Greg Theodore showed up on the second Wednesday of March. ‘I never figured you for having the patience of a fisherman,’ he yelled from the shore.
Rigg waved, laid the bamboo pole into the rubber dinghy and lowered his hands so that Theodore couldn’t see him undo the sixty yards of weighted, marked line that he then jammed wet into the pocket of his parka. He knew this day could come if some reporter looked hard enough. And Greg Theodore was one of those that always looked hard enough.
He struggled as always to row the unwieldy dinghy toward the shore. When he got close, he threw the rope to Theodore, who by then was bent over with laughter at the sight of Rigg thrashing to keep the bobbing dinghy in a straight line.
‘I never catch much, but I find the process calming,’ Rigg said, as Theodore pulled him on to the muck of the shore and tied the rope to a tree.
‘You don’t answer your phone and your voicemail is full.’
‘I’ll have to fix that,’ Rigg said, thinking to do no such thing. He’d put the phone into a drawer the instant he’d returned to the dunes and hadn’t brought it out since.
Theodore pointed to the caboose sitting high and bright red through the trees. ‘Your mansion?’
‘I’ll make us coffee.’ Rigg led him up the railroad-tie stairs, because there was no alternative. Theodore had not come for an idle chat. He’d learned something that now needed to be deflected.
‘Compact, but extremely nifty,’ Theodore said, as he sat at the small banquette in the corner of the tiny galley kitchen.
Rigg added grounds and water to the coffee maker. ‘The guy who dragged this thing up set it perfectly level on deep concrete piers. We fitted it with the oak cabinetry in here, the bath and the sitting area, and built the bunkbeds in the hall.’
‘A flower, even,’ Theodore said, pointing to the little white plastic daisy at the center of the table.
‘Judith’s,’ Rigg lied. He’d bought the thing at a gas station – not for its plastic flower, but for its fake green grass and red plastic pot – on his way back from the jeweler in Grand Rapids the week before.
‘Surprisingly roomy,’ Theodore went on, still looking around, taking his time.
‘It’s sometimes too big,’ Rigg said.
‘What happened to the guy that dragged it up here?’ Theodore asked.
‘He died – collapsed in a food store, two miles from here. Never got to enjoy the place much.’
‘And then you and Judith bought it.’
And then she died, having never gotten to enjoy the place much either, but there was no need to give that words. Rigg filled two cups and brought them to the table. ‘What’s up?’ he asked, to spur things along.
‘A former colleague at the Trib teaches at Medill,’ Theodore said, naming Northwestern’s journalism school. ‘He’d heard you were interviewing professors at the college who knew Aria Gamble.’
Rigg shrugged, as he’d planned. ‘The Examiner had shut down. She was my boss; I couldn’t reach her. I figured she’d connected with someone where she went to school.’
‘I found three professors you talked to. They said you also asked about Corky.’
‘He’s an alumnus as well. And he’d become huge news.’
‘And you were investigating because, in your heart, you’re still a reporter, no matter that you’d lost your trumpet even before the Examiner went down?’ Theodore’s eyes were goading.
‘I told you, I was looking for Aria—’
‘That’s crap, Rigg. You figured they disappeared together.’
Rigg met Theodore’s eyes, struggling to not grab the plastic daisy he’d so stupidly left in the middle of the table and set it out of reach. ‘I admit I wondered if there was a connection.’
‘The most interesting professor I found had both Corky and Aria in his undergraduate twentieth-century history class,’ Theodore said. ‘He said they were driven, relentless and brilliant. They paired up for their term paper.’
‘Leopold and Loeb,’ Rigg said, because Theodore already knew.
‘Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb. Another brilliant pair, back in the 1920s. They killed a boy, Bobby Franks, just to see if they could get away with committing the perfect crime.’
‘Not so perfect,’ Rigg said. ‘They got caught.’
‘The professor told you that Corky and Aria were particularly interested in how those two young geniuses screwed up.’
Rigg had known he’d have to give up something, if someone like Theodore came around. ‘I think Feldott killed Glet,’ he said.
‘Corky Feldott, boy wonder, darling of the CIB, a killer?’
‘I think he killed the girls, too, in one fast, vicious spurt at the end of December. It was a sick career move. I think he wanted to be seen riding in on a white horse to solve the cases.’
Theodore leaned back, unsurprised. ‘Let’s take this one step at a time,’ he said. ‘The two girls at the diner weren’t the Graves sisters, right?’
Rigg shook his head. ‘They were just another couple of lost girls, runaways probably. I’m pretty sure the Graves sisters and Jennifer Ann Day and Tana Damm were all snatched off sidewalks near their homes. It wouldn’t have been hard to do. I saw dashboard flashers on Feldott’s county car. He could have pulled up, showed his badge, and ordered them to get in on some pretext or another.’
‘An ME’s badge, not a cop’s?’
‘What teenaged girl is going to inspect a badge? They complied. They got in.’
‘And were frozen to death,’ Theodore said, more to himself than to Rigg.
‘Or decapitated, to muddy things up,’ Rigg said. ‘Sick, sick bastard.’
‘All so he could burnish his reputation as CIB’s superstar sleuth?’
‘He was a sick young man in a sick, sick hurry to show himself as solving the cases.’
‘But to do that, he needed someone to pin the killings on. Enter Glet?’
‘I don’t think Feldott marked him as a patsy at first,’ Rigg said. ‘That came later, well after Glet approached Feldott for help in protecting the Stemec Henderson foreign DNA samples. Unbeknownst to anyone but ATF, Glet was working Kevin Wilcox as the boys’ killer. He needed to protect the Stemec Henderson foreign DNA from Lehman and McGarry.’
‘As you were inferring in your reporting of their scheme to frame Richie Fernandez for the girls’ and maybe the boys’ killings.’
‘Glet needed access to the specimen lab at the Dead House. That room has a thick keypad lock, the kind that can’t be picked. Someone had to let him in and so he approached Feldott, tipped him that he was afraid McGarry would switch Fernandez’s DNA in for Wilcox’s, and asked him to give him one of the boys’ slides.’
‘Why would Feldott do that?’
‘Because, once exposed, McGarry would be out of the picture and Feldott could take over the county medical officer’s job. Plus, Feldott could position himself as having helped to bust the whole enterprise. Both furthered his chief objective of catapulting his career, maybe to sheriff if Lehman was also knocked out of the picture, maybe beyond.’
‘What about chain of custody of the Henderson boy’s original foreign DNA?’
‘I’ll bet Feldott promised Glet he’d vouch for its security in being transferred to the Richmond lab.’
‘Fernandez wasn’t Glet’s fireworks,’ Theodore said.
‘Feldott was, and that led to Glet’s death. Glet got wise, somehow, to Feldott’s being behind the girls’ murders, and Feldott got wise to Glet getting wise. Maybe it was from a change in Glet’s attitude, maybe it was from something Glet let slip. Whatever it was, it presented Feldott with both a chance to eliminate a threat and an opportunity. Killing Glet would get rid of the threat of exposure and give Feldott someone he could make a patsy to frame for the girls’ murders.’
‘What tipped you to Feldott?’
‘Nothing fast and nothing for certain,’ Rigg said, reminding himself to be careful to not say too much. ‘The morning I discovered Glet’s body, I saw Feldott leave Glet’s bungalow with an evidence bag jammed very conspicuously in his coat pocket, just begging for me to question. Feldott took his time, acted appropriately reluctant, but finally he told me it was a packet of yellow index cards of the same type used to send a ransom note to the Day family and two elsewhere.’
‘What do you mean, “elsewhere”?’
‘Carlotta Henderson,’ Rigg said. ‘They were meant for me, to be photographed picking them up. I passed them on to Lehman.’
‘What did they contain besides Glet’s fingerprints pressed on by his dead hand?’
‘A listing of body identifiers on too many of the victims.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘It means one of the cards listed not only identifiers for three of the four girls, but also one for Anthony Henderson, and that took me too long to understand.’
Theodore leaned back, puzzled.
‘Anthony’s birthmark was listed to point to the same killer for both the boys and the girls,’ Rigg said.
‘Or …?’ Theodore let the question dangle unfinished.
‘Or it pointed to someone who had access to the bodies of both the boys and the girls.’
‘Like someone who worked at the Dead House. Like Feldott,’ Theodore said.
Rigg nodded. ‘It was stupid, including Anthony, but Feldott must have thought that he was invincible.’
‘Superior intelligence, like Leopold and Loeb,’ Theodore said.
‘Furthering that, he must have thought the gods of evil were smiling down on him when McGarry was found dead and Lehman was being whispered about as being the killer.’
‘With both of them gone, and Glet dead of a supposed suicide, the path was clear for the kid to become medical examiner and then, with CIB’s support, perhaps the interim sheriff.’ Theodore looked at Rigg. ‘Catapulted, just like you said.’
‘Feldott was – is – a clever fellow.’ Rigg looked away, hoping Theodore had missed it. But Theodore had not.
‘Was?’ Theodore asked. ‘Past tense?’
‘Slip of the tongue,’ Rigg said.
‘Gutsy kid, that’s for sure,’ Theodore said, reaching for the plastic daisy.
Rigg got to it first, pulled it back to hold in both hands. ‘Gutsy killer, you mean.’
Theodore nodded. ‘Aria Gamble’s admiring pieces fed Corky’s burgeoning rise …’ he said, leaving the suggestion for Rigg to pick up.
‘She’s rich enough to take a little vacation, Greg. Her pearls alone were worth a fortune, maybe as much as seventy-five thousand.’
‘Or?’
‘Or she discovered his plan, confronted him and he killed her,’ Rigg said.
‘There’s a third possibility, Milo. She was in on it and now she’s running with him,’ he said. ‘Living on what they could get for her pearls.’
Rigg said nothing. He’d ventured too much already.
‘It wasn’t just Glet that found out Corky’s plan, was it, Milo?’
‘What do you mean?’ Rigg asked in what he hoped was a steady voice.
‘You, Milo. You found him out.’
‘Not in time,’ Rigg lied. ‘I only guessed at most of it, and just recently. Up here, when I had time to think.’
‘Something set the two of them to running,’ Theodore said. ‘Glet was already dead, so he was no longer a threat. I’m guessing it was you who panicked them to leaving everything behind and taking off in her car. They’re together, but one thing’s bothering me.’
‘And that is? Rigg asked, because it was expected.
‘Why didn’t they come after you like they did Glet?’
‘Perhaps it was too late. They had to get away fast. Her car’s noticeable. Maybe it will turn up.’
Theodore leaned back, struggling to find conclusions. ‘They’re running together, or he killed her, as you suggested. Either way, someone’s getting by just fine on what came from hocking those pearls?’
‘Big bucks – seventy-five grand, she said.’ Rigg turned to look out the window, down to the little lake. The surface had completely thawed; the thick ice that had run out to the hole in the center had long since melted away.
‘We’re left with only speculation?’ Theodore asked, standing up.
‘Only speculation,’ Rigg said, relaxing his grip on the little plastic flower pot and standing up too.