A Deadly Sin: An epic dark thriller that will have you wanting to leave the lights on.

by Tracie Podger

  Corey posted two officers to keep watch over my house, while we headed for the car. As we drove I called Samuel, the caretaker of Montford High School. I wanted access. Once it had been discovered Thomas James, or James Thomas, as he was known at the school, was the person we were seeking, a team had been sent to speak to the teachers, the principal, and search his classroom. But I needed to do that again. I needed to become him, get inside his mind.

  Samuel met us at the gates, he had them open and we pulled into the parking lot. I thanked him as he unlocked the front entrance and was dismayed to note they had no alarm system in operation. Dean, Corey, and I walked to the classroom I’d first met Thomas in. Other than a few papers scattered on the desk, the room was exactly the same as before. Not that I expected it to be any different, I guessed.

  I walked to the bookcase and scanned the books. Dean went through the drawers in his desk. I ran my finger along the spines, reading every single title. Nothing sprang out at me and disappointment started to settle in my stomach. I wasn’t sure what I expected really, a letter hidden among the books maybe.

  “Come on, there’s fuck all here,” I said, trying to keep the frustration from my voice.

  We had been back in the station for no more than a half-hour when my cell rang. I stared at it, Corey and Dean looked at me. ‘Unknown number’ flashed on the screen.

  “Don’t answer it,” Corey said.

  “What?”

  “Don’t fucking answer it.” He ran from the room, shouting for one of his FBI team as he did.

  “Fuck that,” I said, reaching for the phone.

  Dean reached for it at the same time. The phone slid from the table and I scrabbled to catch it before it hit the floor. The ringing stopped.

  “What the fuck!” I said.

  “They’ll want to trace it, Mich,” Dean said.

  “We don’t have fucking time for them to get themselves organized. He has Eddie!” My voice had risen to a shout just as the chief, Corey, and his colleague walked back in.

  The cell was taken from my hand and placed into a handset, a cord was attached to a laptop, and the cell was placed back on the table.

  “He’ll ring back, Mich, you know he will,” Corey said, gently.

  I ignored him and sat watching the cell’s digital clock click through the minutes. Eventually, a half-hour later, it rang again. I looked at Corey, on his nod, I answered.

  “Thomas?” I said.

  “Well done, Mich. I’m surprised it took you that long. What was it? At what point did you find out my name?” he said.

  “Do you have Eddie?”

  “You’re not answering my questions,” he replied.

  “Fuck your questions, there will be no conversation until I know Eddie is okay.”

  “Aw, are you worried? She’s a pretty woman, isn’t she? She smells of you, Mich, of sex. I might have to fuck her to eradicate that.”

  “You fucking…”

  “Now, now. Answer the question.”

  I took a breath. “You leased the house in your name, you prick!”

  “In my name?”

  “James Thomas. You transposed your name. Your father was Thomas Jameson.

  “Transposed. That’s a nice word but why not just use reversed?”

  “I answered your fucking question, now where is Eddie?”

  “You think I’m just going to give up a location? Really, Mich, you continue to underestimate me.”

  “I’ll find you, you sick cunt!”

  “Are you getting angry, Mich? I’m not sure I can deal with such anger.”

  I had to pull the phone away from my ear a little, so he couldn’t hear the deep breaths I was taking to regulate my heart, to control the blind anger that was threatening to overwhelm me.

  “Where is she, Thomas? It isn’t her you want, is it? So, let’s swap. I’ll give you me, if you let her go.”

  “But don’t you see, Mich? I have you. Your life is now mine. And as for finding me, that will only happen if I allow it.”

  “We found your house,” I said.

  “How, Mich? I drove past every CCTV I could, I think I might have even smiled up at one. I parked that truck in full view of the road, with the lights on, and it still took you a couple of hours to find it.”

  “Thomas, what do you want me to do?” I asked.

  “Mmm, now let me think. Oh, out of time, I’m afraid.”

  “Wait, Thomas…” My sentence was cut off as the call ended.

  I slammed my fist down on the desk. He knew exactly how many minutes he had to talk before our trace was complete.

  “It’s a voice match, for sure,” I heard. I fucking knew who I was talking to; I needed to know where he was.

  “What happened with the search at the sawmill?” I asked.

  “Turned up nothing. It’s still operational; it was sold years ago,” Corey said.

  So many dead fucking ends! I balled my fists and rubbed them over my eyes.

  “Think,” I whispered to myself. “Clean that board.” Pete leapt from his chair and cleaned one of the whiteboards.

  I wrote down everything we knew about him. His father made the caskets, so did that gave him access to the funeral home? But why would he steal my mother’s body? If he wanted revenge for what I did, why now? Why wait this long?

  “You said your mom and dad weren’t married, who’s surname do you have?” Dean asked, after reading my notes.

  “My dad’s.”

  “So maybe that’s why it took him some time to track you down.”

  “But he had my mother’s,” I said.

  “Maybe your mother meant something to him, other than her being just your mother.”

  I looked at him; he shrugged his shoulders. I stared back at the board just as the sun began to rise.

  I liked Eddie. Even after I’d punched her in the face, she didn’t shed a tear. I could see pain flash through her eyes, they watered, but she blinked the tears away. She gritted her teeth, I could see a pulse pound on the side of her neck. I placed my fingers over the pulse, wanting to feel her blood pump from her heart to her brain. She flinched, but didn’t make a sound.

  “Now, Eddie. There was absolutely no point in stabbing me, was there?” I gripped her chin and stared into her eyes. She closed them.

  “Look at me, or I’ll staple those eyelids open,” I said.

  She opened them. “That’s better,” I said, giving her a smile. “You have pretty eyes, you shouldn’t hide them away.”

  I looked down at my arm; the blood had seeped through the makeshift bandage and dripped to the floor. It was a deep wound, but I felt no pain. I think I was incapable of that. When I’d grabbed Eddie in the kitchen, she’d been standing at the sink filling a glass with water. I’d placed a rag over her mouth to stifle her scream, before jabbing her with a small dose of ketamine. I didn’t want her completely out of it. But, the silly woman had picked up a small paring knife. She rammed it into my bicep before she passed out. I didn’t particularly care about leaving my blood at the scene. Mich knew my name, and I had no intention of going to jail.

  I turned away from her. “Have you ever seen her naked?” I asked Dan. He sat on his stool and shook his head. “Bet you’ve always wanted to though, haven’t you?” He nodded that time.

  Oh, how ironic it was, I chuckled. The chief medical examiner sat on a metal stool with her feet and hands bound. Opposite her, sat her assistant. They’d stared at each other, without speaking, for a long while when I’d first brought her in. Her features displayed the shock she felt. I wonder if betrayal ran through her veins. If it did, she’d feel just a miniscule amount of what I felt.

  “It’s a shame this building was abandoned,” I said, as I walked around the room.

  I ran my hand over the white tiled walls, although the white was greyer with age. The old coroner’s building had been the perfect location for my work with Eddie. What was more amusing was the fact it was just a stone’s throw from the police statio
n, albeit not visible anymore. I chuckled and shook my head. I’d watch the police search buildings, not once had they thought to come here. Mich was going to be so pissed when he found that out.

  “Not long now, Eddie, then I’ll take you home,” I said.

  “What can you remember about Tommy Sr.?” Dean asked.

  I shook my head. “Not much, my dad worked on and off for him, over the years. They didn’t particularly like each other. I don’t know why.”

  I was getting impatient. I checked my cell regularly, making sure I had enough charge should Thomas call back. I listened to the radio comments from officers out on the streets searching, and all the time I silently prayed. I kept asking myself why. Twenty years was a long time to wait for revenge. Corey had asked for Thomas’ name to be run through all the databases the FBI had, which were way more than we had access to. If he’d spent time in prison in the U.S., his fingerprints would be on record and so far Thomas James, even James Thomas, was a fucking ghost.

  “We have a hit. Thomas James spent just under ten years in prison in Toronto for sexual assault, battery, and kidnapping of a minor, pretty nasty stuff according to the report,” Corey said, as he walked back into the room holding a document.

  “Ten years? So, he did his time, came here and took my mother?” I asked.

  “That, I can’t answer, but it goes some way to answering the why now question.”

  “I’m assuming he got deported on release…the dates don’t tie up, Corey.” I read through the report. “He was released after my mother died.” I closed my eyes for a moment. “He’s not working alone.”

  The room silenced. I stood and walked to the two whiteboards. One contained all the victims; Eddie’s name had been added to the bottom. The other had my random thoughts.

  “It took Eddie and two of her technicians to lower that cross,” I said, pointing to a photograph of Casey. “Dale was a big lad, how easy is it to lift a dead weight into a dumpster? Vicky? Okay, so he could have done what he did alone there, likewise for Louis. But he had help,” I said.

  I thought about Eddie’s team. “Someone ought to get over to the doc’s and let her guys know what’s happened,” I said. She would be expected to turn up for work shortly. Although Eddie wasn’t the only medical examiner at the facility, she was in charge.

  I paced the room, feeling completely useless as the team went about their work. Some were on the phones, others on laptops. I wanted them all out on the streets but knew Dean would have organized dozens of officers and civilians to do that.

  “Do we have all the fingerprint analysis and the DNA testing results?” I asked.

  “Just waiting on a few more but I’ll chase them up,” Dean answered.

  Our forensic team had been working around the clock; we’d pushed and pushed for results quickly but with the number of victims, things were stacking up.

  “Make sure they prioritize that blood.” I needed to know whether that was Eddie’s or his.

  One hour, then two passed and with it, my frustration grew. In all my time being a cop, and my days in the FBI, I’d never had a case that had developed as quick with so few leads. The chief was debating with the FBI on whether to release Thomas’ photograph to the media. I could see both points of view. If his picture was shown nationwide, he’d have fewer places to hide. The FBI had different ideas. All the time he had a live victim, and I’d hated those words, he might panic, kill her, and run. He might get off on the attention and play the game for longer. The rumors had already started that he was wanted, to help with inquiries, and I guessed that had started at the school when he’d failed to turn up for lessons. We would neither confirm nor deny.

  I sat with my arms crossed on a desk and my head resting on them. I tried hard not to let the anger consume me and to think rationally. I replayed every scene in my head, hoping for more clues. The house on Perry Street was under guard, no one had been there since we’d left. Thomas’ house, if it was where he truly lived was under guard; again, no one had been close. We’d searched every abandoned building in the town; we’d searched occupied ones, too. We had neighboring police forces looking out for him. It was as if he’d gone…

  “Underground,” I said, and sat upright.

  “Huh?” Dean said, sliding a coffee across the table to me.

  “Get me a map.”

  Dean stood and looked toward Pete. I guessed in the age of satellite navigation, we’d ditched the good old paper map. However, after a minute or two a map was spread out over the desk.

  “Now someone find out how the fuck we can locate any old bunkers around here,” I said.

  “Underground!” Dean said.

  “It’s the only fucking place we haven’t looked.”

  I studied the map, not far from the house Thomas lived in was woodland. Although that area had, and was still, being searched, would we have known if there was a bunker? The house had been thoroughly searched, if there was a basement, we’d have found it.

  Pete slid his laptop in front of me. He’d Googled bunkers, although not necessarily ones in our area, so we had a visual on what we needed to be looking for. Some were constructed during the Cold War by the military, others by worried homeowners. There were huge concrete entrances built into hillsides, and there were small, unobtrusive hatches camouflaged in the ground.

  “If a person built one, that’s not going to be registered anywhere, but if there’s an old military one, it would be on record,” Pete said.

  “Yeah, on a record we’d have no access to.”

  “What exactly are we looking for?” Dean asked, as he leaned over my shoulder.

  “A clearing, I guess. I can’t imagine a bunker, or whatever we want to call it, would be built in the dense trees. They’d need some kind of machinery to dig, access to it. Can we do thermal imagining?” I asked.

  “That’s going to depend on how deep the bunker is and if anyone’s in it,” Corey answered. “If you’re talking Cold War, nuclear, then I doubt it. The walls would be too thick.”

  My cell rang, startling me. Corey grabbed it before I could and replaced it on the handset that was connected to the laptop, he then handed it back to me. As before, ‘unknown number’ flashed on the screen.

  “Thomas,” I said, as I answered.

  He didn’t reply, instead I heard a scream, a woman’s scream.

  “Eddie!” I shouted down the phone.

  The scream continued until eventually dying off into sobs.

  “Oh, God, Eddie,” I shouted again. “Thomas!”

  I heard a chuckle but no one spoke. It took me a moment to realize I had tears rolling down my cheeks; they dripped to the table.

  “You fucking…” I struggled to speak. All I could hear was her cry: huge wracking sobs. “What the fuck are you doing to her?” My voice became hoarse.

  Corey snatched the phone from me and cut off the call. The room fell silent. The chief took the seat beside me and placed a hand on my shoulder. There were no words that could offer any comfort. In that moment, I knew exactly how the parents of Casey, Dale, Vicky, and Louis felt. I felt sick, my stomach knotted and roiled. I bolted from my chair and raced to the bathroom. I was leaning over the sink retching when the chief walked in. He turned on the faucet and I cupped my hands under the cold water. I splashed it on my face, in my mouth to soothe the burn from acid.

  “You and her?” he said, looking at my reflection in the mirror. I nodded.

  “How long?” he asked.

  “A while, it wasn’t serious but…”

  “No need to explain. I won’t say we’ll find her, Mich, because you know I can’t promise you that, but we’ll do all we can.”

  He grabbed a paper towel from the dispenser and handed it to me. I held it over my face to soak up the water and tears. I turned off the water and screwed the paper towel into a ball. I threw it at the trash can.

  “I’ll find her, dead or alive, I’ll find her,” I said. He nodded and we walked from the bathroom.

>   “The chuckle didn’t match our man,” Corey said, as soon as I rejoined them.

  “What?”

  “The chuckle? I don’t think that was our man.”

  “So he has someone else with him?”

  “I think so. We have a recording of Thomas’ chuckle; this one was a different tone. Now, the clip is really short but definitely different.”

  “Fuck! And we can’t trace that fucking cell?”

  He shook his head. “We know he bought it, it’s registered to him, but as for tracing the location…He’s either got some serious technological brain, or a cell we’ve never encountered.”

  It wasn’t difficult to learn how to route a signal, emails, anything that needed a satellite, or the Internet really, via different countries. It annoyed the hell out of most law enforcement agencies to see fucking tutorials on YouTube. But this guy knew exactly how long he could stay on his cell before we’d get close.

  “He knows something about forensics, and he knows how to dodge a trace. Let’s think on how. He’s a fucking schoolteacher. Or…”

  “Whoever he’s with knows,” Dean finished.

  “Ex cop?” the chief asked.

  “Who knows?” I sighed, tiredness washed over me and I gulped down some cold coffee.

  My stomach grumbled. Although Eddie had brought takeout, we hadn’t eaten a great deal of it. I wondered how the team was getting on at my house.

  “Okay, let’s focus on where he could be,” I said, returning my attention to the map. “Is there a way we can get an aerial shot of this area?” I asked.

  “Google maps,” Pete said, tapping away on his laptop.

  “Something a little more current,” I said, looking at Corey.

  “I’ll make a call but don’t hold your breath,” he replied.

  It had been known that the FBI, if the right contact had been made, to use drone and satellite imagines collected by the military. It was favor for a favor type thing and strictly off the record. While Corey made a call, I sat next to Pete to see what the Internet threw up.