by N. M. Brown
Somebody called out to him from the bustling crowd of reporters. Usually, Leighton would ignore any such media activity around the periphery of a crime scene, but it didn’t anger him; they all had a job to do – news teams included. In any case, this would be the last crime scene he would attend, now Gretsch had finally got his head on a plate.
As he limped in the direction of his car, a reporter called out again to Leighton, but he kept on moving without turning around.
‘Officer Jones, can you tell us anything about the owner of the house on Thorn Road?’
‘Was that the home of The Dentist?’ someone else asked.
‘Come on, Officer, we just want to let the public know what’s going on,’ another reporter shouted.
At that moment, a strange expression appeared on Leighton’s face. He paused, and then turned around, limping back to the throng of reporters. Microphones were thrust toward toward him like giant match heads, and camera lenses appeared over the shoulders of reporters. Leighton leaned toward toward the nearest microphone.
‘Is this thing on?’ he asked in a rasping voice.
A reporter nodded enthusiastically.
Leighton looked down the lens of the nearest camera, cleared his throat and spoke slowly and deliberately.
‘My name is Officer Leighton Jones of Oceanside Police Department. This evening, I followed a credible lead to an address, where I discovered a number of pieces of evidence suggesting the resident was indeed the serial murderer known as The Dentist. The evidence subsequently led me to this location, where the suspect was hiding out in a disused mine.’
Leighton paused and adjusted his clearly painful arm.
‘I attempted to apprehend the suspect, however, he fired at me wounding my arm. As a consequence, I was required to use force to defend myself. Unfortunately, the suspect died during the struggle.’
There was a pause, during which time Leighton had to blink against the flutter of camera flashes. This gave him time to formulate exactly what he wanted to say.
‘It would be unfair of me to take full credit for this result. I want to state clearly, and on the record, that I followed this line of enquiry on the express instruction of my superior officer – Captain Gretsch of Oceanside PD. He trusted my instincts on this case and advised me that public safety was his greatest priority.’
‘Sounds like quite a guy,’ one of the reporters called out.
‘Oh, he is.’ Leighton continued. ‘Earlier this month, one of my colleagues – a loyal highway patrolman named Daniel Clarke – found out that his father was seriously ill. Captain Gretsch demonstrated both his empathy and consideration for the officers in his care, by granting him six weeks paid leave. These are the kind of wise and supportive decisions we see from our captain all the time. Maybe, once in a while, they need to be shared and reported. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to find a big Band-Aid. Thank you very much.’
‘Thank you, Officer,’ the reporter said.
Before Leighton approached an awaiting paramedic, he went back to the reporter.
‘Hey, how come you guys knew to come out here anyway?’ he asked.
‘An anonymous phone call from some woman. She told us that a lone wolf cop was out here, taking on The Dentist.’
‘Thanks,’ Leighton said with a warm smile.
In the small hospital room, in Tri City Medical Centre, Danny was sitting by his father’s bedside watching a wall-mounted television. As the news report unfolded, he smiled in disbelief at the screen, whilst gently holding the warm hand of his sedated father.
‘You clever bastard, Jonesy,’ he said, nodding his head.
Annie Jones was sitting on the edge of a bright yellow sun lounger in Lina’s parents’ garden. She was listening to a Shakira CD whilst painting her toenails bright blue, when Lina rushed through the sliding doors from the house.
‘Oh my God, Annie,’ she squealed excitedly, ‘you really need to come in and see this!’
‘See what?’ Annie asked.
‘Just come,’ Lena said, beckoning her toward toward the house.
‘What is it?’ Annie said, sounding genuinely confused.
‘Your dad is on the news. It’s all over the television!’
‘What is?’
‘They’re saying he caught a serial killer. I think he was telling the truth last night.’
Annie dropped the nail lacquer and hurried into the house.
Officer Sam Westall was on reception duty at Oceanside Police Station when he heard the commotion from Captain Gretsch’s office. The reception desk was twenty feet or so away from Gretsch’s office door, and yet the noise was enough to reach him. It sounded like some sort of fight. Sam had only been serving for six months, but even in that short time he had found Gretsch to be the most intimidating of all the captains.
Leaving the desk, he cautiously walked down the corridor to where the four captains’ offices were located. The noise coming from Captain Gretsch’s suggested some type of argument. He could hear the captain shouting vaguely recognisable expletives.
Sam knocked on the thin wooden door, but there was no answer. Eventually, he summoned the confidence to turn the handle. When he opened the door, he discovered Captain Gretsch, breathing heavily, standing in a room that looked like it had been ransacked. A grey filing cabinet was on the floor, and the entire contents of the Captain’s desk – including a photograph of him astride his beloved Harley – had been swept onto the floor.
‘Are you okay there, Captain?’ Sam asked tentatively.
Gretsch said nothing, but his chest continued to rise and fall.
It was then that Sam noticed the television screen suspended on the office wall. The sound had been switched off, but the picture was showing footage, shot from a circling helicopter, of an area of dry scrubland. The scene was covered with the emergency services. A bright yellow banner scrolled across the bottom of the screen: Breaking news – serial killer caught by Oceanside Police operation.
‘Wow!’ Sam said. ‘Have you seen this, Captain?’
At that point, the captain turned his head to look at the younger officer.
‘Get the fuck out of here!’ he screamed.
‘Yes, sir,’ Sam said, and retreated from the room. As he closed the door, he could hear the sound of further items being broken on the other side.
Chapter Forty-Nine
Leighton carefully placed the box of groceries outside the door and pressed the buzzer. Nothing happened. He tried again, but the sound of thumping music from the apartment next door was too loud to hear anything. Leighton walked to the nearby door and thumped on it with a balled fist.
Moments later the door opened, revealing a dishevelled young man wearing boxer shorts and backwards baseball cap.
‘Turn the music down,’ Leighton said.
‘Or fucking what?’ the young man asked with a menacing frown.
Leighton opened his jacket to show his badge.
‘Or … I’ll arrest you for a four one five misdemeanour and impound your stereo. Even if you make bail, you’ll have to wait thirty days before you’ll get your hi-fi back. That’s assuming nobody at the station accidently breaks it.’
‘Fucking harassment.’ The young man sneered then slammed his door, but a moment later the music fell silent.
Leighton pressed the buzzer for a third time.
This time the door opened, and a bleary-eyed Rochelle blinked at Leighton, smiling slowly in recognition. ‘Hey, Jonesy, I saw on the news. How did you get over here with a busted arm?’
‘I took a cab,’ he said. ‘First time in about ten years.’ Leighton found it hard to conceal his delight at seeing she was safe.
‘So, I saw that you got your man,’ Rochelle said.
‘I thought something bad had happened to you. I stopped by, there was some blood and the place was empty.’
‘I cut my finger trying to open a packet of cigarettes with a kitchen knife, I had to rush out for supplies,’ Rochelle said. It w
as a lie, but it was easier than telling Leighton that Billy had shown up again after a year on the run. He was looking for his drugs and had been more than happy to punch his way to finding them. Luckily, Rochelle had managed to get away from him before things had got too ugly.
‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ Leighton blushed. ‘Listen, you could have stayed at mine a little longer.’
‘It’s cool. I decided to clear out not long after you left. I was scared that the mean girls might come back,’ she said, grinning.
‘Annie showed up yesterday to apologise; to both of us. I guess she realised I was telling the truth.’
‘Glad to hear it. So, what brings you over to Cheapville?’
Leighton shrugged. ‘I just wanted to say thanks.’
‘For what?’ Rochelle frowned.
‘Calling the news network and sending them out to me.’
‘How did you know it was me?’
‘Nobody else cares.’
‘Well it’s cool. When I hadn’t heard from you I tried to call you, and then I figured you were in trouble, so I called the news station.’
‘How did you know where I was?’ Leighton asked.
‘I didn’t. I gave them your cell phone number and they said they could use GPS to locate it.’
‘Thank God they did.’
Rochelle smiled and shrugged her shoulders. ‘You did well. They say on the news that the sick bastard killed Jenna and Danielle too, is that right?’
‘Yeah, I’m sorry.’
‘You’ve got nothing to be sorry for. That bastard would have kept going. You saved a lot of lives; made a real difference, Officer Jones.’
‘What about you?’ Leighton asked.
‘What about me?’ Rochelle shrugged and leaned on her door frame.
‘I could get you into a programme – no cost.’
Rochelle sighed, and looked at Leighton the way an adult might look at a child.
‘Jeez, you’re such a kid sometimes.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘Don’t you get it? Not all problems can be fixed, Leighton Girls like me are different, we don’t get a “happy ever after”.’
‘Why not?’
‘Hell knows, maybe we were born bad, or broken; maybe it’s payback for some shit we did as kids, or in a past life, or some shit like that.’
‘Or,’ Leighton said slowly, ‘maybe you just made some poor choices when you were too young to know any better. And now you could make some new ones – better ones.’
‘Remember you’re a fucking cop, not a preacher.’
‘Look.’ Leighton sighed. ‘I’m just saying, if you need some help—’
‘I don’t,’ Rochelle said resolutely.
‘At any time, give me a call, okay? Some people do care.’
He handed her a small business card and turned to go. Rochelle glanced down at it, and then at Leighton as he walked away.
‘Wilson!’ she suddenly called after him.
‘Huh?’ Leighton stopped and turned around.
Rochelle shrugged self-consciously. ‘My surname is Wilson. Rochelle Wilson. I just wanted you to know.’ Having shared this private information, she vanished inside her apartment, and Leighton – understanding the amount of trust she had revealed – walked to his car with a smile on his face.
Later that afternoon, Leighton decided to build some bridges with Annie. He explained that he needed to take a drive up north, and that he would let Annie take the wheel if she wanted to improve her driving skills. In any case, the injury to his arm meant he had no choice.
After packing some bottles of coke and some water in a cool bag, Leighton and Annie left Oceanside behind and were soon cruising along beneath the hot Californian sun. They didn’t sing any songs together, but they did speak for most of the way and even played I Spy for a couple of miles.
When they arrived in the town of Lakehead, Leighton asked Annie to pull up in the main street. The town looked prettier than Leighton had remembered. He reached into his worn wallet and handed Annie a couple of twenties.
‘What’s the plan?’ she asked.
‘I’ve got to visit someone,’ Leighton said, ‘but I’ll only be twenty minutes or so.’
‘Sounds very mysterious. You can tell me, are you a crooked cop dad?’
‘Not yet.’ Leighton smiled. ‘If you want to have a look around the shops, I can meet you at the coffee shop and we can grab some lunch?’
‘Shopping and lunch – that sounds sweet.’
‘I’ll be twenty, maybe thirty, minutes, and then I’ll wait for you at the coffee shop, okay?’
‘Sure,’ Annie said, and climbed out of the car.
Ten minutes later Leighton pulled up beneath the tall palms of the Golden Cross Care Home. This time he hadn’t made an appointment. Thankfully, there was an outdoor, watercolour painting class taking place in the garden, and it looked like most of the residents and staff were sprinkled around outside.
As he entered the building for the second time, Leighton found the post-lunch aroma to be less pleasant than it had seemed on his first visit. The smell of stewed beans and boiled meat seemed to cling to the walls. Leighton retraced his steps to the day room, where a solitary resident sat firmly in her chair.
As he approached Eileen Cooper, Leighton noted she was wearing a different expression from the one he remembered. Her look of concern had been replaced by one of defiance. This time the police officer felt no need for pleasantries or introductions.
‘You knew, didn’t you,’ he said flatly. It wasn’t a question.
‘I had my suspicions,’ Mrs Cooper said quietly, but with an air of indifference, ‘that was all.’
‘They told me that you had weekly visits up until last year. Were those visits from him, from Dale?’
‘He was as broken as I was. We comforted each other. I suppose we both felt we were somehow keeping Veronica alive through our conversations.’
‘Had he always planned to kill Michael Stanton?’
‘I’m really not sure. He certainly talked about it – we both did. But as the release date grew nearer, Dale left me out of his plans. Then he showed up here one evening and told me that he’d given Stanton a job. He was so excited. He told me that he had him where he wanted. I didn’t see Dale for several days after that, but when he finally visited, he told me that he had a gift for me. It was Ronny’s milk tooth. He said he’d found it in Stanton’s locker, along with an old photograph of her from her school yearbook.’
‘Is that what made him do it?’ Leighton asked. ‘Did finding that make him kill Stanton?’
‘Possibly. The mind is a fragile thing, Officer Jones.’
‘You told me that you often have nightmares in which you see what happened to your daughter.’
‘That’s true, some things can’t be unseen, I’m afraid.’
‘What about the parents of those murdered girls, don’t you think they will have nightmares now?’ Leighton struggled to conceal his anger. ‘You could have reported Dale Sanderson and prevented the pain of those girls and their families.’
‘We all have a cross to bear. The universe has been cruel to all of us,’ Eileen Cooper said, as she deliberately turned away to stare into the complex patterns of the garden area. ‘Please go now. I’m tired.’
‘Is that it?’ Leighton asked. ‘No remorse? Nothing?’
Eileen Cooper continued staring at the curled green tongues of the numerous cacti and palms that filled the large gardens of the home. She was quite happy to play the waiting game.
When she turned around, she found that Leighton Jones had thankfully gone; she smiled, and breathed a deep sigh of relief.
Then she glanced down.
Arranged on the floor, in a fan shape, were the crime scene images of Sanderson’s murder victims: Sarah Klein, Jenna Dodds, Elizabeth Walker, Danielle Millar, and Detective Ryan Slater. The photos ranged from head shots of the deceased – for identification purposes – to magnified images of individual w
ounds.
Eileen Cooper twisted her head quickly, in an attempt to look away, but it was too late; the images had caught her attention like fishhooks on her eyes. She began calling, angrily, for a nurse who never came. Leighton was also responsible for that.
Five minutes earlier, as he passed through reception, he’d told the nurse at the desk that he had heard an elderly woman calling for assistance in the front gardens. She had consequently rushed outside, leaving Eileen Cooper to her pictures and her guilt.
She eventually, in her rage and distress, tried to twist her body around in the rocking chair to escape the infinite stare of the dead. Unfortunately, her lack of strength in her right side had placed her significantly off balance, and she tumbled from the rocking chair, clattering onto the floor.
Lying with her face touching two of the six-by-eight glossy photographs, of ligature marks on Sarah Klein’s throat, Eileen Cooper began to make sobbing, guttural noises, which ironically echoed the final sounds of most of Dale Sanderson’s victims.
As Leighton entered the aromatic coffee shop, where Annie was sitting at the counter chatting to Leanne, both women smiled at him. The place smelled of fresh coffee and warm muffins. He joined them, taking a seat at the counter. It was then, for the first time in what seemed like years, that Leighton felt a moment of discernible happiness. Leaving the images with Eileen Cooper had left him strangely unburdened. He had followed the advice of the grief counsellor and, as a result, the case was closed; Danny still had a job and, best of all, his daughter looked relaxed and genuinely pleased to hang out with him for a while. Things, it seemed, were finally looking up.
Chapter Fifty
It was two days later when Leighton finally returned home from his drive with Annie, which included an impromptu visit to the rocky mountain splendour of Marshall’s Peak, and a night stop at a fairly sumptuous hotel in San Bernardino. Leighton had particularly enjoyed the free breakfast of fresh melon and pineapple; Annie had been more impressed by the heated pool. Throughout the drive back to Oceanside, father and daughter had talked properly for the first time in years. And, perhaps for the first time, Leighton had actually listened. Annie had explained how she was interested in hair and beauty, and that she had never been particularly academic, but explained how she didn’t want to take a job that her dad would look down on. Leighton told her that he just wanted her to be happy and, if she wanted to train in hair and beauty, he would support her all the way. As a result of their conversation, Annie had cheerfully agreed to apply to the Oceanside College of Cosmetology, with a view to starting her training the following month. The decision gave them both a much-needed sense of peace. Eventually, they had turned up the radio and sang loudly as they travelled through miles of vineyards and orange orchards. For Leighton Jones, it was one of the happiest moments in his life.
