The Christmas Killer

by Jim Gallows

  As soon as he reached the station, he realized that he had not asked Leigh or Faith about their morning, how it had been. Was Faith her old self? Had the break done Leigh any good? He might catch hell for that when he got home, and he would deserve it. But he told himself the case was about to break. He could feel it. And once Harper was booked, Jake would make it up to his family. He made this a vow as he entered the detective bureau.

  Mills spotted him. He had a big grin on his face as he stood up from his desk. ‘Me and the boys have chipped in to buy you a little something,’ he said, bending down to pick up a cushion. ‘It’s for the next time you use the vending machine.’

  There was a guffaw from the men behind Mills.

  Jake allowed Mills a moment to enjoy his joke and even offered an indulgent smile. But the truth was, he wasn’t in the mood. He was here to put Harper away.

  Mills stopped smiling and put down the cushion. ‘I cut Harper loose shortly after you went home. Boy, was he pissed off … once he’d stopped crying.’

  Pissed off? Surely Harper should have been little more than simply relieved to be getting out of there.

  Getting away with murder.

  Either Harper was a murderous bastard who was also completely in control of his emotions and absolutely aware of how to manipulate the people around him, or …

  Jake chased the thought away. The ‘or’ was too awful for him to contemplate.

  ‘I think you’ve just made yourself a very powerful enemy, Austin. He’ll be our next mayor, and he’ll be in a position to make things very uncomfortable for you.’

  ‘Not if he’s on death row,’ said Jake with more conviction than he actually felt.

  They heard a yell from across the hall as Asher called. Jake walked into the colonel’s office. Asher was behind the desk, his tie undone.

  ‘I heard you gave Harper a tough grilling last night,’ he began. ‘You think he’s our guy?’

  Jake eased himself into the chair opposite Asher. He considered his answer. ‘He’s looking good for it.’

  Asher looked down at his desk, considering his response. ‘We pursue Harper, we do it under the radar. Understood? I can’t risk blowback on the department if he becomes mayor. Our pockets are empty enough.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Jake. ‘Is there anything else?’

  ‘There’s been another find.’

  ‘Fuck! Where did—’

  ‘Not a new body,’ said Asher, holding up his hands. ‘Just a bone.’

  ‘A bone?’

  ‘It’s a human bone.’

  Who gives a shit?

  ‘I’ve asked the uniforms to preserve the scene, and I want you to drive out and look at it.’

  ‘Look, sir,’ Jake said, taking a deep breath to try and hold himself back. ‘I need to spend all my time on the serial. I’m not—’

  ‘It’s on another part of the interstate construction site,’ said Asher, ‘about half a mile from where Marcia Lamb was dumped.’

  Now Jake was interested. ‘Is it fresh?’

  ‘They say it’s old,’ said Asher.

  He sighed. ‘Then send someone else.’

  Asher looked at him. ‘Last I remember, I was still the boss here. I want you to go look at it, not someone else. You’re the guy with the eye. From what we know already, the bone is old, but it was placed on the site only a few days ago. That makes it fresh. Someone went to the trouble of digging it up and bringing it to the same construction site where we have a killer dumping fresh bodies. You know as well as I do, we have to look into any possible connections here.’

  As he left Asher’s office, Jake caught a glimpse of a slim woman walking into the station, and his heart squeezed in his chest. Had he missed an appointment with Gail Greene this morning? No, he wasn’t due to see her again until Thursday. Two sessions a week over two weeks, anger management taken care of. So had Mills brought her in for something case-related?

  He turned and put on a big smile, walking confidently up to her. As he drew near he could see she was upset. He turned his smile into a frown.

  ‘Gail?’

  Her face was white, and when she looked at him it tightened immediately. She was not in tears, but Jake got the feeling from her expression that she was probably the kind of person who had long since trained herself out of crying.

  ‘You asshole,’ she spat.

  Jake tried not to look surprised or hurt. ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘I’ve just been with Johnny, and he’s in a bad way. You did a real number on him, Detective.’ She had adopted a mock-congratulatory tone.

  He sighed, buying himself a few seconds – the better to curb his reaction to Gail’s sarcasm. ‘Dr Greene, we’re in the middle of a murder investigation—’

  ‘Johnny is a sick man. What you did yesterday was cruel. You’ve set him back years, and you’ve jeopardized any chance I had of helping him.’ Her top lip curled, her face showing a disgust that took Jake aback. ‘I hope you’re proud of yourself.’

  ‘He was obstructing our investigation.’

  ‘He’s fragile, and needs respect and understanding.’

  ‘He was putting people’s lives at risk. Without his interference, who knows what we could have done with the saved time? Candy Jones and Chuck Ford might still be alive now.’

  He knew that he was overplaying the significance of Johnny’s obstruction. Knew also that there was a certain sly malice in his accusation. What he did not know was who he was trying to kid.

  ‘Asshole,’ she repeated and turned to the door. Jake felt about four feet tall. And he also felt angry with himself. He had barely managed a word in his defence, and what he had said was a none-too-subtle suggestion that Johnny Cooper – sick, near-helpless Johnny Cooper – was in some way culpable for the crimes of the evil man who was still out there, probably planning his next attack.

  The guy was still out there, though. And that was all that really mattered. This thought fuelled his next question. As Gail reached the door, he called out, ‘I suppose that means my Thursday appointment is off?’

  Gail did not stop; she just pushed through the door without looking back.

  As Jake turned back towards the detective bureau Mills was standing there, again with the big grin. ‘Trouble with the girlfriend? Don’t worry, the make-up is always more fun than the fight.’

  ‘Fuck you,’ said Jake, brushing past.

  It was time to nail a killer and get his life back.

  62

  Tuesday, 2 p.m.

  Austin, you weren’t meant to be a part of this story. You’re a complication now. You will have to be dealt with.

  He felt good as he looked at the four photographs pinned to his wall. He felt invincible – and invisible. The cops were running in circles, like puppies chasing their tails. Regardless of what they told the newspapers, they were nowhere near tracking him down.

  Everything was following his plan. The only problem he could see was Austin. The detective had nothing, but his eyes were always open and alert, the eyes of a man who never stopped thinking. His eyes were the window into a mind that raced down every alley of thought, sometimes doubling back, looking for a clue or an idea to latch on to. Such men could be dangerous.

  I know what you’re doing. You’re trying to imagine being me. You’re trying to trace my thoughts and see through my eyes. And if you are who I think you are, you just might be very good at that. I’ll have to be even more careful …

  He stood and poured himself a small shot of Scotch. It was one of his few indulgences; always single malts, always from Islay. He savoured the smoky peatiness of the whisky. He let the warmth flow through his chest, chasing away the bitter chill of uncertainty now that this complication had entered the picture.

  No matter. I’m the master, and I have my plan – a new plan. You don’t know it yet, Jake, but I have you in check. And if you make even one wrong move, it will be checkmate. Game over.

  He took a deep breath and drained the whisky.

&nb
sp; I hope it doesn’t come to that.

  I always liked you as a child.

  63

  Tuesday, 3.30 p.m.

  Mills drove while Jake sat silently.

  They stopped at a part of the construction site that looked a lot more developed than where Marcia Lamb and Belinda Harper had been dumped. The blacktop had been smoothed and rolled, and workers were busy painting the road markings. Or at least they should have been. All work was suspended. The foreman was fuming.

  ‘We should have just thrown the fucking bag in a dumpster and kept working,’ Jake heard him say as they arrived.

  ‘I could see why that would have been tempting,’ he said, ‘but there are laws against that.’

  The man turned to face him. ‘When can I get my men back to work?’

  ‘Maybe today, maybe next week,’ Jake told him. ‘This is now a crime scene.’

  Mills added, ‘We’ll do our job and be out of here as quickly as we can, sir.’ Jake wondered when his partner had managed to learn such diplomacy.

  The worker who had found the bone was lingering just behind the foreman, clearly eager to tell his tale and lead them to the spot where he had made his discovery. But even cops not as adept as Jake and Mills would have needed no tour guide. The spot was obviously just up ahead, where a group of workers had formed a loose, lazy ring. A uniformed cop was with them, sipping from a paper cup of coffee.

  Jake was furious. ‘Patrolman, you were ordered to secure the scene. Why haven’t you done it?’

  The officer looked up, surprised. ‘Nobody’s touched it.’

  ‘But you have all these people standing around, trampling on potential evidence.’

  The man had the decency to look sheepish.

  ‘Clear it now.’ It felt good to assert his authority. The way his day was going, he had to take some control back. The officer began to herd the workers back towards the site office.

  Now he was on his own. Mills was hanging back, giving him the space to work. What he was looking at was a hell of a lot better than what he had been seeing for the past few days. For a start there was no blood, no scattered teeth and no dangling eyeballs; just a tattered white plastic bag, with a rock on it to weigh it down. That was all.

  He scanned the area.

  The worker who had found the bag was hovering nearby.

  ‘Did you put the rock on it?’ Jake asked him.

  ‘No,’ the guy said. ‘It was there when I spotted the bag. As soon as I saw the bone, I called you guys.’ He leaned in. ‘Is it human?’

  Jake turned back to the bag. Interesting. The rock had been put there to ensure the bag didn’t get mistaken for garbage. Whoever had dumped it wanted the bone to be found.

  But why?

  As he approached, he saw nothing of interest. The fresh tarmac was clear. He bent down and used a pen to open the bag, then looked inside. There was a bone there all right, and it was human, as far as he could tell. It looked like a femur. It was about fourteen inches long. Jake was no anatomist, but he thought that made it the bone of an adult but not a tall one. Maybe a woman? The surface of the bone was rough and discoloured, and there was not a trace of flesh attached. The colonel was right: it wasn’t recent. On the surface of things, this bone had nothing to do with his case.

  And yet it had been dumped on the interstate. And that sort of fitted with the previous crimes. All the bodies apart from Candy’s had been dumped on sites associated with the new road.

  Jake allowed himself to assume this old bone was related – just for a moment.

  It might make the killer a man of a certain age, depending on how old the femur turns out to be. But no … Why had he kept this bone, for all those years, only to produce it now? It doesn’t fit.

  It couldn’t fit.

  Jake ran through the other potential explanations. It could be – and most likely was – a copycat with his own anti-interstate agenda. The construction companies were leaking money on all the delays. That was a result for the protesters.

  It could be kids playing a prank. That possibility couldn’t be discounted, however extreme and unlikely it sounded to his mind’s ear. If he had the resources, he’d send uniforms to the graveyards to see if anything was disturbed.

  He straightened up and walked the site, but nothing struck him as out of place. He came back to the bone and took out his mobile. Time to ring the lab.

  ‘Ronnie? Austin here. I’m sending you in a bone.’

  ‘Great, thanks. I’m twiddling my thumbs around here,’ she said.

  Jake ignored the playful sarcasm. ‘We found it in a plastic bag on the new interstate. It looks like a femur.’

  ‘Sounds like you don’t need my help at all, Detective.’

  ‘Very funny. Get back to me as soon as you can.’

  He took one last look around the construction site. If it wasn’t for Candy Jones, he’d still like Makowski for this. But Makowski had been in custody the night Candy was killed.

  Of course, Candy could have been killed by a copycat.

  Jake had four victims who could fit into a kind of neat box – two with definite links to Harper, one who was a prostitute, which Jake knew Harper used, and one who could very likely be described as a dress rehearsal for the main performance.

  Jake told himself not to see connections where there might not be any. There was only one indisputable link between the four murders.

  The new interstate.

  Jake didn’t know what, but there had to be something about the road – its construction or location, or some other kind of significance he was not yet seeing – that bound these murders together.

  But what?

  He looked up at Mills. ‘I need a drink.’

  64

  Wednesday, 21 December, 9 a.m.

  Jake was barely inside the detective bureau when Sara came to find him. She was pale.

  ‘Detective Austin,’ she whispered, ‘it’s Johnny …’

  Would this guy ever learn? Would Sara? Just because there wasn’t a fresh kill overnight didn’t mean Jake could waste his morning on this lunatic. He had taken the dressing-down from Gail, and part of him knew she had been right to give it. But he was damned if he was going to provide a babysitting service for every sicko in Littleton.

  ‘Deal with it yourself, Sara,’ he said, making to move past her. ‘I need to—’

  ‘Please, Jake.’

  There was something in her voice and a look in her eyes. No mischievous twinkle suggesting this was another prank. This was different. Jake got up and followed her to the front desk, thinking that maybe Johnny’s constant appearances at the station had worn Sara down.

  He was also thinking that, if Johnny tried to lay claim to the femur, he might just beat the crazy bastard over the head with it.

  At the front desk Johnny stood with his hands thrust into the pockets of a purple bathrobe which, even from ten feet away, radiated a stench of cheap cigarettes, piss and BO. His shoulders were hunched, and the skin around his eyes formed two deep pools of black. He looked like he hadn’t slept last night – and maybe not the night before either. But he wasn’t twitching today. He was standing still, glaring. There was something in his eyes that gave Jake a momentary prickle of unease. There was a focus there – a kind of clarity in Johnny’s hostility.

  But now was not the time for his bullshit.

  ‘I thought I told you I didn’t want to see you here any more,’ he said. But he kept his voice even. He wasn’t going to overdo it like he had on Monday.

  ‘I did it.’

  ‘I’m sure you did. Whatever it is, it can wait until your next therapy session. I understand you’re getting treatment from Gail Greene. She’s very good.’

  Jake came from behind the desk and approached Johnny. Now was the time to escort him out and put an end to this mess. He reminded himself to do it gently – he did not want to give Gail Greene another reason to come back to the station and call him an asshole.

  But Johnny took a step back
. ‘I did it,’ he shouted. ‘You challenged me, and I did it.’ He took a hand out of his bathrobe pocket and held it up. The hand was red with blood. ‘See?’ he shouted triumphantly. He began to pull his other hand out of the other pocket.

  Jake reacted instinctively, pulling his gun from his shoulder holster and bringing it up in a two-handed shooter’s pose, aiming right at Johnny.

  ‘Take your hand out very slowly and raise both hands over your head,’ he bellowed.

  The shout brought out a number of cops, uniformed and plain clothes. They saw Jake with his gun drawn and reacted instantly. Within seconds, five men had guns trained on Johnny Cooper.

  ‘I did it this time! I do have the guts.’ He said it calmly, and he wasn’t moving. Nutcase or not, he had enough sense not to draw a shower of lead on himself.

  ‘On your knees, Johnny – now!’ shouted Jake.

  Slowly Johnny lowered himself until he was kneeling. Both his hands were covered in fresh blood. As he knelt, his robe swung open. He was naked underneath except for a vest, which was also red with blood. Not his own – there was far too much for him to be walking and talking …

  Then his face seemed to cave in, and his body shrank.

  ‘My God! What have I done? I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I only did it because he told me to. It’s what he wanted.’

  Johnny was pointing two blood-coated fingers at Jake.

  65

  Wednesday, 9.30 a.m.

  Johnny was in a holding cell, cuffed. He had gone quietly, saying nothing more beyond a few muttered apologies and reiterations that he had been ‘challenged’ to take a life. He was on the chair, but curled up like a sitting fetus, and he was rocking gently, crying softly to himself. Back and forth. Back and forth.