“Maybe it’s time,” she said quietly. “To cut Gunnar loose and put your man Antoni Moreno into place, where he can watch and handle things. Where he can roust out this inside informant. Your hand might just have been forced, Jack. You can set it all in motion at the police board meeting tomorrow, right? You have at least three board members on your side, no? Maybe four.”
“Yeah.”
“Do it, Jack. Start the process. It’s time.”
“What about this serial killer thing—the idea of holding off on Gunnar until they’re close to catching him?”
“You’ll have to spin it another way. This is you stepping up to the plate to take charge as soon as you take office. This is you putting better, fresh police management in place, stat, to take over this grave investigation, to get rid of the traitors on the force, and to make the city safer for all those young women out there who are terrified to go out alone at night now.”
Angie sat with Maddocks at the opposite end of Buziak’s desk. Buziak had shut his door and drawn the blinds across his window that looked out into the homicide bullpen. He clicked the back of his pen in and out as he listened to Maddocks and Angie update him on the Norton-Wells interview and their subsequent interaction with Zach Raddison.
Before their meeting, another check had been run to ensure there was indeed no record of the Lexus being reported stolen. There wasn’t. A BOLO had since been put out on the plate.
Once they’d covered everything, Buziak leaned back in his chair, pen still in hand.
“So, we have a connection between Gracie Drummond, Jayden Norton-Wells, and Zach Raddison at the mayor’s office. Both the men are Caucasian, black hair. Raddison has a matchbook in his office with Drummond’s phone number and the letters B.C. on it—the matchbook may or may not be his. The B.C. logo may or may not refer to something on Drummond’s calendar. But right after you’d questioned Jayden Norton-Wells about the Lexus seen on the bridge and outside the cemetery on the night Drummond was assaulted, Norton-Wells rushed straight to Raddison, where he argues with him. Norton-Wells, the ADAG’s son, is a practicing Catholic who wears a Saint Christopher medallion around his neck. He also has the initials J.R., which match the inscription on the back of Drummond’s medallion. Plus he never reported his father’s Lexus stolen, nor canceled the plate and associated insurance, and we have found no proof that he was ever dining at the Auberge the night his vehicle allegedly went missing. Or that the Lexus was ever parked in the pay lot up the street from the Auberge.” He clicked his pen again.
“And then there’s his father, developer Ray Norton-Wells, supporter of the Killion campaign, who has Killion’s backing for his planned waterfront development, and who allegeshewas too busy to cancel insurance on the missing vehicle. He, like his son, has black hair. Plus there’s the ADAG—mother and wife ... what a clusterfuck.” He leaned abruptly forward, started rapidly ticking his pen against the desk now.
Angie had to restrain herself from stopping him. The sound was making things zip around in her brain like little live electrical wires. As Buziak was about to open his mouth again, a knock sounded at his office door. He stiffened, and his eyes met theirs.
“This connection between the Norton-Wells family, the mayor’s office, and a vehicle possibly used in the commission of a homicide stays in this room until further notice, just between the three of us for now. Got it?”
They both nodded. He glanced up. “Come!”
The door opened. It was Leo. The hoary detective did a small double take when he saw Maddocks and Angie in Buziak’s office, and he scowled.
“What is it, Leo?” said their boss.
“Botanist’s report has come in. That specific combination of the Garry oak and agronomic grass form part of a rare ecosystem—one where the native oak has adapted to shallow soil and developed wind resistance. And there is only one place with this ecosystem that also has goats—feral goats. Thetisby Island.”
Angie and Maddocks exchanged a fast glance. Excitement rippled through her.
“Meteorologist also confirms that powerful currents, the recent onshore winds, and high tidal flow could push something like a body from the area of Thetisby into the harbor. This would be consistent with the sheep maggot evidence, too, if the body was kept on the island for a time before entering the water.”
Angie sat bolt upright. “There’s an abandoned homestead on Thetisby Island,” she said. “From the 1862 smallpox epidemic. A group of people left the mainland and established a small community there in an effort to avoid the plague. It was a going farm concern with goats, other animals. When the pox got them anyway, it went to ruin, and there’s been a colony of feral goats breeding there ever since.” She paused. The excitement in the room was palpable.
“We just might have our Hocking murder scene,” Buziak said, coming sharply to his feet. “Let’s get the ball rolling!”
CHAPTER 40
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER13
Angie stood in Tyvek boot covers beside Maddocks, Holgersen, and Buziak in the freezing and cavernous root cellar of the crumbling homestead ruins on Thetisby Island. In silence they watched as Barb O’Hagan worked the scene with the forensic ident techs, the photographer documenting every millimeter of their progress. Kitted in white boiler suits, caps, booties, and wearing nitrile gloves, the techs moved as if in slow freeze-frame images as the camera flashed white light. It lent the subterranean scene an otherworldly air. There was no noise apart from the click of the camera and the thin ghostly wail of the wind that sought entry through the broken rafters in the ruins upstairs.
They had not been able to set out first thing this morning as hoped. A new storm front, dense fog, and high surf had held them back until this afternoon. The trip to the island, which should have taken them twenty minutes in the MVPD harbor unit craft, had taken far longer as they’d battled onshore westerly winds and high seas. Leo was on the island, too, but he’d been felled by seasickness and remained outside, smoking and trying to stop himself from throwing up again, swearing like a sailor at not being able to come down into the cellar to observe, in case he puked his DNA all over the place.
When they’d arrived it had been close to pitch-dark in this under-floor hole dug into the black earth. And it was cold—“cold as a witch’s tit,” Holgersen had so succinctly informed them. Cold as a meat locker, Angie thought. Combined with the well-below-freezing arctic outflow temperatures that had locked them in a frigid grip over the last two weeks, it was no leap of logic to see how Faith Hocking’s body could have been preserved for some time down here. Given this new context, O’Hagan figured PMI was ten days to two weeks. Hocking’s body, she’d said, would have kept as well down here as any human flesh stored in the morgue cooler. Even now, with this stormy, wet, and warmer trend, the place still felt like a frigid earthen maw, exhaling breath from the ground below.
They’d brought in portable, battery-powered LED lighting systems, which had illuminated with stark, unnatural light, providing clues to the horrors that might have been perpetrated down here. As she watched, Angie tried to piece together what might have happened to Faith Hocking in this cellar.
They’d found fresh scrapes in the slimy detritus covering the wooden dock where they’d put in with the MVPD boats. It was their first sign that there’d been recent activity on the island—a boat had been moored against the wood. And it was unlikely that it had been tied up there for a pleasure trip, given the weather over the past weeks. Tracks had then been found leading up from the dock—footprints in previously frozen mud, along with strange drag marks that had chunked up moss and lichen that grew over the rocks.
Outside the homestead entrance, more tracks in mud had been evident. And inside the ruins of the home, they’d found a herd of feral goats seeking shelter. It was easy to see how goat hairs, plus old Garry oak leaves, seeds, and other detritus, could have ended up trapped in Hocking’s tarp cocoon.
But it was down in the root cellar where they hit the real pay dirt.
Polypropylene ropes hung from a support beam overhead and swayed softly in the breeze that managed to punch down through the open trapdoor—the same kind of rope that had been used to truss Hocking up. Luminol had revealed evidence of human blood on the rough rope strands. And trapped in the strands, the techs had found human hair trace—black, brunette, and dark blond strands. Angie figured the longer brunette hair strand could be Hocking’s. It was the other hair trace that was now of keen interest. Some looked to be pubic, or male body hair. It had all been bagged and logged, and she was itching to know if it matched any of the hair trace that had been found on Drummond’s clothing, because that would link the donor to both homicide victims.
