Perhaps Maddie had come here to destroy the company that had published the game, drive it out of business. Of course, she wouldn’t have known what Tony Knight had told him: that the attack had had no effect on sales.
He went online and searched for the earlier incident once more; the first time had been a cursory examination. There were many references to the crime. Because the girl was then seventeen, though, her name and photo had been redacted. He doubted that even Mack could get juvie reports. LaDonna Standish could, of course, and he’d have to tell her as soon as possible.
Shaw told himself to slow down.
Thirty-five percent isn’t one hundred.
Never move faster than the facts...
He’d spent time with Maddie — in and out of bed. She simply didn’t seem to be a murderer.
Then, scanning one article, Shaw learned that the teenager — Jane Doe — had suffered serious PTSD as a result of the attack. There’d been breaks with reality, a condition Shaw was more than familiar with thanks to his father. She’d been committed to a mental hospital. Maybe Maddie decided that the victims, Sophie Mulliner and Henry Thompson, were no more than avatars, easily sacrificed on her mission to destroy the Whispering Man himself, Marty Avon.
He swiped her mouse and the screen saver vanished. The password window came up. Shaw didn’t bother to try. He rose and conducted a fast search of the house, looking for the gun, bloody knives, any maps or references to the locations where the victims had been taken. None. Maddie was smart. She’d have them hidden somewhere nearby.
If she was the perp.
Now the number edged up to sixty percent. Because Shaw was in Maddie’s bathroom and looking at the bottles of opioid painkillers. Possibly the sort that had been used to knock out the Whispering Man’s victims. Forensics would tell. He took a picture of the labels with his phone.
Just as he was slipping his phone away, it hummed.
Standish.
He answered and said, “I was about to call you.”
Silence. But only for a brief moment. “Shaw, where are you?”
He paused. “Out. I’m not at my camper.”
“I know. I’m standing next to it. There’s been a shooting. Could you get over here as soon as possible?”
51
A full-fledged crime scene.
Shaw accelerated fast along Google Way within the Westwinds RV park, aiming for the yellow tape, noting two uniformed officers turning toward him. One lowered her hand toward her service weapon. Braking, he kept his hands on the steering wheel, statue-still, until Standish called to the cops nearby, “His camper. It’s okay.”
The JMCTF forensic van was parked within the yellow tape and robed and masked technicians were paying attention to the wall of a small shower/restroom in the middle of the park. They were digging at a black dot — extracting a slug, he guessed. Others were packing up evidence bags, concluding the search.
One uniform was rolling up the yellow tape. No press, Shaw noted. Maybe a shot or two didn’t warrant a cam crew. Residents of the park, though, were present, standing well back from the scene as instructed.
The detective, in her ubiquitous combat jacket and cargo pants, gestured him to where she stood by the door to the Winnebago. She was wearing latex gloves.
“Camper and the ground here’ve been released. They’re still mining for slugs.” A nod to the restrooms and tree. Shaw noticed that another team of gowned officers was at a maple, cutting into the trunk with a wicked-looking saw. How had they found the slug there? Metal detectors, he supposed. Or a really sharp eye.
“So. Here’s what we’ve put together,” Standish said. Her eyes were red and her posture slumped. He wondered if she’d gotten any sleep last night. At least he’d had a few hours’ worth. “About an hour ago one of your neighbors saw somebody come through those bushes there.” She pointed to a sloppy hedge separating the camp from a side street. “Look familiar?”
“Where you saw that visitor the other day.”
“Exactly the place. Yeah. The wit — means ‘witness,’ which I guess you know — didn’t see more than dark clothes and a dark hat. Well, look at the lights. Which there aren’t many of. He walked toward your camper. The wit lost sight and when she looked again he was gone. And, frankly, playing stupid, she went up close to the window and saw a flashlight inside. Your car wasn’t here and where your locks used to be was shambles.”
Shaw looked over the remnants.
“Local uniforms from Traffic took the call, but” — she grimaced — “wonderful, they kept their lovely illumination on, all red, white and blue and flashy.” She lowered her voice. “Because what they’re really good at is traffic and only traffic. Anyways, the perp saw the lights and opened up with his weapon. Took out a headlight and let fly another half dozen rounds.
“Our boys and gals hit the deck — did I mention the Traffic detail? — and by the time backup and SWAT got here, he was gone. No description. Even the wit called nine-one-one didn’t see anything useful. We need you to spot if he took anything.”
Shaw said nothing yet about the gender she’d assigned. He’d tell her about Maddie Poole in a moment.
He was looking at the wrecked door.
“Dent puller,” she said.
A tool with a screw at one end and a sliding weight on a shaft. It’s used, yes, for pulling dents out of car bodies, but you can also screw the tip into a lock, nice and tight, then slam the weight back. Pops the whole cylinder out. Shaw had one lock that couldn’t be pulled that way. The intruder had come equipped and used a pry bar to bend the tempered-steel flanges on the body of the camper. Winnebago makes a fine vehicle but titanium doesn’t figure in the construction.
“There’s something else you should know,” Standish said. She was pulling her phone from one of the pockets in her cargo pants. She called up an image. It was the stenciled drawing of the Whispering Man’s face.
“That the one I gave to Dan Wiley?”
“No. It was left for me.” She paused, her face again a grimace. “Actually, left for Karen, on her car. She was going to take Gem for ice cream and found it on the windshield. I sent them to my mother’s. Maybe it was just to spook me. I wasn’t going to take a chance, though.”
Shaw asked, “Any forensics?”
“No. Like everything else.”
The black eyes, the slightly open mouth, the jaunty hat...
The RV park manager came by to see if Shaw was all right. Shaw told the old salt he was fine and asked if he’d be so kind as to get an emergency locksmith to take care of the Winnebago. He gave the manager one of his credit cards and a hundred dollars.
Then he and Standish stepped inside to survey the damage, which, on the surface, didn’t seem too bad. First, of course, pantry and bed. His weapons were where he’d left them: spice cabinet for the Glock, the Colt Python under the bed.
Standish nodded to a small gun safe beside the bed, bolted to the floor. This couldn’t be opened with a dent puller or much else, other than a diamond saw or a two-thousand-degree cutting stick. “Anything in there?”
He explained that it contained only a rattrap. If he was ever forced to open the safe, the intruder would be rewarded with one or, ideally, two broken fingers. Shaw would then have time to reach under the bed and pull out his revolver.
“Hmm.”
For twenty minutes, Shaw conducted a step-by-step examination of the camper. Drawers had been opened and notebooks and clothes and toiletries disturbed. They were mostly about other jobs and some personal materials. All his notes on the kidnappings and on the Gamer were in his computer bag in the rental car, hidden under the passenger seat.