The Ashes of an Oak

by Bradbury, Chris

  Frank screwed his face up. ‘Closer to three, I reckon. Probably what set him off.’

  Mike grunted. ‘Crazy bastard. How many don’t we know about? He could’ve been killing for years.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Frank. ‘There’s only one way to find out. Shall we go and ask him?’

  ‘I suppose we ought to. I sense a long night ahead,’ said Mike. He rubbed at his protruding gut. ‘I’m shit hungry, Frank. You?’

  ‘No, but we’ll stop for some take out on the way back to the precinct.’

  Frank took another long look at the bedroom.

  There was shit on the floor, smeared up the walls, on Laura Jenkins’ fingers, beneath her long, unkempt nails.

  Her fingers, the skin taut and dry, were like the fragile legs of a bird. Her arms were thin, emaciated. Her face, even without the tarnish of death, was little more than a yellowed, tissue papered skeleton.

  Maybe hunger beat the cancer to it. Maybe she starved to death, no food, no water, her lips parched, her tongue adhered by a glue of thick saliva to the roof of her mouth, because her son was entombed in his own reprehensible world, excluded from the real world, excluded from her world. Two people under the same roof, a millions miles apart.

  Cancer, he thought. She had cancer. After all these years, after all she’d been through, she ended up lying and dying in her own shit while her defective, cursed son was out killing innocents.

  He had lived inside her for nine months, feasted upon the nutrients in her blood and grown, safe and warm, in the amniotic cocoon that protected him from the buffeting of the outside world. He had lain inches from her heart and heard the soft, regular, reassuring, pounding and known instinctively that the clock had already begun to tick.

  In all that time, Laura Jenkins had no idea of the devil inside her. Even when he had slit his father’s throat she had not let go of her boy, had not considered discarding the stained remains of her womb. She had taken the lumps for him, the humiliation, the gossip and the indignity, worn the tattoo of justice that would condemn her to the day of her death.

  Swap the walls of the house for the walls of a cave, thought Frank. Swap the carpet for reeds and the windows for a hole in the wall and we really hadn’t come so far at all. Take away the roof and we’re back with the beasts, he thought – we’re back with the beasts.

  It was a basic room; a table, some chairs, a doorway. A single bulb burned beneath a dusty green shade and poured a weak, jaundiced light upon the occupants.

  Frank Matto sat in the room with Mike Patton. A uniformed officer stood at the door.

  Before them sat Lonny Jenkins. His eyes were closed and his mouth was slightly open. His head was slightly tilted, his neck seemingly collapsed into his shoulders. At first glance, the onlooker would think that he had fallen asleep.

  He had fair hair that fell to his pale eyebrows at the front and fell below his ears and down below his collar. It was unkempt. It hadn’t been washed in some time. The light fell upon areas of natural grease and made it look like a windblown field of corn.

  His top lip, on the right hand side, had the scar of a badly done repair. He had tied to grow a moustache, but his fair, thin, almost boyish hair, had simply fallen out of his top lip and lay like strewn hay. He had not shaved in some time. He had a beard of sorts, but it was more like piglet wisps, soft and without purpose.

  He was a skinny man. He was, Frank noted with some satisfaction, thirty-two years old, but he could have passed for anything from seventeen up.

  ‘Lonny!’

  He opened his eyes to the sound of Mike’s voice.

  Now, thought Frank with revulsion, now he saw it.

  Anyone who saw those eyes as they took their last breath must have thought they were already in hell.

  They were dark to the point of blackness and at the edges of the irises were bands of gold that bled into the blackness like lightning strikes. To the victims, in the fullness of his fury, his face taut, his thin lips drawn over his bared yellow teeth, he must have looked like a demon come to drag them down.

  ‘Hi,’ he said.

  His voice was soft, almost friendly, the kind that offered to carry an old lady’s shopping home.

  His eyes closed again.

  ‘Get him a large glass of milk and half a dozen cookies,’ said Frank to the uniform. The uniform looked at him in confusion. ‘Do it,’ said Frank. ‘And quickly.’

  ‘What the hell?’ said Mike as the uniform almost ran out of the door.

  ‘He’s not tired, Mike,’ said Frank. ‘Look at him. I’ll bet he hasn’t eaten properly in two days.’ Mike looked at Frank blankly. ‘He’s a diabetic for Christ’s sake!’

  ‘Is that what it is?’

  ‘You knew he was diabetic, Mike.’

  ‘He might as well be a fucking alien, Frank,’ blustered Mike. ‘How am I meant to know that? I’m not a fucking doctor. I thought he was just sleepy.’

  ‘Well, here endeth the fucking lesson, Mike. We won’t get anything decent from him until he gets some sugar inside him.’

  The uniform returned with a large glass of milk and a packet of Oreo Chocolate Sandwich Cookies. He put them down in front of Lonny and returned to his place at the door.

  Frank touched Lonny’s arm. ‘Come on, kid. Wake up and drink this. It’ll do you good.’

  Lonny opened his eyes. ‘I’m not hungry,’ he said tiredly. ‘Let me sleep.’

  ‘You sleep now,’ said Frank, ‘you won’t wake up. Drink.’

  He picked up the glass and held it to Lonny’s lips. Lonny took a sip of the cool milk then took the glass from Frank and almost ate it. He drank it all down it one go. Frank looked at the rim of the glass and thought of Milt and his theory. He could see it now, the shape of the lips on the glass.

  ‘Eat a couple of cookies,’ he said.

  Lonny picked one up and started to eat.

  His eyes slid towards Frank. ‘I know you,’ he said.

  ‘Sure you do,’ said Frank. ‘We spent last Christmas at the lake together.’

  Lonny smiled like a drunk. ‘No, really. You nearly had me. Thirty seconds earlier and you’d have been a hero, instead of some crazy punching and shooting at the empty air.’ Lonny’s skinny, weak arms punched at the air mockingly.

  Frank felt his skin crawl. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘You’d love to know, wouldn’t you?’ Lonny laughed. Bits of cookie stained his teeth and coated his tongue. ‘Or maybe you wouldn’t. We don’t all want to be aware of those…moments, those moments we’d rather forget, that we’d rather leave to die the lonely death of the unwitnessed.’

  Lonny’s eyes lit upon Frank. They burned. On the outside he might have looked like any skanky kid, but in those eyes, behind those storm filled eyes, lay a dangerous wasteland, where the creatures of nightmares slithered from the swamps and were let slip to crawl into the real world, to roam beyond the black, depthless stare and carry out the work of their mad creator.

  Frank said nothing. He put his elbows on the table and rested his head in his hands. He could wait. He could wait forever.

  ‘When,’ said Lonny,’ you were doing all that cop Kung Fu stuff that night…’

  ‘Which night?’ snapped Mike.

  Lonny’s head swivelled slowly towards Mike. ‘I did not see you there. Who are you?’

  ‘This is Detective Patton,’ said Frank. ‘Carry on, Lonny. Tell me what you saw.’

  Lonny lifted his keens beneath his chin and screwed up his face. ‘Oh, you so want to know. You so want to know.’

  ‘I do,’ admitted Frank. ‘I screwed up, didn’t I. I’d like to know how I did that. Would you tell me how I screwed up, Lonny? Would you tell me where I went wrong? I need to improve myself. You could help me become a better man. A better cop.’ He lifted up another cookie and put it in Lonny’s hand. ‘Come on.. Tell me.’

  Lonny held the cookie in front of his mouth. He put his tongue out and forced it between the layers. It came apart and he scraped
his teeth along the cream until the other half of the cookie was bare.

  ‘You came running in with a gun in your hand and rain drip, drip, dripping from your hat and your coat all wet and you crept like a cat across that dusty old floor while I hid behind an old rusty filing cabinet watching you and you didn’t even know I was there.’

  Mike and Frank automatically drew breath as Lonny paused.

  ‘Where?’ said Frank. ‘When?’

  Lonny ran stiffened fingers across his face as if he was crushing an itch.

  ‘The girl in the Saran Wrap. That sound like a book. Doesn’t that sound like a book?’

  ‘It sounds like a book,’ agreed Frank.

  ‘You came sneaking in on tippy-toes and then…ah…you suddenly turned and said in your best cop’s voice…’ He deepened his voice and looked with mock-seriousness. ‘‘Against the wall. Turn around’. All deep and angry you were. All deep and angry.’ Lonny held up a finger. ‘But, there was no one there. You had a fight with…fresh air. You killed…a wall.’ Lonny sniggered. ‘You killed a wall.’

  ‘And you saw all this?’

  ‘I did,’ said Lonny excitedly. ‘I did.’

  ‘Then what?’

  Frank felt sick. Much as he’d tried, he’d never been able to forget those moments. Why was it that the things you wanted to repress stayed bobbing like a corpse on the surface, while the things you needed to remember remained hidden away, stabbing at your psyche and screwing up your life?

  Lonny shoved the rest of the cookie into his mouth and chewed.

  ‘Well,’ he said as bits of food sprayed across the desk. ‘I thought you’d died. Really, I thought, well, there you go, he’s dead. I honestly thought at that second that I had some sort of power, that all I had to do was be in the room with someone and they would die. Can you imagine that? No more waiting in line in the shops.

  Anyway, I came out from my hidey hole and heard you still breathing. You sounded like a pig. You were snorting like you were rooting for nuts in the ground. I nearly killed you but then I thought ‘Whoa! Wait a moment. I can have some fun here.’ So I did. I dipped your thumbs in her eyes and dragged those perfect nails of yours across the scratches around her eyes, then flicked a little blood onto your shirt.’ He leaned towards Frank, his chin resting on the palm of his hand as if he was chatting with an old friend. ‘What happened? Tell me what happened. I can tell you what I think happened, but I’d like to hear it from you.’ He narrowed his eyes and smiled.

  Mike tutted and crossed his arms. He didn’t have the patience for this. Frank shot him a look that told him to hold his horses.

  ‘I thought I’d killed her. So did my boss. Turns out I had a thing in my brain, a growth…’

  Lonny let out a high pitched laugh. ‘A tumour? You had a tumour?’ He clapped his hands and jumped up and down in his seat. ‘That is priceless. That is so funny. I bet you thought you were crazy.’

  Frank smiled uneasily. ‘I did…’

  ‘Well, you’re not!’ growled Lonny. ‘I am.’

  He leapt at Frank, his manacled hands raised above his head, ready to strike.

  Mike jumped round the table and grabbed him around the neck, then rolled back, while the uniform sprinted across the room, helped turn him and pin him down.

  Frank lay on the floor and looked at the ceiling, wheezing, feeling foolish, feeling weak.

  He could hear Lonny screaming, high-pitched like a dog locked in the darkest of rooms.

  He picked himself up and brushed himself down.

  ‘You okay?’ said Mike breathlessly as he rocked with the struggling body of Lonny beneath him.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Frank. ‘He’s all yours, Mike. He’s all yours.’

  Frank didn’t go back into the room. He’d reached the limits of his strength that day. He went out for a meal and talked to some strangers in a bar, then at nine-thirty, returned to the precinct to see how things had gone.

  Mike was in his seat. The place was quiet. Pretty soon the night shift would be dragging in the bottom feeders and the sharks.

  He pulled a chair over and sat next to Patton.

  It turned out the psych had been right. Lonny worked in a low paid job, at the abattoir. It was there that he had hung up and drained Jake Doyle. Doyle had been alive when his throat was slit, but he couldn’t call out because Lonny had gagged him. As the blood had flowed, Lonny had ripped away the gag and listened as Doyle had tried uselessly to scream. It lasted seconds. Unconsciousness came very quickly. Lonny described how he sat upon a chair and watched the blood drain, right down to the very last drop.

  All their suppositions had been right; about Mrs Dybek, about George Curtis, Robinson Taylor and Jennifer Hamblett. All the theory had been right.

  But the truth was that Lonny could probably have gone on killing for years if it wasn’t for that random lump of extraneous tissue in Frank’s head.

  Laura Jenkins had had cancer for a year. It had started in her ovaries and spread. There were lumps underneath the skin on her abdomen which betrayed the fact that it had spread. Lonny had done his best to look after her, but there were certain things that should never be shared between a mother and son and he had left her to scoop her own waste from the bed, preferring instead to deny her existence.

  When he put his head around the bedroom door one morning three weeks ago, she was dead. He closed the door and left her.

  When asked why he had killed the people he had, Lonny simply shrugged and said that they were there and, like the man with the urge to climb the mountain, he just had to kill. It was nothing personal. It was just something he had to do.

  When asked if he had killed his father, he said yes. He refused to say any more about that.

  ‘Fine,’ said Mike, happy to leave that one for the psychs. The whys and wherefores could go fuck themselves. He had a bad man behind bars, that was all that mattered to Mike.

  It wasn’t until the Astle girl was mentioned that Lonny showed any signs of agitation. No one had any right, he said, to copy his work. That was why he had left the note. It was a warning, he said, to anyone who tried to imitate him, that he would betray them, that he would tell the world the truth, that it was not the imposter’s work he left behind. He did a proper job. He would not allow them to muddy his reputation in such a shoddy way.

  They had no right.

  Frank was glad the guy was off the streets, but he felt little satisfaction.

  Sunday

  Chapter 32

  The next morning, Frank saw Steve for the first time since he had heard of the death of James Cowdell.

  Emmet had the sense to get them in the office as they came in. He wasn’t going to let this hang over them, not now they had caught the Token Killer.

  ‘I’m saying you could’ve waited,’ said Frank. He looked tired, more than tired, like sleep had just become a comforting rumour.

  ‘And I’m saying,’ countered Steve, ‘that I did what I had to.’

  Frank sat in a chair not looking at his partner. His foot shook in agitation. ‘You went to interview a murder suspect, your words, not mine, on your own? You couldn’t have taken a uniform with you? You don’t think you should have taken a uniform with you?’

  ‘In hindsight, maybe. If I’d known that you were going to get your pants in twist…’

  ‘My pants in a twist? You’re damn right my pants are in a twist. You know how I felt about it and you did it anyway.’ He turned to Emmet. ‘And you let him do it. So fuck you too, Emmet. Fuck you too.’

  Emmet raised a warning finger. ‘Watch it, Frank or you’ll be back on the sick list! Don’t question my decision-making. I mean it.’ He then pointed the finger at Steve. ‘And I shouldn’t have to tell you something like that. You just don’t pull that shit, Steve. Internal Affairs will ask you why you went in without any form of backup? What will you say? ‘Because the Captain didn’t say I should’? They’ll throw away the damned key, man. Now, you’re both on desk duty for the time being, Frank because
you’re still not fit enough for the streets and Steve because you’re officer involved. Do I need to send you to separate rooms like kids? Well, do I?’

  ‘No, sir,’ said Steve.

  Emmet looked at Frank. ‘Frank? What about you?’

  ‘No, Captain.’

  ‘It’s Sunday. We should be at home, but we’re not because this precinct has got its hands on a serial killer. Let’s wrap up the paperwork, put a lid on it and enjoy the moment, shall we?’

  The two detectives nodded.

  ‘Good. Steve, you might be on thin ice with this shoot, so play nice. You may go now. Frank, I’ll have a word.’

  Steve got up. He hesitated and looked at Frank. Frank was disinclined to look back at him. Emmet shooed him away.

  ‘How are you, Sinatra?’ asked Emmet once the door was shut.

  Frank smiled reluctantly. ‘Pissed off.’

  ‘You and Mike did some great work yesterday.’

  ‘Thanks. I just feel kind of flat.’

  ‘That’s normal. Post-arrest blues. You put everything you had into this, plus all that other stuff you’ve had to deal with. It’s understandable.’

  ‘I know, but Mary’s killer’s still out there. We’re not any closer to shutting that down.’

  ‘I know. I’m sorry. Listen, do some paperwork. In fact, do what you want, but you can’t work on Mary’s case, you know that. Her and the Astle girl are out of bounds. Any half-decent lawyer would tear any case we had apart if they found out you were involved. You’re welcome to ride your desk, but don’t go all GI Joe on me. Okay? Anything happens to you, IAD’ll hang me out to dry and watch the crows eat my carcass. That’s if Dolores or Benoît don’t get to me first. They both seem to have taken a shine to you.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Frank. ‘I’ll find something. I’d rather be here than at home doing nothing.’

  ‘You going to be able to work this out with Steve?’

  ‘In time, I guess.’

  ‘You want a divorce? I’ll partner you up with Mike or Bob.’