The Button Man: A Hugo Marston Novel

by Pryor, Mark

  “Don’t tell me he wrote the ending and is now carrying it out,” Upton said. “That would be a little too much.”

  “No,” said Hugo. “Not that, this diatribe looks unfinished. And I’d guess he knows enough to realize that he can’t control the ending anyway, the way things turn out. Remember, too, this isn’t about him, it’s about his father.”

  “Then we should study the book, get some shrinks to look at it. And pronto.”

  “No time. If he’s wanting us up in Scotland hunting Merlyn, then he’s planning something.” Hugo flipped through the manuscript with his thumb. “The church,” he murmured. “The church . . . And it’s Sunday.” He grabbed Upton’s arm, startling him. “We have to go, now.”

  “Where?”

  “Weston Church.” Hugo ran out of the room, down the hallway, and outside, where the sun had made no effort to shift the night. He stopped and turned to Upton, who was close behind. “Have your men keep an eye on this place, no one goes in or out. We can come back later.” If we need to.

  A surprised Agarwal trotted over to the car when he saw his charges making for it. “Sirs?”

  “Weston Church,” said Hugo. “Lights, sirens, the works.”

  When they’d settled into the car, Upton spoke. “What’s going on? What’s at the church?”

  “Walton is acting out some kind of vendetta. It doesn’t make complete sense yet, but the church is at the center of it. It was the start of his manuscript, it was central to his life growing up. And he moved from Weston to Walkern when Reverend Kinnison took up residence.”

  “He doesn’t like women priests?”

  “He doesn’t like something about her, and every time he doesn’t like someone, they die.”

  “That’s insane. He’d kill her because she’s a woman?”

  “No, that doesn’t fit for me.”

  “Then what?”

  “I’m not sure.” Hugo thought back to the typed manuscript. “If this is about his father, it could be about his father’s work.”

  “As a soldier?”

  “No. As an executioner.”

  “Jesus, what are you saying?”

  “I’m not sure, but it makes sense. Several things happened at once, right? Walton won the lottery, had a mental breakdown, and Kristi Kinnison took over at Weston Church.”

  “OK, that’s all true.”

  “When someone with psychotic tendencies starts acting on them, there is usually a trigger. Something that sets him off.”

  “And here we have several triggers. But none of them relate to his father.”

  “Actually, I think they all do, as does his obsession with going back in time, recreating history, so to speak.”

  “Explain.”

  “His father executed killers, murderers. But he was laid off when the death penalty was repealed. The war hero and public servant, the only parent Harry Walton had, was destroyed by that law. If the manuscript means anything, not long after that, the old man basically drank himself to death.”

  “So?”

  “I would bet that when Harry Walton won the lottery, it was on or close to a significant date. Let’s check.” He took out Agarwal’s phone and dialed Bart Denum. “You in the office, Bart?”

  “Yes, sir. I’ve a few bits and pieces to do, plus I figured you might want some help. And the wife’s spending the morning at church, this way I don’t have to go.”

  Hugo smiled. “Good man. What do you have on Walton?”

  “A timeline of his life, as well as—”

  “The timeline’s perfect,” Hugo interrupted. “I’m looking for a connection between the date he won the lottery and his father.”

  “Let me look.” Bart hummed gently as he looked. The car dipped and rose, Agarwal leaning forward as he concentrated hard on the road. “Well,” said Bart, “here’s something. But it’s not just his father.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “His winning lottery numbers were published soon after the fiftieth anniversary of his mother’s death, which now that I look was the same date as his father’s, just a couple of decades difference. Jeez, how did I not notice that before?”

  “And there you have it. Thanks, Bart.” He leaned forward and dropped Agarwal’s phone onto the front passenger seat. “How far to the church?”

  “Less than five minutes,” Agarwal said.

  Hugo sat back and turned to Upton. “His mother and father died on the same day and month. Walton won his little stash just after the fifty-year anniversary of her death. I’m guessing his father committed suicide by booze, literally, on her anniversary, too.”

  “That seems like a hard thing to plan.”

  “Not if you know your liver is already shot.”

  “Fair enough. And so that’s an important date to him.”

  “And if he collected the money soon after the anniversary, my guess is he bought the ticket on that exact date.”

  “Now that would be something of a coincidence. Especially for him.”

  “Yeah,” said Hugo. “Coincidences mean a lot to those looking for reason, and add to that, at about the same time, a woman takes over at his beloved church.”

  “I still don’t get the gender connection.”

  Hugo didn’t either, so he thought about Reverend Kinnison. What he knew about her, what Walton would know. The most interesting thing about her was . . . He looked up. “I was right. It’s not that she’s a woman. It’s that she’s an ex-con.”

  “You think?”

  “And not just any ex-con. She killed two people, right?”

  “Well, yes, but—”

  “Look at all the people who have died,” Hugo said. “Forget the Drinkers for now, the others. Name them.”

  “Well, Ginny Ferro, Dayton Harper, Pendrith.”

  “Right. And all of them have been responsible for the deaths of another.”

  “Not Pendrith.”

  “I’m not so sure,” Hugo said. “If he was in league with Walton then we can’t be sure what he’s done. And maybe Walton knows something about Pendrith’s days in MI5. Either way, I wouldn’t cross him off the list. And if he does belong on it, in the old days, the past that Walton pines for, those people would probably have ended up on the scaffold.”

  “And if we don’t forget Brian Drinker?”

  “He’s different.” Hugo shook his head. “I think he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Remember what he said to us?”

  “He said that Harper was there, and that he apologized, said he was sorry. Which leaves Harper as the man who killed Drinker, but I have no damn idea why.”

  “Wait, though. Harper was there, yes. Drinker told us that, he said he wasn’t going to let him in. But what if Walton was there, too? What if Walton was the one who apologized?”

  “For shooting Drinker? Could be. Either accidently while going after Harper, or on purpose so he couldn’t be identified.”

  “Exactly. Think, too, about the way Harper and Ferro died.”

  “Different ways,” Upton said. “Don’t serial killers have a methodology that they stick to?” He grimaced as Agarwal swung the car up onto the narrow Church Lane. “Puts a hole in your theory, no?”

  “No, actually, it doesn’t. Ferro was hanged, the way she’d have been executed for murder back in the fifties. And Harper was shot. Through the heart.”

  “Why the difference?”

  “Because Ferro was born in England. Walton executed her consistent with history, and Harper with the way they’d have done it in Utah, where he was born.” A thought occurred to him. “The paper. They found minuscule pieces of paper in his heart during the autopsy.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning it wasn’t paper exactly. They used to pin a card over the heart, a little circle of a target for the firing squad to aim at. He did the same for Harper, put him against the stone wall of the church and shot him, just like they did it in the old days.”

  “He really is a psycho.”

  �
��Yes,” Hugo said. “He really is. Ready for some more fun and games?”

  The police car skidded to a halt in the church parking lot and all three men leapt out. Hugo led the way through the gate, Upton and Agarwal close behind. He ran straight up the path toward the front of the church. He stopped in the porch and leaned on the heavy wooden door. It swung open easily and they moved quickly into the nave. The place looked empty, and in the quiet Hugo was suddenly aware of the sound of their feet, his boots especially, on the black-and-red tiling of the floor. The space around them was lit but barely, patches of yellow seeping up the walls from low down, as if children’s night lights had been placed every twenty feet or so along the side walls.

  Hugo turned to Upton. “What time is the morning service?”

  “No idea, why?”

  “It’s getting late, so it seems like Reverend Kinnison should be here already. Let’s split up. And be careful—if Walton’s here, he’ll have a gun.”

  “We should wait, get some of the men from Walton’s home here.”

  “No time,” Hugo said. “If I’m right about him, he’s not looking to hurt people who haven’t, in his mind, committed murder.”

  “Tell that to Brian Drinker,” Upton muttered, eyes scanning the dim interior of the church.

  “Fair point,” said Hugo, starting forward. “If he sees you, make sure he knows you’re unarmed but have company. We want him to run, not shoot.”

  Agarwal nodded, then moved to the far side of the church, which was separated from the nave by thick stone pillars. Upton went to the right, leaving Hugo to move slowly between the pews toward the sanctuary. The air inside was still, the light in this part of the church flat, and a gentle smell of polish rose from the wooden pews. They progressed in a line, checking on each other as much as the church, and quickly came together in the sanctuary where an old, dark-wood lectern sat awaiting its minister.

  Silently, they moved on between the choir stalls, their eyes fixed on a sliver of light that spilled out from under a plain wooden door to their right.

  “The office?” Hugo whispered.

  “That’s my guess,” Upton replied. “You sure you don’t want to wait?”

  “Could be bad for Kinnison if we do.”

  Upton nodded and Hugo looked over at Agarwal, his face ashen and taut. Not an unreasonable response to one’s first encounter with a serial killer, Hugo thought.

  They moved to the door, Hugo on one side and the English policemen on the other. They listened for three, four, five seconds, but heard no sounds. Hugo reached down and put his hand on the doorknob. He turned it a quarter inch.

  Unlocked.

  He steadied himself with a long, slow breath, then nodded to Upton and Agarwal. He turned the knob fully and swept the door open, plunging in behind it, the two officers behind him.

  The small room was empty, the overhead light showing them only furniture, books, and papers, the vicar’s chair swiveled to one side as if she’d got up in no hurry at all, just forgotten to push it back against the desk.

  Hugo looked around the room once more. Another door.

  Upton followed his gaze and said, “It goes outside.”

  Hugo started toward it, then stopped, his stomach lurching with a sickening realization.

  “The shallow grave,” he said. “It’s for her. It’s under a thick bough, and both are meant for Reverend Kinnison.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  He ran toward the door, not waiting for a response. It had two bolts and both were open, as if someone had taken this route before him. How much before him was the question, and as he burst out of the church into the graveyard, he looked toward where he remembered the shallow grave to be.

  The light was still poor outside, the weak winter sun struggling to assert itself against the darkness, and the shapes ahead of Hugo were just that, formless and shifting as he ran, unidentifiable. He heard the running feet of Upton and Agarwal behind him, and they all headed in the same direction, crossing the gravel path and dodging between gravestones, decorum lost to urgency. Once, to his left, Agarwal tripped and disappeared, then popped back up cursing.

  Upton found her first. Hugo had gone too far to the left, Agarwal farther still. They heard him shout, and when they got to him he was straddling the grave, clear of brush now. He was holding her waist and trying to lift her, to take the strain off the rope, his head at her chest, his face drawn taut by the weight and his own distress.

  “Agarwal, here, quick.” Hugo stooped, his hands forming a stirrup that Agarwal stepped into. “On three.” Hugo counted aloud and hoisted the constable high enough to loop his arms over the bough. Agarwal pulled himself up as Hugo went to help Upton, straining to hold up the limp form of the vicar. Agarwal shinned along the branch until he was directly over them and, as Hugo and Upton hoisted Kinnison as high as they could, he reached down and loosed the noose, then slipped it over her head. They laid her on the ground beside the grave that was meant for her, and Hugo put his fingertips against her neck.

  “I think I feel something,” he said, though with the adrenalin shooting through his body it was hard to be sure.

  Agarwal was already on the phone for an ambulance and police backup, and Upton had sprinted to the parking lot in case Walton was still there. He came back minutes later, panting.

  “No sign of him. That bastard, how evil can he be?”

  “He doesn’t see it that way,” Hugo said, kneeling beside Kinnison. “In fact, he sees her as the bad one, the murderer who got away with it. He’s just doing what he thinks his father would have done, should have been able to do.”

  “The executioner.”

  “Right.”

  “You sure that’s what’s going on?”

  “I am.”

  “But why the grave for her? He didn’t dig one for the others.”

  “Because she buried her dead husband in their garden. But forget that, we need to figure out who’s next.”

  “You think there’s more?”

  Hugo touched Reverend Kinnison’s throat again, sure this time he felt a pulse; her skin was certainly warm. He looked up. “I don’t know. I also don’t get Pendrith’s involvement in this. It’s like they should be on opposite sides, don’t you think?”

  “Right. Pendrith wanted to let convicted killers out of prison early, and Walton wanting them all hanged. They were on the opposite ends of the law-and-order scale.”

  “Unless they weren’t.” Hugo stood. “Walk with me. Agarwal, can you stay with her a moment?”

  “Yes, sir, of course.”

  Hugo felt the burn of an idea in his mind, a flickering that he needed to nurture and coax into life, but not beside the wounded figure of Reverend Kinnison. Somehow, dealing with hypotheticals and theories, necessary though they were, seemed disrespectful within earshot of where she lay fighting for her life.

  “What if their goal was the same, but they were just getting there different ways?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Follow my logic, see what you think of this: for some reason, Pendrith was in league with Walton, and I can only think it was because he was doing something he didn’t want people to know about.”

  “Sure, that makes sense.”

  “Now, when you make a deal with the devil, sometimes it doesn’t go the way you want it to.”

  “The devil can be deceitful,” Upton said. “It’s kind of his shtick.”

  “Right. Walton’s sins were prompted by some kind of psychotic break, something Pendrith couldn’t necessarily know the extent of and certainly couldn’t control.”

  “OK, keep going . . .”

  “I don’t think Pendrith foresaw any killing. He’s an MP, for God’s sake, an elected politician. No, I think he was running a sneaky little public relations campaign with Walton, almost an anti-public-relations campaign.”

  “Now you’ve lost me.”

  Hugo looked out over the fields as the distant wail of a siren cut through the murky mo
rning. “Basically, I think they were both after the same thing. The return of the death penalty.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Yes. Before he became an MP, Pendrith was in favor of it but abandoned that position because it made him unelectable. It goes without saying that Walton wanted it restored, too.”

  “So how do you explain Pendrith’s bill to get killers released?”

  “Simple reverse psychology. He probably thought they’d come out and be a danger to society, maybe even hoped they would.”

  Upton nodded. “I’ll admit that there’s nothing gets the people stirred up as a killer released from prison who kills again. You can’t buy that kind of publicity.”

  “Right. But I think Walton messed with that scheme, had his own vision of justice that got in the way.”

  “Those suicides. Sean Bywater hanged himself after being released.”

  “Right. Except I’m betting you Harry Walton had a hand in that. If I remember the story, Bywater supposedly carved the word SORRY into the wall.”

  “Seems appropriate given what he did to his victims,” Upton said.

  “True, but if you’re Walton it’s also a nice way to avoid having to forge a suicide note. And Bywater isn’t the only one who died after being released.”

  Upton snapped his fingers, excited now. “Walton’s car. Remember where it was found?”

  “Church parking lot, or a parking lot owned by the church.”

  “Exactly. Not a church but a halfway house run by the Church of England.”

  “So to find out who burned up in the car, we just need to see who checked in to the halfway house in the last week or two and hasn’t been seen for a few days.”

  The siren was loud now, and Hugo could hear several more close behind.

  “Here comes the cavalry,” Upton said. “Let’s head back.”

  They wound their way between a dozen headstones to where Agarwal sat on the ground holding Kinnison’s hand, talking softly to her, his voice reassuring, encouraging. Hugo knelt again, touched her throat, and shook his head. He stayed there for a moment, then stood and spoke quietly to Upton. “Weak pulse. We have to hope there’s not too much structural damage or, God forbid, brain damage.”