Pretty Girls Dancing(34)
Mark straightened. “And you asked him about that.” It wasn’t a question.
Craw folded the edges of the paper plate over the rest of his slice and leaned down to stuff it in the wastebasket below. “Swung by to see him on my way to dinner. Guess it would be fair to say he wasn’t happy to see me. Less happy when I left, I’m guessing. Said he was paying off a bet to a friend. Guy by the name of Dane Starkey.”
“Think he’s got a gambling problem?” That would open up a whole host of leads to follow up on. A cop with a vice exposed himself to lots of complications, the most damaging of which would be his vulnerability to blackmail.
“Swore he isn’t. Bet on a game when he had too many beers and got in way over his head. Says it’s paid in full now. I’ll follow up with the other guy. He’s out of Columbus.”
“Bookies don’t extend installment plans.”
“But maybe a friend did so he could pay a bookie. Or maybe it’s exactly the way he said.”
The two exchanged a look. Nothing’s ever exactly as it seems. It was one of Craw’s favorite sayings. So they’d tug on that string and see where it led.
“Why is DeVries paying the minimum on a credit-card debt that size every month? They have money issues?”
“Wondered how long it’d take you to come up with that.” The agent looked pleased with himself. “They live paycheck to paycheck from the looks of it. The younger kid, Ryan, had issues when he was born. Ended up in the NICU for a couple of weeks and had three heart surgeries before he was two. Insurance barely covered half. Their monthly hospital payment is bigger than the one for their house.”
Sympathy flickered. There wouldn’t be much a parent wouldn’t do to save a child, even going into massive debt. “So we’ll follow up. See if the Willards had a link to the hospital or to DeVries’s bet buddy.”
His mind went to the moments he’d spent in Whitney’s bedroom talking to her mother. “The DeVries girl took dance lessons,” he said abruptly. Craw swiveled his head to stare at him. “They didn’t think to include that fact in their original statement because she’d quit months ago.” Omissions like that were a constant frustration and could stymie an investigation. “I’ve got the teacher’s name, and I’ll talk to her, the kids in her classes, and their parents. Maybe there were local competitions that both victims had been involved in, too.” He hadn’t gotten that far with Shannon DeVries, but he would.
He paused, searched carefully for his next words. “You said the Willard case was investigated as if linked to the Ten Mile Killer.” Sensing the other agent was about to protest, he hurried on. “You also seemed to think that was a mistake. You probably heard how it all went down at the time, with your buddy working it. What made them think Willard was a TMK victim?”
Craw glowered at him for a moment, then grimaced. “They found his last victim four months before Kelsey Willard came up missing. That vic had been kidnapped two years earlier. Been exposed to the elements for months, but I can’t say for how long. You ever hear of Luther Sims?” The name rang a distant bell. After trying and failing to retrieve the memory, Mark shook his head. The other man went on. “The closest thing to a profiler BCI had at the time. A senior special agent who’d probably taken a couple of classes at Quantico that got him elevated to expert status in the agency.” His tone bore his disdain. “He’s the one who worked on a victimology profile for the TMK victims.”
“That wouldn’t be rocket science, would it, given the way the killer dressed them at the end?”
“Exactly. But this Sims figured there were girls that hadn’t been found.” Craw tugged at his tie, which was already loosened. “The agency brought him in as a consultant on the case, and he was the one who said Willard fit the TMK’s victim profile. Once that news got out, the media circus hampered every step of the investigation.”
The same was true about many of the cases they worked. Mark kept that thought to himself. Media coverage could taint potential witnesses, or worse, lead to a flood of “tips” that proved to be a waste of legwork. Craw might be letting his friendship with the lead agent on the case color his view of how it played out.
As if reading his thoughts, the other agent insisted, “The focus of an investigation has to be free of preconceived ideas. You have someone inserted in the case that points the needle in a certain direction . . . you start looking at leads differently.”
“So the agency pressured Hannity about how he handled the case.”
“Not at first. But you can bet the postmortem on yet-another unsolved case was filled with finger-pointing.”
Failure to capture the most notorious serial killer in recent Ohio history would have that result, Mark knew. Hannity might have been the latest scapegoat to sacrifice his career to that end. “But Kelsey Willard’s body was never found. That should shed doubt as to whether she was ever a victim of the TMK at all.” Mark’s cell gave a familiar ring. He grabbed it from his pocket and rose to walk to the adjoining door. “I’ll be back in a few. FaceTiming with my . . . hey, buddy!” Delight filled him as his son’s face filled the screen.
“Dad! Guess what I saw! A fire truck. Firemen were cleaning it, and Dad, there was a dog! It had spots, and . . .”