Invisible Read online

  [Woman:] “Sorry, that was rude of me.”

  You don’t think I was talking on the phone?

  [Woman:] “It’s kind of a weird-looking phone, but these days, I can’t really tell anymore. It’s…I should mind my own business. Really.”

  No, you’re fine, you’re fine. I’m Graham, by the way.

  [Woman:] “I’m Mary.”

  Mary, Mary, quite contrary.

  [Woman:] “I can be. What is ‘Graham,’ an English name?”

  Yes, it is. What are you drinking, Mary?

  [Woman:] “Club soda. So…are you a writer?”

  No, I’m not. You want to try another guess?

  [Woman:] “Are you a cop?”

  Nope. Why, do I look like a cop?

  [Woman:] “Not really. But the way you observe people—I was thinking, maybe, an undercover one. Like you’re following someone.”

  Maybe I’m following you, Mary. Have you done something wrong I should know about?

  [Woman (laughing):] “That’s an interesting question.”

  Oh, well, color me intrigued. Do tell.

  [Woman:] “I was just kidding.”

  What have you got to lose, Mary? You don’t know me. I’m just a guy at a bar. I might as well be a priest. Confess your sins.

  [Woman:] “I’ll take the Fifth, if you don’t mind.”

  Oh, you’re no fun. Would it help if I confessed my sins first?

  [Woman:] “Sure.”

  I’m a serial killer. I’m recording my thoughts in my fake telephone for posterity. You know, so they can study me someday at the FBI.

  [Woman:] “How many people have you killed?”

  Hundreds, Mary.

  [Woman:] “Mmmm…you don’t look the part. You have a harmless quality about you.”

  That’s why I’m so good at what I do. I suck people in. Like you, for example.

  [Woman:] “So you’re playing me? Trying to win my trust?”

  Exactly.

  [Woman:] “Did it ever occur to you that I’m a serial killer who’s playing you?”

  I guess I better be careful. Tell me, Mary, what are you doing here?

  [Woman (chuckling):] “A nice girl like me, in a place like this?”

  That’s exactly what I mean, yes.

  [Woman:] “Well…actually, you want to know? I was on a setup. A blind date. My friends set me up with someone and I met him here. I work here, so it seemed like a good place to come. We had a drink and he left.”

  And it didn’t go well?

  [Woman:] “Oh, it went fine. He was a nice guy.”

  You say that as if you were disappointed, Mary.

  [Woman:] “Maybe a little. But that’s supposed to be what I’m looking for, isn’t it? A nice guy. That’s what everybody tells me, anyway.”

  But you’re not looking for that?

  [Woman:] “Well, obviously, I want him to be nice. But for me, the main thing is they have to be…well, for lack of a better word, interesting. Not too vanilla. You know, maybe a little dark, a little edgy.”

  You’re looking for a bad boy?

  [Woman:] “I wouldn’t quite say it like that.”

  But not a harmless guy like me.

  [Woman:] “You can be harmless and still be interesting.”

  Okay, then. What’s so interesting about me?

  [Woman:] “Let’s just…forget it.”

  I’m curious, really. Why do you find me interesting? Not that I’m hitting on you. I’m not. Let’s stipulate that there will be no flirting. But I admit, I’d like to hear this.

  [Editor’s note: pause of twenty-seven seconds.]

  So you’re going to leave me hanging? You’re going to leave without—

  [Woman:] “I just…I have an early day tomorrow. But it’s been very nice talking with you, Graham. Good luck on your writing…or your serial killing.”

  Mary, Mary, you really are quite contrary.

  [Editor’s note: pause of eleven seconds.]

  [Woman:] “Okay, fine. You really want to know what I find interesting about you?”

  I am utterly captivated.

  [Woman:] “You aren’t going to like it.”

  I’ll mentally steel myself.

  [Woman:] “Well…it’s just something in your eyes, I guess. Like you’re wishing for something you don’t have. You seem…well, you seem troubled. I hope I’m wrong. But I really need to run along. It was nice meeting you, Graham.”

  [Editor’s note: pause of forty-one seconds.]

  Mary, Mary. Mary, Mary.

  Oh, my.

  [END]

  51

  THIS IS a good thing…this is a good thing.

  Books keeps saying these words into my ear with the soothing ease he’d normally reserve for a child. I stagger out of the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office without a word, Books clutching my arm at the biceps and holding me upright. When we reach our car, I rush around to the front of the vehicle and vomit into the bushes—deep, guttural retching as I plant my hands on my knees and gasp between lurches.

  Books hands me some tissues when I’m done, when it’s passed, and I clean myself up before he helps me into the backseat. “I’m…sorry,” I manage, the only words I utter on the drive back to the hotel, while Books, Denny, and Sophie assure me it’s not a problem.

  But it is a problem, I know. Everything has changed. I’ve changed. Now I’ve seen up close what he’s done. I’ve seen what he did to Marta.

  Books follows me to my hotel room and, without a word, comes inside with me. He puts me onto the bed and sits next to me, one foot on the floor, one on the bed, his hand resting on my arm. “You want anything?” he asks. “Some water?”

  I don’t answer. I stare at the cheesy wallpaper and let out a low moan. “Go ahead and say it,” I whisper, my voice raspy with phlegm.

  “I’m not going to say it.” He goes to the sink and fills a glass with water, placing it on the nightstand beside me. “At least not until tomorrow.”

  This is why you don’t work on cases with a personal connection. He warned me. And he was right.

  “You should get under the covers, Emmy. You’re trembling.”

  “I’m not trembling because I’m cold.”

  “I know, I know.” His hand rubs my arm, something just short of tender, just shy of intimate. How many times he caressed me that way, once upon a time, in a slower, sexier way.

  “This is a good thing,” he repeats once more. “Keep that in mind.”

  I close my eyes in acknowledgment. It’s not lost on me, the significance of what happened in there with Olympia Janus. Our investigation has just been given the stamp of approval.

  “What Lia said in there was right, Emmy. The work you did to uncover these crimes was nothing short of brilliant. You did it all by yourself. You fought against the tide. You fought against the entire ocean. Even I doubted you. But you were right all along. And now we can commit our full resources to catching this guy. We’re going to catch him, Em.”

  I sit up on the bed, feeling woozy, unsteady. “Where’s my laptop?”

  Books holds out his hand. “Not tonight, Emmy. You need rest.”

  “No—”

  “Listen to me, Emily Jean. You’re only human. You’ve been motoring on a few hours of sleep a night for weeks—months, probably—and now you’ve experienced some real trauma this evening. Give yourself a break. For the sake of the investigation, give yourself tonight to sleep. I’m flying in a dozen agents tomorrow. We have the full resources of the Bureau behind us now. If you really want to catch our subject, you’ll have to take care of yourself first.”

  As usual, Books understands me better than I understand myself. I drop my head back down on the pillow, staring at the ceiling.

  Books dims the lights. “I’ll sleep here in this chair,” he says. “I’ll be here all night with you, okay?”

  “Thank you,” I say.

  He doesn’t answer immediately. I feel myself start to drift, my eyes swimming be
neath heavy lids. I know that sleep will be fitful tonight. And I know what I’m going to dream about.

  “We’re going to catch him, Em. Just remember that.”

  And it’s Marta, returning to me, the images I’ve struggled to stifle since Lia Janus gave her detailed recitation, images I won’t be able to avoid when I surrender to sleep. A knife to her kneecap, an ice pick to her scalp, boiling water from a kettle pouring over her—

  “I don’t want to…catch him,” I mumble. “I want to kill him.”

  52

  NINETEEN PAIRS of eyes—twelve agents’ and seven research analysts’—are glued to me as I complete my presentation, my map with the blue stars and red stars, my run-through of our subject’s pattern—two kills a week, every week, from Labor Day to around New Year’s, a slower trend during the spring and summer months.

  “Questions?” I ask. “Comments?”

  I look over the room. I know only a handful of these agents, some of whom come from Hoover and some from Chicago’s field office. Books doesn’t even know all of them, and he was an agent for more than a decade.

  Books, who is running the investigation, has organized the agents into teams, with a team leader for each one who will report to Books every night. One team is for new incidents/rapid response, for new fires that we discover, on the theory that the quicker we deploy to a scene, the more effective our investigation will be (included, within that, the rather fantastical premise that we might deploy so quickly that we could actually catch our subject before he leaves town). Another team will handle old fires, combing through the litany of murders already committed and doing in-person interviews and research to try to dig up a suspect and draw out a pattern.

  And then we have two teams devoted to the most recent fires, where the bodies are still warm, so to speak, and the evidence the freshest. Team Nebraska/Colorado will handle the double murder of Luther Feagley and Tammy Duffy in Grand Island, Nebraska, last week and the murder of Charles Daley in Lakewood, Colorado, two days later.

  And Team Illinois will investigate the murders of Curtis Valentine in Champaign and Joelle Swanson in Lisle. That team will include our original four-person squad—Books, Denny, Sophie, and me—as well as some others.

  A hand goes up in the back of the room, a man with sand-colored hair in a charcoal suit. Even as my eyes move in his direction, I grimace in pain. Either tiny gnomes are operating jackhammers behind my eyes or I have the worst headache I can remember. I am hungover from a night of sporadic sleep, breathtaking nightmares, an ever-present nausea.

  “So we presume he lives here in the Midwest, and he’s traveling in the fall.”

  “That’s right.”

  “What kind of a job allows you to stay home in the spring and summer, but requires travel literally every week during the fall to a different locale?”

  I shrug. “I’m not convinced that he’s traveling because of a job. In fact, I don’t think that’s the case.”

  “Why not?” the agent challenges me. “That’s the most logical assumption. He’s a trucker or a traveling salesman or something like that. He has an airtight excuse for traveling around the country. Why isn’t that the most logical hypothesis? That’s what I’d do. If the police questioned me, I’d want to be able to show that I had a valid reason for being in those places.”

  “He wouldn’t do that,” I say.

  “Oh, really. He wouldn’t do that. And why is that, exactly?” The agent folds in his lips, as if suppressing a smile, and looks around him. The typical special-agent bravado—lookee here at this little research analyst, trying to play special agent. Go ahead, little lady, teach us all your wisdom!

  “Think about how meticulous our subject is,” I answer. “Look at the medical evidence Lia Janus found. Look at the surgical detail with which he carried out his torture, so that nobody would even see it as murder. That’s not a guy who wants to be tied to a paper trail, where you could trace his movements week by week just by looking at job orders or some dispatch report.”

  I shake my head and begin to pace as I continue. “We know from last year’s data—from the patterns of the murders from Labor Day two thousand eleven until that year’s end—that he traveled each week to an area, killed two people, and then returned to his hub somewhere in the Midwest before heading out again the next week. He clearly seems to have traveled by car. And that makes sense, because he wouldn’t want to leave a trail by purchasing an airline ticket. He could take a train, but that’s slower, less precise, and also leaves a trail. And I’d be willing to bet that he drives his own car, not a rental—again to avoid a record. I’d go so far as to surmise that he pays cash for everything when he travels—gas, food, even lodging. A man who is willing to go to so much trouble to torture people without making it look like torture—to somehow fill their lungs with smoke from burnt rubber, for example, or to inflict unspeakable pain in such a way as to mimic injuries from a fire—is not a guy who’s going to be so careless as to tie himself down by a job. No,” I say with a sigh, “even if we find this subject, I’d be willing to bet that we wouldn’t be able to prove he was in any of those cities at the relevant time, or that he even left home at all.”

  The agent with the smirk isn’t smirking any longer, but he’s also not willing to give up. “You’re suggesting we shouldn’t even pursue that angle?”

  “No. Please do pursue it. I’m just telling you what I think.”

  “But let’s start with Emmy’s premise,” Books joins in. “That our subject goes to incredible lengths to avoid leaving a paper trail. No credit cards, no rental cars, etc. That doesn’t mean he didn’t still leave a trail, right?” Books points around the room. “For the murders last fall,” he says, “for each week, each area he visited where he committed a pair of murders—check all the surrounding hotels for people who paid cash during that time period. They’d probably still have to show ID, right? Check for parking tickets issued during that window of time for out-of-state plates. And he would have had to have a large wad of cash on him, right? So before he left town each week, maybe he withdrew a large sum of money from a bank or an ATM. Let’s look for that, for each week last fall—a midweek withdrawal of large amounts of cash, probably over a thousand dollars.”

  I feel a surge of momentum. Good. This is good. So many smart and talented people putting their heads together—surely we can think of something.

  Finally. We’re no longer spending our time looking backward, proving a crime was committed. Now we’re looking forward, trying to solve it.

  “We’re hoping to have a profile worked up soon,” says Books. “Until then…every night, team leaders, six o’clock central time, we video conference.” He claps his hands. “Let’s catch a bad guy.”

  53

  THE TAVERN is about three-quarters full at 3:57 p.m. There is a standard full-length wraparound bar in one corner, then an open area with some cocktail tables in the middle, with dining tables at the other end. The crowd is a youthful mix, many of them just at the legal drinking age of twenty-one, some a bit older, possibly grad students. Waitresses weave through the crowd holding platters with beers and shots. There is probably loud, lively music playing, but we don’t have audio, just the grainy black-and-white video from a standard security camera mounted in the corner, which has since been downloaded to a disc now spinning inside Sophie Talamas’s laptop computer.

  The four of us—Books, Denny, Sophie, and I—are huddled around the computer screen. With his pen, Denny Sasser points to a man walking through the crowd toward the dining tables. From the view of the immobile camera perched high up at the back of the bar, the man is walking through the middle of the screen toward the bottom right corner. The man is short and bottom-heavy, wearing a black shirt and black jeans and a ponytail—the aging hippie.

  “This is Curtis Valentine,” says Denny.

  My heart flutters. There is something stirring about watching this man move with such unremarkable ease, a casual gait as he holds his beer carefu
lly and heads to a table, unaware that he has only hours to live, hours which will be excruciating.

  The footage comes from Benny’s Tavern in Urbana, Illinois, from August 29, the day that Curtis Valentine was murdered.

  Valentine continues to walk toward the bottom right corner of the screen until he disappears out of view. He is heading for a corner table, a sensible decision for someone coming here for a meeting. Unfortunately, the security camera isn’t focused on that corner; its focus is the front of the establishment, the entrance and the wraparound bar, where the cashier is located. The owners want to keep an eye on the bartenders and, more important, on the money.

  “Good-bye, Mr. Valentine,” says Denny, as Valentine disappears from our view. “Go to four oh four p.m., Sophie, if you would.”

  Sophie dutifully fast-forwards the video to seven minutes later, or 4:04 p.m.

  “Keep an eye on the entrance,” says Denny, gesturing to the top left corner of the screen.

  The room is quiet. Books clears his throat.

  “Here,” says Denny, as the door to the bar opens.

  A man walks in, a profile of his right side facing the screen. He is holding a phone up to his right ear, partially obscuring his face. He is wearing a baseball cap, further shadowing his features. His eyeglasses complete the trifecta of concealment. The grainy video doesn’t help, either. But we can still see a few things: a male Caucasian, perhaps bald, medium height, with what appears to be a paunch showing through a blue Windbreaker.

  “This is our subject,” says Denny.

  Nobody speaks, but electricity fills the air. This is our man. This is the man I’ve hunted for months, in the flesh, so close to us that I have to restrain myself from reaching out and touching the screen.

  This is the man who has killed and killed again with impunity. This is the man who has committed such heinous acts of torture that he could make a UN commission on human rights atrocities blush.

  This is the man who killed my sister.

  54

  “HELLO, SCUMBAG,” says Books to the computer screen. That’s the word Books has always used to describe the criminal he’s chasing, be it a bank robber or kidnapper or serial killer, a word that is both antagonistic and, more to the point, dismissive, disrespectful—making the crucial, if subconscious, point to his team that he doesn’t fear this man, and thus neither should they.