On the other hand, all the other victims had been killed in their homes, poised for quick discovery by the returning male head of the house. In that sense, Brown being out of town might be a break for them.
Harrow asked Gibbons, “Is Mr. Brown married?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Does he have kids?”
“Grown, both of them.” Gibbons was frowning now. “J.C., are you gonna tell me what the hell this is about?”
The children being grown didn’t fit the profile. Odd.
Harrow said, “I’m glad to tell you all about it, but prefer to do it in your office, not on the roadside.”
“We can do that,” Gibbons said. “With the sheep in, I’m getting ready to go there now.”
To Deputy Wilson, Gibbons said, “Colby, go tell Mr. Riley we’ve got his sheep back, and we’ll do what we can to find out who opened the gate.”
The deputy nodded and went back to his patrol car.
Under his breath, Choi said, “Don’t forget the fingerprint kit,” and Harrow gave him a look.
Gibbons was turning to go too, when Harrow said, “One more question.”
“Yep?”
“How old are Brown’s children?”
“Lori is twenty-five, a teacher. Mark’s twenty-one. He’s at KU.”
All the way back into town, Harrow mulled what they had learned so far.
Truth was, he didn’t know if they knew more or less than when they had driven into Lebanon, and Carmen’s time might well be running out.
He was starting to wonder if the killer really was making a target on the map — or did the bastard just have them running in circles?
Chapter Thirty
The sheriff’s office was a reconverted downtown storefront, as the deputy explained, letting in Harrow, Laurene Chase, Maury Hathaway, and Nancy Hughes (the latter two with camera and audio gear at the ready).
“Real sheriff’s office is in the county seat of Smith’s Center,” Wilson was saying, “but because of the tourist traffic? We need this auxiliary office here now, too.”
“Tourist traffic?” Billy Choi asked. “In Lebanon, Kansas?”
The deputy was taller than he was wide, but not by much, and might have played football without a helmet as a kid or been a bad boxer, his nose like a glob of flesh-colored Play-Doh haphazardly stuck onto his face.
To Choi, the deputy said, “Friend, you’re standing at the geographic center of the forty-eight contiguous United States. People come here for that.”
This throwaway information, these casual words, hit Harrow like an arrow — an arrow sent by a Robin Hood — like marksman into the dead center of a target.
Laurene and Choi had stunned expressions that said they got it too.
Some people went to Hot Springs for the springs, some visited Turin to see the shroud. Others, it seemed, came to Lebanon to say that they’d been to the center of the United States.
Harrow excused himself and gathered the little group back out on the sidewalk. The host of Crime Seen! allowed Hathaway and Hughes to record the brief discussion between himself and two of his forensic stars.
“So we’re here,” Choi said, pointing downward. “We’re at the center of target, right where he led us.”
Laurene said, “I’d say he must’ve grown up here — heard this ‘center of the United States’ routine his whole life, and worked backward from there, making the map into a big, round target.”
“Could be another red herring,” Harrow said. “Could be too easy...”
“Oh yeah,” Choi said archly, “it’s been way too damn easy. Especially for those fifty-some murder victims. J.C., we’re here. We’re at ground zero on the nutzoid map.”
Harrow had no argument.
“But how,” Laurene asked, “does this knowledge change anything?”
“It doesn’t,” Harrow said. “We proceed as before. It’s just... Billy’s right. We’re here. This is the end of the journey. So we make sure it’s the end of his journey, not Carmen’s.”
Choi and Laurene nodded gravely.
Sheriff Gibbons’s office reminded Harrow of his own back at Story County — a few framed citations and awards on one wall, bookshelves lining another, the third consumed by a large window overlooking the downtown, where traffic was sparse in the orange glow of the setting sun. The wall behind Gibbons’s desk was given over to a large Smith County Sheriff’s Department logo.
The deputy had brought in a third chair to join the two facing the sheriff’s large dark wooden desk. A combination phone-intercom rested on one desk corner, a computer on a separate table. Two photos in a double-frame faced the sheriff’s side, wife and kids probably.
Maybe, just maybe, the next target was Gibbons and not Brown.
Harrow shook his head. Some balls on this bastard, stealing the plates off both the retired and current sheriffs.
Laurene, Choi, and Harrow took the visitor chairs, while Hathaway and Hughes camped in a corner, prepping to shoot the meeting. They’d been waiting nearly ten minutes when Sheriff Gibbons strode in.
After the sheriff sat, Harrow laid out what they knew, what they thought, including the target on the map of the United States where they were all sitting dead-center.
For his part, Gibbons took it all in, not commenting till Harrow had finished. Then he moved his head to one side, widened his eyes, and said, “Hell of a story.”
“I wish it were just a story,” Harrow said.
Laurene sat forward. “We’re looking for a man with issues with authority. He’s going to be a person who isolates himself from the community, a loner. He’s probably going to have a record.”
Harrow almost smiled at the way Laurene had come to embrace Michael Pall’s profiling of their unsub.
“My guess,” she was saying, “is he’s had scrapes with the law where he’s been belligerent, combative — disorderly conduct, maybe even resisting arrest. He’ll be resistive to change. If he has a family, they’ll kowtow to him. In that type of situation, he’d be orderly, regimented. To the community, he’d appear a strict disciplinarian.”
Choi picked up: “The BTK killer, Dennis Rader, was a Cub Scout leader and supervisor in the Compliance Department of Park City.”
“We know about that son of a bitch,” Gibbons said, nodding. “Maniac was right here in Kansas.”
“So you know the drill,” Harrow said. “Can you think of anyone locally who fits that profile?”
The sheriff gave up a darkly amused smile. “Do I know somebody who fits the profile of a serial killer? You just saw me herding sheep, J.C. We’ve had maybe four homicides in Lebanon in as many decades. Why would my mind work along those lines?”
The sheriff’s frustration indicated a temper getting frayed, and Harrow was almost relieved when his cell vibrated. He excused himself, and took the call.
“Me, boss,” Jenny Blake said. “We’ve got something.”
“So do we — Lebanon is the center-point city of the United States.”
“Interesting. But I have something else — remember the fingerprint on the snow globe?”
“Sure,” he said, recalling with a pang that Carmen was the one who’d noticed the object was out of place in the dead child’s room.
“Finally got a hit on the print,” Jenny said. “We went through enough databases, and finally found it. U.S. Army. I had to—”
“Don’t tell me how,” Harrow cut in. “Tell me who.”
“The man’s name is Gabriel Shelton.”