by Steven Dunne
‘You don’t owe me shit, Mike, it was a good shoot. Just how many more times aren’t you ever gonna mention it?’
Drexler returned her grin. ‘Coupla hundred.’
McQuarry drained her coffee and they both stood in unison. Drexler counted out a few dollars and dropped them on the table. She eyed the morbidly obese family as they passed their table. ‘You know, I don’t complain about lardasses encouraging me to weigh my heart down with fat,’ she said, a little more loudly than was necessary, as she stalked away from the restaurant.
They walked down Placerville Main Street through the morning sunshine, back to their dark blue Chevy. They’d been partners in the FBI for nearly three years and were comfortable in each other’s company. Drexler was thirty-three, slender and tall with curly brown hair, a handsome face and a lopsided smile.
McQuarry was thirty-eight and two years away from being a fifteen-year veteran. She looked younger, or so Drexler always told her, and despite his occasional teasing she saw no reason to disbelieve him. Her hair was also brown, but darker and shinier, and she tied it in a ponytail when on duty. She was a foot shorter than Drexler and full-figured, though she tended to think she was overweight and had been ‘careful’ with her diet for most of her adult life.
‘Nice place, this,’ said Drexler.
‘You’re kidding, right?’
‘No. I can see myself living in a place like this in a few years. It’s safe, got great fishing…’
‘Safe,’ sneered McQuarry. ‘Sacramento’s not safe enough for you? It’s the most boring city in the world.’
‘You’ll never get over ’Frisco, will you, Ed?’
‘No, I never will – the most beautiful place in the world. And they got a ballpark. And another thing – the most dangerous activity in San Fran is being a tourist who says ’Frisco. It’s San Fran or SF – never ’Frisco. Got that?’
‘Go easy on me, officer, I’m just a country boy who don’t know no better.’
McQuarry threw the keys at him. ‘Amen to that. Now let’s move it, Mike. We got another hour on the road.’
Grant grabbed her small suitcase from the boot before Hudson could attempt to carry it for her. They walked from the residents’ car park to the reception area of the Midland Hotel and checked in. They found their adjacent rooms and Hudson paused at his door.
‘What do you fancy for dinner? French? Italian? Spanish?’
Grant tried not to laugh. Her superior had many qualities, but subtlety wasn’t one of them. She’d ridden this merry-go-round so many times since they’d first started working together and it always stopped at the same place. Hudson wanted a curry. He always wanted a curry, but he insisted on going through the motions of asking his sergeant for her preference before deciding.
Grant was tired and decided to shortcut the process. ‘You know what, guv? I quite fancy a curry.’
Hudson’s eyebrows rose, as if entertaining the proposal for the first time. ‘Curry? Good call. I think I can manage that.’
Grant tossed her case into her room and locked her door.
‘Going out?’
‘We’ve been in the car a long time, guv. I think I’ll stretch my legs.’
‘Scope out a curry house while you’re at it.’
Grant left the hotel and walked into Derby railway station next door. She looked around to get her bearings, saw the newsagents tucked in a corner and went to buy a local paper. She also bought a cheap baseball cap with ‘Derby Pride’ as its slogan. She fixed it on her head, briefly amused at her new cap. She’d never had clothing that endorsed one of the seven deadly sins before.
She set off along a nondescript road, on one side of which sat a row of brick terraced houses, identical even down to the colour of the paintwork on doors and windows. On the other ran a metal fence separating the pavement from the station car park.
Enjoying the cooler air, she walked on past a dilapidated railway building, which sported a ‘For Sale’ sign, no doubt trying to tempt developers to see the potential for apartments. She reached a set of traffic lights and stopped to look around. There wasn’t much to see. Across the road was a smart redbrick building developed pre-credit crunch. It had a shiny new entry phone system and several buttons next to the main door. Beyond that there was a flyover which ferried traffic in and out of Derby. As Grant stood in the gathering gloom, she was oblivious to the telescopic lens pointed at her, too distant to hear the frantic whirring of the camera recording her image.
Drexler pulled the Chevy across the highway onto the dusty forecourt of the gas station. There wasn’t a lot of room to park with all the flashing Highway Patrol cars, an ambulance and the other support vehicles squeezed into the available space. There were always more people than you’d expect to see at a crime scene. It didn’t help that the space between the gas pumps had been taped off by the CSIs to prevent the corruption of potential tyre, finger and footprints.
Drexler brought the car to a halt tight up against a patrol car and he and McQuarry both stepped into the unseasonal heat. A short and heavyset middle-aged man in brown uniform and a wide-brimmed hat walked out of the mêlée to greet them. He had a brown moustache flecked with grey and chewed mightily on a piece of gum. He stood resting both hands on his gunbelt as he watched the agents approach.
‘This is Special Agent Mike Drexler; I’m Special Agent Edie McQuarry.’
‘Sheriff Andy Dupree, Markleeville PD. Thanks for coming so quick.’
‘No problem, Sheriff,’ nodded McQuarry.
They shook hands briefly. ‘Welcome to the Ghost Road.’
‘The Ghost Road?’ said Drexler.
‘This is the Ghost Road?’ McQuarry looked around at the highway with new eyes. ‘′89, of course.’
‘S’right, ma’am. Some people think it’s haunted, some people think there’s creatures in the forest. Latest I heard, aliens are to blame.’
‘To blame for what?’ asked Drexler.
‘Unexplained crashes. Vehicles disappearing. This is like the Bermuda Triangle for cars, Mike,’ explained McQuarry.
‘Started twenty years ago this year. I was just a greenhorn trooper back in ′75. We lost a family between Yosemite and Tahoe. The Campbells. Five of ’em. Mom and Pop, two teenage boys and a ten-year-old girl. Left Yosemite on a bright breezy morning one Easter and were never seen again. They got reported missing two weeks later…’
‘Two weeks?’
‘They was on holiday, Agent Drexler. No one to report them overdue. Except the manager at the condo, but why would he phone it in? Happens all the time. He gets to keep the deposit and re-let the apartment.’
‘Right.’
‘Far as we know, other families disappeared on this road too. Last one was just a couple of months ago. Family name of Bailey set out from San Diego in a VW camper. They…’
‘What do you mean, far as we know?’ Drexler was unable to keep a trace of censure out of his voice.
Dupree took a pause and shot Drexler a lingering look, then allowed himself a thin mocking smile. ‘Well, when we can be bothered to take a break from hunkering down on the Krispy Kremes, and there’s not a Klan meetin’ or a rodeo on the tube, we sometimes squeeze in some police work.’
‘Excuse my partner, Sheriff,’ said McQuarry. ‘He flunked the diplomacy training.’
‘He’s excused, Ma’am.’
‘What the Sheriff means, Mike, is there could be other families who’ve disappeared.’
Dupree nodded. ‘S’right. My kinda vacation. Load the wife and kids into a Winnebago and set off for the horizon. Who knows how many others do the same? We don’t get notified in Markleeville if a car full of people from Alabama goes missing unless there’s a paper trail that puts ’em here. Don’t mean they didn’t drive up 89 with a pocketful of cash. Know if it was me, I’d be paying cash for my gas. Out in the backwoods that can still be the only currency.’
Drexler nodded. ‘I see.’
‘And is that why you’ve called us
in, Sheriff?’
‘Not exactly, Ma’am. But I think we can rustle up a connection.’ Dupree turned and led them towards the gas station.
Drexler noted he had a slight limp. ‘So what have you got for us, Sheriff?’
‘Two bodies so far. Caleb Ashwell, owner of the gas station. The other one’s in here. Customer found him round six a.m. We figure this one was killed second, as he’s got blood spray from the first on him.’
They walked into the low building where two CSIs were going through their various procedures. A harsh striplight illuminated the dark office, but nothing else. McQuarry decided not to ask where the specialist crime scene lighting was. They probably didn’t have any and there was no sense drawing attention to it and causing further offence. She pulled her latex gloves from her pocket and put them on. Drexler did the same.
A well-built young man, seventeen, eighteen at most, hung from a steel rafter in the low ceiling.
‘Ashwell’s son Billy,’ said Dupree. McQuarry gazed up at him. His face was pale and his lips slightly parted and discoloured. Nearby a chair had been knocked over on its side and discarded plastic packaging lay on the floor. Otherwise there was order.
McQuarry clicked on a small Dictaphone. ‘White male, Caucasian, mid-to-late teens. Lips and tongue cyanosed. Probable cause – asphyxia.’
Drexler stood near the plastic packaging. ‘This is for a tow rope, Ed.’ He looked behind the counter. Several more ropes in their untouched packaging sat on the shelf. ‘Taken from the store here. The hanging was improvised. Suicide?’ he asked Dupree.
‘Homicide,’ said Dupree. Both agents were slightly taken aback by his confidence. Hangings were rarely clear cut, the majority being suicides as it was not the easiest way to kill and would usually require multiple assailants, particularly to subdue a strong young man.
‘Who found him?’
‘Old Ben Gardner called in for gas round six this morning. Says he saw the boy hanging when he got to the door. He’d had to pump his own gas, which was unusual – the boy usually ran out to serve you before your engine was off. Ben said he was clearly dead. Well, he was in ’Nam so I guess he’d know. He rang it in straightaway – didn’t touch anything, didn’t even walk through the door.’
McQuarry nodded and clicked off the Dictaphone. Until the body was cut down they wouldn’t be able to say more. She looked over at Dupree who nodded in response and led them out of the back door of the station onto a dirt track which took them to a small, functional wooden cabin.
Both agents were beginning to sweat now as the midday sun began to parch the bare track and they were relieved to dip under the cooler canopy of the trees.
It took them a few minutes to adjust their eyes to the murk of the cabin. They could see the shadowy form of Caleb Ashwell, tensed and twisted from his death throes. They could see the sinewy debris of his throat and the dark pool of drying blood on his grubby vest. They could see the handcuffs behind his back and an opened wine bottle on the table. It took a while to make out the words daubed in blood on the wall, though, as the darkening stain was nearly lost in the gloom.
‘“CLEARING UP THE GROUND”,’ read McQuarry. ‘Interesting.’
‘That’s what we figured until…’ began Dupree.
‘What we are destroying is nothing but houses of cards and we are clearing up the ground of language on which they stood.’ Dupree and McQuarry turned to Drexler who smiled apologetically. ‘Sorry. Philosophy major. It’s Wittgenstein.’
‘Cute,’ said McQuarry. ‘Doesn’t change what looks like a classic murder-suicide to me. Boy kills father. Boy feels guilty and kills himself.’ She turned to Dupree. ‘But this message makes you think it was a double murder?’
‘No, Mba’am. Something else.’
Brook rubbed his eyes and took another scant mouthful of his baked potato. He washed it down with a slurp of cold tea and returned his gaze to the computer screen. He reread the FBI report and then clicked on a link to take him to the Los Angeles PD Homicide Report on the death of the Marquez family.
He read carefully: although the father and eldest son’s petty criminal background fitted the profile, several factors marked this down as something other than a Reaper killing. The timeline was fine. The Marquez family had died in 1995, at the same time the original Reaper Victor Sorenson had lived in LA, but the use of both a shotgun and several different knives on the two parents and four children pointed away from The Reaper. In addition, the two girls, one fifteen the other twelve, had both been raped at the scene, a violation to which The Reaper had never stooped. Sorenson killed his prey quickly. He didn’t want them to suffer; he just wanted them to experience beauty before they died – a piece of art, a beautiful aria, a glass of expensive wine. Then they could cease to exist, happy in the knowledge that they were leaving behind lives that weren’t worth the living, knowing the world was a better place without them.
Brook looked at his watch. It was past eleven. Three hours spent scouring the unsolved murder files of various US law enforcement agencies had left Brook feeling in need of another shower. America sickened him and he resolved never to go. What was it Sorenson had said just hours before he died? Something about a nation that called itself the Home of the Brave presiding over such appalling murder statistics? No wonder Sorenson felt The Reaper’s ‘work’ would be lost in America and had returned to England to strike in Derby. Brook had been searching for months to find cases that fitted The Reaper’s MO and wading through so much stuff had left him numb.
He logged out of the FBI site and clicked onto his Hotmail account for something to do. He cleared the usual junk and was left with nothing. Not surprising. Apart from some of the US agencies he’d emailed asking for information about families murdered in their homes, nobody even knew he had an email address.
Brook stood, stretching his legs, and went outside to his back garden, sucking in the sweet night air. He shook his head. Why was he still looking? Sorenson was dead. The Reaper was gone. What was he hoping to achieve? To unmask Sorenson to the world? Why? So he wouldn’t have to carry the knowledge alone? There had to be something else driving him. Guilt? The dreams?
A black cat dropped down from a neighbour’s wall and headed straight for Brook’s legs, purring in anticipation of the pleasure to come. ‘Hello, Basil, you little monkey. I haven’t seen you for a while.’ The cat fell onto Brook’s foot and writhed around his ankle until Brook leaned down to scratch its head and neck. After a couple of minutes, Brook extricated himself from its clutches and went back into the house. He re-emerged with a saucer of tinned tuna for the cat and a measure of malt whisky for himself and sat down on the bench, dividing his gaze between the feeding cat and the cotton-wool stars.
He was tired now, torn between the comfort and novelty of his own bed and the urge to go for a stroll, to feast on the chill air. In the end he did neither and satisfied himself with a barefooted amble around the lawn, enjoying the freshly nourished Basil’s acrobatic skills as he chased the nocturnal insects that had dared to enter his territory.
Finally Brook drained his glass, and returned to the cottage. Unusually, there was an email alert on his computer. He clicked on his inbox and was greeted by a message with the tagline ‘REAPER’ and the subject ‘CONGRATULATIONS’.
Brook hesitated for a moment, then clicked on the message.
Damen,
My dear friend, how could I have underestimated you? Well done. Disposing of your daughter’s abuser was a noble act and one which I should have known you’d attend to in the fullness of time. I hope he suffered the way you suffered.
And now, my friend, it’s time for you to really take flight and show the world what you can do. I know you’ve been waiting, biding your time, planning, but now it’s time to fear The Reaper once more. Remember how good it felt to avenge Laura Maples? There’s a lot more work to be done. They’re out there, Damen, the dregs of humanity, waiting for you to show them how life should be lived. Make them see beauty. Make t
hem appreciate the wonder.
Good luck, though I know you won’t need it.
Your friend Victor.
Brook stared at the screen unblinking for several minutes, then drained his glass and went to fetch a refill. He stared at his monitor some more. This was a hoax. Sorenson was dead. And who knew his email address apart from a few FBI agencies? He reread the message before logging out of Hotmail and typing ‘Tony Harvey-Ellis’ into a search engine. He was rewarded with several hits, all local Brighton papers, reporting his drowning. He read all of them without expression, then his eyes fell onto the phone. He cast around for his address book, looked up a number that any normal father would’ve known by heart, and dialled.
Terri picked up on the first ring. ‘Hello?’
Brook hesitated. He opened his mouth to speak but no words came out.
‘Hello? Who is this? This isn’t very funny.’ Her tears were on the way when she slammed the phone down a few seconds later.
Brook replaced his receiver more gently, ashamed. His own daughter. He couldn’t even speak to his own daughter. But what could he say? I hope the man you loved, your mother’s husband, the rapist who took your virginity, is burning in hell. It needed a little work.
He took a deep breath. Two years. His ex-wife and only daughter were strangers. A misery he’d suppressed longer than he cared to think surfaced in him until he looked back at the reports of Harvey-Ellis’s death. Maybe things could change. Now Amy would have to face the truth about Tony; maybe after a suitable time, when the dust had settled, there could be contact, some kind of reconciliation. Maybe.
He glanced back at the phone. Terri had sounded different.
Brook realised now how much he missed her. The only good thing he’d ever done with his life was her. They hadn’t spoken in two years. Not even a phone call. Not since that day on the pier when she’d confessed to her affair with her stepfather – just fifteen years old – standing before him in her school uniform, laying claim to womanhood.