CHAPTER 32

The Chicago police worked under a media blitz, a nightly news “countdown” to the next full moon. Eleven days were left.

Chicago families were frightened.

At the same time, attendance rose at horror movies that should have died at the drive-ins in a week. Fascination and horror. The entrepreneur who hit the punk-rock market with “Tooth Fairy” T-shirts came out with an alternate line that said “The Red Dragon Is a One-Night Stand. ” Sales were divided about equally between the two.

Jack Crawford himself had to appear at a news conference with police officials after the funeral. He had received orders from Above to make the federal presence more visible; he did not make it more audible, as he said nothing.

When heavily manned investigations have little to feed on, they tend to turn upon themselves, covering the same ground over and over, beating it flat. They take on the circular shape of a hurricane or a zero.

Everywhere Graham went he found detectives, cameras, a rush of uniformed men, and the incessant crackle of radios. He needed to be still.

Crawford, ruffled from his news conference, found Graham at nightfall in the quiet of an unused jury room on the floor above the U. S. prosecutor’s office.

Good lights hung low over the green felt jury table where Graham spread out his papers and photographs. He had taken off his coat and tie and he was slumped in a chair staring at two photographs.

The Leedses’ framed picture stood before him and beside it, on a clipboard propped against a carafe, was a picture of the Jacobis.

Graham’s pictures reminded Crawford of a bullfighter’s folding shrine, ready to be set up in any hotel room. There was no photograph of Lounds. He suspected that Graham had not been thinking about the Lounds case at all. He didn’t need trouble with Graham.

“Looks like a poolroom in here, ” Crawford said.

“Did you knock ‘em dead? ” Graham was pale but sober. He had a quart of orange juice in his fist.

“Jesus. ” Crawford collapsed in a chair. “You try to think out there, it’s like trying to take a piss on the train. ”

“Any news? ”

“The commissioner was popping sweat over a question and scratched his balls on television, that’s the only notable thing I saw. Watch at six and eleven if you don’t believe it. ”

“Want some orange juice? ”

“I’d just as soon swallow barbed wire. ”

“Good. More for me. ” Graham’s face was drawn. His eyes were too bright. “How about the gas? ”

“God bless Liza Lake. There’re forty-one Servco Supreme franchise stations in greater Chicago. Captain Osborne’s boys swarmed those, checking sales in containers to people driving vans and trucks. Nothing yet, but they haven’t seen all shifts. Servco has 186 other stations – they’re scattered over eight states. We’ve asked for help from the local jurisdictions. It’ll take a while. If God loves me, he used a credit card. There’s a chance. ”

“Not if he can suck a siphon hose, there isn’t. ”

“I asked the commissioner not to say anything about the Tooth Fairy maybe living in this area. These people are spooked enough. If he told them that, this place would sound like Korea tonight when the drunks come home. ”

“You still think he’s close? ”

“Don’t you? It figures, Will. ” Crawford picked up the Lounds autopsy report and peered at it through his half-glasses.

“The bruise on his head was older than the mouth injuries. Five to eight hours older, they’re not sure. Now, the mouth injuries were hours old when they got Lounds to the hospital. They were burned over too, but inside his mouth they could tell. He retained some chloroform in his… hell, someplace in his wheeze. You think he was unconscious when the Tooth Fairy bit him? ”

“No. He’d want him awake. ”

“That’s what I figure. All right, he takes him out with a lick on the head – that’s in the garage. He has to keep him quiet with chloroform until he gets him someplace where the noise won’t matter. Brings him back and gets here hours after the bite. ”

“He could have done it all in the back of the van, parked way out somewhere, ” Graham said.

Crawford massaged the sides of his nose with his fingers, giving his voice a megaphone effect. “You’re forgetting about the wheels on the chair. Bev got two kinds of carpet fuzz, wool and synthetic. Synthetic’s from a van, maybe, but when have you ever seen a wool rug in a van? How many wool rugs have you seen in someplace you can rent? Damn few. Wool rug is a house, Will. And the dirt and mold were from a dark place where the chair was stored, a dirt-floored cellar. ”

“Maybe. ”

“Now, look at this. ” Crawford pulled a Rand McNally road atlas out of his briefcase. He had drawn a circle on the “ United States mileage and driving time” map. “Freddy was gone a litfie over fifteen hours, and his injuries are spaced over that time. I’m going to make a couple of assumptions. I don’t like to do that, but here goes… What are you laughing at? ”

“I just remembered when you ran those field exercises at Quantico when that trainee told you he assumed something. ”

“I don’t remember that. Here’s-“

“You made him write ‘assume’ on the blackboard. You took the chalk and started underlining and yelling in his face. ‘When you assume, you make an ASS out of U and ME both, ’ that’s what you told him, as I recall. ”

“He needed a boot in the ass to shape up. Now, look at this. Figure he had Chicago traffic on Tuesday afternoon, going out of town with Lounds. Allow a couple of hours to fool with Lounds at the location where he took him, and then the time driving back. He couldn’t have gone much farther than six hours’ driving time out of Chicago. Okay, this circle around Chicago is six hours’ driving time. See, it’s wavy because some roads are faster than others. ”

“Maybe he just stayed here. ”

“Sure, but this is the farthest away he could be. ”

“So you’ve narrowed it down to Chicago, or inside a circle covering Milwaukee, Madison, Dubuque, Peoria, St. Louis, Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Toledo, and Detroit, to name a few. ”

“Better than that. We know he got a Tattler very fast Monday night, probably. ”

“He could have done that in Chicago. ”

“I know it, but once you get out of town the Tattlers aren’t available on Monday night in a lot of locations. Here’s a list from the Tattler circulation department – places Tattlers are air-freighted or trucked inside the circle on Monday night. See, that leaves Milwaukee, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, and Detroit. They go to the airports and maybe ninety newsstands that stay open all night, not counting the ones in Chicago. I’m using the field offices to check them. Some newsie might remember an odd customer on Monday night. ”

“Maybe. That’s a good move, Jack. ”

Clearly Graham’s mind was elsewhere.

If Graham were a regular agent, Crawford would have threatened him with a lifetime appointment to the Aleutians. Instead he said, “My brother called this afternoon. Molly left his house, he said. ”

“Yeah. ”

“Someplace safe, I guess? ”

Graham was confident Crawford knew exactly where she went.

“Willy’s grandparents. ”

“Well, they’ll be glad to see the kid. ” Crawford waited.

No comment from Graham.

“Everything’s okay, I hope. ”

“I’m working, Jack. Don’t worry about it. No, look, it’s just that she got jumpy over there. ”

Graham pulled a flat package tied with string from beneath a stack of funeral pictures and began to pick at the knot.

“What’s that? ”

“It’s from Byron Metcalf, the Jacobis’ lawyer. Brian Zeller sent it on. It’s okay. ”

“Wait a minute, let me see. ” Crawford turned the package in his hairy fingers until he found the stamp and signature of S. F. “Semper Fidelis” Aynesworth, head of the FBI’s explosives section, certifying that the package had been fluoroscoped.

“Always check. Always check. ”

“I always check, Jack. ”

“Did Chester bring you this? ”

“Yes. ”

“Did he show you the stamp before he handed it to you? ”

“He checked it and showed me. ”

Graham cut the string. “It’s copies of all the probate business in the Jacobi estate. I asked Metcalf to send it to me – we can compare with the Leeds stuff when it comes in. ”

“We have a lawyer doing that. ”

“I need it. I don’t know the Jacobis, Jack. They were new in town. I got to Birmingham a month late, and their stuff was scattered to shit and gone. I’ve got a feel for the Leedses. I don’t for the Jacobis. I need to know them. I want to talk to people they knew in Detroit, and I want a couple of days more in Birmingham. ”

“I need you here. ”

“Listen, Lounds was a straight snuff. We made him mad at Lounds. The only connection to Lounds is one we made. There’s a little hard evidence with Lounds, and the police are handling it. Lounds was just an annoyance to him, but the Leedses and the Jacobis are what he needs. We’ve got to have the connection between them. If we ever get him, that’s how we’ll do it. ”

“So you have the Jacobi paper to use here, ” Crawford said. “What are you looking for? What kind of thing? ”

“Any damn thing, Jack. Right now, a medical deduction. ” Graham pulled the IRS estate-tax form from the package. “Lounds was in a wheelchair. Medical. Valerie Leeds had surgery about six weeks before she died – remember in her diary? A small cyst in her breast. Medical again. I was wondering if Mrs. Jacobi had surgery too. ”

“I don’t remember anything about surgery in the autopsy report. ”

“No, but it might have been something that didn’t show. Her medical history was split between Detroit and Birmingham. Something might have gotten lost there. If she had anything done, there’ll be a deduction claimed and maybe an insurance claim. ”

“Some itinerant orderly, you’re thinking? Worked both places – Detroit or Birmingham and Atlanta? ”

“If you spend time in a mental hospital you pick up the drill. You could pass as an orderly, get a job doing it when you got out, ” Graham said.

“Want some dinner? ”

“I’ll wait till later. I get dumb after I eat. ”

Leaving, Crawford looked back at Graham from the gloom of the doorway. He didn’t care for what he saw. The hanging lights deepened the hollows in Graham’s face as he studied with the victims staring at him from the photographs. The room smelled of desperation.

Would it be better for the case to put Graham back on the street? Crawford couldn’t afford to let him burn himself out in here for nothing. But for something?

Crawford’s excellent administrative instincts were not tempered by mercy. They told him to leave Graham alone.