The other men found themselves staring at Desmond's fan letter as if it were a corpse at a wake, silence surrounding them, trying to guess where the killer might've gone.
Altman glanced up and noticed that Andy Carter was frowning as he gazed at a large map of Greenville County up on the wall. The author nodded to himself slowly and then said, "Had a thought"
"Go on."
"Desmond rented his place, right?"
"Yep."
"Well, he had a decent job, he wasn't a youngster, and he was single. He had to've had some money. Why would he rent? Houses aren't that expensive in Greenville."
Altman shrugged. "I don't know. What do you make of that?"
"My wife and I used to go up to the Adirondacks in the summer. We looked into buying a place awhile ago but we couldn't afford to own two houses. So we ended up renting."
The detective nodded. "So you're thinking that one reason a man would rent his main residence was if he owned a house somewhere else. A summer house or something."
"Just a thought."
"But you checked the county registrar; he didn't own any property," Wallace pointed out to Altman.
"But we didn't check other counties," the detective replied. "A vacation place might not be nearby." He grabbed his phone.
And in less than five minutes they had their answer.
Howard Desmond did indeed own a house elsewhere – on the shore of Lake Muskegon, sixty miles from Greenville, tucked away into the backwater, piney wilderness.
"Good thought," the detective said to Carter. "Thanks."
"You think he's hiding out there?" Wallace asked.
"Doubt it," Altman said. "He's not stupid. I were him, I'd vanish for a couple of years, till everybody'd forgotten about the case and I thought it was safe to come back to the area. But there could be some leads there to where he did go. Maybe airline receipts or something."
Josh Randall returned to report that Sergeant Bob Fletcher had no helpful information in the library vandalism case.
But Altman said, "Doesn't matter. We've got a better lead. Suit up, Josh."
"What're we doing?"
"We're going for a ride in the country. What else on a nice fall day like this?"
Lake Muskegon is a large but shallow body of water bordered by willow, tall grass, and ugly pine. Altman didn't know the place well. He'd brought his family here for a couple of picnics over the years, and he and Bob Fletcher had come to the lake once on a halfhearted fishing expedition, of which Altman had only vague memories: gray, drizzly weather and a nearly empty creel at the end of the day.
As he and Randall drove north through the increasingly deserted landscape he briefed the young man. "Now, I'm ninety-nine percent sure Desmond's not here. But what we're going to do first is clear the house – I mean closet by closet – and then I want you stationed in the front to keep an eye out while I look for evidence. Okay?"
"Sure, boss."
They passed Desmond's overgrown driveway and pulled off the road, then eased into a stand of thick forsythia.
Together, the men cautiously made their way down the weedy drive toward the "vacation house," a dignified term for the tiny, shabby cottage sitting in a three-foot-high sea of grass and brush. A path had been beaten through the foliage – somebody had been here recently – but it might not have been Desmond; Altman had been a teenager once himself and knew that nothing attracts adolescent attention like a deserted house.
They drew their weapons and Altman pounded on the door, calling, "Police. Open up."
Silence.
He hesitated a moment, adjusted the grip on his gun, and kicked the door in.
Filled with cheap, dust-covered furniture, buzzing with stuporous fall flies, the place appeared completely deserted. They checked the four small rooms carefully and found no sign of Desmond. Outside, they glanced in the window of the garage and saw that it was empty. Then Altman sent Randall to the front of the driveway to hide in the bushes and report anybody's approach.
He then returned to the house and began to search, wondering just how hot the cold case was about to become.
Two hundred yards before the driveway that led to Howard Desmond's cottage, a battered, ten-year-old Toyota pulled onto the shoulder of Route 207 and then into the woods, out of sight of any drivers along the road.
A man got out and, satisfied that his car was well hidden, squinted into the forest, getting his bearings. He noticed the line of the brown lake to his left and figured the vacation house was in the ten-o'clock position ahead of him. Through dense underbrush like this, it would take him about fifteen minutes to get to the place, he estimated.
That'd make the time pretty tight. He'd have to move as quickly as he could and still keep the noise to a minimum.
The man started forward, but then stopped suddenly and patted his pocket. He'd been in such a hurry to get to the house he couldn't remember if he'd taken what he wanted from the glove compartment. But yes, he had it with him.
Hunched over and picking his way carefully to avoid stepping on noisy branches, Gordon Wallace continued on toward the cabin where, he hoped, Detective Altman was lost in police work and would be utterly oblivious to his furtive approach.
The search of the house revealed virtually nothing that would indicate that Desmond had been here recently – or where the man might now be. Altman found some bills and canceled checks, but the address on them was Desmond's apartment in Warwick.
He decided to check the garage, thinking he might come across something helpful that the killer had tossed out of the car and forgotten about – directions or a map, maybe.
He found something far more interesting in the decrepit building, though. Howard Desmond himself.
That is to say, his corpse.
The moment Altman opened the old-fashioned double doors of the garage he detected the smell of decaying flesh. He knew where it had to be coming from: a large coal bin in the back. Steeling himself, he flipped up the lid.
Inside were the mostly skeletal remains of a man about six feet tall, lying on his back, fully clothed. He'd been dead about six months – just around the time Desmond disappeared, Altman recalled.
DNA would tell for certain if this was the killer, but Altman discovered the man's wallet in his hip pocket and, sure enough, the driver's license inside was Desmond's. There wasn't enough face left to be sure, but the thatch of hair on the corpse's skull and the man's height were the same as indicated on the license.
He looked briefly through the bin again and found nothing else that would identify the body or who'd killed him, though he did find the apparent murder weapon – a stained, old-fashioned military bayonet. Lifting it out with a Kleenex, he set the weapon on a workbench.
So what the hell was going on?
Somebody had murdered the strangler. Who? And why?
But then Altman did one of the things he did best – let his mind run free. Too many detectives get an idea into their heads and can't see past their initial conclusions. Altman, though, always fought against this tendency and he now asked himself: But what if Desmond wasn't the strangler?
They knew for certain that he was the one who'd underlined the passages in the library's copy of Two Deaths in a Small Town. But what if he'd done so after the killings? The letter Desmond had written to Carter was undated. Maybe – like Gordon Wallace – he'd read the book after the murders and been struck by the similarity. He'd started to investigate the crime himself and the strangler had found out and murdered him.
But then who was the killer?
Like Gordon Wallace…
Altman felt another little tap in his far-ranging mind, as fragments of facts lined up for him to consider – facts that all had to do with the reporter. For instance, Wallace was physically imposing, abrasive, temperamental. At times he could be threatening, scary. He was obsessed with crime, and he knew police and forensic procedures better than most cops, which also meant that he knew how to anticipate investigators' moves. (He'd sure blustered his way right into the middle of the reopened case just the other day, Altman reflected.) Wallace owned a Motorola police scanner and would've been able to listen in on calls about the victims. His apartment was a few blocks from the college where the first victim was killed.