An Unkindness of Ravens

by European P. Douglas

  “All of the victims - except Ferguson, I haven't checked on that yet - were keen amateur writers in the same period about twenty years ago.”

  “Holy shit, that is it!” Tyler said. “So what are you thinking, someone at a publishing house going through old slush piles? Something like that?”

  “That’s certainly one idea, but I’m not so sure on it. I think this guy used their writing to get them to come see him. I have a feeling there was a letter sent and they were asked to bring it with them so there would be no evidence of it after the murder.”

  “A hunch?”

  “Yeah, I got to admit that.”

  “Sounds reasonable to me.”

  “This is it Tyler, I can feel it. I have a tonne of old writing stuff and correspondence from each of the people so far. I think the killer is going to be in there somewhere or at least some link to him.”

  “Sounds like we’re on the home stretch,” Tyler said, and this was music to her ears. “You want to meet and we can go through it?” The question threw her, though she should have been expecting it. Suddenly she was very jealous of what she had.

  “I don’t know,” she said and then paused a moment, “I'm not done yet, I still have to get back and talk to people who knew Ferguson and that won’t be today at this late hour. I won’t even be home until it’s time to get to bed.” It felt shit to be lying like this, but it felt even worse to know there was no way Tyler would believe she was going to go to bed when she got home tonight without looking through these files for hours first.

  “OK, tomorrow then?” he persisted and she had to relent to that.

  “Yes, I’ll call you when I’m done and we can meet somewhere.”

  “Maybe my place,” he suggested, “Well out of the way of any distractions?”

  “Maybe,” she said, “Listen, I better go, talk to you tomorrow.”

  “Bye.”

  The open road had never felt so free to Sarah as she bolted along the highway back towards Woodbridge. Every now and then she would glance at the boxes and folders that lay across her back seat and she smiled, shouting with mirth,

  “I’ve got you now, you bastard!”

  It had been a very exciting day for her, despite the long sadnesses that were included as she witnessed first-hand the shattered lives of people left behind. Each of them wore their own kind of heartbreak and it looked to Sarah on some to be permanent. The faces of the bereaved came to her one by one like passing street lamps on her windscreen as she drove.

  As she thought about them, a phrase was trying to make itself known to her, a thread that had run through the day but had for some reason seemed elusive. What was it? It was on the crest of her mind, so close she could almost say out loud what it was that was trying to come to her. She saw those same sad faces and then each one again lit up a moment by the same thing as the others - ‘Stuart got into the final of a competition once - Elizabeth won a competition once - Dennis had a story in a magazine after a competition one time - that was it!

  Was it possible it had been the same competition all of them had been in? Were they the finalists? Were there any more, and if so, would it be possible to find them before it was too late!

  “Oh shit!” she cried scrambling for the phone to call Tyler back.

  “Yeah?” he answered.

  “Tyler, I think we need to act faster than I thought.”

  “Why, what’s happened since an hour ago?”

  “I think I just figured out what the actual connection is while I’ve been driving, and it could mean we’ll be able to identify any further victims in advance if we act fast enough.”

  “What do you need me to do?” he asked.

  “Are you at home?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ll be there in about an hour, get a pot of coffee on, it’s going to be a late one!”

  “On it,” he said, “See you then.”

  One hour and fifteen minutes later, Sarah pulled up outside Tyler’s house. It was 11.42pm. He was standing on the porch in jeans and a grey t-shirt and he looked good in the light of the window beside him. She shook her head - this was no time to be thinking about things like that!

  “Help me with this stuff,” she called out, jumping from the car and pulling open the back door. He arrived beside her silently, and she was surprised he was there when she turned with the first box. He took it from her and brought it into the house and passed her on the way back out as she came in with another. They had the whole lot inside in less than a minute.

  “Most of it is Bachman’s,” Sarah said, “He seems to have kept everything he ever wrote since he was a kid!”

  “He might be the one to really break the case then,” Tyler said. “It would be fitting if he could get some kind of justice from beyond the grave.”

  “That would be a nice angle for your story,” she said. “Well, we better get to work.”

  They took a box each of Bachman’s stuff and started going through it. There were stories written on any kind of paper you could think of, envelopes, post-its, diaries, anything. A lot was handwritten and some of it was simply illegible, but it was touching to think how much all of this had meant to him at one time in his life.

  “I know we can’t really get into this stuff too much,” Tyler said, “But some of what I’m seeing is not bad at all. This guy probably could have been a writer if he kept at it.”

  “Uh-huh,” Sarah said, not really listening as she looked through the papers. She wasn’t reading the fiction Bachman wrote - very little of it anyway - she was much more concerned with any correspondence she came across in the file.

  “If you find any letters, put them on the counter here,” she said, patting where she meant. She saw him nod to this out of the corner of her eye and they went on.

  An hour later they had looked through everything at least once, scanning through the stories of the would-be writers and piling the letters or notes by author on the countertop.

  “Not a lot to go on,” Tyler mused as they looked at them.

  “Maybe, but if we dig a little deeper, there might be something here.” They cross examined the piles looking for entries to the same competitions or letters from the same magazines.

  “I’ve got something,” Sarah said, holding up a sheet of paper and then rummaging through the ones she'd already seen. Tyler looked on with eagerness waiting to see what it was. “I know I saw something like it,” Sarah was saying. “Here!” she cried, pulling out a page and looking at it again, comparing the two. Tyler leaned in close to see and their cheeks brushed one another. He moved back a little.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  “No problem,” she replied and for a moment her face felt flush and she lost concentration but quickly regained focus and looked at the pages. “These two letters are confirming they were in the final of a short story competition for this magazine,” she pointed to the name in the letterhead.

  “Epic Aeons.” Tyler read aloud, “Never heard of it.”

  “Me neither,” Sarah said. “It could be long gone by now.” Tyler went to his computer and looked it up and then turned back to her,

  “Went out of production in May 1991.”

  “Look up CJ Mortimer; he’s the editor who signed the letter for both.”

  She listened as Tyler typed this in and then clicked on some links.

  “Not much,” he said after a long silence. “I’m not sure if this if even the right guy.”

  “I’ll have him looked into back at Quantico,” Sarah said, “If he’s still alive, we’ll find him.”

  “I’ll see if I can find anyone else who used to work with the magazine,” Tyler said. Sarah came over and leaned over his shoulder and looked at the screen with him.

  The net was closing in.

  Chapter 51

  The search didn’t yield much in the end. The magazine had died before the internet really took off, so there was no old website to look through to be sure the others had also been finalists in this
same competition. They found only two names listed against the company in a multitude of different searches, and it turned out the other man, Alex Van Der Poel, was long dead. It was very possible Mortimer was as well.

  Late the next morning Tyler was at his desk at work; his eyes tired from a late night of screen time. He was still searching, however, and he’d put in a few calls to some people he’d written a story on about a local Comic Book Convention, who might have links going back to the time period in question. He was just waiting to hear back from them.

  Sarah would be in her office by now too, using the power of the FBI - although in a much quieter fashion than usual - searching out CJ Mortimer. Tyler’s secret cell phone sat heavy in the lower pocket of his cargo pants, and he was itching to look at its screen every few minutes in case he missed its vibrating - it had to be on silent when at work or around anyone who might know anything about the case. Sarah was the only person in the world with the number, so anything that came via that phone was very important.

  Danny was sitting close by, his keyboard clicking away as he searched the web for more clues. Davis was about the place, in and out to his own office in one of his restless moods. It struck Tyler that the other reporters were very rarely in the office anymore, but then, he was the same sometimes for months on end.

  When his normal phone suddenly jangled to life on the desk, Tyler was startled and jumped as he grabbed for it. It was one of his comic book geek contacts and he was hopeful of good news. Danny looked on as Tyler answered, became animated and then cradled the phone between his chin and shoulder as he pulled a pad and pen out of the rubble of his desk and wrote something down. The address of the former editor of ‘Epic Aeons’ magazine CJ Mortimer. He was still alive so far as the source knew, but he had a reputation for being something of a hermit; there was no phone number to go along with the address.

  “What is it?” Danny asked when Tyler got off the phone. Tyler tried to look less giddy and said,

  “Maybe nothing, but maybe something. I’ll let you know very soon!” Tyler got up and rushed through the doors to the stairwell and down a flight as he pulled his other phone out to tell Sarah this news. What he didn’t notice was that the doors didn’t make their usual swoosh noise behind like usual when they closed.

  “Sarah!” he said as soon as she answered, “I’ve got Mortimer’s address, he’s only an hour from Baltimore!”

  “What? I couldn't find anything here!” she said.

  “I know, it seems like he’s something of a loner, doesn’t have a phone or anything. Where are you?”

  “I’m in Quantico, give me the address.”

  “OK, but you’ll be looking at more than two hours from there. He lives on the shore of Lake Marburg, near Hanover. I’ll text the address to you now and I’ll meet you there, OK?”

  “OK, but don’t speak to him until I’m there, you’ve gotta promise me that.”

  “Yeah, I won’t leave here for a while and will wait for you at the end of his street.” Maybe.

  “OK, great, see you then,” Sarah said and hung up.

  Tyler didn’t intend on hanging around. He rushed back upstairs to get his stuff and leave right away.

  When he came back into the office, however, Davis’ eyes met his and they were furious. The editor had been looking at his phone, but he pressed off the screen now and put it away. Tyler thought it was something he’d seen online that upset him, but then he saw Danny looking very apologetic and he knew it was something else.

  “You're sharing news with the FBI!” Davis shouted, “You want us to lose the story, the exclusive!”

  “Sorry, Tyler,” Danny said.

  “I’m not losing anything,” Tyler said grabbing up his coat, “She is the only reason I have this information in the first place!”

  “Bullshit, I just heard you in the stairway telling her the information you have! Which by the way you haven’t shared with the editor and your employer!”

  “She...” There was a loud ping then and Danny swivelled fast in his chair back to his screen.

  “Guys!” he called out in excitement, “There’s a new post on the murder blog!”

  “What is it?” Davis said, turning to him and Tyler rushed over to see for himself.

  “It says ‘To All Press - You better get to Whitney State Forest Before the FBI See This!’” Danny read out.

  “That’s it?” Davis asked; he too was leaning in to see the screen. Danny scrolled up and down, but there was no more.

  “Nothing more,” he said.

  “OK, you two get out to Whitney, leave here right now. Tyler give me the address of this person you were going to see with the FBI.” Davis instructed.

  “Why?” Tyler asked.

  “They’ll all be diverted to this now, so I can go to this man and get the exclusive from him while you guys get the coverage with everyone else in Whitney.”

  “But you don’t know why I wanted to see him,” Tyler said, though he was sure he should go to the Forest Park if the killer was saying so.

  “That’s why you're going to tell me. Go get in your car, I’ll get in mine and I’ll call you once I'm driving,” Davis said.

  “Why don’t you go to the woods with Danny and I'll go the editor since I know it all already?” Tyler suggested.

  “My days of crawling all over the woods are long gone,” Davis smiled, “but talking to an editor one to one, that sounds like something just up my street.” Tyler still hesitated. He didn't want to lose this talk with Mortimer. “Don’t make me turn it into an order, Tyler,” Davis said impatiently.

  “Fine, Danny let’s go,” Tyler said and he rushed out with the intern following close behind.

  Chapter 52

  Sarah Brightwater was on the road hurtling towards Marburg Lake only moments after getting off the phone with Tyler. As she ran through the corridors of the FBI Academy to the car park, she memorized the address to input in her satnav as soon as she was in the car. Having done this, she was gone and on the road in seconds. Despite what Tyler had said, she didn’t know if he could be trusted not to go to Mortimer alone and she didn’t want that to happen; there was more than enough secondhand information in this case so far as it was.

  Thankfully the traffic was light - it was nice to catch a break for once. It didn’t last long, however. She thought about calling Bobrick or Daniels to let them know where she was going, but at that moment she knew she’d left her own normal cell phone behind on her desk. She’d taken the call from Tyler in a quiet corridor and only run back to her desk to get her car keys. She could see the phone now in her mind's eye sitting under a couple of sheets of blank paper she’d overturned on her untidy desk looking for a pen.

  The one she used to talk to Tyler was handy, however, but she didn’t want to use it to call the FBI - that would open up a whole other can of worms. Instead she called Tyler. She wanted to see what he was doing and she also wanted the full story on what he knew about CJ Mortimer from his source. She never got to make the call. As she dialled, the screen went suddenly blank and lifeless.

  “No!” she shouted, shaking it as though that would bring it back to life. She hadn’t charged the thing! How bloody stupid was that! Now she had no phone at all, no way to communicate with anyone should she need to. What a time for that to happen. She pressed down harder on the gas. If Tyler was waiting for her down the street from the old editor’s house, he might get bored more easily having not had confirmation from her when she was going to arrive. That would be a perfect excuse for him to go in there alone. She couldn’t let him do that, this was her case and she was the one who was going to crack it!

  All Sarah could do on the road was imagine the possible outcomes of the interview with this man. It never crossed her mind he would be the killer himself as he would be far too old, but it was very possible - if not very likely - he knew the killer. One name, that was all she needed. All of her hopes were pinned on CJ Mortimer’s ability to remember thirty years ago.
r />   “Let’s just hope that brain of yours is still sharp!” she said.

  One name and that would be it. The net would close so rapidly it would feel like no time at all. She smiled thinking that ‘John the Baptist’ probably never thought this connection to the writing for the same magazine competition would be found. He would never see them coming!

  Her only fear now was that Mortimer’s mind would be failing or already gone. It would be a harsh kick in the pants if he couldn't tell them anything new at all. It would take time to track down people who knew the editor when he was younger and alarm bells could be rung for the killer as this search went on.

  One name. How simple.

  Her mind went to Malick, thinking how excited he would be either driving or else sitting in the passenger seat as they sped towards the hoped-for breakthrough in the case. He would be thumping the roof and whooping it up, and she smiled at the idea, saw his grinning face as he enjoyed entertaining her as well as the buzz his work was giving him. There was no way he was going to retire; Tara was not going to be happy. She looked at her watch - why was time going so fast!

  Silly thoughts began to crowd Sarah’s mind then. Things like ‘you would have been much closer if you’d been out in the field today instead of stuck in that office.’ or ‘Why didn’t you stick to Tyler like glue when you knew he was going to ask all his contacts about the editor?’ Things she could do nothing about now and which mightn’t have made any difference anyway.

  One name.

  What if that name was Dwight Spalding? What difference would it make to the chase if he already knew they were after him and had been for many years at this stage? She shook the idea away; negativity wasn’t going to solve this, or anything else. The former editor of ‘Epic Aeons’ was going to know something and he was going to be of use! He was going to lead her to the killer.

  The road seemed endless and the satnav didn’t seem to be moving at all. It was interminable. Another negative thought surfaced - what if the killer had expected them to find CJ Mortimer, and Sarah was heading there now only to find the latest victim in this gruesome game he was playing? Well, she may have forgotten her phone, but she certainly hadn’t forgotten her gun. If someone was there waiting, she would have no qualms about firing a shot into them if it came to that. It wouldn’t be the first time after all.