Death By Degrees

by Harrison Drake

  “Bullshit. Sixty-five victims with birthdates that went in order and lined up to Bible verses and now you say hers doesn’t matter. You’re lying to me. It’s not like it even just changes the verse, there is no verse to match her actual birthday.”

  “It really makes no difference.”

  I refused to believe him. “You fucked up, your plan is falling apart. There’s no way you’re going to pull off whatever you have planned from in here. Give it up, Crawford. You’re finished. Just tell me where she is.”

  “Later. Let me tell you my story, and then we’ll go get Kat.”

  Go get her? She was alive? My heart was pounding, every rush of blood I felt through my entire body. It was as if I was standing next to the giant speakers at a rock concert, the bass vibrating through me with every beat.

  “As you know, it started about three-and-a-half years ago when the plane I was flying crashed. It was a mechanical issue, not pilot error… figured I’d get that out before you tried to be funny. But I shouldn’t have survived. The idea of your life flashing by I always thought was just an expression, but it really happened. I saw every moment of my life up until the crash but it didn’t stop there. They were nothing short of visions, visions of the future. They told me of my path, made it clear what I had to do.”

  “Go off your rocker and become a serial killer.”

  “There’s the humour. It was the exact opposite. I was to be the saviour of the downtrodden, the hero of humanity. I had been chosen to usher in a new age, one of peace.”

  “By killing people?”

  “To the closed-minded, yes.”

  “Not sure how to see it any other way. This isn’t the magical question of would you kill one innocent if it meant an immediate and permanent end to world hunger. Killing a handful of people isn’t going to bring about peace.”

  “You’re right. The peace is more of a by-product of the chaos. What’s the saying about not being able to make an omelet without cracking some eggs? Well, I’ve cracked the eggs, that was the easy part. There’s a step missing in that analogy though.”

  “You have to cook them.”

  “Yes. You have to change them into what they need to be before you get the finished product, you have to add fire.”

  So that was his plan. “Does brimstone play a role as well?”

  “Of course it does. Do you see the connection now?”

  “The Book of Revelations, the arising of an unspeakable evil which brings hell on earth until it is defeated and the new world flourishes.”

  “God sent the flood to Noah, destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. We are sinful, but the righteous among us will live.”

  “So that’s your finale, fire and brimstone. Bringing about the end of the world. How ambitious of you.”

  “The old world must end before the new world can take its place.”

  “You’re nuts, Crawford. And here you are, in the basement of a police department in Lyon, telling me you’re going to usher in the apocalypse with your hands cuffed.”

  “You have so little faith.”

  “Faith doesn’t mean believing the ramblings of a lunatic. Or does it now? Did Webster’s change the definition? Whatever. Plane crash, visions, saviour of humanity. Carry on and hurry up.”

  “The visions guided me. They showed me what I needed to do and they told me how to go about it. Sixty-six victims, their birthdates coinciding with verses from Revelations. I was to sacrifice them with honour and dignity. Those who I killed, they will be revered as it is their sacrifice that will bring about the new age. They are our true saviours.”

  “Sixty-six? She had better not be dead, you son of a bitch.”

  “Patience, Lincoln. I will explain further.”

  My blood was boiling. He was back and forth on whether or not she was alive; he wouldn’t give me anything to grasp on to for very long before he took it back and left me spiralling downward.

  “Each of the victims I treated well, up until the time came for their sacrifice. A bladed weapon, thrust into their abdomen; just as Longinus thrust his lance into Christ’s side. Upon their death I would carve the cross into their foreheads, undress them and wrap them in linens.”

  “Upside-down cross.”

  “A matter of perspective.”

  “Okay, so you want us to believe that you treated your victims nicely? I mean, up until the point you murdered them.”

  “If I told you that your death would bring about a paradise for your children, would you accept your fate?”

  “Never. Their lives may not be perfect, their world may have its flaws, but it’s the challenges that give life meaning.”

  “Their lives are far from perfect, Lincoln. Even before this. Running from someone bent on killing you, someone who burned down their home. Cast aside by a father whose interest in his partner was greater than his interest in his wife.”

  “Shut the fuck up, Crawford. You know nothing.”

  “I’ve seen the way she looks at you, watched it many times as I replayed your first press conference. Kara is still in love with you, and the way you are with her, the protective behaviour, the occasional looks… you’re in love with her as well. Consider this a gift.”

  I lunged across the table at him, grabbed him by the back of the head and slammed his face onto the hard wooden surface.

  “You think you were doing me a fucking favour? You think you were helping me?” I had him by the hair, what little there was of it, and was screaming in his face. Kara came around the side and grabbed my wrist until I let go. Then she shoved his head down, not hard enough to hit the table, but hard enough to make a point.

  “My feelings for Lincoln are irrelevant. So are his feelings for me, if there even are any and frankly, I think that ship sailed a long time ago. You have no idea what happened then, and you never will.”

  She walked back to her chair and sat down again. Her face was like stone as she sat there, silent and unmoving. I knew what was going through her head. What Crawford had said was true, she did still have feelings for me, and now she was blaming herself for Kat’s abduction.

  “How did you find the victims?”

  “I was a cargo pilot, a lot of the information came from shipping manifests. What didn’t, well with my hobbies it wasn’t too hard to get into the database and find the birthdates of the others. Once I had that, it was just a matter of finding them which proved far easier than I had expected. I came to realize that I was being actively helped along the way.”

  “By God?”

  “Yes. Or by the universe if you prefer.”

  “Either way I don’t buy it. But, to each their own. What next?”

  I was trying to be as pleasant as possible even though I wanted to tear him limb from limb. The sooner we got through his bullshit, the sooner I could find Kat.

  “Everything fell into line perfectly, everything was as it was supposed to be. But, I began to have my doubts. Which is why I got you involved. I figured if I could give you everything you needed to catch me and yet still succeed, then it truly was God’s work. But if you caught me and stopped me, then maybe it wasn’t fate after all.”

  “So it’s not fate, you’re just crazy. Seeing as you’re in here with me. And what about the two cops? One is dead, the other is barely hanging on.”

  “Collateral damage. This isn’t over yet. This was all meant to be, Lincoln.”

  “They weren’t part of the plan?”

  “No, unfortunately they were not. But it had to be done. If anything stands in my way, it must be removed.”

  “I’m standing in your way, so are the bars of this cellblock and the cuffs you’re wearing.”

  Crawford laughed but didn’t say anything.

  “You just can’t accept the fact that you lost.”

/>   “I didn’t lose. Consider this a time-out.”

  “Whatever helps you sleep at night.”

  “I chose you, Lincoln, as much for your skills as a detective as for the fact that like me, you had been forced to kill for what you believed in and to protect yourself and others.”

  “So does that make us besties?”

  “Maybe in another life. But we do need to get a move on, time is running short. My finale will be upon us soon.”

  “And what is it?”

  “I can’t tell you that, but I know you will figure it out. You have no choice; it’s your fate to do so. You will kill me, but you will fail to stop me.”

  “Then why don’t I just kill you now and put an end to it for sure?”

  “And what of your beloved Kat?”

  “Then tell me where she is and then I can kill you.”

  “I won’t tell you, but I will show you.”

  “No. We’re not bringing you back out.”

  “Then she dies.”

  I’d had enough.

  “Is she alive?”

  “Yes.”

  “For how long?”

  “That depends on a lot of things. A couple of hours, give or take.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I did things differently this time. Get to her fast enough and you’ll save her. Don’t and you won’t. It’s very simple, Lincoln.”

  I looked over at Kara who still sat expressionless. All she could do was shrug. Taking him into the field was a bad idea, I knew it. He was controlling our every move. But if he was right…

  The door opened and Chen walked in. “We’re not debating this. We go. Now.”

  Chen was right. Fuck protocol.

  “Get up, we’re going. But there’s going to be a battalion with us, so don’t try anything stupid.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

  We left the station with Crawford and three cruisers. Together we were three detectives and four constables, seven-to-one odds for Crawford. I called Jean-Pierre and told him what we were doing. I was surprised when he didn’t question it at all. As secretary-general of INTERPOL, he already knew everything that was happening. He knew all about Kat.

  “Go and bring her home,” he said. “Just keep an eye on Crawford. Handcuffs, shackles, whatever it takes. And if he tries to get away, you know what to do.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chen sat in the back of the cruiser with Crawford while I took the front. We had already seen what happened with me in close quarters with him, we didn’t need that repeated. A uniformed police officer drove while Chen told him where to go, relaying the directions from Crawford. Kara was ahead of us in another cruiser with another uniformed constable while two more brought up the rear in the third cruiser. We drove north of Lyon to the area around the small town of Collanges-au-Mont-d’Or. The lights and sirens were on, but we kept the pace a little slower; we needed to keep up with Crawford’s directions and not drive too quickly into a bad situation.

  Crawford directed us to a dead-end road that ended where a forest began.

  “How far in?”

  “About a hundred metres or so. Not too far at all.”

  “You two, stay by the cars,” I said, directing the officers who had brought up the rear to hold back. “Everyone else, move out. Give Crawford the lead. If he’s set anything up for us, let him be the one to take it for the team.”

  “Thank you, Lincoln. Always putting others first.”

  We walked for a little more than a hundred metres by my estimate before Crawford told us to stop.

  “She’s around here somewhere. Let me just get my bearings.”

  “Is she fucking buried?” My hand reached for my gun.

  “Relax. She’s drugged and has an air supply. She’s fine. I told you I did this one differently.”

  “I swear to-”

  “You’ll kill me, I know. Not much of a threat anymore.”

  Crawford walked over toward a tree that had broken off about five feet above the ground. The body of the tree had fallen toward the west but he pointed east.

  “About twenty paces that way.”

  “There’s no mound.”

  “I smoothed it out. Didn’t want it to be too obvious. That small rock on the ground? You see it?”

  I walked over to where he was pointing and found the rock; it couldn’t have been bigger than a tennis ball and was half-buried in the dirt.

  “This one?”

  “Yes, her head is under that.”

  I dropped to the ground and began digging furiously with my hands, brushing the dirt aside as quickly as I could to get down to where she was. Kara and Chen came to help and we began clearing the dirt faster than I thought possible.

  Kara and Chen were working over what we presumed to be the chest and their combined digging brought them to her faster.

  “There’s linens, Link. We’ve got her.”

  I started digging faster and faster until I reached something moist and slimy. I pulled my hands back and the smell of decaying flesh hit my nose.

  “This isn’t… it’s not possible. She’s… This isn’t her.”

  I had just spoken the words when explosions went off around us, blinding light and deafening sound wreaked havoc on my senses. I closed my eyes tight and covered my ears, trying to block out the sound. They were stun grenades, designed to incapacitate and disorient their targets. But there was something else. The inside of my nose was burning.

  I opened my eyes and tried to focus but all I could see was a haze before my eyes started to burn as well.

  “Tear gas,” I yelled, but I didn’t know if anyone would hear me. The ringing in my ears was horrendous. I could hear someone else yelling, it sounded like something about a gun.

  I stood up and used one hand to hold my right eye open against everything that made it want to shut. Tears and mucus were flowing, trying to wash out the gas that was now in my lungs as well. I was coughing and spitting as I walked toward where Crawford had been.

  “Where is he?” There was no response. I had been pepper-sprayed in training, most officers probably had, and that somewhat prepared me for the tear gas. But the flash bangs, the deafening sound and blinding light the grenades produced, were worse and had been completely unexpected.

  I heard what sounded like distant gunfire but I couldn’t tell how far away it was. It could have been right in front of me for all I knew. My outstretched hands hit a tree and I felt around it, realizing it was the one Crawford had been standing beside. My hands reached to the top of the trunk, where it had broken off and found that the center was hollow to a point.

  The small device I found confirmed that he had set this up all along. What else had he had in there? A gun? A gas mask and ear protection? A key to his shackles? He had it all planned from the beginning and we let our emotions get in the way. Even though I thought it could be a setup, I never expected what he had done. I was thinking he would try to flee or have us ambushed.

  The wind helped to clear the gas a little faster and within a few minutes we could see again although it was through a haze of flash-blindness and tears. I could see shapes, make out faces if I was close enough.

  “Where are the others? Renaud and Leclerc? Où est?”

  “Je ne sais pas,” she said. There were two constables with us, a male and a female, who had been hit by the attack as well. The others, the two that I had told to stay by the car, we didn’t know where they were.

  “Ma radio. Ma radio ne fonctionne pas.”

  The radios, he had jammed them again. I took out my cellphone and dialed one-seven. In Canada, calling nine-one-one would put you through to police, fire and ambulance. Here one-one-two would only get you fire and ambulance. One-seven w
as for police. We needed police first, medical care would help but it wasn’t necessary. All they could do was rinse out our eyes for us.

  The first officers arrived within minutes followed closely by an ambulance. They brought eye-wash bottles around, although they were two short. Chen and I waited until the next ambulance came and just kept trying to force out enough tears to clear our eyes naturally. It wasn’t working very well.

  “Still no contact from Renaud and Leclerc. They must have gone after him. We need every officer that arrives to spread out and start looking. Let’s get a perimeter set up, a couple of kilometres out. We can’t let him get away.”

  I was trying not to focus on the question of where Kat was. All I knew was that she wasn’t in that grave. That body was already decomposing, something that wouldn’t have been possible if it was Kat - even if he had killed her the moment he abducted her.

  She was still out there, still alive. I had to tell myself that, I had to convince myself it was true.

  More and more police kept arriving and began fanning out. Other cruisers went to locations to the north, east and west of where we were and began moving in.

  “I found it, Lincoln,” Kara said, still yelling. It would probably take us a while before we returned to speaking at a normal volume.

  I made my way over to her. “Found what?”

  “The radio jammer.” It was hidden behind the base of a large tree about thirty feet from where the stun grenades and tear gas went off. “How do you turn it off?”

  I could see the device, it was about the size of a toaster, but I couldn’t make out any knobs or buttons on it.

  “Just shoot it.”

  “Seriously?”

  “I can barely see… would you rather I did it?”

  “Step back then.”

  Kara fired three rounds into the device before the one light I could see went off.

  “Someone test your radio,” she yelled.