Chapter Twenty-One

HANNAH ASKED IF I could follow her back to the Twelfth District. As if eager to prove me wrong, Hannibal trailed Hannah’s BMW back to the station without incident. Hannah and I walked in together, and she introduced me to Detective Andrew Roberts.

Roberts was tall and mildly overweight with brownish-gray hair. Only six months from reaching his thirty years, he’d told Hannah he had no intention of serving even a minute past that date. He was the only detective who volunteered to assist Hannah with this case, however, and for that she was grateful. Hannah introduced me as the private investigator who was working on the church aspect of the investigation.

The detective’s look was a mixture of cynicism and disdain. I didn’t take offense. That look was standard with most cops and not just in my presence. I held out my hand, but Detective Roberts only stared and grunted. His first words were to Hannah.

“This afternoon at about three o’clock, a husband and wife parked their car in the ‘Red’ long-term lot at the Cleveland Airport. After they parked, they noticed the car next to theirs—a Ford Focus with a broken window on its front driver’s side. Thinking someone had tried to steal the car, the couple reported it to airport security. Security checked the Focus and called the Cleveland PD to file a report. When the cop on duty checked the license plate, it matched the BOLO on Drew Allen’s car. We impounded the vehicle, and the crime scene guys are going over it now. So far, it looks like it was wiped pretty thoroughly.”

“I know the lot has security cameras. How widespread are they?” Hannah asked.

“You can see the license plates of the cars coming in. The coverage throughout the rest of the lot is a mixed bag. Not bad, but it could be better. The real problem is the sheer volume of traffic coming through that lot. It’s open 24-7, and we don’t even know what day to look at. We’d need a lot of man-hours to review those tapes, and we already know Mary Dhillon or her boyfriend likely dropped the car off.”

I knew my input might not be welcome, but I’d stopped caring about those things a long time ago. “The tapes might be able to tell us quite a bit. Whoever drove the car had to get back to wherever they were hiding. If it was Mary, Grieve might have followed her in another vehicle, and we might see that other car’s license plates. If Mary took a taxi back, she’d likely walk toward the airport itself. If we know when she arrived, we could check with the cab company and see who was picking up fares from the airport at that time.”

“The long-term lot is credit-card entry only,” Hannah added. “If we knew her arrival time, we should also be able to get a record of the card Mary used to enter the lot. We know she didn’t use her personal card. That account has been dormant since the time Mary disappeared. Whatever card she swiped, it’s possible they’re still using it today.”

“It’s not perfect,” I said, “but we can probably even narrow the window of the time they abandoned the car. We know Mary left New Orleans on the morning of April 18th. Given the driving distance, she couldn’t have reached Cleveland until the 19th and, more likely, April 20th. If you add an extra day on the back end of that estimate, we should be checking the tapes for April 19th through April 21st, with the first two days being our most likely.”

“That assumes they abandoned the car right away.” Detective Roberts was looking at Hannah when he spoke—he still hadn’t tossed a word in my direction. But before Hannah could answer, their captain called her into his office for an update. Once she was out of earshot, Roberts turned to me.

“She’s a nice kid when you get beyond all the sass, smart too. Now you, I don’t like. Don’t get all pissed off; I don’t like any PIs. In my experience, most of them are assholes who couldn’t make it through the police academy if their lives depended on it. Detective Page, however, thinks very highly of you, so don’t fuck that up. I’d hate to have to shoot you. It might mess up my retirement.”

“I promise you, Detective, I will do my best. Just so you know, I also think highly of Detective Page. Before I met her, I figured most cops were dickheads who couldn’t solve a homicide even with the murder weapon and a signed confession.”

I thought I saw his lips curl. It could have been a smile; it could have been a snarl. Luckily Hannah returned before I had a chance to find out.

“I hope you boys played nice when I was gone.”

“Sure, Mom,” I said. “We’re best buds now.”

We talked about next steps. Hannah felt she and I should go to the airport to speak with the security staff and get the tapes for the long-term lot. While we were doing that, Detective Roberts would reinterview residents from the neighborhoods of our three murder victims.

Because it was now past six-thirty, Hannah called the airport and spoke to the second shift supervisor for airport security. To gain access to the tapes, we’d have to meet with Caitlyn Grivens, the department director. After a bit of wrangling, the supervisor agreed to give us Ms. Grivens’ cell phone number. Hannah called her, explained what we were looking for, and Grivens agreed to meet with us at eight-thirty the next morning. While the delay was inconvenient, I was secretly happy for the excuse to go back to my apartment. We’d been running around nonstop since we left New Orleans. All I wanted to do was sleep, and I suspected Hannah felt the same.

Before leaving for home, I told Hannah I also wanted to have my computer expert perform a background check on Susan Leads, the cousin whose visit to the seminary resulted in Grieve’s expulsion. I was still thinking about a potential message through the Private Matters website, and I wanted to see if there was a weakness we could exploit. With Grieve’s likely embarrassment over the seminary incident, his cousin seemed the best place to start.

Hannah agreed, and I called Tomas as soon as I got back to my apartment. Given his usual routine, I was sure I’d catch him in the middle of some attempted, high-level system incursion. To my surprise, he was with a girl. At least I had the incursion part right.

“Terry, you asshole,” he whispered. “You need to call back tomorrow. I might get lucky tonight, and you are not going to screw this up for me.”

Tomas’s record with girls was the equivalent of my own before I met Hannah. Maybe both of our fortunes were changing.

“I just need five minutes of your time, Tomas.”

“Come on. This woman is interested in what I do. That’s a rare thing.”

“If she finds accounting interesting, I would send her home right now.”

“Nice, very nice. You know what I mean.”

“I thought you were obsessive about keeping the computer thing a secret. You would drop that on the chance you might get laid?”

“Terry, I’m an accountant by day, and I play with computers at night. I’d be willing to do a lot more than that if it would end up with me getting laid.”

“Fair enough, but I still need five minutes.”

“Someday, you are going to open your bank statement and find a zero balance.”

“That would be frightening if only it wasn’t my usual monthly experience.”

He was silent. For his sake and mine, I needed to cut through the bullshit.

I decided to go nuclear. “If you don’t listen to what I need, I’ll not only tell your mother you refused, I’ll tell her you had a girl in your apartment.”

“Bastard. Go ahead, but I’m cutting you off after five minutes.”

In our previous conversation, I’d asked Tomas to check the backgrounds of Father Samuel and Dr. Grieve to see if he could discover any links between the two. After swearing him to secrecy, I told him the rest of the story, or at least what I could summarize in five minutes. Beginning with the confessions that had started this case, I gave Tomas a bullet-point version of the Cleveland and New Orleans murders and the details regarding our two prime suspects. I also covered the discovery of the computer in Drew’s home and the messages sent through the Private Matters website.

“By tomorrow,” I continued. “I should have a copy of the hard drive from Drew’s computer. The New Orleans IT expert would only say the messages sent to the hard drive came from the Cleveland area. We suspect he might have sent the original messages from a library computer to avoid a trace. Grieve is careful, but he’s also arrogant. If I can send him a message, I believe I can bait him into replying from his actual location.

“I know Grieve is probably no longer monitoring the site directly, but don’t those services send an e-mail prompt when a person sends a message? If that’s true, I’m hoping we might still be able to get his attention. If he notices my message and replies, can you pin down his location if you catch his answer quickly enough?”

“I’ll give you a qualified yes to the last one,” Tomas said. “Depending on certain variables, I should be able to give you a location no more than an hour after Grieve sends his message. More likely, I could have it in fifteen to thirty minutes. I’d like to look at the site and see how their system works, and then I can tell you for sure. Regarding the e-mail prompt, I’d guess the site does have that as an option. Whether Grieve set it up and left it operational is anyone’s guess.”

Knowing I was pushing my luck, I asked for one more thing. “I promise I’ll only take one more minute of your time. I mentioned Grieve’s cousin, Susan Leads. I think she might be his weak point. Can you look into her history? Find out if she’s married, where she works, does she have an arrest record, or anything else I might be able to use to poke Grieve a bit.”

“You aren’t giving me much besides a name, but I’ll see what I can find. Now I am returning to my date.”

“Go with my blessing. By the way, what excuse did you give her for taking this call?”

“I told her I have a friend who is manic-depressive, and he always calls me during his down periods. She’s a social worker. She was surprisingly sympathetic.”

“Good to know in case I ever meet this girl. Now go and show her your hard drive.”

Tomas hung up without replying.