The Christmas Killer (31 page)

The man behind him was getting closer. He could feel the menacing presence but he couldn’t make out the face. He never could. But as the man touched him, he turned and screamed, and then he was slashing the man with a knife, his skinny twelve-year-old arms barely strong enough to break the flesh. But after a couple more tries, he finally had the knife inside the man’s belly. And there was blood, blood everywhere …

Then Jake woke up.

It was always the same dream. Not every night, but at frequent regular intervals. And he could never see the face.

Jake hadn’t slept well. Guilt and desire wrestled in his head, and neither had won. But they both kept sleep away. He felt like an asshole for coming so close to kissing Gail. He felt like even more of an asshole when he acknowledged that there was a part of him that regretted
not
kissing her.

The clock on the bedside table showed five forty-nine, but he couldn’t take any more of this. He needed to get away. He knew he couldn’t face Leigh for a family breakfast. He worried that his face might give something away.

Trying not to make any noise, he began to dress. Leigh stirred, and he froze.

‘What’s up?’ she asked groggily.

‘I have to go to the station. The paperwork is piling up.’

‘My hero.’ She turned in the bed, drew the covers over herself again, and was soon breathing deeply.

As Jake left the house he felt a deep sense of disappointment in himself. He hated how Leigh trusted him so much. He wasn’t sure he could live up to her trust.

The station was almost empty; the night shift ran on a skeleton crew. There was one guy on the desk, and two cars patrolling. There were four cops sitting around drinking coffee. Jake poured himself a cup, but he didn’t want to talk. He didn’t feel like company right now.

Carrying his drink, he went to his desk and powered up the computer. Sitting down, he took a sip of the coffee. Strong. Far stronger than the stuff the day shift brewed. But he guessed the night guys needed a bit of a booster sometimes.

He had one fresh email with an attachment. He clicked on the message. It was from Colin Reader, the FBI guy. The message opened, and Jake read it quickly.

Detective Austin,

Thanks for the heads-up on the bone. Dr Zatkin was very helpful. But how did it get over to you guys? I need to know. If you find out, keep me in the loop.

We had one of our artists do up a facial reconstruction on the skeleton. It’s quite good, about 70% accurate, he says. Would you mind having a look over it, maybe post it around the station? We’re hoping it might jog a memory.

Thanks,

Colin

Jake clicked on the attachment and it began to download, line by line, from the top.

It was a drawing. Now he could see the eyes. They were cold eyes, a nondescript grey colour. But there was nothing you could do about that; the eyes on a reconstruction always looked dead.

With every new line that appeared Jake felt more and more nauseous. About ten seconds later, the image was complete and Jake’s mouth filled with saliva.

Apart from the eye colour, he could have been looking at a mirror.

What the hell?

It was a joke. It had to be.

Mills must have sent it to wind him up. But Mills wasn’t smart enough to send a message from a convincing fake FBI email address. He wasn’t that technologically knowledgeable. Jake checked the address in the sender’s box. It was an official FBI address, no doubt about it. Maybe Mills had managed to put Reader up to playing a prank? But that couldn’t have been right – he’d only spoken with Reader a couple of times but the Fed
hadn’t struck Jake as the type to waste his time with jokes.

The image was genuine.

Jake felt a moment of panic.
There has to be an explanation
. But he couldn’t think of one. Unless he was losing his mind.

He passed the morning unable to resist taking repeated looks at the picture. Each time he brought up the window he hoped that the face would be different, that it would have somehow changed itself. But it had not.

Around ten thirty Mills stopped by Jake’s desk. ‘Howdy, partner,’ he said.

With a start Jake minimized the image on the screen.

‘You all right, buddy?’ asked Mills.

‘Yeah, I’m fine. I just have things on my mind. The case is getting to me, I think.’

‘I know. Night guys said you’ve been in for hours. Take a break. Go home and relax. Wrap some gifts or something. Don’t leave it
all
to the missus – that’s a sure way to get yourself some couch time. Know what I’m saying?’

Jake smiled at Mills.

‘I’ll do that.’

But an hour later, when Mills left the station, Jake was still staring at the screen. His mind was a riot of thoughts tumbling over each other, but he kept coming back to one question:
Why does a long-dead man in Littleton, Indiana have my face?

Jake passed the day in a daze, barely aware of the people passing in and out of the station, vaguely aware of a twitch that he had developed.

The detective bureau remained blissfully quiet. On most Saturdays the bureau operated with a skeleton crew just like the night guys, the detectives taking turns on a four-weekly rotation. But today it was even quieter than usual as folks clocked off to go home and be with their families. Jake shook his head clear of images of subdued Christmas dinners under the cloud of threat and violence that had settled over Littleton.

You really have killed Christmas
, Jake thought. Then he cursed himself for being flippant.

It was dark outside when the night shift clocked on. Around the station the uniformed cops readied themselves to go out on patrol. There was always a little more activity in the darker hours on Saturdays – bar fights and such, drawing out the squad cars. When the first siren wailed, Jake came to his senses. Like snapping out of a dream. He really needed to get a grip. But how?
Talk it out, that was what they said. He picked up the phone and dialled Gail’s number.

When the phone on the other end of the line started ringing, he asked himself,
Why Gail? Why not Leigh?
He told himself it was because she was a counsellor. But she didn’t pick up, so it was a moot point. Thinking of Gail brought back yesterday’s conversation in the car. Something she had said about Johnny’s Aquinas syndrome was playing on his mind, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. He replayed the conversation in his head.

Then he went on the Internet and googled the condition. Very little came up and nothing to resolve whatever it was that was bothering him. So he googled ‘head crusher’ again. This time he didn’t just look at the images; he read the articles. Religious zealots would put heretics in the device, and squeeze their heads until they confessed their sins. Often they continued with the pressure until the victim died. Just as often the penitent – or what was left of them – was released from the device and put on trial. The inevitable result was death at the stake. All done in the name of God.

That triggered something.

Jake turned from the screen and picked up a copy of the medical report from Ronnie. It was long and detailed, and he had skimmed over parts of it. But some parts stuck out. He ran his eyes down the pages.

Yes, he was right. All the victims had had their hands
bound together from the elbow to the wrist. There was ante-mortem bruising consistent with restraints on all the victims. He held up his own arms and pushed them together, elbow to elbow and wrist to wrist. The only practical way of doing it was with the palms facing each other.

Their hands were bound in prayer
.

Now he was on track. The killings had a ritualistic aspect, suggesting a religious motivation. He went through the victims in his head again. Marcia Lamb was a single mother raising a bastard child. Belinda Harper was an adulterous wife. Candy Jones was a prostitute. Chuck Ford was a ruthless journalist, opportunistic and without morals, a man who profited from the exploitation of misery.

They weren’t evil people. But perhaps in the eyes of a religious nut … ?

Jake thought about the people he knew in Littleton, the ones who claimed deep faith. Certainly a number of people who had turned up at the demonstrations didn’t want the old church torn down …

But what about … ?

No. It was crazy, what he was thinking now. No way could it be true.

And yet he couldn’t shake the feeling – a tingle of conviction that was almost always right.

Jake went through the evidence bit by bit.

He would have had access to the graves at Christ the Redeemer; and those skulls had suffered the same
damage as the Christmas Killer had inflicted on his victims. If all the murders were committed by the same man, that meant the perpetrator would have to be well into middle age or perhaps a bit older. And old-fashioned in his views too.

Jake grabbed his coat and left the station.

Jake was running now. Why hadn’t he seen it? As he climbed into his car he had his mobile out and was scrolling through his contacts, looking for Mills’s number.

Father Ken Laurie. Unbelievable.

Jake let his mind flood with images of Father Ken’s face, trying to see in retrospect what he may not have seen when he was with him. Any hint as to the evil beneath the smiling kind-old-boy features that he made good use of. But as he focused on Father Ken’s face a strange flickering vision invaded his mind. His finger hesitated over the
Call
button.

The image in his mind was not a memory of one of their meetings. The Father Ken Jake was imagining was younger. His hair was thicker and darker, his skin didn’t have any wrinkles. And Jake’s mind’s eye was looking
up
at him.

Like the view of a child.

A strange sense of familiarity made Jake shudder, even though he could feel sweat running down his body. Behind the young Father Ken scenery seemed to
come into focus, filling out the vision. A dull grey autumn sky, clouds hanging low over … what? He couldn’t see. He was outdoors, in some kind of garden, but what? And where? And why was none of this confusing him?

Jake shook himself and lightly slapped his own cheeks three times. Gail was right – he had been working too hard, obsessing. And he had not slept well last night, because the dream had returned, and …

The dream.

Jake got that same shiver of familiarity. He could feel his chest tightening, his mind working like an engine, asking so many questions he couldn’t decipher a single one. Things were making sense but without making any sense at all.

He put the phone back in his pocket and started the car. He could call Mills in a while. He needed to understand first.

Driving through the quiet streets he tried to prepare himself for the confrontation. He had no idea what he would say to Father Ken.
Do I know you? Did you kill those people?
His ulcer was leaking like a foundering oil tanker, and he had to fight the urge to pull over and vomit by the roadside. He kept driving. The church steeple was like a guiding beacon, and soon he found himself on the right leafy streets. He turned down one, and there it was – the priest’s house.

I can’t believe I left my mother alone with you.

There was nothing parked outside, but Jake didn’t
give it a thought. He drew his car to a stop. Then he did something he hadn’t done since he’d arrived at Littleton – he checked his service weapon to make sure it had a full clip. Satisfied, he got out of the car and walked up to the priest’s door. He knocked. No answer.

The lights were out.

He could be out killing someone right now.

Jake ignored the calm voice in his head saying something about a search warrant and questioning how he would ever explain his actions to Internal Affairs, if it came to it. He took a step back and kicked the door. It was old and a little rickety. It came right off.

He raised his gun as he walked in. Nothing. Through the first door. He quickly scanned the living room. It was empty. He went through to the kitchen. That was empty too. That left upstairs. He took the stairs at a run, two at a time. It wasn’t how he had been taught to do it, but then the police academy had never run a class on raiding the home of a man you’ve been having nightmares about from years before you met him.

At the top he could see three doors, two of which were open. He tried the first door. It led to a bedroom. Nothing. The second door led to an office. The final door was closed. He opened it and stepped into a small bathroom. All empty. No sign of the priest.

The tightness in his chest eased a little bit. Father Ken was out. Jake would call it in shortly, but first he’d have a quick look through the house in the hope that it would throw up some kind of explanation.

He needed to understand.

The bedroom was small. It was a simple room, nothing out of the ordinary. A crucifix hung on the wall above a queen-size double bed, with blankets rather than a quilt. On the bedside locker were a clock, a pair of reading glasses and a stack of books – a mix of popular history and thrillers.

The office contained a computer that looked about ten years old, a printer, even a fax machine, and piles of books. Most of the books seemed to be Bible studies or medieval history, with the occasional weighty theological tome. There was a very comfortable chair, the stuffing bulging in places, that Jake assumed the priest used himself. There was a second chair, more modern – a bland mass-produced thing. Probably for visitors, Jake reasoned.

He went back downstairs to the living room. It was also perfectly ordinary, giving no hint of the monster who dwelt there. A twenty-year-old Hitachi TV sat in the corner, with a doily and a dried flower arrangement on top. The furniture consisted of a simple but comfortable three-piece suite and a coffee table. On the coffee table was a chess set, with a game laid out. Jake looked at it; black was about three moves from checkmate.

Jake started to doubt his own theory.

The final room he searched was the kitchen. Again it was the very ordinariness that struck him. Neither obsessively clean nor disgustingly filthy. On the counter
there was a box of cornflakes and a dirty bowl. A jar of Nescafé instant coffee was open, with a spoon sticking out. The table was simple and had just two chairs. The guy lived alone; he wouldn’t need any more settings than that.

I’m wrong. This isn’t the house of a killer. I’m overwrought. I’ve made a horrible mistake.

Jake knew what he had to do: phone it in and square the broken door with Asher. He could probably wriggle out of it, say that he had come to talk to Father Ken about something else and got the impression there were burglars in the house. He had overreacted enough around the station, Jake thought Asher might just buy it. Maybe he could give Father Ken a few bucks for a new door and that would be that.

He was getting ready to switch off the lights and leave when something caught his eye. A yellow Post-it note on the fridge door. He went over and as he drew closer his legs went weak, and his heart grew cold.

The Post-it had a mobile number and three words.

‘Jake. Call me.’