Parallel Lies (13 page)

While Nell Priest sat in on FBI briefings, representing her corporation’s interests, Tyler found himself in Charleston, Illinois, working with a masters criminology class at Eastern Illinois University, to where all the various security camera videos from nearly two dozen retail establishments had been messengered. For the time being, the existence of these tapes escaped the notice of the FBI and others bent on hammering out jurisdictions, which was just fine with Tyler.

“We’ve received a total of twenty-two tapes,” Professor Ted McCaffery explained to Tyler. McCaffery wore his graying beard trimmed close, a pair of half glasses perched on the end of his nose. The tips of his button-down collar were frayed, and one of the small buttons was missing. Those videos had been sent in from convenience stores, groceries, and bus and train stations, all within a fifty-mile radius of the farmhouse. “We’re expecting a like number from the banks—the ATM tapes you requested. We put two students per tape,” he explained, “on the theory that two heads are better than one.”

“A plaid shirt—”

“And blue jeans. Yes,” McCaffery said. “I wouldn’t have bothered Don Marshall unless I was pretty damn sure of what we’ve got. I put in twenty-four years with state police,” he added proudly. “Then the university scooped me up on retirement, probably because I’m one of the few with twin masters—criminology and forensic sciences.” He was bragging now. “Had never even
considered
teaching before this. Look at me now!”

The large audiovisual lab smelled of institutional disinfectant and bore the groan and hum of dozens of VCRs and television monitors, where students sat fast-forwarding through grainy black-and-white images, alert for men wearing plaid shirts and jeans. The randomness of chance was not lost on Tyler.

“Let me show you why I called you.” McCaffery pointed to a freeze-frame on one of the monitors, where a man stood at a ticket counter, his face obscured in shadow. He wore a large-pattern plaid shirt, blue jeans, and work boots. Tyler stepped closer, his heart doing a dance in the center of his chest.

It was their boxcar killer. He felt certain of it.

“I need to borrow your plane,” Tyler told Nell Priest through a pay phone, his cell phone batteries having died an hour earlier. His thumb rested on a Yellow Pages listing for an electronics superstore on the fringes of Charleston. He hoped to find an automobile charger for the cell phone on the way out of town.

“I beg your pardon,” Priest said.

“Thumbnail sketch: we’ve got a guy on a security video in Effingham: plaid shirt, jeans, work boots. The individual is scruffy, thin, early thirties maybe—no clean look at his
face. Granted, he could be anybody, including our suspect. It’s not much to base a decision on, but those jeans have the legs rolled up into cuffs and they look a little big on him. Maybe they aren’t his jeans.”

“Where’s Effingham?” she asked.

“We drove through it. Twelve miles from Jewett. Hell, he could have walked it, not to mention hitchhike, jack a car, steal a snowmobile. The bus station is a McDonald’s. The restaurant’s security video is time-coded. He bought a Happy Meal and waited for the bus, which is how come we’ve got him on tape. That bus, that time of day, is an express to Chicago.”

“And?”

“Greyhound has pulled the Chicago terminal’s videos for us. They’re reviewing them using the scheduled arrival time, awaiting our arrival up there. It’s a four-hour drive. Less than an hour in your plane.” He hesitated, “Listen, I know it’s a lot to ask.”

She said, a little breathless, “Does the FBI know about this?”

“My cell phone’s dead. I’m not wasting anybody’s time until I know we’re onto something here.”

“You’re withholding from the FBI?”

“I’m following a possible lead. We’ll report it if and when it looks good. The plane, Nell. It’s available or not? If not, I’ll put the pedal to the metal and hope for the best.”

“If you get the plane, you’ve got me for company.”

“No argument there.”

“Tell me your nearest airport,” she said. “I’ll call the flight crew in St. Louis.”

The security firm hired to police Greyhound’s Chicago terminal proved surprisingly capable and cooperative. Tyler’s
standing as a fed may have put off the state troopers, but civilians treated him like God. Priest’s King Air had been met at Midway by a black, chauffeur-driven Town Car, also courtesy of Northern Union Security. On the ride to the bus station, Tyler had shown Priest still photocopies of their suspect lifted from the McDonald’s security video as well as those of three other possible suspects, two of whom had been taped at convenience stores, one from a rifle shop in Marshall. Both the convenience store shots showed men using their credit cards, and Tyler believed their killer was too smart for that, though he didn’t mind the idea of passing these suspects along to the FBI for follow-up. “Throwing them a bone,” he called it. The plaid shirt from the rifle shop weighed in well over two-fifty and just didn’t have the look that Tyler envisioned.

“We’ll want to get this picture at the McDonald’s to our Mrs. Gomme,” Nell said. “Hopefully she’ll recognize her husband’s shirt.”

“Already ahead of you. McCaffery, at the university, is faxing this to Marshall at state police. They’ll send a car out there and run it by her.”

“If they’re going to that trouble, then we should fax all the photos we’ve got,” she said.

“Point taken.” Tyler used his cell phone as it recharged in the armrest cigarette lighter. He made the call to McCaffery and arranged it.

When Tyler hung up, Priest asked, “What, if anything, have we found out about the victim?” Her voice sounded tentative, and it drew his attention.

“They’ve thawed him out slowly for the sake of tissue preservation. They printed him and are running those prints through every known database. Nothing criminal kicked.”

“What do you mean by every database?” she asked, slightly irritated.

“You know, federal government employees, military, state
employees—every state east of the Mississippi. Anything to ID him,” Tyler clarified. “If that gun was registered, then some state could have his prints on file.” Until that moment, Peter Tyler had never seen a black person go pale. He’d seen his colleagues on Metro PD flush, even blush, but never pale. This in turn forced a second realization: he’d stopped thinking of her as black, or African American. He’d been constantly aware of her color in their early dealings, had even altered his own demeanor—walking on eggshells to avoid committing a faux pas—but somewhere in the blur of the past twenty-four, or thirty-six, hours, her skin color had lost its impact. Only now, as she paled, was he once again reminded of her color, and for no explainable reason, he felt embarrassed.

“You’re staring at me,” she complained.

“You’re hiding something from me,” he said, digging. His instincts rarely failed him. “You’ve been a changed person since we found that body along the tracks. Why?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she fired back, but weakly. She wouldn’t make eye contact with him.

Tyler felt hurt, and he realized Nell Priest and her friendship now owned some small part of him. Or maybe not so small. “Am I being ridiculous?” he asked. He
felt
ridiculous.

“I tried to tell you,” she whispered.

“You tried to tell me what?” he asked, unable to conceal the concern in his voice.

The Town Car pulled to the curb and hit the brakes. Tyler felt a pit in his stomach that had nothing to do with the driving. Nell Priest thanked the driver, completely ignoring Tyler, and popped open her door. “We’re here,” she declared, hurrying toward the bus station and away from him and his prying eyes.

“Tell me what?” he asked her on the run through Chicago’s bus terminal.

“Later,” she whispered in a gravelly, sexy voice, an obvious attempt to try to mollify him.

“Tyler?” a loud male voice called out from across the cavernous station.

Tyler whispered at her, “You can’t leave me hanging.”

“Sure I can,” she answered.

Tyler fumed.

The inquiry came from a gray suit. Maybe a football or hockey player once upon a time. If so, it had been a long time ago indeed. He had buzz-cut gray hair, a round face, and spongy jowls. Probably not his own teeth, judging by the bite and their whiteness. They stood near a water fountain, not far from the men’s room. Tyler would have preferred an office to the bus station’s central concourse, but he took the lack of any such offer as a good sign. Perhaps time was of the essence.

“Eleven cameras in all,” the private security guy said, rushing his words and failing to introduce himself. “The system is old but competent.” He began dishing out photocopies of stills from the security system like a man dealing impossibly large playing cards. “We have him disembarking—” Another photocopy. “Pulling a dark duffel bag from storage bin two-seventeen.” Another. “Entering the men’s room. Nearly lost him here but caught the duffel bag going back over things. That’s him. Leather jacket, pretty sharp dresser, you ask me.”

“Same guy?” Priest asked.

Tyler didn’t trust the lousy photocopies, but his heart raced at the prospect of their suspect being caught on tape. He inquired, “Are the video images any clearer than these?”

“Not much better, no. The cameras and recorders are old and we reuse the tapes. Kodachrome, this ain’t.”

If it was the same guy, Tyler realized he had wetted and
combed his hair, switched clothes, and reappeared as a very different man. “He looks more comfortable as this guy,” he muttered, believing they no longer needed the farm wife’s confirmation of the plaid shirt. They had their suspect. Who but their suspect would have entered the men’s room in ill-fitting clothing that matched the description of the stolen clothes, only to leave a few minutes later, rid of the costume? Again, Tyler felt elation. But at the same time he kept an open mind. The worst thing they could do was waste time chasing the wrong guy. “Could have handed off the duffel bag to an accomplice. We’d follow the bag then, instead of the guy.”

“No,” Priest contradicted, leaning across him and affording too much contact. She pointed to the boots.
Only a woman would notice the guy’s shoes,
he thought. She tapped Tyler’s pocket as if he would understand the signal—and then of course he did; he withdrew the folded photocopy from the McDonald’s.

“Same boots in both shots. It’s the guy,” Tyler said under his breath. He wasn’t sure he ever would have caught that.

“That’s all I’m saying,” Priest said confidently. Repeating, “Same boots, both photos.”

“The guy changed everything but his boots.” To Priest he said, “Nice work.”

“Thank you.” That time, it was a blush for sure.

“We’ll need the tapes,” Tyler told the security agent.

“Already arranged,” the man informed him.

“So he’s in the Windy City,” Priest surmised.

The big man asked Tyler somewhat sheepishly, “If I may?”

“Go ‘head.”

He handed Tyler a series of four more shots. None revealed a face, nor did they come any closer to identifying the man—no accomplice, no pay phone. The security man pointed to the suspect’s back pocket—the only shot of his
ass in the whole group. “That right there,” he said strongly, as if of great importance to him.