Over the next few minutes more officers arrived and took position around the farmhouse.
SWAT was still five minutes out.
Carver called through his car’s mic numerous times, trying to get anyone who might be in the house to acknowledge that they were there, but no one answered.
From the radio transmissions among the team members, I knew that no one had seen any movement and I was getting more and more antsy to find out if Griffin was actually in the house, or if we were wasting our time out here.
His car is out front.
Yes, but if Griffin really was guilty, he’d been shrewd enough to avoid suspicion in at least two homicides stretching back almost a decade, even while he marketed in the kind of merchandise he did. The car could easily be a ploy to distract us while he fled in another vehicle.
“Radar, I can’t just sit around here doing nothing. I want to have a look around that landfill. You with me?”
“You bet.”
I radioed Carver; he agreed it would be good to cover the landfill and sent two other officers to take our place behind the house. They were more than happy to man our positions rather than accept the job of trekking across a reeking dump.
“Okay,” I said to Radar. “Get ready for the smell.”
“It’s been too late for that since we got here.”
We started for the fence. Wooden. Eight feet tall. No razor wire on top.
No problem.
Moments later we were inside.
I paused. Studied the mounds of garbage around me.
We were in an area filled with discarded appliances-dishwashers, refrigerators, dryers, washing machines, ovens. Based on the number of units here compared to the population of Fort Atkinson, it was clear that this place had been the town’s landfill for a long time.
The rusted appliances jutted up at odd angles from the piles of trash all around us, some half buried in garbage, some jumbled awkwardly on top of each other in precarious stacks. The area looked like an alien, garbage-strewn, metal-encrusted planet.
Simply put, if Griffin was here, he could be almost anywhere.
“What are you thinking, Pat?”
“I’m thinking I hear a bulldozer.” I pointed across a mound of garbage to our right.
A man was driving a dated bulldozer into the landfill, aiming it toward a giant mountain of garbage bags. I couldn’t make out the face of the driver, but from here his build looked too big for him to be Griffin.
“You think that’s him?”
I shook my head. “No. But go see if he’s noticed anyone. Then, get him out of here. I don’t want any civilians in the area. I’m going to have a look around here.”
“Be careful.”
“You too.”
Gun out, Radar took off, picking his way over the garbage and carefully surveying the rotting landscape as he went.
Occasional telephone poles rose at random intervals along the fence that Radar and I had just scaled. The poles had vapor lights, now off, and I imagined that they served to illuminate the perimeter of the dump at night to keep out scavengers that would undoubtedly be drawn here from the nearby forest looking for food-rats, skunks, raccoons, wild dogs that might dig under the fence, maybe even bears, rooting through the garbage.
Around me, deep tread marks furrowed the ground from the bulldozers and earth movers that had pushed the remnants of people’s daily lives into the hills of refuse. Throughout the landfill were sporadic fires, and plumes of nascent gases were escaping through gaps in the mountains of trash.
“Griffin!” I called. The word sounded thick, almost liquid. It was a strange effect and I wasn’t sure what caused it, but it was eerie and unsettling. “We’ve got this area surrounded.”
It was partly true.
That farmhouse was definitely surrounded.
I proceeded through the cemetery of hulking appliances. Saw no movement. “We found that box under your steps. Thanks for selling the nursery rhyme book. That was helpful.”
Does he know? Does he know it was you who found Mindy’s body?
It was possible he might’ve found out I’d worked Jenna’s disappearance-he could have easily researched things after I’d visited him yesterday with Ralph, but I doubted he would have known that I was the one who’d found Mindy.
The cuffs. The Oswald connection…
“Did you consult with Isle-Seagirt-on the Oswald true crime book?”
No answer.
“Why do you call Mallory ‘baby,’ Timothy?” It took a little work to make sure my voice carried, but I made sure it did. “Is she the one you did all this for?”
No reply. Just the faint sounds of garbage settling, the rumble of the bulldozer’s engine shutting down as Radar spoke with the operator.
I came to a refrigerator. Held my gun steady. “How’d you get the jacket, Griffin?” I stepped quickly around it, leveling my weapon as I did. No one. “Did you know someone at the station? In the evidence room?”
Snow started to fall. Lonely, rogue flakes wandering aimlessly through the stagnant air.
As I was about to call out again, I heard a mound of garbage shift behind me and I spun to see what it was, but I was a fraction of a second too slow.
Griffin had appeared from behind a chest freezer that was tilted on end. With his unmistakably scarred neck, his twisted grin, and a primal fire in his eyes, he looked like a rabid animal.
He had a tire iron in his hands, had just cocked it back, and was swinging it violently toward my head.