Page 25 of Wrong Door

“She went into the greenhouse, and I went back to what I was doing."

They asked a few more questions of Vernon, but there was nothing else of use. Miles thanked him and he and Vic walked back toward the front of the property, taking the long way around along the gravel path that ran past the south gate. Miles stopped at the gate and looked through the wrought iron at the rear garden beyond it. From this position, he had a clear view of the main planting beds and the greenhouse entrance. He figured anyone could observe anyone working in the near half of the garden for as long as you wanted without entering the property or attracting attention. Especially if you were holding a notebook and looked like a student.

He turned and looked at the street. It was a quiet block with parallel parking on both sides. About a quarter of the block on the opposite side consisted of a parking lot for visitors to the estate.

There wasn’t quite enough evidence to support such a theory, but he was becoming certain that Cord had been here, watching Patrice Odom move through the garden while her gloves were probably already treated and sitting wherever she stored them.

They walked back to the car in silence and when they were inside, he took the driver’s seat without starting the engine for a moment. He thought about what they had, and what they didn't. They had a third confirmed victim who fit the pattern precisely. There was also a witness description that put their suspect at Whitmore House roughly two weeks ago. By now, there would be a BOLO, and they also had a house on Gaston Street full of color wheels and odd writings that may or may not be manifestos.

“Seems like the description fits the one from the bookstore,” Vic said.

“I was thinking the same thing. And I also think Cord is very organized. "He has a head start, and we don't know how long it is. The rent buys him a month from two weeks ago. That's two more weeks before anyone is legally looking at that property for nonpayment. Maybe three if you have a lenient landlord." He looked at the front of the estate, at the live oak canopy over the long brick drive.

"We need a list," Vic said.

“What kind of list?”

“Anyone in Savannah whose livelihood centers on color,” Vic said. “Painters, florists, gardeners, muralists…anyone who works with color professionally in a visible way."

Miles nodded, thinking about the color wheels on Cord’s walls, with index numbers and their red circles. "That list is not going to be short."

"No," Vic said. "It's not. But until we can find something hiding in all of that scribbling back at his address, it might be all we have…trying to find people who might attract him and hoping to save their lives.”

“That’ll take forever, though,” he said, but he knew she was right.

“Then I guess that means we’d better haul ass.”

Miles finally started the car. He pulled away from the curb, and the estate's oak canopy receded in the mirror. He started back toward Pruitt’s precinct, while somewhere in the city or beyond it Russell Cord was still ahead of them by a margin Miles was too afraid to think about.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

The conference room had started getting crowded by five that afternoon as Pruitt managed to get officers and assistants to help with compiling the list Vic had suggested. By about ten that night, it had taken on the feel of a space being lived in rather than worked in. Takeout containers were stacked near the door. Laptops were open at every seat. The whiteboard was filled past the point of easy readability; Pruitt having added a second column when the first ran out of space.

So far, the list had fifty-three names.

Pruitt's team had built the initial version from business license records, pulling every registered operation in the city whose primary activity involved color in a professional context. Painters and galleries had been the easy ones. Then muralists, of whom there were more than Miles had anticipated. There were also textile artists, a dye works on the east side of the city, two ceramicists whose work was primarily glaze-focused, a color consultant who worked with interior designers across the low country. One of the officers was taking an especially hard look at a floral design school on Drayton Street and a photography studio that specialized in fine art printing. There had also been a heated discussion as to whether or not interior design should be included, and it was ultimately decided it should not.

"We'll be past one hundred names by morning," Pruitt said, looking at the board. She said it without alarm, just accounting for where they were. "I've got three officers cross-referencing against social media to catch the ones who operate informally, no business license."

Miles was at the far end of the table with his laptop, working through what the forensic team had sent over from Gaston Street in the past two hours: high-resolution images of every notation sheet on the walls, catalogued and numbered. He had been reading through them systematically, building a picture of how Cord's methodologies and beliefs had developed over time. The earliest versions were simpler, rougher in their methodology, closer to intuition than to the pseudo-scientific framework the later versions had become. His index had been refined over years, sharpened by whatever reading and observation Cord had been doing. It started to look more refined, the language becoming more technical, and the conclusions more specific.

It was patient, maddening work. It was the work of someone who had a long time and a fixed point and no particular reason to hurry. Someone like Kane, actually.

Vic was two seats down, running Cord's name against employment records and academic databases. She had confirmed the non-renewal at SCAD and pulled the basic outline of his academic history. She had been building his profile incrementally for the past several hours, checking each piece with heavy scrutiny before moving to the next.

It was 12:16 in the morning when Miles stood up to get a cup of coffee. An as he got to his feet, his phone buzzed on the table. He glanced down at it and saw that he had received another text from Agent Hahn.

This guy is really trying a little too hard, Miles thought.

Miled picked it up and read it. Word by word, he was starting to think that maybe Hahn wasn’t too bad after all. The text read:

Was running a supplementary search tonight. Your suspect Russell Cord was flagged in the task force database. Former SCAD adjunct, color theory background, two-year employment gap. Flag was generated four months ago. Never assigned, never followed up. Notation says resource constraints, pending review. Thought you'd want to know.

Miles assumed Hahn had access to all case records on Cord, based on the reports and updates they had periodically been sending to AD Hayes. And if Hahn had that information, Miles supposed he had given Cord’s name to a broader pass through the database using the parameters he had developed after the Parsons arrest. Cord had come up as a former SCAD adjunct with a documented interest in color theory and a two-year gap in his employment history that had never been explained or followed up on in the original flag. The flag itself had been generated four months ago but not yet assigned to anyone. And Miles understood why; on the surface, Russell Cord didn’t seem like much of a threat…not if a two-year gap in employment initially seemed to be the only flag.

His name had been sitting in the task force database for four months with a notation that read resource constraints, pending review. They’d had his name and no one had acted. Miles was both embarrassed and infuriated while also managing to understand that there was simply no way everyone could be thoroughly investigated.

Miles looked over to Vic, caught her eye, and gave her the phone. She read the message and set the phone down between them. She didn’t say anything immediately, and he could see her working through everything he’d just felt.