The Murder Artist

CHAPTER 14

When I turn in my resignation, everyone tries to talk me out of quitting. I should give it more time, etc. I guess they think I’ll fall apart entirely without the structure of work.

Big Dave wags his huge head and turns my written resignation over, placing it facedown on his desk. “I’m going to call this a leave of absence,” he says. “Let’s say three months.”

“I can’t promise that,” I tell him. “I don’t know how long it’s going to take.”

When Dave says something he really doesn’t want to say, he lowers his head, furrows his brow, and peers up at you, something like a giant turtle. I prepare for some kind of ugly comment when I see his head go down, but what he says is this: “What are you planning to use for money?”

Dave is familiar enough with my financial situation to realize this is going to be a problem. We’re close enough that he’s been to the house a few times for Liz’s carefully crafted dinner parties. He knows we’re not rolling in it and that the separation has been an additional hardship.

“Look, if you get pressed,” he says, “just ask.” The way he squeezes this offer out tells me it’s causing him pain.

I thank him. “I’ve got a little set aside,” I say.

In fact, I’m not sure what I’m going to do about money. There’s no way I can ask Liz to let me open an equity line on the house, for instance. Technically, according to the terms of our separation agreement, I can’t even take a leave of absence because it diminishes my ability to provide support for her. I have to find a way to search for the boys and keep up the support payments for Liz. I can’t leave her short.

I’ll have to hit up my father for a loan – even though, like everyone else, he’ll think leaving my job is a mistake. I’ve got a couple of friends, Michael and Scott, good for a few grand.

And that’s how I’m going to have to do it. Beg. Borrow. Whatever it takes.

“I still think you’re making a mistake,” Dave says, shaking my hand. I can tell, though, that behind his discomfort, he’s relieved that I’m off his hands.

It starts with Dave, but it doesn’t stop there. Everyone tells me I’m making a mistake. What can I do that hasn’t already been done? What goes unsaid is that most of them think I’m chasing smoke, that my children are dead and that I should face that likelihood – while not abandoning hope, of course.

Miracles do happen. Elizabeth Smart comes up a lot.

Even Shoffler tries to dissuade me. “Alex,” he says, sounding like a disappointed parent. “Don’t do it. I’ve seen it before, and I’ll tell you, it’s nothing but heartbreak. You do this and you’re gonna burn yourself out – emotionally and financially.”

“So what?” That’s the thing. The second I decided to abandon the idea of “work,” I couldn’t believe I waited this long to do it.

The detective sighs. “Most of these cases, if they get solved – which most of them don’t, I’m sorry to say – it’s something coming in from the outside, you know? You can investigate the hell out of it and still get nowhere. And then some guy mutters something to a cell mate, or the perp gets caught in another jurisdiction committing a similar crime and the computer makes the match, and there you go.”

“I know that.”

“I know what you’re thinking – that you’re gonna bring more energy and focus to the search than any professionals could and so you’ll succeed where all the rest of us have failed. You think that just because you care more, you’ll find your boys. What I’m saying-”

“I will find them,” I interrupt. “Or I’ll find out what happened to them. And if it burns up all my resources, if it burns me out – so be it.”

Shoffler lets out a long sigh, but doesn’t speak for a long moment. In the background, I can hear people talking, phones ringing, the clacking of computer keyboards. “Well,” he says finally in a weary voice, “keep in touch.”

Kevin and Sean. Sean and Kevin.

In many ways, I’m much better equipped for the task of searching for them than most parents would be. I’m a reporter: finding out things is what I do.

But before I start asking questions, or seeking advice, the first thing I do is try to think about the why, not that I haven’t thought about it a thousand times. Still…

I go over it all again.

Starting with The Piper. By the time the cops were done, they’d found more than a dozen witnesses who saw them – the boys and The Piper – heading out into the parking lot.

The Piper. I still think of him that way, despite Shoffler’s caution about the costume being a disguise. The problem is that he has no dimension for me. He’s an idea, not a person. He’s not real.

But he is real. He’s a man who lives somewhere, who buys groceries, drives a car, wears a particular kind of socks… and he kidnapped my sons. Since I don’t know enough about him to have a real image of him, I have to concentrate on what I do know. And on what he did. He took my kids and he had a reason for it.

MOTIVE, I write at the top of my yellow pad. And then I think about the possibilities.

Profit? The absence of a ransom note would seem to rule that out.

Retaliation? Did someone abduct the boys in retaliation against me, for some story I did? True, my work put me in contact with some bad people, but Shoffler looked into this angle and ended up discounting it. In revenge crimes, the perpetrator almost always sends a signal to let the victim know. The “smirk factor,” Shoffler called it. “This guy’s real cute – with the T-shirt and the phone call and all that, but we still got no smirk factor. If the guy getting even with you doesn’t let you know he’s settled the score, where’s his satisfaction?” Shoffler and I worked at it, trying to connect the clues the Piper left behind with one of the investigations I’ve done, but there didn’t seem to be any connection.

Sexual predator? This is the default position, but I don’t really buy it. Why grab two kids – which would only make the abduction more difficult? And then – why return with them to the house, why call my cell phone, why deliberately confuse matters with the bloody T-shirt? Sexual predators are impulsive and opportunistic. Or so they say. Going back to the house, leaving mementos – that was premeditated. Not a classic pattern.

Kiddie porn? Cute blond twins. Were they abducted by a ring to make a film or procured for sale to someone with a twin thing? Shoffler looked into this – hard – but it didn’t go anywhere. For one thing, most children caught up in the murky world of kiddie porn are not abducted but “purchased” from relatives or foster parents. And a high-profile kidnapping that was sure to provoke a storm of media attention was unlikely in a subculture that preferred the darkest corners. Still…

Religious wacko? There was really nothing to suggest that.

Medical experiment? Shoffler rejected the Dr. Mengele Theory on the basis that there were virtually no cases on the books of pairs of twins going missing. But suppose Kevin and Sean were the initial pair?

I sit for a long time trying to think of other possibilities. In this world of delayed childbearing and infertile couples, it’s conceivable that the boys were abducted by someone desperate for children. Someone stalking the fair, who saw his chance and went for it. I mull this over for a while, the idea of an obsessed wannabe parent.

Whoever it was, he or she would have to be a total recluse, living outside of society – because there’s been no credible sighting of the boys since the day they were abducted. And what about the dimes? The T-shirt? The phone call? How would any of that fit into the would-be parent scenario?

A recluse. An obvious thought occurs to me, but one that never occurred to me before. Unlike Elizabeth Smart, there’s no way someone could wander around with identical twins in tow, not without arousing suspicion. So wherever they are, whoever’s got them, if the boys are alive, Kevin and Sean are hidden from view, isolated.

I glance over my list of possible motives: profit, retaliation, sexual predator, kiddie porn, religious whack-job, Dr. Mengele, wannabe parent. Stripped down like this, the bare list gives me a chill. The least terrifying motives suggest reckless lunacy; the most alarming are truly evil.

I take a deep breath. Beneath the list of motives, I write a second word: CLUES.

Origami rabbit.

Chicken blood.

Row of dimes.

The abductor’s mementos. Judy Jones established that the rabbit was folded of standard material, bore no fingerprints, was of high-intermediate difficulty. And that was about it.

Still, The Piper left the thing on Sean’s side of the dresser. Why?

The chicken blood. It was possible that the blood-soaked T-shirt was a ruse to focus suspicion on me, but that was only an assumption. The chicken blood might have some other meaning. The police lab did establish that the blood came from a breed of chicken common in the commercial poultry business.

The dimes. The lab checked them for prints and struck out. There was also an attempt to source them – but it turned out that although you don’t see many “Mercury” dimes in circulation, there are millions of them out there. They were minted for almost thirty years, from 1916 to 1945, at which point the FDR dime replaced the Liberty head design. The police and the FBI had also looked into mint marks, and the dates of the coins left by the abductor, but there was no discernible pattern.

Still, the coins were placed deliberately; the Piper took the trouble to line them up. They must have some meaning.

There are other clues. For instance, the dog. The Piper used the cute little dog as a kid magnet. Shoffler checked into whippets and told us that the breed was rising in popularity. Lots of whippets out there. But how many can there really be? I never see whippets out for a walk.

And then there’s The Piper himself – his costume. Was that just a disguise, or did it, too, have meaning? I needed to check into the fairy tale of the Pied Piper. And what about the costume – where do you go for Piper gear? I got just a glance, but it seemed pretty elaborate. And what about the ruffs? One for him, one for the dog. Where do you buy a ruff? Did Shoffler check that out? And if so, what did he find out?

Under CLUES, I add:

whippet

Piper: fairy tale

costume

ruff

I’m going to need a look at Shoffler’s files. Only I guess they’d be Muriel Petrich’s files now.

I pick up the phone and call Petrich. She’s not in. I leave a message and try her home number. Instead of a crisp message or the voice-mail robot, I hear a young child’s voice, a child who has trouble pronouncing the letter R. “Hi, you’ve weached the home of Petew, Muwiel, and Bwittany. If…”

The sound of the little girl’s voice, so sweet and vulnerable and proud of herself, is more than I can handle. It’s like stepping off a cliff. What I’ve lost. I hang up.

I have an impulse to call Petrich back. I want to tell her to get the kid’s voice off the voice mail. As she would know, anyone can get the address from a criss-cross directory. Is she crazy? Advertising to random callers that there’s a child in the house?

I take a deep breath, retreat from my impulse and my proxy vigilance. Despite her job, Petrich still lives in a world that seems like a friendly place. She knows – but she doesn’t know, not really – that it can all evaporate in an instant.