The Christmas Killer (15 page)

Jake sensed the mood when he arrived at the station the following day. It wasn’t a high-fives-all-round sort of morning, but there was an air of restrained jubilation among his colleagues. The colonel even smiled at him as he passed his office. At his desk, Mills was grinning through his hangover – the ‘low-key’ Christmas party had obviously been anything but.

Within an hour they had Makowski and his public defender in the interview room.

‘You were late to work two nights in a row. Two nights in which women were brutally murdered. Where were you?’ Jake asked.

Makowski addressed his answer to the table. ‘Like I said, I was with a girl.’

‘We need a name for your girl.’

‘Good luck with that,’ he said with a shrug.

Mills butted in. ‘The way this works is, you tell us the girl’s name, we bring her in, we question her, and if the alibi flies, so do you. But if the alibi sinks, you fry like a rasher of bacon.’

‘I’d love to give you her name,’ Makowski said in a low voice. ‘But I never asked her.’

‘C’mon! How long have you been seeing her?’ asked Jake.

Makowski shrugged, still looking at the table. A slight smirk crossed his lips. ‘Varies. Usually twenty minutes, but sometimes I can go the full half-hour. Sometimes I take her to a motel and we make a night of it. Monday, we did it in the cab of the pickup. Tuesday was in an alley.’

Spent the night with a prostitute. It was an easy way to get an alibi. Worse comes to the worst, a guy in need could usually pay a prostitute to say what he needed her to.

‘And you never asked her name?’

‘I was more concerned with her price.’

Jake bit back an angry growl. Makowski seemed confident, untroubled, and Jake felt like pointing out to him that as these were violent misogynistic murders with a potential sexual motive, his bragging about having sex with hookers was putting himself more sharply into the frame for the killings. ‘You’re going to have to give us a description at least,’ Jake said.

‘Juicy,’ said Makowski.

Jake leaned forward over the table, angling his head to find Makowski’s eyes. ‘Do you want to get charged with double homicide?’ he asked, keeping his voice even. In his experience blank dispassion was more
likely to convince than the TV-cop outrage he’d seen other detectives go for. ‘Because you’re going down that road.’

‘I didn’t do no double homicide,’ said Makowski, turning his face away from Jake’s.

‘You’re not giving us any reason to—’

Just then the door burst open. Sara looked in. Her face was pale.

‘We’re busy,’ Jake snapped. ‘Tell Johnny to—’

‘It’s not Johnny this time,’ she whispered. ‘There’s been another murder.’

Jake felt it like a slap to the face.

He could see that Mills was pale, and not just from his hangover.

‘Time out,’ Mills said to Makowski and his lawyer, and the two detectives left the interview room.

Colonel Asher was waiting for them outside the door. ‘There’s been another body dumped,’ he said.

‘The interstate again?’ asked Mills.

‘Not this time,’ said Asher. ‘Littleton Middle School.’

Mills’s head dropped. ‘Not a kid,’ he said just as Jake asked the same question.

The colonel puffed out his cheeks, breathing a relieved sigh. ‘Thankfully, no.’

‘Might the body have been there a few days?’ Jake asked, on autopilot. Little Middle was the school that Faith had just started.

‘Don’t know,’ said Asher, ‘
yet.
’

Jake caught Asher’s tone and emphasis. Makowski was in custody last night. So if the kill was fresh, they had the wrong guy – again.

‘We better get out there quick,’ said Mills.

In the car Jake said nothing. If Makowski wasn’t the man, they’d wasted a day chasing smoke.

‘Is it something to do with the time of year?’ Mills asked.

‘No one hates Christmas that much,’ said Jake, staring out of the window at the passing houses. There was snow on the ground and over the roofs, and ornate displays in many yards, but with the pall of serial murder hanging over Littleton, all the joy had been drained from them.

‘Tell me what you’re thinking, psychic boy,’ asked Mills.

‘I’m thinking we might have blown this one.’

It might not be their fault, but it was their responsibility. They were dealing with a serial killer now. The nature of a serial killer was to keep killing until they were stopped. And the more they killed, the more violent they tended to become. Each murder had to top the previous one, resulting in victims made to suffer even more. And that was only the second-worst-case scenario.

Number one was that the killer got more proficient, less sloppy. Harder to catch.

Mills drove quickly, keeping the siren off. There was
enough panic in the community without that. Mills drummed on the wheel as he drove and the noise was echoing in Jake’s ears, making him crazy. ‘How much experience do you have with serials?’

‘None,’ Jake admitted. ‘But I’ve done the basic fortnight in Quantico for detectives. I’m guessing you haven’t.’

‘Littleton doesn’t do murder. So none of us have been sent on any of those courses. Are they any good? Could they put together a profile of who we’re looking for?’

Jake wasn’t sure about the usefulness of a psychological profile, but at this stage they needed any help they could get. ‘It wouldn’t do any harm, I guess.’

‘What are you waiting for?’ Mills growled.

Jake took out his mobile phone and dialled back to the station. He asked Sara to put him through to the FBI headquarters and training college in Virginia. The switch patched him through to the office of Agent Bob Ressler, second in command at Behavioral Science, the profiling unit.

‘Agent Ressler’s desk,’ a woman answered.

‘Is Bob in?’ asked Jake after identifying himself. ‘I need to consult on a case we have here.’

‘Agent Ressler is on vacation for the next few days. If it’s urgent, perhaps someone else can help.’

‘We’ve had three bodies in three days.’

‘Point taken,’ said the voice. ‘One unsub?’ This was FBI-speak for ‘unknown subject’ – the perpetrator.

‘We think so.’

‘Look, Agent Ressler is in the Bahamas, but if you email through all the files – especially the crime scene photos and the ME’s report – I can get them to him this evening.’

‘Thanks,’ said Jake. He hung up.

‘Any luck?’ asked Mills.

‘We’ll have a profile in the morning.’

‘Can we wait that long?’

That was the question bothering Jake. Could they wait?

What’s going through your head? Something is driving you, and it’s more than anger. But I can’t see it. Not yet.

They passed four warehouses and a lumber yard, and arrived at the school. Parents were already pulling up to take their children away. Word spread fast, and Jake knew Littleton was edging closer to panic. There would be no containing this one. The press and the cameras would be at the scene within minutes. The proximity to the school made this one sensational.

‘Dad!’

As Jake got out of the car, he was almost bowled over by Faith jumping into his arms. Leigh was behind her, wheeling Baby Jakey’s walker, her face pale and drawn.

‘It’s OK, sweetheart,’ said Jake, talking into Faith’s hair. ‘Mom’s taking you home.’

Faith drew back from him, looking up with eyes that glimmered with tears. ‘Are you coming with us?’

‘I’ll be home later,’ he told her. ‘I have to work now.’

‘But—’

‘Faith,’ said Leigh, her voice a weary rasp. ‘You want your dad to catch the man who did this, don’t you?’

Faith looked from one parent to the next, seeming genuinely uncertain of her answer for a moment. Then she nodded. Over her head, Jake mouthed, ‘Thank you,’ to his wife, who nodded back.

Jake saw that Mills was keeping a respectful distance from the family tableau. ‘Honey, this is my partner, Howard Mills. Howard, this is my wife, Leigh.’

The two of them shook hands. Then Leigh reached to take Faith gently by the shoulder. ‘We should get going,’ she said. ‘See you at home.’

‘There’s a quick way to the dump site,’ said Mills after they had walked away. ‘Through the school.’

Mills drove around the building and straight across the basketball court. He parked the car right under the net and got out.

‘There’s a gap in the fence over here. That’s the best way to the crime scene,’ he said.

‘I’d like to come in the way the murderer did.’

‘And how do you know he didn’t come in this way? Everyone who ever went to this school knows about this gap.’

‘If he was carrying a body he didn’t crawl through a gap in a fence. He took the access road.’

‘OK,’ said Mills. ‘Want to go around to the other side?’

Jake nodded. His pulse was quickening. He could feel him. The killer had been here.

The access road led to a little path. To Jake’s left it curved away, following the line of a small river. It was a narrow path, more a track beaten in the grass, with bushes to one side and trees lining the river. The river was almost blocked off by the thickness of the undergrowth. He looked in the other direction. The trail curved and he could see some buildings in the middle distance. These would be the backs of the warehouses. Near one there were two cops standing on the path with their backs to the river. That had to be where the body was. No sign of anyone else yet. The forensics must still be on the road. One of the cops was smoking.

Jake walked up to them.

‘Hey, buddy,’ the smoker said, ‘this is a crime scene. Walk on and get out of here.’

Jake flashed his badge. ‘I hope you plan on taking that butt away with you after you finish smoking it. I don’t want the scene contaminated.’

The cop reddened.

‘I want one of you to block the trail down there near the entrance, and the other to go up to the high-school
fence and keep it secure. No one comes in without a badge. And no smoking, no chewing and no stepping on stuff.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said the cop, and both left for their new posts.

Jake stood where the cops had been. He too had his back to the river. He looked in both directions. The problem was walkers. There were snagged branches, broken-down plants and dropped litter all along the path.

‘How popular is this spot?’

‘In summer it would be full of kids every night, drinking beer, making out, smoking pot,’ said Mills. ‘Not so much in winter. But there’s joggers and the occasional vagrant. It was a dog walker found the body.’

Jake knew dog people. They walked their animals daily. And dogs tended to have a nose for dead things. This meant the corpse could not have been lying there two or three days. It had been dumped last night. Which meant they had wasted a precious day on Makowski.

Jake swore under his breath.

It bothered him that he was not able to tell which direction the killer had come from; there was too much innocent contamination of the scene. It would be a forensics nightmare.

Now he was facing the river, and he could see her. He felt a tightening of his chest muscles, a burning in his belly. Violent death ages a body, but this one was young. She was probably only just out of her teens. She
was slim, with a clear complexion and coffee-coloured skin, and she was showing lots of flesh. She wore a tight leather miniskirt and a vivid pink boob tube. Her shoes intrigued Jake. They were cheap stilettos with clear perspex heels and red synthetic uppers. That and the scanty clothes indicated that she was a sex worker.

She was lying on her back with her head towards the river; her legs, close together, pointed to the trail. Her arms were flung out like she was asking for a hug. She had been dumped rather than laid out carefully. Without moving, he took in the position of the body, the angle it lay at and the trampled grass. He slowed his breathing and tried to put himself into the scene.

You carried her in a fireman’s lift.

With every second he could see it more clearly. From the angle that she fell, and the crushed grass where he stood, the killer had come from the left. So, the school.

You had her over your left shoulder, and you went up on your toes and you heaved her off. She fell like that, looking up at you.

Jake could feel the murderer’s euphoria as the woman with no eyes looked at him. He felt the joy the murderer would have felt as he saw what he’d done.

You love removing their eyes. You pretend not to, but you get a kick out of it.

But hold it – there was a difference this time. Jake had missed it at first. Only one of the eyeballs was dangling from the socket. The other eye was just an empty hole. There was nothing there. An eyeball was missing.

‘Mills?’

He heard the sounds of Mills leaving the path and coming towards him. Then the intake of breath. ‘Aw no!’

‘You know her?’ Jake asked.

‘I think so. I mean, the face is virtually gone. But the body, the clothes, the shoes. It looks like Candy.’

‘Candy who?’

‘Don’t know. Probably, her name isn’t even Candy. She works the streets. She’s a bottom feeder, been hooked on crack since her early teens. I busted her once for soliciting.’

‘Her eyeball is missing,’ said Jake.

Mills bent and looked. He straightened. ‘He’s keeping souvenirs now?’

‘It’s a nice idea, but I don’t think so. I think our killer came from the school side, and he carried her. So we’ll probably find the eyeball somewhere along the trail.’

‘Anything else?’ asked Mills sarcastically.

‘He’s quite strong, slightly below average height, and he’s right-handed.’

Jake saw the look on Mills’s face, so he explained.

‘He carried her over his shoulder from the school, which means he’s strong. He stood here.’ He indicated the crushed grass. ‘And then he heaved her from his shoulder. Look at where she landed. A tall man would have got her further from the path.’

‘Whoa,’ said Mills. ‘You know a lot about this fella.’

‘Let’s look for the eyeball,’ said Jake, ignoring the wary tone in Mills’s voice. Was Jake making him uncomfortable?

They walked back towards the broken fence into the high school, moving slowly, shining their torches into the bushes as they went. Before long they heard the rustle of movement, the pitter-patter of scurrying rodent feet. A rat burst out and raced towards the fence. They went to where the rat came from and found the eyeball on the ground. There wasn’t much of it left. Several small animals had obviously taken a bite.

Jake didn’t flinch as he put on a glove and picked up the eyeball, dropping it into an evidence bag.

‘You know, in the Middle East they eat eyeballs,’ Mills said. ‘Doesn’t look so appetizing to me.’

Jake ignored Mills’s ham-fisted attempt at lightening the awful scene. A blanket of darkness was descending on him, plunging to the depths of his mind. It was like some of the colour was gone from the world around him. Almost like edges were becoming sharper, and tones muted to black and white.

He shook himself. He needed to get to work, and fast. The darkness, the depression, would simply have to wait. Jake needed help – an outside opinion.