Don’t Talk to Strangers: A Novel Read online

  “To be perfectly honest, Dr. Street, my investigators didn’t make any headway when the second vic disappeared eight months ago,” Sheriff Meltzer told me. “APD says you’re a good investigator and a good profiler. I could use both right now. Can you take a few days? You’d be on our dime, of course.”

  “Would you mind holding while I check the schedule?” I hit the HOLD button. I didn’t check the schedule. I didn’t do anything but watch the vein in my wrist tick, tick, ticking. I was thinking about the kind of killer who would kidnap and murder young girls. I was thinking about the thing that frightens me and tugs at me, pulls me like a magnetic field—the calculating mind of a killer.

  “What’s the time line on the subpoenas?” I asked Latisha.

  “The deposition is five weeks away.”

  “Okay, so I can get them out next week,” I said.

  “You have to,” Latisha warned. “Folks have to be given a reasonable timeframe to prepare.”

  “There’s nothing here we can’t handle for a couple days, I guess,” Neil said.

  I released the HOLD button. “Sheriff, would you mind sending the lab reports and scene photos? I’d like to review them tonight and call you in the morning.” I gave him my email address. “You didn’t mention how long the first victim had been out there.”

  “About a decade, according to the forensic anthropologist.”

  “And the second girl for eight months?”

  “Closer to sixty days.”

  I sat forward. “But she disappeared eight months ago? She was held for six months before she was murdered.”

  “The first victim disappeared a year before she was killed,” the sheriff told me quietly. “Dr. Street, we’re not bad cops down here, but we don’t understand this kind of monster. And we don’t understand how someone held these girls without detection.”

  “Speaking in broad terms, Sheriff, offenders who kidnap and imprison their victims tend to be sexual sadists. Their gratification comes in dehumanizing their victims. In children and young adults dependency on the captor is created fairly quickly. The offender is generally the only human contact the victim has. Every scrap of food, every drink of water, every glimpse of sunlight depends on the generosity of their jailer. Lot of power in that for someone who craves it. And prisoners don’t always run away or scream when there’s an opportunity. Sometimes it’s about traumatic bonding. Usually the offender has made threats. They’re told no one will believe them, that he will find them, that their family will die, their pets will be murdered. Neighbors don’t always know what’s going on. Look at what Ariel Castro did in Cleveland. It’s twenty feet to the next house and he held three women in his homemade dungeon for a decade.”

  “Like I said, we don’t understand this kind of monster,” the sheriff said. “But we do realize we’re dealing with the same suspect since we have the same disposal site, which is why I’m calling you.”

  “I assume you checked family members and local sex offenders?”

  “It’s the first place we looked. Brought in a few for questioning. Cleared the families. And in my experience it’s not the registered offenders you have to worry about. They know they’re the first ones we’re going to shake when something happens. The system does work sometimes.”

  “And you haven’t wanted to reach out to the Bureau. Why?”

  “Whisper is a little outside the touristy areas around the lake. It’s quiet. Hardworking, private people. Having the Feds around isn’t going to do anything to put the community at ease.”

  “The Bureau makes a good partner, Sheriff. They have resources.”

  “This is our case,” he told me, and even though I didn’t know him, I knew he wasn’t going to take my advice. “We want to see it through ourselves if we can.”

  Most cops feel that way. Especially in small towns. It’s personal for them. I didn’t think it was smart, but I understood it. “I’ll go over the files and speak with you in the morning, Sheriff.”

  “Look forward to it, Dr. Street.”

  3

  I read the names on the email from a sheriff I didn’t know in central Georgia. Tracy Anne Davidson. Melinda Jane Cochran. I tried to remember my life at thirteen. I thought about boys, sports, my friends, fitting in, kissing, what to wear. I was happily and completely absorbed by my own narrow teenage world. My brother Jimmy left school when the bell rang, so I walked home alone after practice. Nothing bad happens in good neighborhoods, right? How easy it would have been for someone to approach me, trick me, and snatch me out of my life, my parents’ life. It’s hard to even consider the kind of wreckage that would have left behind. Or the suffering the families of these two girls had endured, first having their children vanish and then coming to terms with the lost hope they would be found alive when their bodies turned up in some remote crater in Georgia’s red clay earth.

  I opened an attachment with copies of the reports from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation lab and sent them to the printer in the outer office. I followed with the photographs from the disposal site, and glanced up from my desk when Neil groaned in his desk chair. I carried my laptop to the conference table. “You have time to give me a hand?”

  “Are you kidding? I’m so frigging bored I’m ready to assign sex offender ratings to the Super Nannies staff.”

  Super Nannies On Call was one of our regular clients. We ran thorough background checks on their applicants. It was a thousand or so a month that I very much wanted to keep. Neil’s overdeveloped technological know-how and frequent bouts with boredom were a recipe for mischief. The combination had been his undoing in the past and nearly landed him in jail. “Actually, that’s exactly where I want to start—registered sex offenders in Hitchiti County and the surrounding area, level two and three. They would have needed access to the area in the last eleven years. Let’s also look at offenders who came back into the area in the last two years. Melinda disappeared a little over eight months ago so she was probably active on social media. Latisha, get Sheriff Meltzer back on the phone for me.”

  Latisha did as I asked and put the sheriff on speaker. “Sheriff Meltzer, sorry to bother you. Quick question. Have you checked to see if Melinda Cochran had social media sites?”

  “She did,” the sheriff told me. “But her parents don’t know the password and our tech guy hasn’t been able to get in. All we’re able to see currently is her profile picture. We’ve started the warrants necessary to get admin privileges but it’s not moving as fast as we’d like.”

  I glanced at Neil. He gave me a thumbs-up. Okay, so sometimes we walk a crooked line in regard to privacy. Welcome to the private sector. “Thanks for your time, Sheriff. I’ll speak to you in the morning.” I disconnected, looked at Neil. “Their suspect is local. I can almost guarantee it.”

  “Wonder where he held them,” Neil said. “I mean it can’t be that easy to hide a live girl.”

  “I don’t like being around when y’all start talking about some guy in the basement making him a girl suit,” Latisha said. “I done saw that movie.”

  “They made a book out of it too,” Neil said, and winked at me.

  Latisha rubbed her arms like she had a chill. “That man had a dog named Precious. Okay? I will never be able to forget that.”

  “Break down Melinda’s Twitter follows and Facebook friends for me once you get in,” I told Neil. “Kids, adults, family, locals, and out-of-towners. And get whatever contact info you can on them. We’ll pass it on to the sheriff’s department.”

  “You’re sounding a lot like you’re going to take the job,” Neil said.

  “If he looks anything like he sounds,” Latisha said, “I’ll take it.”

  “Whether I take it or not, let’s contribute what we can,” I told Neil. He looked at me. I knew what he was thinking. He didn’t like the police consulting work. The last two jobs had turned sour. A serial murderer had nearly killed me last year, and Neil was still nursing a limp from a bullet that pinged off our concrete docks s
ix weeks ago when the subject of an investigation wanted to warn me off.

  “Okay,” he said, finally, and swiveled around to face his computer. “Registered offenders and social media.”

  “Latisha, how about you go with me to check on Larry Quinn’s slip-and-fall.” Latisha brightened. Neil looked at me as if a cabbage had just popped out of my nose. “What?” I said. “She has to learn the ropes. She can handle it. If we don’t get anything today, you can do a couple of shifts on your own tomorrow.”

  “Do I get to carry a gun?” Latisha asked.

  I laughed. “Good Lord, no.” I cleaned out the printer tray, put the sheriff’s reports in a manila folder. My phone went off. Rauser’s ringtone. Aerosmith’s “Dude (Looks Like a Lady).”

  “Miss me?” Rauser’s gravelly voice had years of cheap bourbon and cigarettes in it. “I mean it’s been four hours. You don’t think the day-to-day is killing the romance, do you?”

  “It depends,” I said. “You still mad? Because I gotta tell you that’s not exactly an aphrodisiac.” Neil handed me a parabolic microphone and hung a camera on my shoulder.

  “That was icy,” Rauser said. “I just got a chill.”

  “Is there something I can do for you, Lieutenant?”

  I heard phones ringing in the background, voices. The homicide room was hopping as usual. “Can you go home and give Hank a pee break?”

  “Speaking of killing the romance,” I said. Hank is a white miniature poodle who once belonged to a serial killer. I’m still deciding if this makes Rauser more or less attractive to me. A masculine guy who is kind to animals really tugs at my heart. Holding Hank up in the air and baby-talking him, well, not so much.

  “I’m slammed,” Rauser said. “I’ll do it tomorrow. I promise.”

  “I think we need to hire that pet-sitter we interviewed last week,” I told him. “She could give him a nice walk in the middle of the day. Maybe it will calm him down.”

  “You think she’ll come back? He humped her leg during the entire interview.”

  “I think she liked it,” I said, and Rauser chuckled. The vet had warned us it might take Hank a few weeks after being neutered to get over his, well, hormonal urges. He wasn’t there yet. “I have to run by and switch cars anyway. I’ll take him out. But call the sitter today, okay? I may need to go out of town.”

  “Sheriff Meltzer called you?”

  “He did. You know him?”

  “Nah. The major told me he’d referred you. What’s it about?”

  “Two dead girls,” I answered. “Ten years apart. Same disposal site.”

  “Uh-oh,” Rauser said. He understood the implications very well. A killer had been free in central Georgia for at least a decade. “So you’re taking the job?”

  “I want to look over the files tonight before I decide.”

  “Which means you’re taking it.” Rauser disconnected.

  I pulled into the garage at the Georgian Terrace Hotel with the top down and Latisha in the passenger’s seat. “I’m just going to put the equipment in the Neon and take Hank outside for a minute,” I told her. “Then we can go. Come upstairs and wait inside. You’re okay with animals, right?”

  “I don’t like it when they lick me. Will they lick me?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She looked at my dingy, banged-up white Plymouth. “We’re gonna sit in that thing all day?”

  “It’s important to be inconspicuous.”

  “Ah,” Latisha said as we pushed through the double doors at the Georgian Terrace and headed for the elevator. “Stealth.”

  “Exactly.”

  I heard Hank’s toenails on my wood floor as soon as I opened the door to my tenth-floor loft. Hank is a dancer when he’s excited. But he wasn’t dancing today. He was limping. I swept the room for White Trash and saw her perched on the bar between the kitchen and living room. I knelt down to Hank. “Did you have another spat?” Spat is code for White Trash kicking his ass again. I inspected his paws and shoulders and face and could not find a mark on him. His eyes looked okay.

  “Eeeww,” Latisha said. She was standing over me. “His thing is out. Like all the way out.”

  I stood him up on his hind legs and looked under him. “Wow. I’ve actually never seen anything like that. That’s not good.”

  “Ya think? No wonder the cat’s up there like that. Look into her eyes, Keye. That cat has seen some shit here today.”

  I put Hank down. He hung his head. “I think he’s in pain.” I found the vet’s number on a refrigerator magnet, held on until someone could get an overworked vet tech to the phone. I then awkwardly described the emergency. When I hung up, I told Latisha, “We need to get it unstuck.”

  “That’s not in my job description.”

  “Well, at least pet him or something while I figure it out.”

  “I ain’t touching that.” She backed up.

  “The vet tech said to use something cold or something that lubricates.” I pulled a pair of surgical gloves from my scene kit and opened the refrigerator. Buttery spread. Oily and cold. Problem solved. I dipped in my gloved finger.

  “Oh Lord,” Latisha said, laughing.

  “I have a surprise for you, Hank.” I petted him, then rolled him over and applied Land O’Lakes to his privates. As it turns out, fake butter is a total turnoff. It worked fast. Hank lay on his back, exhausted. I peeled off the gloves, looked up at Latisha.

  “I will never look at you the same way,” she groaned.

  “Yeah, well, we’re never going to speak of this. Ever. Not if you want to keep your job.”

  “My boss giving a poodle a hand job is not something I plan on bragging about. Just sayin’.”

  I took poor Hank for a walk down Peachtree Street while Latisha watched TV and while White Trash watched Latisha watching TV. Hank appeared fully recovered, though he was not as bouncy as usual. I decided not to discuss today’s drama with Rauser. Some things just shouldn’t be shared with the person you love.

  Forty minutes later we parked under one of the giant water oaks that overhung Beecher Street. Huge roots that probably came to the surface during the first drought a couple of years ago had pushed some of the sidewalk slabs up into peaks, cracked and strained them.

  Latisha ducked so I could pull the boom over from the backseat. The Neon isn’t exactly roomy. “This is a microphone. It has video and a digital voice recorder,” I told her. “That saucer on the end magnifies the sound so it can record and we can hear what’s being said. There’s a place here to plug in our headphones.” I gave Latisha a pair and slipped one on myself. They were small, the kind you see attached to iPods. “If she comes out, point it at her and press this button.” I set the mike in Latisha’s lap. It was about the size of a small megaphone.

  She frowned. “Oh yeah, this will be inconspicuous.”

  “Well, don’t hang out the door with it. Just prop it on the window. Gently. Try not to drop it. It cost a bazillion dollars.”

  “What if she doesn’t come out?”

  “We wait,” I said, opening the file I’d brought with me. “There’s a lot of waiting in this business. Staying awake is the trick.”

  Latisha eyed me. “Did you wash your hands?”

  “Yes. I was also wearing gloves.”

  “You in your little crime-scene gloves.” Latisha giggled. “That was some funny shit right there. CSI Atlanta. Boner Response Unit.”

  “The BRU,” I said. We both laughed.

  Latisha trained her sharp eyes on the frame house. I began flipping through photographs—shots of a wooded area around a disposal site in central Georgia, thick in leaves and foliage; shots from above the site at the top of the embankment where a killer had once stood; shots of Melinda Cochran’s decomposing, debris-strewn body; photos taken as they’d carefully uncovered her; more photos of Tracy Davidson’s skeletal remains positioned just slightly below Melinda’s body. Melinda was on her right side, a position she might have assumed for eternity but for
the sensitive nose of a dog. A large hunk of granite had stopped her descent of the hill. I read a handwritten report the sheriff had filed on the day of the discovery, brief, to the point—who, what, when, where. He noted that they had found no impressions in leaves or dirt, and the scene photos reflected that. If the killer was revisiting his disposal site to fulfill some psychological requirements, he was very careful or he hadn’t done it recently enough to leave tracks. Perhaps he wasn’t romantic about his work. Maybe he had returned only once to dispose of the second body. I wondered what had triggered him and why he killed them when he did. Because he was done, because they had fulfilled his needs? Or because they were no longer able to? Had he simply grown bored, tired of them?

  “Why do you like to look at all that stuff, Keye?” Latisha’s voice broke my concentration. She was looking at the scene photos in my lap. Her headphones were hanging around her neck. I removed mine.

  “Because I’d want someone to do it for me,” I answered. She glanced again at the photos, then turned back to the street.

  A car pulled up in front of the house where Larry Quinn’s slip-and-fall woman lived. A woman got out and walked around to the back door, gently lifted a baby out of a car seat. “Showtime,” I told Latisha, then cringed as she awkwardly banged the mike on the door before she got it propped up on the rolled-down car window. I showed her again how to activate video and sound. We both put our headphones back on.

  The front door opened and I saw the woman I recognized from the grocery store video. She was in her late sixties, slightly overweight. She walked off the porch stiffly, but with a smile. “Mama, you okay today?” asked the young woman holding the baby. “I know that look.” They hugged. The baby reached out for the older woman.