Opening Moves

  I was glad to follow up on this, but Fort Atkinson was an hour away. I asked Thorne, “If Griffin lives in Fort Atkinson, will that be a jurisdictional problem?”

  He deferred to Ralph who gave a knowing half grin. “That’s one of the advantages of having me here, bro. If Griffin’s selling crime scene tape from a homicide in Illinois, we have an interstate connection. And that means it’s under my jurisdiction.”

  He might have been stretching things a bit, but it worked for me.

  In the garage we found out that Radar had taken our cruiser, but Thorne signed off for Ralph and me to use an undercover sedan that was typically used on drug busts. Ralph asked him, “Has this guy Griffin ever surfaced before? Any priors?”

  “No. Thompson checked his record right off the bat. Apparently, he’s a celebrity in his own right in certain circles, though. An author named Heather Isle—she writes those true crime books—anyway, she uses him as one of her ‘expert’ sources.” Thorne turned to me. “You know her, right? The true crime writer?”

  “No, Saundra Weathers. A novelist. Writes mysteries. She lived in my hometown, back when we were kids.”

  “It was…” I could see him struggling to find the right words. “The Weathers’ tree house, right? Where you found—”

  “Not theirs, exactly. No. But it was next to their property.”

  Thorne knew this was a touchy subject for me and he let it go at that. “Well, go have a talk with Griffin. See what he can tell us about the police tape and how he knows it was from the scene of a ‘maneater.’”

  We briefly discussed the observations Ralph and I had come up with while we were at the restaurant and at my desk a few minutes ago. Thorne promised to assign the projects to the task force and contact us if they came up with anything, then he left, and Ralph and I climbed into the UC car. I called in to check Griffin’s DMV records and got his address.

  “So I’m curious,” Ralph said when I got off the radio. “What did you find in the tree house?”

  “I’ll tell you on the way.”

  Plainfield, Wisconsin

  Joshua caught hold of Adele Westin as she swayed, then supported her as she lost consciousness and drifted into his arms.

  He lowered her gently to the kitchen’s linoleum floor.

  The drugs he’d used on her were powerful and she didn’t wake up, not even when he brought out the pruning shears to get the item he’d decided to leave behind for her fiancé to show him how serious he was about his demands.

  He left the note detailing what needed to happen before five o’clock, and after placing the proof in the refrigerator that he had Adele, Joshua carried her to the Ford Taurus and laid her in the trunk.

  Then left for Milwaukee.

  For the train yards.

  Being mid-November in Wisconsin, it was starting to get dark early. Based on the drive time, he figured he’d be able to get started on her right when he needed to, just before the gloaming.

  20

  As I recount to Ralph the events surrounding the discovery in the tree house, it’s as if I’m reliving them all over again, so I do my best to detach myself from the emotions, to view the memories from another person’s point of view entirely…

  You’re a junior in high school.

  Leaves, dead and brown, swirl on the ground, then skitter around you and across the mountain bike trail in front of you, caught up in little whirlwinds of air. Tiny tornadoes of late fall.

  You pedal hard to try to outrun the impending storm.

  The trail skirts along the edge of the vast marsh outside of town. You’re on your way home after football practice and can’t help but think of what happened yesterday afternoon.

  You jump a root. Pick up speed.

  Everyone has been talking about the girl all day. Nothing like this has ever happened in your hometown. No one knows what to do.

  They haven’t said much on the news, just that Mindy Wells had been last seen leaving her school at about three p.m. Her home was six blocks away. She never made it. The police were checking out a lead on a blue van that had been seen nearby. That was all.

  At first, her mom thought that Mindy’s father had picked her up. Then, when he came home alone, they thought maybe her grandmother had her. The family was new to the area and there weren’t many other choices. But, no, when they checked, the grandmother didn’t have Mindy either.

  The police were called in and the rumors quickly spread that they were waiting for a ransom note, but from the beginning that hadn’t seemed right to you. The family wasn’t rich, and without a ransom demand, there aren’t too many reasons to kidnap a child.

  The water on the marsh becomes restless and choppy in anticipation of the coming storm. The angry wind scratches at your cheeks and gray steely clouds begin to drip rain onto your back.

  You head for the old county road along the edge of the marsh where it’ll be faster to get home.

  She’s an eleven-year-old girl. If you wanted to take her someplace where you could be alone with her, where would you go? A basement? An old barn? A shed? Somewhere that no one knew about, out here by the marsh?

  You think these things.

  You cannot help but think them.

  The sky is crisscrossed by the stark Vs of Canada geese heading south, or in some cases, settling for a few hours to rest on the brackish waters of the marsh. Even with the rain picking up, even above the sound of your wheels whisking across the damp leaves on the trail, you hear the geese honking.

  The police checked the neighborhood carefully but didn’t find anything. They brought one of the neighbors in for questioning but nothing came of that and they let him go almost immediately.

  Someone could have just driven up and forced the girl into a car and then taken off, that’s what people said. It could have been that easy. It could have been anything.

  But it wasn’t just anything that happened, it was something very specific that happened at that time on that street to that girl. To Mindy Wells. Something that had never happened before, not in that place, not in that way.

  The family is new to the area. She wouldn’t have gotten into the car with just anyone.

  She’s an eleven-year-old girl.

  You duck to avoid a branch. The tires of your mountain bike skid across a smear of mud, almost sending you off the trail. It rained yesterday afternoon, leaving the ground soggy. Most of the water has drained into the marsh, but it’ll take a few days for the ground to dry out completely. Now, however, with the rain picking up, it didn’t look like that was going to happen.

  You picture the street that leads from the school to Mindy’s house. You know it well, you’ve been on it any number of times, and as you think about it, you realize there’s one spot where a thick row of hedges would have hidden the view of the street from all of the neighbors’ homes.

  One spot. Four blocks from the school.

  A blind spot, and that term makes you think of football, of throwing downfield to your receivers. You have to know how to read the defense, how to pick your way past the cornerbacks, linebackers, and safeties, find their blind spots. It’s all about location and timing. Getting the ball to the right place on the field at exactly the right time to catch the defense off guard.

  The trail evens out, bending toward the dirt road you’ll use to take the shortcut home. It’s not far.

  Is that where it happened? Where she was abducted? By those hedges four blocks from school?

  If the person who took her had parked right there he could have forced her into his car and no one would have seen, overpowered her quickly, and no one would have known. There isn’t anywhere else on that street that’s hidden enough from view to do it without taking a big chance at being discovered. Nowhere else made sense.

  But that would mean the kidnapper knew the area well, knew that street well, knew exactly where to do it.

  A local.

  Maybe.

  Or someone who’d lived here.

  And if he k
new the area he would know where to take a girl. A place he could be alone with her.

  You feel a chill.

  The kids from your high school use the dirt road up ahead to get to an old tree house to party and hook up on the weekends. It overlooks the road as well as the marsh, so if you’re up there, you’re able to see anyone coming either by car or by jon boat.

  It’s a place where they know they can be alone. A place they know they won’t be interrupted by adults, or if someone does show up, they can get away before getting caught. You’ve biked past it. You know where it is.

  But unless a person knows where to look, it’s not easy to find.

  You arrive at the road. Pull your bike to a stop.

  The storm has arrived and the wind drives cold pellets of rain against your face. If it were ten degrees colder out, the rain would be snow.

  Besides the rutted older tracks, pressed into the mud of the road in front of you are two sets of fresher tire tracks from a vehicle with a wide wheelbase, a pickup or maybe an SUV. One set is shallower, and the orientation of the tread marks tells you that’s from the return trip south, back to town. The other set is deeper, made when the mud was fresh.

  You think about what you know, about the timing of the rain. It stopped in the middle of the afternoon yesterday, so that would mean someone drove out here during the rainstorm or shortly after it stopped, spent time here, and returned to town only after a substantial amount of the water had drained into the marsh.

  That would have taken several hours.

  Or maybe all night.

  A chill ripples through you. You stare at those tracks, thinking about the time frame, and after a short moment of deliberation, rather than take the road south toward home, you aim your bike north, toward the trail that leads to the tree house.

  It isn’t anything, it’s something—something specific that happened only once in only one way.

  If the driver knew the area, he might know about the tree house.

  Most people don’t know where that trail is.

  A local would, though.

  Yes, or someone who’d lived nearby.

  You pedal along the side of the road, paralleling the tire tracks, but even from a distance, even in the dreary day, you can see where they stop.

  Beside the trailhead to the tree house.

  You feel your heart beating faster, not just from the exertion of pedaling, but from apprehension of what you fear might be waiting at the end of that trail.

  You arrive, park your bike. Lean it against a tree.

  After a moment you start walking along the path, into the woods.

  A rush of adrenaline courses through you and your imagination plays out what might have happened.

  One moment you’re seeing things through the eyes of the kidnapper and the next through the eyes of the girl. It’s startling how detailed you see everything. Not in bursts and blurs like some sort of psychic might, but in full color because you know the area and can imagine how things might have gone down.

  Clarity.

  Just like when you’re on the football field, when everything slows down and you see it all without seeing, when you know where your receiver is going to be without consciously thinking about it. Time slows and you seem to slip through its seams, respond between the moments, pausing between the beats of your heart. Then you thread the needle. Move the ball down the field. Timing and location.

  Clarity.

  You’re a girl, new to the area, walking home from school…There’s a man grabbing you…forcing you into his blue van…driving you out here…where no one will disturb him…

  No, you don’t know if what you see in your mind really happened, but if it did, if—

  You pass an old fire pit that’s been here for years, one that’s always littered with discarded beer cans and charred logs. Today glass shards from several broken Jack Daniel’s bottles lie strewn across the leaves at the base of a log the kids sit on by the fire.

  Nearby, you notice that the leaves are matted down from yesterday’s rain, but the ones on the trail are kicked up. Maybe from someone walking through here—

  Or from the girl, from being dragged through the woods, struggling, kicking, trying to get free…

  Your heart somehow both tenses and races at the same time.

  Through the bare forest you see the tree house ahead of you. It’s perched on the muscular branches of an aging oak and you think of “The Monkey’s Paw,” the short story by W. W. Jacobs that you had to read for English lit. last year. The branches of the oak curl around the tree house like a gnarled hand clutching a talisman.

  “Hello?” you call.

  Silence.

  The tree house is forty feet away.

  “Mindy?”

  Nothing. No reply.

  You gaze around again at the empty, lonely forest, then use your hand to shield your eyes from the slanting rain, and walk to the base of the tree.

  There’s no ladder per se, just horizontal boards nailed to the trunk to form the rungs that lead to the platform that encircles the tree house. There’s a narrow west-facing window that an occasional hunter will slide his shotgun barrel through when he uses this tree house as an impromptu blind to try to take down the geese settling onto the marsh.

  Around to the other side is the opening you’ll have to crawl through to access the tree house.

  As you climb, you catch yourself wondering if it would be possible to carry a girl up these rungs.

  If she were draped over your shoulders. If you were strong. If she were unconscious.

  Getting her off your shoulders at the top and then sliding her onto the platform would certainly be difficult, but you decide that, yes, it would be possible.

  You reach the top rung, ease onto the landing, then glance back. From this height you have a clear view of both the road and the marsh.

  If someone came here last night he would’ve seen headlights coming this way long before they reached the trailhead. It would have given him plenty of time to slip away.

  Your heart is hammering as you traverse the narrow platform, round the corner, and come to the opening that leads into the tree house itself.

  It’s a dark, square mouth two feet high and two feet wide. You’ll need to get on your hands and knees to crawl inside.

  But then you’ll see. Then you’ll know. Then you’ll see that there’s nothing here, and the police will do their job and find Mindy Wells at a friend’s house or something, and then everything will get back to normal and you’ll be able to focus on football again, on the state semifinals coming up this weekend. Everyone will be able to take a deep breath and forget that any of this misunderstanding ever happened.

  You hear the rain splattering and tip-tapping on the roof of the tree house. Hollow. Indistinct. A rapid wet drumbeat.

  And so.

  You kneel.

  And look into the room.

  What little light has slipped in is shrouded by the cloudy, rainy day, but you immediately see that the tree house is not empty. Leaning with her back against the far wall, staring blankly at you, clothes missing, her legs tucked beneath her on the bare wooden planks, her hands on her lap, her wrists tightly bound with rough cord, is the girl.

  Mindy Wells.

  A terrible, terrible shiver runs through you. Your throat tightens. “Mindy?”

  She doesn’t move. Doesn’t respond.

  Only the sound of rain drumming above you.

  You know how to check for a pulse—last spring your track coach had you monitor your heart rate when you did wind sprints. And even though you know it’s too late, you know it is, it must be, you realize you have to find out. You can’t leave without knowing for sure. You need to see if she is still alive.

  As you crawl into the tree house, your heart seems to have knotted up solid inside your chest.

  When you reach Mindy, it takes you a few seconds to work up the nerve, but then you press two fingers against her neck. Her skin has a damp, doughy f
eel.

  There’s no pulse and the coolness of the flesh makes the fact that she’s dead seem all the more real.

  You’re careful not to disturb anything so it won’t throw off the police when they investigate things, but for some reason covering her nakedness seems like the right thing to do, the least you can do for her, so before you leave, you take off your jacket and drape it gently over her chest and lap. She’s not a large girl and your coat is big enough to at least offer her a small degree of modesty.

  Her name was Mindy Wells.

  She was eleven years old when she was raped and killed in your hometown and left in that tree house by the marsh.

  They never found her killer.

  But you’re the one who found her body on that rainy day the week of the state football semifinals back when you were a junior in high school.

  I finished telling Ralph the story and he said nothing, just sat beside me in the car in stony silence.

  Initially, I thought he might do what others had done over the years and jump to the conclusion that finding Mindy was what’d led me on the path to eventually enter law enforcement. But he didn’t. Instead, he just leveled a hard gaze out the window and remained quiet.

  It was another five miles before he spoke, his voice brusque and unyielding. “Kids are the worst.”

  “Yeah, they are.”

  “And you were only sixteen when you found her?”

  “Yes.”

  He looked at me then. “That must have been terrible.”

  “It was.”

  It still is.

  “And they never caught the scumbag who did it?”

  I shook my head and then we were silent again. I didn’t tell him that the guy had also killed at least one other young girl, Jenna Natara, the one whose death had invaded my dreams last night. It didn’t seem like the right time to get into all that.

  Once again he watched the bleak, brown countryside that was brushed with light snow pass by the window. Glancing toward him, I saw him brush a finger beneath his right eye and I wondered how many times he’d been called in on cases with children as the victims.