The Last Commandment

by Scott Shepherd

  One word kept running through it.

  Esher.

  Despite Jared having listed the family home a few months back, Hawley didn’t remember hearing that it had sold yet. It wouldn’t surprise him—Esher was a posh village, unaffordable to most, and the notoriety Fleming had undergone in recent months might have made the house hard to sell.

  It wasn’t like Hawley kept up with real estate sales. He was still living in his father’s house in Woking, the middle-class suburb where he had grown up and would most likely never leave. Esher was definitely above Hawley’s means.

  But it was also on his way home to Woking.

  The least he could do was check it out. That way, by the time Grant and the others landed at Heathrow the next morning, Hawley could deliver a complete report when he picked them up.

  It was past eight when he hopped on the A3 out of Richmond. About a half hour later, he turned west to cruise through Hinchley Wood. He passed Sandown Park Racecourse, where he’d spent a few lazy afternoons with other punters looking for tips on winners that never materialized, then arrived in Esher proper.

  The village, like many of its Surrey ilk, was quaint and quiet. There were a few cars parked outside a pub on the main road. Blinking Christmas lights were strung over a door sporting a golden wreath. Hawley could see a few locals gathered around the tree inside, clinking glasses of eggnog and hurling darts.

  Might have to go in and join them after I’m done.

  He checked the navigation system and continued down the main road for a spell. When it dinged, he turned onto a side road and headed up a slight hill until it rang again, the computerized voice telling him he’d reached his destination.

  The first thing Hawley noticed was the realtor’s sign affixed to the iron gate.

  Still on the market, he mused. And still out of my price range.

  Not that Hawley would ever live there. He’d get lost in the place.

  The house was gargantuan—New Scotland Yard might have fit inside the classic Tudor. Massive gardens glistened in the wintry full moonlight—leading Hawley to believe Fleming still had a number of people maintaining it to facilitate a sale.

  Hawley’s attention was quickly diverted from landscaping to the front of the house. A pair of cars were parked in the cobblestone circular driveway. One was a shiny Bentley, the other a dark-colored Audi.

  A couple of lights were on in the house as well. One seemed to be just inside the formidable front door, the other somewhere on the second floor.

  Hawley parked by the gate and reached out the car window to ring a bell affixed to a wooden post. He waited for some response from the adjacent speaker, but all he got was silence.

  He exited the car and tried the bell a second time. He even called out loud in case someone on the other end was listening or the speaker was malfunctioning.

  Still nothing.

  He was surprised when the gate swung open to his touch.

  Hawley hesitated and looked back at his car. He considered calling for backup but realized it would take at least thirty minutes for anyone from the Yard to get out there—if even that soon.

  Figuring he was already there, he opened the gate and headed for the house.

  He went through the same fruitless ritual at the front door. Ringing and knocking to no avail.

  At that point, the feeling Grant had warned him about was resounding through his entire body, even more so when he found the front door unlocked as well.

  Hawley swung it open and called out.

  “Mr. Fleming? Mrs. Dozier? Scotland Yard here.”

  The light he had seen from outside came courtesy of a Chihuly chandelier hanging above. It illuminated an entryway that led off to massive rooms still staged with furniture that Fleming had kept to show off the house to potential buyers.

  But these rooms held no interest for Hawley. His eyes were on the staircase directly in front of him.

  And the bloody footprints on the carpet covering it.

  He found them upstairs in the master bedroom.

  That had been the other light he’d seen from the driveway.

  At first glance, one would think he had interrupted Liz Dozier and Jared Fleming in bed together. But Hawley quickly realized they’d just been staged that way.

  Especially as they were both still clothed—and complete bloody messes.

  Hawley moved closer to the bed, carefully trying to avoid anything that might later be classified as evidence.

  It wasn’t like he wanted to ensure they were dead. No one could have survived the slaughterhouse the bed and two bodies resembled.

  Hawley just wanted to double check.

  Sure enough, a Roman numeral VI had been engraved on Jared Fleming’s head. A carved VII adorned the brow of the woman he would never get to wed.

  Hawley straightened up as he heard a sound.

  And realized his big mistake.

  There had been two cars in the driveway.

  He had assumed one belonged to Fleming and the other to Elizabeth Dozier.

  As opposed to the blood-soaked killer he turned to find standing directly behind him.

  “Ah, Sergeant Hawley,” he said. “You and Commander Grant will be happy to know that I got Fleming to confess to killing his partner, the late lamented Mr. Dozier, before we finished our work here.”

  He waved the dripping bloody knife at his handiwork on the bed.

  As the Commandment Killer moved toward him, the sergeant found himself thinking of Austin Grant.

  Stanford Hawley truly regretted that he wouldn’t get to tell his mentor everything he had just figured out.

  PART TWO

  London Falling

  17

  Prior Silver was agitated.

  He stood by the newsstand in Stepney, three blocks from his flat. Silver had spotted the two constables watching his street in an instant. The former garage mechanic retreated down the steps into the Underground, mumbling to himself.

  Things were rapidly spiraling out of control.

  New York had been a total fiasco—he should have stayed home in England.

  Silver continued down the escalator into the depths of the Stepney Green station. He searched for and found a phone booth.

  Once safely inside, he closed the bright red door and reached into his overcoat. He pulled out a small wooden cross and Bible. He flipped to the Book of Mark, clutching the wooden cross.

  “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand,” he read aloud. “Repent ye, and believe the gospel.”

  He closed the Bible and shut his eyes, grasping the cross even tighter.

  “Repent ye,” he repeated.

  When Silver opened his eyes, they were filled with a renewed determination.

  He started pumping shilling after shilling into the coin slot, dialed a number he had committed to memory, and listened as the call went through.

  Then Prior Silver waited for the one person in the world who might be able to help him to answer his desperate call.

  18

  Detective First Grade John Frankel felt completely helpless and disconnected from the world.

  That’s what happens when you’re stuck thirty-five thousand feet in the air on a 777 flying across the Atlantic.

  He looked across the aisle. Rachel had fallen asleep on the red-eye, snugly tucked under a courtesy BA-logoed blanket and the eyeshade that came with it. But her father was wide awake beside her, staring straight ahead. As frustrated as Frankel felt, Grant had to feel doubly so as they winged their way back to the UK.

  It was becoming abundantly clear that Austin Grant had become the focal point for the killer. From the crossed-out picture in the stolen Far Rockaway car, to the emergence of Prior Silver as the prime suspect, and now the “Fleming Mess” (Grant’s words); it couldn’t be a coincidence.

  Frankel had been fascinated listening to Grant recall his pursuit of Jared Fleming and Elizabeth Dozier. He vaguely remembered seeing it in a tabloid, but burdened with his ow
n caseload, Frankel didn’t pay much attention to a trial happening on the other side of the Atlantic. But the pair certainly fit the criteria as Silver’s intended victims.

  It hadn’t taken much convincing to get Lieutenant Harris to authorize Frankel’s heading to London alongside Grant. Frankel was sure his superior was breathing a sigh of relief that the killer had taken his serial spree to a distant shore.

  There had been much debate about Rachel accompanying them. Grant hadn’t thought it a good idea, but his daughter argued that having helped unearth Prior Silver she was now part of this, and that she was concerned for her father’s safety and didn’t want to be up all night worrying on a separate continent. Plus, she was a grown woman who made her own choices as to where and how she spent her time.

  Frankel smiled; the last reason was enough to know this was an argument Grant would never win.

  He checked his watch; still three hours till they landed at Heathrow. Frankel tried watching some action movie with Dwayne Johnson but quickly lost interest.

  Instead, he replayed where they were in pursuit of Silver. It wasn’t great.

  The former thief had been in England for nearly a day by the time the three of them boarded the British Airways jet. There hadn’t been a sighting of Silver since he’d stepped off the Norwegian Air flight. And Hawley had reported he hadn’t been able to locate either Jared Frankel or Elizabeth Dozier.

  He glanced over to find Grant watching him.

  “We should try and get some sleep,” murmured Grant.

  “Try being the operative word,” Frankel corrected.

  Grant nodded in agreement, then shut his eyes. Frankel, knowing it was hopeless, leaned back and attempted to do likewise.

  He was startled awake by the cabin lights coming on and the steward’s announcement that they would be landing in twenty minutes. Frankel noticed that Grant was in his familiar post—staring into space, lost in thought. He wondered if the Scotland Yard man had fallen asleep from pure exhaustion like he had.

  Frankel suspected he had not. He noticed Grant was finishing a cup of what he figured must be English breakfast tea.

  Rachel stretched and looked at the two of them. “Did either of you sleep?”

  “One of us did,” Grant said. He motioned at Frankel. “He snores.”

  Rachel chuckled. Frankel gave an apologetic shrug, then gratefully accepted a cup of coffee from a steward pushing a beverage cart up the aisle. He wanted to be wide awake to hear whatever update Sergeant Hawley had for them.

  But Hawley wasn’t there to pick them up.

  Grant said it was unlike the sergeant; punctuality could have been Hawley’s middle name, especially in all matters commander.

  Rachel suggested Hawley had gotten the arrival time or terminal wrong.

  “Does that sound like the man you’ve been chatting with?” Grant asked.

  Rachel didn’t argue the point.

  Frankel watched as Grant tried to reach Hawley on his cell but the call went directly to voice mail. He could feel that concern increase when he contacted the Yard and learned no one had heard from the sergeant since the previous evening.

  Frankel looked up at a digital clock on the arrivals/departures board. Eight-fifteen A.M. “Perhaps he’s stuck in rush hour traffic?”

  “And not picking up his mobile?” Grant hit redial and asked someone on the other end to run a trace on Sergeant Hawley’s car and phone.

  Less than five minutes later, the Scotland Yard man’s phone rang.

  “I’ll bet that’s him circling the terminal,” Rachel said hopefully.

  Grant looked at the display on the cell. “It’s the Yard.” The conversation was brief. “Thank you,” Grant said. “I’ll start heading that way.”

  He disconnected and turned toward his daughter and Frankel.

  “They traced his car to Esher. It’s also the last place his cell registered.”

  “Escher like the artist?” asked Frankel.

  “It’s a village in Surrey. Not far from here actually,” said Rachel. She glanced over at her father. “Did they have an exact location?”

  “I don’t need one. I know exactly where to go.”

  Frankel didn’t like the way those words came out of Grant’s mouth.

  They had the finality of doom all over them.

  They caught a taxi and headed south for thirty minutes.

  Once on the road, Grant called back the Yard with an address to send reinforcements. He’d just finished telling Rachel and Frankel about Fleming’s Surrey estate and how he’d interviewed the tobacco tycoon twice there.

  “You might want to tell Jeffries to have a team ready as well,” Grant informed his colleague before ending the call.

  “Who is Jeffries?” asked Frankel.

  “The forensics medical examiner.”

  Frankel wished he could tell Grant he was overreacting. But Hawley’s car parked outside the Esher mansion did nothing to dissuade that feeling of dread that Frankel knew they all shared by now.

  They removed their bags from the cab and placed them beside Hawley’s car. As the taxi moved off, Frankel glanced through the gates at the mansion. A Bentley was parked in a circular cobblestone driveway. The only sound came from chirping birds brave enough to stay in the barren trees for another dreary winter.

  “Do you want to wait for your colleagues?” Frankel asked.

  Grant placed a hand on the hood of Hawley’s car. “Ice cold,” he observed. “It’s been here since at least some time last night. I say we head inside.”

  Rachel visibly reacted. “Dad, maybe you should wait for someone.”

  “It would be helpful if you’d do that for us,” Grant told her.

  His gaze returned to the mansion lying behind the massive gates.

  The only thing missing is that “Keep Out” sign at the Far Rockway hospital, thought Frankel.

  Grant echoed the unspoken sentiment.

  “We’re too late to stop whatever happened here.”

  Sergeant Hawley had been unable to prevent anything either, as evidenced by his dead body having been draped over those of Jared Fleming and Elizabeth Dozier atop the bed in the master bedroom. It resembled a twisted version of Michelangelo’s Pietà, with Fleming added to the tableau as a second parent grieving the loss of their grown child.

  Frankel knew the killer had staged the display for Grant. It was as if he were saying, “I hereby offer you your son, the good Sergeant Stanford Hawley.”

  For the first time since he’d met Grant, the detective saw pure anguish appear on the man’s face. Along with a fair share of rage.

  “I’m so sorry.” They were the only words Frankel could muster up, knowing there were none in the English language that could be strung together to offer Grant any form of solace.

  Grant barely nodded.

  Frankel knew he would have reacted the same way with the sudden loss of a close colleague in the line of duty. The only choice was to focus on the work at hand and redirect one’s grief and fury to try and make things right.

  London was on the verge of spontaneously combusting with fear.

  Merry Fucking Christmas.

  Jeffries showed up with his team shortly after a couple of Scotland Yard detectives had arrived as backup. Grant introduced Frankel to his superior, Deputy Commander Franklin Stebbins, who had made an appearance—having left his family at a holiday brunch at his golf club. The NYPD detective could tell Stebbins wasn’t overjoyed to make his acquaintance—probably because his presence meant a homicidal maniac had returned to the British Isles.

  A debate ensued on whether to release Silver’s name and description to the media. Grant argued for the public to be made aware that a suspected killer was back in their midst to make it harder for Silver to hide. Stebbins urged delaying the pronouncement, not wanting to create chaos just prior to the holiday.

  With Stebbins pulling rank, the discussion was tabled. The deputy commander implored them to solve this bloody case once and for
all.

  “Why do I get the feeling he was blaming me when he said that?” asked Frankel as Stebbins drove off, presumably to return to his holiday festivities. “Like it was my fault for not catching the guy when he went around garroting New Yorkers.”

  “Probably the same way your Lieutenant Harris felt about me letting Silver cross the pond in the first place.”

  They moved toward Sergeant Hawley’s car, where Rachel was waiting. Neither man had been able to dissuade her when she’d insisted on seeing what they had discovered on the second floor of the house. And though she had tried to keep the proverbial stiff British upper lip, Frankel saw her start to crumble when she encountered the carnage. He had quickly put his arm around Rachel and escorted her down the stairs and out to the car.

  “You really should head back to the house,” Grant told her.

  Once it was decided she’d accompany them to London, Grant had gotten Rachel to agree that she would stay with him in Maida Vale.

  “I’m not going back there without you, Dad,” she said. “I’m fine.”

  Frankel could tell she wasn’t but had been around her enough to know there was no budge room either.

  One of the Scotland Yard men came up and told them Jeffries was ready.

  A few minutes later, Frankel and Grant returned to the master bedroom.

  A lot had gone on in their absence.

  The bodies had been photographed from every possible angle. The bloodstained carpet had been covered in plastic; strings had been pulled and mounted off walls tracing the presumed footpaths of the killer and the victims.

  The FME corroborated a number of things both Frankel and Grant suspected. The carvings on Fleming’s and Dozier’s foreheads corresponded with the ones found on the three bodies Jeffries had examined earlier that month.

  “I’ve already sent pictures to your colleagues in the States,” Jeffries told Frankel. “I presume they’ll match the priest and the other victim you found.”