Eight in the Box (14 page)

CHAPTER 40

I
t was almost seven o’clock when Connie turned off the television.
There was nothing on the news about the murders. The police had kept such a tight lid on their investigation, or what little there was to it, that there was nothing new for the media to report.

Earlier that day Connie had spoken with Angel Alves. Over the past few weeks, the detectives had tried the ploy of setting up Mooney as a “super-cop,” plastering his face on every evening newscast, hoping to draw the killer out by challenging him. If the killer sent a taunting letter to Mooney, there might be DNA evidence on the envelope flap. The killer might reveal a detail of the crime not released in the media. The BTK killer had been caught when he left a computer disk for detectives to find.

Alves had mentioned that Mooney suspected the killer might be in custody on an unrelated charge. That would explain why it had been so long since he had killed. If that were the case, the detectives knew the hiatus wouldn’t last.

Connie went into his bedroom and changed into shorts and a T-shirt. He sat doing his stretches before putting on his running shoes. There were times when he would sit and meditate. This was not one of those times. He finished his stretches and stood up, ready to go for a run through the streets of Hyde Park, a neighborhood that looked more like a suburb than an actual section of the city. Connie ran through its quiet streets a couple of nights a week to clear his head.

The early spring air felt good on his face as he stepped out of the house. He looked around and saw that the street was empty, but the individual houses were full of life. Most people were home from work—eating their dinners, helping their children with homework, watching the evening news or maybe reading a book. They felt safe, safe from the outside world, safe from any harm.

This was Connie’s favorite time to run. Watching people in the evening presented a clear picture of what their lives were really like. The sky was dark and the homes were well lit. It gave him the opportunity to look into this little window to people’s lives, a snapshot of the absolute normalcy of their everyday existence. Through his work, Connie had seen how abruptly everything could be turned upside down by the actions of a single person.

He shivered as he thought how easy it would be for a killer to enter any of these houses and change the families forever.

Connie got a rush thinking about his responsibility as a prosecutor to keep them safe. As he continued on his five-mile run, looking in the windows of every house he passed, he felt as though he was the protector of all these people.

CHAPTER 41

A
ngel Alves watched the tape, frame by frame, studying each of the
faces in the crowd. He compared them to the still photos scattered across the conference-room table.

“Angel!” Mooney’s voice startled him. “Marcy’s on the phone. Main line.”

Alves hadn’t heard the phone ringing. How late was it? He looked at his watch. Ten o’clock. “Tell her I’m in a meeting, Sarge. I’ll call her back.”

“I’m not selling her that bullshit. You tell her. She’s hysterical. Says you never stay out this late without calling. You haven’t called her all day.”

“I can’t talk to her. She’s just going to tell me to come home, that I need to get some rest. I don’t need that pressure right now. I’ve got too much to do.”

“What exactly are you doing? I didn’t even know you were still here.”

“Comparing the TV footage from the McCarthy scene to the stills the guys from ID took of the crowd outside Robyn Stokes’s house. See if anyone showed up at both scenes. We talked about this, how these guys like to come by and see their handiwork.”

“Any luck?”

“Not yet.”

“Keep at it.” Good sign. At least the boss didn’t think it was a bad idea. Mooney pointed to the blinking red light on the phone in the center of the table. “Talk to your wife, first. I don’t mind working you hard and putting a little strain on your marriage. That’s fun. But I’m not going to be responsible for your divorce.”

Alves picked up the phone. Marcy was crying.

CHAPTER 42

W
ayne Mooney opened the door to his apartment and flipped the
light switch. Something brushed against his ankle. Biggie. Good thing his Maine coon cat didn’t hold grudges. If not for the automatic cat food dispenser and a toilet full of water, Biggie wouldn’t have survived the past month of neglect. The cat led Mooney into the kitchen, looking for something better than the dry kibble he’d been surviving on. Mooney opened a can of tuna, a special treat, and dumped it on a dish before grabbing a couple of beers for himself.

Sitting on the couch in the living room, Mooney popped open a sixteen-ounce can of Schlitz and guzzled half. It was tough to find Schlitz anymore, but Mooney knew a source that helped him keep his fridge stocked. Biggie jumped onto his lap, needing to be petted more than he wanted his tuna.

The apartment was a true bachelor pad. Mooney’s father, God rest his soul, would have told him it needed a woman’s touch. There were no window treatments beyond the pull-down shades that were in the apartment when he moved in. There was a couch, a coffee table and a television with a built-in VCR, but nothing else. No pictures on the wall, no other accessories.

It had been weeks since he’d had a chance to sit on the couch and watch television. He actually missed the activity, if that’s what you’d call it, which had been part of his usual routine every night for a year after the divorce. That was the only good thing that came out of the recent killings. They helped him get off his ass and back to doing his job, the job that was the main reason for the divorce. Today would have been their tenth anniversary. They had eloped to Las Vegas and were married at Caesars Palace on the 15th, the Ides of March. They had known they were testing the fates, but they’d both thought it was funny at the time.

The divorce was much less eventful. It was her Christmas gift to him a little more than a year ago. She ended up with the house and the car; he got Biggie and this apartment in Adams Village. The Dorchester boy had finally come home. Pretty sad, but that’s all there was after nine years of marriage. Beware the Ides of March.

He took a second gulp from his beer and it was gone. He found the remote between the couch cushions and turned on the TV before opening the other beer. It was going to take more than a couple of drinks to relieve the pressure of this case. Almost three months had passed since Michelle Hayes’s murder in December, and he and Alves were no closer to finding the killer. They’d had the McCarthy and Stokes murders, and nothing since. He saw no pattern to what the killer was doing, no significance to the dates he chose. No common thread between the victims.

And where were the bodies?

What was the sick bastard doing with the bodies? How could three women disappear without a trace? Did he bury them somewhere? Shallow graves that were formed not by digging but eventually by the passage of time—dead leaves in fall, new growth in spring? New England still offered acre after acre of thick woodland. Would their bones turn up months later, the soft flesh they needed to determine cause of death already gone?

It was only a matter of time before there would be another homicide. And there was nothing he could do about it.

He started flipping through the channels when he remembered seeing a commercial for a pro wrestling on-demand channel, where you could order some of the old matches, the classics. It took him a few tries, but he found the match he was looking for.

For Mooney, nothing tapped into the human struggle between good and evil better than professional wrestling. And it did it in very basic terms. You simply had a good guy, or “baby face,” versus a “heel,” the bad guy. In pro wrestling, like all other forms of entertainment in the television age, the good guys might lose a battle here and there, but they always won in the end.

What fascinated Mooney was how effortlessly a wrestling promoter could turn a popular baby face into a despised heel, further proof that the masses were like sheep that could be easily manipulated. The most beloved wrestler could become public enemy number one by simply pulling some underhanded stunt on his opponent, like a thumb to the eye or a cheap-shot knee to the groin. But the worst thing a baby face could do was betray a friend.

That was exactly what wrestling fans thought André the Giant did to Hulk Hogan. The main event from Wrestlemania III in 1987 pitted a 7' 4", 540-pound André, one of the most popular wrestlers of all time, against a young Hogan, the world champion. In the months leading up to the match, André had been turned into a heel. André’s transformation was founded on his jealousy of Hogan and his desire to win the championship belt that had been denied him throughout his career. The script called for André the Giant, “The Eighth Wonder of the World,” to get body slammed and pinned for the first and only time in his career.

It was a difficult match for Mooney to watch. André had put in all those years as a fan favorite who had never lost a match, and now, at the end of his career, he was going out as a despised villain, disgraced by a new hero who would go on to carry pro wrestling on his shoulders. As big as André was, he and the rest of the world had learned that night that he wasn’t bigger than the wrestling industry.

Mooney began thinking about the killer. He knew that the real world wasn’t like pro wrestling, that the good guys were the good guys and the bad guys were
real
bad guys. There was no middle ground. The roles could not be reversed, and the good guys didn’t always win.

Mooney watched as the big man was lifted and then slammed helplessly to the mat. He was sickened by the sight of André the Giant, the wrestling legend, pinned to end the match, stripped of his pride and dignity at the end of his career. Mooney turned the television off and sat quietly drinking his beer, petting Biggie, the silence broken only by the sound of the cat’s loud purring.

CHAPTER 43

R
ichter military-pressed the
giryas
over his head for the twentieth
rep. The burn he felt in his lats, traps and triceps was incredible. He slammed the giryas back down on the rubber-matted floor. Leave it to the Russians to come up with a simple piece of equipment—a cast-iron cannonball with an attached handle—that gave you the ultimate workout. Americans called them kettlebells, but Richter preferred the Russian name,
girya.
It was their invention; they had the right to name it. Working out with the giryas maintained the kind of strength he’d developed working on his grandfather’s farm during his summers as a kid.

He didn’t mind going to the gym a couple of nights a week, but when he wanted a real workout he would go home and use his own equipment, especially the giryas.

Richter first started using them in college, and they’d played a big role in his success as an All American wrestler. The first pair he bought only weighed about thirty-five pounds each. They were meant for beginners, but they gave him an incredible workout. In almost no time his overall weight increased while his body fat virtually disappeared. Now he only used the eighty-eight pounders, which most people couldn’t lift off the ground with two hands. The key to mastering the giryas was developing the correct swing to ensure that your body was properly balanced during the workout.

He liked doing the double military presses, lifting them straight up from his shoulders toward the ceiling. But the toughest workout was the one-armed snatches, the ideal exercise. Lifting the weight from the floor toward the ceiling worked every muscle in his body. Nothing made him feel more powerful. Doing the snatches gave him an escape from everyday life. They took him from being a schlep who went to his job every morning, and turned him into an animal, a beast, a man with extraordinary strength.

His other weight-lifting equipment was organized neatly in the corner. Each piece of equipment served its purpose, but if left alone on a deserted island all he would really need to maintain his physical prowess and his spiritual well-being would be the giryas. As he reached down to lift them up for another set, he felt as if he
was
alone on an island—and perfectly happy to be there. Richter preferred to be alone when lifting weights. That way he didn’t have to deal with those who weren’t serious about getting a workout. It bothered him that people didn’t take conditioning as seriously as he did. He thought back to an incident that had occurred when he was in high school.

Richter’s friend bent down into the squat position, his face turning purple as he struggled to stand back up with the 405-pound barbell balanced across his shoulders. Richter was close behind with his hands under his friend’s arms, spotting him to make sure he didn’t lose control of the weight. As they stepped forward to lower the barbell onto the squat rack, some loser bumped into the bar. It was the slightest contact, but it was enough to throw Richter’s friend off. He staggered backward. Richter stepped forward and reached under his friend’s arms, hugging his chest and using all his strength to steady him. Together, they regained control of the weight and stepped forward, lowering the weight back onto the steel rack.

As his friend was nodding that he was okay, Richter heard a girl stretching out nearby tell the same guy to watch where he was going. The guy laughed and told her to fuck off. Richter had never seen him before. He must have been new to the gym, but he was big, taller and heavier than Richter. He had the puffy muscles and pinhead of a steroid user. When Richter caught up with him, the guy was busy hitting on a girl in a thong leotard.

Jerks who treated the weight room like a singles club didn’t belong in a gym. Weight lifting was a religion and, even as a teenager, this was Richter’s house of worship. He didn’t appreciate some ’roid-head being disrespectful in his sacred place. He walked up behind the guy and tapped him on the shoulder. “Excuse me,” Richter said in a pleasant voice. “Don’t I know you?”

“I don’t think so,” the guy said. He seemed annoyed by Richter’s interruption. He turned back to the woman.

Richter tapped his shoulder again and politely asked if he was sure.

“Yeah, I’m sure!” the guy shouted. “And don’t touch me again.”

“But I swear I’ve seen you someplace before.”

“You haven’t, so why don’t you fuck off?”

“What’s your name?” Richter asked.

“None of your fucking business.”

Before the guy could say another word, Richter grabbed his left hand, bending it back into an unnatural position. Once he had him in a solid wristlock, he pushed him facedown into a weight bench. Now he could twist the guy’s wrist with one hand and push his head into the bench with the other. “Well, Mr. None-of-Your-Fucking-Business, do you realize what you just did?” The guy struggled to get away from Richter, but he was locked up tight. Richter could see that the guy was doing everything not to scream in pain. “You bumped into that barbell while my friend was finishing his reps.”

The guy tried to twist away, but Richter was too strong. He turned his head to the left, looking at Richter from the corner of his eye.

“You could have hurt someone because you weren’t paying attention.” Richter applied more pressure to the wrist as the guy struggled. “This is a weight room, not a pickup joint. You want to meet women, go somewhere else. Be thankful I’m not really angry and that my buddy over there seems okay.”

The guy struggled to breathe with the pressure Richter was putting on the back of his head, pushing him into the bench with all his weight. He gave a feeble nod of his head.

“I want you to go over and tell my friend you’re sorry for being such a fucking idiot.”

Richter released his grip. The young woman had watched the little wrestling match with interest. Most of the women in the gym were constantly being hit on by guys like this loser, so they didn’t seem to mind watching one of them get dressed down.

The guy got to his feet, shaking his wrist and rubbing his neck, trying to get the blood flowing again. He glanced around at the small crowd that had gathered. He must have figured it was best to do what Richter had told him to. He walked over to Richter’s friend and said, “I’m sorry for being such a fucking idiot.” With as much dignity as a busted man could muster, he picked up his towel and headed for the showers.

The woman flashed Richter a smile. The group of guys, hoping for a fight, started to move apart. “So,” Richter asked his friend, “you ready for your next set?”