Darryl tried to stay calm. He tried to stop twitching. The hunter was already picking up every tiny nuance of fear, every rush of blood from vein to vein. He could probably hear it too, first like a waterfall and then a gushing stream from an underground pipe.
You’re thinking I’m down the hall.
It suddenly occurred to Darryl that the texts included apostrophes―something the self-editing feature didn’t always pick up.
You probably think I’m in the kitchen.
If this guy was taking his time to correct his texts, he certainly wasn’t paying attention to the surveillance monitor. It also occurred to Darryl that he might have bought himself some time, especially now he was standing directly beneath the camera.
You’d be wrong of course. I’m everywhere.
He took a few steps back toward the closet, opened the sliding the door and grabbed the Kevlar vest.
That’s when the phone vibrated again, ominously this time.
Now you’re just hiding.
“My kind doesn’t hide,” he murmured through gritted teeth, realizing he was standing in a blind spot, realizing he felt oddly empowered by it.
Such a beautiful girl. Enchanting.
He could see the hallway between the jamb and the door frame, and the front door beyond it. He decided to make a run for it, only his legs felt like two steel girders until he started thinking of Sharek. The asthma, the inhaler. The Village Inn.
So beautiful, the text repeated. You have nine hours.
“You won’t get her,” he said, and then, “Please God don’t let him get her.”
He pitched forward and scrambled for the hallway, feet slipping on carpet and tile. Just as he bolted for the front door, he saw the shadow of a man before falling on his stomach, wind sucked from his lungs.
TWENTY-SIX
A rage kindled in Ole as he packed up the house. He could still smell her, a seductive smell, delicious like caramel or butterscotch. Fainter on the stairs, but it was there all right. He liked Becky the moment he saw her, longed to be alone with her to ask her things, to tell her things.
He was angry his car was peppered with holes. But he had other ideas. First the cop, then the Williams girl. All in good time. He liked order and he hadn’t had much of that lately.
All of a sudden he began to laugh. The Williams man actually thought he was there yesterday. In the house. He had been a little earlier, of course, when the idiot was out at breakfast. He crept over the back wall, keeping an eye on Alvarez and that nice black charger in the street. Alvarez was a fool. He’d lose more than his pips and ribbons now.
That’s when Ole took the gun, the baseball bat and the photographs. He took some other things too, things the girl might need. He wanted her to feel comfortable, wanted her to feel secure. Then he came home, switched on his monitors and watched the Williams house. Wanted to get a good look at the girl, a good feel for what was to come. Wanted to send a few texts just to freak the old man out.
The spare lot was still stained red with Patti’s blood and not in a container where he kept it. Odin would have no mead to drink, no wisdom. There would be a price to pay for that.
And the car? What use was a car peppered with holes and leaking gasoline. It was at the bottom of the Rio Grande river now.
He hitched a ride to Haynes Park on the west side of town, sat on a swing watching the white house with the blue trim across the street. Regular as clockwork, Alvarez opened the garage door and started the car, letting it idle for a moment to warm up. He always left the driver’s window open, always checked his computer and never noticed a man edging along the side of the car, with a gun in his hand.
It was quick and Ole had a few seconds to feed off a pair of bewildered eyes, especially at the end. Opening the passenger door, he pulled the cop across into the passenger seat, sprinted around to the driver’s seat and drove the car to the northeast heights. Lucky Lt. Alvarez was far from home now, lying face down in an arroyo on Pennsylvania Avenue. And luckier still Ole had a car sleeker than a rocket powered aircraft.
Although nothing in his life was a coincidence. He was guided by a fierce and uncontrollable drive which directed him to leave the bone on the detective’s front door step. He would have left a packet of weed there as well if he’d had a sense of humor.
Ole hadn’t laughed much until he met Morgan, the reawakening of his brother. He’d changed since his death, aged almost beyond recognition. But a body couldn’t be expected to stay the same, not after a gunshot wound to the head and time in lonely limbo.
Morgan. Sea warrior. Transformed.
He was stronger now, a lifeguard, coming out of the Californian sea four years ago, body a shine of oil. Ole found him on the Internet, same age, same build, same last name. He offered him a home when he had none, a family when they disowned him and three million dollars when he was no better than a pauper.
And Morgan took it all.
He became Ole’s brother, shaved his head, braided his hair. Even tattooed one side of that shaved head with sun, moon and stars. He wanted to belong.
Only now the sucker was in jail. He wasn’t allowed a razor unless he was locked in a shower stall and that was only to shave his face. Ole had grown his hair out too. They were twins, weren’t they?
He felt weightless, airborne, driving down the street in his brand new car wishing he was flying like that bird up there. A hawk it was, almost the size of a cat.
He counted the windows on every building he passed. He counted the trees and, if he was close enough, he counted the remaining leaves, subtracting them by the days of the week and the ratio of daily molt. That’s how he knew how long it would be before they were completely bare. He was dedicated to the finer things in life, the things that others couldn’t see.
They wouldn’t see him in the Dodge Charger, not one with a police badge on the side panel. He drove down El Pueblo Road that sunny Monday afternoon. He wasn’t there because he wanted to be. Not really. He was there to do what Odin wanted, and what Odin wanted was a fresh cup of mead.
He hadn’t been the same since that ill-fated afternoon when Becky disappeared. Slipping up, making mistakes, sleeping at night when he never used to. Becky wasn’t a freshly laundered shirt, pressed and perfect, without stain. When he kissed her she wasn’t as stiff as a statue, rather hungry and a little too eager.
When they arrived at his house, she’d sprung out of the car like a rabbit from a trap, kissing him, running her hands through his hair, laughing. If it hadn’t been for the voice on the radio he would have been just as hungry.
The more he thought of Becky, the more he wanted her. Something different. Something priceless. Striking like the last sparkle on the ocean before the sun went down. That’s before she ran away.
Now it was afternoon and he backed his car in the school parking lot and to the right of the front entrance. He watched the children as they came out, evaluating each through a pair of dark glasses, wearing a badge and duty belt.
Badge and duty belt. He nearly laughed.
He looked down at the cell phone and flipped through Alvarez’s messages, mapping his wording, his style. There was only one girl to pick up today. The other was home with flu.
“We’re going to ace this, you and me,” he whispered to himself, elbow resting on the door frame, arm half covering his face. He nodded at another police car in the driveway, fingers flexed to a wave.
Lt. Alvarez was due to take over the afternoon shift and he was Alvarez, wasn’t he? The morning unit pulled out and hardly gave him a second look. It was that easy.
Ole wanted nothing more than to smash the accelerator to the floor, fly down Central, lights flashing, sirens screaming. The power, the energy, it was worth all the frenzied fuss, cars pulling over in front of him, drivers mesmerized as he cast as little as a glance in their direction. They would be watching those pulsing emergency lights, glaring like white fire. And they would be watching him.
Ole liked to watch too, and th
e girl he watched today stood on the front steps of the school, staring out into the road, elegant as a black swan. It wasn’t the first time he’d watched her, talked to her, laughed with her. Taller, eyes furtive as if she had already sensed him. Swinging a backpack on a slender arm, legs like silk beneath a tiny tartan skirt, she waited for her ride.
She waited for Alvarez.
The sluggish breeze carried the scent of her hair, only soon it would carry an air of mold and decay. She would never have gray hair and squint through thick rimmed glasses, clothes stale with the fragrance of camphor. She would be forever young.
He slipped out of the car and gave her a smile. “Ms. Williams?” he said, without a trace of an accent.
She nodded, head inclined, brow puckered.
“Your dad called. Your uncle’s sick so he asked me to pick you up instead.”
She nodded at that and handed him her backpack. Hand instinctively pulled down the sleeves of a round-necked sweater, hands covered in its thick weave.
“You can go to the office and call him if you want.”
He knew she wouldn’t. She was far too fascinated with him to do that.
“No, that’s OK,” she said, avoiding his eyes, giving a small nod. “I have a cell phone. I can call him in the car.”
He opened the back door of the car, watched her slip behind the driver’s seat, hand smoothing down that tiny little skirt. She wore hiking boots with high traction soles, a strange outfit for a girl like that. He wanted to tell her he was sorry. That he would kill and mutilate her without hesitation.
“Thirsty?” he asked.
She took the bottle and thanked him. If he kept her talking she wouldn’t have to use that cell phone.
He pulled out of the parking lot, automatic locks in place. That’s when her told her his name. “Officer Eriksen,” he said, glancing through his rearview mirror. “But you can call me Ole.”
No recognition. No reaction. She was drinking the water instead.
There was a misty, haunted air to the afternoon and Ole wondered when she would know, when she would start to cry. Did Alvarez offer her the front or the back seat? It must have felt different. Somehow.
He kept driving and studying her through the rearview mirror. It would be miles before she woke up in the forest, in an unfamiliar bed. No one would suspect a killer of going back to the scene of the crime, not with all that crime scene tape snaking around the barn.
Her eyes were fixed through the side window, shifting back and forth to catch the sights. Oval eyes with a mix of hazel and green. She was a thinker and thinkers were secretive, dangerous.
“You can turn left here,” she said with a slur to her voice.
He drove right toward the interstate, glancing occasionally up at the rearview mirror. That’s when her head fell back against the seat and her eyes snapped shut.
That’s when he stopped and placed her in the trunk. His imagination was suddenly captured by this strange princess and he felt a stab of fear. It was Kizzy all over again, Kizzy come back to life.
He couldn’t see her any more. She was silent in the trunk, gagged and bound and lying on a bed of spare clothes. She’d sleep if she had any sense, because tomorrow she would be lying on her back on the forest floor where sunlight came through the trees in thin, dusty shafts of light.
He loved the drowsy fragrance of wet leaves and where spiders wove their elaborate webs between the twigs, each dappled with drops of dew. It was a good place to sleep. A good place to die.
TWENTY-SEVEN
“Rise and shine,” Temeke said, ambling toward the duty desk and slapping it with his hand. Sarge lifted his chin, suddenly jolted awake by the noise. “I don’t know how you can sleep with Hackett going up and down in the lift.”
“Elevator, sir. Elevator.”
“How’s Becky?”
“Taking visitors tomorrow. You can go and see her if you like. Go lightly though. I don’t want her to relive the ordeal.” Sarge cleared his throat and looked away. “Oh, and Hackett’s looking for you. Looks mad if you ask me.”
“He was cussing like a detective,” Jarvis chimed in from his tiny little cubicle. “Had a pink slip in his hand.”
“That’s a layoff notice to you foreigners,” Captain Fowler chimed in to a burst of raucous laughter. He was standing at the door of his plush, white office. “What’s this I hear about Malin calling you sir?”
Temeke lifted his chin and grinned. He’d seen the way Fowler looked at Malin, seen the way a lumbering walk quickly turned into a swagger. “I prefer a little distance myself. Pretty, isn’t she?”
“Is she? I hadn’t noticed.”
“She gets five hundred dollars extra for being my partner. That’s a lot more than your bonus once a year, isn’t it?”
Temeke was the only one who laughed as he sauntered up the stairs and he swore long and feebly into the empty corridor. Creeping past Hackett’s closed door, he found Malin poking through the filing cabinet in his office. She turned when she saw him, hand cupping her mouth.
“Something’s happened, sir. You better sit down.”
“I’ve been sitting down all weekend.”
“Mr. Williams called. Tess didn’t come home from school this afternoon.”
“Not another one.” Temeke unzipped his coat and flung it over the back of his chair. His eye was drawn to the window where the trees shuddered in the wind. At night the temperatures plummeted to below ten degrees. “What was she wearing?”
“A black sweater, black jacket, yellow and red plaid skirt and hiking boots. Mr. Williams said there was an intruder in his house yesterday. He said he didn’t see anyone. But there were muddy footprints leading as far as the back yard. Someone’s been tampering with his phone, sending him weird text messages. Should be able to get a trace on it.” Malin turned and pushed the drawer closed with her back. “Why didn’t you tell him about Maisie’s phone?”
“Didn’t want to spook him any more than he already is. There should have been a unit outside his house.”
“There was. Lt. Alvarez. He’s back from vacation. He saw Darryl arrive home in a hurry. Saw his car idling in the driveway. Then he found him on the floor in the hallway. He was OK but he was terrified.”
“Luis is on this afternoon’s shift at Clemency Christian. He hasn’t called, has he?”
Malin shook her head. “I tried calling him an hour ago. Wanted to ask him to get a photograph of Tess from the house when he dropped her off.”
Temeke could hear Hackett honking into a handkerchief next door and dabbing what must have been a bright red nose. “Hackett seem OK to you?” he said, feeling a little sick himself.
She gave him a hostile glare and brushed a wisp of dark hair from her eyes. “Been like a bear with a bee up his nose. Heard him shouting at Jennifer Danes on the phone. She accused him of keeping valuable information about the 9th Hour Killer from the public. Says she’s writing an article for tomorrow’s Journal.”
Temeke unwound his scarf and left it hanging around his neck. He had a strange feeling he’d be going out again. “And what bit of news were we keeping?”
“The bit where there’s two of them. Not just the one.”
“Oh, that bit. Anything else?”
Malin lowered her voice. “The bit where the police are now interested in Darryl Williams. Apparently, you called the Journal and told them.”
“Why would I do a thing like that? It’s Eriksen. Obviously he’s got a way with words and an armory of accents.”
“Andrew Knife Wing called a few times. Something about a dream. He shouldn’t be messing around with strange spirits, sir.”
“Any spirits in his house are the liquid kind.”
Temeke called Luis and listened to the dialing tone. Probably got his sirens on full blast and couldn’t hear the phone. He listened to the message from Knife Wing instead. A vision. A dead body wrapped in a pink quilt lying behind a boulder, which basically narrowed it down to the whole of bleeding
New Mexico.
“The land of enchantment they call it,” he said out loud. “More like the land of bloody entrapment.”
That’s how he felt after living in New Mexico for so many years. Trapped. Like he’d blown in from Europe on holiday and never quite made it back. Something about the scent of cedar and sage everywhere. And the skies… those big blue skies that stretched as far as the eye could see, a vivid vault over a thirsty land.
“Get me a coffee, will you?” Temeke sensed Malin’s narrowed eyes, the shake of her head. He pretended to pat a few papers into a neat pile.
What was the password to his computer this week? H8st8P0lice or Hackettsux. Typing the latter sent him quickly to an email from Hackett demanding an update on the investigation and driveling on about how Temeke’s phone was permanently on voicemail and how many times Captain Fowler had tried to get hold of him in the last twenty-four hours.
There was another email from the local TV station hankering to do an interview and one from Jennifer at the Journal threatening to write her own opinion if he didn’t return her calls.
Temeke deleted them all and opened the database for homicides and kidnap. He found eighteen Eriksens listed, none with the initial O. There was a listing in the NPIS, the immigration service in Norway. An Ole Eriksen born October 3rd, 1977 in Tromsø.
Blond, blue eyed, square jaw, but that’s where the similarity ended. Darryl could easily be forgiven for thinking Morgan Eriksen’s picture belonged to the man he saw. Put them together in a line up and he wouldn’t be so sure.
According to the file, Ole had a twin brother, Morgan. He had died at the age of nine in a hunting accident. A newspaper article showed pictures of a boy lying under a tree as if he was sleeping. There was nothing remarkable about it until closer examination revealed a hole in his head resulting from an old battle rifle. Temeke had seen something similar, an AG-3 fitted with a railed forend and an Aimpoint red dot sight.
“No BB gun,” he muttered. Not even then.
The hunter, a Johannes Elgar, who lived three miles from the Eriksen house, claimed he mistook one of the boys for small game. He was given a life sentence due to a weapon that hardly fell into the collector category according to the Norwegian Firearm Weapons Act.
The 9th Hour (The Detective Temeke Crime Series Book 1) Page 16
