Death By Degrees

by Harrison Drake

  “What? Like they’re actually right-side-up?”

  “If you look from the head to the feet they are. So I thought about the locations and the burials. They couldn’t be random, nothing he’s done has been random.”

  I was getting a little impatient. I just wanted to know what he had found. He typed a few things into the keyboard and red dots showed up on the map, one for every body we had found. Then an arrow pointed from each body.

  “Okay, those arrows represent the direction from the feet to the head. Notice anything?”

  “Yeah. How did we miss that? They all point inward.”

  “Right.” A few more keystrokes and the lines extended, eventually crossing over one another almost all at the same point. “And there it is.”

  “Where is that?”

  “Not a hundred percent sure. It’s not exact.”

  The lines disappeared and were replaced by another dot, this one larger than the others.

  “Israel,” I said.

  “Yes. There haven’t been any killings there yet which I find a little odd.”

  “So this is where it ends then. Can you narrow it down?”

  “That’s what I’m working on now, trying to see which city is the likely target. Right now though, I’d have to say Jerusalem. It’s the closest one, and just given the historical and religious significance it seems the likely place.”

  I nodded. “Good work, Eddie.”

  He smiled then looked down quickly, as though he wasn’t supposed to be happy right now.

  “That’s not it, Lincoln,” Kara said. “I can’t count the number of times I read Revelations last night. Might be part of the reason I haven’t slept yet, I’ll probably have nightmares if I ever do.”

  “It’s pretty messed up.”

  “That’s an understatement. There’s a lot to do with numbers in there, a lot to do with seven but also with three-and-a-half. Stuff about leaving bodies in the streets of Jerusalem for three-and-a-half days, the beast had power for three-and-a-half years. They talk about twelve-sixty as well. There were three hundred and sixty days in the Hebrew calendar, so three-and-a-half years is twelve hundred and sixty days total.”

  “Three-and-a-half years? When did this all start?”

  “Exactly. But we have to go with the Hebrew year, like in the Bible. Or that’s what I think. If we do, then from the first killing it’ll be twelve-hundred-sixty days on Friday.”

  “Friday?” I looked at the calendar on the wall; I had no idea what day of the week it was. “Today’s Wednesday.”

  “I know,” Kara said. “So we don’t have much time.”

  That was our job now, we had to find out what he had planned and where it would happen. That was one part of it anyway. If we found out where he was going, maybe we could find out where Kat was.

  “You two need to get some sleep. You’ve both done incredible work. Thank you.”

  “We still haven’t found her, Lincoln,” Kara said. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay. We need to know what he has planned. She might be part of it. Now go, get some sleep.”

  “Just a couple of hours, I’m going to go to the lounge room and have a nap. Even if you order me, I’m staying here.”

  I nodded. There was no point fighting with her.

  “Actually, Lincoln. Can I talk to you for a minute? Alone?”

  “Yeah, sure,” I said. We left the office and went into an unused adjacent room. The moment the door closed Kara started crying.

  “I’m so sorry, Lincoln. All of this is my fault.”

  “Kara, it’s not. If anything he probably was just trying to get you riled up in there as well.”

  “But he’s right, Link.” She hadn’t called me Link in a long time. Not since… “I still have feelings for you. And I can’t help but think that maybe if I didn’t, none of this would’ve happened.”

  “You don’t know that. Crawford is clearly insane, he might have taken Kat anyway.”

  “It’s just…” The emotions and exhaustion had gotten to her and while I figured she really believed what she was saying, it seemed like she had let her mind take it a step to far. “I had feelings for you before everything happened, before Saunders, before we… slept together. Almost from the start, Link, back when I first came to homicide. And I tried to fight it, Link, trust me I tried. Every day I told myself that it would never work, that you and I can’t be together. And then with what happened, for a moment there I thought maybe everything was coming together. It was horrible of me because for a moment, I didn’t care about the fact it would mean you leaving Kat and the kids. I just wanted to be happy.”

  “Kara, I’m sorry. I never knew.”

  “I know you didn’t, you’re just as blind to that as every other guy. And I didn’t want you to know. But now, if she’s… if she’s been hurt or killed because of me? I’ll never forgive myself.”

  “You have to. You didn’t cause this.”

  “I wish I was so sure. I can’t do this anymore, Link. And I’m so sorry for bringing it up now, but I feel so guilty about it. We’re going to get Kat back and then I’m leaving homicide, I can’t be around you. All it does is cause everyone pain.”

  She was so upset she was shaking. She had sat down on a chair as we spoke and now, with her knees to her chest and her arms wrapped around them, she looked even smaller than she really was. Tears streamed down her freckled face, her usually bright green eyes lost behind a wall of sorrow.

  I tried to say something but she stopped me. She didn’t want me to try to prevent her from doing what she thought was right. Instead, she turned and left the room to find somewhere quiet to take a break. I had a feeling she wouldn’t be able to get much rest.

  Maybe Crawford had taken Kat because of Kara and I. If he did, the blame was on me just as much as it was on her – maybe even more.

  I went back into the office to make sure Eddie knew it was break time as well.

  “Kara’s gone to find somewhere to sleep. Eddie, same for y-”

  Eddie was already asleep, his head resting on the desk beside the keyboard he’d been typing at just minutes before. I shook his shoulder and woke him up.

  “Eddie, if you won’t go home, go find a couch or something. Chen and I will take over, you need some sleep.”

  He nodded then stood up and left the room; his shoulder bounced off the doorframe on his way out.

  “So,” Chen said, drawing it out for a few seconds. “What do we do?”

  “I don’t know about you, but I’d be worse than Kara with Eddie’s computer stuff. And she seems to know more about Revelations now than anyone else here. I want to go to Crawford’s apartment and tear it apart. Maybe he left something there that could lead us to Kat. And we should talk to the officer from the school that survived.”

  Chen nodded. “They tried to speak to her. She barely remembers anything. They figure it’s amnesia due to the trauma. Nothing that will help us there, nothing more than we already know. As far as the apartment goes, they got the warrant for the place so we’re free to go. It’s still under guard.”

  “Did they find anything?”

  “No. But they aren’t us.”

  We arrived at Crawford’s apartment about twenty minutes later and showed our ID cards to the National Police officers guarding the door. The apartment looked almost the same as when I had last seen it although it wasn’t as tidy as it had been. The warrant had given us free reign to search anywhere and for anything and the officers had clearly taken that to heart.

  Not that it mattered. They hadn’t found anything at all to tie Crawford to the crimes. It was just the standard apartment one would expect for a man of Crawford’s age and marital status. A bachelor pad, for lack of a better term.

  I knew there had to
be something beneath the obvious. He had wanted us to find him at the apartment, he had given us what we needed to find him there. If he had just wanted to be caught, he could have walked a little too close to a cruiser on the street, been recognized and slapped into cuffs. He had lured us to his apartment for a reason and I needed to figure out what that was. We had to look past the sparsely decorated apartment, the purchased-for-function IKEA furniture, the one of everything.

  I did notice that the pillow I had shot, the one that had been right beside Crawford, was nowhere to be seen. It made me wonder where it had gone to even if there were really only two options: the evidence locker or the trash.

  Crawford had not been expecting company, had probably never even had company. He lived a meager existence and seemed content that way. The sofa was the only thing built for more than one person and even that had only an end table on one side. I pictured him lying down to watch television, the table behind his head a place for drinks or remote controls. When we barged into the apartment to arrest him, he’d been sitting in the middle of the couch like he would have been if he had just sat up. This apartment had not been shared with anyone.

  I walked up to the couch and lifted the cushions off. The middle one was definitely flatter and had a more ‘lived-in’ feel to it. The others were still quite plump, almost new. There was nothing beneath the cushions, not even a single coin or a chip crumb. Crawford must have kept it clean; had the officers found something under the couch they would have taken only the important piece, not the crumbs.

  The more I looked around and saw past the mild disarray caused by the forensics team, the more I realized just how perfectly ordered everything was. I already knew Crawford to be fastidious and exact in his planning, but this took things to a different level. Everything was arranged to perfection, straight lines and equal distances between furniture, the couch and table oriented perfectly with the lines made by the walls. I doubted I could even measure them to be a single minute of a degree off, let alone enough to actually notice with the naked eye.

  A single stool was positioned under the breakfast bar in the exact centre, the vertical blinds covering the door that led to the balcony were equidistant. I hated vertical blinds, and the thought of trying to draw them closed so that all of the blinds were the same distance apart and angled in the exact same direction made me want to pull my hair out. They never did what I wanted them to do.

  I looked around the apartment and saw that everything was organized and positioned to perfection: the salt-and-pepper shakers that sat in the back corner of the kitchen counter; the microwave and toaster, each with the extra length of cord neatly bound and positioned behind the appliance; the dish towels draped over the handle of the oven and smoothed out in such a way that not a single wrinkle showed.

  Everywhere my eyes went I hoped they would find something that would say Kat had been here, that would say where we could find her. I tried to push the thoughts back, to keep my emotions from clouding my vision, but they kept forcing their way to the surface. Evidence was what we needed, and whether it regarded Kat or Crawford, it would still bring me closer to finding her.

  I opened the fridge, my pet investigative tool, and what I saw meshed with what I had expected to see. The various jars, bottles and cans were all arranged by contents, size or alphabetically, and all had the labels turned outward. Foods that could spoil were in front of the newer bottles of the same, or in the case of the vegetable crisper on top of the newer package. It was methodical, organized and logical.

  It was Crawford.

  When I closed the fridge I noticed a note on the door held on by a magnet: LF SL 1030. It took me a moment to realize what it meant, but when I did it was obvious.

  Lyon, France to Sri Lanka. 10:30 a.m.

  It was the time of the flight I had been on. Crawford had obviously planned for me to be on that plane when he abducted Kat. Maybe he didn’t bank on me getting off of the plane so quickly. Which reminded me…

  “Chen, how did you get me off that plane?”

  “You mean not in handcuffs?”

  I nodded. “And not at gunpoint.”

  “Let’s just say that our bosses at INTERPOL have some friends in very high places. Apparently the French Prime Minister made a phone call, but no one wants to confirm that. Either way, you’re here. That’s what matters.”

  “Whatever part you played in it, thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  I left Chen in the kitchen and walked into the bedroom. The moment I entered I saw that something was out of place: the nightstand. It had been moved slightly so that it was no longer square with the wall and was now at an almost imperceptible angle. In a normal apartment, I wouldn’t have thought twice about it. I walked up to the nightstand and pushed on the left side. It slid down into the indentations that had been left in the carpet, caused by the nightstand not having been moved for a long time.

  The carpet beneath where the nightstand had been began to rise back to its normal height right away confirming the fact that the furniture had only recently been moved. It could’ve been moved by the detectives, but I held onto the hope it had been Crawford who had put it like that.

  I opened the drawers and found nothing out of the ordinary. There was a pair of reading glasses, a Bible, and a small container of antacid tablets in the top drawer. The bottom drawer held a few more books. I leafed through the pages of each of the books but nothing fell out nor were there any markings in them. Each book made its way to the bed once I was done looking at it, as did the medicine and reading glasses. The drawers came out easily and I checked them over - front and back, top and bottom – before stacking them one on top of the other beside the bed. The next step was to move the lamp to the floor.

  I had hoped that removing the drawers would let me see beneath the nightstand, but there was a bottom panel blocking the view. I lifted it up and moved it a couple of feet to the left but found that there was nothing beneath it aside from carpet a shade lighter than what surrounded it.

  Chen came into the bedroom. “What are you looking for?”

  “Not sure,” I said. “This was a little out of place, thought maybe he’d done that on purpose to lead us to it. But it seems like it might have been bumped by the detectives.”

  Chen walked up to it and grabbed onto the top. “Take the bottom,” he said. “We’ll flip it over.”

  We turned it upside-down and set it down on its top surface. The wood panel beneath the bottom drawer looked different from the bottom than it did from the top.

  I took out my knife and opened it, locking the blade into place.

  Chen just looked on waiting to see what would happen next.

  “False bottom,” I said, followed just after by “I think.” I began to pry at the wood and with a little effort and a couple of creaks the piece came loose. An envelope was taped to the underside of the original panel, “Lincoln” written on the front of it.

  “Nice work, Link,” Chen said.

  “He made it pretty obvious. Moved the nightstand just out of place – probably killed him to do it.”

  “Yeah, it’s pretty OCD in here.”

  Obsessive Compulsive Disorder could present itself in a number of ways, but Crawford fell into the category of ‘counters and arrangers’ – a category I found myself darting in and out of. The apartment showed the order and symmetry common among people with this type of OCD and we had already seen his obsession with numbers and how things were arranged given the connection between the position of the bodies, the birthdates of the victims and the connection to the verses of Revelations. Crawford would likely have felt the need to bring order to chaos, fixing anything that seemed out of order to him.

  The deliberate action of leaving the nightstand out of place would have taken a lot of willpower. The urge to push it back into place would ha
ve been overwhelming.

  I already had a pair of latex gloves on, so I picked up the envelope and pulled it away from the panel. The tape peeled away with it.

  The envelope wasn’t sealed; the flap had just been folded inside to keep it closed. I pulled it open and removed the contents: a tri-folded piece of computer paper and a Polaroid. The Polaroid was positioned so that I couldn’t miss it when I took it out – it was a picture of Kat. She was sitting in a chair, her hands apparently bound behind her and with a blindfold covering her eyes. The background was a standard white wall, like you would find in any apartment building or home. Nothing about the picture stood out, everything aside from Kat herself was so generic.

  Kat looked okay though, unhurt at least. I knew that there could be a lot that the picture didn’t show, but from what I could see she was fine physically. I held the picture in my hand and stared at it, as if I looked at it long enough and hard enough I’d know where to find her.

  “Can I?” Chen said, reaching for the paper. I let him take it from my hand.

  Chen unfolded the letter and began to read. “Lincoln, I hope that it was you that found this. If it was, I did not underestimate you. I believe you already will know the next step, and you know that there is very little time left. I will see you in Israel, Lincoln. There’s a very nice hotel in Jerusalem. I took the liberty of booking rooms for you, Kara and ‘Chen’.”

  “Is that it?”

  “No,” Chen said, handing the paper to me. I took it and skimmed past the first paragraph and the hotel’s address.

  “I’m sorry about abducting Katarzyna. She is innocent in all of this and it is unfortunate that she was chosen to suffer. You needed something to push you along, Lincoln, and I do believe I succeeded in finding the right motivator. Of course, nothing I do is ever done alone. Take solace though, in a few days time none of it will matter. You and Kat will find yourselves together once more. But if I am wrong in everything, you will see her once more in this life. I can only hope that when that time comes, you are still as she remembers.”