slump to her shoulders and a lined face, a thick head of curly hair, Santa Claus white, combed neatly. Her eyes are scanning something off in the distance, out a window and over a quarter-acre backyard. I don’t know if she is pondering everything I’ve said to her or if she’s thinking about her daughter, who probably played back there on that now-dilapidated swing set, or swung in the tire that still hangs from the big oak tree.
The kitchen is lit brightly, but a dark pall hangs over everything here, as if something rotten has infested this once-vibrant house, coloring the egg-yellow walls a dingy beige, turning Gretchen’s warm radiance into a despairing reserve. I recall experiencing that sensation after Marta died, how obscene any object of beauty seemed. How dare something be luminous and pretty, I would think, in the midst of such pain and suffering. How dare those people walking down the street laugh and smile. How dare the sky be such a magnificent periwinkle blue.
I look back down at the kitchen table and jump at the sight of a large cockroach. It’s only after I’ve scooted back my chair that I realize it isn’t real; it’s just an ornamental piece, a porcelain figurine. Who would have a porcelain cockroach?
“Sorry,” says Gretchen. “We’ve had that thing for years. Joelle loved it. She…” Gretchen looks off into space again. “When she was a child, she heard that song, ‘La Cucaracha’? You know that song? La cucara-CHA, La cucara-CHA?”
“Sure, of course,” I say with a smile.
“Oh, she heard that on the radio one time when she was just a little one, maybe three or four years old. She started dancing and trying to snap her fingers along with the music. Her little blond curls were bouncing everywhere.” Gretchen allows a smile at the memory. “After that, my husband, Earl, always called her ‘my little cucaracha.’ When she was little, she couldn’t pronounce it. She’d say she was his little cuckoo-clock-ah.”
Gretchen grimaces at the thought, comforting and painful all at once. I stifle my own memories—hours after I received the news, my mother and I waiting for the flight to Phoenix, my mother drinking one Bloody Mary after another at the airport bar while our plane was delayed. All that time, I wondered if there had been some mistake, that infinitesimal possibility that some signal was crossed, that my sister was traveling somewhere overnight and had someone house-sitting for her, that the burned body in her house was not her, that we’d show up at her house in Peoria that night and Marta would walk up in some athletic outfit and backpack and say, What are you guys doing here? Did something happen?
I don’t dare move now, don’t so much as rattle the ice in the glass of lemonade sitting before me. Don’t so much as breathe.
Gretchen closes her eyes and gives a quiet shake of her head—the appropriate response, I came to learn, for such bereavement. It’s so overpowering, so incomprehensible, that trying to make any sense of it whatsoever is futile. You just shake your head and cry.
“All right, Emmy,” she says. I don’t even see her lips move.
I close my eyes, too, and say a quiet prayer. Then I push the paperwork in front of her and hand her a pen. I thank her with a long, warm hug that devolves into tears from both of us.
When I get outside, I click on my smartphone and call the assistant state’s attorney in DuPage County with whom I’ve made contact, a man named Feller.
“Joelle Swanson’s mother just consented to the exhumation,” I say, somewhat alarmed at the enthusiasm in my voice. I’ve been working this guy Feller for the last two days, finally extracting from him, at close of business yesterday, this promise: if you can get the mother to exhume, we’ll get our ME to autopsy her.
As soon as I end that call, I make another one, to a prosecutor in Champaign County, a woman named Lois Rose, who welcomes my call like she’d welcome a kidney stone.
“DuPage County is exhuming Joelle Swanson for an autopsy,” I say to her. “And your guy, Curtis Valentine, isn’t even in the ground yet.”
“Thanks to you, Emmy,” she reminds me. The Valentine family held a memorial service for Curtis in Champaign yesterday—closed casket, obviously—but, at my urging, agreed to hold off on the actual burial for a few days.
“C’mon, Lois. If they’re convinced enough in DuPage to unearth a body, why can’t you guys just move a body from a funeral home to a morgue?”
I pause, alarmed at my callous reference to a body. My sister was a body, too.
Lois Rose makes a noise on her end of the phone, a harsh exhale of air. “Did anyone ever tell you you’re persistent?”
“Once or twice, yes.”
“If I get our ME to do this autopsy, will you stop calling me?”
I actually laugh. And when the call is over, I pause at my rental car and squeeze my fists so tight I fear I might break a bone in my fingers.
“Finally,” I whisper.
Finally, an autopsy—two, in fact—to get the proof we need for the boys at the Hoover Building to give us a team, an army to hunt this monster.
33
* * *
“Graham Session”
Recording # 9
September 5, 2012
* * *
Okay, I have something very important to discuss with you tonight. I thought it could wait but it can’t. So when we last visited yesterday evening, I was at a bar in Grand Island and they were playing a college football game on ESPN Classic with the Houston Cougars from two years ago. You may recall I mentioned a man named Luther, Luther Feagley, sitting two stools down with this woman he was trying to impress, a real beauty named Tammy Duffy? Anyway, after I ended our session, Luther starts prattling on to the fair Tammy about this fancy offense that Houston runs called the run-and-shoot. And Luther, he’s sounding like quite the professor, a real academician he is, a man of letters, telling her how the run-and-shoot features four wide receivers, with the quarterback throwing the ball on every down.
So you can imagine, it got me a little hot under the collar.
Houston did not run a run-and-shoot offense. It was a spread offense. There’s a difference. There are many differences, actually.
The run-and-shoot was developed to maximize the quarterback’s options, which include running—thus, run and shoot. Typically, the QB does a half roll or a sprint out from the pocket, attacking the corner, enabling him to run if necessary. And the receivers usually call their own route based on the defense they see. So it’s a very dynamic offense, with a fair amount of running.
[Editor’s note: sounds of a man’s voice, muted, as if gagged, attempting to speak in a high-pitched voice.]
Quiet now, Luther. I’m not talking to you. Does it look like I’m talking to you? I’m talking about you. That’s not the same as talking to you. Do you understand there’s a difference, Luther?
My apologies; my friend has to learn some manners. Now, the spread offense, there’s nothing magical about it. You just place your receivers all across the field to spread out the
defense and create better passing lanes. It’s not as improvisational.
So I tried to be polite about it. I tried to make the point to Mr. Luther Feagley that Houston ran the spread offense, and this Rhodes Scholar here, this highly cultured member of the intelligentsia, this venerable sage who roams the earth espousing great wisdom, he decides to talk down to me like I’m some single-cell organism. Do you know what your mistake was, Luther? Do you? If you guess correctly, I’ll give you back your teeth. Some of them, at least. The top ones.
No? Flustered, are we? Your mistake was insulting someone you don’t know. I looked like a nice, normal, harmless guy, didn’t I?
I’m going to have to put down the recorder—no, wait, I’ll clip it to my Windbreaker…okay, good, you can still hear me…come here now, my love…
[Editor’s note: sounds of a woman’s muffled cries continue throughout the remainder of this recording.]
You’re…heavier than…I thought…there. Phew!
Okay, Miss Tammy Duffy, we’re going to have some fun. Let me…get you…more comfortable first. Come on, now, don’t fight me…[Inaudible] making this any easier…
I wasn’t expecting this detour, I can tell you that, Luther. I was going to have a burger at the bar last night and watch some classic football and be on my merry way. But I called an audible because you’re such a horse’s ass.
And I’m going to give you a choice, Professor Run-and-Shoot. I can kill you first, or you can have a front-row seat to what I do to Tammy before I deal with you.
Tough decision? Okay, then the front row it is. I suppose on the plus side for you, it will be an extra thirty minutes of life. That’s what you guys all desperately cling to, right? Every last breath?
Well, when you’re done watching what I do to Tammy, you’ll be rethinking that decision.
[END]
34
I PUSH myself away from my computer and stare at the clock. It’s past five o’clock now. Where are they? My feet drum the floor. My brain is having trouble focusing. I’m supposed to be swimming through the sea of data in NIBRS for unsolved arsons or suspicious fires but I can’t concentrate, not when we’re this close now. Each of them, Champaign and DuPage counties, promised me autopsy results by five o’clock. Well, it’s past five, people—where are you?
I walk over to Books’s office. Sophie Talamas is in the chair on the other side of his desk, scooted forward so that she and Books can speak to each other quietly, each of them with their elbows on the desktop, their heads only inches apart. There’s a familiarity between them, a subtle intimacy in their body language. I don’t need to be hit over the head to see it. A blind monkey could see the chemistry between them.
When they spot me, they withdraw from each other. Each of them leans back instead of forward, opening up to me with looks on their faces that tell me I wasn’t expected. I wish I could just backpedal out of the room, but that would make everything even more awkward.
“Did you get the forensics yet?” Books asks, recovering.
I shake my head and raise my smartphone. “Any minute, I assume.”
“Come in. Sit down.”
Sophie moves her chair back and makes the seat next to her available.
“Did you work through last night’s fires?” I ask her. I’ve given her the assignment that I’ve been doing for the last year, monitoring websites and signing up for breaking-news e-mails to monitor all the fires that occur throughout the day, hunting for the next kill committed by our subject.
“Yes,” she says. “Nothing from yesterday or last night.”
I nod reluctantly. I can’t be sure she’s good at this yet. I’d double-check her work if I had the time. We’re a four-person operation doing the work of a dozen.
“I was just explaining to Sophie about our jurisdictional issue,” Books says without prompting, probably reading my facial expression.
I nod, as if I believe him. The way they were huddled together, the way they drew back when they saw me—I don’t think a jurisdictional issue was the topic of conversation.
The FBI doesn’t have jurisdiction over this case until it crosses state lines, and even if we can establish murders in Champaign and Lisle, Illinois, no state line has been crossed. So unless the locals ask for our help, we are out of luck. It’s a hurdle for us, but all we have right now are hurdles, so it has to get in line.
“I didn’t mean to interrupt,” I say.
“Don’t be silly,” says Books with too much enthusiasm. “Come in.”
Saved by the bell. The bell on my phone, for incoming e-mails. I look to see what the message is.
“Joelle Swanson’s autopsy,” I say.
35
I PULL up the e-mail on my desktop, where the report from the DuPage County Coroner’s Office will be easier to read. I’ve only read one forensic pathology report in my life and it was from a different jurisdiction, so this isn’t my bread and butter. But like the last one I read—probably like all of them—there is a summary conclusion at the end that wraps up, in as close to layman’s terms as possible, what the coroner found with regard to the death of Joelle Swanson of Lisle, Illinois. I flip to it and hold my breath.
Fire investigators have found no evidence of deliberate cause in the fire itself, concluding that the fire was caused by a burning candle in the decedent’s bedroom that ignited the curtains and spread throughout the upper story of her townhouse.
“Right,” I mumble. We always knew that. He made it look like an accidental fire. That’s no surprise. Now for the forensics.
The presence of clear soot deposition on tracheal mucosa and the dorsum of the tongue is consistent with the decedent being alive at the time of the fire and inhaling smoke and other toxic chemicals. The soft tissue and blood in the recoverable organs was cherry red, which is typically evident with carboxyhemoglobin levels above 30 percent and is therefore indicative of inhalation of toxic levels of carbon monoxide and cyanide.
“That can’t be right,” I say. She breathed in the smoke, they’re saying. Joelle was alive when the fire started?
These findings are compared against a lack of any evidence of injuries on the decedent’s body caused by blunt trauma or other external force besides the heat generated by the fire.
No evidence of stab wounds or gunshots or anything like that. Nothing that couldn’t be explained by flames or the intense heat generated by them.
“No,” I say.
Based on the findings above, it is concluded that the manner of death was ACCIDENTAL, and the cause of death was asphyxiation as a result of smoke inhalation during a fire.
“No!” I shout, pounding the keyboard on one side, causing it to flip in the air and fall off the side of the desk, dangling from its plug connector.
“Bad news?” Books has appeared in the doorway.
“It’s wrong,” I say. “It can’t be right. This can’t be right.”
I stagger out of my chair and put my head against the wall, staring at the floor. Books walks over to my desk and reads the report on my computer.
“Jeez, I’m sorry, Emmy.”
My phone beeps again, another e-mail. I don’t move. My head stays against the wall, my eyes focused on the floor.
“There should be another e-mail in my in-box,” I say. “My guess is, it’s the report from the Champaign County coroner.”
“Hang on.” Books gathers the keyboard back up and works the mouse. “Yep. It’s right here.”
“Read it for me, would you, Books?” I close my eyes as time passes, as the memories slap me in the face, the argument with my mother after Marta’s death.
Something’s not right, I said to her. We should have them perform an autopsy.
Why, Emmy? Because you think her bed was in a different spot than it was a month ago when you visited?
I don’t think it, I know it. Whatever, Mom—I’m suspicious. I think we should—
You think we should let them cut up my baby and pull out all her organs? You don’t t
hink she’s suffered enough from the burning? You want them to chop her up like some science experiment? I won’t do it.
“Damn,” Books says quietly. “Damn.”
“Don’t say it,” I tell him.
“I’m sorry, Em. It’s almost the exact same report as from DuPage. The Champaign County coroner finds Curtis Valentine’s manner of death to be accidental, caused by smoke inhalation.”
I feel him upon me now. He puts his hands on my shoulders.
“Don’t. Don’t touch me.” I wiggle free, walk to the other side of the room. “They’re wrong. Don’t you see that? They’re both wrong!”
Books breaks eye contact with me, stuffs his hands in the pockets of his suit pants. He doesn’t see that, of course. What he sees is a woman stubbornly clinging to a truth that isn’t true at all, a little girl insisting that the Tooth Fairy is real.
“I’m sorry,” he says again. “I’m really sorry.”
36
* * *
“Graham Session”
Recording # 10
September 7, 2012
* * *
I’m looking at this boy. He’s five, maybe six. He has brown eyes and messy, unwashed hair and blue jeans. He’s shoeless, but they all are; it’s a requirement for the kids’ play area, the Rocky Mountain Play Park, inside this shopping mall. The parents are sitting around the perimeter, chatting with one another or sipping their Starbucks lattes or shouting at their kids to play nice or slow down or keep an eye on your little sister.