Broken Dolls (A Jefferson Winter Thriller)

by James Carol

  The ritual is everything. What I’m doing here will get replayed over and over in my mind. I’ve already imagined this moment a thousand times.

  First, I need to shave her head one last time.

  I undo the wrist straps so she can sit up. She doesn’t struggle or complain. She knows better than that. The lessons with the knife have been painful and memorable. I work slowly, enjoying every moment. I work until her head is smooth and perfect. She lies completely still while I secure her to the table, compliant and corpselike, her spirit shattered.

  Now for the main feature.

  I show her the orbitoclast and the mallet. During our time together she’ll have seen these objects on numerous occasions. She’ll know exactly what I intend to do with them. I won’t have spared her a single detail. Her eyes widen when she sees the orbitoclast. She struggles, but there’s no real intent there. These last few months have stripped the fight from her. That’s why we’ve reached this point. When they stop fighting, they stop being fun.

  I peel back her right eyelid and slide the orbitoclast in above the eyeball, keep on pushing until the tip touches bone. Her body bucks weakly but the leather strap holds her head completely still. She’s making pathetic mewling noises. Compared to some of the screams I’ve had, these are nothing, yet it’s still one of the most beautiful sounds I’ve ever heard. Her left eye is wide with fear.

  I pick up the mallet and hit the orbitoclast with just enough force to pierce the bone. I’ve practised this and know exactly how much force to use. The bridge of the nose acts as a guide to help get the angle right. I keep going through the frontal lobes until the orbitoclast reaches a depth of two inches. It’s just like piercing a grapefruit. I pull the orbitoclast forty-five degrees to the side and the tip cuts through the brain. Another tap with the mallet, another inch deeper into the frontal lobes. This time I pull the orbitoclast from side to side, twenty-eight degrees each way. I finish by forcing the butt of it upwards to sever the interhemispherical fissure.

  At some point during the procedure my victim slipped into unconsciousness. I don’t wait for her to come back around because there’s no point. I’m not going to get any sort of worthwhile reaction from her. I feel a sense of anticlimax. The fun and games are over. This good thing has come to an end.

  I peel back the left eyelid and go to work on the left side of her brain.

  *

  We shook hands at the lab door and the professor told me to call if I needed anything else. I walked into the corridor with Templeton and the door closed behind us. Within two steps the air smelled fresher. A faint trace of the cadaver still lingered, though. It was stuck to my clothing. A whisper of the smell remained in my nostrils.

  ‘We need to talk to Hatcher,’ I said. ‘Someone needs to check museums and private collectors to see if anyone’s missing an orbitoclast. I’m hoping our unsub’s a traditionalist.’

  ‘And if he’s not?’ said Templeton.

  ‘Then he’s had an orbitoclast custom-made, which would be bad news for us since it makes it a lot more difficult to find out where he got it from.’

  ‘Maybe he made it himself.’

  ‘Unlikely. This unsub is not a blue-collar worker. He wouldn’t have the skills to make something like that.’

  ‘We could do the same thing with ECT machines,’ Templeton suggested. ‘If he’s a traditionalist then maybe someone’s missing one.’

  ‘Nice idea, but it would be a waste of time. The reason Freeman used an ECT machine was to knock his patients out. Our guy wants his victims awake. He wants them aware of what’s going on right up to the last moment.’

  ‘Jesus.’ Templeton went quiet for a moment. ‘Okay, where to now?’

  ‘Somewhere that does a decent lunch. Do you know anywhere?’

  ‘You can eat after that?’

  ‘I can always eat.’

  19

  Templeton pulled up outside a café in a narrow back street. The place had evidently been here for ever and had seen better days. The orange paintwork was peeling, and Angelica’s was written in swirling faded black letters above the doorway. The shops on either side were boarded up with wood panels that were covered with graffiti and layer upon layer of posters advertising events that had long passed into history. I looked at the café, looked at Templeton.

  ‘You’ve got to be kidding,’ I said.

  Templeton shook her head. ‘I’ve never been more serious.’

  ‘We’re in London, a city that has thousands of places to eat, a city that has some of the finest restaurants in the world, and this is the best you could come up with.’

  ‘Looks can be deceptive. Trust me, the food is amazing.’

  We went inside and the Italian guy behind the counter came around front and hugged Templeton like she was his long-lost daughter.

  ‘And how’s my favourite detective doing?’ he said.

  ‘Good, Federico.’

  ‘Still catching those bad guys so we can all sleep safe in our beds?’

  ‘I’m doing my best.’

  Federico nodded toward me. ‘Who’s your new boyfriend?’

  ‘He’s not my boyfriend.’ Templeton gave the café owner an indulgent look. ‘This is Jefferson Winter. He’s helping us out on a case.’

  Federico held out his hand and we shook. He had to be pushing seventy, but he still had a decent grip on him.

  ‘So what can I get for you guys?’

  I ordered the lasagne, while Templeton opted for the all-day breakfast. The dissection lab was already a distant memory and she’d got her appetite back. It was a cop thing. There’s a definite correlation between experience and the amount of time it takes to bounce back from something horrific. The more you’ve seen, the faster you bounce back. It had taken Templeton the best part of the drive to Angelica’s to regain her equilibrium. I was good to go by the time we reached the door of the dissection lab.

  The table by the window was empty. Window seats are great because you can watch the world go by. I unzipped my jacket, hung it on the back of my chair, then sat down and got comfortable. Outside, a steady stream of people walked past. Some were on cellphones, some walked purposefully, on a mission, all of them were wrapped up in their own private dramas. A cute girl wearing a dress much too short for the weather caught my eye because she had great legs. It was impossible not to look.

  I stared out the window and went over what I’d learned this morning, adding new details to the profile, reassessing and changing others. Federico brought our drinks over and put them on the table. I stirred two sugars into my coffee. Templeton was staring across the table at me.

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘You’re miles away there. What are you thinking?’

  ‘I’m wondering why you told me your dad was a cop.’

  ‘That wasn’t what you were thinking.’

  ‘Maybe not, but that’s what I’m thinking about now. So why did you feel the need to be disingenuous?’

  ‘Are you calling me a liar?’

  I laughed. ‘Tomato, tomato. Anyway, you’re dodging the question. Your dad wasn’t a cop, was he? Or his dad.’

  ‘No they weren’t,’ Templeton admitted. ‘My father’s an accountant.’

  ‘So, what’s the story?’

  ‘It’s stupid.’ Her voice was small and lacking in confidence.

  ‘I like stupid.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll tell you. But promise you won’t laugh, and promise you’ll never breathe a word of this to another living soul. Not a word, Winter.’

  ‘Cross my heart.’

  ‘I’ve never told this to anyone.’

  ‘Tell me or don’t tell me, but don’t keep me hanging.’

  Templeton took a deep breath then went for it. The words came out quickly, like if she didn’t get them out fast enough, she’d never get them out.

  ‘When I was a kid I didn’t want to be an actress or a ballet dancer or any of those things that little girls are supposed to want to grow up to be, I wanted t
o be a cop. Or, to be more accurate, I wanted to be a detective. Nancy Drew was my first hero. I read all the books. And I used to watch every cop show, even the really crap ones. Reruns from the seventies and early eighties, everything. Cagney and Lacey was my favourite.’

  Templeton cringed at this last admission, embarrassment written all over her face. I liked this version of Templeton as much as the tough, cocky cop version, perhaps more. It was somehow more real, a glimpse behind the mask. I understood why she presented herself the way she did. Law enforcement is still very much a male-dominated profession, and she had ambitions and big dreams. To get as far as she wanted to get, she needed to both understand and play the game. There was no way her career was going to stall at detective sergeant. She had the makings of a great detective inspector, a detective chief inspector. She could go all the way if she wanted, smash right through that glass ceiling.

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with Cagney and Lacey,’ I said.

  ‘There was everything wrong with Cagney and Lacey. I bet you hated the programme.’

  ‘Okay, you’ve got me there. I was more of an Equalizer type of guy.’

  ‘A moody loner, out to save the world one person at a time. Yeah, I can see that. Although technically speaking it wasn’t a cop show.’

  ‘Tomato, tomato.’

  Templeton laughed, and I laughed along with her.

  ‘As for why I was so obsessed, I’ve no idea. It wasn’t like I had brothers I needed to compete with, and my parents certainly weren’t pushing me in that direction. I guess I believed it was a job where you could make a difference. As soon as I was old enough I joined the Met.’

  ‘Do you still believe you can make a difference?’

  She considered this while she drank her tea. ‘Some days, yes, other days, no. On the whole, there are more yes days than no days. I guess if that changes then that’s when I’ll quit.’ She smiled that great smile. Her teeth were perfect, two neat white rows. ‘I reckon I’ve missed the boat for becoming a ballet dancer, but maybe it’s not too late to become an actress.’

  Federico arrived with our lunch. My food came without any embellishment. No salad or bread, just a slab of lasagne on a plate. It didn’t look much but Templeton was right, it tasted amazing. Templeton’s plate was piled high with a cholesterol overdose. Bacon, sausage, egg, beans, the works. I looked at her plate and wondered how she kept so slim.

  Templeton scraped some beans onto her fork. ‘So what about you? Why do you do what you do?’

  ‘I became a cop because my father was a serial killer.’

  ‘That wasn’t what I asked.’

  Templeton was right and we both knew it. She was staring again, but there was nothing warm and fuzzy about this stare. It was the sort of stare that would make an innocent man confess. This was the other side to Templeton, the cop side. The side Hatcher had warned me about. It was an uncomfortable insight into why she was so good at her job.

  ‘That explains why you joined the FBI,’ she said. ‘But it doesn’t explain why you left, and it doesn’t explain why you do what you do now.’

  I fell quiet, debating the best way to answer. There were a number of reasons I could give. One big reason and a whole load of smaller ones. All of them were true, but none on their own gave the full picture. I’d given eleven years of my life to the FBI and for the last three I was their lead profiler. I’d been awarded the Medal of Valor for my part in a high-profile kidnapping that ended with the girl alive and the kidnapper dead.

  On the face of it my FBI career was a success, however, the reality wasn’t so clear-cut. I have always been an outsider, and I’ve always done things my own way. The problem is that the FBI isn’t a place for outsiders, or people who do things their own way. The organisation is massive, thirty-four thousand employees and an eight-billion-dollar annual budget. The emphasis is on the team, and the higher up the ladder I climbed, the more obvious it was that I didn’t fit in, that I would never really fit in anywhere. I made enemies in high places. Resentments festered. Politics came into play and I’ve never been much of a politician. Whenever my methods were called into question, I argued that I did what was needed to get the job done, but that argument wore thin pretty fast.

  Those were the little reasons. The big reason was those three words mouthed in that execution chamber at San Quentin prison eighteen months ago.

  We’re the same.

  Every major decision has a tipping point, a single event that shifts enough weight to one end of the scale or the other. That was the tipping point for me. I resigned from the FBI as soon as I got back to Virginia, just packed up my desk and left and never looked back. I knew my father was screwing with me, but it didn’t make any difference. Those three words hit harder than any bullet. I’d never murdered anyone in cold blood, and I sure as hell hadn’t gone out into a forest under a cold, dead moon and hunted down an innocent woman with a high-powered rifle and a night scope.

  But knowing wasn’t enough. I needed to prove to myself that we weren’t the same, and I couldn’t do that within the constraints of the FBI. That’s why I’d chosen the path I had, and that’s why I drove myself so hard.

  We were not the same.

  But.

  My cellphone buzzed in my jeans pocket. Templeton was still staring across the table at me, expecting answers. She was going to have to wait. I thumbed the phone to life. Hatcher had sent two photographs. Both were grainy and indistinct on the cellphone’s small screen, but I could see everything I needed to see. The woman in the first picture had dark hair and brown eyes, and had been reported missing forty-eight hours ago. She wasn’t the one. I opened the second picture and a shiver shot up my spine. Everything about this woman was right. Her dark hair, her brown eyes, the confident way she held the gaze of the camera. I placed the cellphone on the table and spun it around so Templeton could see.

  ‘Meet our next victim,’ I said.

  20

  ‘Number Five will sit on the chair.’

  Adam’s distorted voice boomed around the basement. It was loud and terrifying and filled Rachel’s head with so much white noise it was impossible to think straight. The sound bounced off the smooth tiles and ricocheted throughout the room, creating strange, disturbing echoes. Rachel put her hands over her ears, crawled to the back of the mattress, and curled herself into a tight fetal ball. The lights were back on and she had her eyes shut tight to keep the glare out. To keep reality out. There was no way she was going to sit in that chair. It wasn’t going to happen.

  ‘Number Five will sit on the chair or face the consequences.’

  Rachel pushed herself right into the corner, her whole body trembling. Hot, salty tears leaked from under her eyelids.

  ‘No,’ she whispered. ‘No, no, no, no, no.’

  The door slammed open and Rachel’s head snapped towards it. Adam strode out of the brightness and stopped in front of the mattress. He was tapping an old-fashioned bamboo cane gently against his left palm. Rachel cowered deeper into the corner and tried to make herself smaller. Without warning, he brought the cane down on her back, putting his full weight into the blow. The pain was so sudden, so unexpected. Rachel let out a screech that was more animal than human and tried to push herself even further into the corner.

  ‘Number Five will sit on the chair.’

  Rachel didn’t move.

  The cane whistled through the air and bit into her back, and she let out another scream.

  ‘Number Five will sit on the chair.’

  Adam tapped the cane against the tiled floor. Tap tap tap. The rhythm was monotonous and infuriating. All Rachel could hear was the sound of the cane. It obliterated all other noise. Adam stepped to the side and the dentist’s chair loomed large in the middle of the room, filling her vision. Rachel looked at the cane then stood up and began walking. Adam followed her across the room, tapping the cane against the floor. Tap tap tap. The way he was watching her made her feel like a bug in a glass jar. The dentist’s chair was only
five metres away but those five metres felt like five miles. She hesitated in front of it, her eyes drawn to the dark stains on the cream-coloured armrests.

  ‘Number Five will sit.’

  Rachel glanced over her shoulder and saw the cane, saw that Adam wouldn’t hesitate to use it again. The skin on her back burned where he’d hit her. She sat down and the coldness of the vinyl through the sweatshirt made her skin crawl. How many other women had been strapped to this chair? What had happened to them? Rachel forced herself to stay in the chair, but it wasn’t easy. All she wanted was to bolt across the room back to the illusionary safety of the mattress. All that stopped her was the thought of what Adam might do.

  Adam leant across her to fasten the first arm strap and Rachel recoiled. His aftershave had smelled so good when she first met him, but now it turned her stomach. Adam spent a long time securing her to the chair, his fussy fingers fastening and refastening the buckles until he was satisfied. He attached the last leg restraint and straightened up, then flashed that charming smile she was learning to loathe.

  ‘There,’ he said. ‘That wasn’t so difficult now was it?’

  21

  I sat with my feet propped on a desk, drank my coffee, and watched Jamie Morris on the screen. He was doing clockwise laps of the table bolted to the floor of the interview room, going around and around like a clockwork toy. I could sense the pent-up energy, the frustration, the anger. He was wound up tight, a trapped animal, scared and desperate to escape. Morris was a reluctant forty-year-old, someone who would do anything to create the illusion that he was younger than he was. Plastic surgery, a deal with the devil, anything.