A Kettle of Hawks (The Birdwatcher Series Book 3)

by European P. Douglas

  “That’s my count too,” Tyler said though he knew it was really one more than that. It finally made sense why Spalding had asked him ‘How many’ before he killed Carson Lemond in the warehouse in Baltimore. Spalding knew who Tyler really was and had gathered all the people Tyler had killed over the last twelve years in one place to taunt him. All the people Tyler killed save one, the very first person he ever killed that no one had ever known about.

  Chapter 11

  Megan lay awake almost the full night after she passed on the message to Sarah and Tyler. She was sure Spalding was going to call back to make sure she’d done what he told her. She had called Ellie before going to bed to make sure Ellie wouldn’t call her later and scare her. The phone lay on the bedspread, dull and blank screened and silent. Megan tried to read, but found she couldn’t, the same page loomed over and over again, unread despite her eyes scanning over the words many times already. She turned on the TV, the sound down real low, but it was more for the company of the flickering lights than anything else.

  When she wasn’t thinking about Spalding calling, she worried that she had put Sarah and Tyler in danger by talking to them. What if Spalding planned to take them hostage too? It would be her fault. She shook her head, no, Sarah was an FBI agent and Tyler looked like he was strong and could take care of himself. They would be together too, and surely they could take Spalding down if he tried to take both of them at once. Was this wishful thinking? None of the people Spalding took or was in control of ever saw it coming. He was a master of his craft, there was no denying that. If only he’d turned his genius to something else the world could be a very different place.

  The next day she worried some more. Had they gone up there today? Had they decided not to go after all, that they couldn't take the risk? In a way, though she would not have wished it, she almost wanted to be with them, to go there and see whatever it was they were seeing. Megan looked up the map on her computer and put in the coordinates and looked at the green area that surrounded the point for miles. How would they even get there? How long would it take?

  The buzzing of her phone snapped Megan awake and she sat up on her bed, scrambling confusedly on her knees looking for it between the sheets. When had she fallen asleep? She didn’t even remember coming back over to the bed.

  She looked through bleary eyes at the screen, there was no name there but she was sure she’d seen the number recently but didn’t think it was Spalding.

  “Hello?” she answered before blowing from her face some loose strands of hair that had been tossed in her scramble for the phone.

  “Megan, it’s me Tyler,” the voice on the other end said. Megan looked at the clock on her nightstand. It was almost seven in the evening; that couldn't be right.

  “Hi, are you okay?” she asked as she walked to look out the window to look at the sky. Dusk was falling, there was no doubt about it, the clock was right. She must have slept all afternoon.

  “Yes, I’m fine,” Tyler said, “Listen I just want to ask you something about Spalding, is that alright with you?”

  “Did you go to the place?” Megan countered, almost unable to hear what Tyler had said in her eagerness to know.

  “Yes, we went up this morning, we’re not long back,” he replied.

  “What was up there?”

  “Photographs.”

  “Of what?” Megan hadn’t expected that answer and she was relieved neither of them had been hurt.

  “People, all alive, but we don’t know who they are. Sarah is going to look through the FBI database on missing people and see if she can find out who they are.”

  “My god,” was all Megan could say; she knew those people were either dead or soon going to be, there was no other way with Spalding. Images of the people she’d been held prisoner with under that farmhouse flashed before her eyes and she shut them to try to block out the memory. They were all dead now, having been won round by Spalding who they came to almost see as some kind of father figure, taking care of them and feeding them. How sick it had been and how sad and scary those last moments must have been for those people when they finally realized what he was doing to them.

  “I know,” Tyler said, “But there’s something else I need to ask you. Did Spalding ever mention anything to you about someone he called ‘The Birdwatcher’?”

  “The Birdwatcher?” Megan asked, not sure it was what he’d actually said.

  “Yes, do you remember him saying anything about that name?”

  “I don’t think so,” Megan said, her mind not fully engaged in trying to recall. She’d spent a long time trying to forget any of her conversations with Spalding and it seemed to her now that although she didn’t know it before, it looked as though she’d done a good job of it.

  “Think Megan, this could be important,” Tyler urged.

  “I’m trying,” she replied, frayed a little and not wanting to think or remember. She knew she had to though, if Tyler said it was important that probably meant that lives could be saved if there was anything she could recall. The line was silent as Tyler waited for her. The Birdwatcher? He hadn’t mentioned that before had he? Each of her physical meetings and conversations with Spalding came to her in snatches, nothing full or vivid but suppressed, seeing only enough to know if those words had been uttered. It wasn’t coming to her and...;

  “Yes,” she suddenly said, “He did mention that name once, about a week before he brought me to the farmhouse!”

  “What did he say?” Tyler sounded eager, hungry for this in a way that surprised her. He wasn’t a police officer or FBI agent after all.

  “It was at the end of one of our talks. He said that ‘John the Baptist’ was about to be brought down, and that it would come as another great shock to ‘The Birdwatcher.’” Megan said.

  “That’s it?” Tyler said, sounding let down, “Are you sure?”

  “Yes,” she said before she was sure. Her mind raced, she saw Spalding’s grin as he’d delivered this news to her. At the time all it had meant to her was the case her father had been involved in was coming to a close. “Yes,” she repeated, “He never mentioned it again.”

  “You have no idea who it might have been?” Tyler asked and she could hear the hope stretching in his voice.

  “No, he never called anyone by their real name as far as I know,” Megan answered apologetically.

  “Okay, thanks,” Tyler said, “How are you holding up?”

  “I’m fine,” she said, the answer automatic and untrue.

  “Fine is the best anyone can do these days,” he said. “If you ever need to talk- off the record of course- you know my number.”

  “Thanks,” Megan said. “Do you think what he showed you and Sarah today will help you?” she asked.

  “It’s hard to know. This is all one great game to him, but what he seems to always forget is that he’s the only one who knows all the rules.”

  “Sounds like a rigged game to me,” Megan said.

  “Feels like that to me too,” Tyler said with a sigh. “But I can promise you this, I won’t be giving up on this until it's over and I’m pretty positive it’s the same for Sarah.”

  “I think you can do it,” Megan said. She didn’t think it though, she hoped it.

  Chapter 12

  Sarah went home after her long day’s hike with Tyler and didn’t feel good about the day she’d had. It felt wasted somehow and she checked the news and her work emails as soon as she was back in coverage on her cell phone. She felt sure something had happened while he was off the grid but there didn’t seem to be anything out of the ordinary- as grim as the ordinary was for a law enforcement agent. She was glad to get home and let the front door to her apartment fall closed with the weight of her back against it. It was quiet in here and the world was outside and away from her for the time being.

  Sarah kicked off her trainers (she'd changed into them from the muddy boots before driving back) and the soft carpet felt good on her feet. The large sofa looked inviting
and though it was still only early evening she felt she could sleep if she just lay down a minute. But she wasn’t going to do that. There was work to be done.

  Walking into the bathroom she ran water for the bathtub. There was work to be done but there nothing to say she couldn't start that work in a nice warm bath. She took her laptop and powered it up, closing the living room blinds at the same time and went back to the bathroom. Peeling herself from her grimy clothes she let them fall to the floor and stood naked a moment and feeling her body thank her for it. She put the laptop on the closed toilet seat and then closed her eyes and took in some deep breaths as the thunderous water filled the bath. She watched it as it foamed up the lavender soap and released the aromas from the Epsom salt crystals she’d dropped in there.

  There was something missing, she felt and walking-still naked- to the kitchen she poured herself a large glass of wine. It was so freeing to walk about like this and when Marcus lived here he had loved this part of her personality. She brushed away thoughts of Marcus. It wasn't a good idea to think about him anymore.

  The plunge under the water was bliss and Sarah could feel the heaviness of the day lift from her at once. The warm water gathered over her stomach and she ran a hand over it, enjoying the feeling there. If only her life could always be like this.

  After enjoying laying in the water a while and sipping on her wine slowly, it was time to get to work. As she dried her hands and pulled the laptop over, she was proud that she’d been able to put all those photographs from today out of her mind for those few minutes.

  Sarah spent the remainder of the bath, through dinner and right up to bed time searching missing person posts on newspaper websites, Facebook, Twitter and other internet channels. She knew Tyler would be doing the same at his house.

  By the time she went to sleep that night Sarah could put names to six of the photographs and knew that the longest of them missing was almost ten years. This made her think of what Tyler had told her about ‘The Birdwatcher’ and she wondered if this was overlapping with that case.

  Was this Spalding at work, or was Spalding ‘helping’ them again by outing another serial killer's secrets? There was no way to be sure.

  The following morning at the Academy, Sarah nosed around the offices to see if she could find out anything about ‘The Birdwatcher’ case. She wasn’t even sure that it really existed but it didn’t take long for some threads of proof to appear. She asked one of the tech girls about it and was told information was being collated but that no official investigation was underway and no one had been assigned the case. This was of course as far as the girl knew and she admitted her information could be a week old by now. A lot of things can change in a week in the FBI.

  Sarah thought briefly about going to SAIC Bobrick and asking about the case, but then thought better of it. This approach of asking for what she wanted hadn’t worked out too well for her in the past. If they thought she wanted it they were likely to give it to someone else. Just like they had with the top secret Spalding case. It worried her too, that this new case could be tied to the Spalding case and that access to it would disappear as soon as the link was made. She went to the comms room and took up a spot by one of the computers and started looking up the people she’d found last night.

  Using the system, she found more of the people and then started to plot a map of where those people lived. Where they had last been seen and where their bodies had been found. It didn’t take her long to see the pattern. Each of them was killed near their homes, and found buried in woodland. No doubt if she dug deeper she would find that nesting birds were nearby each time. Sarah looked at her map and saw that even with only ten of the people in the photos found so far, they were spread right across the country. No wonder this guy had been getting away with it for so long. There was only one victim to a State so far and Sarah was willing to bet of the next nine, each of them would be from a different State too.

  There was no doubt in her mind; this was ‘The Birdwatcher’ and he was either Spalding or Spalding knew who he was. She could feel another murder was coming. So far none of them had been in States bordering Virginia. It was in the air and Spalding knew it was going to happen soon. That is why he’d let them know now.

  As usual, however, Spalding’s help was useless. There was nothing Sarah could do with the information she now held. If she went to Bobrick or Daniels with this, the first thing they would ask her was where she’d got her information from. If she told them she would have to give away a lot more about what she’d been doing over the last couple of years than she’d like. There would be no doubting disciplinary proceedings- at the very least- at this stage if even half of what she'd done came out.

  She felt sick, even if she was able to warn that this killer was about to strike again it would make no difference at all. ‘The Birdwatcher’ was a serial killer who bucked all the trends, killing across race, gender and social class. The victims seemed not to have anything in common and almost seemed to have been chosen at random. Nothing at all linked them so far save the places they were buried. Spalding had given her another poison chalice, a glimpse at knowledge but not the power to use it to save a life. She wasn’t going to follow his lead like this again; there was no victory in it for her and he knew that. Well, now Sarah Brightwater knew it too.

  Chapter 13

  Tyler Ford didn’t spend the evening after the hike with Sarah looking up the names of the people in the photographs they had found. He didn’t have to; he knew every single one of them, intimately, in a way that no one else in the world could ever know them. None of them had ever truly been out of his thoughts and it had been very hard to keep acting normally in front of Sarah for the rest of the afternoon. He was glad they went up in separate cars and he could get some respite a couple of hours earlier than would have been the case had they carpooled.

  While Sarah searched eagerly, working hard for every name, Tyler sat at home in his living room. He poured himself a tall whiskey -Jameson Redbreast- and in the dim light he recalled all of them, one by one, in the order he’d met them. To do that however, Tyler couldn’t help but go back to the start and remember the one Spalding didn’t know about.

  It was in Tyler’s twentieth year when he was a student at North-western University in Evanston Illinois. He was in his second year working towards his journalism degree and at weekends he would hike alone into the hills and along the shore of Lake Michigan.

  Tyler would tell people he was going home for the weekend, but what he actually did was go into those hills and forests and kill things. It didn't matter what, but by this time he’d had a taste for it but didn’t see he was ever going to kill a person. Of course the idea had crossed his mind from time to time, but he had never made any plans towards actually carrying this out. Killing animals was enough for him and he felt he had a handle on it. It wasn’t something he was ever going to be able to talk about openly, but no matter what might be going on in life later after graduation he felt sure he’d always be able to get away to the woods and kill something.

  One late evening in April, that changed however. Tyler was in the woods, looking down over a view of the Lake few people would have ever seen when he was suddenly taken by surprise by a young man coming out of the trees, practically running into Tyler.

  “Sorry,” the man said even as he lost his balance and fell over before Tyler. Looking at him, Tyler thought this guy had seen some hard weeks. He was about the same age as Tyler but he looked older, like the world had treated him rough and now he was out here hiding from it. He wasn’t dressed for the wilderness at all, his jeans and short sleeved shirt were ripped and covered in grime.

  Tyler gave him something to eat and they talked a while. The boy's name was Terrence and he was shifty and nervous looking and Tyler instantly got the idea that nothing this person said could be trusted. He was running away from something, something bad that he hadn’t planned and didn’t have a true escape plan from.

  Night was drawing i
n and Tyler wondered when Terrence was going to move along. He didn’t want the lad here with him over night. Tyler didn’t know what this stranger was capable of.

  “Where’re you sleeping tonight?” Tyler asked as he gazed at the long reflection of the setting sun on the lake.

  “Somewhere in these woods,” Terrence replied shrugging.

  “You don’t have a spot?”

  “No, I’m only up here a few days. I was down in Chicago for the last month.” Tyler looked at him, Terrence was saying these things as though it were all normal behaviour, things that were so usual they didn’t even need to be explained away. Tyler measured him for a long time and then said,

  “What’re you running from, anyway?” Terrence looked back at him for the first time in many, many minutes. It looked as though he was weighing up the idea of telling him the truth. Twice his mouth moved as though he were about to speak and finally he said,

  “Do you have anything to eat?”

  “Just enough for myself,” Tyler said, “I wasn’t planning on running in to anyone up here.” Terrence nodded at this answer. Again he wasn’t looking at Tyler but a charge suddenly popped in the air and Tyler could feel the electric menace this man felt for him. His outward appearance remained the same and this fascinated Tyler. How was that possible?

  “You sure you can’t spare anything?” Terrence asked and now the menace was creeping into his voice. This wasn’t a request. Tyler wasn’t one to be intimidated, even at this young age and especially not by someone his own age and who looked as worn out and jaded as Terrence did.

  “I’m sure,” Tyler said, his own voice stern and unfriendly now too.

  When Terrence pulled the knife from his pocket, Tyler saw it as almost inevitable, like this was something he had lived through before. The electricity was beyond pulsing power now and was like something he’d never felt before. This was even more powerful than when he killed the animals.