The Ackerman Thrillers Boxset

by Ethan Cross

  Kaleb slammed his fist against the dash. “Yeah, he got away. And killed three people in the process. I’ve known something was off about you two from the start. How the hell did you know he was still on scene? Who are you really?”

  Williams meandered through traffic, driving slowly without saying a word. Finally, he said, “We’re from the Department of Justice. Part of a think-tank specializing in the capture of serial murderers.”

  “Then why lie to us? Why the cover story?”

  “We try to keep a low profile.”

  Kaleb laughed, but there was no humor behind it. “A low profile. What else haven’t you told us? Have you been withholding evidence?”

  From the back seat, Garrison said, “We have our orders, just like you.”

  “That’s a load of—”

  “You’re right,” Williams said. “We’ve been keeping things to ourselves.” He went on to explain everything. A lead they followed that led to a man named Joe Colwell. The connection to Francis Ackerman Sr. The suspicion that there were actually two killers—a master and an apprentice. The woman they had found at the Colwell house.

  When Williams was finished, Kaleb sat in silence for a moment. Then he said, “Take me to the station.”

  *

  The metro patrol station was a massive glass-faced structure covered in red brick and sandstone with a gray metal roof. In front of the station, a 25-foot decorative copper weather vane climbed into the sky. The display was named Salute for the two-dimensional figure of a police officer standing atop the weather vane. The silent sentinel turned when the wind blew as if it was saluting the surrounding community.

  Kaleb jumped from the Suburban before it had come to a full stop in front of the station. He strode past the weather vane, beneath a red portico, and through the large glass front doors. He nodded at the desk sergeant and continued past him through the squad room, down a long white corridor, and into his mother’s office.

  He expected a stern dressing-down for barging in on her unannounced. Instead, Captain Maria Duran leaped from her leather chair, rounded her desk, and came toward him. He recoiled instinctively, as if she were going to attack him, but what she actually did shocked him even more than if she’d shot him on the spot.

  She grabbed him around the waist and squeezed him tight against her body. “I heard what happened at the crime scene. I’m so glad that you’re okay.”

  Kaleb didn’t know how to react. The last hug he remembered from her had been when he was eleven. They hadn’t even hugged at his father’s funeral. He raised his arms but didn’t wrap them around her. Her gesture was so alien and shocking that he forgot briefly why he was even there.

  “I’m fine,” he said as his mother pulled away and straightened her suit. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, I just ... The thing with this Dunham boy and ... The way you ran into the Goodweather house to try and save those men. It was a very selfless and heroic thing to do.”

  “Really? I assumed that you’d tell me I was stupid, and I should have waited for backup.”

  “Oh, you were, and you should have. You could have gotten yourself and others killed. But that’s beside the point. I guess I just saw something in you that I didn’t know was there. I’m proud of you, Kaleb.” Maria Duran stumbled over the words as if they didn’t taste right in her mouth.

  Kaleb was at a loss. Dumbfounded. Speechless. “Thank you,” was all he could muster.

  “What did you need to tell me?”

  “Umm ... nothing. I was just going to tell you about the attack at the crime scene, but I guess you already know.”

  His mother nodded and sat back down at her desk, and the cold and distant exterior that Kaleb knew so well—and that now seemed almost comforting—settled back over her. He headed for the door, but she said, “Oh, and Brad Dunham is in Interrogation Room Three. He’s been asking for you.”

  “For me? Why?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he heard that the thing at the hospital was your idea and wants to thank you for trying. You’ll have to ask him yourself. See if you can get him to open up. The FBI agents who were with him at his house said that he spoke to the killer alone on his wife’s phone. And Mr. Dunham won’t tell anyone what was said. But be gentle with him. He’s been volatile. Which is understandable, considering the circumstances.”

  Kaleb gave a sympathetic nod. They were all on edge, but he couldn’t begin to imagine what Brad Dunham must have been feeling at that moment.

  34

  NONE OF THE CONTRACTORS WHO CAME WITH FAGAN HAD GIVEN THEIR NAMES, ALTHOUGH MAGGIE HAD HEARD FAGAN REFER TO THE BIG BLOND MAN AS MR. CRAIG. She had tried to introduce herself on two occasions when she’d found herself in the kitchen at the same time as one of the stern-faced operators. They hadn’t necessarily been rude, but they also hadn’t spoken more than one word at a time. She had given up on trying to learn their names and had started assigning them made-up monikers instead. Nothing too creative. Just a way of identifying them in her head. One man walked with a limp—she called him Festus after the character from Gunsmoke. One’s head seemed to always be on a swivel—she called him Hoot Owl. She hadn’t decided on names for the other two but was leaning toward Grumpy and Bashful.

  Festus was the one who had come upstairs to tell Maggie that Ackerman had requested to speak with her. He and Bashful were on guard duty.

  As she entered the room, she asked, “Has he had anything to eat or used the bathroom?”

  “He hasn’t asked.”

  Maggie walked over and pulled the black hood off Ackerman’s head. He said, “Hello, little sister. How are things?”

  “They said you wanted to talk to me, but I can barely stomach being in the same room with you, so talk fast. You have five about seconds to give me something useful.”

  “I thought of some aliases that father may be using. But you have to give me something in return.”

  She laughed. “What? You want to know my darkest fear? My most painful memory? No deal.”

  “Nothing quite so dramatic. I just want to know who the woman is that Marcus brought in.”

  “How do you know about her?”

  “Thin walls and good ears.”

  “She’s Marcus’s former fiancée. Your father kidnapped her about a week ago. Now what are the aliases?”

  “There’s more to it. Why would father take her? Their relationship must have ended a long time ago.”

  “You can ask him all about it when he’s in the cell next to yours. Aliases?”

  Ackerman looked away, and his eyes moved back and forth from side to side as if he was processing a great deal of information. His normal cocky demeanor melted away, and his eyes filled with the anger that she knew dwelled just beneath his surface. “Did they have a son? Did Father take Marcus’s boy?”

  “How the hell did you know that?”

  “It’s the only thing that makes sense. You need to find him before he does to that boy what he did to me. I’ve tried hard to block out that part of my life, but I’ve been able to remember a few aliases that I heard Father use. And I think I may see a pattern in them. Criminals on the run will often use some kind of naming convention in order to make it easier to come up with an alias quickly and keep them straight. I think that Father used a first name from the Bible—which is humorous considering that he’s an atheist—and a color for a last name. Moses Black. Noah Green. Isaiah Brown. It’s not much, but it gives you a place to start. Then look at interests. Marcus said he’s taping the killings. He may be a camera enthusiast. He’s always been fascinated with human behavior and fear. He may be working as a counselor of some type. Holding clinics to overcome one’s fears or something of that nature. And he’s a very talented musician.”

  Maggie wrote it all down on a spiral flip-up notepad and then said, “Okay, we’ll check it out.”

  As she headed for the door, Ackerman said, “And one more thing. I offer you this in the spirit of familial cooperation. Use it as you see fit. It�
�s about your brother.”

  Maggie hesitated, her hand resting on the door knob. She swallowed hard and turned back to the killer. “Don’t. Just don’t.”

  “When I was in your computer systems, I didn’t read only Marcus’s file. I read yours as well. I have an insight about your brother’s case that you may find useful.”

  “If you’re playing with me, I swear to God in heaven I’ll kill you right now.”

  “This isn’t a game, little sister. But I won’t speak of it again if you don’t want to hear what I have to say.”

  “Tell me.”

  “The man who abducted your little brother.”

  “They call him The Taker.”

  “Yes, I had studied the case even before I knew of your involvement. On the anniversary of an abduction, he sends a care package to a victim’s family that contains a small remnant of the abductee’s clothing and a lock of their hair. He’s obviously a sadist who derives pleasure from extending the grief and pain of the children’s families.”

  “Get to the point.”

  “I just wonder why he sends only those two items. He has an interesting concept going, but it seems a bit restrained for a man of that type. If it were me, I’d send a finger one year, a toe the next, maybe a kidney after that. Clothing and hair seem a bit subdued. Why not go for the full shock value? Let them know the child is dead and bask in their grief. They’ve tested the hair and found that it’s old, probably taken at the same time as the abduction.”

  “You better be going somewhere with this.”

  “What if he can’t send body parts because he doesn’t have the bodies? What if there are no bodies?”

  “Meaning?”

  “Maybe you’re not dealing with a serial killer. Maybe he’s a different animal altogether. Definitely a sadist and a psychopath, but one with a profession. One who puts his skills to use for a purpose. Like our CIA contractor friends here.”

  “I still don’t get what you’re telling me.”

  Ackerman shook his head. “Think, Maggie. The two items he sends. What do they have in common?”

  She thought for a moment. Searched for the answer. “They could easily be kept as trophies?”

  “Yes, but no.”

  Finally, Maggie’s mind grasped at a spark of hope and an idea that she hesitated to even speak aloud. When she did speak, her tongue seemed fat and useless. “Hair and clothing could have been taken without hurting the abducted child.”

  “And why would that be important?”

  “If it was against his orders to do any permanent damage to them. You think that the Taker is involved with human trafficking?”

  “All the children were healthy and from good stock,” Ackerman said. “All young enough not to remember their previous lives. People pay top-dollar for kids like that. And the serial-killer angle deflects suspicion. Other avenues of the investigation have been exhausted. This a new one to pursue.”

  “But that would mean ...”

  “That your brother may still be alive. Food for thought, anyway.” Smiling, Ackerman added, “But let’s focus on catching one bad guy at a time. You have aliases to check out.”

  35

  MARCUS AND ANDREW STOOD IN THE LONG CORRIDOR THAT LED TO CAPTAIN DURAN’S OFFICE, WAITING TO SEE WHAT KIND OF DAMAGE KALEB HAD DONE TO THEM. Marcus saw several of the cops from the task force hurrying around the precinct. There was a palpable tension in the air. Everyone was killing themselves for a lead on the case, but they had nothing. No way to find the Dunham boy. At least, not while he was still in one piece.

  He tried not to think of the other boy whom his father had also kidnapped. Dylan would be safe, relatively speaking. His father wouldn’t kill his own grandson, but there were fates worse than death. Marcus tried to keep the boy from his thoughts and focus on the task at hand. The Dunham boy was the one in immediate danger. But it was hard not to think of Dylan. He was suffering for no reason other than that Marcus was his father. A father whom he’d never even known. He supposed the kid would have been better off never knowing.

  “You shouldn’t have told Kaleb all that,” Andrew said.

  “They needed to know. They need all the information. A kid’s life’s at stake.”

  “I know what’s at stake. They didn’t need to know about your father. Don’t you know why Fagan wants to keep this secret?”

  “Not really. We have a cover story. We’ve worked with other agencies before. They don’t have to know about every time we bend the law.”

  “It has nothing to do with the Shepherd Organization itself. It has to do with you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What do you think would happen if some reporter found out that Francis Ackerman Sr. was still alive and has another son? And that son just happens to be a member of a secret group in the government that hunts serial killers. You’d be a damn prime-time special. They’d expose the Shepherd Organization. They’d find out where all our skeletons are buried. We’re small for a reason. Our budget isn’t large enough to alert the bean counters on the Hill, and we stay out of the limelight. We don’t draw attention to ourselves. If it gets out that you’re the son of one serial killer and brother of another, it could be the end of the Shepherd Organization.”

  Marcus pushed hard against his temples. The pressure behind his eyes felt as though it would pop them out of his skull. “Great. One more death on my conscience.”

  “Not everything is your fault. And even if something is, who cares? All you can do is give it your all, and let the chips fall where they may. It doesn’t matter what you’ve done or where you came from. What matters is what you do and where you’re going.”

  “I tell myself that, but it doesn’t make this feeling go away.”

  “You think you’ve cornered the market on guilt and regret? Sometime I’ll tell you about what I did before this.”

  The Shepherd Organization had an unwritten don’t ask, don’t tell policy when it came to its agents’ past sins. Each one of them had a story, and those stories were the reasons why they had been recruited. “I thought you were a deputy medical examiner?” Marcus asked.

  “I was, and I also had a job on the side working at an abortion clinic. Lots of people have a lot to say on the subject, and they’re welcome to their opinions, but I can tell you this: when I was the one doing the deed, it sure felt wrong. Plus, I ended up being targeted by a serial killer who murdered the kids of people who worked at the clinics. Not only was I taking the lives of unborn children, but I also lost my daughter because of it.”

  Marcus cursed and let out a long slow breath. “I don’t even know what to say, Drew. That’s awful. I’m sorry.”

  Andrew wiped away a stray tear. “The point is that we all have sad stories. We’ve all been through something. We all have regrets and mistakes that we wish we could take back. You can’t change the past, but you don’t have to let it define you.”

  The door to Captain Duran’s office opened up, and Kaleb stepped out alone. He moved toward them, but he was looking past them, through them. As he walked past, he didn’t make eye contact but said, “I have to speak to Mr. Dunham, but once that’s done, we’re going to talk some more.”

  “What did you tell your mother?” Andrew asked.

  “Nothing yet. I’m going to let you do that.”

  Kaleb led the way past desks and cubicles and officers working vigilantly, making phone calls, chasing down leads. He showed them into the observation area connected to Interrogation Room 3 and shut them inside. Through the glass, they could see Brad Dunham. His eyes were bright red from crying, but they were also empty. As though the biggest part of him had already died.

  When Kaleb entered the room, Brad barely acknowledged his presence. The father’s eyes didn’t move until Kaleb introduced himself. Upon hearing the name, Brad’s head swiveled quickly in Kaleb’s direction, as if he was surprised to find another person in the room.

  “Captain Duran said that you were asking for me,�
� Kaleb said. His voice sounded deeper as it resonated through the speakers in the observation room.

  “Yes, I was. Before we talk, can I get these cuffs off and get something to drink?” Brad held up his manacled hands for emphasis.

  “Oh, absolutely. I’m sorry. Why the hell did they put you in handcuffs?”

  “I went a little crazy there. They had to restrain me. It’s fine. I’m better now.”

  Kaleb removed the cuffs and then asked, “What would you like to drink?”

  “Anything from a can. Pepsi, Coke, either one. Or coffee from a real coffee mug would work too.”

  Marcus wondered about Brad’s request. He seemed pretty particular about his beverages. Maybe Brad had some obsessive compulsive tendencies that weren’t listed in his files.

  Kaleb seemed to wonder about the requests as well, but he didn’t question the man. Brad had been through enough already. Kaleb left the room in search of Brad’s beverage. Brad rubbed his wrists and stretched out his arms. Then he stood up from the table and paced the room. A moment ago, Brad Dunham had seemed to have one foot in the grave. Now he brimmed with nervous tension.

  The door opened and Kaleb came in with a blue can of Pepsi, condensation dripping down its side as if it had come from a cooler. He handed the can to Brad and then sat down at the table. Brad remained standing. He didn’t open the soda. He gripped it hard in his left hand and let it dangle at his side. His knuckles grew white from the pressure he was exerting on the can.

  “Something’s wrong,” Marcus said.

  Kaleb looked up at Brad and asked, “So what did you—”

  “I’m sorry,” Brad said.

  Then he swung the fist containing the soda can hard against Kaleb’s temple. Brad was a big man, strong from years of manual labor. The blow sent Kaleb falling backward in his chair. His face shot to the side and blood flew from his lips. It splattered across the observation glass.

  Brad wasted no time. His movements were quick and practiced, as if he had replayed them over and over in his mind and knew exactly what to do. Kaleb seemed unconscious or at least dazed. Brad grabbed for something on Kaleb’s belt and came up with a Beretta pistol.