A dark van. That was all that Tommi Humphrey could recall from the night of her brutal attack. Jeffrey had done a cursory search for dark vans in the tri-county area. Memminger and Bedford, much like large swaths of Grant County, were filled with painters, electricians, plumbers, carpenters and people who simply liked to drive vans. The tally was at 1,893 and climbing by the time Jeffrey had closed the search on his computer.
He returned to the map. He followed the fire road back to its starting point off Stehlik Way. Stehlik was accessed via Nager Road from the north and Richter Street from the south. The Heartsdale Memory Gardens with its rolling hills was approximately two miles off Richter, straight down Mercer Avenue.
A storage facility was under construction across the street.
He picked up his BlackBerry. He sent an email to Lena Adams, instructing her to go by the worksite on her way into the station. It was possible that a construction worker had seen a suspicious-looking vehicle, possibly a dark van. It was also possible that a construction worker drove the suspicious-looking vehicle. He sent another email telling Lena to get all of the names of any workers or visitors who had been on site in the last three months.
It was feasible that a stranger had stumbled onto the fire road, but the more Jeffrey thought about the women who were attacked in the woods, the more likely it seemed that the perpetrator was someone who was familiar with the terrain—a student or professor who had lived on or near campus, someone in the fire services division, an emergency worker, someone in the department of transportation, a traveling salesman, an adjunct, a janitor, a handyman, or a local who had lived here all of his life.
Counting the students, the county’s population topped out at 24,000 residents. Jeffrey would knock on every door in the vicinity if that’s what it took. The problem was that the county wasn’t an island. The killer could very well be from one of the adjoining towns. If he added in Memminger and Bedford, that pushed the population north of 100,000. If he added the southern part of the state, that pushed the number into the millions.
He searched his desk for the folder Lena had left him. As ordered, she had summarized all of the reported rape cases in the tri-county area. There was a total of three dozen unsolved rapes, which felt like a too-exact number. None of the M.O.s matched the Grant County women. None of the victims shared any similarities to Tommi Humphrey, Rebecca Caterino or Leslie Truong.
Jeffrey closed the folder.
At the police academy and during every subsequent seminar Jeffrey had ever attended, he’d been taught that rapists stuck to a type. They were drawn to a particular age group or a particular look; young blondes with ponytails, grandmothers with pin curls, cheerleaders, prostitutes, single mothers. Attackers had their choice of victims and they chose according to their own sick fantasies.
That theory didn’t seem to be holding up in the Grant County cases. Tommi’s hair was short and blonde at the time of her attack. Beckey’s hair was brunette and long. Leslie’s was black, cut in a pageboy. One had reportedly been a virgin, the other a lesbian, the third someone who, according to her mother, was experienced. All three victims were students at Grant Tech, but their ages, physical builds, skin tones, even the shapes of their faces, were all different.
Jeffrey rubbed his face. He couldn’t keep going in these same circles. Two women had been attacked in two days. Now they were starting another day. What was going to happen?
He checked the time again before picking up the landline and dialing a familiar number.
“Mornin’,” Nick Shelton said. “What can I do you for?”
“It’s Jeffrey. How long would it take for the FBI to generate a profile?”
“How long until you retire?”
“Shit,” Jeffrey mumbled. “That long?”
“I could winnow it down to a year if I got the right fella on the case.”
Jeffrey did not want to think about what would happen if this case dragged on that long. He had seen what had happened to Leslie Truong. He had heard the details from Tommi Humphrey. “Nick, being honest, if this thing goes to the end of the month, I’m going to get the state involved. This guy keeps learning. He’s going to hurt more women.”
“You really wanna get into a pissing contest with my boss?” Nick chuckled. “No offense, bubba, but her dick’s bigger than both of ours put together.”
Jeffrey rubbed his eyes. If he let himself go there, he could still see the broken neck of the wooden hammer. “My ego will be fine. We’ve got to stop this guy.”
“I hear ya, buddy.” Nick offered, “Go on and send me the details. Might as well put it in the pipeline. Whether or not we end up taking over, if there’s a trial, it’d be good to have a Fee-Bee on the stand looking all J. Edgar for the jury.”
“You’ll have it by the end of the day.” Jeffrey returned the receiver to the cradle. He kept his hand on the phone. He debated calling Brock for a report, but he knew that Sara would’ve called immediately if something useful had turned up during the autopsy.
He rolled up the topographical map and set it aside. He skimmed his emails. The mayor wanted to talk to him. The dean wanted a meeting. The district attorney wanted a check-in. The Grant Tech student newspaper wanted a written interview. The Grant Observer wanted an in-person sit-down. Jeffrey sent back anodyne responses to everyone, resisting the desire to tell them what they wanted and what they actually needed were two different things.
At least his mother was off his back. After the umpteenth missed call, he had finally called Mae to wish her happy birthday. When she’d balked, Jeffrey had gaslighted his own mother. He’d created a false memory of a conversation they’d never had, “reminding” Mae that he’d promised her months ago to take her out to dinner the weekend after her birthday. Like any knee-walking drunk, she had pretended to remember, and like any child of an alcoholic, Jeffrey was simultaneously filled with satisfaction that he’d finally found a way to use her drinking in his favor and eaten up with guilt for tricking her.
He was saved further introspection by the fax machine grinding out a page behind him. Brock had sent him details on the hammer Sara had excised from Leslie Truong’s vagina. By sheer luck, there was a manufacturing mark stamped on the end.
Jeffrey looked up the product number on his computer. He recognized the distinctive yellow and green stripes of the tool brand.
The Brawleigh twenty-four-ounce cross-peen was part of a three-hammer set that was aptly called a Machinist’s Dead Blow Kit. Peening hammers were specifically designed for metalwork. In fact, peening referred to the process of working a metal surface to improve its material properties. Brawleigh offered a straight-peen hammer and a bossing mallet to round out its Dead Blow collection.
Jeffrey scanned the details. The head of the 1.5-pound mallet was filled with sand and coated in polyurethane. The two hammers had plastic disks covering the flat sides of the heads. All of the tools were engineered to minimize the elastic rebound from a struck surface; hence the narrow neck of the wooden handle on the murder weapon.
He zoomed in on the hammer. There was something sinister-looking about the metal head. The peen, the opposite end of the face, was conical in shape, used to shape sharp angles. He had no way of knowing whether the hammer had been used on Tommi Humphrey. Had the killer purchased it specifically for the attacks, or was it something that he’d found lying around his shop?
Brawleigh was a nationally known brand, as ubiquitous in the tool industry as Snap-On and Crafstman. Jeffrey did a general search for the cross-peen hammer and found it was readily available at Pep Boys, Home Depot, Costco, Walmart and Amazon. Subpoenaing the records of sales in the area would be a David vs. Goliath quest. Grant County’s district attorney worked on a part-time basis. Filing the subpoenas would take days. Jeffrey didn’t have days.
He closed the tabs and returned to the Brawleigh site. The Dead Blow kit was under the METALWORKS menu. He hovered the mouse over the sub-menus. Nothing stood out. He went to WOODWORKS and found exactly what he was looking for.
NAILSETS AND AWLS.
He studied the nailsets, which were used to sink finish nails into wood. The tool was tempered steel, round, about six inches in length, thick at the top so a hammer could strike it, narrow to a point at the bottom to countersink the head of a nail. Jeffrey fisted his hand. He had held his share of nailsets. The tool was too small to effectively use as a weapon, let alone as a device to puncture the spinal cord.
He clicked on AWLS.
Scratch awls. Stitching awls. Bradawls.
He zoomed in on the bradawl, which was similar in look to a screwdriver. Instead of a flat or Phillips head, the metal tip was honed to a sharp point. The tool was another one that was familiar to Jeffrey. It was used to make indentations in wood to help guide a nail or screw into the correct position.
It was also long enough, and precise enough, to puncture a woman’s spinal cord.
There was movement in the squad room. Matt was pouring himself a cup of coffee. Frank was taking off his suit jacket and hanging it on the back of his chair.
Jeffrey went out to meet them, asking Frank, “Autopsy?”