Judge Ryswick frowned as he leafed through the papers Russ had assembled. Being in chambers with the man always made Russ feel like a juvenile delinquent about to be dressed down. Standing in the judge’s dining room wasn’t an improvement. He had thought changing into his spare uniform at the station would seem more professional, but he was afraid it just made him look more like an asshole.
“Can I get you something to drink, Chief?” Mrs. Ryswick was as sunny and serene as her husband was dour and dismal.
“Thank you, no, ma’am.” The Ryswicks were in golfing gear. The deputy chief clerk, whom Russ had called, had caught them at the nineteenth hole of the Glens Falls Country Club. “I’m sorry to interrupt your Sunday.”
She patted his arm. “You already apologized, Chief. It’s fine.”
Ryswick said something beneath his breath.
“Your Honor?”
Ryswick looked up at him. “I see reasonable cause for searches pertaining to Bors Saunderson. Kent Langevoort, less so.”
Russ pointed to the faxed statement from Leonard Epstein, who, thank God, still lived in New York and practiced at his family firm. “Mr. Epstein confirmed corporate officers from Barkley and Eaton did business with his firm, where his sister worked for two summers, at the end of high school and after her first year in college. Barkley and Eaton officers, including Kent Langevoort, were at a corporate retreat outside Millers Kill during the time Natalie Epstein was killed.”
Ryswick grunted. “What about this storage unit business? Where did you come up with that?”
“A confidential informant.”
“That’s not going to fly in court.”
“My men are ready to execute the warrant simultaneously at the storage unit and at Mr. Langevoort’s vacation home. We expect to be able to find independent verification. As well as evidence that Mr. Langevoort was directly involved in the death of both women.”
“Hmm. Good luck with that.” Ryswick reached for his phone. “Stacy? It’s Ronald. Can you meet me at the courthouse? I need you to draw up a warrant for the Millers Kill police.” He flipped the folder shut and handed it back to Russ. “Make this count, Chief Van Alstyne. I hate to disturb my clerks on their days off.”
Russ had guessed there wasn’t going to be anyone at McKenzie Self-Store at five o’clock on a Sunday evening, and he was right. He had brought the lock-pop with him, a thirty-pound drill that could pith out an entire locking mechanism. It was going to be overkill for Langevoort’s unit, which had been knocked up out of cheap corrugated metal a long, long time ago.
Jack Liddle stared around at the mostly deserted industrial park stretching around them. FOR RENT signs hung on several long, low buildings, and the parking lots and roads connecting them were cratered with unfilled frost heaves and potholes. “I remember when this was a busy place.”
Lyle MacAuley handed Russ a pair of work gloves and protective glasses. “It’s definitely gone down since I’ve been here.”
“That building there, with the rusty roof? That was my cousin Ed’s business. He put together little electronic things. Smart guy, went to RPI.”
“Probably made in China now.” Lyle gestured for Jack to step back.
Russ hefted the lock-pop and switched it on. It bucked and shook in his hands. He pressed the bit end against the metal lock plate and grimaced at the resulting shrieking whine.
“I hate these things,” Lyle shouted at Jack. “Last one we had to go into had kiddy porn. They oughtta be outlawed.”
Russ lurched forward as the drill broke through. He reversed the power, pulled it out, and switched it off. “Okay, we’re in.” He handed the machine to Lyle while he stripped off the gloves and goggles. He had asked his deputy chief to ride along to assure there would be no questions about planting evidence later. In fact …
“Lyle, drop that in the car and bring back the camera, will you?” The MKPD didn’t have shoulder cameras for its officers yet, but Russ had popped for several small video recorders out of his own pocket.
Lyle returned, latex gloves on, camera in hand. “This is going to look like that show where the pickers go into the storage units.” He tossed a pair of gloves to Jack.
“Let’s hope this isn’t as stuffed with crap as those ones are.” Russ grasped the handle at the bottom of the door. “Okay, start recording.” He yanked the door up.
The storage unit was empty, except for two cardboard boxes at the very back. Russ snapped on his evidence gloves and walked forward. He picked up one box and brought it to where the late-afternoon sunlight spilled across the storage unit’s opening. He bent over and gently pried the flaps apart.
A pair of sneakers sitting on brightly colored cotton. He lifted them out, the fabric unfolding into a fluttery summer dress. Beneath it was a small square purse with a long strap. “Jack, can you hold these?” He handed the clothing to the older man.
Russ opened the purse. Lipstick, mints, a phone and a wallet. He flipped the wallet open.
“Is it hers?” Lyle stepped forward, still recording. Russ held up the fabric rectangle so the camera could capture Gabrielle Yates’s face in the Florida driver’s license. He closed the wallet and exchanged it for the phone. It wouldn’t turn on. Russ slid the back off. “SIM card’s gone.”
Jack peered over his arm. “Is that the part that tracks location?”
“Yeah.” There was a yellow bandanna left in the box. Russ stooped to pick it up, and revealed a cheap digital camera beneath it, similar to the one his deputy chief was using. Unlike the phone, the camera powered on. The thumbnail pictures displaying in its two-by-two screen were too small for Russ to make out. He scrolled down to the first photo and selected it. It opened, filling the screen with a smiling Gabrielle Yates, bright-eyed and alive. She had the yellow bandanna in her hair. He scrolled forward through the photos. Gabrielle and Bors Saunderson, drinks in their hands. Gabrielle modeling the Tory Burch dress, pretty and pleased. Why not? It might have been the most expensive piece of clothing she ever had, foster kid that she was.
Lyle peered over his shoulder. “What do you think the deal was with the dresses?”
“Part of the ritual, whatever it was? Maybe a soft payment in exchange for sex?”
Jack shook his head. “It’s to put them off guard. These were wealthy men. They’d say, ‘Hey, let me take you out to a fancy restaurant for dinner. Here, I’ve got something you can wear that’ll fit right in. Gosh, you look pretty. Go ahead, honey, it’s yours.’”
Russ thought of Gabrielle’s wallet and handed the camera to Jack. Inside the back compartment, neatly folded, was the receipt for the dress. It was difficult to make out the scrawled signature, but Russ had no doubt the credit card imprint would be Saunderson’s.
Jack made a noise. Lyle and Russ leaned in to see. No longer bright eyed, Gabrielle half-leaned in Saunderson’s arms, her face glazed. He was peeling the pretty dress away. Jack handed the camera back to Russ. “It’s the Langevoorts’ place.”
“Yeah.”
“You think there’ll be any forensic evidence left?”
“I doubt it. They have a cleaning service. Odds on he had them there the day after.” Russ tilted the camera.
Jack held up his hand. “I don’t need to see it.” He set the dress and sneakers back in the box.
Lyle, looking over Russ’s shoulder, switched off his own camera. “Oh, Christ.” He shook his head. “Jesus, he filmed everything.”
The pictures of Bors folding her limp body into a large garbage bag were close to unbearable, but Russ made himself press on until the final image, her body as he had seen it, stretched out on McEachron Hill Road, the bare glimmer of dawn along the horizon.
“There’s not a sign of Langevoort in those pictures, is there?” Jack nodded toward the camera, as if he didn’t want to get too close.
“Yeah, but how else could they have been taken? It places him there as much as if he’d put himself in the frame.”
“He could argue Saunderson had a tripod.” Russ turned the camera off and set it back inside the box. “Set the camera to go off regularly every couple of minutes or so.”
Lyle made a noise.
“What’s in the other box?” Jack pointed toward the rear of the storage unit.
Russ walked back and hoisted it against his chest. It was larger, older, and heavier than the first box had been. He set it on the floor and glanced at Jack. “This might be the evidence for your case.”
Jack shook his head. “Langevoort’s not dumb enough to leave that behind. My guess is, this place stays secret until the current owner dies. Then the next guy inherits it. First thing he would do is destroy anything implicating himself.”
Russ bent over and unfolded the flaps. “Huh.” Slim leather shoes with short, curved heels, their color stained with a thin layer of mildew. White wrist-length gloves, the kind women wore in old movies.
“Oh, dear lord.” It sounded like Jack was praying. “It’s Jane Doe. This is what Harry McNeil was looking for.”
Russ handed the shoes and gloves to Jack. Beneath them, neatly folded, was a stiff, wide-skirted dress, still shiny despite the patches of mildew. Beneath the dress, a flouncy skirt with layers of netting riddled with holes. A garter belt and flimsy stocking were likewise moth-eaten.
“A purse.” Jack pointed. “Is there a purse?” Russ thrust his hand beneath the froth of feminine apparel and came up with an embroidered clutch. He opened it. Not much different from Gabrielle’s despite the intervening years—a lipstick, a small handkerchief, a box of Chiclets. He handed the wallet to Jack, who opened it.
“Carmella Marino.” He shut his eyes for a moment. “We got her, Harry. Carmella Marino.”
Lyle leaned over the box. “He wasn’t involved in this one, was he? Langevoort?”
“Not if my theory is correct. I think old Mr. Barkley and Lloyd Harrington, his successor, did this.”
“In 1952.”
“When Barkley decided to make him his heir.”
Lyle scrubbed at the top of his head as if he was trying to knock his thoughts into order. “And when old Mr. Barkley died, Lloyd Harrington inherited this.”
“Not this.” Jack waved at the cheap metal walls. “This place didn’t go up until ’69 or ’70.”
Lyle pointed to the box. “But this evidence, this was somewhere Harrington had access to. But instead of destroying it, he moved it here. Why?”
“Jack said it this afternoon, when we were trying theories out. This is a trophy.” Russ straightened and twisted his back. “Maybe Langevoort and Saunderson committed rape and murder as some sort of cold-blooded pact to gain power. But Harrington”—Russ tapped the box with the toe of his boot—“Harrington liked it. Hmm.”
He bent over again. His tap had dislodged a small cylinder from beneath the clothes. He pinched it between his fingers and held it up. It was a metal film canister, its top screwed on tight. “What do you want to bet is on this film?”
“Not old home movies.” Lyle’s voice was dry. “You think Langevoort hung on to all this because he’s a freak, too?”
“I don’t know. So far he’s managed to keep himself well away from all this. Except for the fact he’s presumably been paying for this place for the past thirty-odd years, there’s nothing directly tying him to the murders. Lots of circumstantial evidence, no smoking gun.”
“I won more cases with the former than the latter, back in my day.” Jack carefully replaced Carmella’s purse in the box and then straightened. “I think Langevoort kept it as a smoke screen. This is evidence Lloyd Harrington committed murder. He was also around and involved in Natalie Epstein’s death. But he died a year later. The murder was still an active case.” He made a face. “Not very active, to my great regret, but still out there. If I had just managed to break something, and connected it to Barkley and Eaton—well, Langevoort could have pulled this box out and said, ‘Hey, I found this in my boss’s effects after he died.’” He sighed. “If I had had evidence Harrington was the killer in ’52, I would have accepted him as Natalie’s killer. Yeah.”
Lyle slid the MKPD camera into his breast pocket. “I’d dearly love something that ties Langevoort in a little more tightly.”
“We go with what we’ve got.” Russ bent over to fit the items more securely back in the box. “We wrap and seal these in evidence tape and—” his fingers brushed against something that was neither cloth, nor leather, nor metal. He pulled it from where it was, flush against the side of the box. An 8-by-11 mailing envelope, brown, unsealed. He stood. It had no writing on the outside.
“Developed pictures?” Lyle raised the camera again, to catch the image.
Russ flexed the mailer. “I don’t think so. Not stiff enough.” He opened the flap carefully and pulled out a sheet of paper, covered in florid writing that could have been done by a calligrapher. His eyes dropped to the bottom, It had been signed by Lloyd Harrington. He looked back up at the opening. It was a paragraph in Latin.
“Can either of you read what this says?”
Jack pulled his glasses down and squinted at it. “That’s the word for father, and there’s son. Uh, hand, heart … sorry, that’s all I know.” He reset his glasses. “My last Latin class was about sixty-five years ago.”
The next paragraph was, thankfully, in English. “‘I, the undersigned, having had a life put into my hands, likewise put my life into the hands of my father, Samuel Barkley—”
“Hot damn,” Lyle murmered.
“That confirms the link,” Jack agreed.
“—‘to be sealed by a worthy sacrifice of youth and beauty’—That would be the girls—‘and to be so bonded by seed and blood as a natural father and son, owing all due support, loyalty, and obedience to my father while inheriting all his worldly goods.’”
“What. The. Hell.” Lyle shook his head. “What does that even mean?”
“Clare said the folks from Barkley and Eaton were talking about this Roman adoption thing that passed ownership of the company from one man to the next. I’m pretty sure most of them thought it was a metaphor. Apparently, not for these guys.”
Lyle looked horrified. “Was this how Romans adopted?”
“Absolutely not. I remember that much from my history classes.” Jack crossed his arms. “I’m sure there was a legal document, and maybe they sacrificed a bird or something, but this? This is two guys who wanted to rape and murder, coming up with a fancy reason to justify it. ‘Blood and seed.’ God.”
Russ tilted the page to better catch the light. “The rest of it’s a list of what the new son owes to the father. Financial support, listen to his advice about the company, keep him ‘as befits the father of a great man,’ provide him with company—do you think that means visiting him on Sundays? Or did Harrington have to supply more girls? Jack, Harry McNeil didn’t have any other cases like this, did he?”
“No. But Harrington would have been living and working down in New York City. God knows how many bodies he could have slipped into the East River.”
Russ eased the paper back into the envelope and replaced it in the box. “Let’s see if there’s one of these in the other box.”
There wasn’t. “Not surprising.” Lyle pocketed the camera. “Langevoort has everything he needs to blackmail Saunderson into doing whatever he wants. No need to slap his name on some freakshow document.”
“Keep him as befits the father of a great man,” Jack murmured.
“Russ, should we be looking for possible sexual assaults by Langevoort as well?”
“I don’t think so. My hunch is, this isn’t a sex thing, like it was for Barkley and Harrington. I think he’s doing this in a very clear, calculated way, to have control over Saunderson.”
“Then he’s insane,” Lyle said flatly. “All that stuff about financial support and a say in the company? He could just put it in a goddamn contract.”
“Yeah, but … there’s a difference between legal obligations and the way a father influnces his son.” Russ tried not to think of Ethan. He didn’t want his baby boy in this place, even if it was only in his head.
“They weren’t father and son.”
“You don’t have to be kin to one another,” Jack said. “Sometimes, you don’t find a father until you’re all grown up.”
Russ’s phone rang. He pulled it out of his pocket and checked the caller. Clare. “Hey, darlin’. Everything okay?”
“Kent just left the house.” Her voice was low and tense. “I tried to talk him into staying, Audrey and I both did, but he wouldn’t listen. Should I follow him?”
“No. Eric is manning a speed gun on the county highway a mile down from the Langevoorts’ private road. If we need to, he can keep eyes on Kent. Did he say where he was going?”
“The hospital. But Russ—he went down to his office first. He could have taken the key to the storage unit. Or he might have more of the Seconal to finish off Bors. I don’t know.”
“That’s fine. We’ve got him either way. You sit tight. I’ll talk to you soon.” He hung up. Swung around to the pair behind him. His teeth felt sharp when he grinned. “Lyle, let’s get these boxes secured. I think Langevoort’s coming to us.”
He called Hadley and sent her to the hospital with orders to not allow anyone except listed medical personnel into Bors Saunderson’s room. Then he had Lyle park the car at the end of the storage units. They pulled down the door of the storage unit with themselves inside. Closed up, it was very dark and very hot. The hole where the lock had been shone like a flashlight near the cement floor. “He’s going to notice that,” Jack said.
“Yeah, but he’ll still want to check and see if the boxes are here.”
“Is he in good shape?” Lyle asked. “Works out?”
“I don’t know. Why?”
“Because our average age is sixty-four. We’re going to have a hell of a time catching him if he bolts.”
“Speak for yourself,” Jack said.
There was the sound of tires on asphalt. They all stilled. Russ unsnapped the top of his holster. The car stopped. A door slammed. Walking footsteps that switched into a run. “What the hell?” The voice was low to the ground, as if the speaker had squatted down to take a better look at Russ’s locksmithing skills. The door jerked up, and there, outlined in the beautiful August sunshine, was Kent Langevoort.
“Aaah!” He quivered for a second, open-mouthed, as if he had been rung inside a bell. His eyes darted left, right, and then he settled. His face smoothed into a mask.
“Jack?” Russ handed him his cuffs. “It was your case.”
The old police chief stepped forward. “Kent Langevoort. You’re under arrest for the rape and murder of Natalie Epstein, and criminal conspiracy in the rape and murder of Gabrielle Yates, and accessory after the fact in the rape and murder of Carmella Marino. You have the right to remain silent…”