“It means I don’t care,” Hotchner said. “We work the case. That means we read the evidence, work the victimology and study the UnSub’s behavior— nothing more, nothing less.”
Nods all around.
Then they lapsed into silence and got back to work.
Morgan knew Hotchner was right: they had a killer to find, and Denson was just another person of interest now. The only thing to do at this stage was concentrate on the work in front of them.
After another quarter hour, Lorenzon popped in, a skinny, bushy-haired white guy trailing him. The man had a long, sharp nose, even white teeth and a pointy chin. Taller than the African-American detective, he wore a blue, collarless shirt with buttons down the front, navy blue slacks with narrow maroon suspenders and black loafers. Lorenzon instructed their guest to wait by the door, and approached Hotchner, who was seated at the head of the conference-room table.
Lorenzon said softly, almost whispering, “I think you’re going to want to talk to this gentleman.”
Around the table, they all looked up.
“Why?” Hotchner asked, also sotto voce.
Lorenzon’s eyebrows rose. “Because he’s identified your John Doe… and recognized the picture of another of the victims from the newspaper.”
Hotchner said, “I think we want to talk to this gentleman.”
Lorenzon ushered the guy over, gesturing to him the way a car salesman in a showroom indicates a shiny new model. “This is Paul Grant. Mr. Grant is a bartender from a club called Hot Rods.”
“ Nota car club,” Rossi said, with a puckish smile.
“No,” Grant said, with a nervous smile in response. “It’s a gay bar.”
Hotchner stood and gestured to an open chair. “Sit down, Mr. Grant. Join us, Detective Lorenzon.”
Morgan knew his boss might have preferred a private meeting with Grant, but the field office was laid out so that conference rooms and interrogation rooms were not even on the same floor, much less near each other. And taking this witness upstairs and ushering him into a cubicle might create the wrong impression.
The chairs Lorenzon and the bartender took were near Hotchner. Reid and Prentiss slid their chairs down in the direction of Morgan, at the far end of the table, to give their boss a semblance of privacy. Rossi, however, stayed put.
Hotchner asked the bartender, “You know our John Doe?”
“I didn’t ‘know him’ know him,” the bartender said. “But I knewhim.”
Though the other agents had mostly moved down, they were all, of course, listening in on this interview. And that particular response made Prentiss’s eyes widen while Morgan tilted his head just a shade (the equivalent of anybody else rolling their eyes). Meanwhile, Rossi looked like he was trying hard to digest something, with only Reid seeming perfectly comfortable with Grant’s chasing-its-own-tail answer.
Hotchner asked, “Could you break that down?”
Grant shrugged. “Well, it wasn’t like we were friends or anything. We just both knew some of the same people.”
“You knew his name, then?”
“Yeah. Sure. Of course. Stevie.”
“Do you know Stevie’s last name?”
Grant considered that. “Pretty sure it was Darnell. Stevie Darnell.”
“You didn’t know him well.”
“No.”
“How didyou know him?”
“From the club, mostly. You work the bar, you get friendly with regulars.”
“He was a regular, then.”
“Oh, yes.”
“Was that the extent of it, your friendship?”
“ ‘Friendship’ overdoes it. I ran in to him at a couple of gay events, once or twice at the movies, but that was pretty much it. He was one of those people you know well enough to say ‘hi’ to.”
Rossi asked, “You say he was a regular. Was he in the club a lot?”
“Some.”
Hotchner asked, “How much is some?”
Grant scratched at his bushy head of hair as if that might unearth the answer. “Twice a week, maybe?”
“Pretty regular, then,” Rossi said.
“A lot of the guys are. Not Bobby though.”
Rossi said, “Bobby?”
“Bobby Edels,” Grant said, and shrugged. “The other guy that got killed. That’s why I’m here, isn’t it?”
Prentiss moved her chair back closer; so did Morgan and Reid.
Morgan said, “So you knew Bobby Edels, too?”
Grant nodded. “A little. Not even as well as I did Stevie. Bobby, he came into the club a couple of times, but he wasn’t out yet.”
“Still in the closet,” Rossi said.
Grant nodded again. “Still in the closet. It was like, you know how it is, he was still trying to put the pieces together. Stevie, hewas out— wayout.”
For once the profilers were at a loss for words: a major break had just walked into the conference room and sat down at the table. Hard to know even where to start…
Detective Lorenzon finally spoke up: “Tell them what you told me, Mr. Grant.”
Glancing from the cop to Hotchner, his voice barely above a whisper, Grant said, “On different nights, I saw them each leave the club with the same guy.”
Rossi frowned. “The three were together?”
“No! The first night Stevie left with the dude, the other night Bobby left with him.”
Hotchner asked, “Did you know the man they left with?”
“No. I saw him around once in a while, but not often. He’s struck me as kind of a creep, frankly. A user.”
“Of drugs?”
“Well, maybe. But definitely of people.”
Hotchner nodded. “Did anybody else in the club seem tight with him?”
Grant shrugged. “I wouldn’t know. I pick up on things, sure; but I’m also busy working. That’s something I never noticed.”
Jumping in, Rossi asked, “Think you could you identify this guy if you saw him again?”
“Oh, yeah, sure. Absolutely. In a heartbeat.”
Hotchner turned to glance around the room. “Where’s JJ?”
Prentiss said, “Dealing with the editors of the newspapers, I believe.”
“Would you get her, please?”
Prentiss got up and went out.
Returning to Grant, Hotchner asked, “Does the club have video security?”
“You bet it does. Inside and out.”
“Good. Now, I want you to sit down with a forensic artist—are you willing to do that?”
“To stop some bastard who’s killing gay men? Hell, yeah. Anything. Name it.”
No one bothered to point out that the UnSub wasn’t just killing gay men—this was a monster without prejudice.
Prentiss came back in, Jareau in tow.
Hotchner made quick introductions, then said, “JJ, we need a forensic artist ASAP. Mr. Grant is going to give us a description of a possible suspect.”
“I’m on it,” Jareau said with a smile and a nod, and was gone again.
Hotchner turned to Prentiss and told her, “We need the security video from the club and we need to stream them to Garcia. Once the forensic artist is finished, Garcia can scan the tapes looking for our UnSub."
“Yes, sir,” Prentiss said. “Do you want me to interview the employees of the club?”
“Let’s hold off on that until we’ve got a suspect sketch. After that? Make it a top priority.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Morgan,” Hotchner said, shifting, “you and Reid stick with that Wauconda material and see if there’s anything we missed the first time.”
Reid nodded, and Morgan said, “If there’s anything, we’ll find it.”
Turning to Rossi, Hotchner said, “David, you and I will go back to victimology. We’ll add in the two gay male victims and see how that changes things.”
“Right,” Rossi said.
Hotchner thanked Grant, and Lorenzon took the witness to a break room for coffee while a sketch artist was rounded up. But the team leader would ask Tovar to check Grant out—their cooperative citizen could be the UnSub insinuating himself.