This was another minor point of disagreement between Kat and me. She would cite books and websites that forbade raw fish for children. I argued that Japanese kids eat sushi all the time, which did convince Kat to be more lenient on the suggested age. Now the kids did me proud as Kat looked on in astonishment. Nothing was taboo to them, be it octopus or squid, scallops or flying fish eggs; not even deep-fried capleins (a small, entire and intact fish battered and fried) caused them to turn their noses up as they bit into the heads and tails with delight. Pride as a parent can come from many unforeseen sources.
With the buffet beaten threefold—three times as much food eaten as we had to pay for—we mounted our metal steeds and suffered through the uphill ride home, carrying quite a bit of extra weight. That amount of food eaten in such a short time put us all a near comatose state. It was a wonderful way to end the day, as we all crashed in the family room, Kasia snuggled up in my arms on the couch while we watched cartoon superheroes and villains battle it out over Metro City. It was our fourth time watching Megamind yet it didn’t stop me from laughing.
The sun fell beneath the horizon while the movie played, and by the time the credits rolled darkness reigned. A new moon left us with only the pale orange glow of streetlights seeping through the windows. With their teeth brushed and pajamas on, Link and Kasia climbed into bed with Kat and I for our evening story time. We were halfway through our third visit to The Secret World of Og, a classic which my parents had read to me.
Three chapters later—I had set the limit at two when we began reading—we tucked the kids into their respective beds and kissed them both goodnight. The night belonged to Kat and I now.
Thirty minutes later I was asleep on the couch with Kat wrapped up in my arms.
—7—
I awoke a few hours later to find myself still on the couch. Whether I had looked too peaceful to move or Kat had wanted a silent night’s sleep I did not know. I rose, folded up the blanket Kat had lovingly draped over me and stumbled into the kitchen. The “clean” light was lit upon the dishwasher—at least Kat had remembered to start it before she went to bed. I removed a tall glass and went to the fridge for juice to remedy my parched throat, a consequence of sleeping with my mouth open and snoring like a banshee. I took hold of the handle then pulled open the fridge. The glass dropped to the ceramic below. It shattered into countless pieces that danced across the floor like droplets of water on a hot surface. It was now a puzzle that would never be put back together.
I stood transfixed, my right hand on the door handle, my left hand upright as though the glass was still there. I stared deep inside the recesses of the refrigerator and the deepest corners of my mind. There, next to the salsa, the skull was staring back at me with an insane grin.
“Link?”
The sound of breaking glass must have been enough to rouse Kat. I never heard her enter the kitchen.
I didn’t turn my head or break my stare.
“Link, what are you staring at?”
“The skull. Don’t you see it?”
Kat put her left hand on my shoulder and closed the fridge door with her right. I felt a slight pain in my shoulder as she squeezed me tight, trying to wake me up. Sleepwalking would have been a welcome explanation to what I saw. Either that or waking up and finding I had never left the couch. I knew that I would not be so lucky.
“I’m awake,” I said, then began to cry. “I’m losing it, Kat. I’m slipping.”
I crumpled to the floor and Kat sunk to the cool tile with me. She held me from behind, her arms tight over my shoulders and around my chest.
“You’re not, Link. You’re not,” she said. “It’s just this case, it’s getting to you.”
She was right, she had to be. There was something about the way he deliberately chose strangers and marked them for death. It was a horror I had never seen before.
I should have felt better, the warm arms of the woman I loved around me and a rational explanation whispered in my ear weren’t enough. Why would this case take me back to woods I now remembered—woods I had camped in as a child? And why the buried skeleton?
I knew there was something more to it. But what?
—8—
I awoke to the alarm on my cell phone the next morning feeling strangely refreshed after a dreamless night. The cathartic act of sobbing into my wife’s arms must have cleansed my mind.
The killer had not struck that night. It was only six thirty though, and there was still time for someone to come home and find his wife or girlfriend dead. I forced the thought away and tried to focus on something happier; hoping that not thinking it would keep it from happening. The house was silent. Kat had been sound asleep when I left the room. Not even the alarm had made her stir. Link and Kasia would not be up until after I had left, hitting the road an hour after I had risen.
I showered and shaved before donning my standard black suit, a lime green shirt and grey patterned tie the only difference from my last day at work. I was out the door on time, climbing into the red Mini Cooper I had wanted since the new models came out. It was a tight fit for a family of four, but with a van as our second vehicle, Kat agreed that I should have a fun car. She seemed to enjoy it as much as I did. The pickup trucks and giant SUVs that filled the detachment lot dwarfed my Mini, and my coworkers had laughed when I first rolled into the lot with it. But now that gas was rising again, I was the one laughing.
I made it out of the city without difficulty, the light pre-church Sunday traffic keeping the roads clear. The line-up at Tim Horton’s was empty as I stopped for a large green tea for myself and a large double-double for Kara. I should have followed the unwritten rules of the service and let the rookie buy, but it felt uncouth to pin everything on the less senior officer, especially since she was fast becoming as skilled an investigator as I.
I found myself facing Kara and her silver Toyota Prius, the only other economical car in the lot, as she made a right turn and I a left into adjacent parking spaces. Kara and I climbed out, she relieved me of her coffee, and we strolled into the office. Our slow pace was still insufficient to keep us from the harsh realities of our work. We talked about our days off and for a moment enjoyed the fact that there were so many detectives on the case. It was nice to be able to take a break—we had both worked through our days off after the first two murders.
The morning briefing went as expected, with little new information to disseminate. Headquarters had approved the overtime to hire on an additional fifteen officers to patrol the area south of London. It was hoped that the increased presence would lead to either an arrest or at least it would deter another killing. There was no shortage of willing officers either. As soon as the e-mail had been sent out, people were scrambling to sign up—the fact that the last victim had been the wife of one of our own had moved people. The overtime hours were welcome as well. Additional cruisers would be spared from surrounding detachments and even the service’s helicopter would make a nightly appearance—a front mounted infrared camera scouring the area.
It was almost nine now, and everyone in the meeting was breathing a collective sigh of relief. Quarter after eight had been the latest a murder had been called in.
“Detective Munroe, call dispatch immediately. Detective Munroe, call dispatch.”
The overhead page broke through the chatter in the room and all of us stared at the source of the sound, a speaker set in the ceiling tiles.
Damn it.
I walked to the phone and dialed the extension for dispatch.
“Munroe.”
“Lincoln, it’s Jenna. There’s been another. One uniform is already on scene, others en route. Are you ready for the address?”
I took out my pen and notebook and gave her the go ahead.
“Four-seventy-five Catherine Street, Ingersoll.”
“Thanks. Let uniform know we’re on our way.”
Kara was already ready to go as soon as I hung up the phone. Within minutes we were on the road, an older mode
l brown Chevy Malibu our stylish and obvious police ride. It took us just over twenty minutes to arrive with only a few laws broken. It had been a pretty silent ride, neither one of us knowing what to say. Two days. It had only been two days. Our silence spoke louder than words: the bastard needed to be caught.
I pulled up a few doors down from the address, a red bricked ranch-style home. Two Fords in the driveway a brief distance from the Ford plant were all I needed to see to know where at least one of the homeowners worked. The paramedics had cleared the scene already, leaving three police cruisers and an SUV parked on the street out front of the home. Crime scene tape had already been put out and an officer was standing guard out front of the residence.
The door opened and a uniformed Staff Sergeant I recognized all too well made his way out to the curb. “Real shit show in there,” George said, an ineffable choice of words.
“What have we got, George?”
“You sure you want to know?”
“Just give me the details.”
“Husband, James McLeod, is retired from Ford. He’s pushing seventy and was working the night shift last night. Daughter says he’s a Commissionaire, works in London keeping an eye on the downtown cameras. He made it home around eight-thirty and called his daughter. She knew it was him from the caller ID but he wasn’t speaking, just breathing heavily.”
Not good. Not good at all.
“The old man went silent, so she hung up the phone and called nine-one-one. Ambulance and the first officer, the female inside, got the call and made it here about ten to nine. Thinking they had an unresponsive male inside they went in, the door was unlocked. They could hear a faint beeping sound coming from the upstairs and went up to find an elderly woman in bed—I’m sure you know what she looked like—and the husband on the floor, the phone still in his hand. EMS figures it was a heart attack.”
“Please tell me this is a joke.”
“Wish it was, Lincoln, wish it was. The daughter came just after they found the bodies. They gave her the bad news and told her she wouldn’t be able to go into the house. She lives just around the corner, so she went home to her family. She’s… not doing well.”
Two dead bodies inside and no one to tell the tale. Just when I thought things couldn’t get worse, another murder occurs with the finder deceased and likely no other witnesses. If there was a break to be caught now would be a really good time for it.
I thanked George who said he’d be on scene until the bodies were removed. That would be awhile but crime scenes needed to be held. Kara and I went inside the older home decorated about as one might expect for an elderly couple. Floral patterned drapes and couches, kitchen and dining room furniture reminiscent of a sixties-era diner, doilies on every table surface and pictures from bygone years mixed with new photographs of grandchildren and family. The house had the undeniable smell of a grandmother’s home, difficult to place but containing a combination of mothballs, Pine-Sol and the smell that comes from aged stuff; different but not unpleasant, like being in a second-hand book store.
The couple appeared to live comfortably—a nice flatscreen replacing the rabbit-ear model, a well-stocked fridge with better food than I had in mine and a gorgeous and rather new pool in the backyard which I presumed was more for the grandkids. The husband’s job seemed to be more of a way to kill time than to make ends meet. Night shift at nearly seventy didn’t appeal to me, but if he had worked nights most of his life it would be hard to change.
Nothing was out of place on the main floor. I then checked the basement, opening the door and looking down the steps. The basement was completely unfinished and appeared to be cluttered to a point that even walking would be difficult.
“Leave it ‘til later?”
Kara read my mind. “Yeah, probably nothing down there for us.”
I made my way down the hallway toward the master bedroom, walking on a clear plastic runner that covered the pale green carpet. The body of the husband was visible before I reached the door to the bedroom, his feet just inside the room and his head toward the bed. His shirt was ripped open and electrodes were on his chest, evidence that EMS had tried to resuscitate him.
The woman still sat in the bed, leaning against the headboard and nude as the day she was born. Her lower half was covered by the blankets. The area paramedics were well aware of this case and knew as soon as they entered the room that there was nothing they could do for her. They would have checked for signs of life but left the body otherwise undisturbed.
Kara and I spent hours searching the scene for anything at all, the Forensics team doing the same. No one found anything that would lead us to the killer. Everything was back to normal, as normal as it could be. This killing was exactly like the others, save for the message that came with the third killing.
My phone rang as I was looking through the couple’s personal effects in the main bathroom. Numerous medications prescribed to both of them lined the interior of the medicine cabinet, cluttered the counter and sat hidden away in the drawers. Everything from blood thinners, anti-cholesterol medication and nitroglycerin to ointments, creams, lotions and even Viagra.
“Detective Munroe.”
“Detective, it’s Leonard Heisenberg.”
No further introduction was required. Dr. Heisenberg was the forensic psychologist and behavioural expert for the OPP. He was also a hell of a profiler.
“Go ahead.”
“I’ve been reading through the last case and looking at some of the details. The killer showed a sense of remorse for killing a pregnant woman. It’s likely he feels some guilt for all of the murders but has a reason he considers just. I was just informed that there was another murder, is that correct?”
“I’m at the scene now. An elderly woman, husband died of an apparent heart attack when he found her. There’s nothing else different about this one.”
He paused for a moment, taking in the dual loss of life. “What a shame. Too much for him to handle it would seem.” Another pause. “There is something different here—the time frames. Serial killers tend to speed up as they go along but two days in between killings is rather rare, especially for a murderer who clearly stalks his prey.”
“Unless he’s been keeping tabs on more than one at a time I’d have to agree. It would take time to determine the patterns of the couple and find a woman who’d be alone at night.”
“My professional opinion?”
“Always welcome.”
“His last murder left him unsatisfied. The fact that the young woman was pregnant was too much for him to bear. Though instead of letting his world crash down around him he struck out again in an attempt to regain control. If nothing else is different on this killing, I would believe that he has, in his mind, gotten back on track.”
“What about the husband dying? Wouldn’t that have changed the game for him as well?”
“Not necessarily. He chooses women who have someone living with them. He wants someone to find them, and I believe he wants them to feel agony and helplessness. This man dying as a result would likely bolster the suspect, make him feel as though he had succeeded better than ever before.”
I understood what he was saying but I was missing a major part—what it all meant.
Heisenberg seemed to sense the lingering question. “I believe, and were I a betting man I’d probably put a great deal on it, that he will not strike again for some time. A week or so, possibly up to two.”
A sigh of relief before I spoke. “That’s good news. But unfortunately we still have very little to go on. If this elderly woman was killed in haste, wouldn’t you think he might have made a mistake?”
“Your suspect is a perfectionist. Order is very important to him. He wouldn’t sacrifice his methods even if it meant having to give up a kill. I would hazard that the reason this last victim was elderly was that he was afraid of revisiting his previous crime. By selecting an older woman he didn’t run the risk of murdering another pregnant woman.”
??
?Thanks Doc.” I needed to ask it again, just to be certain. “So you think we’re on offense for a while?”
“I do. A week, two if you’re lucky. Make them count.”
I had to do it, even if it was just for my benefit. “No uncertainty?”
Heisenberg laughed. “Is that a joke?”
“Only in principle,” I said.
“Clever, Detective.” He was still laughing faintly. “Good luck,” he said.
I pressed “end call” and slid the phone back into its holster on my belt. Kara was pleased when I relayed the doctor’s opinion but I could tell that our thoughts were the same: if he didn’t kill again, would we have any chance to catch him? We had been playing cleanup for so long while waiting for an error—DNA left at the scene, hairs, fibres, a decent eyewitness, anything we could go on—that we weren’t sure we could catch him without another body.
It was a depressing thought and neither of us spoke beyond what was necessary as we finished up at the scene, delegated tasks to the other detectives and uniformed officers that had arrived, and returned to the office. The only satisfaction came from tearing off two pages of my calendar. It was June tenth now. Laconic; concise to the point of seeming rude or mysterious, using or involving the use of a minimum of words. How fitting as we sat in silence, pouring over documents and awaiting news that something had been found.
The call never came.
—9—
Three days had passed since the last murder and the good doctor’s theories were presenting as fact. We all felt that we were in a sort of grace period. It was like the five days of celebration that never existed on the Julian calendar—an unmarked end to the year. Days that time itself forgot.