He didn’t find her peacefully asleep.
He tried to resuscitate her, tried until the first ambulance arrived but there was nothing to be done. Two lives had ended that night, and a third had been destroyed.
We had nothing new to go on other than a timeline. The coroner had estimated time of death at 1:30 a.m., two and a half hours after Dupuis had made her last phone call. A more exact time would come after the autopsy, but the coroner had never been off by more than a half hour.
The interview lasted two hours, countless details of the life of the victim, her habits, her history, her dreams and fears, her family and friends, her likes and dislikes, and yet none of it would help us. He had picked her out of the blue and marked a total stranger for death.
“Go home, get some rest,” I said to Kara after we thanked Franchini for his time, “you’ve earned it.” Franchini had arrived and left in the company of his sergeant, now out of uniform. The Sergeant had taken my words to heart.
“Thanks, Lincoln. Don’t tell anyone about my breakdowns in there.” She couldn’t make eye contact with me, whether she felt she had failed me or she was afraid of any human connection bringing back the tears, I couldn’t tell.
“Policing is only about being tough when you have to be, Kara. We’re all human, and sometimes a human touch and empathy are what are really needed. You shouldn’t be anything but proud of how you handled that interview.”
A feigned smile, no glimmer in the eyes. “Thanks. See you in a couple of days.”
Hopefully not in the middle of the night. Twenty-two days, then eight days. There would be more pictures on my desk before the week was out.
A mandatory day off for us didn’t mean the same for the killer.
—5—
You’re dreaming again.
Wake up.
The flying isn’t real, none of this is real.
Wake up.
Pinch yourself or something.
Wake up.
Put an end to this.
Wake up.
The trees lie below me once again as I soar through clear blue skies toward a glimmer of light. Would I be spared the bloodbath tonight? The crippling pain? Or would I experience it all again?
Wake up.
Save yourself the pain.
I refuse to dive and instead stay above the trees until the glimmer is right below me. I drift down to the treetops and weave through branches thick with green. My feet find solid ground and I crumple to the dirt below me.
The pain is back.
Wake up.
It tears through my body and I cannot move. I feel myself slipping away again but I hold fast and fight against the pain. With every bit of strength left in me I force myself to stand, to fight the fire that courses through my veins.
The knife turns ahead of me, rotating in the cool breeze, its blade pointing to the skull below. Blood makes its way down the edge of the knife, and as a strong wind blows through the tree the knife swings on its invisible thread.
The blood drips off of the blade and onto the top of the skull, a message forming from the drops. I strain to make it out before it is complete: “Why?”
I read the message before the blood runs into the empty eye sockets.
I look up to see crime scene tape surrounding me and the posts and strings of an archaeological survey at my feet.
The sky goes dark once again, thunder claps and flashes of lightning streak across the clouds. The rain comes down in torrents and soaks me to my core, water rushes down my face and into my eyes. I lower my head and wipe the water away from my face.
The skull remains but it is no longer alone. The dirt has been carefully removed, tools sit beside the shallow grave as rain washes the bones bright white. A bright red heart pounds in the chest, blood from an unknown source pours out from an open wound that pierces the muscle of life. The blood flows into the recesses of the grave covering an errant piece of bone: a missing rib, and another, the end cut off just above the heart.
Wake up.
—6—
I awoke in a sweat; a dull ache coursed through my body and reminded me of the night’s events. The ache was joined by new pain in my chest when my eight-year-old son pounced on it like a jungle cat.
“Daddy,” he said, “you don’t work today?”
“Nope. I’m all yours today, Link.”
He smiled from ear to ear, his crooked teeth gleaming in the morning light.
“Well, all yours and your sister’s and your mother’s, of course.” I reached to his stomach and began tickling him until he fell off the bed in a fit of laughter.
“Mommy’s making breakfast. Bacon, eggs and pancakes.”
The enthusiasm of children for the simple things in life always warmed my heart, although I found my own enthusiasm growing with the thought of a greasy, home cooked breakfast.
“Give me a couple of minutes. I’ll be right down.”
“Okay Daddy,” he said from the floor where he had landed moments earlier. Link got to his feet, took off out the door and bounded down the stairs, prompting the usual reprimand from his mother about a herd of elephants.
I got out of bed, stretched and tried to push away the aches and pains that lingered. I had never had a dream so real, never felt such pain nor had it linger after I woke up.
Was it true what they said? That your mind can make it real? If you die in a dream do you die in real life?
I wiped the sweat from my brow, took off my damp t-shirt and boxers and stared at the body-shaped stain that marked my place on the bed. I would be yelled at for not making the bed as the last one out of it, but I felt it better to let the sheets dry out before burying them with the comforter. I got dressed in the jeans and polo shirt that lay folded on the floor.
I wandered into the ensuite bathroom and looked into the mirror. These days what looked back at me no longer brought me joy; a tired face that looked older than my thirty-five years, swollen bags under my red-rimmed green eyes, sallow cheeks and hair desperately in need of a cut. My hair was thick and curled as it grew, a gift from my African-American father. The eyes were from my Irish mother. Luckily the brown skin tone that my father also bestowed upon me helped to hide some of the evidence of my sleeplessness.
The first step was to shave. I hadn’t had time yesterday—being woken up at three in the morning by a murder had that effect on a person’s hygiene. It was my day off so shaving wasn’t required, but I never knew if I would be called in again tonight then forced in front of the press cameras. So begrudgingly, I took out my shave gel, wet my face and lathered up.
When I took a final swipe at the thin strip of shaving cream remaining on my left cheek, the blade took with it a small patch of skin. Red flowed down my cheek.
And I found myself frozen in time.
The slow motion trickle held my gaze as it ran down my face and dropped silently into the sink. Another drop followed with a third taking the plunge a moment later. I looked down into the sink and the word Why stared back up at me from the blood.
I blinked and reality came rushing back.
I had never in my life hallucinated before. At least not to my knowledge. But now I began to wonder, had I hallucinated something before and never known it be a mirage? And if not, why was I beginning to see things now?
I realized I had dropped into a half-crouch in front of the mirror. I was trembling. Losing my mind had always been a fear of mine. I had dealt with delusional people and schizophrenics and listened to people rant about the voices in their heads and the creatures and demons that surrounded them. I had always feared that I would one day be on the other side of the fence. No one knows when mental illness will strike and no one is exempt.
I shook my head, trying to clear my mind but the dreams still clung to me. They had reappeared every time I closed my eyes and now they haunted me with my eyes open. A message in blood? And prior to that a message in light, apparently Morse code that I was at a loss to decipher. The closest I got was that it
nearly spelled WHY, something that would make sense now. I needed to look at it again.
I pulled myself up and wiped my face clean of what water, blood and shave gel remained, then dabbed a square of toilet paper on my fresh wound. It was time to face the family. Having been gone so much the past few weeks and so involved in the case, I found myself drifting away from my wife and children. The more I blamed myself, the more the guilt poured in until I was swimming in a pool of it so deep the bottom was out of sight. Now it was hard to even make eye contact with them without wanting to cry.
I clambered down the steps to the foyer, twinges of pain in my knees, and made my way onto the porch to collect the morning paper. I knew it would be there. It was something my wife hated, along with the flyers that were delivered once a week. She would step over them every time she went out, refusing to pick them up.
The front page was as I expected it to be. The latest murder was above the fold. The article would probably include veiled suggestions that the police weren’t doing their jobs.
I went back inside and closed the door, locked it as always, then made my way into the kitchen. Greeted by the smell of fresh cooked bacon and a loving kiss from my wife, my mood lifted. It would not be brought down today. I threw the paper face down on the side of the counter. I wouldn’t read it. There was nothing to be gained and too much to be lost.
I took a seat at the table and watched my wife cook. Katarzyna, or Kat as she now preferred, was a beautiful woman just hitting her prime at thirty-five. She remained just as stunning as the day we met. At five-nine, she stood just a couple of inches shorter than me and, when she had heels on, I had to rise to my tiptoes for a kiss. Her long brown hair accentuated the eastern European features that had first mesmerized me when we met in university.
We shared a first year mathematics class at the University of Western Ontario in London. She was, as she eloquently put it as soon as she learned the term, fresh off the boat. Her parents had wanted to send her to Canada for her education in hopes that she would return afterward, get a good job, marry a good Polish man and have lots of beautiful Polish babies. Only one of those four happened.
Her English was quite good—a hell of a lot better than my Polish is now—but it needed some polishing. That’s where I came in. After the first week of class, I made a point of sitting next to her whenever I could, chatting with her and complimenting her on her English. Being the nice guy that I was, I offered my assistance both in class and after. It didn’t take long before our first date and after that we were inseparable.
After first year we moved in together much to the dismay of her Roman Catholic parents and against some of Kat’s own beliefs, beliefs she pushed aside for me. Kat wasn’t supposed to fall in love and there was no way she was supposed to stay in Canada, but as she tried to tell her parents: wszystko dobre, co się dobrze kończy—all’s well that ends well. They chose to disagree. Her father flew over from Warsaw to try to convince her to come back home. His attempts failed, but he left satisfied that I would take could care of his daughter—not that she required it—and that we would visit. It was a turnaround neither of us had expected but one that I could not be happier with, especially since our future children would now have their babcia and dziadzio to visit.
Kat and I got married shortly after finishing our degrees, hers a teaching degree specializing in math and sciences and mine in biological anthropology. It was the odd cultural anthropology and criminal psychology elective that steered me toward my current career. Kat followed her passion and became a teacher at a local high school, molding the minds of impressionable youths and trying to steer them toward a career in science.
At the ages of twenty-seven we welcomed our first-born into the world: Lincoln Charles Munroe the Fifth, a beautiful and healthy baby boy weighing in at seven pounds, nine ounces. Link, as we all called him, was practically my clone—same skin tone and features. His sister followed two years later, the equally beautiful Kasia Agnieska Munroe. Dark haired and lighter skinned, she bore many of her mother’s traits and her telltale height, bursting Kat’s womb at the seams with her twenty-three inch birth length.
“Stop staring at me.”
“Sorry, Kat. Off in my own little world there.”
“It’s creepy,” she said, then let loose a laugh.
“Is it wrong to stare at my beautiful wife as she waits on me hand and foot?”
My answer came in the form of a wet dishcloth to the face.
“Maybe not, but it’s still creepy.” From the day I met her I had always loved her accent. Of course I loved it even more when I heard her speak Polish, which she often did with the kids. Eight and six and fluent in Polish while I, with only enough to manage light conversation, struggled to keep up. And now, enrolled in French immersion, the kids would soon be two languages up on their barbarian of a father. I was learning though—having to read the correspondence from the school and help them with their homework left me little choice.
Breakfast was served, hot and greasy and plentiful. A half pound of bacon, three eggs, four pancakes and two glasses of orange juice later I was fueled up and ready to go. It was the first real meal for me in ages, there was no time to eat while at work. By the time I finished and stood up I felt as though I had swallowed a brick.
I took the kids downstairs and turned on the Xbox. Although I would have preferred to play some Mass Effect or maybe Halo online, the kids got their way and we played for an hour and a half with their pet tiger and black panther cubs. I smiled as they waved their arms like madmen in front of the Kinect sensor, throwing balls for their cubs, feeding them, petting them and of course, in Link’s case, driving a remote controlled car into them. He would follow it up with a treat for the cub. He found his cub’s reaction to being hit funny but felt bad for having hurt his pet. Boys will be boys I guess. Better a virtual animal than having him out throwing rocks at squirrels and frying ants with a magnifying glass.
Abusing animals. The first step most serial killers take. I pushed the thought away and focused on the screen.
Once the kids were bored of their pets, the only ones allowed in our household, we moved out to the backyard. The sun was shining strong this morning, burning off the dew and leaving their playground dry as a bone. I pushed them on the swings until my arms went limp then chased them around the backyard until my legs followed suit. It was going to be a long day followed by the sleep of the just.
I took care of lunch, barbequing burgers and hotdogs while Kat kept watch on the tray of french fries turning golden brown in the oven. Without the word-a-day calendar I had to think hard to remember what day it was. Happy to realize it was Saturday (I had peeked at today’s word—relax: rest or engage in an enjoyable activity so as to become less tired or anxious), Kat and I decided to take the kids to the local city pool for an afternoon swim followed by a run through the splash pad. As always, I found myself the wettest.
The kids forced me to stand under a large bucket that filled up with water then dumped its contents onto the heads of unsuspecting targets. It was like watching the toaster, you never knew when you would get hit until the freezing cold water came down in a deluge over your head and shoulders. We tore through the sprinklers, stood beneath a flower that showered us with a refreshing mist and crawled through a tunnel of tubes that sprayed us from all angles, leaving not a patch of clothing dry.
Kat stood on the sidelines laughing and yelling encouragement to the kids as I was put through trials that would make Hercules shiver with apprehension. I let Kat sit out, not wanting a repeat of the day I bear-hugged her and held her under the bucket. Twelve years married and I have never felt so close to once again being a bachelor.
I walked over to the bench Kat had made her home, a book in her hands and her eyes peering over the top at the chaos in front of her. I took care to sit a short distance from her, keeping her dry and myself out of trouble. I put my cold, wet hand on Kat’s bare knee and she shivered slightly.
“I’ve m
issed this,” she said.
“Me too.”
“How much longer do you think it will take, until you catch him?”
“I don’t know. We’re coming up empty every time. If he keeps going like this… never.”
She sensed my feelings of failure and put her hand on mine. “You’ll get him, Lincoln. I know you will.” She paused. “Just, when it comes time, don’t kill him.”
I was shocked. The thought hadn’t even crossed my mind. I had imagined his arrest many times, particularly parading him in cuffs past the media so the world could see his face. But I never imagined killing him.
“Hopefully it won’t come to that.”
“You can’t. If you do, you’ll be no better than him.”
I could tell she was becoming upset. I pulled my hand away and looked out to the kids running through the water.
“We sure make cute kids.”
Kat laughed. “We could make another one, you know.”
We had talked about it in the years after Kasia’s birth, but now that she was getting older the topic seemed to have been put to rest. I wanted the kids close together. But maybe Kat was right.
“Girl or boy?” she asked.
I smiled at the thought of either. “A baby.”
“Good answer. Anyway, I wouldn’t mind some more time off work. Maybe you could take a few months too. Would be a nice break after all of this. I know the kids would love to have you home.”
We held hands again as the kids chased each other around for what seemed like hours. Both of our minds were occupied—thoughts of painting the spare bedroom, buying clothes and a crib and introducing the kids to their new sibling.
Maybe she was right.
Cold and wet, we walked home along quiet streets lined with trees and well-kept lawns, praising the warmth of the sun as our clothes began to dry. My phone had yet to ring, a wonderful silence, and I offered prayers to gods I didn’t believe in for the silence to last through the night.
A change of clothes later we saddled up our bicycles and strapped on our helmets. It was nearing five o’clock and an afternoon in the sun and water had left our stomachs rumbling. It was a short ride to the best all-you-can-eat sushi joint in town. The kids had been introduced to Japanese food at an early age—teriyaki salmon and inari, edamame and fried pork in ginger sauce by the age of one, raw fish and everything else by the age of two.