by James Carol
‘PB and J,’ he corrected.
‘Is that really appropriate?’
‘Probably not, but it is necessary. The last time I ate was on the plane, and that was hours ago. My blood sugar level is about to nosedive. Believe me, you don’t want to see the fallout from that one.’
‘Whatever you say.’
‘If it’s okay with you, I’ll handle the questions.’
‘Fine with me. You know what you’re looking for.’
Kirchner came back in and handed Winter a plate with a sandwich on. It disappeared in half a dozen bites, chased down with some milk. The bread was a day past its best, but he was too hungry to care. Kirchner was on the armchair opposite the sofa. He was perched right on the edge like he was getting ready to run.
‘I’ve got a couple of questions,’ Winter said.
‘And who exactly are you?’
‘My name’s Jefferson Winter. I used to work for the FBI. I’m consulting on this case.’
‘I was interviewed at the time of my wife’s murder. You know that, right? I told the police everything I know.’
There was a slight hesitation before he said ‘murder’. Two years had gone by, but in every way that mattered no time had passed. Murder had a way of freezing the victims’ loved ones in the past.
‘I want to try a cognitive interview. Do you know what they are?’
Kirchner shook his head. ‘No.’
‘In that case I’ll walk you through it,’ Winter said. ‘In a moment I’m going to ask you to shut your eyes. Then you’re going to go back to the evening of Alicia’s murder and describe what you see, hear and smell. That’s how a cognitive interview differs from a normal interview. Basically, you’re reliving the memory through your senses. The advantage of this approach is that it increases your level of recall.’
‘“Reliving the memory”,’ Kirchner echoed. ‘I’m not sure I want to do that.’
‘I understand your reluctance, but it’ll really help us out.’
‘And how exactly will digging up the past help? Will it bring Alicia back?’ Kirchner shook his head. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘You’re right, Mr Kirchner, nothing will bring her back. However, her killer is still out there, and if we don’t catch him, then tomorrow evening someone is going to come home from work and open their kitchen door, and they’re going to step into a nightmare that’s identical to the one that you live through every single day.’ Winter paused. ‘Let me ask you something. What would you give to change the past?’
‘Everything,’ Kirchner said quietly. There was no hesitation. This was clearly a question he’d asked himself a thousand times, probably in the dead of night when the hours felt the loneliest, and the bed too big.
‘Unfortunately that’s not going to happen. But you can influence the future. That’s what I’m offering here. An opportunity to make it so this nightmare doesn’t happen to anyone else.’
Kirchner didn’t say anything for a while. He was looking more troubled than ever. ‘All right. What do you want me to do?’
‘Close your eyes.’
Kirchner closed his eyes.
‘If something comes into your head, I want to hear about it. I don’t care how crazy it is. In fact, the crazier the better. What’s important is that you don’t censor your thoughts.’
‘I think I can do that.’
‘Good.’ Winter’s voice had dropped to a notch above a whisper. Like a hypnotist, he’d slowed his delivery, stretching out the syllables. ‘I want you to imagine you’re lying on a sun lounger on a beautiful beach. You can feel the sun, warm on your skin, and you can hear the waves rolling in, the water ebbing and flowing. Take a moment to lose yourself in the scene. Can you hear the gulls crying and calling? Can you taste the salt on your lips and tongue?’
Kirchner nodded.
‘Good. Now count slowly from ten to zero. With each passing number you’re going to sink deeper into the sun lounger.’
Over the next thirty seconds Kirchner noticeably relaxed. His breathing slowed and deepened. The lines on his face smoothed away, making him look younger again.
‘Let’s go back to the evening of the murder. You’re in your car, driving home from work. Maybe you’ve got music playing, or maybe you prefer silence.’
‘The radio’s on,’ Kirchner whispered in a dreamlike voice.
‘You pull up outside the house. Do you park in your usual parking space?’
Kirchner nodded.
‘You kill the engine and get out of the car. What’s the weather like?’
‘The sun’s shining. I’ve got my tie off and my shirt sleeves rolled up. It’s too hot for a jacket.’
‘What happens next?’
‘I go into the house. I know Alicia’s home because her bag is in the closet. I hang up my coat and call out her name, but she doesn’t answer. I try again. This time I shout up the stairs in case she’s in the bedroom. There’s still no answer. I’m figuring that she must be in the kitchen.’
His voice hitched and his face creased up with misery. Winter jumped in before he lost him. ‘Okay, I want you to stay in the hallway for a minute. What can you see?’
‘All the doors are closed.’
‘Is that unusual?’
‘No. We keep our cat confined to the kitchen while we’re at work because he keeps throwing up hairballs everywhere. Except he’s somehow got out. He’s at the top of the stairs.’
‘Describe him.’
‘He’s a black and grey tabby. A big one.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘Mouse. It seemed appropriate when he was a kitten. Because he was so small. He wouldn’t stop growing, though.’
‘What happens next?’
‘Mouse comes down the stairs and walks over to me. I pick him up, give him a scratch and tell him off for being out of the kitchen.’
‘How are you feeling?’
‘Puzzled. Mouse shouldn’t be out here. Alicia must have accidentally locked him out of the kitchen. It wouldn’t be the first time.’
‘But this time feels different. Something’s not quite right about the picture. What?’
A small shake of the head. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Take a look around. Does anything seem different or out of place?’
Another small shake of the head. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘What can you smell?’
Kirchner’s face creased into a frown.
‘What is it?’ Winter asked gently.
‘I can’t smell anything.’
‘And that’s unusual?’
He nodded. ‘Alicia gets back from work before me, so she cooks dinner during the week. I cook at the weekend.’
‘I want you to walk over to the kitchen door.’
As soon as Winter said this, Kirchner’s breathing sped up and he started to shift around in his chair.
‘Put your hand on the door handle. Does the door open toward you?’
‘No. Away from me.’
‘So you push it open. What happens next?’
Kirchner’s eyes suddenly sprang open. ‘You know what happens next,’ he hissed.
‘I know what I think happened. That’s not the same.’
‘What happened was that I opened the door and killed my wife.’
‘That’s the censored version. What I want to know is what actually happened. I need the details. What did you see? What did you smell?’
‘Why would you want to know something like that?’
‘Because it’s my job to get into the heads of the people who carry out these crimes. I catch them by understanding them.’
Kirchner didn’t look convinced. He looked like he wanted Winter to get the hell out of his apartment, like he wanted him to get the hell out of his life. It was understandable. The scar tissue covering his wounds was thin, and here was Winter scratching it off.
‘Mr Kirchner,’ Anderton said. ‘We know this is hard, but if you could help us out here.’
‘Why? It’s not like you’re real detectives.’
Anderton flinched, the criticism hitting her where she was most sensitive.
‘Let me ask you something,’ Winter said. ‘How many times a day do you relive Alicia’s murder?’
Kirchner said nothing. The guy was a mess. There were signs that he’d been self-medicating. Alcohol for definite, but possibly prescription meds, too. Red veins snaked through the whites of his eyes and his skin had a graveyard sheen. His hair was wild from where he’d been running his hands through it. There was a slight tremor in his hand. Maybe it was all the questions, but more likely it was because it was fast approaching Happy Hour.
‘The moment of Alicia’s death plagues your entire existence,’ Winter said. ‘Even when you’re not consciously thinking about it, those memories are bubbling away just below the surface. They inform every second of your day-to-day existence. And when you do remember, it’s brutal. When it comes to emotional responses, the brain doesn’t make any distinction between what’s memory and what’s actually happening. Every time you remember, it’s like you’re reliving the whole thing all over again.’
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘That’s the thing, Mr Kirchner, I know exactly what I’m talking about. Look, all I’m asking is that you share one of those action replays with me. Maybe it won’t help. Then again, maybe it will. If there’s even an outside chance of it doing some good then that’s got to be worth a little discomfort on your part, right? Particularly since you’re going to be crucifying yourself with the memory anyhow.’
Kirchner took a deep breath while he wrestled with his decision. It was one thing to sit in an empty movie theatre while your memories played on an endless loop on the big screen. It was another thing entirely to fling the doors open and invite the whole world to come and watch. When he finally spoke, his voice was flatlining. It was emotionless, uninflected, dead.
‘I opened the door and it was like being kicked by a horse. I fell backwards and somehow ended up on the floor, slipping and sliding and trying to scramble away. My brain had switched off and I was just reacting. I got to my feet and my ears were ringing. I knew something bad had happened, but couldn’t work out what. Slowly I worked it out, though. There had been some sort of explosion. And then I remembered that Alicia was in the kitchen. I stumbled back to the door and went in. The smell of the explosion was overpowering. I could see the kitchen chair lying on its side. And I could see there was someone on it. I ran over. It was Alicia. I tried to wake her up, but couldn’t. I kept trying and trying, but she just wouldn’t wake up. That’s what happened.’
‘Thank you,’ Winter said.
Kirchner just glared, tears streaming down his face. ‘Get out of here,’ he said.
13
Frankie’s was a sports bar down by the river. The walls were decorated with Canucks memorabilia. Hockey sticks, helmets, shirts signed by the team members. The big screen was tuned to a soccer game that nobody was watching. The table Winter ended up at was close enough to the bar that he could watch what was going on, but far enough away that he wouldn’t be disturbed. He usually avoided sports bars on principle, but Frankie’s was half empty this evening, and it was only a short walk from his hotel, and it had a decent enough whisky selection. That last one was the clincher.
David Hammond had turned out to be a complete bust. The cell number Anderton had for him still worked, but he hadn’t wanted anything to do with the investigation. Montreal was 3,000 miles away. He was using geographic distance to create emotional distance. His wife was dead and buried and he wanted to move on. Anderton had pushed hard, but it hadn’t done any good. It wasn’t the end of the world. Winter had already got most of what he was looking for from Kirchner.
He sipped some whisky, then took out his cell and navigated to his emails. Anderton’s were in a separate folder. He scrolled through them until he reached the ones that had attachments. She’d sent the case files through at the start of their correspondence. Bait to get him hooked, and then she’d reeled him in.
Winter downloaded the autopsy report on Isabella Sobek and began to read. Isabella. That was another indicator that Sobek had viewed her as a possession rather than a person. A name like that just cried out to be shortened. Bella. Izzy. Isa. Take your pick. You got to know someone, and you got close to them, and those little terms of endearment slipped in. But that hadn’t happened here. As far as Sobek was concerned she was Isabella. For now and for always. Winter couldn’t see him shortening it. He couldn’t even imagine him calling her darling or sweetheart or honey. That would somehow diminish her. It would somehow lessen the value of the possession. Winter had seen the photographs. If he’d been married to her she would have been a Bella. No doubt about it.
He skimmed through the autopsy report, taking in details. When you got down to it, every death could be attributed to one of two causes. Your lungs stopped pumping air, or your heart stopped pumping blood. If either one happened then death was an absolute certainty. Everything else was just a variation on those two themes. Sometimes, as was the case here, the themes merged. According to the medical examiner, the explosion had shocked Isabella’s heart to a standstill and ruptured her aorta. Then the ball bearings had slammed into her chest, ripping through her lungs and rendering them useless. The same thing had happened with Alicia Kirchner and Lian Hammond. The blast killed them, the shrapnel made sure they stayed dead.
You could argue that the ball bearings weren’t necessary. And so far they hadn’t been. In all three murders the explosion alone had been enough to get the job done. The problem with using fireworks was that it would be difficult to know how big the blast would be. That was the unknown quantity in the equation. The killer would have carried out tests, so he would have had a rough idea of what to expect, but there would still have been some doubt. Was the blast going to be big enough? Would it do what it needed to do? The ball bearings were his insurance policy. If by some miracle the victim survived the explosion, then the shrapnel would finish them off.
Where, why, who. Winter was wondering about the why again. The road less travelled. When dealing with serial killers, the actual murders usually happened for one of two reasons: necessity or gratification. The problem was that neither explanation seemed to fit. Necessity would cover a scenario where the killer raped his victim and was worried about being identified, or a scenario where his fantasies had pushed him into going too far. Winter couldn’t see how that would work here. Which left gratification. Except that didn’t work either. This killer didn’t get their hands dirty. Nor did he need to look into the eyes of his victims as he took their lives.
It wasn’t unusual for serial killers to hang around at the scene of the crime. They got off on the confusion and pandemonium. The sense of superiority that this gave them was intoxicating. Anderton had known this. That’s why she’d had cameras and eyes on the crowds who’d gathered outside the murder houses. Nobody had stood out, though.
Another possibility was that the killer had been hanging around outside his victims’ homes prior to the explosion. That would fit with him taking a hands-off approach. Except that didn’t sit comfortably, either. The murders had all happened in residential areas between the hours of six and eight in the evening. People would have been home from work by then. Someone would have seen something.
Again, Anderton had been diligent. The neighbourhoods had been canvassed, but nobody had seen anyone acting suspiciously. Winter took witness statements with a pinch of salt. They could be useful, but sometimes they created more problems than solutions. People placed too much importance on them and that could lead to a wild goose chase. Memory was fluid and easily corrupted. The drapes in your childhood bedroom weren’t blue, they were in fact red. You’d actually had the chicken dish when you last went out for a meal, not the beef.
In this case Winter would be happy to accept an eyewitness statement as gospel. If the killer had been hanging around in a car, waitin
g for the bang, someone would have seen him and said something. Even if they hadn’t been able to give a halfway decent description of the killer or the car, they would at least have been able to confirm that he’d been there.
But that hadn’t happened at any of the crime scenes. On that basis Winter was happy to accept that the killer hadn’t been outside the victims’ houses when the bombs went off, which meant that gratification was off the table, too. If you took gratification and necessity out of the equation all you were left with was a large question-sized hole. Serial killers didn’t do anything without a good reason. The risks were too great to have your actions controlled by whims. Winter decided to park this one for now. He’d let his subconscious play around with it, see what it came up with. Sometimes hitting things straight on just led to that hole growing bigger.
Winter finished his whisky and put the glass back on the mat. The sensible thing would be to head back to the hotel and carry on working through the files there. Then again, that first whisky had gone down a little too easily. There was a mirror on the wall behind the bar. Light shone through the bottles lined up on the shelves and reflected back, sparkles of colour, like amber jewels. Faces were reflected there too. Laughing faces. Serious faces. Smiling faces. Sad faces.
A curious face.
Winter stood up and went over to the bar. The same guy who’d served him earlier served him again. He was in his late fifties with small eyes set in a fleshy face. He had the look of a hardened drinker, someone who should avoid bar work. Winter saw liver failure in his future. He knew what that one looked like because that’s what killed his mom.
The barkeep poured in silence, one eye on the big screen. He was the only person watching the game. Winter carried his drink back to his table and got settled. He put it down and squared the mat, making sure it was absolutely parallel with the table edge, whisky sloshing gently against the sides of the glass. The curious guy was at a table close to the bar, one where he could watch the reflections in the mirror without being obvious. He was shielded by two rowdy kids who were competing to see who could drink the most. It was good cover. Anybody looking in that direction would hone in on the kids.
