by Hayton, Lee
Next up was a room crammed with furniture. Bent, broken. Some so ugly it was an abomination to even keep them unused in storage. Better off burning it, mate. Someone could be hiding in there, but Arbeck wasn’t keen to move enough chairs aside to check. He’d hear it a mile off if they tried to rush him.
The room at the end of the hall was bright and well aired. It smelled better than the rest of the house put together. All except for the underlying dankness Arbeck guessed came from Malcolm Carter himself. Stanton would make his excuses, but the man lived like an animal. Live like one, die like one. Thems the rules.
A sewing machine hogged the center of the room. Not a little Berlina like his wife had. An old industrial one. Metal wedges with interlocking teeth hooked up to thick cables half an inch wide. The thing must weigh a ton. Carter must have had help to get it in here—who would’ve guessed the man had friends? Rust was flaking off the chains holding the foot pedal, but the rest of it was shining clean.
Piles of furry material took up half the room, arranged in varying shades of brown. Arbeck tipped a cardboard box toward him and felt his heart skip a beat as he saw a couple dozen sets of empty eyes staring back out. He tossed it down in disgust, then poked a finger in to confirm they were plastic. Weirdo. Arbeck scanned the room again, half-expecting to find a girl suit made from real girls.
Underneath the sewing table was a thick laptop. Built back when being able to drop a laptop and still have it perform was a big deal. Arbeck hooked it out with his foot and looked at it. If he opened it up, the forensics lab would kill him. Without leaving any trace evidence. There’d been too many instances where an inexperienced officer would open a laptop, or press a key on a desktop, only to watch the computer wipe itself clean of anything nefarious. Arbeck had enough enemies in this life, without courting more. That guy with the weird mustache at his local bar for one.
“Got something,” Arbeck announced as he walked through the kitchen to the laundry. Stanton was staring into the washing machine with open horror. “What?”
Stanton looked back at him with hollow eyes. He appeared to be trying to smile, but it came across as a frightful grimace.
“What?” Arbeck repeated, urgency spurring him into panic.
He could walk across and look for himself, of course, but he didn’t want to. Watching the grim dance of expressions across his partner’s face, he didn’t even want to hear a description.
Beads of sweat popped up on Stanton’s forehead. Suddenly, he held a hand to his mouth and bolted for the bathroom. Good luck. Given the state of the house, the bathroom was the last place Arbeck would run toward.
The gut-wrenching odor he’d smelled earlier emanated from the machine. Arbeck pulled at his ear. He could go out to the car and patiently wait for Stanton to join him. Nothing wrong with that, locking up the evidence nice and safe. He’d checked the rooms assigned to him. There was no need to go further.
Retreating a few steps, Arbeck laid the laptop down on the kitchen floor. Just in case he experienced a similar emergency to Stanton. He pulled his jacket sleeve out and pressed it up to his face, taking a few breaths through it before he courageously ventured forth.
The machine squatted in a dark corner of a dark room. Apart from one inadequate, dust-encrusted window looking out to the back of the house, the natural light came from the kitchen and bathroom. Arbeck pressed the sleeve tighter over his mouth and nose as he moved closer to the smell.
Don’t let it be a kid. Please God, don’t let it be a kid.
A terrified sob erupted from his mouth when he saw the dark shape inside. Then his eyes recognized the long snout, the matted fur. Arbeck reached up and closed the lid against the stench, then stumbled back into the hallway, hanging his weight from the door frame, so his body was angled further away.
Christ. He’d left the laptop back there. Another dismayed sob burst out of him, then Arbeck jogged back to the kitchen, stooping and catching the heavy laptop in his right hand and looping back out. When he put a hand up to wipe his face, he was irritated to find it wet with tears.
He didn’t even like dogs.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
It wasn’t until the lab called through, that Haggerty realized the whole station had been holding its breath. They were dealing with a sicko who liked boys and hated dogs, but everything else was conjecture. Not anymore.
“They’ve found it,” he yelled, striding through the door and out into the squad room. “On his computer. Evidence for the two murders. He wrote a fucking diary, can you believe.”
A wave of cheers greeted his statement. For a moment, Haggerty closed his eyes and let the sound roll over him. The fear he’d felt, for his job, his career, his town, vanished in an instant. He felt fucking fantastic.
Then he opened his eyes and saw the look Collins was giving him. Open doubt. Why didn’t she just stand up and shout it out?
“Collins, can I see you in my office for a moment?”
He turned, giving a champion wave to his team. They’d been after this bugger for over a decade, well before he’d been promoted into the unit. Once, they’d celebrated only to find out that they’d got nowhere. Now, they could be certain.
“A fucking diary,” he said as Collins closed the door behind her. She swore occasionally but scrunched her face when she did it. Broadcasting that she’d do it to fit in, but her parents had raised her better than that. “Can you fucking believe it?” Another wrinkle of her nose.
“Great news, sir. Did it say how he knew these girls were pregnant?”
“I don’t know, Collins. I don’t have the thing in front of me. When the technicians send the copy through, I’ll be sure to look that up.”
The frown on her face would’ve brought him down, once. When he had to follow union rules and fair work policies and any other bullshit guidelines the county thought to impose. Union terms didn’t apply to consultants. Individual contractors, in law.
“Now the case is solved, we won’t be requiring your services any longer.”
It would’ve been sweeter if her reaction was visible—a tear in her eye, an open-mouthed gape on her gob—but the tight muscles in her jaw would have to do. Haggerty leaned back in his chair and eyed her up and down, noticing how tightly her hands were wound around each other. It would do very nicely, indeed.
“There are some warrants I had filed—”
He leaned forward to cut her off with an upraised hand. “Edwards will follow up on any loose ends. Stanton and Arbeck can help. Edward’s partner isn’t coming back anytime soon, you know.” Collins right eyebrow raised, and she shook her head.
Haggerty sighed. Had she not even bothered to have a preliminary conversation with the man? “His partner was hit in a shooting a month back. The bullet lodged at the top of his spine. Our medical offers him good coverage, but there’s not a lot anyone can do. Aguila's not going to be walking anytime soon.”
Collins cleared her throat and stared down at her lap. Haggerty tipped his head to one side, was she upset? Pissed maybe.
“I’d ask you to clear out your desk, but—” He waved his hand out at the squad room, and Collins followed his gaze. Apart from her bag, there was nothing personal on her desk. “You’ll be paid up to and including today.”
“Captain, you know there’s still some things that don’t make sense.”
He could feel the muscles in his shoulders bunching. Nothing was ever enough. “What doesn’t make sense is that we had this suspect in our cells last year, then we cut him loose.” Haggerty picked up a pen from his desk and clicked the end, in and out, in and out. Collins jawline grew so tight it looked like her cheekbones were about to pop. “Those two dead girls? They’re on us as much as they’re on him.”
Collins' shoulders slumped in slow motion, like a blowup doll with the valve unplugged. Before his eyes, she was shrinking into herself, her reddening skin broadcasting her shame.
“Clear out, Collins. The rest of us have got some celebrating to do.”
Malcolm fucking Carter.
Haggerty almost didn’t believe it himself. When Collins first went off on her tangent, he hadn’t pulled her back as sharply as he should, because part of him followed her logic. Gregory Mancini had been reasonably young, good-looking if you liked that greasy slicked hair of his. It was easy to believe that a teenage girl in trouble would turn his way; make an assignation she shouldn’t make. How the fuck had Carter managed to get them alone. At best, he looked like a fat slob. At worst, a gay fat disgusting slab of graying meat with mommy issues. The wet pout of his lips had made Haggerty’s skin crawl the entire time he was questioning him.
Still, girls in trouble had hormones shooting through the roof. Hard to blame them for turning to any port in a storm.
Maybe he would follow up on Collins query. Put Edwards onto tracking down exactly how Malcolm had teamed up with these girls. Maybe it would give him some pointers when he current wife became his latest ex.
If Malcolm Carter—who couldn’t stand outside a high school without getting a nail in his head—got girls to trust him and meet up alone at night, there was hope for anybody.
#
The next night, Victoria was out walking again. Unable to sleep. Her mind skittered over the evidence against Carter and kept coming up short. An endless loop replayed Gregory Mancini and the sickening crunch as he hit Star Harris across the temple with a dirt encrusted rock.
When she’d first arrived home from the station, Victoria had busied herself with cleaning out the boxes packed away in the garage. Unwrapping items she couldn’t remember owning, let alone buying, along with possessions that brought forth memories so strong they were visceral.
Her steps on the pavement were soothing, rhythmic. The heat of the exercise more than enough to drive away the cooling breath of night.
The nightmare that woke her tonight had been Shelly, decapitating in slow motion. Something that had never happened in real life, but which her dreaming mind insisted on playing, frame by frame. Without thinking about it, she’d left the house and headed left rather than right. Not to the security of the university surrounds, but the empty dread of the park where Shelly spent her final minutes.
Even after the passing of so many years, the park hadn’t changed since she found Shelly hanged there. A reversal of fortune had never been on the cards, and the park was still the favored refuge of Mr. Down and Mrs. Out. As she passed the thin line of poplar trees that demarcated the boundary, Victoria hugged her arms tight around her body for protection. Still, she didn’t hesitate or angle away to a new destination. As she stepped closer and closer to the children’s playground that no child would ever visit again, the cold anger over the case started to march across her thoughts.
It was hard to believe that the passage of so many months and so many horrors had led the police in a circle back around to where the unit started. Malcolm Carter. The man was a useless waste of space. Slimy. Greasy. Collins had always wanted to shower whenever he was dragged into the station. A nasty piece of work, but he wasn’t a killer. Most especially not a cold and calculating one.
From Arbeck’s sickening description, Carter was so disorganized he couldn’t even dispose of a dead dog. This was meant to be the criminal mastermind who’d outwitted them for years? A man who stuck a dog in the washing machine when its body started to stink. If he wasn’t bright enough to bury a mutt in the backyard or toss it into a random skip, he was hardly their man.
Not to mention, he was dirty. Victoria stamped each footstep deeper into the grass of the park in indignation. There wasn’t a piece of forensic evidence on those dead girls except what was placed there. Was she just meant to smile and nod and agree that the man with an aversion to personal hygiene had somehow managed to cleanse an entire crime scene? Not once, but fifteen times over?
Just walk. Forget about everything else and clear your mind with walking. A few nights before it had worked, but tonight every inch of Victoria’s body wound tighter into a ball of rage.
How could those idiots let themselves be led straight into the same trap again?
Malcolm Carter wasn’t at that high school yesterday by accident. It certainly wasn’t because he was hanging out with attractive, pregnant teenagers. Anyone with half a brain could tell he’d been lured there. A trap set and then sprung. The finer details may not have been factored in—who could anticipate a Swede appearing the model of decorum would smash a spike into his brain—but the premise was clear.
Look at me. I’m breaking parole. Investigate my house. Find a dead dog in my washing machine and a diary on my laptop. A diary I haven’t even bothered to password protect because all it contains are the finer points of my fourteen kills.
Fourteen.
Chuck Havana from the computer forensics lab had sent her a summary report that she’d read and absorbed a good ten minutes before Haggerty got his call. A courtesy heads-up against what he knew was about to happen. Even Chuck suspected something wasn’t right, and the man worked with computers instead of people. Not exactly trained in investigative technique or human psychology.
The brief had mentioned fourteen murders, and Victoria had accepted that without question. It was the number she was used to rolling around in her head too. Except, that was before the last two attacks. If she subtracted Star because there was no doubt Gregory Mancini killed her and added Miranda and Coby to the list, it was fifteen.
If Malcolm Carter were the killer, he’d know about Shelly. If he weren't the killer, he wouldn’t know she existed. Omitted from every official report, unknown to the press. Her old Captain knew, but he was long retired. Haggerty may never even have been told. Victoria didn’t think anyone in the unit knew, except her. And Edwards. And Two entire high-school classes.
Without the actual text to analyze, it was pointless. Maybe there was another girl missed, a copycat gone unnoticed. Maybe the techs had added up wrong. Who cared? She wasn’t on the case anymore. Unless or until another girl died, no one was.
Another girl.
Except it wouldn’t be just any other girl. It would be Nicole. For all that she’d shaken her head when Victoria asked if she was pregnant, she’d clearly been lying. A girl who could get herself in the trouble Nicole had gotten into, with no natural ability to deceive, meant a teenager no one paid enough attention to.
A vulnerable teenage girl.
Just how the Birdman liked them.
Victoria stepped across into the shallow bark of the playground. The ground was lighted at each corner, the concrete poles forming a place for addicts to lean after a fix. Even with the light, she was extra careful with her footing. Bark concealed a multitude of sins, the least harmful of them a used condom. If she stepped on a needle, it could pierce through her shoe. Then Victoria could spend the next six months waiting for the final viral testing to come back negative. If she were lucky.
She adopted a gait like her sneakers were snowshoes. Step, then drag the sole through the bark before giving it a little shake. Carving out the path for her next small step forward. Step, drag, shake. The swings were on her right now, a set of three. The canvas on the far-right seat had torn, pulling away from the chain, so it hung loose and useless. No small behinds would ever wriggle into its cupping hammock again. No sets of feet struggling to reach the ground to enable that first necessary push of momentum.
There were large, concrete pipes next. Five of them at different angles to form a path to crawl through. Stormwater bores. So wide across, that even a full-grown man would only have to stoop to enter i
nside. Offcuts from a city project, sending a generation of children into raptures of delight. One of them had a sleeping form curled inside. Sleeping away the remnants of the chemicals that propelled him spinning through the day.
The slide backed up by a fort that Shelly once dangled from was constructed beside the pipes. Victoria reached the wooden fort, built so children could climb high enough to get a rush when gravity pulled them down the smooth metal chute, or climb higher to play king of the castle. Tired, she closed her eyes and leaned her forehead against the rough beam. Even after all these years, the wood still hadn’t worn smooth.
Three playgrounds existed in her head. The one she’d played and screamed in as a child where each object sent her on a loop of terror and joy as the best playthings do. The physical satisfaction of swinging through the air tempered and exalted by the view at the height of the arc. Where gravity disappeared for a second, and her tiny body would hang in mid-air. The concrete pipes that were always cold, even in the hottest sunlight. Where the smallest peep would echo into a giant baritone.
And the slide.
Every year when school let out for summer, some kid—some boy—would wax it down, so nothing impeded the pull of gravity. Overused, the slow-motion avalanche of children, each one a special snowflake to someone, would cure the surface so that as the day wore on the slide sped up. The heat of the sun turning the metal into a trial by fire if you were scaredy-cat enough to hold out your hands either side for control. The biggest and bravest crossed their arms in a vampire pose and kept their eyes wide open the whole way down. A grade school equivalent of throwing up your arms in a roller coaster.
The second was the way it had been when she was going through high school. When everyone was still trying to convince themselves that “trickle down” was a thing and capping rates for shared services would somehow benefit the community.