by James Carol
‘Okay, stay here, but please try not to touch anything.’
42
The sound of Mendoza’s footsteps faded into silence, leaving Winter alone with the shadows. He placed the hurricane lamp down beside the body and, for a time, just stood there. This scene was the latest episode in a whole chain of events. The flow of those events had started back at the house and pushed him gradually towards this place. It was almost as though Amelia had taken hold of his hand and led him here.
Except that wasn’t quite right, because that chain hadn’t started back in the house, it had started when he stepped into a New York diner and watched Amelia stab Omar. It was like a movie. You started at the opening scene, then worked through, moving from frame to frame and scene to scene until you reached the end credits. Except that still wasn’t right, he realised. This film would have started with Eugene dying. That was the trigger event.
He reached into his jacket pocket for a Snickers, ripped it open and took a bite. While he ate, he walked over to one of the walls and studied the paintings. The one that caught his eye was easy to interpret. It showed two stick figures positioned side by side. Both had nooses around their necks, and crosses for eyes. The figure on the left was wearing a triangular skirt and was larger than the one on the right. Mother and son.
He stepped back and another picture jumped out at him. This one had been drawn beside the mattress. Once again, it was easy to interpret. A little girl holding a knife as big as a pirate’s sword was standing over a cowering man. Father and daughter. Revenge, Old Testament style.
The position was interesting. Every time the light came on it would have been one of the first things that Eugene Price saw from his mattress. The positioning reminded Winter of the mannequins back in Amelia’s room. He started at the mattress and traced a circuit around the room, moving from picture to picture. Some he could interpret, but most he couldn’t because there wasn’t any context to work with. The stories those pictures told was just too personal. He was able to form an impression of the overall story, though. A tale that began in suffering and ended in redemption.
A small picture of Amelia and her father caught his attention. It was near floor level, hidden away in one corner. Winter crouched down beside it and passed the lamp back and forth, making the picture come to life.
This drawing was more detailed than the others. Instead of sticks, there were fully formed limbs and bodies, and instead of dots for eyes and a line for a mouth there were carefully realised facial features. Amelia was cowering against the headboard of a bed, while Eugene Price loomed over her. There was more detail in the background too. Enough for Winter to be fairly certain that this was the bed from Amelia’s childhood room.
There was a small bookcase next to the bed, a ballerina music box sitting on top. Amelia had drawn a couple of crochets and quavers, giving the impression that there was music coming out of it. The music box was clearly a cherished possession from childhood, precious enough for her to have kept it all these years.
The subtext of this picture was as easy to interpret as the one of Nelson and his mother with the nooses around their necks. But how long had the abuse been going on for? Had it started after her mother’s suicide, or had it been going on longer? Winter was leaning towards the latter. Amelia was screwed up. No doubt about that. She might even be one of the most screwed-up individuals he’d ever encountered, which was saying something. If she’d had a loving childhood, would she have still ended up a killer, or would her life have taken a different route?
Winter had been battling with the question of nature versus nurture since he was eleven and the FBI had taken his father away. The answer wasn’t black or white, it was mired in grey. That was the only conclusion he could allow himself. We’re the same. The statement contained more truth than he was happy to admit to. There was a reason he was so good at what he did, and that reason had little to do with the training he’d received at Quantico. A part of him understood the monsters he hunted. And that part had been with him for as long as he could remember.
When he was a kid his father had taken him on hunting trips to the forests of Oregon, the same forests that he’d taken his victims to. The difference was that when Winter wasn’t around his father had hunted young women instead of deer.
He could clearly remember the first time he killed a deer. He could feel the cool damp bark of the tree that he’d used to support himself. He could smell the soft, moist stench of the forest crowding around him. Electricity was flowing through his veins and his heart was pounding. During their previous trip his father had wanted him to take the shot and he’d purposefully missed. At the last second he had shifted his aim and the deer had run off. His father hadn’t said anything, but he’d known. The silent disapproval had somehow been worse than if he’d raged at him. This time it would be different.
So he’d lined up the sight on the deer’s body mass, and he’d willed his breathing and heart to settle. The world had shrunk until the deer was the only thing that existed. He’d breathed out one final exhalation, and, as he did so, gently squeezed the trigger. Before the bullet left the barrel he knew the shot was true. In the time it took to finish the exhalation the deer lay dead on the ground.
As natural as breathing.
His father might have taught him the art of killing, but the ability to take a life had come from that part of him that lived to dance with the dark. That said, the crucial difference between them was that he had never killed a person in cold blood. But what would have happened if he’d had a different childhood? If he’d suffered the abuse that Amelia had, what might he have become?
He finished the Snickers, put the empty wrapper into his pocket, then took another look at the wall of jars. Six years was a long time. Working on a year being 365.25 days, you were looking at 2,191.5 days. The average male produced between two and four pints of urine a day, so in six years that added up to anything between 4400 and 8800 pints. The actual amount would be dependent on fluid intake, which worked in Amelia’s favour. If she needed more urine all she had to do was make him drink more. He took a closer look at the jars. They were all different sizes, but at a rough guess each one held about a pint.
Assuming Amelia had taken six thousand pints over six years, that would equate to around six thousand jars. Winter didn’t think there were that many in the wall, but it couldn’t be far off. That meant she’d started collecting the jars near the start of Eugene’s incarceration. Every day he would have seen the wall getting higher and that would have been torture in itself. Eventually it would have got to the point where there was just a narrow walkway for Amelia to come and go, but still she collected the jars. She would have piled them up near the gap and Eugene must have known what they were for. As a form of punishment, this was as cruel and unusual as anything Winter had ever seen.
Satisfied that he’d answered the question of how she had done this, he moved on to the question of why. That one was tougher. Maybe she’d done it for some sort of symbolic reason, or perhaps she’d done it because she thought it looked nice. Serial killers did all sorts of strange things that made sense to them, but would baffle a rational mind. Often the motivation for the behaviour only became clear after they were caught. Winter had a feeling that this was one of those occasions.
He walked back to the corner where Amelia had drawn the picture of herself with her father, sat down on the cold floor and traced her lines with the tip of his gloved figure. He started with the bed, before moving on to Amelia, and finishing with Eugene. He took a closer look at the picture of Amelia and saw that the black marks he’d taken for dirt were actually tears.
Because there was no stave, the musical notes she’d painted made no sense. Even if there had been he doubted it would help. This was figurative rather than literal. Even so, he was interested to know what tune the music box had played.
He leant back against the cold wall and extinguished the lamp. The room disappeared into pitch darkness. Winter waited for his brea
thing to steady and his heart to slow, just like he had done when he had shot his first deer. When it had, he closed his eyes and thought back to the hours following the Reed murders.
43
‘What happened to the light?’ Mendoza shouted from the stairs.
‘I needed to think,’ Winter called back.
He fumbled the Zippo from his pocket and relit the lamp. Footsteps echoed in from the entrance room and a second later Mendoza walked through the gap in the wall of jars. She looked at the body, then cast a quick eye across the room, before finally looking at Winter.
‘How long have you been sat down here in the dark for?’ she asked as she climbed through the gap.
Winter shrugged. ‘A while, I guess.’
‘Communing with your inner psychopath again?’
‘Something like that.’
‘The sheriff’s department had another emergency, hence the reason they’re not here yet. I didn’t even bother asking what, since I’m sceptical there was one. After I told them about Eugene Price it was a totally different story. They’ve promised to get someone here as soon as possible. What’s more, this time I actually believe them. I also managed to get hold of Dr Griffin. When I told her what we’d found she sounded unhealthily interested.’
‘There’s no such thing.’
‘So says the guy who’s happy to sit in the dark alongside a corpse with no eyes.’
They started at each for a moment.
‘I don’t think Amelia blinded her father,’ Winter said.
‘So who did? We’ve seen nothing to indicate that she has a partner.’
‘No, she’s definitely working alone. Eugene blinded himself.’
Mendoza frowned.
‘Okay, put yourself in Eugene’s position. For six years Amelia tortured him. She kept him chained up in the dark, just like he’d done to her and Nelson, and she made him eat from a dog bowl. When the lights were on, he’d watch her painting pictures on the wall. When the lights went off he would still see those pictures because the images were seared into his memory. Amelia would have noticed the scars appearing on his body. Maybe she started off by suggesting that he scratch his eyes out, and this progressed to her suggesting he burned them out. Six years is a long time, but under these conditions it would seem like an eternity. Eugene would have plenty of time to think things through. He would have been eaten up by the guilt.’
‘So he blinded himself out of remorse,’ Mendoza finished for him. She shook her head. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘He wouldn’t have had to look at the paintings any more.’
‘You’re just speculating here. You don’t have any proof that that’s what happened.’
‘The eyelids were scarred, but there were no marks on the outer edge of the sockets or the upper cheeks. If someone is trying to take your eye out with a cigarette you’re going to struggle.’
‘But to burn out your own eyes, Winter.’
‘A desperate unhinged person is going to do desperate unhinged things. You don’t need me to tell you that.’
‘But his eyes.’
‘Okay, think of the worst thing you’ve ever seen, then tell me I’m wrong.’
Mendoza fell silent for a second. ‘Jesus,’ she whispered to herself.
‘There’s more. I think Eugene died of natural causes.’
She laughed at that. ‘Winter, there is nothing natural about this situation. Nothing whatsoever.’
‘Okay, Amelia is ultimately responsible for killing him. No argument there. But how did he die? He wasn’t shot, bludgeoned or stabbed. Yes, he might have been poisoned, and we’ll have to wait for the tox screen before we can rule that one out, but I doubt he was. So that leaves natural causes. Because of all the painkillers, my money’s on cancer. Towards the end things would have got bad, that’s why she got the Vicodin. The over-the-counter pills would have stopped working.’
‘And that’s significant?’
‘Mendoza, everything that happened here was significant. Put yourself in Amelia’s shoes. You hate your father more than you hate any other person on the planet, so you lock him away down here and torture him for six years. You tell yourself it’s all about revenge, you even go to the trouble of looking up Bible passages to justify your actions, but that’s not the real reason.’
‘So what’s the real reason?’
‘Love.’
‘Excuse me.’
‘Yes, you’re a killer, and yes you hate him, but there’s a tiny part of you that loves him. That’s why you can’t take that final step.’
Mendoza walked over to Eugene and looked down at him. Her attention was fixed on the two empty spaces where his eyes had been. She shook her head. ‘I don’t know, Winter.’
‘You had a pretty normal childhood, right? You loved your mom and dad, yet I bet there were times you hated them. Love and hate are not absolutes. They’re like yin and yang. Each one contains a little of the other.’
‘I’m still not seeing it.’
Winter hesitated, debating whether or not he should go that extra step. ‘I hated my father for what he did to me and my mom. I probably hated him as much as Amelia hated her father. But despite everything, there was a part of me that still loved him.’
Mendoza looked at him long and hard. ‘Okay, I can see how that might work.’
Winter came over to join her. ‘Eugene would have known he was dying. It’s like Clarke said, that’s going to give you a whole new perspective.’
‘And that’s when the guilt finally got the better of him. That’s the point when he realised that everything he’d done to his family was wrong.’
‘He spent more than two thousand days down here. That’s a long time. And every day he had to look at those paintings, and fill the jars, and watch the wall getting bigger. When he realised he was dying something flipped inside his head.’ Winter paused. ‘But it wasn’t all about the torture for Amelia. In her own weird way she was looking out for him. Think about it, he’s not malnourished, so she clearly wasn’t starving him. You saw all those TV dinners in the freezer, all the food tins in the cellar. Those were for Eugene. The fact that he managed to fill all those thousands of jars is proof that she wasn’t denying him water.’
‘Which would explain the medicine. It’s another example of her looking out for him. She didn’t want him to die.’
Winter nodded. ‘But there’s more to it than that. For the past six years her life here has been defined by her father. Caring for him is a full-time occupation. Amelia had come to need her father as much as he needed her. With him gone, she’s been cut adrift. Her father has cast a shadow over the whole of her life. His death has forced her into a position where she needs to completely re-evaluate everything.’
‘So how does the thing with the eyes fit into this? Amelia would have had to provide the cigarettes. Doesn’t that count as torture?’
‘Yes and no. If you view it is an act of atonement then the answer is no. It wouldn’t have been enough for Amelia if they’d just kissed and made up. She needed some sort of symbolic act, and that’s what happened.’
‘So he blinded himself?’
Winter shrugged. ‘It’s only a theory.’
‘It all sounds crazy.’
Winter nodded. ‘No arguments there.’
Mendoza looked down at Eugene’s bloated body, then stepped back and looked around the room. ‘Do you know what this place reminds me of? It’s like an Egyptian tomb. You’ve got the hieroglyphs all over the walls. And you’ve got the jars, although, these contain bodily fluids rather than his organs. And everything’s sealed up like a tomb. What do you think?’
‘I think you might be on to something there.’
‘And your inner psychopath? What does he say?’
Winter turned to face her and waited until she met his gaze. ‘He says that when Eugene Price died he was sorry for what he did. Very sorry. He also says that right now Amelia Price is a very, very angry young woman.’
44
Birch and Peterson were first to arrive. They bounced into the clearing in the Hartwood PD’s battered old Crown Victoria and came skidding to a stop beside the BMW. Peterson got out first and slammed his door. The pathetic look of boyish enthusiasm on his face reminded Winter of an over eager puppy. Birch wasn’t so quick. He eased himself out from behind the wheel and stood there breathing hard for a moment or two, his face flushed, his piggy-like eyes so narrow they were almost shut.
‘Would someone mind telling me what in the name of sweet Jesus is going on around here? First Granville Clarke, and now this.’
‘Where have you been?’ asked Winter.
‘That’s none of your business.’
‘It is our business. You were supposed to secure this house.’
‘I do not work for you Mr Winter.’ Birch’s eyes turned even more piggy like. His expression was more smirk than smile. ‘You aren’t even a police detective, nor are you with the FBI any longer. You have no authority over me whatsoever.’
Winter went to reply, but Mendoza touched his arm.
‘Chief Birch, we need you to identify the body of Eugene Price.’ She was aiming for placatory, but her Brooklyn accent made it sound like a threat.
‘It can’t be him. Eugene Price has been dead for six years. All you’d have left is bones.’
‘That’s the thing, he hasn’t been dead for six years.’
‘What the hell are you talking about?’
‘Eugene died sometime during the last week, and so far as we can tell he died of natural causes.’
‘That’s impossible. Eugene Price died six years ago. He was murdered by his son.’
‘And the body was never found.’
Birch’s blood pressure was creeping up, the skin on his face and over-sized neck turning pink. ‘It’s not Eugene.’