They were in a strip mall on Hawthorne between Sixteenth and Seventeenth, near the site of the kidnapping. Through trees and abundant shrubs, Fitz could see gowned crime scene officers at work.
Roughly twenty reporters had gathered, Fitz in the front. The on-air men and women were the attractive ones, nightly-news ready. The others were more casual about their dress, and some bellies curled over belts, some hairdos needed coiffing, some shoes could have benefited from polish.
The MCC was like a long and narrow police station, only the furniture was bolted to the floor and the seats featured belts. One wall was filled with the electronic gear that’s absolutely necessary to solve crimes—at least, according to TV shows in which mobile command centers figure.
He snapped away with the low-end camera.
The woman now stepped outside and was joined by the Fairview County sheriff and the Garner police chief, two middle-aged white men so similar in their solid appearance that they could have been related. The trio faced the reporters, squinting. The July sun was fierce.
“Good afternoon. I’m Special Agent Sandra Trask with the joint Violent Crimes Task Force of the Bureau.” She introduced the others, though there was no doubt who was in charge.
Fitz had heard of her. She was based out of the VCTF headquarters in Manhattan, seventy miles south. He noted that she, unlike insecure law enforcers Fitz had known, introduced herself by her first name and not just her last. Cops without confidence wore their titles like the shields around their necks.
Two more pictures, then he grew frustrated and pocketed the camera. He replaced it with a notebook, which felt much more comfortable in his hand, and started to speed-write—his own version of shorthand.
“Between twelve thirty and one thirty this afternoon, a thirty-seven-year-old male, Jasper Coyle, resident of Garner, New York, was abducted at his parked vehicle on Hawthorne Road, near Seventeenth. The perpetrator left behind a note and identified himself as the Gravedigger, the same as a kidnapping near Baltimore in late June of this year. Just like in that incident, the note included a clue as to the victim’s whereabouts. Presumably—given the perpetrator’s name and his MO—it’s underground somewhere.
“There were no witnesses to the first taking, in Maryland, and that victim couldn’t provide a description. But someone saw him here. The witness described him as over six feet, blond, pale complexioned. Wearing jeans and a gray sweatshirt, sunglasses. That was all the information he gave us. It was an anonymous call from a pay phone.”
“Copycat?” someone called.
Fitz thought: Of course not. The FBI would know by now that the handwriting matched that from the note in the first kidnapping.
“No, the handwriting matches that from the first abduction.”
“What’s the clue?” another reporter called.
Trask nodded to a young male agent, who began distributing sheets of paper. Then she said, “It’s a limerick.”
6
In the Gravedigger’s Maryland kidnapping, three weeks ago, a thirty-two-year-old woman named Shana Evans was knocked unconscious, drugged and placed in a three-foot-wide drainage tunnel under a highway. The Gravedigger had piled rocks at the entrances. She’d screamed and screamed, she later told the cops, but cars passing overhead were too loud for anyone to hear her. The risk wasn’t that she’d suffocate, but that she’d drown in a storm if the tunnel flooded.
To find her, the police had to decipher a curious sentence:
Recklessness Times 7 Mean Mayhem That We Overcome
Figure it out, save the victim.
XO, the Gravedigger
Finally, a concerned citizen cracked it. The first letters of the phrase spelled out “RT 7, MM Two”: she was at Route 7, mile marker 2.
There they found and saved Evans, largely unharmed, but traumatized by having to fight off several angry, and hungry, rats.
Fitz now looked down at the Coyle abduction clue.
There once was a man with a car.
Whose trip didn’t get very far.
Not one single mile,
Oh, my what a trial!
He’s trapped somewhere under the bar.
Figure it out, save the victim . . .
XO, the Gravedigger
So, the victim was buried within a mile or so of the point of abduction—a huge area to comb, especially challenging when looking for someone hidden underground. As for the other lines in the clue, Fitz could not decipher them.
The reporters peppered Trask with more questions: about fingerprints (none), about Coyle’s family (he was unmarried), about the anonymous witness (still unidentified), about CCTVs downtown (none—Fitz had a laugh at that one), the number of officers on the case (twenty-five and counting), canvassing for other witnesses (yes, but no luck so far).
Finally Special Agent Trask ended the press conference. “There’ll be an update later. But, for now, I’d like to ask you please to get that limerick out to as many people as possible on your broadcasts and in your newspapers. We’ve sent it to Quantico and are having forensic linguists look it over.” As cameras and microphones hovered, she added, “And I hope you all try your hand too. We’ll have to assume that Mr. Coyle doesn’t have long to live.”
7
Brick against brick was pointless.
Like trying to cut paper with paper. Jasper Coyle, sweating, had made very little headway, other than removing small chips of mortar . . . and breaking the terra cotta ax he’d found earlier.
Brick dust coated his mouth but he didn’t want to spit. Conserving moisture. He was already furiously thirsty. He needed a better tool. He was reluctant to turn away from the brick wall; he found comfort in the slivers of illumination coming through the cracks in the mortar.
On hands and knees once more, patting the ground. Ten feet, twenty . . . He didn’t know.
Finally: ah, yes!
His hand landed on a piece of rock, not brick. Solid and heavy—about five pounds, he estimated, like the dumbbells he held when jogging on the treadmill during his early-morning workouts at Fitness Plus. A good size for pounding and, better yet, the right shape; one end was sharp, like the end of a pickax.
Thank you, God, he said silently to the entity whose existence he’d given up acknowledging years ago.
Maybe that would change.
Coyle made his way back to the wall and once again began chipping away, as splinters and then chunks of mortar loosened and dropped to the floor. The tool was better but it was still a slow process. He had to run one hand over the target, then move the appendage away before the blow. He did this ten or so times, using all his strength. Then he’d pause, suck air from the hose, and return to the digging, a nineteenth-century coal miner. The final brick grew loose, like a seven-year-old’s baby tooth.
Coyle was growing increasingly faint. Slamming rock into mortar used up more air than he was taking in.
Please, just let me last long enough to get a few bricks out. Light meant air. Air meant survival.
Breathe less, breathe less, he told himself.
He did, but this only made him delusional, even giddy. He remembered when he’d met a young woman at Fitness Plus. Side by side on the treadmill, they’d chatted and laughed. Coyle had asked her out afterward. At the restaurant—one of Garner’s nicest, prime rib the specialty—he’d swallowed water wrong and got the hiccups. He’d gone to the restroom and, in a desperate attempt to rid himself of the spasms, held his breath for as long as he could.