فصل چهل و دوم

CHAPTER 42

Crawford sat in the back row of the jury box eating Redskin peanuts while Graham closed the courtroom blinds.

“You’ll have the profile for me later this afternoon, I take it,” Crawford said. “You told me Tuesday; this is Tuesday.” “I’ll finish it. I want to watch this first.”

Graham opened the express envelope from Byron Metcalf and dumped out the - two dusty rolls of homemovie film, each in plastic sandwich bag.

“Is Metcalf pressing charges against Niles Jacobi?”

“Not for theft - he’ll probably inherit anyway - he and Jacobi’s brother,” Graham said. “On the hash, I don’t know. Birmingham DA’s inclined to break his chops.” “Good,” Crawford said.

The movie screen swung down from the courtroom ceiling to face the jury box, an arrangement which made it easy to show jurors filmed evidence.

Graham threaded the projector.

“On checking the newsstands where the Tooth Fairy could have gotten a Tattler so fast - I’ve had reports back from Cincinnati, Detroit, and a bunch from Chicago,” Crawford said. “Various weirdos to run down.” Graham started the film. It was a fishing movie.

The Jacobi children hunkered on the bank of a pond with cane poles and bobbers.

Graham tried not to think of them in their small boxes in the ground. He tried to think of them just fishing.

The girl’s cork bobbed and disappeared. She had a bite.

Crawford crackled his peanut sack. “Indianapolis is dragging ass on questioning newsies and checking the Servco Supreme stations,” he said.

“Do you want to watch this or what?” Graham said.

Crawford was silent until the end of the twominute film. “Terrific, she caught a perch,” he said. “Now the profile-”

“Jack, you were in Birmingham right after it happened. I didn’t get there for a month. You saw the house while it was still their house - I didn’t. It was stripped and remodeled when I got there. Now, for Christ’s sake let me look at these people and then I’ll finish the profile.” He started the second film.

A birthday party appeared on the screen in the courtroom. The Jacobis were seated around a dining table. They were singing.

Graham lipread “Haaappy Birthday to you.”

Elevenyearold Donald Jacobi faced the camera. He was seated at the end of the table with the cake in front of him. The candles reflected in his glasses.

Around the corner of the table, his brother and sister were side by side watching him as he blew out the candles.

Graham shifted in his seat.

Mrs. Jacobi leaned over, her dark hair swinging, to catch the cat and dump it off the table.

Now Mrs. Jacobi brought a large envelope to her son. A long ribbon trailed from it. Donald Jacobi opened the envelope and took out a big birthday card. He looked up at the camera and turned the card around. It said “Happy Birthday - follow the ribbon.” Bouncing progress as the camera followed the procession to the kitchen. A door there, fastened with a hook. Down the basement stairs, Donald first, then the others, following the ribbon down the steps. The end of the ribbon was tied around the handlebars of a tenspeed bicycle.

Graham wondered why they hadn’t given him the bike outdoors.

A jumpy cut to the next scene, and his question was answered. Outdoors now, and clearly it had been raining hard. Water stood in the yard. The house looked different. Realtor Geehan had changed the color when he did it over after the murders. The outside basement door opened and Mr. Jacobi emerged carrying the bicycle. This was the first view of him in the movie. A breeze lifted the hair combed across his bald spot. He set the bicycle ceremoniously on the ground.

The film ended with Donald’s cautious first ride.

“Sad damn thing,” Crawford said, “but we already knew that.” Graham started the birthday film over.

Crawford shook his head and began to read something from his briefcase with the aid of a penlight.

On the screen Mr. Jacobi brought the bicycle out of the basement. The basement door swung closed behind him. A padlock hung from it.

Graham froze the frame. “There. That’s what he wanted the bolt cutter for, Jack - to cut that padlock and go in through the basement. Why didn’t he go in that way?’’

Crawford clicked off his penlight and looked over his glasses at the screen. “What’s that?”

“I know he had a bolt cutter - he used it to trim that branch out of his way when he was watching from the woods. Why didn’t he use it and go in through the basement door?” “He couldn’t.” With a small crocodile smile, Crawford waited. He loved to catch people in assumptions.

“Did he try? Did he mark it up? I never even saw that door - Geehan had put in a steel one with deadbolts by the time I got there.” Crawford opened his jaws. “You assume Geehan put it in. Geehan didn’t put it in. The steel door was there when they were killed. Jacobi must have put it in - he was a Detroit guy, he’d favor deadbolts.” “When did Jacobi put it in?”

“I don’t know. Obviously it was after the kid’s birthday - when was that? It’ll be in the autopsy if you’ve got it here.” “His birthday was April 14, a Monday,” Graham said, staring at the screen, his chin in his hand. “I want to know when Jacobi changed the door.” Crawford’s scalp wrinkled. It smoothed out again as he saw the point. “You think the Tooth Fairy cased the Jacobi house while the old door with the padlock was still there,” he said.

“He brought a bolt cutter, didn’t he? How do you break in someplace with a bolt cutter?” Graham said. “You cut padlocks, bars, or chain. Jacobi didn’t have any bars or chained gates, did he?” “No.”

“Then he went there expecting a padlock. A bolt cutter’s fairly heavy and it’s long. He was moving in daylight, and from where he parked he had to hike a long way to the Jacobi house. For all he knew, he might be coming back in one hell of a hurry if something went wrong. He wouldn’t have carried a bolt cutter unless he knew he’d need it. He was expecting a padlock.” “You figure he cased the place before Jacobi changed the door. Then he shows up to kill them, waits in the woods-”

“You can’t see this side of the house from the woods.”

Crawford nodded. “He waits in the woods. They go to bed and he moves in with his bolt cutter and finds the new door with the deadbolts.” “Say he finds the new door. He had it all worked out, and now this,” Graham said, throwing up his hands. “He’s really pissed off, frustrated, he’s hot to get in there. So he does a fast, loud pry job on the patio door. It was messy the way he went in - he woke Jacobi up and had to blow him away on the stairs. That’s not like the Dragon. He’s not messy that way. He’s careful and he leaves nothing behind. He did a neat job at the Leedses’ going in.” “Okay, all right,” Crawford said. “If we find out when Jacobi changed his door, maybe we’ll establish the interval between when he cased it and when he killed them. The minimum time that elapsed, anyway. That seems like a useful thing to know. Maybe it’ll match some interval the Birmingham convention and visitors bureau could show us. We can check car rentals again. This time we’ll do vans too. I’ll have a word with the Birmingham field office.” Crawford’s word must have been emphatic: in forty minutes flat a Birmingham FBI agent, with realtor Geehan in tow, was shouting to a carpenter working in the rafters of a new house. The carpenter’s information was relayed in a radio patch to Chicago.

“Last week in April,” Crawford said, putting down the telephone. “That’s when they put in the new door. My God, that’s two months before the Jacobis were hit. Why would he case it two months in advance?” “I don’t know, but I promise you he saw Mrs. Jacobi or saw the whole family before he checked out their house. Unless he followed them down there from Detroit, he spotted Mrs. Jacobi sometime between April 10, when they moved to Birmingham, and the end of April, when the door was changed. Sometime in that period he was in Birmingham. The bureau’s going on with it down there?” “Cops too,” Crawford said. “Tell me this: how did he know there was an inside door from the basement into the house? You couldn’t count on that - not in the South.” “He saw the inside of the house, no question.”’

“Has your buddy Metcalf got the Jacobi bank statements?”

“I’m sure he does.”

“Let’s see what service calls they paid for between April 10 and the end of the month. I know the service calls have been checked for a couple of weeks back from the killings, but maybe we aren’t looking back far enough. Same for the Leedses.” “We always figured he looked around inside the Leeds house,” Graham said. “From the alley he couldn’t have seen the glass in the kitchen door. There’s a latticed porch back there. But he was ready with his glass cutter. And they didn’t have any service calls for three months before they were killed.” “If he’s casing this far ahead, maybe we didn’t check back far enough. We will now. At the Leedses’ though - when he was in the alley reading meters behind the Leeds house two days before he killed them - maybe he saw them going in the house. He could have looked in there while the porch door was open.” “No, the doors don’t line up - remember? Look here.”

Graham threaded the projector with the Leeds home movie.

The Leedses’ gray Scotty perked up his ears and ran to the kitchen door. Valerie Leeds and the children came in carrying groceries. Through the kitchen door nothing but lattice was visible.

“All right, you want to get Byron Metcalf busy on the bank statement for April? Any kind of service call or purchase that a doortodoor salesman might handle. No - I’ll do that while you wind up the profile. Have you got Metcalf’s number?” Seeing the Leedses preoccupied Graham. Absently he told Crawford three numbers for Byron Metcalf.

He ran the films again while Crawford used the phone in the jury room.

The Leeds film first.

There was the Leedses’ dog. It wore no collar, and the neighborhood was full of dogs, but the Dragon knew which dog was theirs.

Here was Valerie Leeds. The sight of her tugged at Graham.

There was the door behind her, vulnerable with its big glass pane. Her children played on the courtroom screen.

Graham had never felt as close to the Jacobis as he did to the Leedses. Their movie disturbed him now. It bothered him that he had thought of the Jacobis as chalk marks on a bloody floor.

There were the Jacobi children, ranged around the corner of the table, the birthday candles flickering on their faces.

For a flash Graham saw the blob of candle wax on the Jacobis’ bedside table, the bloodstains around the corner of the bedroom at the Leedses’. Something . . .

Crawford was coming back. “Metcalf said to ask you-”

“Don’t talk to me!”

Crawford wasn’t offended, He waited stockstill and his little eyes grew narrow and bright.

The film ran on, its light and shadows playing over Graham’s face.

There was the Jacobis’ cat. The Dragon knew it was the Jacobis’ cat.

There was the inside basement door.

There was the outside basement door with its padlock. The Dragon had brought a bolt cutter.

The film ended. Finally it came off the reel and the end flapped around and around.

Everything the Dragon needed to know was on the two films. They hadn’t been shown in public, there wasn’t any film club, film festi . . .

Graham looked at the familiar green box the Leeds movie came in. Their name and address were on it. And Gateway Film Laboratory, St. Louis, Mo. 63102.

His mind retrieved “St. Louis” just as it would retrieve any telephone number he had ever seen. What about St. Louis? It was one of the places where the Tattler was available on Monday night, the same day it was printed - the day before Lounds was abducted.

“Oh me,” Graham said. “Oh Jesus.”

He clamped his hands on the sides of his head to keep the thought from getting away.

“Do you still have Metcalf on the phone?”

Crawford handed him the receiver.

“Byron, it’s Graham. Listen, did those reels of Jacobi film you sent - were they in any containers? . . . Sure, sure I know you would have sent ‘em along. I need help bad on something. Do you have the Jacobi bank statements there? Okay, I want to know where they got movie film developed. Probably a store sent it off for them. If there’re any checks to pharmacies or camera stores, we can find out where they did business. It’s urgent, Byron. I’ll tell you about it first chance. Birmingham FBI will start now checking the stores. If you find something, shoot it straight to them, then to us. Will you do that? Great. What? No, I will not introduce you to Hotlips.” Birmingham FBI agents checked four camera stores before they found the one where the Jacobis traded. The manager said all customers’ film was sent to one place for processing.

Crawford had watched the films twelve times before Birmingham called back. He took the message.

Curiously formal, he held out his hand to Graham. “It’s Gateway,” he said.