by James Carol
Yoko didn’t say anything.
‘You remember I said there was nothing interesting about the autopsy reports? I kind of lied about that. The pattern of knife wounds looked random because the attacks on the moms had been carried out in a frenzy, right? And they were random. Well, mostly random. Mom One had a chest wound on her left side and Mom Two had an almost identical wound that was a couple of inches lower and guess what? Mom two was a couple of inches shorter than Mom One. I’m betting that these were the first wounds that were inflicted. The unsub would have been standing in front of their victims. Because of the angles involved you’re looking at a shorter-than-average man, or an average-sized woman. And because everyone was looking for The Sandman, this detail was missed. And you wonder why nicknames piss me off so much.’
Before she could respond to that, the door opened. The woman who answered was average height and looked much older than she actually was. At a glance, Yoko would have said that she was in her early forties. At a second glance she thought you could knock the best part of a decade off of that estimate. She looked more closely, searching for evidence of drug or alcohol abuse, but the woman just wasn’t giving off that vibe. There was tragedy here but it wasn’t the sort of tragedy that came from a needle or a bottle.
‘Can I help you?’
Kerry’s voice was pleasant, her manner polite. Like a soccer mom at a bake sale. Yoko glanced at her left hand. No rings, engagement or wedding. Her eyes were blue and she was a natural blonde.
‘I’m hoping that you can help us,’ said Winter. ‘We’re from the FBI, and you’re a murderer. Or should that be murderess?’
The colour drained from Kerry’s face. Yoko felt as though the colour was draining from her own face too. Her mind was racing through possibilities, sifting through the evidence. All of a sudden it wasn’t a question of whether or not she’d called this one wrong, it was more a question of how wrong she’d got things.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Kerry was trying to keep her voice level but it wasn’t working. There was a tremor there that she couldn’t quite hide.
‘And that’s the wrong response. What you should be doing is asking to see our badges.’
A glance at Winter, a glance at Yoko, eyes wide and terrified. She looked like a cornered animal. She glanced once more at Winter, then turned and ran into the house.
‘What the hell have you done?’ Yoko hissed.
‘Hey, I’m not looking for a medal, but a thank you would be nice. While everyone else has been looking in the wrong place, I’ve found the killer. Come on, that’s got to be worth something.’
Yoko drew her gun, stepped into the living room and stopped dead. One wall was covered in a collage of overlapping photographs. Every bit of space was covered. The sight overloaded her senses to the point where she momentarily forgot all about Kerry Adams. Something about the collage struck her as just plain wrong. It shouldn’t have elicited this response because it was just a collection of snapshots, but it did. Partly it was the way they’d been haphazardly stuck to the wall, but mostly it was the sheer volume. There were hundreds of photographs, thousands. The common thread was the blonde-haired, blue-eyed little girl. She’d been cut from the same mould as Suzy Devlin, the same mould as the two little girls who’d been murdered before Suzy. Line them up and you could have been looking at a gang of best friends.
There were photographs from the birth, baby photographs, toddler photographs, photographs showing a little girl getting older and cheekier and loving life. Pictures with mom, pictures with dad, pictures of the whole family together. There were photos taken on vacation, and photos taken on day trips, and photos taken for no other reason than she was smiling her fantastic smile. Happy memories from happier times.
Because there were a finite number of pictures to work with, the same photographs had been repeated time and time again. And the reason for that was because the little girl was dead. As far as Yoko could tell there were no pictures showing her older than six or seven. One look at the wall was enough to wipe away any lingering doubts that Winter might be wrong about this.
‘The little girl was called Mary Beth Adams,’ Winter told her. He was talking fast, the words coming out in an excited rush. ‘She was seven when she died. She’d gone to the store with her dad but they never got there. A truck ran a red light and smashed into their car. Mary Beth was killed instantly, but her dad survived. Kerry was at home getting everything together for a surprise birthday party. That’s why her husband had gone to the store. She needed Mary Beth out of the way so she could get things organised.’
A sound from the back of the house got Yoko moving. She waved Winter behind her, then followed the sound. The door in the back wall opened on to a short corridor. There were three doors leading off it, all open. Yoko moved carefully down the corridor, checking each room they passed. Bathroom, Kerry’s bedroom, Mary Beth’s room.
Kerry was sitting on Mary Beth’s bed clutching a large, cuddly Miss Piggy toy, her knees drawn in to her chest. Yoko figured that the room hadn’t been touched since the day of the accident. Toys, games and clothes lay strewn over the floor, the bed was unmade, the drawing on the desk had been started but would never be finished. It was as though Mary Beth had gone to dinner and would be back at any moment to do some more work on her drawing, or play with the games on the floor.
The desk had been positioned under the window where the light was best, the chair half in, half out. Coloured pencils lay scattered across the surface. The drawing displayed some talent and a lot of patience. Inspiration had clearly come from the posters of Disney princesses on the walls. That said, there was evidence that the princesses’ days had been numbered. The poster of a boy band that Yoko had never heard of looked much newer than the Disney ones. This was the room of a little girl who was about to move from one phase of childhood into the next.
Except that was never going to happen now.
‘Some days it hurts so much I wonder if I’ve already died and gone to hell. Maybe this is hell.’ Kerry was talking quietly, the cuddly toy pressed up against her mouth muffling the words. ‘Mary Beth was so beautiful. She was my angel. Why did she have to die? Every day I wake up wishing I was dead, but it doesn’t happen.’
Winter pushed past Yoko and stepped into the room. She flashed him a warning look and waved him back, but he ignored her. Her first instinct was to grab hold of him and drag him back into the corridor, but this was a situation where sudden movements would not be tolerated. Move too fast and Kerry was going to get spooked.
‘So why didn’t you kill yourself?’ he asked Kerry. ‘That’s got to be better than murdering those innocent girls.’
‘Because I’m already in hell!’ she screamed at him.
The burst of anger was so sudden and unexpected it made Yoko flinch. There was raw fury in Kerry’s face. No tears, but that’s because all her tears had been used up long ago. Winter was still giving off a vibe like this was one big game. It was the same attitude that he’d been displaying all the way through this, and it made Yoko nervous. This was not a game.
‘You don’t understand,’ she added quietly. ‘You’ll never understand.’
‘Help us to understand,’ he said gently.
Kerry gave a humourless laugh and shook her head. ‘I’m in hell and Mary Beth is in heaven and I’ll never see my baby again. That’s all you need to know.’
‘It wasn’t your fault. It was an accident.’
‘Of course it was my fault!’ Kerry yelled at him. ‘I’m her mom. It was my job to protect her. I didn’t do that and she died and it’s all my fault. It should have been me in that car, not her.’
‘And should is a dirty word. You should do this, you should do that, you should do the next thing. Every day we make a thousand decisions. Those decisions are based on the information available at the time, and they’re based on the flawed premise that we can somehow control the future. None of us can do that. There’s always a chance that a r
ogue variable will come into play. Like some truck driver running a red light.’
‘And what do you know about anything? You’re just a kid.’
Winter shrugged. ‘Well, I know that you knocked on the doors of your victims and when they answered they saw you standing there looking distraught. They asked you what the matter was, and you gave them some story, something about how your kid had disappeared, perhaps. They would have asked you in because they felt sorry for you, but before they could call the police, you would have pulled out a knife. Does that sound about right?’
Kerry just stared at him. Yoko was staring too. She felt she should be saying or doing something, but Winter was a dozen steps ahead and she was just doing her best to keep up. He’d stepped into Kerry’s head and was seeing everything through her eyes. It was like the time he’d turned into Valentino all over again.
‘Once you’d bound and gagged the moms you went through to the girls’ bedrooms. It was late and it was a school night so they would have been fast asleep. You watched them sleeping for a while, and then you took a pillow and smothered them. You used make-up to disguise any discolouration, then you tucked them in. But before you left you read them a story and sang them a lullaby because that’s what you used to do for Mary Beth.’
Yoko had thought that Kerry was all cried out, but that was something else she was mistaken about. A single tear rolled down Kerry’s left cheek. The distant look in her eyes made it appear as though she was having trouble focusing.
She started to sing in a whispering voice that was cracked and out of tune, and heartbreakingly sad. ‘Hush little baby, don’t say a word, papa’s going to buy you a mockingbird.’
‘And if that mockingbird won’t sing, papa’s going to buy you a diamond ring.’ In contrast, Winter’s voice was gentle and surprisingly sweet. It was in tune, too. The way it seeped through the silence seemed somehow ominous and sinister, a perversion of something beautiful.
Yoko took this as her cue to step in. ‘It’s over, Kerry. You don’t have to do this anymore.’
‘You’re right, I don’t.’
She was speaking in a flat voice that set the alarm bells ringing inside Yoko’s head. This was the sound of someone who was about to step off the ledge. The resignation in her voice was absolute. Without realising what she was doing, Yoko raised her gun. At that exact same moment, Kerry dropped the cuddly toy and pulled out a large carving knife from under the pillow.
Chapter 16
‘Put the knife down, Kerry.’
Yoko sighted along the gun barrel, her hands steady, the left supporting the right. Kerry looked up, her eyes deader than ever, then very deliberately put the knife up to her own throat. She got to her feet and started walking towards the middle of the room.
‘Stay where you are and put the knife down.’ Yoko was working hard to keep her voice level, to squash the panic down. Kerry ignored her and kept on walking. Yoko glanced over her shoulder. ‘Jefferson, I want you to go into the hall.’
Winter didn’t move. He was staring at Kerry like she was a newly discovered life form.
‘Now!’
Her warning came a fraction of a second too late. Kerry suddenly darted forward, heading straight towards him. The knife was high in the air and starting to arc downwards. Yoko’s training took over and she squeezed the trigger. The sound of the gun was deafening, the room too small to hold the explosion. Kerry’s momentum carried her forward until she collided with Winter. They both crashed to the floor and ended up in a heap at the foot of the bed. The knife kept going too, tumbling uselessly onto the carpet.
‘Get her off of me! Get her off now!’
Winter sounded shocked and scared, but mostly he sounded disgusted. All the cool had gone, all the arrogance. He was wriggling beneath Kerry, trying to work himself free. Yoko ran over and pressed her fingers against Kerry’s neck, checking for a pulse, not feeling one. She glanced at her chest, searching for movement, and saw nothing.
‘What the hell are you doing? Just get her off of me.’
She grabbed hold of Kerry’s shoulder and pulled hard. The body moved more easily than it should have done. When you were moving a dead weight you always got resistance, and that just wasn’t there. Yoko started backing away, but wasn’t quick enough. Kerry suddenly rolled onto her back and her eyes sprang open. She was moving fast for someone who’d just been shot, adrenalin fuelling her. She grabbed hold of Yoko’s foot and pulled, knocking her off balance and sending her tumbling to the floor.
Yoko’s head hit the floor so hard she saw dark spots. The Glock slipped from her hand and landed a couple of feet away. She flipped over onto her front and scrambled desperately towards it, but before she could get there Kerry landed on top of her, Yoko thrashed to the right, thrashed to the left. She thrashed to the right again, putting everything she had into the move, and somehow managed to roll onto her back. Kerry was on top of her, eyes manic, blood seeping out of a shoulder wound. She’d managed to get hold of the knife again. She thrust with it and Yoko brought her arms into the shape of an X, blocking it. The blade came close enough to graze her cheek, close enough for her to feel cold steel.
Too close.
Kerry shifted slightly, repositioning herself. Her arm went up. Yoko wriggled around trying to break free, trying to knock Kerry off balance, trying to buy a few more precious seconds. She’d blocked that first thrust but she didn’t think she’d be so lucky a second time. Kerry’s arm came down towards her and she forced herself to keep her eyes open as she brought her arms into an X shape. She instinctively knew that she wasn’t moving fast enough to block the knife, that her reactions were too slow. She was going to die and there was nothing she could do.
Because her ears were still ringing, the second gunshot seemed much quieter than the first. Even so, it was one of the best sounds she’d ever heard. One second she was staring at the polished blade of the carving knife, convinced she was about to die, the next she was watching as a fine mist of blood and brains spattered against her face, and even that was okay since it was a damn sight better than the alternative. The knife stopped in mid-air and Kerry tumbled to the side. She was definitely dead this time.
Yoko struggled to her feet and sat heavily on the bed. The adrenalin buzzing through her body was making her feel lightheaded and nauseous. She’d heard stories of meth heads keeping going with half-a-dozen bullets pumped into them, but this was the first time she’d witnessed anything like that for herself. Granted, Kerry was running on adrenalin rather than drugs, but the end result was similar enough to make no real difference. And adrenalin could be pretty potent stuff. How many times had she read stories about unlikely heroes performing superhuman feats? Moms lifting up cars to rescue their kid, that sort of thing.
Winter was standing in the middle of the room looking lost and bewildered. Her Glock was hanging from his outstretched arm and he was staring at Kerry Adams’s lifeless body as though he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing.
‘Are you okay, Jefferson?’
‘Not really.’
Chapter 17
‘We need to get out of here.’ Winter’s eyes were still glued to Kerry’s lifeless body. He was talking fast, the words tumbling out. ‘I’m figuring you didn’t tell anyone you were coming to meet me. What were you going to say? That you needed to go pick up your drunk colleague? I can’t see that happening. So nobody knows we’re here, which has got to work to our advantage, right? Also, the street’s quiet. I haven’t seen anyone. That means we can slip away and nobody will be any the wiser.’ He paused a second. ‘Except that doesn’t work, does it?’
Yoko shook her head. ‘No, it doesn’t. One look at that wall of photographs and any halfway decent detective will realise they’re dealing with something that goes way outside the ordinary. Maybe they’ll connect this to The Sandman straightaway, maybe they won’t. Whichever way it plays out that connection will get made at some point. So they come into Mary Beth’s bedroom and find Kerry’s body.
They’re going to think they’re dealing with a vigilante. So they dig a little deeper and discover that they’re not dealing with one vigilante they’re dealing with two. Our prints are all over the house, our DNA. The bullets came from my service gun. What’s more, the time of death corresponds with the amount of time it would take me to rush over here after receiving a mysterious phonecall, a call that was witnessed by three detectives from Tampa PD’s homicide department.’
Winter rubbed his mouth and let out a long sigh. He laid the gun on the bed, then sat down beside Yoko. His gaze didn’t stray from Kerry.
‘Shit. So what do we do?’
‘First we call Sergeant Dixon. When she gets here we tell her exactly what happened, and I mean everything. I’m talking full disclosure. The only way to make this go away is by being completely honest. Then you’re going to beg for her forgiveness. The good news is that since The Sandman has been taken out of play she probably won’t be too upset.’
‘And what happens to you?’
‘I expect there will be an investigation. I’ll be suspended while this is going on, hopefully on full pay. Again, because there was a happy-ish ending, I should get to keep my job.’
‘And what about me?’
‘That one’s up to you, Jefferson. While the dust is settling, you should give some serious thought to joining the FBI. I don’t think you’ll have too much trouble getting in. You impressed a lot of people with what you did in Maryland last year. Then again, if you think that you’ll be happier playing piano for tourists and old folk, that’s your call.’
She paused a moment, waited until she had his full attention. He kept glancing over at Kerry. She understood his fascination. The first time she saw a dead body she was exactly the same. She’d wanted to look away, but just couldn’t make herself do that. Not for long, at any rate. No sooner had she made herself look away, she was staring again. Winter turned to face her. She could sense his confidence and arrogance returning. The shadow of a smile was hiding just below the surface.
