Natalie almost laughed aloud. She and Steven had had wild imaginations.
“That’s right,” the woman interrupted Natalie’s thoughts. “You do remember. It’s Alana now. I’ve grown up. So have you.” She nodded at the booth. “Can I sit?”
“Sure.”
Alana seated herself across from her, then folded her hands on the table and stared at Natalie.
“You haven’t really changed much,” Alana said. “Your hair got darker. You and your brother looked like angels. Pale, pale hair, like sunshine.”
Natalie heard tears gather in the other woman’s voice, then Alana shook her head. She curled her hands around the edge of the table.
“I’m really sorry about Steven. I never got the chance to tell you that. I wanted to tell you. I went by the house a few days after he was found, but you were gone. You never came back.”
“There are only bad memories here,” Natalie said.
“Really?” Doubt flickered through Alana’s eyes. “You and Steven had a lot of fun those summers. There was a lot of good here, too.”
Natalie nodded. “It’s hard to see beyond losing Steven. My parents were never able to. They never considered coming back here.” Her mother started running when they were still on the island, when Steven’s body was wrapped and packed into the simple wood box for travel home. She didn’t look back. And Natalie’s sole reason for returning was to find closure, to figure out what had happened that last day, and to get justice, if it was to be had. She wanted to look forward, too. “Miss Iverson was a school teacher?”
Alana’s lips twitched and then her mouth opened in nervous laughter. “My son had her for the fifth grade, you know.”
“She was murdered,” Natalie said.
“She raised ladybugs in an aquarium in the classroom and in the spring the kids set them free. She was delightful.”
“She was a victim of the King’s Ferry Killer,” Natalie tried again. “Why?”
“I try not to focus on the ends of things,” Alana said. “That’s totally negative. It erases everything the person was. It reduces them to ashes, really. If I let the endings have value, then what would I think about my marriage, my inability to properly mother my son? Why think about friends in the past tense?”
Natalie wished she could think about Steven alive, running through the tall sea grass, the wind pulling at his hair, his laughter like music. She wished she could completely forget that he had ceased to exist and pretend that he was still with her. She knew memories did that, when they were allowed to. They kept the person close, breathing. Warm.
“But why her?” Natalie pressed.
“There have been a lot of murders here,” Alana said. “You’ve been gone a long time, Natalie, but the killer never left.”
“I just want to know why.” Natalie sat back in her seat. “But no one seems to have that answer.”
“That’s right. You always were a good listener,” Alana said. “I used to watch the way you listened to a person, hearing what wasn’t said. It’s kind of sneaky, really.” Alana slid to the end of the booth and stood. “You’re right, you know. No one has that answer. Not even my husband—ex-husband—the great constable.” Alana laughed. It was sharp and shredded her voice. “But for sure, Steven wasn’t the end. He was the beginning.”
“I know that now.”
“You knew all along.”
“But I didn’t—”
Alana’s face softened again and her voice dropped, “I know you’ve forgotten, and I don’t blame you,” she said. “But they weren’t alone in the end, Natalie. That should comfort you. It does me.”
Alana’s voice drifted slightly out of reach as Natalie fell backwards in time. They weren’t alone. Not alone. Natalie had always known this. She didn’t know how, but she believed it the way she believed in sunrise. She searched for a memory, would welcome a vision, but nothing came.
Alana turned and wove through the tables. When she got outside, she moved close to the window where Natalie sat and smiled. It wasn’t a gesture full of menace, as Natalie expected, but an expression of sheer joy. She lifted her hand in a small wave and then strolled down the street,
her red coat pushed back and flapping in the wind.
She recognized that something was off with Alana but didn’t try to puzzle it out. She was more concerned about what Alana had revealed.
She knew what Natalie had always believed. That Steven and Lance weren’t alone when they died. But how did she know? And what more did Alana know that Natalie didn’t?
Chapter Twenty-Five
Monday, 11:00 am
The message sent by the King’s Ferry Killer to his son’s e-mail address is blinking on the computer screen. Graham stares at it, trying to sift more meaning out of the scripture. It disturbs him on a personal level. It feels, almost, like an accusation. He has not abandoned Isaac and never will, but there are times when he feels disconnected from his son. Times when he worries his son feels just as lost, as separate.
‘father why have you forsaken me?’
Of course, the words were spoken by Jesus in his final moments on earth.
The anguish in those words makes Graham’s blood sing in a way that is frightening. The KFK made this personal. For what other reason would he send the message to his son?
Father is not capitalized. The killer is not referring to the Holy Father but to Graham.
Isaac is marked, as surely a target of the KFK now as if he was standing in the cross-hairs of a rifle.
Graham tries to calm his frantic pulse with the assurance that his son is in school now. Safe. The KFK isn’t likely to storm the doors and claim his son. That’s not the way this man
works.
Graham tips back in his seat, slides his hands behind his head, but refuses to take his eyes off the scripture. The KFK chose the depiction of the crucifixion as interpreted by the painter Diego Velazquez. Nothing was altered in the scene. The techs went over the message several times and ran it through programs designed to find abnormalities. Graham placed a filter on it and launched it into cyber space, then poured through the symbolic matches the search churned up. Other than the obvious, nothing stood out.
He’s grasping again, left with little to go on.
As he expected, Natalie Forrester was not much help. The nurse was right, Natalie seemed to float over the very thin line between real and imagined. And yet, he sensed a determination in her that was anchored. Focused. Graham understands that. His need to find the man responsible for his brother’s death tethers him to this place. But it also gives him purpose. It pushes back that emotional numbness, the colorless leftovers of a traumatic event, and gives him drive. It makes him, like her, more than a survivor. And it gives him the illusion of control.
But it’s impossible for him to ignore the instant and intense arousal that slammed into him the moment he walked into her hospital room and that the turn-off switch was nonresponsive. He reminds himself that his desire for her filled the need to affirm life. The attraction was otherwise empty. He knows this because, only three hours later Graham can recall the color of her eyes, their earnest appeal. He can feel the plush bow of her lips under his fingers. But he cannot say if she’s stacked or small-breasted. He can’t remember the contours of her body or the fullness of her smile. All the attributes at the base of an honest physical attraction were lost on him.
And after the visit, he’s still groping in the dark, no closer to the killer and quickly losing even a false sense of security. What he values most—his son—is now in jeopardy.
Isaac came face-to-face with the KFK at the Kroeger place. Was he able to see Isaac, identify him, in a way Isaac wasn’t able to do with the killer? Does he know that Isaac is gifted? That he is a witness to murder? Is Isaac a target now because the killer thinks he can identify him, or because Isaac’s gift makes him a natural adversary?
Graham feels bile rise in his throat. Damn acid reflex. He stands and tosses the Styrofoam coffee cup into
the trash. He pulls a bottle of water out of a drawer and begins pacing the room, leaving the blinking message on the computer screen and pausing in front of each of the nine messages left by the KFK and now spread out on the long conference table.
No two are the same. The killer poured holy water over Lance and Steven. Sealed in plastic bags are every item of clothing worn by the boys when their bodies were discovered. Graham picks up the bag holding Lances red t-shirt. He opens the zip and brings the bag to his nose. The scent from the perfumed water, even sixteen years later, rises up from the cloth. Lance loved this shirt. A picture of the Penguin, from the Batman series, is on the front. Lance wore it whenever it wasn’t in the washing machine. Graham breathes deeply, looking for that sweaty-boy smell that was particular to his little brother, but doesn’t find it. It’s long gone and even his memory of it is fading.
What did Lance and Steven do? What act, however misconstrued, led to their deaths and their purifying in holy water? Whatever it was, they did it together. As had Baker and Farb and Howe and Cowen.
Graham understands the connection between the porcelain figurine of the baby Jesus and Shelley Iverson--she was pregnant and unmarried. The baby was the result of behavior that could be judged loose or immoral.
They have yet to connect Kroeger to Iverson, but when Graham questioned Jeremy’s father about his son’s usual activities, he mentioned that the boy served in the church--the same church Iverson attended. It’s just a matter of follow-up now.
He understands the rosary beads plucked from their string and left at the scenes where Howe and Cowen were found—suggesting, perhaps, that there are no prayers to cover this sin. And the communion wafers left in the mouths of the adulterous lovers who had a need for confession.
The female tourist wore a crown of laurel. Several detectives looked into her past, dug through the seven weeks she spent on the island, but came up empty-handed. Laurel, meaning honor and glory, was used in the Bible as mockery. For what was she sacrificed?
Simon Tuney had a gold cross pressed into his palm. The symbolism continued to baffle the detectives, especially in light of his offense. Maybe it was a call to repent. Maybe the necklace belonged to the KFK. Or to Cathy Gresham. It was one of the unknowns not likely to see light unless the killer volunteered the information.
The KFK never used e-mail before. Never communicated beyond the religious symbols left with each victim. If all the killer delivered was the image, the fit was perfect. But he added the words, the appeal, father why have you forsaken me? And this means the killer’s urgency is gathering momentum.
The wounds are deeper, more excessive. Where in the past, the KFK sliced through the carotid artery in a single, controlled pass, he was now cutting into bone.
Jeremy Kroeger was killed within twenty-four hours of Shelley Iverson. In the past, when the KFK murdered in pairs, the bodies were discovered no sooner than two days apart. So his pace has picked up.
Graham believes his behavior is escalating.
That he will kill again.
That his next intended victim is his son. Isaac.
And that Iverson and Kroeger and maybe, Isaac, too, are connected.
And that’s where the investigation needs to focus now. Iverson and Kroeger.
Whenever the KFK took victims in pairs, they were associated.
They know the connection between Iverson and Kroeger.
Graham pushes his hands through his hair and begins to mentally pick apart the evidence.
A seventeen year old senior in high school and a twenty-six year old fifth grade teacher. How does Isaac fit in with the pair?
Was Isaac targeted because he was a witness to their murders, or is Isaac the point between Iverson and Kroeger?
Or is it more personal than that? Did the KFK focus on Isaac because he’s family—Graham’s son—and the spitting image of his first victim?
Carter knocks sharply on the door then slips into the room.
“You done communing with the dead?”
“The dead speak,” Graham says. “And our bunch have a lot to say.”
“Yeah?” Carter drops into a chair and puts aside the stack of papers he brought with him. “Fill me in.”
“Iverson and Kroeger,” Graham says. “I think I’ve figured out their connection.”
“Me, too,” Carter boasts. “What did you get?”
“Church.” Other than the boy’s clothing, that’s the only detail in Iverson’s life that stands out. Five o’clock mass three days a week and morning mass on Sunday. That’s a lot of church for a woman who sleeps around. Even if she’s seeking salvation.
Carter’s face falls.
“You got the same thing?”
“Yeah, but I had to make a few calls to get it. It turns out Kroeger was an altar boy. I know, overdone in all the movies. But we’re not talking about priest and altar boy. We’re talking older woman, younger man.”
“Boy,” Graham corrects.
“He would have been eighteen in two weeks,” Carter says. “Courts would have considered him an adult.”
“Depends on when the abuse started.”
“Well, we have a connection,” Carter sums up. “I think if we press Father Riley a little more he’ll give us enough details to support a relationship between the two.”
“Then press him.”
Carter nods. “About direction,” he says and Graham hears the tension enter the man’s voice. “We know where to look next. I’m not saying this makes any sense at all. I mean, I’m not suggesting Isaac has been up to anything, that he was involved with Iverson or anything like that—”
“I know where you’re going with this,” Graham interrupts.
“You do?”
“The e-mail was sent to my son’s account,” Graham points out.
“Yes, it was. That doesn’t mean he‘s mixed up in all of this,” Carter begins again.
“Yeah, I got that.”
Carter nods. “OK. I’m not the only one who thinks Isaac could be next. Father Riley had a lot to say about that piece of scripture, its delivery and its implications.” He flips back a page in his notebook and begins reading, “‘When Jesus uttered those words he was on the cross, and the sins of the world, for a moment, separated Jesus from God.’
“It’s when the Son is separated from the Father that He dies. In this sense, the Son is abandoned, even though the Father never went anywhere. Riley’s message: He says to stay close to Isaac. Could be our killer is planning one final, momentous murder to cap his illustrious career. The one. In a way, I think Riley might be right. If you look at this from the point of view of our killer, you have more god-like power than anyone else in King’s Ferry. The KFK might be planning to separate you and Isaac and then kill him.
“And there’s something else,” Carter continues. “It’s possible you know the KFK. That you were at one time or another like a “god” to him. You know, like maybe he worked for you. Maybe you knew him when you were a kid and he looked up to you.” Carter shrugs. “Maybe it’s that crazy brother-in-law of yours. You said he was always coming to you for help.”
Graham lets it all sink in. Tries to use reason to pare away what doesn’t fit.
“I don’t think so,” he says. “Randy is harmless.”
“He doesn’t look harmless,” Carter argues.
“He self-destructs, but that’s the extent of it.”
Graham considers the theory as a whole, though, and agrees there’s merit in the “father separated from the son” angle. He makes plans to pick Isaac up after school today. His son can hang out at the station, where there’s enough artillery not even the KFK can get to him.
“You have anything else?”
“A gem.” Carter smiles. “I was saving it.”
He pulls out a piece of paper with some printed text on it and hands it to Graham. Shelley Iverson’s name and address.
“What is this?”
“The search on the Kroeger’s computer? The one th
at accessed the sex offenders data base? This is the name that was entered.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. But no hits. I think Kroeger’s mother must have known something was going on.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Monday, 11:40 am
The King’s Ferry Library was located on the same street as police headquarters. Natalie parked her rental between the two, hoping that by the time she was done she would have something useful to give Graham Marquette.
Steven wasn’t the end. He was the beginning.
And all this time the man who murdered him was terrorizing the island. Natalie wondered if her parents knew that. Or had they thought, like her, that Steven’s murder was forgotten?
She climbed out of the rental car and looked at the sky. It was so burdened with clouds it looked like night was beginning its descent. A thickening mist was in the wind. Natalie juggled a yellow legal pad and a map of the island as she zipped her jacket against the chill.
Winter was the off season as far as tourism was concerned, and Natalie had the sidewalk to herself. Across the street a brilliant neon sign boasted the name of a popular grocery chain and next to it an art gallery with paintings hanging in the windows. Natalie didn’t recognize either place. She was trying to jar her memory with each encounter, but there was so much new here, the library seemed the only constant.
Its building was one-story, limestone with a peaked roof and was surrounded by a quarter acre of thick, green grass. She remembered wood benches, and bronze statues--one of native tribesmen, the other a large, open book surrounded by a group of children. Coniferous trees and flowering shrubs were scattered throughout the grounds--white, coral and red would come to bloom in the garden plots. Of course, now the buds were closed, the trees bare.
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