“A railway?” Gracie echoed with a laugh. “With little steam engines and everything?”
“Absolutely,” Mike answered, moving into the kiln and preparing a seat for first Gracie and then himself on the ground beneath the conical roof of the structure.
“The steel rails were stolen for scrap by locals, when the industry died,” I continued. “But you can still see some of the ties.” I waited for Gracie to follow Mike in, which she did very slowly, then called out to Lucas, who had begun lightly playing with Marcianna. “Okay, kid—like I said, you keep an eye out, and your ears open. Got it?”
“No doubt!” Lucas called, moving back toward the kiln. “I’m ready, L.T.”
Once the rest of us were inside the cavernous kiln—still deeply redolent of charred wood and brick dust, with the rising moon shining through the partially fallen roof—Gracie looked around at the blackened, molding, and decaying bricks of the walls and said, “I suppose that it’s an appropriately morbid place to discuss murder, isn’t it?”
“Morbid?” Mike said brightly. “Come on, Gracie…” And he swatted the ground beside him, urging her to sit down. “These places are fun, admit it. They’re ghostly, maybe, but not morbid.”
“Okay,” I pronounced, not wanting to get sidetracked by Mike’s ongoing flirtations. “Now that we’ve disposed of the BCI and gotten you here, Gracie—shall we get about the rest of the business of the evening?”
Gracie had to consider that proposition for a moment, swiping a suddenly loose shower of her shoulder-length black hair behind her ear with a practiced move of one delicate hand as she sat beside my partner. “Well—I suppose so,” she said at length. “As long as we’re really safe in here…”
“Well,” Mike teased, “ ‘safe’ means a lot of things to a lot of people, Gracie.”
Which only netted him a sound punch in his shoulder. “Don’t you screw around with me, Michael Li,” Gracie said, as Mike moaned in real pain. “You knew all along we were coming up here.”
“Gracie,” he defended quickly, “I didn’t! Not until we got back from town, anyway.”
“Maybe,” she answered coolly, poking a finger at his nose. “But you’ve certainly seen that cheetah before, don’t deny that, and you didn’t give me any warning. So just cut all the coy hooey.”
“What’s hooey?” Lucas called in bewilderment from his post just outside.
“Bullshit,” Mike explained. “Gracie’s being polite because she thinks you’re an innocent kid.”
To Lucas’ sharp laugh in return, Gracie said, “Oh, no I don’t. I might have earlier, but not anymore. Anybody who would be involved with you two…” Then, trying to gather her dignity, she snatched a plain elastic hair tie out of her bag and skillfully pulled her hair back into a short, bouncy ponytail, one that I thought might make Mike expire. “All right. You want to get down to business, so let’s do it. One thing confuses me, right off—shouldn’t I be the one asking about who knows what? Because, like I said, my main interest is in how you’ve applied your method to these murders. For instance, even if I agree with you, how did you rule out the idea of a serial killer so quickly?”
“I didn’t say we’d ruled it out,” I replied carefully. “Ruling out is not what Mike and I do. But it’s not the principal avenue we’re pursuing, for a variety of reasons. All of which I’ll be happy to share with you—once I know what it is you really want to tell us.”
“What I…?” Gracie answered hesitantly. “But I already told you, down in the hangar. You two are pretty unique, in this county, in your understanding of the throwaway-children problem—or at least, in your willingness to talk about it. There’s a lot of awareness of it in the county seats, and in Albany, too: in fact, ‘throwaways’ has become one hell of a buzzword—but a very quiet one. The truth is, everybody knows there’s a political storm brewing over the whole subject, and so it’s produced, naturally, a pretty dark little effort to keep it contained, because it’s currently viewed as a problem without a solution. I mean, it’s hard enough to find runaway kids—but to find runaway parents, who’ve really figured out how to hide out and reinvent themselves, usually out of state? That’s next to impossible. And then there’s the fact that our current governor has staked a lot on what he’s doing for the children of New York—”
“All very true,” I interrupted, as evenly as I could. “But true in only a general sense. So—suppose you get specific. I don’t want to appear falsely modest, Gracie, but Mike’s and my method, which you claim got us such a reputation in New York, isn’t so tough to grasp that someone as bright as you couldn’t have figured it out. The fact that we don’t do what most of law enforcement does—that we won’t give in to tunnel vision, or to any of the more complicated names that the social sciences have given the same old habit of hunches, whether it’s ‘bounded rationality,’ ‘focused determination,’ ‘heuristics,’ or whatever—doesn’t make us rocket scientists, after all. You know that; and you didn’t come here for some class in dialectics, in how to immediately put counterproposals to any and all investigative assumptions. You came here because something specific is on your mind.”
Gracie looked from me to Mike, a little helplessly. “Well,” Mike said, shrugging. “He didn’t get his nickname for nothing, Gracie. So—is he right?”
Gracie paused to gather a deep breath. “Yeah. He’s right.”
“It’s not a tribunal, Gracie,” I said, trying to make it easier for her to get the rest of her story out. “And listen—my friend out there? The cheetah who’s got you so worried? Let me give you a quick summary of how she came to live on Shiloh, because it’s not what you’re thinking…”
The tale of Marcianna’s captivity and release, featuring as it did Mitch McCarron’s role, proved enough to charm the naturally compassionate Gracie out of her fears. By the time it was over, she had moved to the kiln entrance, where she studied the romping if tethered Marcianna with true fondness; indeed, there was growing affection and empathy in her gaze.
“So,” Gracie said at length. “Nothing around here is really what it seems, hunh?”
“Well,” Mike said, making an attempt to stick up for the closeness that he and Gracie had, until they’d entered the kiln, been sharing, “some things are. Have been…”
Gracie laughed a little, and moved back to sit by him. “Michael Li,” she said, indulgently scolding him. “You change girlfriends like you change socks.”
Mike’s expression turned to umbrage. “How can you possibly say that, Gracie? Where am I going to find so many girlfriends in this town, living with this miserable gweilo and his ‘pet’?”
“Oh, come on,” Gracie answered. “I’m sure there are some online students who find you just irresistible. After all…” She put her hand very coyly to his gun-bearing ankle, at which point I thought he really would lose it. “…any man who is secure enough to pack a snub-nosed .38 must be very confident with the ladies.” Mike was about to gasp out a response, when Gracie touched his mouth with a finger and said, in the same sexy tone, “Tell me—are we going to go bust a speakeasy, after this? Maybe look for remaining members of the Capone mob?”
Mike fell back into disappointment. “Nice,” he said quietly. “I told you, I like the ankle—”
“The ankle holster, yeah,” Gracie replied. “You’re an idiot in more ways than you’re aware of, you know that, Mike?” That crack brought another laugh from Lucas; and then, without any prodding, Gracie’s manner became much more serious, and she looked up at me. “Okay, Trajan,” she said, dropping all formalities along with all pretense. “You want to know what specifically is bothering me about the way this case is being handled. So I guess I’d better tell you, since you’ve gone to all the trouble to create this”—she wafted a hand around the kiln—“effect. To start with, I’m sure you know that just about every law enforcement official in this part of the state, with the exception of Steve Spinetti and his people, has been given a long list of native and relocated sex o
ffenders, and is trying to find a likely suspect that they can pin these throwaway killings on. And while they haven’t come up with the name of a particular sucker, yet, what they have come up with is a method to make the rap stick.”
I glanced quickly at Mike, and found him shooting a similarly shocked look my way—because we had both taken Gracie’s meaning perfectly: “You’re talking about a deliberate attempt to frame somebody,” I said, slowly and quietly.
“And not just the idea,” Mike added, in a similar tone, “but a method—evidence. A plan to plant evidence.”
Lucas whistled, low and quietly, from outside, and it was not hard to understand why. The deliberate planting of evidence in a serial murder case was something that was not altogether uncommon, in big-city cases involving, say, victims who were prostitutes; but to find law enforcement in someplace like Burgoyne County contemplating it in a child murder case was unusual, to say the least, and I took heart from the fact that Gracie had specifically excluded Steve Spinetti’s department from any such plot.
But our guest had not yet exhausted her cache of surprises; not by a long shot. “Yes, I’m talking about exactly that,” she said, “but I’m also talking about something significantly more. The word is that evidence alone isn’t going to cut it, this time. Apparently somebody in the BCI, acting on orders from higher-ups—maybe very higher-ups—has gotten hold of a body. A dead child, one who matches the background profiles of the other three—or, I guess you’re now telling me, the other four. And as soon as they pick their target offender, they’re going to plant the body in the dumb schmuck’s home, or some other place only he has access to. Then Mangold will bring the guy in, interrogate him for as long as it takes, and bang, that ties it up with a bow.”
Once again, I had begun pacing, this time to try to order my racing thoughts. “But—for this scheme to work—it would be necessary that no more throwaway kids suddenly turn up dead.”
“Correct,” Gracie answered. “And I guess you can understand the level of my concern, now.”
“Holy shit,” Mike murmured. “That would mean—Trajan, that would mean that whoever gave the order to go out and find somebody to frame, along with a body, that person has to somehow be able to guarantee that the deaths will stop. Which means—”
“Don’t say it,” I warned, taking out a cigarette and pointing it at Mike. “You know how I feel about that word.”
“What word?” Gracie asked.
“Sounds like you’re talking about a conspiracy, is what it sounds like!” Lucas called, causing me to grab a small piece of old brick from the floor of the kiln, rush outside, and hurl it at him. It caught his right thigh and he yelped loudly.
“Damn it, Lucas!” I told him. “Do not use that word! First of all, it’s fucking dangerous, and second, though I’m sure you’ve learned to love conspiracy theories from your TV shows, in the real world we understand that for every thousand of them proposed, maybe one turns out to be true.”
“So maybe this is the one,” Lucas moaned in defense, rubbing his leg. “And didn’t you have to take some oath about ‘first doing no harm’ when you got to be a doctor, you psycho?”
Mike brought me a light for my cigarette as I reentered, a very grave expression on his face. “Kid’s got a point, L.T.,” he said. “I mean, about the first thing. We all know you’re a psycho.”
“Ha!” Lucas declared. “Yeah, L.T., kid’s got a point, and we all—”
“Um—boys?” Gracie said, as Mike went back to her side. “If you’re finished with recess, can I get back to what I was trying to say? I’m afraid that Mike and Lucas do have a point, Trajan, insofar as a possible conspiracy is concerned. I don’t like it any more than you do, but for all that I’m hearing to make sense—and I’m hearing it, not just through denials, but through confirmations from people I trust, in the BCI, the FIC, even the DA’s office—then yes, whoever is behind this idea has got to be able to guarantee that no more kids will turn up dead. And how else do you do that without a conspiracy of some kind? Maybe even a high-reaching one? I mean, from the beginning, I thought it was very strange that the FBI Field Office in Albany—you know, the one on McCarty Avenue—”
Mike chuckled. “Oh, yeah. We know it.”
Gracie gave him an indulgent smile. “Yeah. I’ll just bet you do. Anyway, I wondered why they hadn’t been brought in, or hadn’t forced their way in. After all, one of the FBI’s mandates is to investigate crimes against children, especially if those crimes present any evidence of being the work of a serial killer.”
“True, Gracie,” I answered. “But remember, those are their stated mandates. Like most FBI franchises in the country, the Albany office spends less time doing their local jobs—less time doing them with real dedication, anyway—than they do sitting around trying to get ready for the next terrorist attack. Or at least trying to uncover a good terrorist conspiracy, which is one of the reasons I don’t want to hear us throwing that word around.”
“I know,” Gracie said, waving off my cynicism. “But that wasn’t what really worried me. See, I straight up asked both Cathy Donovan and the DA just why the FBI wasn’t stepping in, because it seemed to me that we could use their resources. And sure enough, the field office had tried to horn in on things, at first—but then both they and the DA’s office got a message—”
I had begun to grasp it: “From somebody on South Swan Street,” I said, referring to the location of the Alfred E. Smith State Office Building, which was across a park from the capitol building in Albany but connected to it by a tunnel; and both were just a quick drive from the Governor’s Mansion.
“Yes,” Gracie said. “And all of them, along with Frank Mangold’s boss, were all being told that the FBI would stay out of this case, at the urging of the governor and with the blessing of, it was pretty obvious, the state attorney general and even the AG in Washington. But what possible interest could the Justice Department have in interfering with a crime in a little county in upstate New York?”
I hadn’t expected this from Gracie: it was an unusual and dangerous bit of business, for someone in her position to first have such doubts and then to voice them, along with fairly dramatic speculations, to people on the outside of an investigation. It was, indeed, genuinely brave; and she wasn’t done yet: “I mean, I don’t want to get too ambitious about it, but the governor has spent a lot of political capital on his handling of child welfare; and the subject of throwaways, if it busts loose, is going to be a major black eye, to him, maybe to the entire party and to his closest political ally, who just happens to be the guy sitting in the White House—”
Lucas, awed and excited by what he was hearing, let out a low, “Whoa, shit!”
“Jesus,” Mike agreed. “Could we actually have stumbled onto something that big, L.T.?”
The tone in their voices, on top of everything else, was enough to make me immediately hold up my hands. “Okay, okay, okay. Everybody just get a damned grip—and that means everybody,” I called, making sure Lucas heard me. Then I tried to calm myself: “Now—I’ll entertain the idea of the FBI giving our governor a hand: he’s taken stupider risks in the last six years. But no president lets himself get involved in this kind of thing—”
“Hey, Nixon told those five morons to rob the Democratic national headquarters,” Mike parried, earning points with our guest. But I had to check him again, and fast:
“Nobody knows that, Mike. Not for sure. Obstruction of the investigation, yes, that’s what got him. But initiation of the original crime? That’s only supported by a whole lot of speculation.”
“But isn’t this just obstruction of an investigation?” Gracie asked.
“You guys aren’t getting it—that was national politics, this is a state scandal, at best, so far as we know. So don’t get sidetracked, let’s just proceed with only those aspects that we’re certain have relevance to the case.”
Gracie nodded. “All right—I take it you mean the subject of a serial killer. But, ha
ving told you what I have, I think you really should let me know why you think one can’t be responsible.”
“Fine—Mike?” I turned to my partner, suddenly feeling a sharp pain in my hip. “You want to take this one?”
“Okay, Gracie,” Mike said a little indulgently, which got him a frown from our guest. “Let’s start with the simplest facts. First of all, like Trajan said, we don’t rule things out—not in the usual way. We just analyze the facts, the evidence, and the profiles, even if they’re preliminary, then look at the prevailing assumptions, and propose counter-suggestions, and keep doing that until we get to something that we can be fairly sure of. That’s what we’ve done, in this case, on the subject of serials. Let’s start with the basics: most serials work alone—you know that. And even before Latrell, the kid who got shot Friday night, talked about ‘them’ to Trajan, we’d pretty much determined that the staging of Shelby Capamagio’s death—and probably the others, except maybe for Donnie—would have required more than one person, logistically. It just would’ve been too hard to get the body into that fairly dramatic position, for starters; and then to keep an eye out for anybody who might have been passing by? We’re talking at least two, maybe three people. That’s very unusual, in serial cases.”
“I thought of that,” Gracie answered, “when I heard about what Latrell said to Trajan. But even if serial teams are unusual, they’re not unprecedented, especially in cases involving child victims. There was Ian Brady and Myra Hindley in England, the Gallego couple here—”
“True, the list can be made long, Gracie,” Mike cut in. “But only if it’s also made international in scope. So, given the circumstances you’ve heard us mention, why do you insist that it has to be true?”
“Besides the consistent m.o.?” Gracie said, still offering a peculiar sort of resistance, one that now seemed less like genuine advocacy than some kind of test of either our views or our loyalties. “Well, just look at the victims: in every case of past serial teams who preyed on children that I know of, the victims were described as somehow ‘subhuman,’ as not worthy of continued existence. It’s not too hard to see how such people might view kids already officially labeled by the state to be ‘throwaways’ as similarly disposable—it’s why I think it’s a terrible classification for them.”