M for Murder, page 14
She had only seen him briefly that morning, during which time he couldn’t have uttered more than five words to her, and she figured that he was probably still mad at her about the fight at the bar. Although it would have been easy to apologise and clear the air between them, Rebecca had no intention of doing so. The idea of grovelling to Hickok was enough to make her want to throw up and she knew that she would rather take her chances, even if it did mean stepping on eggshells every time she was around him.
She had been pleased to see that his jaw had swollen up nicely and that he had been sporting a large purple bruise. Although she had resisted commenting on it, she was curious to know what he had told Sutton. The older agent hadn’t mentioned anything to her, so she guessed whatever he had said hadn’t been the truth.
Finishing his doughnut, Vic reached inside the bag for another.
‘One of the professors, hey? Well, let’s hope he’s right and they get the guy then.’ He grinned broadly. ‘Might save us both a lot of reading.’
‘Let’s hope so.’ With a half smile, Rebecca turned back to the report she had been reading.
Vic, meanwhile, started to sift through the top file on his own desk. He started to whistle again as he worked and she was aware of him looking up in her direction every now and then, as though his mind was somewhat preoccupied. Eventually she glanced up herself, only to see him watching her, a big grin spread across his face.
‘What?’ she asked, feeling a little agitated.
Vic shrugged his shoulders innocently. ‘What what?’
‘Quit staring at me, will you?’
‘I’m not staring at you.’
Self-consciously, Rebecca reached her hand to her cheek. ‘Yes, you are. What is it? Have I got something on my face?’
‘Nothing’s wrong for chrissakes. I’m just in a good mood, okay?’
Rebecca stifled a laugh. ‘I didn’t know you had good moods.’
‘Yeah?’ Vic narrowed his eyes slightly. ‘Well, now you know I do.’
‘So why are you in a good mood then?’
‘Why would I tell you?’
Rebecca threw her pen down on the desk, shaking her head in disbelief. The guy was dying for her to ask him, and now he was planning on making her beg? ‘Come on, Vic, you’ve been acting like the cat that got the cream ever since you got here. You obviously want to tell me something. Well, go ahead and tell me. I’m listening.’
‘So I see.’
‘Did you win the lottery or something?’
Vic pulled a face. ‘You really think I’d be here right now if I had?’
Rebecca didn’t even have to think about the answer. ‘So what’s happened that’s so great?’ she pushed.
‘Well, I guess I did have a pretty good weekend.’
‘Define good.’
Vic grinned. ‘I got laid.’
‘Oh,’ Rebecca said, suddenly wishing she hadn’t asked.
‘Yeah, sorry, sweetheart.’ He winked at her. ‘Looks like you missed your chance.’
‘I’m crushed.’
‘I can imagine.’
‘So who was it then? Jill?’
Vic nodded and grinned.
‘Yeah, we were going at it hot and heavy for most of the weekend.’
Rebecca gave a sardonic smile. ‘Lucky girl.’
The grin disappeared as quickly as it had surfaced. ‘Hey, quit it with the smart comments, okay?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I mean it, Angell,’ he threatened, a scowl breaking out across his face. ‘I’m getting a little sick and tired of your big mouth. You think you know everything, don’t you?’
Ignoring his outburst, Rebecca grinned at him across the desk. ‘Well, it’s nice to see your good mood lasted a long time.’
Vic glowered at her, his face reddening.
Aware that he had a short fuse and not wanting to push him too far, she backed down. Although the guy could be a jerk, he had for once come into work in a good mood. She didn’t want to be the one to go and ruin it. Keeping her tongue in check, she smiled sweetly at him.
‘So, you and Jill are a steady item now?’ she asked, trying her best to sound genuinely interested.
Vic gave her a dubious look before answering. ‘Hardly. You think I want to be tied down to one woman?’ He raised his eyebrows suggestively. ‘Still, I am meeting her for lunch today, so who knows what we might end up doing.’
Rebecca screwed up her nose, feeling disgusted at the thought. She glanced down at the half empty bag of doughnuts sitting on the desk between them.
‘Well you’d better cut those sugared rings out, pal, or you won’t have an appetite.’
Vic’s grin returned to his face as he rubbed his belly. ‘Sure I will,’ he said, reaching for another doughnut and cramming half of it into his mouth. ‘Good sex is enough to give any guy an appetite,’ he mumbled through his mouthful.
Rebecca screwed up her nose. ‘You know what?’ she muttered, half under her breath. ‘I really didn’t need to know that.’ Rolling her eyes, she turned back to her paperwork.
They broke for lunch at one.
Vic disappeared to meet Jill and Rebecca went window shopping before stopping at one of her favourite coffee houses for a cappuccino. As she sipped her drink she wondered how come it was so easy for Vic to meet someone and so difficult for her. After all, she’d been in the city now for over a month and, aside from her brief liaison with the philandering David, the closest she’d been to a date was on Saturday night when she had gone to the Blue Moose with Hickok.
Not that she would ever count that as a date. Beer and bourbon with her favourite FBI Agent was not an experience she wished to repeat.
You could do worse.
And you could do better.
Special Agent Joel Hickok, with his dishevelled dark hair and taunting eyes, wasn’t a bad looking guy. He was a couple of inches taller than Rebecca, who stood at five-nine in her bare feet, and he was in good physical shape. That didn’t change the fact though that he was rude and arrogant and had a boorish attitude, and that he made her so mad at times she just wanted to punch him.
Punch him or kiss him?
Remembering the feelings that had surfaced immediately after their fight on Saturday night made her uncomfortable and she immediately scolded herself.
You do not have feelings for Joel Hickok.
You hate the very ground he walks on.
He is a stupid, ill-mannered jerk and it would suit you fine if you never laid eyes on him again.
Done with her pep talk, Rebecca tried to focus her attention on the case. She went over the reports she had read that morning, trying to think if there was anything that she could have missed. The one thing that still didn’t add up was why the killer hadn’t restarted the alphabet from the letter I. Despite Hickok’s theory that the victim was already accounted for, Rebecca wasn’t so sure he was right. Surely the main intention of the Alphabet Killer was to kill twenty-six students. If the copycat killer didn’t start from where Rodney Boone had left off, then there would only ever be twenty-five deaths accounted for.
Maybe the answers they needed weren’t in the files on the current murders. Perhaps instead they should be rereading the files on the original crimes that had been committed by Boone himself.
Rebecca knew that the files were back at the police precinct Hickok and Sutton had gone through them all themselves. Not believing Boone to be responsible for the current murders, they had only taken the necessary background information. Maybe they had missed something.
Finishing her drink, she hurried back to the precinct, eager to pull the files on Boone. When Vic returned five minutes after her, smelling strongly of Jill’s flowery perfume, she had already retrieved the files from records and had them sitting in a pile on the desk.
Vic looked at her questioningly. ‘What’s all this?’
‘Files on the Alphabet Killings,’ Rebecca told him, not bothering to look up.
Vic hung up his jacket and came over to the desk. ‘There were only a couple of files here when we went to lunch. Now there’s more than double that. What’s going on, Angell?’
‘I pulled out the files on Boone and the original victims.’
Vic narrowed his eyes. ‘Why?’
‘Come on, Vic. You know as well as I do that we’ve been through all of the evidence with a fine-tooth comb. Maybe we need to go back over the original files.’
‘I thought our FBI buddies had already done that.’
‘They did, but only briefly. They might have missed something.’ Vic nodded. Rebecca watched him deliberating, hoping he would agree with her decision.
‘Well… I guess it wouldn’t hurt,’ he said eventually.
She smiled, relieved. ‘My thoughts exactly.’
‘This is your idea, though,’ he warned. ‘So you get to do most of the reading, okay?’
‘Okay, that’s fine.’
Rebecca passed him a couple of the files before turning back to the one she had in front of her. Opening the top page, she started to read the murder report on Boone’s first victim, Danielle Adams.
18
Wyefield, California. February 1968
Helen White had tried to kill herself on a Tuesday.
It was easy to remember the date, because the particular Tuesday she had chosen had been Rodney’s twelfth birthday; he often wondered if she had picked it for that reason or whether it had just been a bizarre coincidence.
Being a Tuesday, he and Clifford had been at school and, despite it being his birthday, the day hadn’t been unlike any other. His mother, as usual, had spent the day at home with his youngest brother, entertaining her various men friends.
Rodney had wised up enough over the last year and a half to know what went on behind her closed bedroom door and, although he didn’t like it, he knew better than to say anything. As long as he did his chores, his mother tended to ignore him, and he had grown to understand that it was better to be ignored than to endure more of the physical abuse he had suffered in the months that had followed his father’s death.
He remembered clearly how he and Clifford had walked home from school and how he had been quaking in his shoes because his teacher had given him a report card with a succession of Fs. The marks had come as a huge disappointment to him. He had worked so hard, both in class and at home, having decided that he wanted to go to college after school and train to become a professor like his daddy had been.
His disappointment was nothing compared to the fear he felt as he neared the house. He had promised his mother that he would improve his grades and dreaded what she would do when she saw the report card.
Of course, he was worrying unnecessarily, for his mother never got to see the report card. When they entered the house, they found her slumped face down on the bedroom carpet, her cut wrists creating puddles of red on the dull grey carpet, and a blood-covered kitchen knife at her feet.
Clifford had started screaming and, in a daze, Rodney ran to the phone to call for an ambulance. He could hear the sound of crying in the background as his shaking fingers dialled the number and he tried to calm Clifford, telling him to go and check that their brother was okay.
The ambulance came, followed by two police cars, and the officers remained long after Helen White had been taken to hospital, asking a hundred questions and confusing Rodney, who was feeling alone and scared, worrying about what was happening to his mother and what was going to happen to him and his brothers.
It was hard to believe that night had been almost two years ago, but just like the night when his daddy had been killed, it would always be with him in clear and colourful detail.
His mother had survived her suicide attempt, but never returned home. The doctors declared her mentally unstable and she was allowed to see the three of them one more time before she was taken to the nursing institution where, it was claimed, she would be made well again. But in truth she still resided there to this very day.
As they had no other family and were too young to fend for themselves, Rodney and his brothers had been brought to Wyefield, the nearest city to San Palimo, and placed in the Wyefield Children’s Home to await adoption. Rodney recalled the day they had arrived and how after settling in they had spoken to social workers, who promised that the three of them would remain together.
He had clung to that promise every time the prospective parents had come to visit, looking for a child to make their family complete, always drawn to the youngest brother, often prepared to make room for eight-year-old Clifford, but never wanting to take on the responsibility of a thirteen-year-old boy.
Eventually the day came when the home gave up trying to place the three of them together and it was decided that they would have to go separately.
Although nobody actually ever spoke the words aloud, Rodney could read the vibes well enough to know that he would likely spend the rest of his childhood in the home.
As everyone expected, the youngest was the first to go, taken on by the doting parents of three girls who wanted a boy to make their family complete, and it was less than a month after he had gone that the news came that Rodney had been dreading.
A home had also been found for Clifford.
Although he had already lost his mother, his daddy and one brother, Rodney found the idea of losing Clifford almost unbearable. His brother had been his one ally since his daddy had died and together they had looked after each other. Without Clifford, Rodney wasn’t sure he could go on.
Of course he somehow managed to, forcing himself to face each day, knowing that nobody wanted him and living for the promise that his brother had made him during their last conversation before they had said goodbye, that no matter where he was or what happened in the future, he would one day come back to find him.
Sitting on the large window ledge in his room at the home, watching the traffic passing by on the busy road two floors below, Rodney remembered Clifford’s promise and knew that he could trust him to keep it. Almost a year had passed since the two of them had seen each other, but not a day went by when he didn’t think of his brother, wondering what he was up to and wanting to know how he was getting on with his new family.
He stared thoughtfully at the worn brown suitcase sitting on the floor, packed with his meagre possessions. Being alone had changed him in many ways. It had made him grow up and realise that if he was going to get on in life he would have to become a survivor. He had learned to channel the emotions running free inside him, quashing down any feelings of love and joy he experienced, and releasing them instead through acts of fear and pain. He wondered if it was because of these necessary changes that the Boones had picked him.
As they sat and studied him intently during their first meeting, Cedric and Phillipa Boone must have sensed his new inner strength and known he would grow into a son they could be proud of.
Seeing their car pulling up outside the main door, ready to collect him and take him away to his new home, Rodney climbed down from the ledge and collected his case, determined that he would not let them down.
19
Juniper, Oregon. Tuesday 29th April 1997
Emma Keeley had been found.
The body of the beautiful, raven-haired pianist had washed up on the banks of the river down by the old bridge and had been discovered early Tuesday morning by two joggers.
Like the others, she was naked, and the back of her neck had been carved.
Joel Hickok and Max Sutton, together with the local pathologist and a team of officers, hurried to the scene, and the whole section of river was immediately sealed off.
The pathologist, Greg Withers, a burly man in his fifties who like fine wine had aged well with few wrinkles and just a hint of silver in his thick red hair, was already known to both agents, having been responsible for the reports on Scott Jagger and Rufus Lind. As he worked, the three of them discussed different aspects of the case, in particular the area in which Emma’s body had been found.
So far, the killer had copied Boone, dumping his victims in the sewer each time. Was there a reason he had now decided to change location?
As they talked, a small crowd of morbid sightseers began to gather behind the police tape, along with the photographers and reporters who had been first on the scene. Max rolled his eyes when he saw them.
‘Sick fucks. I can’t believe that people get off on seeing this shit.’
Joel gave a twisted smile. ‘Who wants to pay for TV when you get the real deal for free?’ ‘You know what this means, don’t you?’
‘We get to be celebrities?’
‘You wish, pal.’ Max let out a sour laugh. ‘We get to do a press conference and let everyone know what’s going on here.’
Joel shrugged. ‘And you’re cut up about that? It was inevitable that people were gonna find out sooner or later.’
‘Yeah, well I’d kind of hoped for later. Once the press start blowing things out of proportion there’s gonna be a whole lot of pressure on us from head office to get things wrapped up, and that’s not good seeing as we currently have jack shit.’
Joel nodded thoughtfully. ‘You know, we don’t have to tell them everything.’
Max looked at his partner. ‘You want to hold something back?’
‘It wouldn’t hurt. We could always play it like a one-off homicide and that way, hopefully, there won’t be too much suspicion.’
‘What about the other two, Jagger and Lind?’
‘What about them?’
‘It doesn’t take a genius to connect them to Emma Keeley.’
Joel pulled a face. ‘So? If people find out, they find out. We can deal with it when it happens. No need to go handing the press everything on a plate now, is there?’
‘I guess not.’ Max glanced at the crowd, drawn to the flashing bulbs. While he liked Joel’s way of thinking, he didn’t see it working. The original Alphabet Killings had been big news in Juniper. When people found out that three students had been killed, they would have to be pretty stupid not to put two and two together.
