Myrtle Street was located in the industrial end of University Avenue on St. Paul’s northwest side. That end of town was dotted with an assortment of manufacturing operations behind small sidewalk stores, ethnic shops, and numerous small bars with names like Ace’s Place and Pete’s Canteen. Mac and Lich drove over in their department-issue gray sedan, turning left at the GasUp station on the corner of Hampden and University. They went one block and hit a dead end, the only way they could go was right on Myrtle and the vacant lot was half way down on their left. A coroner wagon, two squads and Riley’s unmarked were already there.
The body had been dropped in a vacant lot filled with knee-high weeds and brush. Bottles, cups, rusted barrels, newspapers, an old recliner, and dirt piles littered the landscape. There was one sickly tree and the outline of the old foundation of a house that once had occupied the lot. The uniforms had taped off a large area around the body as well as along the street.
On both sides of the vacant lot were chain link fences covered with vines, tall unkempt shrubs, and weed trees. The combination of vegetation made it virtually impossible for nearby houses to see into the vacant lot. The back wall of the Hancock Foundry spanned the backside of the lot. There were no windows and one lonesome set of double doors, with a dumpster to the left, one lid up and one down.
Across the street stood old two-story, white, wood-sided houses with steep, pitched roofs. They all had a solid, bland, wood front door and single picture window on the front with a metal awning. All the same style, built some seventy years earlier. The metal awnings and front doors were all different colors, the only thing differentiating the houses. The properties were not well tended, most having untidy yards. It was a poor, working-class neighborhood.
Riley was crouched by the side of the body, taking notes, while two crimescene techs examined the body, one of them speaking into a Dictaphone. Mac and Lich stood fifteen feet away. Mac couldn’t make out much about the victim, other than she was nude, wrapped partially in plastic. He could see her legs and she fit the profile-thin, medium height. The balloon, tied around her ankle, bobbed and weaved in the November wind, smiling at him. Jeering.
The rest of the detail arrived shortly thereafter. Riley saw everyone coming and got up out of his crouch. He nodded for them to follow him over to the street. Everyone gathered around. Riles quickly gave out orders. They needed to canvas the area around the lot.
“Who found the body?” somebody bellowed.
Riles looked down towards the other end of the street towards the city workers digging up what looked like a sewer line. “One of the guys came over here to take a piss and saw the body. He’s over working with his crew. I’ll take Lich and McRyan over to talk to him.” Everyone else spread out to take up their assigned tasks of what would likely be another fruitless search for anything on this guy.
A uniform fetched the city guy who had found the body. His name was Myron Dix, a large, rotund African American who looked to be in his early fifties, with a bushy gray beard. He was wearing his City of St. Paul hardhat and orange work vest over his tan canvas work suit, a smoke hanging out the side of his mouth. Mac admired the canvas work suit; it undoubtedly was warm, and he was already chilled. It was forty degrees, but with the wind howling it felt more like twenty.
Dix and his crew had arrived for work at 7:00 a.m. They had gone to work and didn’t notice anything right away. “Anyway, around 7:45 a.m. or so, my two cups of coffee hit me, and I needed to piss,” Dix said. “I’d usually get into the truck and hit a gas station or something, but with the vacant lot so close, I wandered over there.” Never mind the fact that urinating in public was against the law and this guy was a city worker.
“What did you see?” Riles asked.
“Well, there’s the one tree over there. I went behind it and did my business. On my way out I looked over to my right and saw the balloon. That’s been in the papers. I got a little closer and saw a leg. Another step or two, and I got the whole picture.”
Lich jumped in. “Did you touch the body, anything like that?” Dix put his hands up and shook his head. “No. No. No. Figured that killer was at it again. They say he dumps the bodies in vacant lots.” Dix waved his left arm towards the lot, “This shithole qualifies. I ran back to the truck and called it in.”
They went back over it again. Time of arrival, did he notice anything out of the ordinary, any vans in the area, anyone else walking through the lot? Dix had nothing to add. The two other guys on his crew were of no help. As they were walking away, Mac asked one last question, “You guys start today?”
“Naw, man,” Dix replied. “Noon yesterday.”
Mac and Lich stayed with Riley and continued on with the canvas. It was painful watching him work it. You could see it in his eyes as the day went along. House after house, witness after witness, nobody saw anything. The case was beating down on Riley, and the despair showed on his face, as they developed nothing other than their seventh dead body. Mac overheard a couple of conversations Riles had with the chief. It wasn’t pretty.
Mid-day they learned that the victim’s name was Charlene Murphy. She worked at the Hole-in-the-Wall, a diner that wasn’t but five blocks away. She left work at 11:00 p.m. the night before, and the diner’s morning workers found her car in the back of the parking lot, with her keys lying underneath. The strangler likely attacked her there, dragging her back into the alley and to the van they assumed he had. A canvas had been started behind the restaurant, but it was unlikely anyone saw anything. A ten-foot-high fence ran most of the length of the alley. Not only couldn’t anyone see anything, but the fence also created an excellent sound barrier.
At 4:00 p.m., Riles ordered everyone downtown, leaving two men behind to catch people as they came home. Mac and Lich headed for their car. When Mac got into the car and turned the key, he noticed the gas gauge was nearly empty. Lich saw it too. “Let’s hit the GasUp on the corner.”
Mac pulled up to the line of pumps closest to Hampden Avenue, got out and started filling the tank. “I’m chilled to the bone, man. Grab some coffee.”
“Will do,” Lich answered as he headed inside.
As the tank filled, Mac looked out onto University and watched the traffic pass by. Not much going on other than normal traffic for this part of town, delivery trucks and vans, beat up cars of working-class folks, the occasional cab. Not much pedestrian traffic, especially on such a cold and ugly day.
He looked back inside and could see Lich at the coffee pots. The GasUp station was big for the neighborhood, with four islands of gas pumps, four pumps per island. A large canopy with the big orange GasUp sign on it rested overhead. Mac looked up and noticed the surveillance cameras looking straight down on each set of islands. He looked up at the one for his island and it was bent, pointing out towards the corner of Hampden and University.
Hearing the pump pop, Mac looked inside and waved. Lich paid for the gas and the coffee.
Mac got back in the car, and Lich was there a minute later, with a steaming hot twenty-ounce coffee.
“Mucho gracias.”
“I’d have gotten you a cerveza,” Lich cracked, “But we’re on the clock.”
Mac took a drink and immediately felt better, the Styrofoam cup warmed his cold hands, and the coffee quickly heated his insides. Taking another sip, he looked up at the camera one more time and wondered. He started the car and instead of taking a right onto Hampden to go to University, he took a left, back towards the dump site.
“Where the hell are you going?” Lich asked.
“To check something out.” Mac drove back to the construction site, where the crew was still working, minus Dix, who’d gone downtown to give a statement. The road was dug up completely from side to side and into the yards on either side. The hole was down nearly ten feet where they were repairing a sewer line. It blocked the entire street.
Mac got out and approached the crew. “I was talking to Dix earlier, and he said you guys started yesterday, round noon right?”
A short guy with a wind-reddened, pock-marked face named Borowicz responded, “Yup, uh huh, that’s right. Started right after lunch.”
“How late did you work?”
“We were off the clock at 4:30.”
“How big a hole did you have going at that point?”
“Pretty good size.” Borowicz said.
“What’s pretty good size?”
“Oh, we had the street dug up good, you know, you couldn’t go past. We had the road-closed sign up on the other side so people on Cromwell wouldn’t turn in. She was big and deep.”
“You’re saying no way anyone could get by.”
“Nah, unless they were drunk and wanted to drive through the yards and stuff. Why would anyone want to try that?”
Exactly, thought Mac. “Thanks guy. Stay warm.”
“I fuckin’ wish,” replied Borowicz, heading back to work.
They walked back to the car. “What the heck was that all about?” Lich inquired.
“I’ll show you.” Mac backed up and turned back towards the GasUp station. “This morning I was looking at the big map of the city where they plotted out all the locations where the victims were found, right?”
“Yeah, so?”
“Rock and I were looking at it, and he made the comment that the guy always leaves himself multiple routes out. He goes in one way and probably out another.”
“So?”
“With Myrtle closed like that, the only way in and out of here is Hampden. We take Hampden in, one block it’s a dead end, and you can only go right on Myrtle. Now, if Myrtle isn’t closed…”
“He can go any number of ways.”
“Right. He can go straight ahead on Myrtle then right or left on Cromwell.”
“But, as far as I know, Riley had the gas station canvassed.”
“Right. And there was nothing,” Mac replied. “But let me show you something.”
Mac pulled back into the GasUp station, this time in front. They got out, and Mac said, “Look at that.” He pointed up at the camera he had been looking at earlier, under the canopy, pointing right out to the corner of Hampden and University. There was a large street light on the corner.
Lich, seeing it, turned to look at Mac with a little grin, “Long shot.”
“Humor me.”
The store manager was taking inventory in one of the aisles, making notes on his clipboard. His name was Harold, a short, curly-brown-haired guy dressed in a white shirt, orange tie, and khaki’s that had seen better days. He wore glasses with large, round, clear, plastic frames ten years out of style. Mac imagined the job didn’t pay enough for new ones. Mac and Lich identified themselves.
“A couple of your guys were in earlier. I gave them the names of our people who worked last night.”
“So, the store’s open twenty-four hours, right?” Mac asked.
“Yeah.”
“Are the security cameras always running?”
“Yeah, far as I know,” Harold replied.
“Did our guys ask about those?”
“No.”
“How come the one on the far left out there, underneath the overhead, is pointing out to the street like that?” Mac asked.
“Ohh, is that what this is about?” Harold replied, shaking his head, exasperated. “Guy who changes the gas pricing numbers hit it with a ladder the other day. I’ve warned him about that before, that he could hit it and sure ’nuff, he did.” Harold stated, satisfied that he’d predicted it right. “I have a call in to get it fixed, but it might be a day or two.”
“Is it still operating?”
“Yes. Why?”
“Mind if we take a look?”
Harold waved them to the back of the store. “Would I have a choice?”
“No, but it’s all right for us to let you think you have one,” Lich quipped.
Harold took them into the security room. After a store clerk in northern Minnesota had been abducted and murdered a few years back, convenience stores started putting in more cameras, and GasUp had gone the whole nine yards. Two monitors that showed eight cameras, four inside and the four outside. “Here’s the one you’re looking for.” Harold said, pointing to the upper left-hand corner of the right screen.
It was camera five, and it was looking right out at the corner. A truck pulled in front of the camera as they were watching. You could see most of the truck and the back end. You could even make out the plate. Of course, it was still daylight and that helped immensely, but the picture quality wasn’t bad for black and white. Mac felt his heart skip a beat.
“Harold… do you mind if I call you Harold?” Mac asked.
Harold didn’t mind.
“Do you record?”
“Oh, yes, we keep it back several weeks.”
“What do you record on? Video tape?”
“No, no, no,” Harold replied, shaking his head with some pride, “We actually have a pretty good system. We record onto these DVDs. You can store a lot more on them and if you need to review them, the quality isn’t bad.”
Mac and Lich exchanged a look and a little smile. “Still a long shot,” Lich said.
“Harold my friend,” Mac said, and right now he was liking Harold a whole lot, “we need to borrow the DVDs for the last week. What do you say?”
“Would I have a choice?” Harold asked, a little smile coming across his face.
“No,” Mac replied.
“And in this case, I’m not gonna even let you think you have one,” Lich added.
They grabbed the DVDs and signed a form for Harold. He’d been helpful, and they wouldn’t want him to get in trouble with GasUp management. Mac could feel the adrenaline running through him as he bounded out the door to the car. Lich picked up on it, but cautioned, “Don’t get your hopes up, son.”
Mac knew he was right, but he didn’t care “Have you read the file on this case yet?” Mac asked back.
“I read the Readers Digest version Riley gave us last night. Not much there.”
“That’s right. And you know what? They haven’t caught a break yet. Not one,” Mac replied. “Well, maybe they just caught one. Lord knows Riles could use it.”
Lich picked up on the feeling, “That he could, my friend. That he could.”
Mac wasted no time getting back downtown, taking University over to Robert Street into downtown and pulled into the parking garage. He finally had some warmth returning to his body, having already put much of the twenty ounces of coffee away. Once inside the building, he began to feel human again. They headed for the detail conference room. Riles and Rockford were inside, looking at the map, putting pins in for where the victim lived, worked and where they’d found the body. Mac assumed the others were working the phones or maybe had already gone back out. Riles saw them and had a slightly perturbed look on his face. “Where have you guys been?”
Mac explained what they’d found. He could see just a little color return to Riles face. “You’re not suggesting we’re going to see anything on there? I mean I’d never get that fucking lucky in my lifetime.”
“What have you got to lose, Pat?”
“Only my hair, a clump of which I found in the shower drain this morning. Pretty soon I’ll look like Lich,” Riles replied ruefully and with his first smile of the day.