The desk at right was recessed a foot or two from its twin and Hotchner’s reading of the setup was that the woman had secretary/receptionist duties, while the male occupant of this other desk actually ran the place. The male’s desk had a stacked in-and-out box, a newspaper open to a crossword puzzle, a pen next to it, and a phone. On the back wall, a two-way radio perched on a shelf.
The boss, maybe fifty and balding, had a squat, troll-like look, as if he’d hopped off a tall building, landed on his feet and compacted himself. He wore a white short-sleeve shirt and what was probably a clip-on tie, red-and-blue stripes.
Prentiss showed her credentials to the probable receptionist, who immediately glanced over at the boss.
“That’s okay,” Hotchner said to her with a trace of a smile. “We’ll introduce ourselves.”
Turning to the heavyset man behind the other desk, Hotchner again displayed his credentials.
“FBI—Supervisory Special Agent In Charge Aaron Hotchner and Supervisory Special Agent Emily Prentiss.”
The squat little man made no move to stand or to offer a handshake. His eyes held a cold but unconcerned suspicion. In an undistinguished second tenor, he asked, “What can I do for you?”
Putting away his credentials, Hotchner said, “To start with, what’s your name?”
The troll shot a look at his secretary/receptionist, then said, “Jake Guzik.”
Hotchner nodded. “Any relation to Jake ‘Greasy Thumb’ Guzik, the mobster who died in 1956? Sharing a name with a felon is no crime, of course, but maybe we should take you down to the field office, so we can fingerprint you just as a precaution.”
Prentiss was smiling just a little.
The guy patted the air in front of him. “Whoa, whoa, I was just havin’ some fun with you guys.”
Prentiss said, “Do we look like we stopped by for the matinee?”
“Sorry, sorry. Bad joke. Stupid joke. We don’t get the FBI around that often.”
Hotchner arched an eyebrow and asked, “But sometimes you do?”
Now their host wasworried. “I was just kidding around. I am glad to help you people. What do you need?”
The secretary turned away, possibly stifling a laugh, albeit probably not the laugh her boss had hoped to get out of her.
“Let’s start again,” Hotchner said. “Name?”
“Marshall—Art Marshall.”
“Good,” Hotchner said. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”
Marshall smiled feebly.
Prentiss said, “Would you mind if we sat down?” “No. That’d be fine.”
“Do you have any chairs?”
“Sure. Absolutely we have chairs. Consuela, couple of chairs for our guests!”
She said, “Yes, sir,” and rose and got them chairs.
The agents sat down.
Then Hotchner said, “Now, let’s talk about a car.”
“ Whichcar?” Marshall asked, suddenly finding himself on more comfortable ground.
Actually, that was a good sign: if Marshall were up to anything illegal with this business, Hotchner knew, the question would have unnerved him, not relaxed him.
Prentiss said, “A 1995 Honda Civic, navy blue.”
“Consuela, bring it up.”
The young woman, back at her desk, ratty-tat-tatted at the computer keyboard and the screen on her monitor changed to display a table.
“We have three 1995 Honda Civics,” she said.
“Three?” Prentiss asked, obviously surprised. “All navy blue?”
“All navy blue.”
Hotchner said, “This one was registered to a man named Edels.”
Consuela nodded, checked the screen, then took a sideways look at her boss. “We just filed the paperwork to sell that car.”
“We know,” Hotchner said to her. To her boss, he said, “Did you know the police had run this plate number as a missing car?”
Marshall shrugged. “I can’t keep track of every car that the cops are looking for. I stop at due diligence.”
Hotchner had not expected above and beyond the call of duty from the manager of a business self-dubbed Buccaneer.
Prentiss asked, “When was it towed?”
“March thirty-first,” Consuela said.
“Ten days after Bobby Edels disappeared,” Hotchner said to Prentiss. He asked the secretary, “Where was it towed from?”
Consuela read the screen again. “A private lot north of Davis Square Park, down by the railroad yards.”
“What was the car doing there?” Hotchner asked, as much to himself as anyone.
Marshall was shaking his head. “Not much down that way.”
Hotchner stood. “We’ll be calling in a crime scene team to take the car.”
Marshall frowned. “What about my money?”
Prentiss said, “You’ll have to settle for the satisfaction of knowing you may help catch a murderer.”
“You can’t eat satisfaction.”
Hotchner, with no expression whatsoever, said, “Skip a meal.”
They nodded good-byes to the manager and his secretary, and stepped out onto the lot.
Prentiss said, “That was pretty funny.”
Hotchner gave her a look. “Don’t tell anybody.”
Using his cell phone, Hotchner phoned SAIC Himes at the Chicago field office and arranged for someone to come tow the Civic to the FBI garage.
Hotchner said, “We’ll need somebody to finger-print all the Buccaneer tow truck drivers, too.”
“Not a problem,” Himes said. “What isa problem is we just got a call from the police department in Des Plaines. They’ve found a body in the crawl space of a vacant house at 8213 West—”
“Summerdale,” Hotchner said, finishing the sentence.
“How in the hell did you know that?” Himes asked.
“That’s where John Wayne Gacy lived.”
“You have got to be shitting me.”
“I wish I were,” Hotchner said. “We’re on our way.” He clicked off and punched in Rossi’s number, knowing all he had to do was give David the address, and the significance would be obvious.
Rossi said, “Morgan and I can be there in…”
Hotchner could hear Rossi conferring with the Chicago native.
“…an hour.”
“I’m with Prentiss,” Hotchner said. “We’re farther away, but we’re coming too.”
In a Tahoe a few miles away, Supervisory Special Agent David Rossi clicked off and pocketed his cell phone.
Shaking his head, Morgan said, “Gacy?”
“Yeah. The clown prince himself. Let’s shake it.”
Along with Lorenzon (who rode in the back), they had been in Chinatown canvassing the neighbors along Twenty-fifth Street, looking for anyone willing to talk about the house at 213. They had been there over an hour and were pitching a shutout—not a single person thus far had let them get past showing their credentials before the door closed in their faces.
The midafternoon traffic was light and Rossi watched with some admiration as Morgan wove expertly through it; in forty-five minutes, they were pulling up to the house of death.
Although untold misery had been perpetrated within, from the outside this was an unprepossessing brick-front bungalow with a picture window left of the propped-open front door, and a long, narrow driveway running up the left side. The gateway to hell had rarely looked more benign.
Several police cars, both marked and unmarked, sat on either side of the street, an ambulance backed into the driveway. The yard had been cordoned off with crime scene tape and several officers milled around outside. A nearly constant parade of personnel, both uniformed and plainclothes, made its way in and out of the front door.
Morgan parked and the two agents and the detective climbed out of the SUV. As they crossed the street, a plainclothes guy, obviously a detective, came out of the house and saw them. He was tall and broad-shouldered, with a block-shaped head with thinning gray hair. This obvious old-timer wore a suit that screamed Sears-off-the-rack, barely disguising the gun on his hip, and Rossi would have pegged the guy a cop even without his erect posture and swagger. Right behind the plainclothes veteran came a slightly shorter guy with brown, curly hair and a digital SLR camera hanging on a lanyard around his neck. He wore a maroon polo, black jeans, and black sneakers and appeared pretty fit. Another lanyard around his neck held a plastic ID.