Verraday nodded agreement. “And he kept him around as insurance against the day that he’d need a scapegoat for the murders.”
“Plus they’re the same age and race,” said Maclean. “Someone looking for a person with Jason’s profile could easily fall for the sleight of hand and be directed toward Cody instead.”
“Jason Griffin planned this very carefully. He probably looked through the profiles of hundreds of ex-felons before he found just the right one.”
“But how do we prove any of this?” asked Maclean. “How do we know we’re even right? There’s not a shred of Jason Griffin’s DNA on any of the bodies.”
“We’ve got to shake him up,” said Verraday. “Jason thinks he’s smarter than everyone else. He thinks he’s outwitted us at every turn. So we have to throw him off balance, find his Achilles’ heel. He’s got to believe we’ve got so much on him that there’s no point in putting up a fight. And we’ve got to figure out how to do it as quickly as possible before there’s time for the shit to come down on you for openly questioning whether Fowler got it right.”
“There’s something you said early on that’s stuck with me,” said Maclean.
“What’s that?”
“That whoever the perpetrator is must have committed killings before to be this good at it. Since there were no bodies fitting the killer’s signature found in Seattle before Alana Carmichael was murdered, we have to assume that if Jason Griffin is the killer, he committed his previous murders somewhere else. So what happened in Jason Griffin’s life that would have changed his MO? Made him started killing the way he’s killing now?”
“He said his father died last year. He was the head of the business until then.”
“Yes,” said Maclean, “which means that now, Jason can use the hangar as the kill and cleanup site. It’s perfect.”
“He would have had to take his victims somewhere else to dispose of them,” said Verraday.
“But where?”
“Robert Pickton’s family owned a forty-acre farm in Port Coquitlam. That’s how he was able to hide the bodies of so many women.”
“There was a picture of Jason with his mother at the controls of a floatplane,” said Maclean. “Professor Lowenstein mentioned that they used to fly floatplane charters.”
“Right, and if the Griffin family had a lot of money at that time, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume they had a vacation property some place.”
“I can do a search of land titles. It’s all electronic nowadays. It’ll only take a few minutes.”
Verraday vacated his seat so that Maclean could come around and use his desktop computer. She punched in the surname and a string of properties came up, both for ones currently owned and ones sold within the last several years.
“Look at this,” said Maclean. “There are only three recent property transfers in the state listed for a Fred Griffin. One is the family home in Fremont, which, as you can see, was transferred from Jason’s father to Jason’s mother when they divorced four years ago. Fred also owned a condo that Jason inherited after his father died last year. The third one is a twenty-acre waterfront vacation property up on Suquamish Island, in the San Juans. It was sold off less than a month before Fred died.”
“You know anything about the San Juans or Suquamish?”
“Never been there. Let’s check it out.”
Maclean Googled it and in seconds had some results.
“No ferry service to Suquamish,” she said. “And no airstrip. The only way in is by private boat or—get this—floatplane. Only about thirty full-time residents. Very lonely, very remote. The kind of place where something terrible could happen to you and nobody would ever know. Fred inherited it from his father, so his ex-wife couldn’t touch it as part of the divorce settlement. But as next of kin, Jason would have been in line for it. If his dad hadn’t sold it first.”
“But then the father dies suddenly a few weeks later. I wonder if the new owner has received any generous offers from mysterious strangers wanting to buy it?” asked Verraday.
“I’ll check on that,” said Maclean. “And I wonder what he died from. The obituary suggested a mental health organization for donations.”
“Suicide?”
“If that’s the story, I’m going over that coroner’s report with a fine-toothed comb, and if anything’s out of place, I’ll have the case reopened. I want to find out if the father had any help dispatching himself. And I’ll speak to the new owner and the real estate agent,” said Maclean, “find out if Jason’s tried to buy back the property. There’s something else I’ve been wondering too.”
“What’s that?”
“When you asked Jason Griffin if the numbers matched on the engine and frame of his Dodge Charger, I saw a flicker of something on his face. I’m going to run Jason through the DMV registration system, make sure that car’s registered in his name. And if it is, I’m going to find out if that’s the original engine. You’re the vintage car expert. The VIN code would indicate what the original engine is, right?”