Path of Bones

by L. T. Ryan

  “Why would he risk losing any of this?” Cassie wondered. “I mean, I know money isn’t everything, but was he so bored with his life that he thought he’d spend some time murdering people?”

  “It doesn’t always make sense,” Harris said. “And you’ll drive yourself crazy asking why.”

  “She’s right,” David said. “We have to be satisfied that we caught him. The next step is to make sure he goes to prison for a very long time.”

  “Actually,” Harris said. “The next step is finding out who his blackmailer is.”

  Cassie walked over to Langford’s bed and looked at the letters spread out across the top of it. There were at least a dozen of them, and they all looked ordinary. It was strange to think they had been used to instruct Langford in committing such horrific crimes.

  “Okay.” Cassie blew out a breath. “What are we working with?”

  Harris handed Cassie a pair of gloves. “So far, everything adds up. We’ve put them in chronological order as best as we could according to what Langford told us and using our best judgment. It starts with the initial requests, then goes into the letters about the women.”

  “May I?” David looked at Harris.

  “Go ahead.”

  “What I found interesting is that whoever wrote these letters was familiar with Dr. Langford. He called him by his first name, Richard, and used phrases that implied they must’ve crossed paths at some point.”

  “So, Langford does know who the blackmailer is?” Cassie asked.

  “Not necessarily.” David leaned forward and used a gloved hand to point out a couple lines here and there. “The blackmailer says things like ‘I know it won’t be hard for you to take a life, given that your profession deals in death every day,’ or this one that says ‘Your competency and willingness to take risks is what drew me to you.’”

  “Maybe he was a patient?” Cassie asked. “Is that possible?”

  “Anything’s possible at this point,” Harris said, “but yes, it seems like the blackmailer could be one of Langford’s patients or someone who was aware of him.”

  “And that’s why they chose Langford? Because Langford was smart enough to get away with murder and cavalier enough to not care that he was playing with people’s lives?”

  “Seems like it.” Harris pointed to the first letter. “In this one he talks about seeing the newspaper article describing Lucy’s disappearance. He put two and two together and figured it out. He said Langford was too smart for the police, but not smart enough to outplay him.”

  Cassie groaned. “Great, another arrogant jerk.”

  “On the plus side, this guy likes to talk. Some of these letters are three or four pages long. That means we’ll be able to get more information from them.”

  “You mean he didn’t sign his name at the bottom? That’s rude.”

  “I miss the days when serial killers told us who they were,” David said.

  “Luckily,” Harris interrupted, “we can tell a few other things from the letters.”

  “For one,” David continued, “the paper.”

  “It looks normal to me,” Cassie said, leaning closer.

  “Every detail is important. It’s stationery paper, not ordinary computer paper. There are no lines on it and no logos, watermarks or designs, either.”

  “Also inconvenient,” Cassie said.

  David ignored her. “This could be his personal stationary or he might’ve bought it for this purpose. Either way, I doubt we’ll be able to track him down from the type of paper he chose.”

  “So, it gave us no information?”

  “I wouldn’t say that,” Harris said. “Sometimes the absence of information is useful, too. It helps us rule out other factors.”

  “Fair enough,” Cassie said. “What else?”

  “He used black ink,” David continued. “We’ll be able to analyze that. But again, I doubt we’ll be able to track him down based on the type of pen he used.”

  “He wrote in cursive, though,” Harris said. “His handwriting is nice and neat.”

  “Rules out another doctor,” Cassie said. When Harris and David looked confused, she shrugged. “Their handwriting is always terrible.”

  “Still, younger generations weren’t beaten over the head with cursive the way some of us older folks were. The way he’s formed some of these letters, he might be older. Or went to a private school.”

  Cassie looked up at David to see if he was joking. His face was serious. “You can tell all of that from his handwriting?”

  “Yes and no.” David stood up and stretched his back. “These are educated guesses, emphasis on the guess. What will help is if we can pull any fingerprints off the paper.”

  “What’s the likelihood of that?” Cassie asked.

  Harris shrugged. “This guy seems smart. Don’t think he would make a mistake like that, but maybe he overestimated Langford. Maybe he figured Langford wouldn’t get caught, and therefore the letters would never be found.”

  Cassie looked back down at the letters in front of her. She had avoided looking too closely, but her eyes were drawn to Elizabeth’s letter. The picture was taken from Facebook or a dating profile. It was pixelated, but that did not distort how happy she was.

  Cassie was overcome with immense sadness. For the detectives, the victims were already dead and gone. Their stories were over, and it was time to give them justice. But for Cassie, there was more to it. Elizabeth wasn’t gone and neither were the other three victims. Their souls hadn’t been laid to rest. Their mystery hadn’t been solved.

  Cassie reached for Elizabeth’s letter, hesitated, and looked up at Harris. “My turn?”

  Harris gestured toward the letter.

  Cassie turned her attention back to the paper and as soon as she made contact, she felt a tingling surge in the tips of her fingers. She snatched her hand back, but the vision had already taken hold of her.

  Unlike the vision Jessica had given her, Cassie wasn’t transported to another place and time. She was aware of being in Langford’s bedroom surrounded by David, Harris, and the other police officers. But a series of images flashed in her mind. She swayed on her feet as she tried to make sense of it.

  “Cassie?” David asked, his voice tinged with worry. “Are you okay? Did you see something?”

  “A basement,” Cassie said. The image was already fading, and she was trying to hold onto it. “With an altar.”

  “What?” Harris asked. “What’s happ—”

  “What else?” David had witnessed this on more than one occasion. “Come on, talk to me.”

  Cassie turned to him and shook her head. “It went by so fast.”

  “Describe anything you can.”

  “It was dark. Almost pitch black. But there were candles lit on a small table. Some weird symbols drawn on the wall behind it.”

  “Could you see any identifying markers? Could you tell what kind of house it was?”

  “It went by so fast.”

  “Do you want to try again?”

  Cassie nodded and reached for another letter. She hesitated for a fraction of a second before making contact, but once she did, nothing happened. There was no electric buzz, no dizziness, and no flashing images.

  Cassie touched another letter, and another. She touched every single letter about each of the victims and then moved to the others. When she looked back at David, he already knew what she had found.

  “Nothing,” he said.

  “I’m sorry,” Harris said, holding out her hands, “but what just happened?”

  “Sometimes I get flashes,” Cassie said.

  “Flashes?” Harris looked dubious. “Of what?”

  “Images. Sometimes like a cut scene.” Cassie was still trying to recall the picture, but with every passing minute it became darker and darker, like it was fading from her memory at lightning speed. “I’m assuming the basement belongs to the blackmailer, but I can’t be sure.” Harris shot David a look and he left the room only to rea
ppear a minute later. Harris raised an inquisitive eyebrow when he reentered.

  “No basement,” he said. “Didn’t figure there would be in this part of town being at sea level and all.”

  “I thought so. We’re back to the blackmailer then,” Harris said. “But that description isn’t going to get us far.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  Harris took a deep breath. “It’s okay. We need to get these to the lab anyway. Let’s go back to the precinct and regroup. Maybe something will come to you on the way.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Cassie said, knowing it was a longshot.

  Thirty-Six

  David held the door open for Cassie and Detective Harris and shuffled in behind them. The entrance to the precinct was more active than usual. There was a man and a woman arguing loudly off to the side, while another man spoke to the intake officer. When the woman at the front desk caught sight of the three of them walking in, she sighed with relief.

  “Detective Harris,” her voice carried over the screaming couple. “I was about to call you.”

  “Everything okay?”

  The woman pointed to the man standing in front of her. “Other than Savannah going crazy like there’s a full moon tonight, this gentleman has information relevant to your case.”

  Harris stepped up to the man at the counter. “What can I do for you?”

  The man turned and took her hand. Cassie thought he looked a bit like Langford. He was tall and trim with wide shoulders and a strong jaw. The difference was in their eyes. This man looked kind. He looked like he cared. And he looked like he had something he had to get off his chest.

  “My name is Bradley Baker, and I think I know who the killer is.”

  The entranceway fell silent. The couple stopped yelling and were staring at the group with unabashed interest. David was the first to regain his composure.

  “Let’s take this somewhere more private, shall we?”

  Bradley nodded and the four made their way toward the back of the precinct to one of the more spacious meeting rooms. Harris pulled out a chair for Bradley and sat across from him.

  Cassie wasn’t sure what to do. “Should I go, or—”

  “Sit,” Harris said. “Stay, please.”

  “I’ll grab us some waters.” David backed out of the room.

  “Mr. Baker, was it?” Harris asked.

  “Doctor,” Baker said, shifting in his seat. “Dr. Baker. Call me Bradley.”

  “My name is Adelaide,” Harris said. “And this is Cassie.”

  Bradley looked between the two of them and smiled. “You must think I’m nuts.”

  “Not at all,” Harris said. “But I will say we already have a suspect in custody.”

  “Is it Langford?” Bradley sat up straighter when he saw the shock on Harris’s face. “I knew it. Jesus Christ. I knew it. I should’ve said something sooner.”

  “Whoa, whoa, hang on,” Harris said. “Let’s start at the beginning, okay?”

  David returned with the waters and set them in the middle of the table and retreated to the corner of the room and leaning against the wall.

  “The beginning,” Bradley said. “Okay. Well, I work with Dr. Richard Langford at Candler Hospital. I didn’t know him in school, but we started at Candler at the same time. We’ve worked together for, uh, some years. I’m sorry, I can’t—I can’t remember how long.”

  “It’s okay,” Harris said. “Take a deep breath. Drink some water. There’s no rush here, okay? Get through it in your own time.”

  Bradley nodded and grabbed one of the water bottles. This new side of Harris surprised Cassie. She was calm and compassionate. This was the side she showed when she talked to victims and their families. The side of her that cared about people. The side that remembered why she did this job in the first place.

  Bradley drank half the bottle of water. He screwed the top back on and placed it on the table. “Richard Langford and I have known each other for, oh, I’d say, six or seven years. I wouldn’t call us friends, but there’s no outward animosity between us. We didn’t socialize, and if we had to work together, we kept it professional.”

  “Sounds like a decent work colleague,” Harris encouraged.

  “I’ve had worse.” Bradley laughed, but not for long. “Langford can be a bit of a dick, to be honest. I learned to steer clear of him and he left me alone. I know he was cheating on his girlfriend with a couple different nurses at the hospital.”

  “Did you know his girlfriend?”

  “I’d seen her at the hospital a couple of times. She’d bring him dinner once in a while when we worked late. She seemed sweet, but we never talked. Langford complained about her all the time, but I took it with a grain of salt. I doubted half of what he said was true. The rest of it was probably blown out of proportion. And one day, I noticed she had disappeared.”

  “Did that surprise you?” Harris asked.

  Bradley shook his head. “Not really. He played the part for a couple days but seemed to get over it rather quickly. It didn’t sit right with me, but people grieve in their own way. And I hoped maybe she dropped him, you know? Got out of a bad situation.”

  Harris’s eyebrows knit together. “According to Langford, they got into a fight and she fell down the stairs. He covered up the accident and made it look like she left town.”

  “Oh.” Bradley stared at an imaginary spot on the conference table. “That’s too bad. She seemed sweet.”

  “Correct me if I’m wrong,” Harris continued, her voice gentle, “but I don’t think you’re here to talk about Lucy, are you?”

  Bradley cleared his throat and took another drink of water. “No. About a month ago, I noticed he was distracted. He’s a good doctor, but his bedside manner has always sucked. He went off on a couple of patients and a few nurses, but nothing major. Most people figured he was still grieving.”

  “But not you?”

  “He stole some things from the hospital,” Bradley said. “One of them was a bone saw. I saw him take it. I didn’t think much about it at the time. I thought maybe he was selling tools on the side. Like, maybe he had gotten in with some bad people and he was doing anything he could to make extra money.”

  “That could’ve explained his girlfriend’s disappearance, too,” Harris offered.

  “I didn’t know for sure.” Bradley’s eyes were wide. “I didn’t have any evidence and I didn’t want to accuse him—”

  “No one’s blaming you. You couldn’t have known. You didn’t do anything wrong.” Harris waited until Bradley nodded reluctantly. “What made you recall the bone saw?”

  “The news,” Bradley said. “Something wasn’t adding up. I looked at his schedule and noticed he had one of the nurses move his shifts around. For all four murders, he wasn’t working the previous night. He was off every single time.”

  “You did the right thing coming to us,” Harris said. “And I hope you can take some comfort in knowing that you were right. We caught Langford in the act and he’s in custody.”

  “Good.” Bradley swallowed hard. “Good.”

  The silence stretched on until David was the one to break it. “Why don’t you seem reassured?”

  Bradley took another large gulp of water. “Well, see, I don’t think he was working alone.”

  Cassie and David exchanged looks, but Harris kept her eyes on the man across from her. “Why’s that?”

  “Because.” Bradley looked at each one of them, redirecting to Detective Harris. “My father, William Baker, had something to do with it, too.”

  Thirty-Seven

  The room was dead silent for a solid thirty seconds. Harris sat up and placed her hands on the table. She seemed almost too calm for the current situation.

  “What makes you say that?” Harris sounded stern.

  Bradley took a deep breath, held it for the count of three, and let it out in one large rush. “My father and I aren’t close, but we do see each other about once a month or so and have for the las
t three years. Ever since he had his first heart attack.”

  Cassie couldn’t help the little “oh” that escaped her mouth.

  “Yeah.” Bradley ran a hand through his hair. “Look, this is going to sound nuts—”

  “It won’t.” Harris glanced at Cassie. “Trust me when I say this case has challenged my own perception of reality. I’ll give anything a chance at this point. Tell us your story and we’ll figure out what it all means in the end, okay?”

  “My father and I aren’t close,” Bradley repeated. “We never have been. He’s the stereotypical man’s man and I was always more sensitive than he wanted me to be. As soon as I turned 18, I left home and decided to become a doctor. I think it was the first time he was proud of me. Of course, I saw being a doctor as a way to help people. He saw it as a path to earn respect and wield power. But I didn’t care about power. I wanted to travel the world and cure people in remote villages. Help the people who were always overlooked.”

  “That sounds like a good dream to follow,” Harris offered.

  Bradley’s smile was tight. “Well, my father didn’t think so. He thought it was a waste of time. He wanted me to work in New York City and earn loads of money. He didn’t want me to waste my inheritance on people he thought would be better off dead anyway.”

  “So, you had a falling out?”

  “For about eight years,” Bradley said. “Then three years ago, he had his first heart attack. My parents are divorced but my mom is still his beneficiary. They called her when he was in the hospital and of course, she called me. I visited him a few times, but it was hard. He couldn’t understand why he was having a heart attack. He was healthy. Athletic, even. Not pushing seventy yet. I tried to tell him that sometimes that’s how the dice are rolled. Genetics could play a huge part in it.”

  “How did he take that?”

  “Not well.” Bradley laughed, but it was cold. “He went crazy. Went through doctors like candy. If one wouldn’t give him what he wanted, he found another. Started getting into holistic medicine. He started looking…elsewhere.”