by Holly Hunt
"We've been working on that for six months, we don't know why he targets these kids specifically, but—"
"They said they thought I'd kept him home! Like I wouldn't call them and let them know he wasn't coming!" Mr. Michaels ranted, pacing in front of her. "I mean, there's a frigging murderer on the loose, of course I'd tell them if he wasn't coming—"
Liz raised her voice a little, to catch his attention. "I don't know, Mr. Michaels, but I will definitely be asking them that myself." Liz held up her hands, stopping the man's pacing. "This hasn't been released to the public yet, Mr. Michaels, and if it were to become public, it would severely hinder the chances of finding the man responsible." She looked him in the eye, trying to convey how serious she was. "But there are two markers for the Holiday Killer's appearance. The first, which the city knows, is that he leaves behind a token of the holiday. The second is that the bedroom of the kidnapped child is cleaned up to a spotless degree, as though covering something up."
She patted his hand as someone knocked on the front door. "The forensics team is going to go through Russell's room, but before they do, I want you to do something for me."
The man nodded and went to open the door. Liz stood behind him, waving to her father-in-law as he led the boys into the small apartment.
"What have you got, Elizabeth?" the man asked gruffly, shooting the other man a quick glance. "This the father?"
"Yes, this is John Michaels." She smiled at the man, who was sitting back in his seat in the kitchen. "Before the boys get into the room and disturb it, I want Mr. Michaels here to examine the contents and determine whether anything is missing."
Bill rubbed his forehead. "Liz, a child's clean room is nothing special. You can't just commandeer the forensics team to check a clean-up—"
"Trust me on this. Mr. Michaels? Can you come with me, please?" Liz took some latex gloves from one of the forensics guys and pulled them on, then led the defeated-looking man back down the hall to his son's room.
"Right. I want you to look around, without touching anything, and tell me if there is anything missing from the room. A toy, a poster, a piece of memorabilia—anything. Back at New Years', when he took poor Mike Rolland, he also took the boy's stuffed dinosaur, and it hasn't resurfaced yet. Neither has poor Emma Filch's unicorn, taken on Valentine's Day. We need to know if anything's missing from Russell's room as well—anything that we can identify."
The man nodded, stepping into the room and looking around.
Liz's stomach was quiet, resigned to what was going on around her. Mike's stuffed animal was missing, and the theft might be another calling card, if she could prove a pattern. It might answer the question of whether Russell had actually been killed by the Holiday Killer. She didn't know the significance of the clean rooms, or the missing tokens, but if she could build a connection here, it would be a start.
This boy was chosen to offset the fact the killer couldn't get to Jamie. It was her fault this kid was dead, and she was going to have to live with that.
Bill's hand rested heavily on her shoulder, startling her from her thoughts. "Don't think about it," he murmured in her ear. "It'll break you. These kids need your head in the game now. I can see the guilt in your eyes; if you don't want Mr. Michaels seeing it and possibly attacking you, I suggest you square up. We'll talk about it later." He squeezed her shoulder and gently pressed past her, heading for the forensics team milling in the kitchen.
He's right. She squared her shoulders and watched Mr. Michaels searching the room, trying not to disturb anything. I have to do this. For them.
Mr. Michaels' gaze fell on the bed, and he straightened up, catching her attention. "His wooden train. Russell slept with it every night. Couldn't work out how the kid slept with a piece of wood in his face, but there you go."
"Can you describe the toy, please?" Sergeant Donhowi asked, standing just outside the door.
"Blue, red wheels. It was mine when I was a kid, and I gave it to Russell to fix his nightmares when he was a baby." The man turned away from the room, folding his hands over his chest. "Look, I meant to take Russell to my mother's today. Do you mind if I call her?"
"No, that's fine," Liz said, scribbling a quick description of the room into her notes and stepping out of the way of the forensics team.
The man nodded and stepped around the scientists now flooding the room. Liz looked at the forensics guys.
"I want this room covered with everything. Coat the place in fingerprint powder, anything that will help us catch this sick bastard." She waited until she heard affirmation from most of the crew before she left.
Something about the man's description of the train sounded familiar, but she couldn't work out where she'd seen it. She could see it in her mind's eye, sitting on a shelf along with a bright orange stuffed animal of some form, but she couldn't remember where she'd seen it. But it sat in the back of her mind, nudging, driving her to remember.
"Liz, where are you going?" Bill asked, sticking his head out of the kitchen, where he was watching Mr. Michaels.
"I'm going to go find out why the boy wasn't reported missing. He was meant to be at a sleepover, and eleven years old is a little young to be sneaking out on his grandparents. They didn't report him gone, or even check with the father. Something weird is going on."
Liz headed for the car, looking at the address in the notebook. She was going to sort this mess out now.
The drive three blocks to the Daffy house—the house where Russell had been meant to be spending the night—wasn't too bad, as there were still only a few people on the road. Liz pulled up outside the address on the paper, looking at the house. It was a small house, more an old cottage with a tiny yard and decaying roof that had clearly seen better days. There were children's bicycles and toys scattered in the front yard, with a pile of shoes on the edge of the porch, some of them without partners.
What a mess. If Jamie left his shoes out like this, there'd be no dessert for a week! she thought, stepping over a baseball bat lying on the path. If these people have something to do with Russell or the kids' murders, they'd definitely have the garden to hide their activities in.
She walked up the stairs to the front door, where she knocked a couple of times, glancing at the dying pot plants on the porch. The garden was alive and overgrowing, the grass up to her ankles, but the container plants were dead.
This place is so unkempt… She knocked again. "This is Special Detective Donhowi. Open the door, please." I don't want to have to break the flimsy wood down on you.
"Coming, hang on a minute," a lady's voice called from deep inside the house, and Liz shifted her weight to the other foot, waiting for the woman to open the door.
She glanced around the front yard again. Her attention jumped back to the door as it opened, revealing a small girl, six or seven years old, red hair up in a ponytail and a toothbrush hanging out of her mouth.
"Grandmum said to come in and have a seat."
Liz smiled at the girl and stepped inside, closing the door behind her. She followed her into the living room, looking around. There was mess all over the floor—toys, clothes, crockery, and debris from a crumbling wall near the entryway—but it was easy to navigate. Three children appeared around the corner of the doorframe, taking one look at her gun and vanishing again, screaming and giggling.
"Sorry to keep you waiting," a woman said from behind Liz, making her jump. "My son took off with his girlfriend, leaving the kids with us for the weekend, and I had the three-year-old in the bath. Carl's out on errands, as usual, so he couldn't answer the door, but I think you made an impression on Belle." The woman wiped her hands on a towel hooked into her back pocket and offered it to Liz. "What can I do for you?"
"I'm here about Russell Michaels." Liz sat down, making herself at home. "I understand that he was here the last two nights?"
"He was meant to be, but he didn't show up. I figured my son-in-law decided not to let him out. Does it all the time, the fickle man. Still, can't bl
ame him, with what happened to Lana."
"Your daughter? What happened to her?" Liz asked, scribbling quickly.
"Run down by a drunk driver a few years ago, when Russell was four." The woman shooed a pair of curious children from the room. "He normally doesn't let the kid out of his sight. I was surprised he agreed to the sleepover in the first place. He's so worried about someone not seeing Russell on the street, or another drunk driver hopping the curb and killing the poor child."
"Mrs. Daffy, Mr. Michaels was under the impression that Russell was here last night."
"Well, he never made it here. I figured he'd kept him home. It's not the first time the man's said he was letting Russell come over, and decided to keep him home without calling. 'There's a killer on the loose,' he says, seeming to forgetting that the killer's stealing kids from their homes, whether their parents are there or not." The woman seemed to freeze, looking at Liz's face. "Wait… That call earlier… His agitation… Dear God… Russell isn't…? God, why didn't I call him?"
"Russell was found this morning, down by the marshlands. There are signs it's a Holiday Killer attack, but there are also signs that it's not. We're currently investigating, and we hope to catch Russell's attacker quickly."
The woman covered her mouth in horror. "The Holiday Killer. Oh, Lord, It was him! Robin, get the kids in here!"
"Mrs. Duffy, please, I see no reason to distress the children." Liz shook her head. "There's a young boy in the morgue tonight, and you don't want to have to explain what happened to Russell to the children. Let them stay children as long as you can."
She handed the woman her card, even as a gaggle of small children started to build up around her. The youngest was three, the oldest maybe eight. "I have to get back to the station and begin the paperwork. Please, if you think of anything that could help—if you remember any strange people hanging around the neighborhood, for example—give me a ring. I don't think I need to remind you that this case must be handled with the utmost delicacy, in order to maintain the integrity of the investigation. Please speak to no one about what happened here."
The woman nodded, sniveling a little. Liz stood and left the house quietly, keeping her thoughts to herself. She needed to get out and think, and she needed some solid evidence.
These people were strange, no doubt. They were hiding something, but she didn't think it had anything to do with Russell's death. She sat in her car for a few minutes, rubbing her eyes and thinking. She'd already been awake for over twenty-four hours, and she was getting droopy.
She hadn't learned much from this visit, except that Mr. Michaels and his mother-in-law didn't really see eye-to-eye on much. They were both going to blame each other for Russell's death, almost as much as they were going to blame themselves.
It was a dead end, this lead, and she thumped the steering wheel in frustration. She'd just wasted a few hours learning nothing but that Russell was stuck between two sets of parents when he died. Neither realized he was missing until she turned up on their doorstep, telling them that the boy had been dead for two days.
She turned the key and headed off toward the station, thinking. How could someone treat their child with such unknowing indifference that they didn't realize he'd gone missing? She couldn't imagine doing that to Jamie, and believed Phil was the same.
But the kid went missing off the street, and that brought one person right to mind. A man who had been arrested on child pornography charges less than twelve months earlier, though he'd walked on a technicality. Child snuff films might just be up his alley, and she'd have to ask him to find out.
They hadn't brought Mark in since Sally Kerric went missing last Thanksgiving, and Liz thought it would be a good idea to re-open the file with his name on it.
As for Carl, Russell's grandfather… Well, she was reserving judgment on the man until she could have her own little chat with him.
6
Liz rubbed at her face as she examined the chart in front of her. The chart logged the Holiday Killer's seven victims, and no matter how long she looked at it, she still couldn't make out a pattern to the victims themselves. But there had to be something there. Each of the children was younger than eight, but had a different background. Their rooms had been cleaned up after their kidnapping—or before, maybe, she couldn't tell—and the child's favorite toy had been stolen. She wished she knew where those toys were, because it might lead them straight to an arrest—and a city finally at peace. But no one had recovered the toys.
There had been only one suspect in the last six months: Mark Windsor, charged with possession and distribution of child pornography and sexual assault less than twelve months ago. He had a rap sheet that covered everything from breaking and entering to drug dealing and sex trafficking, having dipped his fingers into almost every crime imaginable at some point. He was a known laborer, which put him in the docklands, where they found the chemical sealant from the glove print at Mike's home, and he was one of the few workers there whose hands and feet fit the prints left outside the kidnappings, which Lisa had noticed while processing him for assault three weeks ago. He was also the only dockhand who had a pair of gloves in their possession covered in the same residue found on Mike and the second victim, Sally's, windows.
She was still bitter about letting him go on the Holiday Killer case, but she didn't have any evidence that wasn't circumstantial in order to hold or charge him. That said, she had two officers on him at all times, watching and reporting his every move. And they'd finally found something useful.
Liz stared down at the mug shot on the table, then glanced briefly at the artist's sketch she'd had commissioned after Mike was found on Lowrig Boulevard—that of the man who had found the body, talked to her, and then disappeared. While of the right body type as the suspect from New Year's, Mark didn't sport the same heavy-set brow or thick beard. He did, however, sport a similar moustache. But his eyes were also the wrong color—black, instead of light brown, almost gold. The man she'd talked to hadn't been Mark. She didn't think.
Then she came to the jackpot—the picture she'd been searching for. When they arrested him on child porn charges again a couple of days ago, the team photographed Mark's bedroom while he was in custody to catalog any place where the porn was kept, video or photo, including some dusty shelves in a dark corner of the room.
They'd been looking for evidence that he was selling kids to rich men who could pay. But the picture proved something even worse than that—that he'd had at least something to do with the Holiday Killer murders.
Liz glanced up as the tall, thick Italian man was brought in again, his hair greased back and his clothes ironed. He was followed by two very expensive lawyers, who were shadowing him at his elbows. Three policemen were trying to escort him into the room, but they were put out of the way by the large lawyers and forced to wait for the man a few times.
Liz didn't even bother to stand as he strode into the room, taking a seat on the other side of her desk. She glanced up at him and then continued to write in her notebook, scribbling nothing at all. Attempting to put the man off.
"Do hurry up with your bullshit claims," Mark said, sitting back in his chair and gesturing to the lawyer on his left. "This is your invoice for the time you've already wasted. As you can see, my time is expensive."
Liz didn't look at the paper his lawyer handed her, instead crumpling it up and throwing it on the floor. She wasn't about to play his stupid games.
"You've had some pretty special evidence in your possession," she said, handing him a photo of his gloves, seized under a search warrant a month ago. "These gloves were used in a kidnap-murder case a few months ago, Mark. I'm sure that if we were to run them against the samples found at the crime scene, I'd find an exact match. Because…" She passed over a picture of his boots, which were seized that morning, "these boots made the footprints at the base of the some of the victims' windows."
"What you have is a rather large pile of circumstantial evidence," the lawyer to Mark's ri
ght said with a grunt, pushing the photos back across the table at Liz. "You can't prove any of that. Now, my client agreed to come here today, to talk about when his possessions would be returned to him. He did not come here to face wild accusations of kidnapping and murder. Unless you have something concrete to substantiate these claims, my client is leaving now."
"How about this?" Liz asked, pushing the final picture across the table.
On it was a collection of children's toys, including a stuffed tyrannosaurus, a wooden train, and a teddy bear missing an eye, sitting on a shelf in Mark's bedroom. She watched Mark carefully. "Care to explain why I don't have you arrested? At the very least, you're breaking parole for that 'assault of a minor' charge you left prison for mid-last year, owning these child-friendly toys, never mind whether they came from my victims or not. At the most, DNA tests on these items will turn up matches to the some of the victims of the Holiday Killer, and you will go away for a very long time."
The man laughed, his face giving nothing away. He glanced at the lawyer on his right, who flipped the photo upside down and pushed it across the bench.
"And just what are these supposed to be?" he asked, helping his client stand up from the table. "Souvenirs of a crime my client didn't commit? If they are, they were planted in my client's house by someone of nefarious means or action. I wouldn't place too much stock in your evidence, Detective Donhowi." The lawyer smiled, waving for Mark to walk out of the room first. "Until your DNA evidence comes back, you have no case—"
"Actually, all the evidence I need came in this morning." She looked at Mark as two burly officers stepped into the room, holding handcuffs. "Mark Windsor, you are hereby charged with the kidnapping, torture, and murder of seven children. Jenkins, take over, will you?"
The officer nodded, then led the man out of the room by his elbows as he read him his rights. Liz smiled at the lawyers, who were frowning at her.
