The Dark Halo, page 26
“Right. Then there’s the coins. If Nicolas Sutton wasn’t the killer, then how else do you explain all those Ferryman coins? That part of his confession about his dad collecting the coins, that seemed legit too.”
Somehow, he’d forgotten about the coins.
“Grace, you work on one thing at a time and see where it leads. Pitching in aspects that don’t seem to fit isn’t helpful. You can always circle back to them later once you have a narrative. Sometimes those issues resolve themselves.”
“There’s nothing to come back to later, Johnny. We’re done, remember? We solved the case. The task force room has been dismantled. You didn’t get the result you expected, but you got one.”
Coombes turned away from her, his jaws clamped tight together.
“I know he used to be a friend, Johnny. But people change, they become damaged. The teenager you knew was not the same person that drew a gun on you. The simplest answer is usually right, no? Well, the simplest answer is that Nicky was the Ferryman. I think you just have to make peace with it.”
“I guess I’m not there yet.”
She studied him closely.
“When was the last time you slept?”
“It’s…it’s been a couple of days.”
“Jesus. Lie down or go home.”
“I’ve got an errand to run first.”
“Fine, but I’m driving.”
Coombes waited in her living room while she changed her clothes. He pretended not to notice that she didn’t close her bedroom door as she dressed, or the occasional reflection of her on the TV.
What the hell was he going to do with her?
When she re-emerged, he told her where they were going. He had expected some resistance, but instead she just nodded, like it was what she expected.
Coombes supposed she was right about him being tired, because he fell asleep before they left her parking garage. When he woke, his head was tilted over, bouncing on her passenger door window. She glanced at him with an eyebrow raised.
“You snore like an elephant.”
“Sorry.”
“What about that, is that normal?”
He saw where she was looking and flinched.
“Your car needs new shock absorbers.”
“I got to tell you, Johnny. For that I’d put up with the snoring.”
He laughed and turned his attention back to the road. She made him feel good, and he hadn’t felt this good since Monica Sullivan had pressed herself against him in that bar.
After five minutes they were back at what remained of the Sutton home in Silver Lake. A police cruiser sat at the gate and he could see three news trucks parked on the street. Reporters and camera crews doing follow-up pieces on what was rumored to be the Ferryman’s last stand.
The facts were the same as the night before, only this time it was daylight and more of their audience was awake and wanting to catch up. The whole country had followed the case and the interest in it had not died with Sutton. The lack of official confirmation had served to amplify interest, rather than subdue it.
Sato parked some way from the house and they began to walk back together in silence. It was stupid, but he hadn’t anticipated the presence of the media. If the reporters saw them approaching, it was going to be chaos. The cameras would swarm around them, millions of Americans ready to feed on his train-wreck face. His memory of Olivia Sutton’s gatepost camera haunted him with its resolution.
The red Porsche was right where Lass said it was, ready for a getaway. It looked fast, even when it was parked. Coombes leaned down and reached into the front wheel arch and pulled out Lass’ GPS tracker. Sato made a face.
“That’s why we’re here? I thought we were doing another walk-through of the crime scene. When did you even plant that?”
“Did you know that your nose crinkles when you’re mad?”
“What?!”
Coombes stood. “It’s quite adorable, actually. I never noticed before.”
“Johnny, this is illegal.”
“Yeah, but it’s not mine so cool your jets, ok?”
The tracker was dirty but he dropped it into his pocket anyway.
“Lass,” Sato said.
He knew what she thought of his old partner and didn’t want to get into it with her. Lass had his flaws, but his approach had almost worked. The tracker hadn’t been on the car when it mattered, during the murders, or during Olivia’s abduction. He paused for a minute on the sidewalk, unmoving. He could feel an idea forming, like the buzz before a sneeze.
What the hell was I thinking. Work it.
Car…abduction…GPS. Then he had it. Coombes turned to the Porsche and looked at the windshield. He saw what he needed almost immediately, in the top corner of the glass. A sticker for a security company called AutoTrack. Like a lot of expensive vehicles, the car was fitted with its own GPS tracker to prevent theft. Everywhere the car had been was logged somewhere, on some computer database.
“Grace, you accept Nicolas Sutton’s confession at face value?”
“He was pretty convincing.”
“For it to work, he had to kidnap his sister as well as kill all those people, right? Otherwise, how did he know where she was? It’s all or nothing.”
He had her attention now, he could see it.
“What are you thinking?”
“This is Nicky’s car. Obviously, it’s not the one used to abduct Olivia, but he’d have to come here to pick up the Mercedes first and I’m certain he didn’t take the bus.”
“And he wouldn’t want to involve someone else.”
“This car has a built-in GPS in case it’s stolen. If it wasn’t parked here the morning that Olivia was abducted, then dollars to doughnuts he didn’t take her. We could also check where it was parked prior to each of the murders.”
“That’s hardly airtight, Johnny. He could’ve hired a car for example.”
“If he did, it would show up on his credit card and there was nothing like that on his statement, we’ve seen it. Same for something like Uber, everything leaves a digital trace. In my experience, owners forget their cars have GPS most of the time. It’s something they select in the showroom along with the coating to stop the paint fading. Nobody remembers, least of all when their head is as messed up as Sutton’s.”
“Still, though. It’s weak.”
“You know what’s weak? A confession that relies on him having to knock his sister unconscious and dump her in the trunk of his dad’s car like a piece of luggage. He could’ve just asked her to get into this one and driven away. Doesn’t that make more sense?”
“That part always bothered me, I admit it.”
“My bet? Nicky’s car was somewhere else the day his sister was taken. If it was, his confession is pretty much dead in the water as far as I’m concerned.”
Coombes glanced down the road at the news crews and saw a man pointing at them. They’d been spotted, it was time to leave. He walked to the back of the Porsche and took a photograph of the license plate, then walked back to her Toyota. Sato floored the throttle before he had the door fully closed. She had her jaws tight together, her face unreadable.
“If that was Curtis’ car, would you give him the same benefit of the doubt?”
“Are you serious?”
“They both killed their father. They both seem like fine examples of toxic masculinity. Even their taste in cars is pretty similar. From where I’m sitting, they are practically the same person. The only difference is, Sutton confessed and drew a weapon on you. If Curtis had done half those things, we’d be sitting in a bar right now.”
“You really think Olivia Sutton wouldn’t recognize her own brother in a baseball cap and sunglasses?”
“No, I don’t. That never made sense either. We’re missing something and even if we find it, it’s not going to show us who the real killer is, supposing it’s not Sutton.”
“Actually, we’re missing a couple of things. Namely, what led the killer to frame Nicky for these murders, and why he confessed to them when he was innocent. What you said before, about the coins, I can’t wish it away. The coins were his father’s, the chance of them belonging to someone else is remote. They were Teddy’s all right, from his jar in his home office. That’s where they used to be anyway, nobody would notice them gone after the fire.”
“Someone stole the coins to frame Sutton?”
“Why not? Is that so ridiculous? The house was being renovated. People coming and going all day, nobody really knowing who is who. If the killer put on a hard hat and could’ve walked around totally invisible like he did at the Capitol Records Building. He sees the coins, picks them up and walks out.
“Maybe he didn’t know what he was going to do with them at first, it was just a joke. The story of what those coins represented to Teddy was no secret, he told everybody. So now he has the old man’s coins, he’s back home drinking a beer or whatever, but he’s still burning up at Nicky for something and slowly the plan forms, to use the coins to implicate him in a crime.”
“You think he stole the Mercedes at the same time?”
He nodded. It was perfect. Two loose ends resolved at once.
“The keys to the Mercedes hung on a hook at the back door the whole time we were friends and I’m guessing that never changed. It might look old, but that car’s a classic and in pristine condition. It’s probably worth a decent amount of cash. Maybe our guy swipes the keys and figures he’ll return later for the car when nobody’s around. Only, when he comes back, he witnesses Teddy’s death through the picture window and a new plan starts to form.”
“Damn, Johnny. That’s good.”
“Whatever it turned into, this started off personal. A grudge between two men that spiraled out of control. Nicky pissed people off like I drink coffee - all day, every day. It was like Tourette’s; he couldn’t help himself. But to make someone this mad, we’ve got to be looking at something else, right?”
Sato nodded. “Love or money.”
They sat in silence for a moment with just the hiss of the air conditioning pushing through the cabin and the muted sound of traffic through the glass. Something about being in a car helped him to think. At his desk there were too many distractions.
He thought of the Sutton’s real estate business.
Both the principals were now dead, and although Olivia was certainly capable of running it, he doubted she’d want to. The most likely outcome was that she’d sell the business and go on with her life. If taking control of the business had been the goal, then the suspect would certainly have killed Olivia when he’d had the chance and picked up the business from an administrator for pennies on the dollar.
The big picture didn’t work, it was something smaller.
Teddy Sutton had been a shark in the business world and Coombes had a feeling his son was no different. Willing to stick it to the little guy to increase his margin. Olivia had mentioned an argument she’d overheard her father have the last time she’d seen him alive. Had they simply screwed over the wrong little guy? It was worth checking, but with them both dead, how could he? He turned to Sato.
“If you had to guess which it was, love or money, which would you choose?”
“Love.”
She didn’t even pause to think about it.
“What’s your reasoning?”
“Because there’s no money in this, only revenge.”
40
They drove straight back to the Police Administration Building. He felt refreshed from his short sleep and from their new focus in the hunt for the Ferryman. Accepting that the coins were Theodore Sutton’s helped to unlock things for him, instead of fighting it. He’d convinced himself that if the coins were Teddy’s, then that automatically made it a lock that Nicky was the killer and with that obstacle behind him he was free to move on.
He had Sato drop him off on the street before she parked so he could pick up two large cups of coffee. She wasn’t at her desk when he got back to the detective bureau, so he left her cup next to her mouse and walked along to the task force room and unlocked the door. The laptops were gone, the whiteboard had been wiped down, the boxes of Vandenberg’s mail had been removed. All that was left, was the unprocessed evidence from the day before in two cardboard boxes.
He moved the boxes over to the main table. Now that the room was quiet and empty of other people, he might actually be able to use it. He pulled on a pair of blue nitrile gloves and began to go through the first box. It was full of Sutton’s clothes, carefully folded and placed in individual evidence bags. The man had pulled a gun on him, but all he felt looking at the clothes was sadness. His old friend was dead, and it was his fault.
The second box was the one he was after, Sutton’s personal effects.
Watch, cell phone, wallet, fraternity ring, some loose change, a couple of pens, a Zippo lighter, and a bunch of keys. Coombes set the items out, still in their evidence bags, on the table in front of him. He picked up the watch and looked at it. It wasn’t a Rolex, like the killer’s from the hotel footage, it was a Timex and it was old. The watch face was small, with a thick crystal. It looked like Sutton had picked it up at a pawn shop for five dollars, but he didn’t know much about watches. He put it back down on the table.
Coombes looked at all the items again.
The Zippo stuck out. Nicolas Sutton didn’t smoke. Not cigarettes, not cigars. He had been a health nut; smoking would be an anathema to him. Who carried a lighter if they didn’t smoke? But it wasn’t that much of a mystery. The lighter wasn’t Sutton’s. He’d found it in the ruins of the Silver Lake house and had simply slipped it into his pocket.
The lighter belonged to the arsonist.
To the Ferryman.
Coombes picked it up and turned it over in his hands. There were scorch marks on the case, supporting his theory. A logo was printed on the front; two halves of a circle, split by a lightning bolt. He didn’t recognize it. After trailing gasoline around the Silver Lake home, the killer had thrown the lighter in from the doorway to start the fire. He didn’t understand how Sutton had found it and the fire marshal hadn’t, but that hardly mattered.
Coombes took a close-up photograph of the lighter with his cell phone then returned it to the evidence bag and took out Sutton’s wallet.
It contained five crisp 100 dollar bills, along with 385 dollars in assorted used bills. Coombes sighed. He couldn’t say how much money was in his own wallet, but for sure it wasn’t $885. That was a lot of walking around money in a world that was increasingly cashless. He flicked through the credit and charge cards, driver’s license, membership cards.
He took a photograph of the cards in two groups of six, then returned them to the wallet. Lastly, he took out business cards. There were two for Nicolas Sutton’s own firm, ready to be given out, and three he’d presumably received from others. The names on those three cards were horribly familiar.
Harry Ryan, Gordon Sellers, and Simon Keehan.
Coombes looked up at the whiteboard. Although wiped down, he could still see an imprint of what had been written on it, the names of the dead. The first three victims of the Ferryman apparently had business dealings with Sutton. For nearly two months they’d searched for a link between victims and now, when he least expected it, or wanted it, he found one.
Normally he’d conclude that this supported the narrative that Nicky was the killer and he knew Gantz and Block would assume the same thing.
It was a disaster.
He took a long drink from his coffee, focusing on the flavor, on the heat of it spreading out inside him. The evidence had not yet been catalogued, there was still time. He found an empty evidence bag and dropped the three business cards into it, then folded it up over and over to get the air out and put it in his pocket.
Was it really likely that someone would pull off so many perfect crimes and be stupid enough to walk around with their victims’ business cards in his wallet? It was ridiculous and yet, he reflected, not impossible.
People liked mementos. A hotel keycard, a piece of jewelry, a tuft of hair. People in love, new parents, and serial killers. When it came to mementos, there was considerable overlap. He rejected it. The cards could’ve been planted, or been there for a long time, forgotten. It didn’t prove anything, except possibly why they’d been selected.
Focus, he thought.
Love or money, that’s what Sato had said, and she’d nailed it.
He turned his attention to Nicolas Sutton’s cell phone.
It was an iPhone in a bashed polycarbonate case. A couple of years old, the same model as his own. He took it out the evidence bag and looked at the display. The screen lit up and a lock screen vibrated, detecting that he wasn’t Sutton. Face ID. He swiped up and the keypad came up, asking for a 6-digit passcode.
Mathematically, the chances of hacking the phone were poor, but he knew a little about people. They were lazy, particularly with passwords or numbers that they had to enter all the time. The old 4-digit numbers were in a lot of ways more secure, because they were shorter and easier to remember. They could be anything. On the other hand, 6-digit codes were almost always birthdays or anniversaries.
Coombes went back to the evidence bag with Sutton’s wallet and pulled out his driver’s license and found the date of birth. He punched 102684 into the iPhone. The lock screen buzzed. Too obvious. He was certain that the number would be a date, but what date? Something significant to him, but not blindingly obvious to a potential thief.
It was pointless to keep guessing. The iPhone could erase all data after 10 incorrect passcode attempts, and before that point was reached were lockout periods. The problem was, he didn’t know that much about Nicolas Sutton’s recent life to begin to guess at significant dates. If it wasn’t his birthday, he was pretty much all out of guesses, it was his one and only shot. He thought of Olivia. There was a half chance she might know Nicky’s passcode. Coombes took out his own cell phone and opened his contacts. Even if she didn’t know it, she might have an idea about significant dates. The number was ringing.
“Hello? Who’s this?”
