The Narrows - Michael Connelly [66]
“Then what, he’d spit it back into Bob’s hand?” Zigo asked incredulously.
“No, he’d throw it in the trash can. We interviewed him in the death house captain’s office. There was a trash can. When we were done each day, Bundy was led out. There were many points when Bob was alone in that office. He could have just taken the gum out of the can.”
“So you’re saying Bob more or less went Dumpster diving for Ted Bundy’s gum and then held on to it so he could put it in a grave all these years later?”
“I’m saying he took the gum out of that prison, knowing it had Bundy’s teeth marks in it. Maybe it was just a souvenir then. But it became something else later. Something maybe to taunt us with.”
“And where’d he been keeping it, in the fridge?”
“Maybe. That’s where I’d keep it.”
Dei turned back around in her seat.
“What do you think, Brass?” she asked.
“I think I should’ve thought of it myself. I think Rachel is onto something. I think Bob and Ted actually got along. He went down there several times to talk to him. Sometimes alone. He could have gotten the gum any one of those times.”
Rachel watched Dei nod her head in agreement.
Zigo cleared his throat and spoke.
“So this was just another way of him coming out and telling us he did this and how smart he was about it. To taunt us. First the GPS with the prints and now the gum.”
“That’s what I would say,” Doran agreed.
It wasn’t that simple, Rachel knew. She unconsciously shook her head and Zigo, sitting next to her, picked up on it.
“You disagree, Agent Walling?”
She noted that Zigo must have attended the Randal Alpert school of building relations among fellow colleagues.
“I just don’t think it is as simple as that. You are looking at it from the wrong angle. Remember, the GPS and his prints came to us first but that gum was in that grave first. He might have intended for the gum to be found first. Before there was any direct connection to him.”
“If that was the case, what was he doing?” Dei asked.
“I don’t know. I don’t have the answer. I’m just saying, don’t assume at this point we know what the plan or even the sequence was supposed to be.”
“Rachel, you know we always keep an open mind on things. We take things as they come and never stop looking from all angles.”
That sounded like a line taped to the wall in the public information office in Quantico, where agents always had pithy policy and procedure statements to deliver over the phone to reporters. Rachel decided to step back from tangling with Dei on this. She had to be careful not to outstay her welcome and she sensed she was nearing that point with her former student.
“Yes, I know,” she said.
“Okay, Brass, anything else new?” Dei asked.
“That was it. That was enough.”
“Okay. Then we’ll talk to you at the next one.”
Meaning the next conference room case session. Doran said good-bye and broke off and then the onboard communication link remained silent as the helicopter crossed the dividing line between the harsh undeveloped landscape and the beginning of the sprawl of Las Vegas. As Rachel looked down she knew it was merely a trading of one form of a desert for another. Down there, beneath all the barrel tile and gravel roofs, predators still waited to come out at night. To find their victims.
21
THE EXECUTIVE EXTENDED STAY MOTEL was off the south end of the strip. It had no neon lights flashing in front of it. It had no casino and no floor show. In fact, no executives stayed there. It was a place populated by the fringe dwellers of Vegas society. The addicted gamblers, the take-off men, the sex trade workers, the kind of people who can’t leave the place but at the same time can’t put down permanent roots either.
People like me. Often when you meet a fellow tenant at the Double X, as the longtimers call the place, they’ll ask you how long you’ve been