“Well, there wouldn’t have been, if he bought them,” Nate said reasonably. “And what was it Thorson said? No reports of sales to customers who weren’t legitimately using them. If Geharty was known to them as a tailor, it wouldn’t have been flagged as unusual for him to be buying them.”
“Then let’s contact them,” Laura said, but Nate had already yanked up the desk phone from in front of him.
He dialed the number from the search results and then waited, looking at her and connecting their eyes with a significant gaze when the call was answered. “Hello, yes. This is Special Agent Nathaniel Lavoie calling from the Mariesville Police Department. We’re investigating a series of murders out here, and – yes. Mhmm. Yes, sir, those are the ones. Well… yes, exactly. We need your help. There’s a customer of yours who we believe may be our suspect. What we need from you is to let us into his account history so we can see the details of the mannequins he purchased from you.”
There was a long pause. Laura was about to ask what the delay was, whether the person on the other side of the phone was arguing or refusing, when Nate started again.
“Yes, I’m ready,” he said, cradling the phone between his cheek and his shoulder and then lifting his cell phone up to eye level so he could type on it at the same time as talking. “Okay. And how will we know what model we’re looking at? Oh, okay. Right. Yes, go ahead.”
He made a number of notes, typing constantly while making the occasional noise to let the person on the other side know that he was listening. Laura waited with bated breath. She got out of her seat and looked over Nate’s shoulder at the screen of his phone, trying to read what he was writing. The first line read look up images online, check placement and shape. Laura didn’t know what the ‘placement and shape’ referred to, but the rest was a string of model names and numbers. She typed the first one into the computer’s search engine, ready to see what they were looking for. With any luck, it would be a faceless mannequin – maybe one in a sitting position to really incriminate their tailor.
“And that’s it?” Nate asked, casting his eyes at Laura sharply. She paused as the images loaded, feeling uncertainty seize her. Something was clearly wrong. “No, no. So this goes back over how long…? Fifteen years? Christ. You’re sure it’s just eight?”
Laura’s mouth dried up.
Eight?
There had been eight mannequins seated around the dinner table in that basement. The image was emblazoned onto her brain. Even if she hadn’t counted them at the time, she would be able to do so again now just from memory.
If he’d only ever bought eight mannequins in the whole course of his business, then all eight were sitting in that basement, fully accounted for.
Nate thanked the person he’d been talking to and put the phone down, then looked up at Laura with a slack look to his eyes. “Did you get that?”
Laura nodded. “We’ll have to check the actual mannequins and make sure there isn’t any other mention of a company that sells them in his statements. But…”
“But he’s registered as having bought eight mannequins, and there were eight in that basement, and that kinda sounds like all his mannequins have been accounted for,” Nate said.
There was a knock on the door, and Nate and Laura both swung their heads in unison as it opened.
“Agents,” Detective Thorson said. She had a terrible look on her face. A kind of gray hue. “We’ve just got done speaking with a case worker who was assigned to Frank Geharty. He spent the first three days of this week in a residential facility receiving treatment for delusions. He was there voluntarily, and left yesterday on his own accord without taking his medication with him.”
“He has an alibi?” Laura said, not wanting it to be true but knowing in her heart it was. Some part of her had known from the moment they walked into that basement, somehow. Even though all the signs pointed to Frank Geharty, her gut hadn’t been in it. He might have been mentally unwell, but that didn’t mean he was a murderer.
“He has an alibi,” Detective Thorson said, and all three of them shared a collective moment of utter despair. In contempt, Nate took a sheaf of paper from the desk and swept it into a waste paper bin under it.
But then Laura grasped onto one tiny flicker of hope and held it, looking up at the others with a clear idea of what they needed to do next.
“Mannequins Supply Limited,” she said, turning to Nate. “Where is their manufacturing base?”
Nate looked up the answer on the listing he’d already opened on his phone browser. “It’s outside of town,” he said. “Looks like about a forty-five minute drive.”
“Grab the keys,” Laura said, getting up from her chair immediately. “We don’t have any time to lose.”