The Ashes of an Oak

by Bradbury, Chris

  ‘That’s four things,’ said Frank.

  ‘And that’s the kind of cocky attitude that’s going to lose you points.’

  ‘Now hold on a minute,’ croaked Frank. He was feeling tired and dried out. He didn’t need this. He didn’t need to justify his actions after what he’d been through. ‘The man in the suit, whoever he is, has been at all the crime scenes, so that’s not such a coincidence. One way or another, he’s leading us to the scene or making sure we get there. He called in the car fire. He made me chase him to the body of Curtis. Last night, he forces me to follow him and, lo and behold, there’s another fucking body there. I don’t give a rat’s ass if IAD doesn’t like coincidences, that’s the way it’s gone down…’

  ‘And the bullet holes in the wall?’ asked Emmet. ‘How do you explain them?’

  ‘I missed! I thought I’d got him, but I missed.’

  ‘From point blank, Frank? You missed from point blank?’

  ‘It happens. There was an almighty struggle. It was dark.’

  ‘If that was the case, why didn’t he kill you once you were down?’

  ‘Because he’s playing a fucking game, Em. He’s enjoying it. I bet he’s laughing his ass off right now; a cop found next to the body of his next victim. I bet he’s laughing his fucking head off while we peck at each other like old hens in a shrinking farmyard.’

  ‘Well, let’s hope IAD have the same sense of humour.’

  Frank held his arms up, fait accompli. The action hurt. He felt as if he’d been kicked all over. He had pins and needles in his right arm, down to his fingers. ‘I’ll tell them the same as I’ve told you, the truth.’

  They both sat there in silence, each unwilling to give credence to the other one’s idea.

  ‘Anyway,’ said Frank hoarsely. ‘We don’t even know the girl was killed by the same guy?’

  ‘Pretty much certain about that.’

  ‘How? Did he take something?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Emmet. ‘Her eyes.’

  Chapter 9

  Frank left the King Memorial Hospital at ten that morning, despite the protestations of nurses and the severe, doom-laden warnings of the doctor – he might have concussion, he might have some sort of cerebral bleed, the stitches on his neck may not hold. Frank flippantly replied that he would be careful when he sneezed and left.

  He knew that IAD had nothing on him. For a start, he didn’t actually shoot anyone. Of course, he had intended to, but he didn’t and they couldn’t do a damned thing about that. The fact that he’d been found next to the body of the girl just confirmed all that had happened before. It fitted snugly with the way this sicko was playing around.

  He took a cab to the precinct. Emmet would be mad, so would Mary and Steve would roll his eyes, but they’d get over it. They had to.

  When Emmet saw Frank, his head turned towards him like iron filings towards a magnet as soon as he stepped through the swing gate. His head dropped. He put his pen down, came to the door of the office and beckoned Frank with the most crooked of fingers.

  ‘Get in here. You too Steve.’

  Steve looked at Frank the same way a wronged child looks at the real culprit in the school yard.

  Emmet closed the door. ‘What are you doing here, Frank?’

  ‘Working.’

  ‘Forget it. You’re off duty until IAD clears you. Even then I want the department doctor to clear you. You turn that head of yours too fast it could fall off.’

  ‘You know as well as I do that IAD will find nothing because there’s nothing to find.’

  ‘You still have to give them a statement.’

  ‘Not a problem.’

  ‘Then the doc has to clear you.’

  ‘Well, if the doc in the hospital saw fit to let me go, I’m pretty sure he won’t argue with that.’ Frank looked his Captain in the eyes. It was a bluff that would be blown as soon as Mary found out his bed on the ward was empty, but until then…

  ‘Fine,’ said Emmet. ‘But you will stay in that chair until IAD has done with you.’

  Emmet picked up the phone.

  Frank said he’d be at his desk if Emmet needed him.

  Steve poured them both a coffee. Frank picked up his chair and brought it round to Steve’s side of the desk.

  Frank felt like he’d been away from this place for years, not just a few hours. When he walked in and caught the old familiar smells and sounds, he felt warm content flood him. The place still stank, it was forever in darkness and shrouded in pale fake light, but it was almost home.

  Steve leaned confidentially forward. ‘He took her eyes before he killed her.’

  ‘Christ.’

  ‘We figure he restrained her, she had marks on her wrists and ankles, then gagged her with the Saran wrap and then took out her eyes.’ He took out a cigarette for each of them. ‘There were scratch marks around the eyes which may suggest that she thrashed her head as he did so and that his nails cut her. The nature of the bruising around her head suggests that she was forcibly held.’

  ‘Well, that’s it then,’ said Frank. ‘All we do is look for a guy with long fingernails and strong hands.’ He bobbed his head up and shouted. ‘Hey, Mike! Round up the usual suspects. All the guitarists in the land.’

  Mike looked up at him then shook his head, waved a dismissive hand and returned to work with a string of expletives rolling around his mouth.

  ‘After he’d done that,’ pressed Steve as he tried to ignore Frank’s sarcasm, ‘he wrapped up the rest of her head and watched her suffocate.’

  ‘Then he moved her?’

  ‘Then he moved her.’

  ‘He’s consistent with that, I’ll give him that much. You think that means he’s killing them all in the same place?’

  ‘Could be,’ said Steve. ‘It would make sense. On the other hand, a man constantly dumping bodies in the trunk of his car may draw attention to himself.’

  ‘Depends on the time of day he moves the bodies and where the car is parked.’ Frank waved his cigarette at Steve. ‘Except for Mrs Dybek. That’s inconsistent. He dumped her a few yards from where he killed her. A few yards downhill, for sure, but still close to the scene. Why?’

  ‘Maybe he was disturbed.’

  Frank half-smiled. ‘That’s the understatement of the year so far! But yeah, maybe. You found out who the girl is…was?’

  ‘No ID. We’re checking missing persons right now.’

  ‘Any sign of sexual assault?’

  ‘None. She was fully dressed. Pair of blue jeans, purple shirt, all intact. Even her jewellery’s in place.’

  ‘We know he’s not out to rob these people. Taylor’s wallet was still on him. The Dybek place was intact but for a shoe.’

  Frank put a finger to his temple and rubbed in a tight circle. His head ached. He wanted to sleep. The pins and needles in his hand made it feel as if someone else was feeding him his cigarette. ‘None of this makes sense. We have a man stabbed to death on the street, his pinkie ring stolen and his finger broken. We have a man with a ripped out heart folded neatly away inside a furnace. We have an old lady suffocated with a towel and thrown off a balcony and a young girl smothered by Saran wrap and her eyes plucked out. There is no sexual motive to any of them. The modes of death appear random.’ He went into his drawer and took out a couple of aspirin. ‘In common, they have my guy, who apparently has the ability to disappear through walls and is immune to the effects of lead, and the fact that they were all found at a secondary scene. In none of the places was there any clue to who the murderer is or where the murders took place.’

  ‘And Milt hasn’t come up with anything we don’t already know,’ said Steve tiredly.

  ‘And Milt hasn’t come up with anything we don’t already know,’ repeated Frank despondently.

  Steve pointed over Frank’s shoulder. ‘And you’re about to get a new a’hole ripped.’

  Frank turned to see Mary walk purposefully through the gate.

  ‘You didn’t need t
o speak to Emmet like that,’ insisted Frank. He opened the car window and breathed in deeply. He felt sick and the way the car was bouncing through potholes and over the uneven road made it feel like he was seasick. He closed his eyes to the jittery scenery and tried to concentrate on the still blackness.

  ‘He’s the Captain,’ said Mary. ‘He should know better. So should Steve and, most of all, so should you. For God’s sake, Frank. Do you think you’re so bloody indispensable that others can’t cover for you for a day or two?’

  ‘It’s not about me or the guys I work with…’

  ‘Of course it is. It’s your damned nosiness, Frank, your inability to leave the job to the nightshift. That’s what got you into this. That’s what put you into a hospital bed and under the noses of IAD. You’re like kids, the lot of you. I thanks God we didn’t have any of our own. I couldn’t have coped with them and you.’

  ‘Don’t say that, Mary…’

  Mary pursed her lips. She’d gone too far. If there was one thing guaranteed to bring down the silence, it was the mention of kids or at least the absence of them.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Really.’

  ‘So am I.’ He leaned over and kissed the side of her head. ‘Would you do me a favour?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Would you pull over? I think I’m going to throw up.’

  She did and he did.

  Frank slept through the afternoon. He woke up groggy, with a headache and with his joints on fire. His right hand was still tingling. He turned on his back and cursed. He felt the foolhardiness of a child who’d been caught shoplifting. The world had a right to be mad at him. He was pretty mad with himself.

  He got up, took a shower and went into the living room. The TV was on. It was turned down and mumbled like a ghost.

  ‘You awake?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Mary came to the kitchen door. ‘You look better. A nicer shade of green.’

  ‘I feel a nicer shade of green. Bit shaky though.’

  ‘Have you eaten today?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Your blood sugar’s probably a little low. I’ll get you some milk and cookies.’

  Frank froze and stared at her like she’d just solved the world’s fuel crisis. ‘Jesus Christ and Holy Mother of Mary!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Milk and cookies.’

  ‘What about them?’

  Frank went to the phone and dialled.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  He held a finger to his lips. ‘Steve? Steve, it’s Frank. No, I’m at home. Yes, she’s watching my every move. That doesn’t take away my right to think. She hasn’t taken my brain.’ His eyes flicked to Mary. She scowled. ‘Not yet anyhow. Will you just shut up and listen? I think I’ve got something. Yeah. Our guy. He’s a diabetic.’

  ‘It would make sense,’ said Milt.

  He sat stretched out in his chair in the morgue office with his feet upon the desk. He looked content. His hands lay across his concave abdomen with a cigarette poking between his fingers. On the desk next to him was a steaming cup of strong black coffee. This was his world, this dank, dark basement in the heart of the city; the one place where no one wanted to be – except him.

  Frank hated the smell in here and today he hated it even more. The stench of formaldehyde and sweat and rotten skin and dissected organs and chemicals all combined with his headache to make him want to throw up again. Normally he could walk in here and not blink. Today it smelled like death.

  ‘The guy turns up with the intention of killing Mrs Dybek,’ said Milt, ‘has an attack of the sugars and can only manage to sling her over the balcony with the bit of energy he has left.’

  ‘But the milk and cookies?’ asked Frank.

  ‘They would have stopped him passing out, for sure. Stopped his hands shaking. She may or may not have been dead at this point. If he made her sit there and watch him eat and drink, then that may have given him some kicks. Or he may have eaten while she lay on the floor dead. Who knows?’

  ‘But surely the food and drink would have given him back his energy.’

  ‘It would have given him enough energy to get out of there once he’d done what he had to do, but that’s about it.’ Milt took his feet off the desk, shifted in the chair and crossed his legs. ‘I’ve known people who go into a diabetic crisis and it wipes them out, all they can do is sleep after. It’s exhausting.’ Milts hands waved as he spoke, his fingers followed by a stream of smoke. He was in his element. ‘The only unusual thing about this is that he let himself get in that state in the first place. Any diabetic worth his salt is prepared for this sort of thing. In fact, they wouldn’t let it happen in the first place.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Maybe he’s newly diagnosed. Maybe he doesn’t have control of the illness yet. That’s got to hurt a control-freak like him.’

  Frank pondered on what Milt had said. ‘So you think I’m right?’

  ‘I think it’s a good theory. The one thing you have to hope for is that he’s not undiagnosed. If he is, then you’ve got nowhere to go.’

  ‘And if he is?’

  ‘Get yourself round to every doctor and hospital in New York and ask them about any newly diagnosed diabetics.’

  ‘Okay. Thanks, Milt. I kind of hoped it would be little more concrete than that.’

  ‘Don’t sound so desperate, Frank. It’s a fine idea. Wish I’d thought of it myself. Run it past Emmet. Pursue it. I think it’s worthy.’

  ‘Okay. Thanks. I’d better go. I might be on one of your slabs if I don’t get back to Mary. She warned I had to be back in an hour.’

  Frank got up to leave.

  ‘There is one other thing,’ said Milt.

  ‘Yeah?’

  He hesitated. It wasn’t something he was going to share, but he liked Frank, he liked him a lot. He was one of the honest cops, one of those that didn’t do it for the envelopes and the promotion, but did it to try and improve the world. ‘It’s not for public consumption,’ he warned. ‘But it might help.’

  ‘I’ll take all the help I can get,’ said Frank. He sat back down and lit a cigarette.

  ‘Have you ever heard of cheiloscopy?’

  Frank shook his head. ‘No.’

  ‘There’s this theory that in the same way our fingerprints are unique, so are our lip prints.’

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘There’s a lot of work being done on it at the moment and it’s sort of a pet subject of mine. A couple of Japanese guys, Tsuchihashi and Suzuki, have done a lot of work on this and it’s been taken up by quite a few people. It’s been broken down and classified, but we’re still a couple of years away from it being accepted. It’s not the kind of thing that gets taken in as evidence as yet, but…’

  Frank wished he would hurry up and get to the point. ‘And?’

  ‘The glass I picked up at the Dybek apartment. I did some extra work on it and found a lip print. The guy must have drained every last drop of that milk, because I got both upper and lower lips.’

  ‘How? I can understand the lower…’

  ‘You know when you really enjoy something down to the last drop? You let that drop roll down the glass and then sort of bite down on it with your lips and trap it. The same can happen with the kind of desperation our guy must have felt. He took every last drop of that milk. He didn’t drink it. He ate it. Ate it until he had not one drop more.’

  ‘He could’ve just poured himself another glass.’

  ‘The carton was empty, Frank. We dusted it. One of the crime scene guys made a note. Mrs Dybek had enough for her needs. She wasn’t expecting company. He took the last bit, hence his need to take every drop. He wasn’t going to waste any feeling the way he did. How often do you and me smoke a cigarette down to the butt, knowing that we won’t get another for an hour? Same thing.’

  ‘So did you find anything?’

  Milt sat himself up and leaned on his desk. He narrowed his eyes as cigar
ette smoke drifted up towards his face. ‘If I give you what I know, Frank, don’t go using it. Don’t tell Emmet. It’s a pointer, that’s all.’ Frank agreed. ‘The trouble is, the lips are very malleable, so some smudging occurs. This is the kind of thing needs to be ironed out as yet. Later, maybe, to lend weight to the overall evidence, you can bring it out, but not yet.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Okay.’ Milt reached into a desk drawer and took out a folder. He took out a single sheet of paper. It was full of type and diagrams. He ran his finger down the page, his head bobbing as it went in recognition of what he had written. ‘The guy had a harelip, Frank.’

  Frank beamed. ‘You’re kidding me?’

  ‘No. But don’t get too excited. It was what’s known as a microform cleft. It had been repaired. Nowadays you may see a scar running from the top of the lip to the nostril or a crooked moustache. Sometimes you get that tightness that pulls the lip up a bit.’

  ‘Yeah, I’ve seen that. Go on.’

  ‘It’s pretty common. One to two kids every thousand births. It’s twice as common in males as in females and twice as likely to be on the left side of the lip as the right. It’s also more common in Caucasians and those of mixed parentage.’

  ‘And all of this means what?’

  ‘It means, possibly, that your suspect is male - there were no signs of lipstick or other makeup and, as we know, the killer is pretty strong. He’s Caucasian or of mixed race and has the remnants of a harelip. However, there is one more interesting thing.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘He’s one of the minority who has the scar on the right side of his lip.’

  Frank took of his hat and ran his fingers through his hair. It felt gritty and oily. He suddenly wanted another shower and to wash his hair until it squeaked. ‘That’s great work, Milt.’