The Good Killer Read online

  “Why not?”

  “It wouldn’t get you what you want. You think you’re going to question him and he’s going to confess to an attempted kidnapping in Montana?”

  “Hardly,” Garza said. “I could approach him with some subtlety. He knew Molly before. He might have some insight into what she would do now, where she would go. He might even be in contact with her. What if she went to him for help?”

  Rachel gave him the raised eyebrow again. “A minute ago you were saying he was her stalker.”

  “I don’t know what he is. But if I were in a room with him, I could get a sense of him pretty quickly. Without any ‘blundering around.’ Then I would know more than I know now.”

  She shook her head. “We can’t have it. Too risky. And unnecessary. Khadduri won’t help you find Sean and Molly. You know how you’re going to find them. There’s only two ways.”

  “Tell me.”

  “The first way: dumb luck. A civilian spots them and phones it in, or a cop pulls them over. There’s no glory in that for you, but it gets the job done.”

  “And the second way?” Garza said.

  “You get ahead of them. Figure out where they’re going to be. Talk to people they used to know, people they might turn to now. That’s what you need to do. I can give you some names. Get you started.”

  *

  She did more than give him names. She accompanied him over the next few days as he drove around southeast Michigan in a rented car tracking down old friends and relatives of Sean Garrety and Molly Bowen.

  She was with him when he spoke to Molly’s mother in a town called Flat Rock, twenty-five miles south of Detroit. Janice Bowen answered her door in a taffeta dress, dark green and formal, as if she’d been hosting a cocktail party and they had turned up unexpectedly.

  She lived in a tiny apartment, an efficiency with a curtain to hide her bed away. There were stacks of magazines and unopened mail on the seats of the chairs. Garza counted three birdcages and eight parakeets—some of them not confined to the cages. The air in the place held a sour smell.

  Mrs. Bowen seemed not to notice. She was eager to talk about Molly. She hadn’t seen her in six years and hadn’t heard from her in all that time. “But I keep hoping,” she said. “I always did my best for that girl. She knows I’d do anything for her. I’d give her my last dime.”

  “Did Molly have brothers or sisters?” Garza asked. “Or any other family she would reach out to?”

  “No,” Mrs. Bowen said. “I always wanted more babies. Molly was such a beautiful baby. But her father thought one was enough, and when he passed, that was it for me.”

  “Did you ever meet Sean Garrety?”

  A flash of yellow passed through the middle of the room—a parakeet swooping from one corner to another. It made Garza flinch, made Rachel raise a hand to shield her face. Mrs. Bowen showed no reaction.

  “Molly never introduced him to me,” she said. “She was always very private. A strong-willed girl. She left home young. I never blamed her. But I’ll tell you one thing—”

  She broke off suddenly and turned toward the corner, where the yellow bird had been joined by a green one. Both of them perched on a lampshade. The green bird lunged at the other, chattering and flapping its wings.

  “Hush now,” Mrs. Bowen said. She took a step toward the corner and the green parakeet fluttered away, alighting on top of one of the cages.

  “I’ll tell you,” Mrs. Bowen said, as if there’d been no interruption. “If Molly’s in trouble now, she’s not to blame. She was always a fine girl. It’s his fault. Sean’s. That’s what I told them.”

  “Who?” Garza asked.

  “The newspeople. They came here to interview me. From Channel Four. I talked to them for an hour, but they only used a minute or two. Do you think they’re saving the rest?”

  “I don’t know,” Garza said.

  “I thought they’d use more. I wouldn’t mind doing it again. I could do it better.” Mrs. Bowen paused and stared off at nothing. When she spoke again, her voice had a faraway quality. “I could show pictures, from when Molly was a girl. I could make an appeal to her, ask her to turn herself in. If you want me to.”

  The yellow parakeet dived down from the lampshade and swept upward in a smooth arc to land on her shoulder.

  “I don’t think we’ll need that,” Garza said.

  He spent a few more minutes with her and got the names of some of Molly’s friends. When he stepped outside into the sunlight, he felt relief. The air smelled clean. He breathed it in.

  “Was she drunk?” he asked Rachel. “I looked for booze in there. I didn’t see any.”

  “That’s not drunk,” Rachel said. “That’s crazy.”

  *

  Most police work is a slow accumulation of facts. It might lead nowhere, or you might think it’s leading nowhere until unexpectedly it takes you somewhere. These were truths Rafael Garza had learned early on.

  As he spoke to friends of Molly and Sean, the impression that emerged was of two people well suited to each other: pleasant, intelligent, attractive, but perhaps a little aimless. Molly had earned a bachelor’s degree from Eastern Michigan University. She wasn’t a standout, but she had done well. Her professors remembered her, vaguely. Most of the friends she made lost touch with her after graduation, and when they realized she had moved away without saying goodbye, none of them were hurt. “That’s Molly,” one of them told Garza. “That’s a very Molly thing to do.”

  Sean had attended Wayne State in Detroit, but he had dropped out after one semester. If he’d made friends there, Garza couldn’t find them. Rachel Massoud hadn’t been able to come up with a name for Sean’s father, and his mother had died when he was thirteen. Afterward, he had gone to live with Cole Harper’s family. Cole had three sisters—Georgia, Nancy, and Evie—and a brother, Jimmy. Garza talked to Nancy and Evie and got the impression that Sean had been an odd, shy kid and that he and Cole had usually been off in their own little world. The sisters were glad to be rid of Sean after Cole died; they thought he’d been a bad influence on their brother.

  The other sister, Georgia, had moved out of state, and though Jimmy still lived in the area, Garza had no luck finding him at either his home or his business. He left phone messages for both of them.

  Cole Harper’s mother lived in a nursing home, and the sisters Garza spoke to warned him that she was suffering from dementia. “She has good days and bad,” Nancy told him. Garza found out for himself. He and Rachel drove a few miles south of Detroit to Harmony Senior Living in Lincoln Park, and a nurse led them to a patio with a woodland view. Aileen Harper sat in a wheelchair with a shawl draped around her.

  The nurse introduced them and then left them alone. When she had gone, Aileen Harper said, “That one’s tricky.”

  “She seemed nice enough,” Garza said.

  “That’s how they fool you. But that little bitch is a thief. She stole my glasses.”

  “My dear lady,” Garza said. “Your glasses are on a chain around your neck.”

  “Not these, you fucking moron. My other pair.”

  Garza smiled. Beside him, Rachel stifled a laugh.

  “You have an accent,” Aileen Harper said. “Where are you from?”

  “My mother was from Juárez,” Garza said. “But I was born in this country.”

  “Mexican. I should have known. What do you want?”

  “I’d like to ask you about someone you knew once. Sean Garrety.”

  “Who?”

  “Sean Garrety. Your son Cole’s friend.”

  “Cole’s dead.”

  “I know. I’m very sorry—”

  “Got himself shot. Idiot.”

  “Do you remember his friend Sean?”

  The woman pulled her shawl close around her as if she were cold. “There’s nothing wrong with my memory, you dirty greaser—”

  “I apologize if I’ve upset you—”

  “I remember Sean, that little prick. I wish he’d
never moved in with us. I’d stab him in the heart, if I knew where he was. Do you know where he is?”

  “No,” Garza said. “I’m looking for him.”

  Aileen Harper stared out at the woods. “Well, if you find him, bring him here. I’ll rip his fucking head off. Then I’ll bury him and piss on his grave.”

  Her voice rose on the last lines, and the nurse came and gave Garza and Rachel a withering look. As they left, the nurse was speaking softly to Aileen Harper, trying to calm her.

  Walking back to the car, Rachel poked Garza with her elbow. “Don’t let her get to you,” she said. “I like your accent.”

  *

  Sean had enlisted in the army a few months after he dropped out of college. The people who knew him from that time, his fellow soldiers, were scattered across the country. Some were still in active service; some had moved on to other things.

  Garza contacted as many of them as he could. He spoke to them by phone from Rachel’s office or his hotel room near the Detroit airport. The picture they painted of Sean was of a good soldier, a quiet guy who didn’t talk much about himself. Few of them had heard from Sean after he left the army, and none in the last six years.

  When Garza asked them if they had seen Sean’s picture on the news after the mall shooting, some of them claimed they hadn’t made the connection between that Sean and the man they had served with. Others acknowledged they had known him right away. None of them had called in to the Houston police. “I figured Sean knew what he was doing,” one man said. “Why should I make trouble for him?”

  All the people Garza spoke to told him they would help Sean now if he came to them. But they didn’t expect to hear from him. “He’s not that kind of guy,” they said. “He wouldn’t ask for help.”

  One night in his hotel room, after a dozen calls that led nowhere, Garza got through to a master sergeant named Leland Ross who was stationed at Fort Jackson in South Carolina. He remembered Sean Garrety well.

  “I think he was twenty when we got him,” Ross said. “Most of the kids I see are eighteen or nineteen when they enlist. But even at twenty, they’re still kids. Some of them come in thinking they’re ready for a fight. They want it, but then you put them in a situation where they’re under fire and they choke. Others, like Sean, you take one look at them and they look scared. You think they’ll break. But they come through for you. That’s what I want around me, guys that’ll come through. They don’t have to be fearless, because nobody’s fearless, not really. And they don’t have to be perfect, because nobody’s perfect either. You understand what I’m saying?”

  “I think so.”

  “Seems to me Sean came through in Houston,” Ross said. “If he didn’t want to stick around after, that’s his decision. This stuff I’m hearing now, that he’s running from some trouble he got into years ago, that doesn’t matter to me. I don’t know if he would come to me or not. If he does, I’ll give him your number. But I won’t turn him in. No way.”

  “I’m not asking you to,” Garza said. “I only want to talk to him. I’d like to help him if I can.”

  Ross turned quiet, and Garza thought he might have hung up. Until he said: “Dalton Webber. That’s who you should talk to.”

  “Webber?”

  “He was captain of our company at Rustamiyah in Baghdad,” Ross said. “He retired as a major, I think. Lives on his family’s farm in Indiana. He’s who I’d go to, if I were in trouble. I don’t know if Sean would. But if he did, Webber would help him. He’d feel like he owed it to him. Sean saved his life.”

  It was late when Garza got off the phone with Ross. He stood at his hotel window, his own vague reflection in the glass. Dots of light moving in the distance: planes coming in for a landing and headlights floating along I-94.

  Ross had given him a number for Dalton Webber. Garza dialed it, got no answer, left a short message. He felt tired. He brushed his teeth and lay down on his bed. The ceiling looked gray in the dark.

  Garza closed his eyes and glided along the edge of sleep. He thought about Indiana. There was something about Indiana in the file—in Rachel’s file on Sean Garrety. But the file was in her office. It would have to wait.

  The next morning Garza tried Webber again, without success, and made some other calls. In the afternoon he and Rachel drove west to Ann Arbor to interview Karen Tierney, a woman who had once known Molly Bowen.

  They met up with her at a park along the Huron River, a place with slides and swings where soccer moms brought their young children to play. Karen was one of the moms, blond hair tied back in a ponytail, yoga pants and a fleece top, running shoes. She had a four-year-old daughter, a cherub dressed warm to ward off a mild October chill, darting around on the grass with the other children.

  Karen watched her daughter from a bench. Rachel and Garza joined her there. She laughed when Garza asked her if Molly had been in contact with her.

  “You’re imagining a more exciting life for me than the one I have. Desperadoes showing up on my doorstep. No, I haven’t heard from her.”

  “But you were close once,” Garza said.

  “Sure. We were friends, and she worked for me. I opened an art gallery in Detroit. Not the smartest financial decision I ever made, but it was fun while it lasted.”

  “Did you ever meet Sean?” Garza asked.

  “No, but I heard about him. Molly fell for him hard, and fast.”

  “I understand she was involved with someone else when she started seeing him. Adam Khadduri.”

  “That’s right,” Karen said. “Adam used to come into the gallery. He had good taste. That’s how Molly met him.”

  “What was it like when their relationship ended? Did Khadduri take it badly?”

  Karen gazed out at the river. People in canoes floated by on the water.

  “I’m not sure,” she said.

  “Molly didn’t talk to you about it?”

  “No, but I got the sense that something happened. Because she didn’t want to talk about it.”

  “Do you think he got angry?” Garza asked.

  “Maybe. If I had to guess. But it’s only a guess.”

  “Could he have turned violent?

  “I thought he might have, at the time. But I never saw Adam that way, as someone who would be violent.”

  “How did you see him?”

  “I only knew him from the gallery,” Karen said. “He was always a gentleman. Courteous, soft-spoken. Of course, people can be one way in public and another in private. But none of the stories Molly told about him raised any alarms.”

  “What stories did she tell you?”

  Karen looked down at the ground. “I remember Adam took her on a trip once, up north, around Kalkaska—to a place called Grass Lake. I guess there used to be a summer camp there. It’s abandoned now. All that’s left are some cabins and an old chapel at the end of an unpaved road. But it meant something to Adam. He had gone there as a teenager. That’s what he told Molly. He’d been happy there, and he wanted to show her. They bought lunch in some town nearby and brought it out there and ate it at one of the old picnic tables. They spread a blanket in the grass after and lay down and looked at the sky.”

  She turned toward Garza, a trace of a smile on her lips. “I thought it was sweet. He was too old for her, but there was a younger man inside him, someone who wanted to get back what he used to have.”

  *

  Garza got stuck in rush hour traffic, driving from Ann Arbor back to Detroit. The eastbound lanes on I-94 were packed for as far as he could see, cars creeping forward a few yards at a time. Rachel, in the passenger seat, scanned through the radio until she found NPR. She listened to the news for a while, then switched it off.

  “What do people call you?” she said. “Rafael?”

  The question took him by surprise. “My old partner used to call me Ray.”

  She laughed. “Ray? That doesn’t suit you at all.”

  They covered half a mile before she spoke again.

 
“What are you thinking, Ray?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Back at the park, with that woman, you steered the conversation toward Adam Khadduri. You’ve been good so far, leaving Khadduri alone, like I asked you. But he’s been on your mind.”

  Garza shrugged. “I think Khadduri had something to do with what happened in Montana. He has a motive to want to find Sean and Molly.”

  “You think it drove him crazy, when Molly left him. But you’ve got no evidence of that. Were you listening to the lovely tale we just heard? Adam Khadduri’s a big softy. He wants to recapture his lost youth.”

  “I don’t know if he cares about Molly anymore. But I’d say there’s something he wants to recapture. Sean stole from him. There’s his motive. How much do you think Sean took?”

  “Nobody knows.” Rachel said.

  Garza glanced over at her. “I think you know more than you’re telling me,” he said. “If you’re investigating Khadduri for trafficking in stolen art, you must have more evidence against him than the single stone they found in Cole Harper’s pocket.”

  “Of course I do,” Rachel said. “Khadduri’s been operating for years. Most of his business is legitimate, like any other art dealer. But some of the stuff he buys has been stolen from museums or archaeological sites, often in war-torn countries. It’s hard to track. And he’s careful about who he sells to. He has connections to private collectors who have no interest in ratting him out.”

  “How do you go after someone like that?”

  “The same way you go after anyone. You look for his weaknesses.”

  “What are his weaknesses?”

  “People who are close to him, who know his business.”

  The interstate widened to three lanes and the congestion eased. Garza got his speed up to fifty.

  “Do you have someone close to Khadduri?” he said. “An informant?”

  “You’re a clever one,” Rachel said, slipping off her shoes, putting her feet up on the dash. “But forget about Khadduri, or you and I won’t get along. And I want to get along with you.”