Stranger in the Room: A Novel (30 page)

We wanted to come here to get a feel for the location. The toughest thing about crime scene photographs is understanding context—how and where the scene falls within its environment and where the victim is within the scene. Neither of us expected to find new physical evidence at this late date, but there was still a lot of information to be gathered regarding offender behavior. In order to satisfy his needs regarding placement of the bodies, he had taken risks by operating in public. Calculated risks, however. The killer had used the cover of darkness to stage the scene; he’d worn gloves as always; he was careful about being quiet, where he parked. But he wasn’t careful enough. We knew he carried a 9mm, and Rauser’s specialists had concluded it was an S&W. We had fluid samples, which hopefully would hold enough skin cells for DNA typing. The twine found around Troy Delgado’s neck matched the twine that helped hang Donald Kelly. We weren’t dealing with a mastermind or someone well schooled in evidence collection like the Wishbone killer, who had taunted police last year and terrorized the city. But this killer was careful enough, intelligent and erratic enough to be dangerous.

Rauser’s phone went off. Mine followed as he was answering. I
didn’t recognize the number. Miki. “Hey, this is my new number. Log it in. I’m at the gate at Hartsfield. So weird walking through the airport with a cop.”

“Are you okay?” I asked, and wondered how she was handling the fear. I wondered if she was clean and sober.

“Really fucking glad to be leaving Atlanta,” she said. “I’d appreciate you and your boyfriend solving this shit while I’m gone. Hey, they’re boarding my plane now, gotta go. Really I just wanted to say thanks for everything and tell you Aunt Emily totally rocked her audition. I mean, we were just shaking our heads. She is the most uninhibited person I’ve ever seen in front of a camera. They’re going to love her. She’s a natural actress.”

“This explains why she and my ex-husband are so crazy about one another.”

“I think she really is going to be the next Paula Deen,” Miki said.

“Only prettier,” we said at the same time.

“Be safe, Miki. Tornadoes don’t care if you’ve got a camera.”

“No kidding,” she said, laughing, and she was gone. I looked at Rauser. “That was Miki. She’s getting on the plane.”

“I just got the same report. And your mom is home safe. How’d Emily’s thing go?”

“She blew them away.”

“Of course she did.”

We crossed the manicured center of town and headed back to Rauser’s car. His hands were dug into his pockets and he was watching his feet as he walked. “I gotta powwow with Major Hicks when I get back. See how the new boss handles all this in his first week in Homicide. Nobody’s gonna like it. Multiple homicides without a viable suspect. Might as well be walking on hot coals.”

Atlanta has a long and violent history. And the pain is fresh. Only a year ago a killer had tormented and murdered, then vanished. It was inevitable there would be rumors that Wishbone had returned. Police Chief Jefferson Connor had nearly been tarred and feathered last year for his mishandling of the Wishbone cases. While Rauser and I were convalescing, we’d watched the chief skewered daily in the media with utter, unremorseful joy.

“I don’t mean to make this all about me, but I went through hell
with Chief Connor last year over the Wishbone investigation. I don’t want to go through it again,” I said. “You sure Hicks is okay about my being on board?”

“Connor learned his lesson about meddling. He stays quiet now unless there’s a press conference and he can grab the credit for something. And Hicks won’t bother you. He has no reason not to trust my judgment. I’ve got a good record. And he knows they offered me his job first.”

Rauser stopped and looked at me. He has a way of showing emotion without doing anything at all. It starts with a tiny crinkling at the corner of his eyes that makes you think he’s going to smile. I stepped in closer. His big hands touched my waist just above my hipbones. “Why don’t we sneak away for dinner tonight? Williams can handle whatever comes up.”

I leaned in to him. “I want you first. Then dinner.” He kissed me and I felt his hands move up my back. I felt them all the way south to the Everglades.

On the way to the station, we stopped in the Majestic Diner, where Dolo Doe told us they had picked up their daughter one evening. Rauser showed Fatu’s picture to the manager and cooks and anyone else who would look at it. No bells went off. Rauser’s detectives and the uniforms would have copies of her photograph too, in case someone on the street recognized her and remembered her boyfriend. But a year is a long time in the hazy, transient world of Atlanta’s streets.

We tossed out theories on the drive, Rauser’s favorite being this man Fatu called Mister was actually her pimp. Her parents knew this, that it was the real reason they’d argued that night when Fatu took off up the street with the phone against her ear. We also discussed the possibility he was a john or in some other position of power—counselor, sponsor.

We returned to the station. Rauser got me the box of personal possessions from Donald Kelly’s room in the assisted-living facility, and I hauled it to the cubicle they’d loaned me. It’s astonishing what our lives get boiled down to in the end. I thought about the box we’d picked through so carefully at the Does’ house.

I opened a black leather billfold and saw credit cards, a state identification card, a debit card, insurance card, forty-seven dollars, a yellowed,
dog-eared folded note:
Honey
, d
on’t forget your lunch
. There was a fading photo-booth picture of a couple. I looked at the inventory sheet, which described the photograph of Kelly and his wife. She had been dead for over ten years. I found a school picture of a little boy grinning at the camera, tooth missing just right of center, lots of dark hair, eight or nine years old. And another one with the same dreamy-blue school background and the same boy, slightly older.
Great-grandson Levi Sobol
, the sheet told me.

Williams was sitting in the cube in front of me. “No other family pictures in Kelly’s apartment?” I asked.

“Just in his wallet. Wife and grandkid.”

“This must be the boy Kelly had talked about to the driver. You know if this picture is current?”

“The last one is two years old.”

“That would put the great-grandson at about the same age as Troy Delgado, wouldn’t it?”

Williams nodded. “Different schools, though, different neighborhood.”

“How about the summer baseball leagues? Delgado played in one. I think we should take a closer look at the grandson. Maybe there’s a league roster or something. Social media might be the fastest way to check out sports and other extracurricular activities.”

“So you’re thinking our perp sees Kelly’s great-grandson while he’s watching the Delgado kid and that somehow led him to Kelly? How do you figure?”

“I don’t figure.” I sighed. “I’m just looking for a way to put your victims in the same location at the same time. Kelly didn’t have many pictures. Just his dead wife and this boy. Both obviously meant a great deal to him. And he was a baseball fan. The novel he’d written was about baseball. He told the driver how much he cared for the kid. He’d want to see him play.”

I needed to know how and where he met his victims. All four victims, one living, three murdered, had been celebrating something, at some turning point. Even Miki had stopped cutting herself. It said something about his psychology, but what did it tell me about where he’d seen them, met them, selected them? Fatu worked on the streets.
He could have easily picked her up in Midtown. Perhaps they’d met at the hospital where both she and Miki had once been patients. Was he part of the hospital staff? Or a patient? Could he have met Miki there too? Or had he formed his attachment to my cousin through tabloid stories or her photos in magazines? Maybe he’d simply spotted her somewhere and latched on. The hospital was one of the largest mood disorder and addiction centers in the Southeast, with several clinics. It was a good bet that most of the addicts in the area who needed inpatient rehab had been in the Peachtree-Ford system at some point. That Miki and Fatu had been in the system was not necessarily the smoking gun I was looking for. And where would that leave Donald Kelly and Troy Delgado? Neither was in recovery. Nor had either suffered from mental illnesses, as far as we knew.

Williams turned back to his computer. I continued looking through a dead man’s things. I thought about him hanging there in Miki’s house, chalky and cold.

“Check this out,” Williams said. “Levi Sobol’s Facebook page. No privacy controls. Somebody should teach these kids how to do this safely.”

I got up to look at his monitor. There was the nice-looking boy from the wallet photos. But he was wearing a red baseball cap, and white uniform with red stripes.
Cardinals
, it said in thick red screen-printed letters. Williams started clicking through Sobol’s Facebook photo albums. He found a team picture—three tiers of boys in uniform, the bottom row sitting cross-legged, steadying a sign that said
Atlanta Summer League Association
.

On the far wall next to the enormous combination dry-erase and corkboard that listed open cases and relevant details added by the investigators, photographs were posted of victims before they were victims, when they’d simply been student or mother or baseball player or dog lover. I walked to it and looked at Troy Delgado standing on the pitcher’s mound, glove on, hands at his sides, goofy kid smile that said he was indulging a parent and couldn’t wait for the photo shoot to be over. Blue script on his uniform said
Blue Jays
. I remembered the letter from the coach that had been opened. The one that said Troy had extraordinary talent.

Rauser appeared and stood watching me. “Which teams are in that league?” I asked. “If they have Blue Jays, can we get a list of players?”

“Both teams are in the same league,” Williams reported a minute later, and our first connection was born.

“Let’s see if we can put them on the same field the same day.” Rauser was chewing his bottom lip, which meant his nerves were popping. You could feel the energy coming off him. “Balaki, call that driver. See what he knows.”

“Schedule’s online,” Williams said. “And look at this. Delgado’s team played Levi Sobol’s team twice already this season.”

“Lieutenant,” Balaki said, and covered the mouthpiece on the APD landline. “Mr. Balasco says he took the old man to the field a couple times to watch the kid play. He thinks one of the other drivers did too. He’s gone to get his schedule.” Balaki scribbled on his notepad. “Thank you, Mr. Balasco. Yes, sir. Have a good day, sir.” He hung up. “May twenty-first and June third Mr. Kelly was driven to the ballpark.”

“That’s a match on the schedule,” Williams said. “June third. Blue Jays versus the Cardinals.”

Rauser clapped his hands together. “There it is, people. Two victims in the same place at the same time. Nice work, everybody. Okay, let’s have a second look at the volunteers for Dignified Elder Transport. Any other drivers that took Kelly to the ballpark, this Balasco guy included. See if he’ll take a polygraph. Let’s get records from the assisted-living facility on Kelly’s coming and goings. Residents or their caretakers have to sign in and out. Find out who’s in charge of this summer league, and let’s figure out how big the organization is. Do they have people that work concessions or are they outside vendors, things like that, assistant coaches, anybody comes in contact with the kids or the property. That includes maintenance people. Get a list and start checking ’em off. Is it just one field?”

“Two fields, same park,” Williams answered. “It’s the sole location for the league to compete. Near Piedmont Park in the Saint Charles neighborhood. Close to Grady High School.”

“Somebody get the Midtown grid up on the main monitor,” Rauser said, and we all looked up at the flat screen mounted on the wall, the
same one I’d seen them laughing at with Miki and the Booger Bandit video. “Now give us marks on the Little League field; Inman Park, where Miki lives; fifteenth, where Kelly’s daughter lives; Kings Court and Amsterdam, where the Delgado boy was killed; and the assisted-living place on Monroe, where Kelly lived.”

A red pushpin icon appeared on the screen at each location. It was shaped like an
F
, if you marked the four points and added one in the center. Miki’s house was farthest away and at the bottom of the
F
, the condos near Colony Square at the top. The ballpark was dead center. Delgado’s neighborhood and Kelly’s home would be at the points of the two forks.

“So the Little League fields mark the center of the area our perp’s been working. It’s a residential area, so let’s start talking to the neighbors. What have they seen, et cetera. Keye, you want to add anything?”

“It’s been days now with no credible tips,” I said. “That means whoever he is, he’s blending in. He has knowledge of the area and the area is used to seeing him. But most important, this is our Stone Mountain connection. All kinds of events in the village that require concessions and vendors. Including a baseball field on the outskirts of the village.”

“Lieutenant,” Williams said. “Levi Sobol’s team is playing tonight.”

Rauser looked at me and smiled. Our dinner date had just moved to the ballpark. I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

  
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