The 6th Target (24 page)

I looked around his rented room, a ten-by-twelve box with a single bed, small pine dresser, two file cabinets that had once formed the base of his desk. The wide plank that had served as the desktop was on the floor, along with a computer and sheaves of scattered paper.

Something else had been dislodged during the fracas. A pipe had rolled out from under the bed.

It was about an inch and a half in diameter, eighteen inches long, with a ball joint screwed onto one end.

A two-part construction that looked like a club.

I stooped down to examine it closely.

There was a fine brown stain in the threads where the ball joint screwed onto the pipe. I drew Conklin’s attention, and he stooped down beside me. Our eyes met for a second.

“Looks like this was used as a bludgeon,” Conklin said.

WE WERE IN INTERVIEW ROOM NUMBER TWO, the smaller of the interrogation rooms at the squad. Tenning sat at the table, facing the mirrored window. I sat across from him.

He was wearing a white T-shirt and jeans. He had his elbows on the table. His face was turned down so that the overhead light made a starburst pattern on his balding scalp.

He wasn’t talking because he’d asked for a lawyer.

It would take about fifteen minutes for his request to filter down to the public defender’s office. Then another fifteen minutes before some attorney would come up and find his or her client in our interrogation room.

Meanwhile, nothing Tenning said could be used against him.

“We got our warrant to search your premises,” I told him. “That pipe contraption you used to kill Irene Wolkowski and Ben Wyatt? It’s at the lab now. We’ll have results before your PD shows up.”

Tenning smirked. “So leave me the hell alone until he gets here, okay? Leave me alone with my thoughts.”

“But I’m
interested
in your thoughts,” I said to Tenning. “All those statistics on the papers I saw in your apartment. What’s that about?”

“I’m writing a book, and I’d like to get back to it, actually.”

Conklin came into the room carrying a battery-operated radio. Richie slammed the door hard, then turned on the radio. Loud static came through the speakers. He fiddled with the dials, turned the volume up.

He said to Tenning, “It’s tough getting reception in here. I’d really like to know when the rain’s going to let up.”

I saw the alarm in Tenning’s eyes as the static climbed to an electronic squeal. He watched Conklin thumb the radio dial, starting to sweat now.

“Hey,” Tenning finally said, “could you turn that thing off?”

“In a minute, in a minute,” Conklin said. He dialed up the volume, set the radio down on the table. “Can I get you some coffee, Garry? It’s not Starbucks, but it’s got all the caffeine you could ask for.”

“Look,” Tenning said, staring at the radio, his eyes jitterbugging inside his head, “you’re not supposed to question me without my lawyer. You should put me in a holding cell.”

“We’re
not
questioning you, buddy,” Conklin said. He picked up a metal chair, set it down with a loud bang right next to Tenning, and sat beside him.

“We’re trying to
help
you. You want a lawyer — that’s
fine
,” Conklin said directly into Tenning’s ear. “But you’re giving up your opportunity to
confess
and cut yourself a
deal
. And that’s okay with us, isn’t it, Sergeant?”

“Fine with me,” I said over the radio static. I fiddled with the dial, found some ’80s heavy metal, turned it up so that the discordant electronic twang almost vibrated the table.

“We’re going to exhume the dogs you killed, Garry,” I said over the music. “Match the teeth up with those wounds in your arm. And we’re going to match the DNA from the blood on your club to your victims.

“And then Inspector Conklin and I are going to sign up for front-row seats for your execution in twenty years or so, unless of course you want to have me call the DA. See if we can get the death penalty off the table.”

I looked at my watch. “I figure you’ve got about ten minutes to decide.”

A band called Gross Receipts launched into its jarring rendition of “Brain Buster.” Tenning shrank into a ball, wrapped his arms over his ears.

“
Stop. Stop
. Call off the lawyer. I’ll tell you what happened. Just please,
shut that thing off
.”

IT WAS STILL POURING when I parked behind Claire’s SUV.

I cut across the street in the lashing rain, ran fifty yards to the front door of Susie’s. I opened it to the ringing beat of steel drums and the smell of curried chicken.

I hung my coat on the rack inside the door, saw that Susie was coaxing her regulars into a limbo competition as the band tuned up.

Susie called to me, “Lind-say, get out of your wet shoes. You can do this, girl.”

“No way, Suz.” I laughed. “Don’t forget, I’ve seen this before.” I showed myself into the back room. I buttonholed Lorraine and ordered a Corona.

Yuki waved to me from the back booth. Then Cindy looked up and grinned. I slid onto the banquette next to my best friend, Claire. It had been a while since we’d been out together as a group.
Way too long
.

When my beer came, Cindy proposed a toast to me for the takedown of Garry Tenning.

I laughed off the toast, saying, “I was extremely motivated, Cindy. I didn’t want a roommate, and you were going to have to move in with me permanently if we didn’t catch that bastard.” Yuki and Claire hadn’t heard the details, so I filled them in.

“He’s ‘writing’ this book called
The Accounting
,” I told them. “It’s subtitled
A Statistical Compendium of the Twentieth Century
.”

“Come on! He’s writing about
everything
that happened in the last hundred years?” Yuki asked.

“Yeah, if you can call page after page of statistics ‘writing’! Like, how much milk and grain were produced in each state in each year, how many kids went through grade school, the number of accidents involving kitchen appliances —”

“Jeez, you can Google that stuff,” Yuki said.

“But Garry Tenning thinks
The Accounting
is his calling,” I said as Lorraine dropped off beer and menus. “His paycheck came from being a night watchman at a construction site. Gave him ‘time to think big thoughts,’ he told us.”

“How’d he even hear all those people and their noises in his closed-off little room?” asked Claire.

“Sound travels through the plumbing and the vents,” Cindy said. “Comes out in weird places. Like, I can hear people singing through my bathroom air duct. Who are they? Where do they live? I don’t know.”

“I’m wondering if he doesn’t have hyperacusis,” said Claire.

“Come again?” I said.

“It’s when the auditory processing center of the brain has a problem with noise perception,” Claire told us over the racket in the back room and the clanking of dishware from the kitchen. “Sounds that others can barely hear are intolerable to the person who has hyperacusis.”

“To what effect?” I asked.

“It would make the person feel isolated. You stir all that up with explosive-anger disorder and sociopathology, well, you get Garry Tenning.”

“The Phantom of the Blakely Arms,”
Cindy said. “Just tell me there’s no chance he’s going to get out on bail.”

“None,” I said. “He confessed. We have the murder weapon. He’s in and he’s done.”

“Well, if he really has this auditory disorder, Garry Tenning is going to go absolutely bug-nuts in prison,” Yuki said as Lorraine brought our dinners.

“Hear! Hear!” said Cindy, pointing at her ears.

We dug in, swapped stories and worries, Claire telling us that her workload had doubled and that “We’re having a farewell pour for Dr. G. tonight. He got a job offer he couldn’t refuse. Somewhere in Ohio.”

We toasted Dr. Germaniuk, and then Claire asked Yuki how she was feeling these days.

“I’m feeling a little bipolar,” Yuki said, laughing. “Some days I think Fred-a-lito-lindo is going to convince the jury he’s a legitimate psycho. The next morning I wake up absolutely sure I’m going to beat Mickey Sherman’s pants off.”

We got into a good-natured competition to name Claire’s unborn baby, Cindy calling out, “Margarita, if she’s a girl,” and winning the next round for free.

Way too soon, dinner had been reduced to bones, coffee had been served, and hungry would-be diners were backed up in the doorway.

We tossed money at the check on the table and dared one another to rush into the rain. I was last out the door.

I drove toward Potrero Hill, absorbed by the rhythm of the wiper blades and the halos around oncoming headlights, finding that the vacuum of silence in the wake of the tumultuous day and the camaraderie with my friends was bringing me back down.

Joe wouldn’t be sitting on my front steps when I got home.

Even Martha was still on vacation.

Thunder rumbled as I ran up the steps to my apartment. It was still raining when I went to bed alone.

RICH AND I FRETTED AT OUR DESKS the next morning, waiting for Mary Jordan to come through the gate. She arrived ten minutes late, looking rattled.

I invited the Westwood Registry’s office manager to join us in the windowless cell we call the lunchroom. Rich pulled out a chair, and I made coffee — black, two sugars, the way she’d taken it when we’d seen her last.

“I’ve been praying for Madison,” Jordan said, twisting her hands in her lap. There were prune-colored smudges under her eyes. “I feel in my heart that I’ve done what God would want me to do.”

Her words stirred up a little eddy of apprehension in the pit of my stomach. “What did you do, Mary?”

“When Mr. Renfrew went out this morning, I opened the door to his office again. I did some more digging in there.”

She hefted a large leatherlike handbag onto the table and removed a slate-blue, clothbound, old-fashioned accountant’s ledger. It was labeled
QUEENSBURY REGISTER
.

“This is in Mr. Renfrew’s handwriting,” Jordan said, pointing out the neat block letters and numerals. “It’s a record of a business the Renfrews had in Montreal two years ago.”

She opened the ledger to where a stiff rectangle of paper was wedged between two pages. Jordan took it out and flipped it over.

It was a photograph of a blond-haired boy of about four, with incredible blue-green eyes.

“Got a few minutes?” I asked Jordan.

She nodded her head.

I’d ridden up in the elevator with ADA Kathy Valoy, so I knew she was at her desk. I called her and explained about the Queensbury Register and the photo of the boy.

I said, “The Renfrews are hopscotching around the continent, opening and closing these registries. Kathy, I’m guessing
we’re looking at a picture of another victim
.”

Kathy must have taken the stairs two at a time, because she appeared in the lunchroom doorway almost before I’d hung up the phone.

She asked Mary Jordan again if she’d dug up this information on her own, and again Jordan swore that she was not acting as our agent.

“I’ll put in a call to Judge Murphy,” Valoy said, staring at the photo, running both hands through her short black hair. “Let’s see what I can do.”

Minutes after we’d escorted Jordan out to the elevator, Kathy Valoy was back on the line. “I’m faxing you the search warrant right now.”

PAUL RENFREW ANSWERED OUR KNOCK and swung open the door to the Westwood Registry. He was looking smart in a gray herringbone suit, crisp shirt, bow tie, and well-cut wheat-colored hair. His flyaway eyebrows lifted over his frameless lenses, and his smile broadened.

He seemed completely delighted to see us.

“Is it good news? Have you found Madison?” he asked.

Then the four uniformed officers climbing out of the property van caught his eye.

“We have a search warrant, Mr. Renfrew,” I said.

Conklin signaled to the uniforms, and they clomped up the stairs with empty cartons in hand. They followed us down the long hallway to the Renfrews’ office.

The workplace was orderly — a mug of tea was on the desk, a plate of half-eaten muffins resting beside a sheaf of open files.

“Why don’t you tell us all about the Queensbury Register?” I asked Renfrew.

“Sit down, sit down,” he said, indicating one of the two small sofas at right angles in the corner of the room. I took a seat, and Renfrew wheeled over his desk chair, all the while shooting concerned looks as Conklin directed the cops. They dropped file folders into boxes.

“Queensbury isn’t a
secret
,” Renfrew said. “I surely would have told you, but we closed that business because it failed.”

He showed me his palms as if to say there was nothing up his sleeves.

“I’m just a terrible businessman in a lot of ways,” Renfrew said.

“We need to talk to your wife,” I said.

“Of course, of course, and she wants to talk to you. She’s flying out from Zurich this evening.”

Renfrew’s open manner was so winning, I let him think he’d won. I smiled, then asked, “Do you know this child?”

Renfrew took the photo of the blond-haired, blue-green-eyed boy and scrutinized it.

“I don’t recognize him. Should I?”

Conklin came over with a cop in tow and several blue-covered ledgers under his arm.

“Mr. Renfrew, you’re prohibited from doing business for seventy-two hours, and that includes using your business phone. This is Officer Pat Noonan. His job is to make
sure
your business is closed until the warrant expires.”

“He’s staying here?”

“Until his relief comes in about eight hours. You know anything about football? Pat is a big fan of the Fighting Irish. Can talk your ear off if you let him.”

Noonan smiled, but Renfrew’s face went blank.

“And, Mr. Renfrew, don’t try to leave town. That would look really bad.”

THE TENSION IN TRACCHIO’S OFFICE was almost unbearable. The insatiable media beast had been roaring at us nonstop for more than a week — on air, in the legit papers, and in supermarket tabloids. And we had no rebuttal.