me.”
I didn’t grace him with a reply, just pushed through and into the apartment proper, leaving one of the uniforms to babysit him. The place was gloomy and untidy. Curtains closed, heating on. Overly warm and with an acrid, musty smell that stuck in the back of my throat. A small kitchen off to the left with a smattering of dirty crockery. Ahead was the front room with a collection of ratty furniture, a TV, a coffee table covered in junk, and a couple of stacks of videos in one corner and shelves littered with magazines and a half dozen or so paperbacks in the other. Well-used ashtrays, an empty beer can, coffee mugs. The magazines were mostly old porno titles with names like Red Hot Cheerleaders and Down ‘N Dirty Amateurs . They looked well-thumbed.
A pair of doors leading off the front room opened onto an equally untidy bedroom covered in discarded clothes and a cramped bathroom. Amongst the clutter on the bedroom floor I could see a pair of heavy brown suede shoes. A puffy dark blue jacket was hanging from the back of a chair. I pointed them out to Naomi wordlessly and continued to look around the apartment as the police team slowly began to sift through its contents. Out one of the back windows, I could see down into the parking lot at the rear where two more cops had just started searching his grey Toyota Camry.
Travers never seemed to lose his cool throughout the search, treating the whole thing with laid-back contempt and speaking as little as possible. Once we’d gone over the front room, he sat down and watched TV, doing his best to look like he was ignoring us until we were finished.
We left with his shoes, jacket, several pairs of pants, and three hunting knives, all in plastic bags. We hadn’t found the ski mask or the blindfold and I knew, as I was sure Naomi did too, that unless we were very lucky, we didn’t have enough to arrest him. Unless we could find something that tied Travers or his clothing to one of the victims or the scenes, it’s all circumstantial.
As the last cop filed out, I gave the place the eyeball one final time, then made for the door. Travers showed me out. “So long, Mr Feebie,” he said as I stepped into the hallway. He leaned closer and smiled, dropping his voice slightly. “It's kinda fun when you get to see the cops looking in all the wrong places. For their bad guys, I mean. You ever wonder if this sort of thing just encourages people? You know, when they know you’re not getting it right?”
“What?”
“I’m just thinking out loud.”
“That’s got to be a first.”
“I’m thinking, what if, like, this guy you’re after might have heard about all this here, and be thinking that he can get away with it now, if you ain’t found nothing. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”
“Not really.”
“Hell, if he could see you guys he might get tempted by that pretty detective of yours. She's real cute. Doubt she'd want to go out for a drink or something? Heh.”
“I doubt it.”
“You could ask.”
“Could, but won't. Goodbye, Mr Travers.”
He closed the door and left me outside to digest his words. The suggestion — unprovable and inadmissible — that we’d got the right guy, we just hadn’t found the evidence. And that he knew we couldn’t take him down. Or it might just have been an ex-con’s joke at the expense of law enforcement, a sly ‘fuck you’ to his old enemies.
Don’t judge yet, I told myself. We could get lucky with the clothes.
In the car, I told Naomi, “We need to keep him under surveillance. Twenty-four hours a day. Constant watch. When he makes a mistake, I don’t want us to miss it.”
We didn’t get lucky with the clothes. There were no traces from any of the victims or the crime scenes, even on the shoes. They’d all been cleaned regularly. The surveillance fared no better. Travers seemed to anticipate that everything he did would be watched and made a point of doing very little. He didn’t even break the
I didn’t grace him with a reply, just pushed through and into the apartment proper, leaving one of the uniforms to babysit him. The place was gloomy and untidy. Curtains closed, heating on. Overly warm and with an acrid, musty smell that stuck in the back of my throat. A small kitchen off to the left with a smattering of dirty crockery. Ahead was the front room with a collection of ratty furniture, a TV, a coffee table covered in junk, and a couple of stacks of videos in one corner and shelves littered with magazines and a half dozen or so paperbacks in the other. Well-used ashtrays, an empty beer can, coffee mugs. The magazines were mostly old porno titles with names like Red Hot Cheerleaders and Down ‘N Dirty Amateurs . They looked well-thumbed.
A pair of doors leading off the front room opened onto an equally untidy bedroom covered in discarded clothes and a cramped bathroom. Amongst the clutter on the bedroom floor I could see a pair of heavy brown suede shoes. A puffy dark blue jacket was hanging from the back of a chair. I pointed them out to Naomi wordlessly and continued to look around the apartment as the police team slowly began to sift through its contents. Out one of the back windows, I could see down into the parking lot at the rear where two more cops had just started searching his grey Toyota Camry.
Travers never seemed to lose his cool throughout the search, treating the whole thing with laid-back contempt and speaking as little as possible. Once we’d gone over the front room, he sat down and watched TV, doing his best to look like he was ignoring us until we were finished.
We left with his shoes, jacket, several pairs of pants, and three hunting knives, all in plastic bags. We hadn’t found the ski mask or the blindfold and I knew, as I was sure Naomi did too, that unless we were very lucky, we didn’t have enough to arrest him. Unless we could find something that tied Travers or his clothing to one of the victims or the scenes, it’s all circumstantial.
As the last cop filed out, I gave the place the eyeball one final time, then made for the door. Travers showed me out. “So long, Mr Feebie,” he said as I stepped into the hallway. He leaned closer and smiled, dropping his voice slightly. “It's kinda fun when you get to see the cops looking in all the wrong places. For their bad guys, I mean. You ever wonder if this sort of thing just encourages people? You know, when they know you’re not getting it right?”
“What?”
“I’m just thinking out loud.”
“That’s got to be a first.”
“I’m thinking, what if, like, this guy you’re after might have heard about all this here, and be thinking that he can get away with it now, if you ain’t found nothing. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”
“Not really.”
“Hell, if he could see you guys he might get tempted by that pretty detective of yours. She's real cute. Doubt she'd want to go out for a drink or something? Heh.”
“I doubt it.”
“You could ask.”
“Could, but won't. Goodbye, Mr Travers.”
He closed the door and left me outside to digest his words. The suggestion — unprovable and inadmissible — that we’d got the right guy, we just hadn’t found the evidence. And that he knew we couldn’t take him down. Or it might just have been an ex-con’s joke at the expense of law enforcement, a sly ‘fuck you’ to his old enemies.
Don’t judge yet, I told myself. We could get lucky with the clothes.
In the car, I told Naomi, “We need to keep him under surveillance. Twenty-four hours a day. Constant watch. When he makes a mistake, I don’t want us to miss it.”
We didn’t get lucky with the clothes. There were no traces from any of the victims or the crime scenes, even on the shoes. They’d all been cleaned regularly. The surveillance fared no better. Travers seemed to anticipate that everything he did would be watched and made a point of doing very little. He didn’t even break the
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