The van was pointing in the wrong direction, facing the oncoming traffic. But I’d been lucky. I’d skidded in a half-circle, stalling the engine and somehow slapping the wheels on the driver’s side up against the low concrete ridge bordering the shoulder of the road. It was the ridge that had stopped me from flipping over.
I should have been panicked, hysterical, but I wasn’t. If anything, I felt light-headed, relieved, even a little giddy. The nervousness was gone—completely.
It’s always like that.
A dark four-door sedan pulled off the road in front of me. I winced as its headlights shone into my eyes. A moment later the driver notched them down to a dull glow and flung open his door. I watched him get out. He was a bald, muscular man, dressed in a cheap three-piece suit. Even in the glare of my lights, his face was whiter than it should have been. He looked terrified.
I climbed out of the van and met him halfway. He looked as if he were going to be sick.
“Jesus, mister!” he babbled. “Are you okay?”
I nodded. He didn’t seem to notice.
“Jesus!” he said again. “I hit her! Honest to God, I didn’t even see her until it was too late! One minute I’m thinking about getting home and the next minute the door opens up and she flies into my hood and her face, mister, God in heaven, her face—!”
I turned around, glanced at the van. The windshield in front of the passenger’s seat was clean and unsoiled.
I turned back to the other man. His face was flushed, and he’d been waving his arms. Somewhere off to the side of the road, in the night-shrouded field that paralleled the freeway, a cricket chirped.
“It’s all right,” I said.
“What?” His perspiration glittered in the headlights. “We’ve got to find her! She’s back there somewhere, lying on the road!”
My vision was misting over, softening his features and the hard silhouette of his car. I snickered at the sight of his bald head; it was sweating too. After all this time, the beer had finally hit. That’s probably why I tried to explain. Usually I don’t. But I felt sorry for him. Another innocent, touched by my sin.
“No,” I told him. “She’s not.”
“Huh?” He blinked.
“My wife’s not there,” I repeated. “She’s in a Mexican cemetery, outside Cabos San Lucas. We were honeymooning, you see. We had a fight. I guess I was drinking too much. I guess I hit her, too.”
I paused, waiting, while a big eighteen-wheel rig thundered by. When I could talk without shouting I said, “She ran away. Where, I don’t know. The next morning the police called. They’d found her in a ditch. Someone had choked her to death. Before that she’d been raped.”
The man took a sudden backward step.
“So don’t blame yourself,” I reassured him. “Don’t you see? It’s not your fault. It’s mine. She knows that. Besides,” I added, “in a little while you won’t even remember this. Any of it.”
That was true. There had been other witnesses in the past, and other participants. But only I remember; only I can recall.
The bald man’s expression had changed. His eyes were wider, and a new fear shone from them. He hunched up his shoulders as if he was afraid I was going to hit him. “Look, mister,” he said unsteadily, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. All I know is that there’s a lady back there, hurting real bad. Are you coming?”
I shook my head.
“All right,” he said. “Okay.” Suddenly he wheeled and bolted, ran back down the road. Just before the night absorbed him, he turned his head and yelled, “But I’m bringing back the cops!”
I listened to the sound of his clattering heels until I couldn’t hear them anymore. By the time he’d run to the roadside emergency phone he was going to be feeling pretty stupid; the only thoughts in his mind would be, What I am doing here, and why am I not going home?
What the hell. I lit a cigarette and walked back to the van.
The remaining bullet hole in the passenger window mocked me. Another souvenir. As I got in and turned on the engine, I thought of this; Was there, even now, someone out there in that field? Someone slipping a rifle into its case or a pistol into a waistband, someone whose mind was frozen with horror or mad with exultation?
Maybe. And then again, maybe not.
Does it matter?
Getting the van turned around in that traffic was tricky, but I managed. On the way home, it began to rain.
It rained all that night.
This morning, when I woke up, I had a hangover—a small one. A little killer. So I walked down to the corner and bought a bottle of aspirin and another six-pack.
Before I left, I picked up another calendar.
RED CHRISTMAS by David S. Garnett
Born in Liverpool in 1947, David S. Garnett currently lives in West Sussex. He has had six science fiction books published under his name, the first of which, Mirror in the Sky, he wrote when he was nineteen. Other science fiction books are Time in Eclipse, The Starseekers, The Forgotten Dimension, Phantom Universe, and Cosmic Carousel. Under several other names he has written numerous other types of books, including the novelization of The Hills Have Eyes: Part Two, while even more pseudonyms have disguised his identity as the author of many short stories and articles and features in magazines whose pages are mostly filled with unclad ladies. “Red Christmas,” first published in the holiday issue of one such magazine, Mayfair, appeared under the by-line David Almandine. Garnett will have his joke.
It was only eight o’clock, but already it was freezing. Richard Franks drove home carefully, and not until he had stopped his car in the driveway did he really believe it. For the first time in over a week he was home before midnight.
He tried the door with his key, then remembered he still had to ring the bell because his wife had left the bolt on. He heard her open the living room door, and saw the hall light come on.
“It’s only me, Sue,” he called.
“You’re home early,” she said, letting him in.
“You call this early?” he said, his lips brushing hers. He bolted and chained the door, then followed his wife down the hall and into the kitchen.
“Coffee?”
“Please.”
“Dinner’ll be ready soon. It hasn’t had much time to get cold.”
“Fine,” said Richard. He put his bulging briefcase on the kitchen table. “I’ll just put the car away. If I don’t do it now, I won’t want to later.” He unbolted the back door.
“Maybe we’ll have a white Christmas,” said Susan, shivering as her husband let the cold air in.
“We might. But there’s not much time left.”
He went outside while Susan filled the kettle.
It was the night before Christmas Eve.
“Any progress?” Susan asked as she put his plate on the table.
Richard shook his head, and started eating.
“It would be nice if you could solve it before Christmas, then perhaps we’ll have you home all day.”
“I’ve told you I’ll try my best to make it,” said Richard between mouthfuls. “But if anything happens, I’ve got to be there. You know that. We can’t expect the murderer to stop just because it’s Christmas.”
“There hasn’t been one today?”
“No,” Richard almost added: not yet. A murder every night for the past eight days, and the police had got nowhere with it. The papers called it a scandal, and the city lived in fear.
“Perhaps there won’t be any more. He might stop.”
“Stopping isn’t good enough. We have to get him. A maniac’s on the loose, and we’re running around in circles. All leave’s been canceled; mobile patrols have trebled. And still it goes on.”
“You’ll get him, dear.” said Susan. “I know you will.”
Richard knew it too. However long it took, no matter what it cost, this was one case he had to clear up. But he wondered how many more victims the madman would claim before he was trapped.
Richard was finishing his main course. Susan was pouring custard on the apple pie. Then the phone rang.
He was on his feet at once. “Franks,” he said into the receiver. “Yes. Where? Jesus! Like the others? Yes, I’ll be there in five minutes.” He replaced the phone.
“Another?” said Susan, and he nodded.
“Haven’t you time to eat this?”
“Keep it warm,” Richard told her, but he knew that in a few minutes he’d have completely lost his appetite. He’d seen many murder victims during his career, but none had affected him like these. Perhaps, he reflected, I’m getting too old for this sort of thing; too conscious of my own mortality.
He put on his coat and scarf, hat and gloves. “I shouldn’t be more than a couple of hours. There’s nothing I can do there, but I’ve got to make an appearance.” He opened the door, and gave her the same warning he had for the past week: “Bolt the door. And don’t open it to anyone but me. Anyone.”
“Yes, Richard,” said Susan.
Richard went out into the cold, the front door closing behind him. He looked up into the black, star-filled sky as he began walking. There was no moon tonight, but his route was well lit.
What he hadn’t told Susan was that the murdered woman had lived only a quarter of a mile away, in a small house on one of the streets he’d come along only twenty minutes ago. It hadn’t seemed worth getting his car out of the garage again. If he had to go to headquarters, he’d get a lift back in a patrol car. But Susan had probably noticed he was on foot, and she’d guess he wasn’t going far. It couldn’t be helped, he was on his way now.
As he walked, he tried to remember if he’d noticed anything unusual as he’d come along West Road. A handful of cars, a butcher’s van delivering turkeys, a police car, two or three people walking, a bunch of kids carol singing. In none of the other cases had any of the neighbors seen or heard anything out of the ordinary, and Richard expected it would be the same here.
He arrived at the house at the same time as the ambulance. He pushed his way through the score of people standing and staring, and was dazzled by the flashbulb as a press photographer stepped out in front of him. He went around the man, ignoring the questions of the reporter who suddenly appeared by his side. Finally he got to the door, and a uniformed officer standing outside opened it for him.
The first thing Richard did was check the door. There were two solid bolts, a lock and a safety chain. One of the bolts, and the chain were obviously new. But the chain was hanging down. It had been opened from inside. As with all the other victims, this woman had opened the door, and welcomed death.
Her body was in the front room, next to the overturned Christmas tree. The trail of blood led into the room from the hall. She’d managed to crawl three or four yards before finally collapsing—and she’d been stabbed every inch of the way. It was like all the others.
Richard only needed to look for a second. It was easy to tear his eyes away from the corpse, but his nose couldn’t block the sickly-sweet scent of the blood. He tasted his meal in the back of his throat, and wished he hadn’t eaten it.
“Hello, Mal,” he said to the man standing by the fireplace, his cigarette dripping ash onto the carpet.
“Looks like you didn’t get an early night after all,” said Malcolm Kegan. He inclined his head toward the body, surrounded by the men taking photographs, and measuring and testing. “Same as usual. She let the killer in. Back door and windows still secure. Wasn’t robbed or sexually assaulted. The place smashed up a little.
“How long ago?”
“No more than an hour. That’s when her husband went on the night-shift. A car picked him up. He’s in the kitchen at the back. Want to see him?”
“Later,” said Richard. “I came by this way half an hour ago. There was a butcher’s van on the other side, fifty yards down. Better check it. Ask the neighbors, usual thing.”
“The man next door found her,” said Mal. “He came to bring a Christmas card that had been delivered wrongly. When he didn’t get a reply, he looked through the window, and saw her.”
“What’s her name?”
“Campbell. Jane Campbell. She teaches part time at the school down the road.”
“Check on the postman,” said Richard.
“As always.”
“Yes. As always.”
The postman was the only person they’d been able to think of for whom people would open their doors under present circumstances. At this time of year, everyone got deliveries. Other people who went from house to house, such as electricity meter readers, usually carried identification. And they kept daylight hours, and didn’t have to work through into the evening. But even they would be checked and re-checked.
Richard surveyed the room, trying to imagine how it had been as the murderer left: the hacked corpse and the blood, the toppled tree, the smashed ornaments, the litter on the floor—tinsel, wrappers, scattered nuts, the empty lemonade bottle, the full bottle of scotch beneath the fallen string of Christmas cards.
What kind of ghoul could be responsible for such an atrocity?
It didn’t make sense. For Richard Franks every crime had to have a motive of some sort. Where murder was concerned, the reason could be anything from anger to robbery. It could be committed in the heat of the moment, or meticulously planned. But something like this? The fact that it went on and on, that each night there had been another death, made it seem even harder to comprehend
Who would stab a forty-year-old woman a hundred times, then pull down the decorations, and leave? It had to be someone Mrs. Campbell knew or trusted, or else she wouldn’t have let him in.
Him? The killer could equally have been a woman. But murders like this weren’t usually the crime of a woman. Yet how many series of murders such as these had there ever been? Very few, Richard knew.
Or there might have been more than one murderer. Another theory was that the different killings had been committed by different people—as if murder was an infectious disease. Richard didn’t think much of this notion, but he couldn’t discard it. Any idea, however crazy, had to be examined.
Yet the fact remained that all the victims had opened their doors, and those with safety chains had undone them. Three men were included among those murdered. Two of them had been in their forties, and might have been expected to put up some resistance. The other was a retired dentist, slain with his elderly wife in the only double killing on the murderer’s score card.
Richard went looking for the woman’s husband, but he found himself in the kitchen. The fridge door was open, and there was an empty bottle of milk lying on the mat. Next to it were several pieces of broken glass.
Turning, Richard went to talk to Mr. Campbell. And, as ever, he wondered what he could possibly say.
Richard was home even earlier the next night. He’d got past the stage of pretending to do something even when there was nothing he could do. It was best if he stayed at home tonight—or at least until the inevitable phone call—because he probably wouldn’t get much time at home tomorrow. How many years was it since he’d been here for Christmas dinner?
“I’m glad you’re here,” said Susan. “I feel much safer.”
“Don’t be silly. Everyone’s perfectly safe so long as they keep the door locked. Christ knows how many times we’ve told them. People are stupid. They simply ask for it.”
“You shouldn’t talk like that.”
“Well, it’s true. We can have a car anywhere in town within ninety seconds of a phone call.”
“Not everyone has a phone,” Susan reminded him.
“All but two of those murdered did.”
“You won’t have to go out again, will you? Even if there is another one, you said yourself there’s nothing you personally can do.”
“There doesn’t seem anything anyone can do,” said Richard, “But that doesn’t mean we can stop trying. Yet it does seem that once he’s done one, he goes home to bed. So everyone’s safe after that.”
&nb
sp; “That’s been the pattern so far, but what—” Richard cut her off. “Don’t say any more. Let’s have a bit of the Christmas spirit. How about a vodka and lime?”
“Yes please. But only a small one, or you’ll never get your dinner.”
Richard poured himself a whisky, then handed his wife her vodka. He raised his glass. “Here’s to crime.”
“That’s not very funny anymore.”
Richard shrugged and started drinking. “You’ve made a nice job of the tree,” he said.
“It’s been like that for days if you’d noticed,” his wife called as she went into the kitchen.
Franks didn’t know why she bothered. There were just the two of them now. Colin would be bringing his wife and one-year-old son tomorrow, but Anne and her husband lived too far away to come.
Richard felt he had every reason to be pleased with the way they’d brought up their family. Both their son and daughter had been to university, and had settled into good jobs before marrying. But he didn’t envy them the task of bringing up children in this undisciplined decade.
It did kids good to go without. When he’d been a boy, he’d had nothing, now children wanted everything—and usually got it. When he’d gone to buy something for his grandson, Raymond, he had been amazed at the stuff on sale.
All those toy guns and weapons and Junior Mugger sets. It was no wonder kids turned into juvenile delinquents. Richard blamed television too. It simply wasn’t proper to allow developing minds to watch some of those programs. They’d grow up with completely wrong ideas about society and law, about death and violence. They’d have no sense of right or wrong.
But Richard knew his views weren’t held by the majority, and he had learned to keep quiet. Everyone was entitled to their own opinion. Yet it was a pity that everyone had the wrong opinion. If it wasn’t safe to walk the streets tonight, he hated to think how it would be in ten or twenty years.
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