A Clamour of Rooks (The Birdwatcher Series Book 4)

by European P. Douglas

  Chapter 6

  Megan Stanver was braver than before but still light years away from living a normal life. Her mother still watched her every move, perhaps more so since Megan and Ellie had absconded to find out where Spalding had wanted Sarah and Tyler to see.

  That was a day Megan thought about often and with both regret and happiness mingled as one. It had been an adventure with Ellie. The two of them freer than they had been in so many years and then suddenly fear and terror gripped them at the thought Sarah and Tyler were involved with Spalding and had met him at that empty spot in the forest. Megan recalled the thumping heart and swimming head as they ran headlong into the woods, escaping something unseen but felt deeply. It was a lucky thing that neither of them had sprained an ankle or broken a leg.

  The regret she held was believing this idea and then letting Ellie talk her into going to the police with it. Both Sarah and Tyler had been in contact with her since that time and she had apologised but she got the sense she put them through bad trouble needlessly. Neither of them admitted to this but she felt it was true.

  Ellie was gone home before Megan had spoken to either of them and she was sure Ellie wouldn’t talk to them if they tried. It had strained things between herself and Ellie and that was a great shame after all they had been through together. They were still in touch, but Megan could see the dropping off of their relationship. Long distance never works, she thought. The multiple messages a day dropped to one message a day and then less frequent. The daily phone call went to every three days, then a week and now it wasn’t any kind of schedule at all that Megan could discern. In a couple of months, it might all stop completely and that would be the end of that. It wasn’t what Megan wanted but it took two people to keep a friendship going, she couldn't do it alone.

  Perhaps it would be for the best, she thought. Maybe moving on in their lives meant leaving one another behind. It was hard to have a relationship based on mutual horrors suffered and they were always going to be reminded of what had happened as long as they were in contact.

  Megan took up her phone and scrolled to the most recent thread of messages with Ellie. It had been two days ago. The phone started buzzing in her hand and in her fright, Megan dropped it and it slid off the sofa cushions and onto the floor where it lay screen facing up. Leaning over to retrieve it, she saw it was Ellie who was calling. How coincidental was that!

  “Hi Ellie, I was just thinking about you...;”

  “Megan!” Ellie’s voice was throbbing with tears, almost choked off and hoarse. Megan’s heart jumped into her throat. “I’ve called you to say goodbye.” Her voice was jittery, coming in segments like she was in great pain and talking between gasps for breath.

  “Ellie! What’s wrong? Are you alright?”

  “It’s over,” Ellie gasped, “We should never have escaped.”

  “Ellie, tell me what's happening?”

  “He’s here,” Ellie replied in a sobbing whisper. “He has me.” Megan’s blood ran cold and yet she had to ask the stupidest question of her life,

  “Spalding?”

  “He’s here,” Ellie repeated. “Goodbye Megan.”

  “Run Ellie, you have to run, you can’t just give up!”

  “I’m tired of running” she cried, “I’ve been running for so long now it will be nice to stop and rest.” Her voice was slowing, and Megan wondered if she was losing consciousness.

  “Ellie!” she screamed down the phone, “It won’t be a rest, it will be the end of everything!”

  “That sounds nice,” Ellie slurred, her voice lilting towards happiness somehow.

  “Ellie,” Megan was sobbing now, feeling all was lost. The door flew open and Megan’s mother came into the room, obviously having heard Megan screaming.

  “Megan? What’s wrong, why are you crying?”

  “He has Ellie!” Megan sobbed and then back to the phone said, “Please Ellie, no.”

  “I’m calling the police right now,” Melissa Stanver said but Megan was concentrating on the phone hoping to hear something else from her friend.

  “Bye Megan,” Ellie said so low it was barely audible, “Take care.”

  “No,” Megan said, shaking the phone as though it were Ellie herself, trying to revive her.

  “Don’t worry, she’s not in any real pain anymore,” the placating voice of Spalding came on the line.

  “You bastard, what did you do to her?”

  “Megan? Who are you talking to? Get off the phone!” Melissa was coming towards her and Megan turned away and arched her hip at her mother to stop her getting hold of the phone in her hand. Spalding was chuckling softly,

  “This is what you get for going to the FBI about the coordinates when I told you not to tell anyone else about them,” Spalding said. Megan could make out her mother's voice on to the police, but no words registered with her.

  “You’re going to get caught!” Megan spat.

  “I better be on my way,” he said, “I have a feeling some unwanted guests are going to arrive here very soon.” He hung up before Megan could say anything in reply and Megan stopped struggling and her mother grabbed the phone and stepped back from her. Melissa lifted the phone to her ear for a moment and listened and then looked to her daughter.

  “The FBI are on their way to Ellie’s house,” she said.

  “It’s too late,” Megan said, dropping to her knees on the thick carpet. Her mother kneeled before her and took her into an embrace.

  “I’m so sorry, Meg,” she said. Megan’s mind was scrambled as she pictured Ellie dying beside the phone and Spalding standing over her, a grin on his face. Perhaps it would have been better if they had never escaped from the farmhouse dungeon.

  “We need to get ready to leave here now Meg,” Melissa was saying but she wasn’t really hearing it. “They’ll get to Ellie, they’ll catch him,” Melissa went on as the sirens rang out as police made headway to their own home as a precaution.

  “Why did I listen to her?” Megan wailed. Melissa didn’t know what she was talking about, but she hugged her daughter tight and let her cry bitterly until the police arrived at the door.

  Chapter 7

  Mrs Stanver’s call was relayed to Sarah right away now that she was part of the Spalding case. A local FBI team was rallied and set out for the house. Sarah made her way to the landing strip and got on the small plane that was always ready to go. She kept track of things on a satellite link to the armour cameras of the team members who were on their way to Ellie’s house hoping to find Spalding trying to escape. A regional array of roadblocks had been set up in concentric circles from the street address. Surely it had been fast enough to ensnare him, she thought, but an ill feeling in her heart told it wouldn’t be.

  Sarah could be on the ground in an hour and half, but it would be agonizing waiting that long to get there. She could imagine Spalding walking the streets, dipping into a house as police sped to the scene, laughing to himself as he made his slow and confident escape.

  She watched the screens with great interest as the team arrived at Ellie’s house. They each knew what to do and the unit moved as one machine surrounding the house before making the incursion within. Sarah had noticed the front door was open and her heart sank at the thought of it. He had walked out without a care in the world and he was long gone, they were not going to get him today.

  The scene within the house was minimal. Camera’s moved from room to room, sweeping the place and each time they shouted ‘Clear.’ There was no sign of anyone, dead or alive. Finally, the whole house was searched once and there was no one there.

  “Is there a basement?” Sarah shouted into the mic. There was a moment of silence and then to different voices came back that there was not. “Dammit!” Sarah said and then she saw something.

  “You!” she shouted, getting confused as to which camera she was shouting at.

  "Found something,” the operator of the same camera said at that same moment. “There’s a note on the table here, and
what looks like a drop of blood.”

  “Can you read it without touching it?” Sarah asked, trying to see it in the camera. Her eyes was drawn to the bright red blood drop.

  “No, but I’m fully covered, I can move it to see what it says?” the team member said. Sarah hesitated for one second and then said,

  “Do it!” She didn’t want to be responsible for them not reading a note that was telling the people on the ground that there was a bomb in the house or something like that. Everything else went silent as all eyes were on the note and the team member’s gloved hands as they reached for it.

  “Be gentle with it,” Sarah urged, the tension making her feel like she had to say something. The hands on the screen hesitated a moment at this but went on all the same. Timid gloved fingers pressed into the fold in the paper and opened it out flat. The camera was positioned to see just what the agent saw, and Sarah could read the few words written there in a neat hand. Her heart jumped when she saw it was addressed to her!

  Sarah, do you like board games? Clue, perhaps?

  That was it.

  “Who’s Sarah?” one of the agents asked. Sarah could tell they were thinking this was just something that had been left in the house prior to the event, a family message perhaps, but she knew differently.

  “I’m Sarah,” she said, and she wondered if Spalding knew she was officially on the case now.

  “Do you know what it means?” the captain of the ground team asked her.

  “Not yet,” she said, “But this guy likes playing games, I’m sure we’ll understand it soon enough.”

  The rest of her trip was spent listening to reports from possible sightings of the suspect to boring check-ins from patrols saying the same thing over and over- nothing to report. It was getting too long for the roadblocks to have been of any use. She could only hope he was still within the perimeter as the street-by-street searches were being carried out.

  Ellie’s body hadn’t been found and no one had been able to contact any of her remaining family either. It was like they had all three of them disappeared from the face of the earth. It didn’t look good for any of them and Sarah wondered if it would turn out to be Ellie’s blood on the counter. She thought it would be, but it could be anything, a clue to another case for all she knew. Spalding was so unpredictable and sometimes he took what seemed like crazy risks to get what he wanted. Who would have thought he would go back to Ellie's house to get her?

  Had Ellie been right about Spalding being in the house before and moving things on her? When Sarah had spoken to her about this at Megan’s house, Sarah felt Ellie had been going through some kind of mental or emotional episode and she hadn’t believed her. The house had been checked and there were no signs of any access points unless the family had left a door or window unlocked which they swore blind they would never do after what had happened to Ellie once she was back home.

  After what felt like a whole day of travelling, Sarah was finally standing in the house looking at the note and the blood stain with her own eyes. Forensics had taken a sample of the blood for analysis, but the letter was waiting for her. She looked at it closely, seeing that it was paper taken from a notepad beside the phone. There was no sign of the pen it was written with.

  “The guard has been found,” someone called from the back door. Sarah went there knowing the man was dead.

  “Where is he?” she asked the person who had called it in.

  “In a car a few blocks away. Probably his own. His throat is cut and there is another note...;” the agent hesitated a moment then went on, “For you.”

  “What does it say?” Sarah asked.

  “I never knew why that big fancy mansion never had a garage,” he replied. Sarah pursed her lips in anger and pointed to the note on the table,

  “Is it the same paper as that?” she asked. The agent looked and then nodded.

  “Looks the same,” he said.

  “He went back to the car to leave that second note after he was here,” Sarah said. His arrogance and confidence was infuriating. “Make sure there’s nothing else of note in the car!” She was going back to the counter when she thought of something else. “And ask the people patrolling to keep an eye out for scraps of paper on the ground, he might be leaving us a trail!”

  She went back and looked at the note. Both had referenced the game Clue, but what did that mean? The game had no significance in her life. Did Spalding perhaps think she used to play it with her parents when she was a little girl, and they were still alive? Was the game under the stairs where he’d hidden the night of her prom as he waited to kill her mother? Sarah shook her head to rid herself of these ideas; she didn’t want to start getting teary eyed in front of the rest of the agents here. She went outside to get some air.

  What a nice street this was, she thought. It looked so quiet and happy. How wrong appearances could be. Another radio check came in.

  Nothing to report.

  Chapter 8

  Detective Freeman had reported the case to the FBI a day after he was assigned to it. Now it was late in the evening and he was at the scene again, wanting to see the place at night for himself to see how it was and what views were afforded of the house from the streets and surrounding properties. Having satisfied himself that no one save a person on the actual grounds of this house had any way of seeing what was going on inside he made his way back to the front door. When he got there, he saw a car he didn’t recognise and a man and woman standing there looking at the house. FBI if ever I saw one, Freeman thought.

  “Can I help you two agent’s with anything?” he asked. They turned and looked at him.

  “Are you Detective Freeman?” the woman asked. Freeman thought she looked very tired.

  “Yes, and you are?”

  “Agent’s Brightwater and Delgado, FBI,” she said as they both flashed IDs.

  “Do you guys practise that?” Freeman laughed, “It looked perfectly synchronised.”

  “We aim to impress,” Delgado said with a smile.

  “You called in this case to us?” Brightwater asked. So, the man is the fun one, Freeman thought.

  “Yes, you can call me Jed,” he said as he walked to the front door beckoning them to follow.

  “Sarah and Pedro,” the man gave their first names, but Sarah cut in again,

  “Why didn’t you report this case to us right away?” she asked.

  “I wanted to have a look at it myself first,” he replied, feeling no compunction at all to lie. If they were as good as they should be, they would both understand. They would have been police officers too at one point in their careers. Delgado pursed his lips and smiled in agreement and Sarah rolled her eyes.

  “Let’s go in and have a look,” she said. They understood alright, Freeman thought.

  The door was unlocked and the three of them went inside, the two agents looking at the copy of the file each of them had.

  “They were all sitting here at the end of the stairs, trapped inside?” Sarah asked, pointing to the steps.

  “Scared as hell too,” Freeman nodded.

  “Did you manage to come up with any ideas or theories while you looked over the place?” Sarah asked.

  “This was well planned but seems to be pointless. We can’t find any motive for any of the murders,” Freeman said, “It seems to be all about games,” he finished. Sarah looked at him,

  “What do you mean by that?” she asked.

  “Well, they were all brought here for one of those ‘murder in the dark’ nights, you know where the lights go out and someone is the killer?”

  “Only this time someone really was the killer,” Sarah added. Freeman nodded,

  “It's not just that though, I haven’t put it in the report yet as I only thought about it a little while ago.” He paused here a moment before going on to say what he thought, feeling pretty sure he was not going to be making a fool of himself. “The places they were all killed,” he said. “They were all the rooms from the boardgame ‘Cl
ue.’” Sarah’s face went white at this and Freeman was worried about her for a moment. He looked to Delgado as though he might know what to do with her. “What is it?” Freeman asked.

  “This is where he was sending me,” she said. “This is definitely part of the larger case.”

  “What? What larger case?” Freeman asked, not liking being left out of whatever was going on here.

  “Get the forensics team back here right away,” she said to Delgado and then turning back to Freeman said, “I want a list of every single person who has been in this house or on the grounds since your discovery of the murders.”

  “What’s going on?” Freeman asked again.

  “This is a lot more complicated than it looks,” Sarah said, “But you were right about it all being part of a game.”

  “Whose game?” he asked.

  “It’s an FBI case, Detective and I’m afraid we can’t speak about it,” Sarah replied. He could see the determination in her eyes and the cogs in her head whirling around. This meant something to her, something real.

  “Spalding?” he asked. Freeman always kept up with police news and one of the best places to get that was the disreputable ‘news’ websites out there. Kernels of truth in everyone's story if you knew how to look. He knew he’d heard the name Sarah Brightwater before and now he knew where. Her wide eyes that turned suddenly so distrustful gave him his second answer.

  “What?” she snapped at him.

  “You’ve already told me the answer,” he informed her. “You’re personally invested, big time.”

  “What do you know about it?” Sarah asked and Freeman was surprised to see her hand inching towards her gun. He held up his hands and looked at Delgado for support.