Whispers of the Dead dh-3

by Simon Beckett

  Sam might be already dead.

  Restless, I left the kitchen. A forensic unit was on its way to the house, but no one seriously expected them to find anything significant. Even so, I was still careful not to touch anything as I went into the lounge. It was a comfortable, cheery room: soft sofa and chairs, coffee table half covered with magazines. It was imprinted with Sam’s personality far more than Paul’s; thoughtfully designed, but still a room for living in rather than admiring.

  I turned to go, and my eye fell on a small photo frame on the smoked glass cabinet. The picture was an almost abstract pattern of black and whites, but the sight of it was like a punch in the stomach.

  It was a prenatal scan of Sam’s baby.

  I went back out into the hall. I stopped by the front door, visualizing what must have happened. A knock on the door. Sam opening it, seeing a paramedic there. She’d be confused, convinced there was some mix-up. Probably smiled as she tried to explain the mistake. And then… what? There were bushes screening the front door, the big maple tree in the garden further blocking it from view. But York wouldn’t have taken any chances on being seen. So he’d have tricked or forced his way inside somehow, before quickly overpowering her and bundling her into the wheelchair.

  Then he’d brazenly pushed her down the path to his waiting ambulance.

  I noticed something on the floor by the skirting board, specks of white on the beige carpet. I bent down for a closer look, and jumped as the front door suddenly opened.

  Jacobsen paused when she saw me crouching in the hall. I got to my feet and gestured at the white flecks.

  ‘Looks like York was in a hurry. And no, I haven’t touched anything.’

  She examined the carpet, then the skirting board next to it. There were scuff marks on the woodwork.

  ‘Paint. He must have caught the skirting board with the wheelchair,’ she said. ‘We’d wondered how York got Professor Irving out of the woods. It was a good half-mile to the nearest parking place. That’s a long way to move a grown man, especially if he’s unconscious.’

  ‘You think he used a wheelchair then as well?’

  ‘It’d explain a lot.’ She shook her head, annoyed at the oversight. ‘We found what looked like cycle tracks on the trails near where Irving went missing. It’s a popular area with mountain bikers, so it didn’t seem relevant at the time. But wheelchairs have similar tyres.’

  And even if York had encountered anyone as he was pushing an unconscious Irving back along the trail, who would have thought anything of it? He’d just have looked like a carer taking an invalid out in the fresh air.

  We went back into the kitchen. I saw Jacobsen looking at the half-full coffee percolator. Without asking I poured her a cup and topped up my own.

  ‘So what do you think?’ I asked, quietly, as I handed it to her.

  ‘It’s too soon to say…’ she began, then stopped. ‘You want me to be honest?’

  No. I gave a nod.

  ‘I think we’ve been two steps behind York all along. He fooled us into thinking you were his target, and walked in here while we were looking the other way. Now Samantha Avery’s paid for our mistakes.’

  ‘You think there’s any chance of finding her in time?’

  She looked into her coffee as though she could divine the answers there. ‘York won’t want to take long over this. He knows we’re looking for him, and he’ll be excited and eager. If he hasn’t killed her already, she’ll be dead before the night’s out.’

  I put my cup down, feeling suddenly nauseous. ‘Why Sam?’ I asked, although I could guess.

  ‘York needed to reassert his ego after his failure with Dr Lieberman. We were right about that much, at least.’ Jacobsen sounded bitter. ‘Samantha Avery would’ve ticked all the boxes: the wife of Dr Lieberman’s probable successor, and nearly nine months pregnant. That’d make her doubly attractive. It guarantees headlines and, if we’re right about the photographs, it also feeds into York’s psychosis. He’s fixated on capturing the moment of death on film, believing that’ll somehow reveal the answers he’s looking for. So from his point of view, who could be a better victim than a pregnant woman, someone who’s literally full of life?’

  Christ. It was insane, and yet the worst of it was there was a twisted logic behind it. Futile and obscene, but there all the same.

  ‘And what then? He isn’t going to find the answers he’s looking for by killing Sam.’

  Jacobsen’s face held a bleakness I’d not seen before. ‘Then he’ll tell himself she wasn’t the right one after all and carry on. He’ll know time’s against him, no matter how much his pride says otherwise, and that’s going to make him desperate. Maybe next time he’ll go after another pregnant woman, or even a child. Either way, he won’t stop.’

  I thought of the tortured faces in the photographs and had a sudden image of Sam going through the same ordeal. I rubbed my eyes, trying to banish it.

  ‘So what happens now?’

  Jacobsen stared out of the window at the advancing night. ‘We hope we find them before morning.’

  Before the next hour was out, the evening’s quiet had been rent apart. TBI agents descended on the sedate neighbourhood, knocking on every door in the hope of finding more witnesses. Plenty of people could recall seeing an ambulance that afternoon, but no one had noticed anything remarkable about it. Ambulances were self-explanatory. The sight of one might arouse morbid curiosity, but few people would question why it was there.

  Certainly none of Sam and Paul’s neighbours.

  Gardner hadn’t managed to learn anything more from Candy. All she could say for sure was that it had been a man of indeterminate age wearing a paramedic’s uniform. Well, it looked like a uniform, she thought: dark trousers and a shirt with badges on it. And some sort of hat or cap that hid most of his face. A big man, she’d added, more hesitantly. White. Or perhaps Hispanic. Not black, at any rate. At least, she didn’t think so…

  It hadn’t even struck her as odd that the ambulance driver had been alone. And she’d been able to offer even less information about the ambulance itself. No, of course she hadn’t taken the licence number. Why should she? It was an ambulance.

  ‘There were no obvious restraints, so Samantha must have been stunned or unconscious,’ Gardner said, while Paul was on the phone to Sam’s mother. ‘It’s possible he used some sort of gas, but I think the oxygen mask was probably just a prop to dissuade any watching neighbours from intervening. Gas is too hit and miss, especially if someone’s struggling, and York would’ve wanted to put her out as soon as possible.’

  ‘He wouldn’t use brute force,’ Jacobsen said. ‘If you knock someone unconscious there’s a danger of concussion or brain damage, and York wouldn’t want that. He needs his victims fully aware when he kills them. He wouldn’t risk clubbing them over the head.’

  ‘He did Irving’s dog,’ Gardner reminded her.

  ‘The dog was incidental. He was after its owner.’

  Gardner squeezed the bridge of his nose. He looked tired. ‘Whatever. The fact is he obviously knocked Samantha Avery out somehow. But at least if he has to wait till she comes round, that might give us more time.’

  I hated dispelling even that slight hope. ‘Not necessarily. He only needs his victims unconscious long enough to get them into the ambulance. After that it doesn’t matter. However he does it, if they’re only unconscious for a few minutes it probably won’t take them long to recover.’

  ‘I didn’t realize you were an expert,’ Gardner said tartly.

  I could have pointed out that I used to be a GP, or that I’d once been drugged myself. But there was no point. Everyone was feeling the strain, and Gardner more than most. No one had emerged from this with any credit, but as the Assistant Special Agent in Charge of the investigation, the final responsibility ultimately lay with him. I didn’t want to add to that burden.

  Not with Sam’s life at stake.

  Paul himself seemed to have crossed beyond fear and pani
c into a state of numb isolation. When he came back from phoning Sam’s parents he sat without speaking, staring into the impossible nightmare that had engulfed his life. Her parents would be flying out from Memphis the next day, but he hadn’t bothered calling anyone else. The only person he wanted now was Sam; everyone else was an irrelevance.

  I felt torn over what to do. I wasn’t needed there, but I couldn’t simply leave Paul and go back to my hotel. So I sat with him in the lounge as coffee-breathed TBI officers went about their business, and the last hours and minutes of one day ticked inexorably towards the next.

  It was just after eleven when Jacobsen came into the lounge. Paul quickly looked up, hope dying in his eyes as she gave a quick shake of her head.

  ‘No news. I just wanted to ask Dr Hunter a couple of things about his statement.’

  He sank back into his lethargy as I went out with her. I saw she was carrying a folder in her hand, but it wasn’t until we were in the kitchen that she opened it.

  ‘I didn’t want to upset Dr Avery with this yet, but I thought you should know. We rechecked the footage from the hospital’s security cameras around the time York called Dr Lieberman from the payphone. You were right about the ambulance.’

  She handed me a black and white photograph from the folder. It was the CCTV still I’d seen before, showing the shadowy figure of York crossing the road by the phone booth. The rear of the parked ambulance was visible at the left hand side of the frame. It was hard to say, but he could have been heading towards it.

  ‘The ambulance arrived ten minutes before York used the payphone and left seven minutes later,’ Jacobsen said. ‘We can’t see who was driving, but the timing fits.’

  ‘Why would he have waited ten minutes before making the call?’

  ‘Maybe he had to wait until there was no one around, or perhaps he wanted to savour the moment. Or gather his nerve. Either way, at ten o’clock he went to make the call, then came back out and waited. Dr Lieberman would’ve been in a hurry, so it should’ve only taken a few minutes for him to make it outside. When he didn’t show York would have waited awhile before realizing something was wrong and getting out of there.’

  I played it through in my mind: York glancing anxiously at his watch, his confidence bleeding away when his victim didn’t appear. Just another minute; just one more… And then driving away, furious, to plan his next move.

  Jacobsen pulled out another photograph from the folder. This one had been taken in a part of the hospital I didn’t recognize. An ambulance was caught in the centre of the frame, blurred by motion.

  ‘This was taken on a different stretch of road a few minutes before the ambulance pulled up outside the mortuary,’ she said. ‘We traced its route backwards on other security cameras. It’s definitely the same vehicle. This is the best shot we’ve been able to find.’

  That wasn’t saying much. The photograph had been enlarged to the limits of useful magnification, and had the out-of-focus look of still lifted from video. The angle made it impossible to see whoever was inside the cab, and from what I could see there was nothing remarkable about the ambulance itself: a boxy white van with the predominantly orange livery of East Tennessee’s main emergency service.

  ‘How can you be sure this is the same one York used?’ I asked.

  ‘Because it isn’t a real ambulance. The markings look authentic, but only until you compare them to the real thing. Not only that, but it’s a model that’s at least fifteen years old. That’s way too old to be still in use.’

  I examined the photograph more carefully. Now she’d mentioned it the ambulance did look dated, but it was good enough to fool most people. Even in a hospital. Who would think to look twice?

  I handed the photograph back. ‘It looks pretty convincing.’

  ‘There are companies that specialize in selling used ambulances. York could’ve probably picked up an old model like this for next to nothing, and then repainted it in the right colours.’

  ‘So can you trace where it came from?’

  ‘Eventually, but I’m not sure how much good that’ll do us. York probably used a credit card from one of his victims to buy it. And even if not I doubt it’ll help us find him now. He’s too smart for that.’

  ‘What about the registration?’ I asked.

  ‘We’re still working on it. The plates are visible in some shots, but they’re too dirty to make out. Could be intentional, but the vehicle’s sides are splashed as well, so it’s obviously been driven through mud some time recently.’

  I thought about what Josh Talbot had said when he’d identified the dragonfly nymph from the casket. The body had to have been left close to a pond or lake. Probably right by the water’s edge… They’re not called swamp darners for nothing.

  ‘At least now we’ve a better idea of what we’re looking for,’ Jacobsen went on, putting the photographs back into the folder. ‘Even without the registration we can release a description of the ambulance. That’ll narrow things down a little, if nothing else.’

  But not enough. York had been given plenty of time to reach wherever he was going. Even if he hadn’t crossed the state line, there were hundreds of square miles of mountain and forest where he could lose himself.

  And Sam.

  I looked at Jacobsen and saw the same thought in her eyes. Neither of us spoke, but an understanding passed between us. Too late. Inappropriate as it was, I was suddenly conscious of how close we were standing, of the way the scent of her body underlay the light perfume after the long day. The sudden awkwardness between us told me she was aware of it as well.

  ‘I’d better get back to Paul,’ I said, moving away.

  She nodded, but before either of us could say anything else the kitchen door opened and Gardner walked in. One look at his seamed face was enough to tell me that something had happened.

  ‘Where’s Dr Avery?’ he asked Jacobsen as though I weren’t there.

  ‘In the lounge.’

  Without a word he went out again. Jacobsen went with him, all emotion carefully smoothed from her face. The air seemed suddenly cold as I followed.

  Paul didn’t seem to have moved since I’d left him. He still sat hunched in the chair, a mug of coffee standing cold and untouched on the low table beside him. When he saw Gardner he stiffened, holding himself like a man preparing for a physical blow.

  ‘Have you found her?’

  Gardner quickly shook his head. ‘Not yet. But we’ve had a report of an accident involving an ambulance on Highway 321, a few miles east of Townsend.’ I knew the place by name, a small, pretty town in the foothills of the mountains. Gardner hesitated. ‘It isn’t confirmed yet, but we think it was York.’

  ‘Accident? What sort of accident?’

  ‘It was in a collision with a car. The driver says the ambulance took a bend too fast and sideswiped him coming the other way. Spun both of them round, and the ambulance went into a tree.’

  ‘Oh, Christ!’

  ‘It took off again, but according to the car driver the front fender and at least one of the lights were smashed. By the sound it made he thinks there could have been some mechanical damage as well.’

  ‘Did he get the registration?’ I asked.

  ‘No, but a banged-up ambulance is likely to get noticed. And at least now we know which way York was headed.’

  Paul had jumped up from his seat. ‘So now you can put up roadblocks?’

  Gardner looked uncomfortable. ‘It isn’t that simple.’

  ‘Why the hell not? For Christ’s sake, how hard can it be to find a beat-up ambulance when you know which damn way it’s heading?’

  ‘Because the accident was five hours ago.’

  There was silence as his words sank in.

  ‘The driver didn’t report it straight away,’ Gardner went on. ‘Seems like he thought it was a real ambulance, and was worried he might get into trouble. It was only when his wife convinced him to try for compensation that he called the police.’

  P
aul was staring at him. ‘Five hours?’ He sat down, as though his legs would no longer support him.

  ‘It’s still a valuable lead,’ Gardner insisted, but Paul wasn’t listening.

  ‘He’s gone, hasn’t he?’ His voice was flat and lifeless. ‘He could be anywhere. Sam could be already dead.’

  No one contradicted him. He stared at Gardner with such intensity that even the TBI agent seemed to flinch.

  ‘Promise me you’ll catch him. Don’t let the bastard get away with this. Promise me that much, at least.’

  Gardner looked trapped. ‘I’ll do my best.’

  But I noticed he didn’t look Paul in the eye as he said it.

  CHAPTER 21

  THEY FOUND THE AMBULANCE next morning. Id spent most of that night in an armchair, dozing fitfully. It seemed endless. Each time I woke I’d check my watch and find that only a few minutes had passed. When I looked out of the window and saw a golden glow breaking in the sky, it felt as though time was starting up again.

  Glancing at the other armchair, I saw that Paul was wide awake. He didn’t seem to have moved all night. I stood up stiffly.

  ‘Do you want a coffee?’

  He shook his head. Flexing my neck and shoulders, I went into the kitchen. The coffee had been warming all night, filling the room with a stale, burnt odour. I poured it down the sink and made a fresh pot. I switched off the light and went to stand by the window. Outside, the world was starting to take form in the early morning gloom. Beyond the houses opposite I could just make out the lake, its dark surface smudged with white mist. It would have been a peaceful early morning scene, if not for the patrol car parked outside, a lurid splash of reality in the tranquil dawn.

  I sipped my coffee as I stood by the kitchen window. Outside, a bird began to sing. Its lone voice was soon joined by others, a growing chorus of birdsong. I thought about Jacobsen’s grim forecast: If he hasn’t killed her already, she’ll be dead before the night’s out. As though on cue, the first shafts of sunlight touched the lake.

  It was going to be a beautiful morning.