Buried: Mystery Series (My Murder Mysteries #2) (4 page)

"No," was the simple answer he gave me.

I was beginning to get tired of the interview already, so I decided to move on to something else.

"Do you like the idea of killing people?" I asked Ian.

Ian was silent again.

"I know the answer to that, Ian," I said, "because two of my colleagues have already been to your house, and they found these unusual, sadistic drawings."

"That doesn't make me a killer," he said.

What he’d just said intrigued me very much.

"Why did you just say that?" I asked him, not knowing the response.

"Because I know you think I did it!" he yelled, getting up as if he was attacking me.

"Calm down now!" I said, raising my voice myself.

"I'm telling you I am not the killer! I did not kill those people!"

"Did you watch the news the other day?" I asked him.

Ian nodded, his face facing the floor again. He sat down and looked depressed again. I then made the decision to talk to him about his family.

"What was your upbringing like?" I asked him.

"My upbringing?"

"Yes. What were your parents like? Did you have any grandparents, or brothers or sisters?"

"I had all of those," Ian replied, still not looking at me.

"What were they like?"

Ian looked at me for a second, and then decided to open up.

"My father used to beat me,” he replied, “and my mother was an alcoholic. Some days I would go hungry, and the only food I received in a day was at school, or if I was lucky enough I found some money somewhere to go to a shop. They treated my little brother, Evan, the same."

I was not expecting that reply at all, but there was more.

"My grandparents used to sit and laugh while my father beat me up almost every day. Evan used to be so scared that he hid under the table. My sister used to laugh at me as well. She went out most of the time. She must have been brought up that way too. And then there was my aunt. She was the most caring of the lot, but she did not do anything to stop them – she just blocked it out of her life."

"Were there any other family members?" I asked.

"There was Nathan, who was my mother's brother. He left when I was a baby, and never spoke to us again. I remember, when we were teenagers, Evan telephoned him, but he just put the phone down. I suppose he was treated the same way as the rest of us."

Ian stopped talking, leaving me to think.
Who on Earth were these people?
I knew I had to put my emotions to one side, and focus on the case.

"Right, Ian," I said to him. "I am going to arrest you for the murders, and you will be under arrest until we release you (if we release you). You will be looked after in the cells."

"You're wrong!" he cried. "I did not kill those people! I'm innocent!"

That was what they all said, but that did not matter. I knew there was a small chance that Ian Green was not the killer, but it was very unlikely.

However, I noticed something, and I did a little more research and found out something very intriguing. I looked for photographs of each of the family members, and compared them with photographs of the victims. It was then that it hit me. I noticed that each family member had an astonishing resemblance to one of the victims. For example, Eve Roberts strongly resembled Alison Green, Ian's sister. I knew then that I probably had the killer, but I knew that further research had to be done in order to convince a jury.

I sat back and thought for a moment: Ian Green. Was that the name of a psychotic serial killer? Was he even the killer at all, or was this whole thing a red herring and therefore a waste of valuable time? I was determined to get to the bottom of this, no matter what, and although it looked as though I was coming to the end of the case already, it did not feel like it. In the other cases I had solved, whenever I was close to solving it, I felt something inside. I just had this sensation that I was right, but I just did not feel it for this one. Perhaps it was because the case was far too depressing – much more depressing and twisted than any other case, but I knew the job had to be done, since justice was on the line, and lots of it.

First of all, I decided to research Ian Green's relatives. In the interview, he had mentioned his parents, his grandparents, an aunt, an uncle (although he was never in his life), a brother and a sister. That totaled eight people – the same number of victims there were in the field. My theory for now was that Ian Green had imagined killing his abusive family while killing these innocent victims. Perhaps that was his way of releasing his anger. He would have wanted to kill his parents because of the abuse, his grandparents because they supported the abuse, his aunt because she turned a blind eye, his sister because she did not care, and his uncle because he knew about the abuse, yet did nothing about it. However, there was still one big question that stood out: why would he want to kill his little brother? What did he ever do? I wanted to find out, but first I needed to know more about the family, and if there were any still alive. It was most likely that Evan, the brother, or Alison, the sister, would still be alive, and the others would probably be dead, although I was beginning to think that they had probably turned to drugs and ended up dead one way or another with the upbringing they had had. And it would not have been their fault. I had not yet made my mind up on whether or not I felt sorry for Ian if he turned out to be the murderer, because although what the murderer did was beyond evil, their evil would have been forced upon them, although some would not have seen it like that. Some would have wanted justice for the people who suffered such awful deaths, and I did, in a way, because it was still unforgivable, despite the horrific upbringing. I just knew that evil does not appear – it has to come from somewhere.

I turned on the computer to do some research. Firstly, I discovered each of the names of the family members by looking for birth records, including Ian's. Ian was born in 1966, making him forty-six now, and when the first murder was committed in 1988, he would have been twenty-two years old, which, unsurprisingly, was similar to the age when serial killers first started killing, on average.

Now that I had the names, I needed to find out which ones were dead. As I expected, all of the members of Ian's family were dead, except for Evan Green. Evan had changed his name to something else and he was now untraceable.
He got out while he could
, I thought, leaving his brother to suffer alone with the monsters he was living with every day of his life.. Evan just wanted to forget everything. However, it was rather interesting that Alison, the sister, was dead. She would have only been around fifty today, so it was quite unusual. I then found out that she had committed suicide – she took tablets and left a note, saying how much she hated the world and how glad she was to be finally out of it. Perhaps Evan leaving the family gave Ian the motive to kill him, I thought.

The other family members also died in intriguing ways. Both of the grandparents had died in their homes on the same day. The autopsy report said that it was just a coincidence, that they had both died of old age on the same day, but it was still very interesting. Thomas, the father, had died of cardiac arrest, aged fifty-six. Iris, the mother, had died of liver failure due to her alcoholism. The aunt had died in a fire due to smoke inhalation, and the uncle had died in a car crash, aged twenty-eight. I did not know why, but all of these deaths seemed to be very suspicious. Although half of them were seemingly natural, it was too coincidental that four members of the same family would die of unnatural causes (or even five if Iris was included). Maybe Ian had murdered some of them himself and discovered that he enjoyed watching them suffer, so he would want to repeat it again?

I knew that enough was enough: I was ready to arrest Ian for the murders. I was not going to charge him yet, although I was now very suspicious of him, almost too suspicious. But I swore an oath to myself before entering the job: never assume anything unless there is concrete evidence to support it. I just needed to gather more evidence against him before I charged him, but I knew I did not have much time.

At the end of the day, after having not done much more work to progress in the case, I left the station for the night. As I was coming out of the doors, I received a phone call. I looked and it said it was Danny, my ex-fiancé. I cancelled the call. I was sick of him making these phone calls, and if he did not stop soon, I was going to arrest him for harassment. I had made it perfectly clear to him that I wanted nothing to do with him ever again – he made his bed, and now he had to sleep in it. He broke my heart, and nothing was ever going to change that. Although my life was quite busy at the moment, I wanted to try and find space for someone in my life. I had always been a loner. At school, I had one boyfriend for about three weeks. Nobody ever really liked me, and I didn't know why. I knew I was not the ugliest of people; it was probably because I was too focused on my work. Throughout my school life I pushed boys aside, and that was what got me here today. But now I was determined that one day, I would find the one. I knew I would eventually, no matter how long it took.

After that depressing moment, I decided to forget about it and move on with my life. I went home and looked at the notes and information about the case so far.

I returned to the station the next day, thinking it would be business as usual. In fact I was about to get another lead in the case, because a relative of one of the victims said they wanted to speak to me, with new information I had not heard before. I was excited to see what it was, to see if it got me anywhere, and most importantly, to see if it gave me any more evidence to convict Ian Green of the murders.

"Hello," said the woman, who appeared to be in her late sixties.

"What can I do for you?" I asked her as politely as possible, just to show that the case of her relative was in good hands.

"Well," said the timid woman, "I am...
was
the daughter of Fred Lesley."

"That's right," I said, showing her that I had at least thought about her father. "He was the elderly man."

"Yes," she said, apparently nervous. "Anyway, the news said that you have arrested Ian Green. I came in as soon as I could."

"Yes," I replied, beginning to get excited at the thought that it might lead somewhere.

The woman continued. "Well, I think I have more evidence to help convict him, if he is guilty."

By now I was very excited. Hopefully this woman was correct, and Ian Green had slipped up somewhere.

"Please, tell me," I replied.

"Well," she said, "I don't know where else to start, but at the beginning."

"And that is a very appropriate place to start," I said, trying to be as reassuring in my voice as possible, while pushing her to tell me about this evidence as quickly as she could.

"Well, it started a few months before my father was killed. I was coming to see him one day, and when I left, it was getting dark, and I got the fright of my life when I saw Ian Green standing outside my dad's window!" she cried.

"Really?" I said, glad that my hopes were correct.

"Yes. Me and my sister got the fright of our lives. We asked him what he was doing and he just said, 'sorry. I was looking for something.' But that wasn't the first time we seen him there. We seen him twice after that, me and one of my brothers, and then we think we saw him a few times after that, peering into my father's window."

"But you can't say for certain that it was him the last few times?"

"No, because it was really dark, but we can only assume that it was him. He must be a head case anyway. Why would he peer into an old man's window like that?"

"Well, hopefully, I'll find that out for you," I replied. "But the only explanation I can give you right now is that Mr. Green has problems."

"Well, does that help?" the elderly lady asked.

"Yes, it does actually," I said. "It helps a lot."

I was now more confident with the case; I was more confident that Ian Green was indeed the killer I was searching for.

Then, suddenly, something came to me. Elizabeth Beckett, the elderly woman, was murdered with an axe, and not everyone buys axes these days! Even the type of axe was identified, so if I found a record of purchase for that specific axe, I would be able to find more evidence that pointed towards Ian Green, because the person who bought the axe would have had to have shown an ID to be able to buy it, so there was a chance (no matter how small it was) that Ian Green could show up on a record if the shopkeeper had bothered to write down the names.

I felt a pulsing through me – I knew that something good was coming. Was this the breakthrough in the case I was looking for? After an hour of looking for shops that sold that specific type of axe, I was fortunate enough to be able to trace one such shop in the area, and it was the only shop that sold that type of axe at the time in Minot. I was pleased with the results, but I knew the search was not yet over.

I arrived at the shop, which was still there. To my luck, it was actually the same shopkeeper who had worked there for over twenty years. I showed him the badge, and he seemed willing to help.

"I know you might find this strange, but I am investigating a cold case killing," I told him.

"Let me guess," said the shopkeeper. "Are you the one investigating the killings that were on television?"

"Yes...how did you know that?" I asked, intrigued.

"Just a guess," said the shopkeeper. "So, what can I do for you?"

"Well," I said, trying not to laugh with embarrassment, "I am investigating a murder that happened over twenty years ago, and I have recently discovered that the killer purchased an axe from this shop before they killed the victim."

The man looked shocked. "You mean he came here?" he said.

"Yes," was the simple reply.

"And I've spoken to him?" he asked, still showing a shocked facial expression.