11:25 a.m.
5 hours until the gloaming
Ellen struck gold.
She found one company, High Profile Charter Service, based out of Milwaukee, that made regular chartered stops in Cincinnati and Champaign and had even done so two days before their respective murders, then returned to Milwaukee the day after them. They’d also sent a flight to Green Bay two days prior to the disappearance of a woman from nearby Appleton.
There weren’t any flights to Rockford or Madison, but again, those cities weren’t too far from Milwaukee and it made sense that the killer could have driven to them easily enough.
When we checked which company had chartered the flights in question, we found that they were all hired by Hathaway amp; Erikson, LLC, one of the biggest acquisition firms in the Greater Milwaukee area.
A business that did business with other businesses.
I remembered what Griffin had said right before he was killed, when I asked him about the Maneater: “Now there’s a man who knows how to acquire what he wants. Does it for a living.”
A man who knows how to acquire what he wants.
Does it for a living.
A guy who works at an acquisitions firm? A double entendre from the man who called Mallory “baby”?
I wouldn’t put it past him.
Oh yeah, things were popping.
High Profile Charter Service didn’t have flight manifests, but they did have a record that nine people had been on the flight to Cincinnati, seven to Champaign, and five to Green Bay.
“If we get those names from the acquisition firm,” Corsica said, “and the same name appears on all the lists-”
“We have our guy,” Radar exclaimed.
I didn’t think we could go quite that far, but I had the sense that it would certainly be one circumstantial link to the crimes that would be hard to discount.
As it turned out, only Corsica was able to leave the department with me at the moment, but I didn’t care. I was willing to work with just about anyone if it meant moving things forward.
We grabbed our things and left to pay a visit to Hathaway amp; Erikson, LLC.