Freezing

TWENTY-EIGHT

Eric hung up from Scott’s call and regarded Aviva Goldsmith carefully as they stood in the reception area of Sanctuary House.

‘We have reason to believe that you would have known Eleanor Patterson as Agapanthus.’

Instead of looking at the photo again, Aviva Goldsmith’s eyes stayed on Eric’s and he saw her left eyelid twitch. She steadied it with a finger.

He said quietly, ‘Please look at the photo again.’

‘I don’t need to. Agapanthus never arrived.’

He pounced on her use of the past tense. ‘What do you mean, “never arrived”? So you expected her? How was she supposed to get here?’

He felt Angie’s hand on his arm so stopped shooting questions at Aviva Goldsmith, who had been trying to get a word in.

‘Let me explain,’ she said. ‘Our system here is that when we’re contacted by women who need sanctuary, we don’t ask any questions of them. We only give them our address and instructions on how to get here. We don’t know their names, anything about them, or where they’re coming from, other than if they’re out of state or will be arriving with children . . . oh, and which day. We need only enough information to determine if we have enough space to accommodate them. If they’re coming from out of state, like Agapanthus . . .’

She paused and only then looked again at the portrait in Angie’s hand. ‘We instruct them that on arrival at the airport, they should take the bus to our nearest stop at the Naval College. We tell them which number bus to take and to walk here to the house. This makes it harder for their abusers to track them because it reduces the number of people they interact with, particularly by not using taxis, and it gives them a way to get here that makes them appear to be local. They’re instructed to travel without baggage so they don’t appear to be visitors. All of this is designed to reduce their vulnerability while in transit. The bus also provides some safety in numbers.’

Eric caught Angie’s eyes.

Aviva Goldsmith must have noticed the exchange because she asked, ‘Is that important?’

Angie asked, ‘You instruct them to use a bus from Atlanta airport?’

‘Ye-es.’ She looked at them, her eyes questioning.

Angie said, ‘I’m afraid that those instructions may have put Eleanor Patterson directly in the path of a predator.’

Eric thought Aviva Goldsmith was looking upset and he wanted to get information from her before that rendered her useless. ‘We need to know what day Eleanor Patterson was supposed to arrive at the airport. And we need to know if you’ve got any other women who didn’t show.’

She looked into the middle distance.

‘Are you all right?’

‘No, I’m not all right.’ She blinked back the wateriness in her eyes and focused on him. ‘I’m damn angry.’ She turned on her heel, went to the inner door, and punched buttons on the security panel, the noise a staccato tattoo. Watching her, Eric wondered how he could ever have mistaken her for a nun.

The agents went to the window and watched her open a file drawer to pull out some manila folders. She put the items on the window ledge for them.

‘There are only three women who haven’t arrived at Sanctuary House after making first contact. That’s three women since we opened in nineteen ninety. In these files are the records of our contact with them and you’ll see what dates we expected them.’

Angie immediately began going through the files, her notebook and pen at the ready.

Eric looked at Aviva Goldsmith. ‘Were you ever concerned about why these women never arrived?’

She smiled at him wearily. ‘Human beings are complex creatures. Women being abused by the person they love or the father of their children have yet another layer of complexity. Even after they’ve decided to leave the abuser, they can change their minds and stay, or they leave but decide they don’t need a place like Sanctuary House to assist their transition. To exercise choice is a woman’s right and it’s a crucial one. It has been our practice to assume that a woman who didn’t arrive after first contact with us has exercised choice. We know there are alternatives . . .’

Her hand strayed to the roots of her streak of white hair and he noticed fine scar tissue on the backs of some of her fingers.

‘For example,’ she was saying. ‘We know that it’s possible that in the act of leaving, abuse victims face an even greater danger from their partners. But I must say that we had not thought that, having left the abuser, they would encounter someone yet more dangerous.’

She stopped touching her scalp and looked directly at him. ‘May I ask how you knew this woman’s code word? They’re instructed to avoid writing it down or sharing it with anyone.’

Eric was limited in what he could say at this stage in the investigation but he wanted to give her something.

‘I think she didn’t trust herself to remember something so important. She wrote it down but hid it well. But the fact that she wrote it down may help us find her killer.’

‘Her killer?’ She echoed him. ‘You only said she had been harmed by this person.’

‘Yeah. He harmed her by killing her.’

This time, he recognized Aviva Goldsmith’s expression; she was angry, damn angry.

Angie closed the last file. ‘Got it. Let’s go.’

Tripper waited until the electronic display came up, acknowledging the cash he’d fed into the machine: ‘Go pump at #4’. He walked to the motorcycle and began to pump the gas. Through his helmet, he could hear a newscaster’s voice coming from the small television screens mounted above the pumps. The man’s tone was breathless.

Back to our breaking story. We’re just now getting the vision we promised you from Northside where it’s understood that police and FBI officials have made a break in the case of several unsolved Atlanta homicides. Teri is live at the scene. Teri?

Tripper’s grip relaxed on the pump and he turned to look at the screen. The camera was focused on the field reporter’s heavily made-up face as she lowered her finger from where she’d been covering her ear.

That’s right, Don, but I should add that, so far, neither the police nor the FBI have made an official statement as to what is taking place in the house that is just about halfway down the block on this quiet street, but it’s widely believed to be related to the discoveries of female body parts around Atlanta, all still unidentified. As you can see behind me, law enforcement vehicles are continuing to arrive and they have put up crime scene tape to keep us some distance away.

The camera shifted from her face to the street behind her and attempted to focus on a house partially obscured by one in the foreground. In the corner of the screen, a box materialized with a view of the same street with a subtitle: Earlier Today. Several people were visible emerging from an SUV and crossing the street. Tripper raised the visor on his helmet and stared hard. Jayne Hall and Steelie Lander were unmistakable as they walked behind Special Adversary Houston.. . . and although we have no official word on the case being investigated, the families of women missing in Atlanta are already beginning to congregate here, hoping for some word on their loved ones. Back to you in the studio, Don.

Tripper’s anger was so great that it outweighed the zing of fear that shot through him and made his toes tingle. His plan to go back to California and cause those bitches as much trouble as they’d caused him was no longer enough. They’d interfered one step too far now. He had to eliminate them – all of them, including Houston. It could mean taking his chances by going back to the Mead Street house, which was in violation of the Transition Plan. But he would have to take that chance.

Tripper lowered his visor with a snap and turned back to the motorcycle.

As Angie drove them back to her office, Eric made a series of calls. First, he confirmed that King was indeed working at Atlanta Airport on the day that Eleanor Patterson was due to arrive there. Then he contacted the relevant Transport Police units to track down any CCTV footage from in and around the airport. Without a time frame for Patterson’s arrival, they would have to scan through all the footage from that day and hope to see some contact between Patterson and King. They needed a strong link to solidify the case against him because they didn’t have proof that he was driving his van when her dismembered arms fell out of it on the freeway. Nor was her purse in his garage proof that he actually killed her.

By the time Eric and Angie walked into the briefing room, the airport’s Closed Circuit TV tapes were waiting for them. The Transport Police had sent a note that Eric could thank the increased camera coverage and extended CCTV storage requirements that came into effect after September 11, 2001, otherwise the footage would have been wiped by this time.

Angie corralled a television and playback machine from someone’s office and wheeled them into the briefing room while Eric brought sandwiches and sodas from the cafeteria. They had Eleanor Patterson’s photograph illuminated on the projection screen to assist them in identifying her if she turned up on the video and they kept each tape on fast-forward as they ate while watching the screen.

The stationary camera had only picked up the part of the room that showed the information desk and about fifteen feet of tiled floor in front of it. Many people passed back and forth in the room and the fast-forward made them appear to be involved in some complicated dance, sometimes appearing to twirl in the center of the floor when they were consulting monitors mounted around the room.

Angie stopped the first tape several times for false alarms; women who looked like Patterson on fast-forward but then were revealed to look completely different once the tape was put on play. There was no sign of a man cleaning the floors as King was alleged to have been doing that day.

Then Angie exclaimed, ‘Whoa!’ and rewound the tape. ‘You said Houston described a big off-white handbag in the shed at King’s house? I think I just saw one.’ She pressed Play.

At first, the image was just the floor, the desk, and the man working behind the desk. Then a woman came into the shot from the right, the airport terminal side, and she stood in the center of the floor, turning slowly as if deciding which way to go. Angie paused the tape while the woman was turned toward the camera. The time marker read 16:22:12. Eric looked at the portrait on the projection screen and then back at the frozen CCTV footage.

‘That’s her,’ he stated.

‘Yeah, definitely. Same square jaw, same features, same type of hair. Big, pale bag.’

‘Play it, Angie.’

As they watched, Eleanor Patterson turned and walked to the information desk. She kept her handbag tucked under her arm as she stood talking to the attendant. It was while she was doing this that another man entered the shot from the left at time marker 16:26:34. His head was tilted down and he was walking backwards slowly, which was confusing until it became clear he was mopping the floor, shuffling backward so that he wouldn’t walk on areas he’d just cleaned.

‘Shit,’ Angie hissed.

The man with the mop passed close behind Patterson while she was leaning into the counter to look at something. He paused as though to stretch his back and pulled a kerchief from a back pocket. As he wiped his forehead, he glanced at her. At the moment he put the kerchief back in his pocket, Eric pressed Pause.

‘That’s him. That’s King, the sonofabitch.’

‘She doesn’t even know he’s there.’

‘He means nothing to her at this stage. If she even noticed him. He’s just the guy cleaning the floor. We have to see how he gains her trust.’ He restarted the tape.

King carried on mopping until he was out of the shot to the right. Patterson finished the conversation at the desk and walked out of frame to the left, toward the curb pick-up and bus stop area. The time marker read 16:31:02. Then King was back, now entering from the right and working backwards. He seemed to be mopping faster. At 16:40:36, he was no longer visible on the CCTV footage.

Angie exchanged the tape for one that showed the exterior of the same area. They would examine the rest of the interior tape later. She fast-forwarded the tape to time marker 16:30:00 and they saw Eleanor Patterson walk out of the building at 16:31:01, cross a few lanes for other buses, then stand at the third island across. They had a clear view of her. Over a period of 24 minutes, four buses came and went and Patterson didn’t get on any of them. Once, she waved at someone on a bus who may have spoken to her and she held up three fingers as if to suggest she was waiting for the Number 3.

At time marker 17:03:00, she appeared tired of standing and sat on the bench, keeping her handbag close to her body. And at time marker 17:07:20, a van pulled up to the bus stop. It was pale but it was otherwise a match to the gold van Eric had spent two days watching in Mesa, Arizona. In the passenger window was a neat, hand-lettered sign: Athens. The town where Sanctuary House was located.

The agents watched her go from waving the van off to shrugging to scanning for the bus again . . . and then someone opened the passenger door from the inside. Eric lunged forward to hit Pause. In the freeze-frame, the driver’s wrist was visible. They would get the tape enhanced. He let the tape begin again.

Eleanor Patterson got into the van and closed the door behind her. After exactly three seconds, at time marker 17:08:10, the brake lights on the back of the van went off and it pulled forward, its Georgia license plate clear. It accelerated at a sedate pace until it was out of the frame.

Eric fast-forwarded the tape until they saw the Number 3 bus arrive at the stop four minutes later, belching exhaust and canting to one side. He didn’t know how late the bus was but it was too late for Mrs Patterson.