Hush Little Baby

by James Carol

  Serial killers were fantasists, and the fuel for those fantasies often came from the things they saw in their everyday lives. How long before the murders had the first two victims appeared on his radar? It would have been months, maybe even a year, or longer. The first murder was always the hardest. It took nerve to cross the line and make the fantasies real. And all that time he would have been seeing that little girl and her mom passing by. Until one day he couldn’t take any more and the fantasy became reality.

  ‘Young fits the profile perfectly,’ Dixon continued. ‘It’s like you were standing right beside him when you came up with it. He’s a white male, thirty-two years old. He went to college, got a degree, got married. He had a couple of office jobs but kept getting fired.’

  ‘Anger-management issues?’ Yoko suggested.

  ‘Got it in one. And it was his temper that finally ended the marriage. He used to get drunk and beat his wife and daughter. That story gets played out too often for my liking, but at least this time there was a happy ending. Well, happy so far as the wife was concerned. She managed to find the courage to get away, and stay away. She moved into a shelter with the kid, then moved to Orlando. These days she works in Disney World.’

  ‘Has anyone checked up on them to make sure they’re okay?’

  Dixon nodded. ‘You bet. I got someone from the Orlando PD to look in on them. They’re happy and healthy, and most definitely alive. Anyway, the divorce was a car crash. Even though it was never going to happen, Ronald Young tried to get custody and, surprise, surprise, the judge sided with the mom. Young goes postal, calls the judge every name under the sun, and ends up in jail for contempt.’

  ‘And now he works as a van driver?’

  Dixon was nodding again. ‘It was the only job he could hold down. And the only reason for that is because his brother owns the company.’

  The convoy split into two at a set of lights. The front two cars went straight ahead, while the two cars at the rear peeled off to the right. Nothing had come across the radio to indicate that this was about to happen, so the move had clearly been discussed in advance, probably when the detectives were in a huddle back at the boarded-up church.

  They drove on in silence for a couple more blocks before pulling over. The tension could be felt all around them. Yoko had witnessed plenty of takedowns, and they were all much the same. Static tension, a short burst of furious action, then some sort of resolution, for better or worse. The uncertainty was the biggest problem. It didn’t matter how good your intel was, you didn’t really know what you were up against until you were actually there.

  Dixon pressed a hand against her earpiece. Her knuckles were tight, her breathing shallow. In her own earpiece, Yoko heard a crackly disembodied voice state that they were in position. The voice presumably belonged to whoever was in charge of the other half of the convoy. Dixon gave the ‘go’ order and their driver hit the gas. The sudden movement took Yoko by surprise and she was thrown back in her seat.

  They turned left then right, driving hard. Up ahead, she could see the other two cars from the convoy speeding towards them, getting larger in the windshield. The driver waited until the last moment before hitting the brakes and hauling the steering wheel hard to the left. They skidded to a halt facing a large red-brick converted factory building.

  Yoko pushed her door open and jumped out. She could smell the nearby river, and she could smell the promise of another hot day hanging in the air. Dixon was already six yards in front, running shoulder to shoulder with a burly cop who was clutching a battering ram to his chest. Two other detectives were sprinting ahead of them towards the building entrance, guns already drawn. Another two peeled away to the left and sprinted around to the back of the building.

  Dixon entered the building and came to an abrupt halt in the entranceway, her arm held up high to indicate that nobody should come any further. She was huddled into the edge of the staircase, far enough back to stop a gunman getting an angle from the floor above.

  A voice in Yoko’s earpiece said ‘clear’ and she looked up. One of the detectives was aiming his gun towards the second floor, while his buddy sprinted past him. The running cop stopped at the top of the stairs and checked the corridor, his gun indicating the direction he was looking. Left, right, left, right, both ways along the landing, double-checking just to be sure. Another voice said ‘clear’ and the first cop ran up the stairs, ran past him and disappeared to the right.

  Everything had gone still and quiet. The silence was unnerving, the tension building. Everyone was looking up towards the second floor, nobody saying a word, nobody moving. Yoko counted off the seconds in her head. Four, five, six. She reached ten before the ‘all clear’ came down from above.

  ‘Go!’

  Dixon dropped her arm and sprinted up the stairs, her Glock leading the way. Yoko’s gun was still in her shoulder holster. There was no point taking it out. If Young did anything stupid there were enough firearms drawn to kill him a dozen times. She hung a right and hurried along the landing. Young lived behind the third door. Dixon was standing to the left of the doorway, the cop with the battering ram was off to the right. She banged hard on the wood.

  ‘Police! Open up!’

  No response.

  Dixon banged again. ‘We know you’re in there, Ronald!’

  She gave it a couple of seconds, then nodded to the cop with the battering ram. He stepped up to the door and got himself in position.

  ‘What do you want?’ said a voice from the other side of the wood.

  Dixon put her hand up and the cop with the battering ram stood aside.

  ‘Police! Open the door!’

  The chain rattled off, the lock disengaged and the door swung open. Young was standing there dressed in a black delivery driver’s uniform. He glanced at Dixon’s gun, glanced at the arrest warrant she’d just pulled out from her pocket, glanced at the cops crowding his doorway, then he put his hands up in front of him and stepped back.

  ‘Turn around. Hands behind your back.’

  Young complied straightaway and Dixon took out her handcuffs. She snapped them onto his wrists, then started reading him his rights.

  ‘What the hell is this?’ Young shouted.

  Dixon ignored him and finished her breathless recitation of the Miranda Warning, ‘Do you understand your rights as I’ve just read them to you?’

  ‘Sure I do, so how about you answer my question?’

  ‘Let’s start with the murder of three kids and their moms, and work from there.’

  Chapter 14

  Ronald Young sat chained to the table on the other side of the one-way glass. The uncertainty that had been evident when he was arrested had gone, and now he just looked plain pissed. Yoko was in the small annexe room next door. There were three detectives with her, two on her left, one on the right. She was sitting front and centre, the best seat in the house. She sipped her coffee. It was actually pretty good. Her stomach rumbled, reminding her that she’d hit the day at a full sprint and missed breakfast. Nothing new there. Her body had long ago adapted to a diet of caffeine and nicotine.

  Young was sitting there glaring at the table, his hands, the mirror. His body was full of tension and getting tighter with every passing second. Shoulders, arms, face. His jaw kept moving like he was chewing gum. Yoko kept one eye on the clock above the one-way glass, and one eye on what was happening in the interview room, and waited for the explosion. Young had last blown up three minutes and twenty-two seconds ago, and before that he’d lasted three minutes and fifteen seconds. On the basis of that she reckoned they had another thirty seconds or so before he blew again.

  In the end he lasted eighteen. The second hand reached twelve and he tried to stand up. The chain attached to the handcuffs rattled tight, so he only made it half the way up before he was jerked to an abrupt stop. This only enraged him further. He rattled the chain hard against the table and screamed for his lawyer. His face was bright red and the tendons and veins in his neck were sta
nding out.

  He stopped as suddenly as he started. One moment he was raging, the next he was slumped back in his chair, all the fight gone. Then the process started up again. He glared at his hands, the table, the mirror. The thoughts going around in his head getting him more and more wound up. Yoko sat sipping her coffee, fascinated. It was like watching a wildlife programme on National Geographic.

  She glanced up at the clock and began counting off the seconds until the next eruption. Before that could happen, the interview room door swung open and Dixon entered. The sergeant was accompanied by a man who was presumably Young’s lawyer. Yoko had met enough lawyers to be confident that she’d called this one right. What’s more, she was betting that he wasn’t particularly successful. This was not someone who was fast-tracking towards a partnership and a corner office, this was someone with a rented office in one of the cheaper districts and an advertising board on the sidewalk. No way would a big city lawyer be caught dead wearing a suit that shade of brown, or that badly fitting.

  The guy walked around to Young’s side of the table, confirming her suspicions. The body language during their brief introduction made it evident that they’d met before. Yoko wondered if this might be the same guy who’d represented Young during the custody battle. The lawyer sat down, leant in towards his client and whispered something in his ear. The room microphone wasn’t sensitive enough to pick up what he was saying, but she had a pretty good idea of what had just passed between them. Keep your mouth shut and let me do the talking.

  Dixon got settled in the seat opposite and went through the preliminaries for the camera: names, date, time, charges. Her first question was met with silence. So was the second, and the third. She asked her fourth question and Young opened his mouth as though he was about to say something. The anger was boiling up to the surface again. His hands were pulled into tight fists and the chain was stretched as far as it would go. His face was tight too.

  The lawyer was ready for this. He laid a hand on Young’s arm and when that failed to elicit any sort of response, he dug his fingers into the muscle. The action was very deliberate, and, to start with, Yoko thought her eyes were playing tricks. She’d seen lawyers do a lot of weird and wonderful things over the years, but she’d never seen this particular move. Young turned and gave his lawyer a what-the-hell glare. The lawyer didn’t say a word, just shot him a warning look.

  For the next half an hour the interview followed the same pattern. Dixon would ask questions and Young would just sit there with his mouth shut tight. A couple of times he looked ready to blow up again, but the lawyer put a hand on his arm and that seemed to bring him back down.

  Yoko’s cell rang and three pairs of eyes swivelled towards her. She mouthed an apology and took out her phone. UNKNOWN CALLER had flashed up on the screen. She didn’t recognise the number. She turned off the ringer and put the cell away.

  Less than a minute later the phone buzzed in her pocket. She took it out, glanced at the screen. UNKNOWN CALLER and the same number as before. She took a closer look at the number. A landline number rather than a cell, and she was pretty sure that it was prefixed with a Tampa code. That got her curious. The only people in Tampa who might want to call her were in this building. If they wanted to get hold of her, they could knock on the door and speak to her in person.

  She connected the call and said a tentative ‘hello’. All she got in response was the crackle of static and the sound of heavy breathing. Great. Some pervert had got hold of her number. She was about to hang up when the person doing the heavy breathing spoke.

  ‘Hey there, Special Agent Tanaka. I think I need you to come get me.’

  The voice was thick and slurred, and she recognised it straightaway. She held up the phone. ‘Sorry, I’ve got to take this.’ Two of the detectives were still looking in her direction, while the third’s attention had drifted back to the interview room. Without waiting for a response, she slipped out of the room.

  ‘Are you drunk?’ she hissed into the mouthpiece.

  ‘Of course I’m not drunk,’ Winter slurred.

  ‘Jesus, you are drunk. It’s not even lunchtime. What the hell are you playing at?’

  ‘Okay, I might have had one or two.’

  ‘Look, I’m busy here. I can’t just drop everything and come running to get you. Whatever mess you’ve got yourself in, it’s your problem not mine, so deal with it.’

  ‘That’s the thing. It’s kind of your problem too. I think I might have crashed your car.’

  ‘You think! Either you have or you haven’t!’

  ‘Okay, okay, okay, I crashed the car, mom. But it wasn’t my fault.’

  Yoko forced herself to take a deep breath and tried to regain her composure. Winter was a total liability. What the hell had she been thinking, bringing him to Tampa? She was sorely tempted to let him clean up his own mess. That would teach him. Then again, he was right. This was her problem, too. After all it was her signature on the hire-car agreement.

  ‘You still there?’ he slurred. ‘You’ve gone awful quiet.’

  ‘Was anyone else involved?’

  ‘No, I hit a hydrant. The damn thing came out of nowhere and kaboom! Not my smartest move. I think I’ve wrecked the axle. You should have heard the noise it made when I drove off it. And there’s water spraying out everywhere. It’s like a fountain or something.’

  ‘Are you hurt?’

  ‘I think I might have banged my head. I’m in Seminole Heights, by the way. Brookfield Avenue.’

  Yoko repeated the street name in her head, consigning it to memory.

  ‘You can’t miss me. I’m next to the trashed fire hydrant.’

  ‘This isn’t funny.’ She sighed. ‘Look, just stay where you are. I’ll get there as soon as I can.’

  Chapter 15

  ‘Are you sure this is the right street?’

  Yoko was looking out the side window of the cab, expecting chaos and destruction. All she saw was a quiet residential neighbourhood sinking in the torpor of a sleepy workday morning. There were no wrecked cars, no fountaining fire hydrants, no drama whatsoever.

  ‘This is the address you gave me.’

  She looked out the window again, then stretched over to the middle of the cab so she could see around the passenger seat. The view out the windshield was the same as the view from the side window. Wide streets, clapboard houses, trees lining the sidewalk. She couldn’t see any sign of Winter, or the Chevy.

  ‘So what do you want to do?’ the cabbie asked. ‘Do you want to get out here, or do you want me to drive you somewhere else?’

  Before she could answer there was a loud bang on the side window. She turned around, heart jumping, and saw Winter grinning and waving through the glass.

  ‘Looks like I’m getting out here. Are you okay to wait?’

  ‘Sure. I’ll keep the meter running.’

  Yoko took a moment to compose herself before getting out. Right now, she really wasn’t in the mood to deal with Winter’s bullshit. She did a slow count to ten then opened the door and stepped out onto the sidewalk.

  ‘Did you miss me?’

  ‘Like a hole in the head, Jefferson. I can’t help noticing that there’s a distinct lack of wrecked cars around here.’

  ‘Yeah, about that, I might have exaggerated slightly.’

  ‘And you’re not drunk.’

  ‘God, no. It’s way too early.’

  ‘Okay, you have precisely two seconds to tell me what’s going on here.’

  ‘Don’t you want to know where I’ve been all morning?’

  Yoko sighed and lit a cigarette. ‘Okay,’ she said evenly. ‘Where have you been?’

  ‘I’ve been at the Tampa Tribune’s offices. Do you want to know what I was doing there?’

  He had an expectant expression on his face, the sort of expression you saw on small kids who couldn’t wait to tell you about their adventures. All Yoko could think was what the hell had he done this time?

  ‘I’ll tell you w
hat I was doing there, shall I? I was going through their back issues. And why would I be doing that, I hear you ask.’

  He stopped talking again and stared expectantly.

  Another sigh. ‘And what were you doing there, Jefferson?’

  The expectant look turned into a smile. ‘That would be telling.’

  Yoko gave him a blank look and said nothing.

  The smile turned into a laugh. ‘Okay, okay, since I’ve dragged you all the way out here, I’ll share. I’m thinking a show-and-tell might be the way forward.’

  Before she could respond, he hopped off the sidewalk and headed across the street. Yoko took a last quick drag on her cigarette, crushed the butt into the gutter, then paid the cab driver. She caught up with Winter at a mailbox belonging to a small bungalow. He was standing at the end of the driveway, staring up at the house. The wood had been painted light grey and brightly coloured drapes hung in the window. The small yard was tidy and unfenced and sloped gently down towards the sidewalk. Palm trees rustled in the wind, the shadow of the leaves dancing on the grass. An old sun-blasted Ford Escort was parked under a plastic-topped canopy.

  Winter touched the number on the mailbox, nodded to himself, then made his way up the driveway to the house. His hand snaked out as he passed the car, fingertips dragging across the hot metal. Yoko almost asked him what he was doing. The only thing that stopped her was the idea that he might actually give her an answer. At the top of the driveway he turned left and stopped at the front door. He knocked, a quick cheery rat-a-tat-tat..

  ‘What are we doing here, Jefferson? And I want a straight answer.’

  ‘We’re here to see Kerry Adams. We need to talk to her in connection with the investigation.’

  ‘I’m afraid you’re a bit late there. We’ve already caught The Sandman.’

  He flashed her a look that gave her an icy feeling inside. ‘Really? And when you say you’ve caught The Sandman, what you mean is that you’ve got a man in custody on suspicion of the murders.’