“Did he struggle pulling Coyle into the bushes?”
“No, not at all. Didn’t think about that either. He was really strong. Probably works out. Or has some job that keeps him in good shape.”
Another note.
Tile closed his eyes, as if he were witnessing the incident once more. Then he said, “Really that’s about it.”
“You did fine.”
Tile asked, “Why do you think he’s doing this?”
“Always the key question. Motive.” Fitz finished the bourbon. “I’ve done a few serial killer stories. I’ve never seen anybody like this one. Men kill for sex. Women for money. He doesn’t want either.”
This individual does not fall into any of the generally recognized categories of serial perpetrator . . .
Fitz continued: “I’ve got a theory he’s doing it for the publicity.”
“Publicity? You mean like he gets off being on the news?”
“Maybe. A kidnapping’s going to get a lot of attention in the first place. But he wants more, so he leaves clues that get the whole country focused on him. I’m going to check with some criminal psychologists, some cops. See what they think.” He closed the notebook. “I’d encourage you to talk to the police.”
“No way. You’ll tell them what I told you, that’s enough.”
“Your choice.” Fitz paid. He rose to leave and handed Tile one of his business cards.
“They might subpoena you for my name,” Tile muttered darkly.
“Then I’ll refuse.”
“You’ll be in contempt. You could go to jail.”
“Then I go to jail.”
11
On the way to the Examiner, Fitz called the FBI and was patched through to Special Agent Trask. He gave her the new information.
“You found the witness?” Her voice was higher than he remembered. Maybe she was surprised. She didn’t seem like a woman who reacted to the unexpected. “How?”
He explained.
“Ah, a construction worker just called our tip line. He said that he’d seen someone who looked like Ethan Hawke. You behind that?”
“I encouraged him.”
“You going to give me the witness’s name?”
“No.”
Fitz braced for a fight.
“Okay. We’ll find him.” She thanked him and hung up.
Jail was not, apparently, looming large.
Once in his office, he spread all his notes out. He began to plan a profile piece. The theme would be a serial killer (well, kidnapper, thus far) whose motive was publicity.
Odd reason to commit such terrible crimes.
But then, Fitz thought, what was normal when it came to taking a life?
He would, as he’d told Peter Tile, find some experts and get their opinions: a criminal-psychology professor, a homicide investigator in the Sheriff’s Department.
Another idea occurred. He would look over other stories about crimes around the same time and in the same place as the kidnapping; maybe the Gravedigger had made some other attempts to capture the media’s awareness, which might have failed to generate the attention he craved. But he could have been caught on security tape or seen by witnesses.
He reviewed the coverage in the local Maryland papers around the time of the Shana Evans kidnapping: domestic batteries and one parental abduction; a bystander killed in a gang-shootout cross fire; a food processing plant under investigation in a salmonella outbreak; your typical robberies; a hate crime or two; a serial killer preying on prostitutes (his MO was very different from the Gravedigger’s); a brutal assault at a rally outside the national political debates; a West Virginia businesswoman killed in a mugging outside a restaurant not far from her motel.
As for the kidnapping of Jasper Coyle, Fitz had only to skim recent or planned Examiner stories: the governor’s interview; the coal-company executive’s death, thanks to the timid guardrails on Route 29; the downtown renovation project; the meth and opioid crisis; a domestic murder; and another parental kidnapping in a custody dispute. Some minor police blotter pieces like DUIs, vandalism and low-level drug busts.
He snagged a piece of 8 ½ by 11-inch paper from the printer and charted these stories. Visual aids helped him focus.
Fitz gazed at it for a while. But none of the pieces had the Gravedigger’s signature. Either they involved no crime at all, or known or local perps were the ones involved.
Dead end. Still, though, his reporter’s instinct told him there was more to the kidnapper than what appeared; he couldn’t dismiss the idea of publicity as a motive.
He’d have to think about it.
And think he would.
But not quite yet.
The police scanner crackled, made him jump. “Be advised, all units, we have probable location of Jasper Coyle. Proceed to corner of Thirteenth Street and Arthur Road.”
12
The backhoes and jackhammers sat idle.
Worried the machinery might entomb Jasper Coyle with brick and stone, the authorities had the rescue workers dig by hand.
Fitz jockeyed for position among the other journalists, print and broadcast, behind the yellow tape barricading off the construction site where an old building was being demolished.
This was an old portion of town, filled with redbrick and limestone buildings dating back at least one hundred years. A grassy park was across the street, with an ancient cannon pointing westward, a direction from which no enemy had ever approached the town of Garner.
City Hall and other administrative offices were nearby, as was police headquarters. A full complement of law enforcers too—city, county, state and fed, all under the calm direction of Special Agent Sandra Trask.
A supervisor called to one enthusiastic pick-axer, “Careful. If he’s down there, we don’t want to knock something down on him.”
The worker shot back, “If he’s down there, he needs fucking air.”
Fitz approached a broadcast reporter he knew, a veteran ABC and NBC reporter now with National Public Radio. Fitz had little use for TV journalism, now that Walter Cronkite and Huntley and Brinkley were gone, but he respected NPR for the depth it brought to stories. He asked the man how they’d found Coyle.
“Well, that’s a story and a half,” the man said, laughing. He explained:
Agent Trask had given a statement about cracking the code. A woman in the Shetland Islands, the United Kingdom, who was “rather addicted to crosswords,” had figured out the limerick.
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.
Mrs. Sophie McMillan, eighty-seven, was quoted as saying: “I noticed he said the bar, not a bar. A bar would be like a bar where people drink or a bar like a girder for building. But I thought the bar meant the law. Barristers and solicitors, as we say over here. And then there was the word ‘trial.’ So I decided that that poor bloke was buried under a lawyer’s office or courthouse.”
Investigators had located a courthouse from the early twentieth century, presently being torn down. Nearby a team found footprints that matched those of the Gravedigger and a hose disappearing underground. Rescue excavation began immediately.