Ghost Mortem (Bordertown Chronicle Book 1)

by Gavin Masters

  My dad parked the cruiser by the square, and the three of us got out. We walked past the crowds who'd gathered around the grim scene, which now included Alfie and his pack. Dad, Vikki and I passed them, crossed under the police tape, flashing our badges—or in my case, my press pass—and onto the grim crime scene.

  It wasn't so much a crime scene as another macabre staging of a cadaver. Another naked woman mounted on a cross, like some kind of scarecrow. Like the first victim, her body was covered in eye-like scars. There were so many of them this time, it was hard to find a patch of unmarred skin, until I reached her face.

  I braced myself for the waterworks that would invariably ensue the moment I saw Danny's face. I forced myself to look. As before, it was horrifyingly eyeless, but…

  But…it wasn't Danny! I almost laughed when I saw that. It didn't look like her at all. The woman didn't even appear to be the right age. In fact, she was probably closer to thirty.

  “It's not her,” I exclaimed, almost laughing, almost drunk with relief.

  I looked to my dad, who did not seem to share this relief at all. He looked like he'd just seen a ghost, so to speak.

  “Dad?”

  I've seen my dad break down and cry only three times in my entire life. The first time was when I came to, right after the accident five years ago. Raven's arm was off, replaced by a bloody geyser. My father was shouting at me to come help. I was completely useless and freaking out. I was still in shock. Dad kept cool even then. Told me to put pressure on her wound while he found a tourniquet to tie it off with. I didn't even know what a tourniquet was until that day. But he just kept calm. Even when I asked about mom, who wasn't moving, and wasn't breathing. He just kept cool, got on his phone, and got an ambulance to us. Even then, dad didn't cry. He just kept sitting next to me in the waiting room at the hospital while Raven was in surgery. He kept reassuring me it would all be okay. Then, finally the nurse came out and said Raven was alive and stable, then, and only then, did I see my father cry for the first time ever.

  The second time was at my mother's funeral. He was up at the podium, while Raven and I sat close by. Raven's still-recent wound was oozing through the stitches under the bandages, her eyes dopey from the pain meds. Dad's own eyes were black too—a side-effect of the broken nose he'd sustained during the crash. Somehow, I'd survived relatively unscathed, with only a few superficial scratches and a mild concussion. The doctor who'd examined me said I was lucky. But I sure didn't feel lucky.

  Dad wanted to give mom a proper send-off. He wept so much that day while reading from that crumpled piece of paper, that by the end of it, it was a blur of pulpy paper and ink, and his hands were blue.

  The sight of this second victim would be the third and final time I saw my father cry. I didn't know why yet, but this grizzly sight broke him.

  “Dad?” I repeated. “Are you all right?”

  “Jessica…no…” he sobbed.

  My father collapsed to his knees.

  Jessica? I thought. My mind raced. Do we even know a Jessica? She certainly didn't look familiar to me.

  “Dad? Who is that?”

  “He couldn't…it…it can't be. This is impossible.”

  “Dad! Who the fuck is Jessica?”

  Dad didn't respond so much as rise back to his feet and scream.

  It caused quite a stir. Just about everyone in the throng of onlookers stared at dad. They probably thought he'd gone crazy.

  “Who are you?” dad shouted. “Are you here? Show yourself! Where are you?”

  “Jack?” said Vikki. “What's going on?”

  “It's him. It's really him. I didn't think it could be, but…it has to be him. It has to be, but it can't be,” he sobbed.

  “Dad, what's—”

  “No! This isn't possible,” he continued. “This is not…no…no…no!”

  Dad made a beeline for the police tape.

  “Jack, where are you going?” said Vikki.

  Dad was heading for the house. Our house. No wait, he was heading for the car. Our family's black sedan. He got into the car, started the engine and quickly began to peel away.

  I was in a panic. I'd never seen my dad behave like this before. I quickly grabbed at Vikki's utility belt.

  “Gavin, hey! What are you—?”

  I took Vikki's E.D. gun, flipped the switch to bug-launcher mode, and fired it at my dad's car as it sped away.

  The bug landed just above the rear bumper, and flashed its red beacon, confirming it attached correctly.

  “God this thing's cool,” I said.

  Vikki snatched it back from my hands.

  “Gavin, what the hell?”

  “Sorry. Needed to be quick. We need to follow him.”

  Vikki looked me in the eyes finally, like she was scanning me. Then she looked back at the body.

  Vikki nodded. “Okay.”

  “Vikki?” Doc said. “You're leaving?”

  Vikki looked at the Doc, then back at me. Then back at Doc again.

  “Something's wrong, Doc. Something about this just spooked Jack, and I need to know why. And…I want to make sure my partner's okay.”

  “Okay,” said Doc. “But first, wait. There's something different about this one.”

  “What?”

  “Some of these wounds look like they healed years ago. This woman might have been held five…maybe even ten years. Maybe longer.

  We both—Vikki and I—had to stop and do a double take and look at the woman again. Her face looked sad and weary…and somehow, even in death, still hauntingly beautiful. This woman had probably had a family wondering where she was for years. Where had she been all this time? And how the hell did my father know her? My father became downright reclusive for a while after the accident. When he wasn't at work, that is. Who was she? Was she a cop? Was she a witness? Was she an old lover he didn't want me or Raven to know about?

  “We should go,” I said.

  Vikki nodded. “Doc, let me know what else you find. You two,” she said to two other officers I didn't quite know yet, “maybe you guys can start canvassing for unsolved missing persons going back the last two decades.”

  We got into Vikki's cruiser, and using the G.P.S. tracker, we followed my dad.

  Chapter 37

  Using Vikki's P.D.A., we followed my dad's beacon up the highway north of Bordertown. We were maybe two minutes behind him. Maybe three at first…then progressively more. Wherever he was going, he was speeding like a madman. I was impressed he hadn't been pulled over for speeding, but then again, as a lawman familiar with these parts, he presumably knew where the speed traps were.

  “Vikki…” I began a few minutes into the ride. “I um…I don't know. I don't know what to say to you right now.”

  “You don't have to say anything,” she said. “Let's just concentrate on finding Jack.”

  I nodded.

  We rode on in silence, until I couldn't stand it and turned on the radio for some tunes. Ironically, the sound of silence was filled by The Sound of Silence.

  It was dusk when the blip on the G.P.S. finally stopped moving. By that point, dad was maybe a good ten minutes ahead of us. We drove until we saw his black sedan, parked on a trail just off the highway, by a wooded area. Dad was nowhere to be seen.

  Vikki activated one of her sonic resonator thingies, and we moved on into the woods. The area around us now teamed with light from all life-signs—life from all sorts of creatures in the woods. We were looking for something a little bigger though.

  We wandered the woods for a while, trying not to stray too far from the highway.

  “I really wish we'd brought Alfie and his wolf pack right about now,” I said.

  Vikki didn't say anything, but remained vigilant. I couldn't tell if she was angry with me or what. Maybe she wasn't thinking about that at all right now. Maybe she was just making sure her partner was okay. Something I should also be focused on, seeing as he was my dad and all.

  After perhaps another five to ten mi
nutes of searching, we found a dim outline of a figure digging in the dirt. We moved closer, and that's when we were sure it was really my father.

  “Dad?” I said.

  Dad looked up at me for a moment, almost like he was high on speed. Then he looked at Vikki. Then back at me.

  “Nothing stays buried, son. The past, it…it always comes back to bite you right in the ass.”

  “Dad, what are you talking about?”

  “You know I'm glad you're here. Both of you. This has been a long time coming, and I'm just…I'm just so sick of being alone with myself all the time. It was all right when I thought I had Jessica to talk to, but now…”

  “Dad, what are you doing? What the hell are you talking about?”

  “…Now I have no one. Just a couple of kids who don't understand me…”

  “Dad, that's not—”

  His shovel seemed to clank, evidently hitting something hard in the dirt below him.

  “There it is,” he said.

  Dad dropped the shovel, got to his knees, and started digging with his hands.

  We watched as he dug up something melon-sized. Then dad held it up for us to see, turning his flashlight toward it, so there was no mistaking what we were looking at.

  It was a human skull.

  My heart began to race.

  Vikki drew her gun and trained it on Jack.

  “Jack, what the fuck!” she cried.

  Jack looked at me, while I just stared back bewildered.

  “See, she's got the right idea, son. I can't be trusted. I'm digging up a body.”

  “Jack, what the…what the fuck, Jack!” Vikki cried.

  “Dad?” I said. “Who is that?”

  “You don't recognize him?” my dad replied, his expression almost euphoric. “Well no, of course you wouldn't. He probably looks a little different than the last time any living person ever saw him. It's Death. You're looking at Death himself.”

  “I don't understand,” I said.

  “Gavin, you wanted to know why I was so sure the murder back in that corn field couldn't possibly have been committed by Darius Danko. Well…here's the proof.”

  “What the hell are we even looking at?” I asked.

  “See this small hole right here? Right in the middle of his forehead? It's a bullet hole. And somewhere in the dirt here is a bullet that'll match up to my old twenty-two.”

  “I don't…Jack…I don't understand you,” cried Vikki.

  I looked over at Vikki, astonished to see her falling apart like this. With an unsteady hand, she trained her gun on Jack, while her other hand wiped away tears.

  “I guess this has been a long time coming,” dad said.

  “But, dad…they said…they said Darius Danko was in the wind. And then he was…but…the killing stopped!”

  “Don't you get it, Gavin? Darius Danko was never going to stop killing. He didn't stop because he thought we were watching him, or because he had a change of heart. He had no heart. He was a compulsive psychopathic sexual predator. He was never going to stop.”

  “So you killed him?” I said.

  “I didn't know what else to do, Gavin. You know how long I'd been chasing him? Ten years. Ten long years of finding a new girl every couple of months. Sometimes several in a single month. And every time we thought we were getting close it was like he was two steps ahead of us. It was like he was laughing at us. Taunting us. Like he could see our every move. And he had the devil's luck. Leads went cold. Evidence went missing. And then…then I got the notion he might be law enforcement.

  “I told Gary. You remember Gary? My partner at the time? He said he'd talk to the sergeant. Then he disappeared too. That’s when I put it all together. Our unsub was R.C.M.P. Detective Sergeant Darius Danko. So I did my own investigation under the radar just to be sure. And that's when I stumbled upon his basement full of trophies, and his kill room. It was all there, just like Gary and I knew it would be. And that bastard knew everything about our investigation.

  “The next day, I got a bunch of officers to arrest him at the precinct. I got a proper warrant from a judge to go into his home. Except he had a contingency plan. He set up a kill switch. An incendiary bomb. By the time we all got there…the place was lit up like fucking hellfire. Any D.N.A. evidence linking Danko to the kill room was destroyed. All I had left was my own memory of what I'd found there the night before—which was a circumstantial account at best—about how I'd broken into his trailer without a warrant.

  “I almost got fired for that. Hell, I should have been fired for that. And then the judge let Danko walk. He was done professionally. There was that at least. But the jury believed him. They actually believed that somehow, absolutely all of that evidence had been planted. They were actually gullible enough to believe him. Just like all of his victims. He was so good at getting people to trust him…And the day that…”

  Dad choked up. I couldn't tell whether he was laughing or crying at this point. The two emotions seemed to be mixing together, the way a hot and cold front mix into a whirling tornado.

  “The day that he walked out of that courtroom,” dad continued. “He turned to me with a big smile on his face and he said “I'll see you around, Jack. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon. I might pay you a visit. Maybe I'll…” he trailed off. Now I could tell he was sobbing. “Maybe I'll take your wife out for a ride…or…maybe…sniff…maybe I'll take your little girl out…when she's old enough…”

  Dad balled up on the ground by the hole he'd dug.

  Vikki lowered her gun, tears trickling down her own cheeks now.

  “He really knew…” my father continued, “he really knew how to scare people when he wanted to. Even before he showed his true colors as a serial killer. Sergeant Danko was a tall, lanky, scary asshole everyone was afraid of.

  “I've never…I've never been so scared, Gavin. You've got to believe that. I wasn't in my right mind when I did this. I certainly never meant someday for you to have to go through all this. But that's…that's why I did it. He threatened to go after Sarah, and Raven. I couldn't…I couldn't let that happen.

  “So I started following him. I stole a G.P.S. tracker from the precinct and I started keeping track of his movements. I followed him for a long time until he finally got out to this really secluded cabin in the woods. Not that far from here. Another property no one knew about. God knows how he procured this one. My best guess was it was probably a property confiscated during a drug bust, or a grow op or something, now converted into another torture room. I did a perimeter sweep. I knew he was alone, and then I got out my gun and I went in.

  “He had a girl in there. She can't have been older than sixteen. At first, I heard her screaming, and then I came in and saw her lying there, chained to the bedposts, screaming, like pieces of her were being cut off…which…they were. And then I just started shooting. I fired the clip empty into Danko. Then I reloaded it. He…he wasn't dead yet, so I just kept shooting him. Then when I was out of bullets I just took to beating the living shit out of him with my fists. Finally I just strangled the big fucker. Fuck he was big. I just…strangled him until his last breath, and he…just…laughed and laughed…blood spurting out his mouth…until finally…he stopped.

  “Then, just to be sure, I put a bullet in his god damn head.

  “I untied the girl. God, she was so scared. She cried so hard. And I knew she was going to have so many scars. Her name was…”

  He sniffled.

  “Her name was…”

  Then he was crying too hard to say anything.

  “Jessica,” I said.

  He nodded.

  “No one…no one else ever knew about her, Gavin. No one! How…could he know? There were only three people who knew what really happened there that day. And now…and now…two of them are dead.

  “To this day, I still don't even know how he first abducted her. Back then. It was like there was two of him. It didn't make sense then, and it makes even less sense now. He's…bey
ond me, guys.”

  “Jack…” Vikki started.

  But then Vikki didn't seem to know what else to say. No one did.

  After a time, my dad cleared his throat and nodded.

  “You have to arrest me now, Vikki.”

  Vikki shook her head. “Jack, no…”

  “It's what he wants. He's obviously pissed that I killed him, itching to get his revenge.”

  “So you're just going to turn yourself in?” I said. “You're just going to give him what he wants?”

  “I'm a remorseless killer, Gavin. Vikki. You guys think I regret what I did? No. I think, second only after raising you and Raven, murdering this monster is the greatest thing I've ever done. More than my whole god-forsaken career. I don't want you to get me wrong. I'm sick of running. But I'm not ashamed of what I've done. Hell, no, I'm proud of it. I guess you guys probably wouldn't understand.”

  “No,” I said, “dad, I think I do.”

  “Vikki,” he started, and moved towards her with his hands balled into fists together in front of him. “You should take me in. I'm guilty of murder.”

  “No…Jack…you were just protecting that girl.”

  “And yet Jessica's still dead. And so are a lot of other girls. And that's…that's not why I followed him. I was going to kill him the instant I got him alone. That was always my plan. Wherever I found him. Long before I knew he had another girl out here. That was…he threatened my family. He killed Gary. I just wanted him dead.”

  “Jack, I…Jack, I can't arrest you for this.”

  “Why not? It's murder.”

  “It's wrong,” she said.

  “Maybe. But I think that's what he wants.”

  “We can't give him what he wants, Jack.”

  “Maybe if I turn myself in…maybe he'll stop. Maybe he'll take his corridor of light.”

  “Dad, do you know how stupid that sounds? Didn't you just say he was a psychopath who would never stop?”

  “I did say that, didn't I?”

  “So…let's get this asshole buried again. I'll help if you're too tired.”

  “And then what? How do we stop him? We don't even know where he is. Or what he is.”