Joshua made it to his car, which he’d parked four blocks from the train yard. The Ford Taurus he’d left behind wasn’t his, of course. He’d stolen it a few days ago so there wouldn’t be any chance that his own vehicle would be identified at the scene of any of the crimes. It seemed like a slim possibility anyway, but it wasn’t a chance he was willing to take.
He’d planned on torching the Taurus when all of this was done, but now it looked like that wasn’t going to happen.
How did they find you?
Joshua had no idea.
Once inside the car, he snapped on the scanner and listened to the chatter back and forth between the squads.
And thought of last night.
The squads.
The sirens.
The abduction of Colleen Hayes.
Joshua was a fan of true crime books and three weeks ago he’d finished Heather Isle’s newest book about David Spanbauer, a rapist and child murderer in Wisconsin earlier in the decade. The story had intrigued him so much that he’d looked up the true crime expert the author had cited numerous times-a “collector of memorabilia,” as Isle put it, Timothy Griffin.
Eventually, that led Joshua to find out about the products Griffin offered through his direct-sales business.
Which had naturally intrigued him.
It took a little work, but Joshua tracked down the guy’s home address.
He waited until one evening when both Griffin and his young girlfriend were out, and then, just as he’d done with Dahmer’s apartment before it was destroyed, he took his camera into Griffin’s home and captured footage of the place’s interior. He even got footage of the basement and the cache of items beneath the stairwell, the collectibles without price tags on them. The ones that, apparently, were not for sale.
The special items, Joshua. You know all about those.
Checking the boxes of receipts in the bedroom closet, Joshua had found one for a pair of handcuffs from the Oswald case, which ended up being perfect for what he had in mind.
The Oswald case.
The one that mirrored, in so many dark ways, his own.
Because of his special connection with their story, he’d wanted to save their crimes for the climax. And this discovery, in a way, would help him do just that.
According to the receipt, a woman named Colleen Hayes had purchased the specific cuffs. So, rather than leave a pair of his own that might be able to be traced, he decided to let her husband use their own pair when he was forced to abduct the African-American man.
That way, it helped Joshua by turning the spotlight of the investigation onto the husband.
As Joshua’s father had taught him years ago, you always give the police what they want. And they want fingerprints, DNA, hair, semen; they want sole impressions from shoes; they want any hard physical evidence that they can hang a name onto: cuffs, Vincent. Done.
They’ll keep looking until they find what they want, but when they have it in hand, they’ll be content to formulate their theories based on their cursory findings and then work diligently to prove themselves right. More often than not, that’s a lot easier, a lot more convenient, than ruthlessly ferreting out the truth.
Because of that, Joshua was careful not to leave trace evidence that could be tied to him at the scenes, and, when possible, he tried to leave evidence that pointed to someone else.
But tonight he’d been forced to leave a veritable stockpile of evidence behind in that boxcar. From the start he’d been careful about prints, but DNA was nearly impossible not to leave. However, he’d never been arrested, so even if law enforcement did somehow manage to get his DNA, they wouldn’t have anything to compare their samples to.
Now, he checked his watch and saw that it was almost five, almost time for Carl to call with his update on what he’d done to Miriam Flandry.
Joshua clicked on his portable phone, the one that he’d made sure was untraceable.
So, things this evening had not gone as planned, but everything could still move forward as long as Carl had been obedient and done his job.
If he had, Gein’s name would rise to the forefront of the news cycle once again, the national media would start playing and replaying Carl’s and Adele’s story, and everyone would take notice.
And right now that was what mattered most.