by Matt Drabble
He was currently ensconced in a crappy roadside motel that stretched the limit of his meagre resources. He had been working his ass off and, as yet, all he still had were questions. He greatly wished that life could be like the movies where all you seemed to need was a rousing self-appointed agenda and things fell into your lap. But there were no great leaps here for him; nothing had fallen out of the sky and into his lap and no secrets had been laid bare before him simply because he wished it.
All he knew at the minute was that 8 years ago there had been a serial killer dubbed the “Crucifier” by the media. A man named Arthur Durage had been crowned the psychopath and struck down by Detective Inspector Karl Meyers. Meyers had saved Durage’s final victim, Lana Genovese, before succumbing to a fatal knife wound by the killer. What the wider public didn’t know was that Meyers had been working with a so-called psychic, Jane Parkes. She had been with the detective in Durage’s basement on that fateful final night and had escaped unscathed. Randall had been friends with Meyers’ partner, Tom Holland, from whom he had gathered such information in the form of a journal kept by Meyers which had been held in the possession of Holland. But now there was supposedly a new Crucifier on the loose and Randall had discovered that Arthur Durage’s grave was empty. According to the groundsman at the cemetery, there had never been a body put into the ground.
Randall’s nostrils were full of conspiracy and cover-up; the only trouble was that he was now a man without resources. After Marion Ramsey had fallen under the Crucifier’s blade, her father had made it clear that Randall no longer had the backing of The Globe newspaper. He knew that Alfonso Ramsey had been stern about stopping him - his plastered hand bore testament to the media magnate’s seriousness.
So here he sat on the outside. There was a new, or possibly old, killer in town and he had no idea just how to proceed forwards. The police had swept away the original investigation to hide the fact that Meyers had been working with a charlatan medium, presumably on the police payroll, and it had gotten him killed.
He lay back on the bed and tried to think about anything else but smashing the whisky bottle open and drowning his sorrows. This was supposed to have been his swansong. His legacy would have been to see his name up in lights and make enough money for his estranged family.
The phone buzzed noisily, interrupting his self pity and he answered it reluctantly. “What?” he grouched.
“Randall, that you?” a woman’s hushed voice asked.
“Who’s this?”
“You don’t know me but I got your name from a friend who told me that you might be interested in paying for certain information.”
“I don’t tend to deal with smoke and mirrors, lady. You got something useful then I might buy it, but not anonymously. But don’t worry, I always protect my sources and your name will never feature beyond me, but I have to have a record for the accounting files. I’m afraid that I don’t have an endless supply of brown envelopes stuffed with cash.”
There was a long silence on the other end of the line as the woman pondered his words.
“What do you pay?” she asked eventually.
“Well that depends on what you’ve got,” Randall replied, rubbing his temples and trying to stave off the impending headache.
“Oh shit, okay,” she sighed. “My name’s Kim Croft. I work as an admin assistant in the Faircliff Police Station in CID. One of the PCs here has sold you info before and he says that you pay well.”
Randall knew that he didn’t have the money anymore, now that he wasn’t working for The Globe, but he had flashed the paper’s money recently enough so he should be able to lead the woman on. “That’s right. What have you got?”
“I want you to know that I would never normally even dream about doing something like this, but…, I’ve got a mother whose nursing home bills are mounting up and I have to find a way to help her…, you understand, don’t you?”
Randall would have genuinely struggled to find something that he could care less about. “Of course, Kim,” he said soothingly. “Times are tough for everyone and we all have to do unpleasant things to get by, but family has to come first, right?”
“Yes,” she said, eagerly grasping for the imaginary lifeboat.
“So what have you got?”
“I came across some files when I was doing some typing…, oh shit I hate doing this. Look, my boss trusts me and I have access to his desk in order to do the filing, typing etc. There was a stabbing at a rest stop just outside of town recently; did you hear about it?”
Randall wracked his brain for a moment. “Yeah, I think so. Wasn’t that a mugging gone wrong or something like that?” he asked. With all of the Crucifier stuff, some poof getting his rocks off in a public toilet hadn’t made his radar.
“Well, that was what the police let people think. There was blood discovered at the crime scene. They figured that the victim managed to fight back and had injured his attacker. They tested the blood hoping for a match and they got one.”
“Whose was it, Kim?” Randall asked fervently, knowing that this was going to be juicy.
“How much will I get for this?” Kim asked nervously.
“£20,000,” Randall lied, knowing that he would never pay a penny for it.
“Okay, the blood matched someone on file. It matched Arthur Durage’s.”
----------
Danny led Jane into Wilson’s house. It suddenly struck him that there was a huge gulf between him and his team outside of the office and he really didn’t know any of these people beyond their shared profession. He had spent so long carefully guarding his own personal secrets that it had prevented him from ever having friends; now it seemed like such a ridiculous waste. He made a mental note to at least try and change his ways. If he wasn’t careful then he was going to end up miserable and alone. He had found a great guy who loved him and all he ever did was build barriers; he wondered just how much of Nathan’s patience he had already exhausted.
He held back as Jane entered Wilson’s home and tomb. The lab boys had already determined that the man had been killed in the potting shed at the bottom of the garden and then carried into the house. His wife had been butchered and displayed like the rest of the Crucifier’s victims. Her face was bashed in beyond recognition and the symbol carved into her chest. Wilson’s watch had been smashed and stopped at 8:17am, leading everyone to assume that was when he had been attacked, giving an indication of the time of death. Dr Reese had been on the scene earlier and had said, after a cursory examination, that the time indicator seemed correct.
Danny knew at this point that if Jane was caught on the premises, his career wouldn’t be his biggest concern. If Chalmers found them here then he would likely be facing charges and jail. Chalmers and Barrett were clearly more concerned with their appearance than the case and Ramsey had the ears of even their superiors. Bradshaw continued to be a mystery to him, but the man had an easy way of putting you at ease which was both comforting and disconcerting at the same time. Bradshaw clearly knew about Jane and, despite his presence being orchestrated by Alfonso Ramsey, Danny’s gut was telling him that the man was on the level. Besides, if the man knew enough to tell him who and what Jane was, then it was pointless trying to keep secrets from him.
He watched as Jane wandered through the house, clutching her mother’s silver brooch tightly in her hand, pausing at various points before moving on. Even a week ago he would have found the whole idea preposterous, but now he could feel the air crackle with electricity as she walked from room to room.
Bradshaw kept a watchful distance behind both of them. Danny could feel the man’s mind ticking over and knew - without Jane’s extra sensory perception - that the man’s dim cowboy act was mainly for show.
“You believe her?” Bradshaw suddenly whispered from behind, and Danny had to stop himself from jumping; the American moved as silently as a ghost when he wanted to.
“Enough to be risking my neck, I guess,” Danny answered honestly. “I tak
e it that you understand her presence here is strictly confidential? Not even my team know about her.”
“Yeah. I kind of figured that by the way that you made her wait around the corner until everyone else had left.”
“Speaking of which, why are you back here?”
“Got to go where the action is, Danny, and right now something is telling me that your lady friend there is right where I need to be.”
----------
Jane could quickly feel that the sense of palpable death was already disturbingly familiar. The more time that she spent walking in dead shoes, the more that she felt comfortable in them.
Wilson’s house had been one of happiness, a sanctuary from the worries of the outside world. She could feel a strong bond between a husband and wife, one that had been tested to breaking point but had survived. Now, while their lives may have been lost, at least their bond stretched into the afterlife and they were together for eternity.
The killer’s trail was still glowing as she stepped into the Shadow World and she had no trouble in following his movement. Once more there was a barrier to what she could see and the killer took every conceivable precaution to shield his identity. But now there was a cautiousness to his movements, as though she had troubled him and he was now taking her seriously.
The assault in the shed of Danny’s friend had been brutal but efficient; the attack on Mrs Wilson, however, had been frenzied and full of anger. Due to her enforced involvement and the escalation she could now sense deeper than before, to the point that she could tell when the killer was in control and when he wasn’t. There was a dichotomy here to his actions: at times careful and rehearsed, and at others wild and hysterical.
There was something here that he was trying to hide, something important. She retraced her steps throughout the house and down to the potting shed in the garden. It was here that she felt strongest that the killer was blocking something from her. She concentrated her efforts as the scene played out in front of her. Wilson was attacked brutally and without warning as he opened the shed. He was stabbed with the sharpened garden shears before being able to raise a hand in self-defence. The killer watched him die before taking his coat and hat in order to move undetected up to the house and take Mrs Wilson unawares. But there was a moment at the shed, a brief second where her vision wobbled like someone had altered the tape. She rewound and watched the scene over and over again: the stabbing, the death, the killer leaving. Every time that she watched the scene, she managed to narrow down the moment where something changed. She poured all of her senses and will into the moment, staring past what she could see and what he was hiding. The scene blurred and jumped for the briefest of seconds and she caught it. There was a whisper on the wind and she caught the scent; he was desperately fighting her to keep this hidden but she was fighting back and harder. She pushed with all of her might, taking all of her anger and frustration out on the man that had dragged her back into this life, a life that she had sworn to leave behind forever. She battered against his defences until her hands were bloody, tearing down the wall brick by brick until the gleaming light behind shone through with magical triumph.
When she stepped back across the threshold, she found Danny and Bradshaw waiting for her expectantly.
“What is it?” Danny asked quickly.
“How accurate is a time of death determination, Danny?”
“Unfortunately, it’s not like the movies; most doctors in real life can only give a window of an hour or two, but sometimes you can get lucky, like with Wilson when his watch broke upon impact.”
“The watch,” she replied. “The killer set it forwards an hour and then smashed it,” she said triumphantly.
“Forgive my ignorance, Miss,” Bradshaw said, interrupting. “While that certainly helps with the time of death, why the excitement?”
“Don’t you see?” Jane enthused. “He tried to hide something from me. He tried to hide it but I beat him, and if I can do it once then I can do it again; he can’t hide from me anymore!” she snarled. “That son of a bitch is mine.”
----------
Randall drove back to Faircliff with his mind buzzing wildly out of control. His story had quickly grown beyond his wildest dreams and now he had an empty serial killer’s grave and DNA evidence at a murder scene. The police had announced to the world that Arthur Durage was the Crucifier and that Durage was dead, but what if he wasn’t? What if the police had covered up the previous murders somehow and now their lies were back?
He tried to get his head around all of the complicated scenarios to stare into the dark heart of the twisted shadows.
His main problem, of course, was that while his conjecture and theories box was overflowing, his evidence box was empty.
The long road was draining his energy and he turned into the next service station to rejuvenate his senses. The car park was busy with a myriad of travellers, all with their own stories and destinations ahead of them. For once he didn’t feel jealous of their lives, for his own was surely more important than any of them.
He entered the large building, passing through a waft of various food smells from the outlets offering artery-clogging quick-stop refills. The lobby was huge with the various stores off shooting in spurs from the atrium. There was a bank of public telephones that he walked past on his way to the toilet area. As he passed the first phone on the wall, it suddenly burst into life with a shrill ring.
He paused, puzzled at the coincidence, before moving past it. The first phone immediately stopped, only for the second to start ringing insistently. He walked by a little spooked, but as he moved at an increasingly fast pace, every phone that he passed rang at him with screaming high-pitched tones.
He reached the end of the line just as the last phone rang. He was a little shaken but he was also a man with a deep centre to his core. Instinctively, he snatched up the handset in defiance. “Yes?” he asked in a quiet voice.
“Stop looking for me,” a coarse voice whispered back down the line.
“Who is this?” Randall demanded.
“You know who I am.”
“I really have no idea just what silly games you think you’re playing, but I can assure you that they will not work on me,” Randall said, with more assuredness than he felt.
“You’re not usually my type, Mr Reporter, but I can always make exceptions. You have seen enough evidence of my work, Randall; did you ever wonder what it would feel like to fall beneath my blade?”
“Durage?” Randall asked incredulously.
“Stop looking for me,” the voice reiterated. “Stop before it’s too late.”
Randall could only stare down at the phone as the connection was brutally severed. There was no one else around him and the whole wall of phones suddenly rang out together in a deafening chorus. Randall stood rooted to the spot, staring in disbelief at the ringing telephones. Eventually, his paralysis broke and he ran for the bathrooms. Once inside he splashed cold water on his face and tried to still his pounding heart rate. The face staring back at him from the mirror looked ancient and pale. His skin was thin like parchment paper and there was an unhealthy hue to his colouring. His hands gripped the edge of the porcelain sink and he desperately tried to find his rational mind, but it wasn’t easy. This whole thing was starting to spook him like a ten year old listening to ghost stories around his first campfire.
His brain was trying to work through the facts and while he had to admit that the telephones had been a good trick, it was surely just that. The idea that Arthur Durage was still on the loose was exciting in the abstract and its existence on paper looked tantalizing; the thought that a killer might be stalking him, however, was far from thrilling.
Randall had no illusions as to the content of his character. He was no crusading hero and if the gods of fate had seen fit to task his shoulder with carrying the weight then they were in for a rude awakening.
The face stared back at him in the mirror and he saw just how ill he must look to other peo
ple. His old bones were fading fast and even if he’d wanted to, which he surely didn’t, he was the last man capable of saving anyone. He had started this comeback trail with the idea of ending his life with some dignity and a little success, not to mention the prospect of proving to his bitch of an ex-wife that he wasn’t quite the long-term loser that she loved to label him as. He had a son who he had been absent from for most of his life and he wanted to prove to the kid that his old man had something about him, even if it was just leaving a cheque behind.
Footsteps startled him as someone approached the toilets. For some reason he panicked and ran for the nearest stall, slamming and locking the door quickly behind him. The cubicle stank to high heaven and he wondered when it had last been cleaned.
The door to the men’s toilets swung open on an ominous whisper and shoes clacked across the tiled floor.
Instinctively, Randall stood on the toilet keeping his feet up off the floor and out of sight. He braced his arms against the cubical walls and crouched, sweating profusely as the footsteps grew closer. He held his breath tightly in his chest as the man moved to the far end of the cubicle wall. A door banged loudly as the man thrust it open and proceeded to open every cubicle door one by one.
Randall’s legs were burning with the unnatural effort of his precarious balancing act. Door after door banged open as the man worked his way along the wall. Randall turned towards the noise and saw that there was a crude hole forced through his cubicle wall. Graffiti was scrawled across the surface, depicting graphic acts of sex, along with several telephone numbers.
Randall leaned closer and placed his eye over the hole to try and see what was happening as the man had suddenly grown silent. The only sound was that of his own heavy breathing as he stared through the hole into darkness beyond. He thought that his chest was going to explode with the strain of remaining so still and quiet. His legs trembled and his hands shook. An eye suddenly appeared on the other side of the hole and Randall screamed in terror at the blinking orb. He thrust a finger through and poked the eye hard enough to make the man on the other side stagger back, screaming in shock and pain.