Stranger in the Room: A Novel (37 page)

Ten million or so offender DNA profiles had been logged into the CODIS system. It was not a hundred percent for positive hits even when an offender’s DNA was actually in the system. But technology and software were constantly improving, and more and more law enforcement agencies were taking the time to log in offender profiles. As a result, the system had become increasingly effective.

Rauser pulled pages of reports Williams had printed off the printer and handed them to me. I scanned the details as fast as I could. “They amplified the samples from the clothing using PCR. DNA is confirming your witness statements. The offender is male. It’s likely he’s also white. It’s possible his eyes and hair are brown.”

“But it’s not certain?” Williams asked.

“Gender is definite. They’ve identified the XY,” I said. “Race has certain ID markers. The probability is he’s Caucasian. But we’ve confirmed that with witness statements already. Eye and hair color are less certain.”

“Got a hit on CODIS,” Williams announced. “Matches the sequence in the samples Stone Mountain PD submitted from offender skin samples under Fatu Doe’s nails.”

“Okay, now we’ve got a physical link for all three victims,” Rauser said, and smiled. “DA’s gonna wanna kiss my face. Balaki, you get anything on the hospital records?”

“Affirmative,” Balaki answered. “Four instances in two hospitals where Jesse Owen Richards and Miki Ashton were both on the inpatient register.”

“Okay, that’s it right there. Richards is our guy. Let’s track him down.”

“Got the last driver’s-license photo on record,” Bevins said. “It’s six years old, though. He hasn’t renewed. I don’t see any vehicle registrations in his name either. I’ll put it up.” We all looked up at the
big screen. A white, overweight man with a thick neck, a jowly face, and brown eyes and hair looked back. “Six-three,” Bevins told us. “Three-twenty.”

“He could have lost the weight in six years,” Balaki pointed out.

“Miki said he was a big guy, soft. She saw his stomach under his shirt,” I said.

“Where is he now?” Rauser wanted to know.

“Missing,” Williams said, and the energy in the room took a dive. “A missing-persons report was filed three years ago by the grandparents, Fred and Melinda Etheridge.”

“Find out where they are and stake ’em out. Front and back. I don’t want anyone slipping out the back door. This feels a little too convenient. Once we’re set up, Keye and I will go in and have a chat with the grandparents.”

“No work records for him. Nothing,” Williams said. “He never resurfaced.”

“Oh yes he did,” Rauser said. “And he started killing people.”

“How about bank records?” I asked.

“Bank account was closed,” Bevins said. “A week before the missing persons was filed. Two hundred and thirty bucks.”

“So, he knew he was going to disappear,” I said.

“Looked suspicious then too,” Bevins said. “He was an adult with a history of mental illness, and he’d emptied his bank account. Notations from the detectives indicate their conclusion was he left of his own free will.”

I spotted a package of cookies in cellophane on Balaki’s desk and picked them up. “Blood-sugar emergency,” I said. My nerves were running laps and I couldn’t remember if I’d eaten. Hey, don’t judge. Vodka would have been nice, but cookies was what I had.

“Go for it,” Balaki said.

I ripped the package open. The cookies were hard and stale. I popped one in my mouth. My phone lit up, a 205 area code. I hooked on my earpiece.

“Hel-woo,” I said, which is what you get when you answer your phone with a mouthful of old, dry chocolate-chip cookies. Balaki snickered.

“This is DCH Regional Medical Center in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Is this Keye Street?”

“Yes.”

“We have Miki Ashton here under observation.”

“What happened?” Rauser must have heard something in my voice. He looked up at me with concern. “Is she okay?” I thought of the devastation the storm had wrought.

“I’ll let her tell you.”

“Keye, I’m fine. It’s my leg. And I lost my new fucking phone.”

“What happened? Is it bad?”

“Broken in a couple of places. I’m out of commission for a while.”

“Oh no, Miki. I’m so sorry.” I mouthed to Rauser that Miki had broken a leg.

“It got totally crazy here,” Miki told me. “Looks like there was a war. Seriously. I was in Beirut after a bombing and there was less infrastructure damage and fewer people hurt. I’ve already uploaded the pics to the magazine. They’re stunning, Keye. What happened here, it’s beyond description. Biggest tornado I’ve ever seen, stayed down for about three miles. We were right behind it. We came through this neighborhood that was just leveled in about two minutes. All you could hear was crying and screaming. It was horrible. Except one house was standing all alone. The roof was sheared off, but the rest of it looked strangely perfect and beautiful among the rubble. I heard a woman calling for help. I went in and found her, then one of the walls came down.” Miki asked me to hang on, and I heard her being a brat to the nurse. “Can I please get some painkillers over here? Do you have any idea how fucking bad this hurts?” Then back to me in a different tone entirely, “I have a friend from Birmingham getting me to the airport when I’m released in a couple of hours. Will you pick me up at Hartsfield-Jackson?”

“Of course,” I said, and took down her flight info. “Miki, what about the woman?”

“What woman?”

“The injured woman in the house.”

“Oh yeah, yeah, right. She’s fine. She had a bathtub on top of her. They got her out. I think she’s down the hall. Keye, they’re saying
maybe a couple hundred people died. I’ve covered some bad shit, but this is right up there.”

I heard stress in her voice. I didn’t have the heart to tell her about the creepy phone call or the threats to her or the shots at me or that Neil had been hurt. Not yet. “Miki, does the name Jesse Richards sound familiar?”

“No. Why?”

“I’ll tell you about it when I pick you up.”

  
33

W
e stood in front of a sandy brick home with a second-story clapboard addition. Rauser knocked on the door, a cop knock, too firm, too official. I knew he had detectives on the street already. I’d spotted the car, another Crown Vic, with a driver and passenger two doors up. He’d wanted them front and back, but the house backed up to the golf course. I wondered how they’d decided to handle that.

The woman who opened the door wore dark pink pants, sneakers, and a polo shirt. Her hair was silver and thick, tucked behind her ears. We knew she was seventy-two and her husband was three years older. But she didn’t look it. Not even close.

“Mrs. Etheridge, I’m Lieutenant Aaron Rauser with the Atlanta Police Department, and this is Keye Street. May we come in?”

Alert green eyes went from Rauser to me. “Of course, Lieutenant, Ms. Street. Please come in. May I offer you a glass of iced tea?”

“No, ma’am. Thank you.”

She led us through a tidy house to where a white-haired man was sitting at a table, gluing back together a model airplane that looked like it had some age on it. He didn’t lift his head when we entered the kitchen. She touched his shoulder and spoke loudly. Behind him, outside the window, the Candler Park Golf Course stretched out. “Fred,
these people are from the police department. They want to speak with us.” I saw the hearing aid in his ear when he raised his head.

“Well, pull up a chair,” he told us. “Did my wife offer you something?”

“Yes sir, she did,” Rauser answered. Melinda Etheridge sat down with us.

“You here about Owen?” Fred Etheridge asked. “Can’t be good news or a phone call would have been sufficient.”

“He doesn’t go by Jesse?” Rauser asked.

“His mother called him Jesse,” Mrs. Etheridge told us. “She was killed when Owen was seven and we were awarded custody. He wouldn’t let anyone call him Jesse after that.”

“We’d like to speak with your grandson. Is he here now?” Rauser asked. I thought again about the stakeout on the street and the wide open green of the golf course. I imagined a door being flung open and Richards running. It didn’t happen.

“Why, no.” Mrs. Etheridge looked shocked.

“Where can we find him?”

Mr. Etheridge frowned. “I assumed you were here to tell us where he is.”

“No, sir. We’re trying to locate your grandson. It’s very important.”

“We’re not even sure Owen is alive,” Mrs. Etheridge said. “He disappeared about three years ago. We filed a report.” Irritation crept into her voice.

“Yes, ma’am. I’m aware of the report,” Rauser said. “We believe your grandson is very much alive and in the Atlanta area.”

Melinda Etheridge reached out, squeezed her husband’s hand on the table. “Before he disappeared, Owen had moved back in with us. He couldn’t seem to hold a job,” she told us. “And he could be very difficult to deal with. It started in high school. The moods and gloominess could turn violent when things didn’t go his way. He’d break things, yell and scream. He gave up the things he loved, put on a lot of weight. He was so angry. It would break your heart to see how angry he was.”

“What did he love?” I asked.

“Baseball, for one,” Mr. Etheridge answered. “And he was good at it. He liked girls, though he wasn’t good with them. Our daughter,
Owen’s mother, and his father were killed right in front of him. He never seemed to be able to get over it.”

“So you haven’t seen him in three years? Not even a note or a phone call?” Rauser asked.

“No,” Mrs. Etheridge answered.

“Did he have any friends?” I asked. “Anyone he spent time with or trusted?”

“Owen had trouble keeping friends,” Fred Etheridge said. “He was too unpredictable. He’d blow up at them. But there was the guy with the landscaping crew who picked him up for work. They went out a few times and seemed to stay friendly. You remember his name, honey?”

Mrs. Etheridge shook her head.

“Please, anything you can think of, Mrs. Etheridge,” Rauser pressed.

“I don’t mean to appear rude, Lieutenant,” she replied, evenly, “but you’ve asked a lot of questions. You’ve come into our home and told us our grandson is alive and that you’re looking for him. But you haven’t bothered to offer an explanation. And you seem completely oblivious as to how this might affect us.”

Rauser calmly removed his phone from his pocket. Too calmly. He wasn’t in the mood to be polite. He touched the screen a couple of times, then slid it across the table. Mrs. Etheridge’s hands came up to her face. But her eyes stayed locked on the pictures on Rauser’s phone. He’d framed them all on one screen—Fatu Doe brutalized in the gazebo, Troy Delgado facedown in the dirt, Donald Kelly hanging.

“God in heaven,” Mr. Etheridge said.

Rauser pointed at the photo of Kelly. “This man was abducted, shot, and then hung like this in the house of a woman your grandson spent time with at Peachtree-Ford Hospital. He was also an inpatient at a facility for mood disorders at the same time she was a patient. We believe he’s been stalking her for at least two years. There was a piece of wrapping paper in this man’s pocket.” He pointed to Fatu Doe’s picture. “She had a ribbon tied like a bow around her ankle.” He pointed at Troy Delgado’s body. “This little boy right here. He loved baseball too. Body fluid on this little boy and on the old man, it matches semen found inside this young woman. She was beaten and
raped before he killed her. Now, I realize this may come as a shock, and I hope you’ll forgive me if I don’t have time to sugarcoat it, but we believe your grandson did these terrible things. And we think he wants to do the same thing to the woman he’s been stalking. Dr. Street here has profiled the killer and all roads led to your grandson. If you withhold information from us, it’s blood on your hands. Do you understand?”

“Is the woman being stalked blonde, and is her name Miki?” Mr. Etheridge asked.

I fought a shiver.

“I’d love to know how you know that,” Rauser said evenly.

“Last two times he was in the hospital we visited him.… They were long stays, weeks. He’d checked himself in both times. He talked about a young woman. He said they’d met and fallen in love. He talked about how pretty she was, how smart she was. He said she understood his darkness,” Mr. Etheridge said. “When he came out and moved back in with us, he wouldn’t talk about her. Not in a way we approved anyway. He made disparaging remarks each time we raised the subject. He’d had these infatuations before. His response to rejection was always anger. He got that from his father. We didn’t want our daughter to marry that man. When he was violent with her even when she was expecting, we begged her to leave him. She finally did when Owen was about five. But he wouldn’t leave her alone.…”

Mr. Etheridge was veering off track. His wife took over gently. “After Owen disappeared, we went through his things. We’d hoped maybe he’d left a note. He’d hurt himself before. Cut himself. It was always our fear. That we’d get a call or we’d find him dead. So we went through everything. We found dolls.
Barbie
-type dolls. Male and female. They were hanging from clothes hangers in his closet. They all had strings tied around their necks. And they were all
naked
,” she added venomously.